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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022

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he can algorithmically suppress certain content/accounts

Can he do so without enough backlash to make it counterproductive though? I think the main power behind being able to nudge opinion like that relies on doing so unnoticeably. Making it overt can make it actively counterproductive due to the Streisand effect, as the fact of what you're suppressing itself becomes news.

Musk has been bringing up the degree to which that was going on behind the scenes at twitter prior to his takeover (eg. publicising the twitter files). However I don't think he's in a good position to do so himself - he can't just directly press a button and tweak the algorithm: he needs a technical team to make those knobs available, which could be a big issue. First, he's much more likely to get noticed / caught doing so: one twitter insider leaking those details is all it takes, and I think there are going to be more willing to do so than when those tweaks aligned with the politics of the average twitter employee. Second, the fact that he's spoken against this leaves him open to charges of hypocrisy when he does it, and again, the mismatch in politics is going to make the push-back more severe.