Fig. 1. “Elon Musk shared a video of his entrance on his Twitter account.” Photograph attributed to Elon Musk, October 26, 2022, via the New York Post,[1] fair use.
Philip Bump brings together themes[2] I visited in a couple of my recent blog postings:
It’s not clear whether [Elon] Musk understands that Twitter polls are not particularly meaningful. In discussing his polls with users on the platform, for example, Musk embraced ideas that would plaster a veneer of accuracy on top of the fundamentally unscientific process.[3]
I, of course, addressed Elon Musk’s methodology on November 21. There’s nothing radical here. It’s basic to survey methodology that you’re supposed to use a representative sample and that what Musk or anybody else is relying on with Twitter polls is not, and cannot be, a representative sample.[4]
The other point, which I raised on November 26, is about misinformation or, perhaps, disinformation, in which, among many points, evidence does not support the conclusions offered.[5] As Bump points out, Musk is misusing evidence to claim popular support for a change in Twitter policies which serves to restore hateful and violent white Christian nationalist voices to the platform. Further, some of that evidence may be misleading as many of the votes in Musk’s polls may have been cast by bots,[6] a point I had also made in my earlier posting.[7]
Musk, in fact, is very much an outlier on the high side for the number of bots among his “followers.”[8]
Mr. [Elon] Musk is “an outlier among outliers,” said Darius Kazemi, a computer programmer who has spent a decade creating and studying bots and is currently a senior software engineer at Meedan, a technology nonprofit that aims to combat misinformation. “His experience is going to be different from not just the average user, but the average celebrity.”[9]
We don’t know the extent to which these bots participated in Musk’s polls. But to the extent Musk is aware of any such participation, his claim to the voice of the people for support for his predetermined conclusions is fraudulent. It would be, for me as a Ph.D., a cardinal sin: intellectual dishonesty.
One would think [Elon] Musk would know this. One would expect that he would, as an adult who has run businesses involving a lot of numbers. If a Tesla executive collected signatures on a petition from a large group of employees who disliked Musk calling for him to sell the company, would he shrug and say, “Well, the people have spoken”? I propose that he would not.
But the polls give him cover. He can bring back [Donald] Trump and bring back abusive accounts and point at Twitter users and then blame the users for it. Not his fault! He asked people what they wanted and they said they wanted this, so please keep buying ads from Musk’s Twitter anyway.[10]
Advertisers have so far been unimpressed. They’re ditching Twitter in droves.[11] And according to Musk, in addition to taking its advertising dollars elsewhere, Apple is threatening to pull the Twitter app from its app store.[12]
Perhaps you’re noticing a pattern: Donald Trump and his supporters claim the 2020 election was stolen to justify violence (which they minimize) in an effort to keep Trump in the White House. Implicitly, this is a claim to popular support which did not appear in the results and for which Trump and his supporters can offer no evidence. But this evidence-free claim rationalizes an attempt to establish a competitive authoritarian regime, which would ensure that Republicans never again lose like they did in 2020 and, now, in 2022. As with Musk, the claim supports a change in policy which favors hate and violence.
Certainly you can nitpick the details. But in broad strokes, Musk has embraced Trump’s playbook.
- [1]Thomas Barrabi, “Elon Musk barges into Twitter HQ as deal nears: ‘Let that sink in,’” New York Post, October 26, 2022, https://nypost.com/2022/10/26/elon-musk-barges-into-twitter-headquarters-as-deal-nears/↩
- [2]Philip Bump, “Hey, Elon Musk? Twitter polls are not the ‘voice of the people,’” Washington Post, November 28, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/28/hey-elon-musk-twitter-polls-are-not-voice-people/↩
- [3]Philip Bump, “Hey, Elon Musk? Twitter polls are not the ‘voice of the people,’” Washington Post, November 28, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/28/hey-elon-musk-twitter-polls-are-not-voice-people/↩
- [4]David Benfell, “About Elon Musk’s Twitter poll and about Twitter polls generally,” Not Housebroken, November 21, 2022, https://disunitedstates.org/2022/11/21/about-elon-musks-twitter-poll-and-about-twitter-polls-generally/↩
- [5]David Benfell, “Information, information cynicism, disinformation, and misinformation,” Not Housebroken, November 26, 2022, https://disunitedstates.org/2022/11/26/information-information-cynicism-disinformation-and-misinformation/↩
- [6]Philip Bump, “Hey, Elon Musk? Twitter polls are not the ‘voice of the people,’” Washington Post, November 28, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/28/hey-elon-musk-twitter-polls-are-not-voice-people/↩
- [7]David Benfell, “About Elon Musk’s Twitter poll and about Twitter polls generally,” Not Housebroken, November 21, 2022, https://disunitedstates.org/2022/11/21/about-elon-musks-twitter-poll-and-about-twitter-polls-generally/↩
- [8]Sarah E. Needleman, “Elon Musk’s followers include a lot of bots,” MarketWatch, June 5, 2022, https://www.marketwatch.com/story/elon-musks-followers-include-a-lot-of-bots-11654478074↩
- [9]Sarah E. Needleman, “Elon Musk’s followers include a lot of bots,” MarketWatch, June 5, 2022, https://www.marketwatch.com/story/elon-musks-followers-include-a-lot-of-bots-11654478074↩
- [10]Philip Bump, “Hey, Elon Musk? Twitter polls are not the ‘voice of the people,’” Washington Post, November 28, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/28/hey-elon-musk-twitter-polls-are-not-voice-people/↩
- [11]Sarah E. Needleman and Alexa Corse, “Elon Musk Says Twitter Has Had Massive Revenue Drop as Layoffs Begin,” Wall Street Journal, November 4, 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-says-twitter-has-had-massive-revenue-drop-11667573127; Sarah E. Needleman and Tim Higgins, “Elon Musk Claims Apple Is Threatening to Remove Twitter From App Store,” Wall Street Journal, November 28, 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-attacks-apple-tim-cook-over-advertising-and-censorship-11669662024; Naomi Nix and Jeremy B. Merrill, “Advertisers are dropping Twitter. Musk can’t afford to lose any more,” Washington Post, November 22, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/22/twitter-advertiser-exodus-musk/; Faiz Siddiqui, Naomi Nix, and Will Oremus, “Advertisers fleeing, workers in fear: Welcome to Elon Musk’s Twitter,” Washington Post, November 4, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/04/twitter-layoffs-musk/; Suzanne Vranica and Patience Haggin, “Twitter’s Advertising Exodus Accelerates, Despite Outreach From Elon Musk,” Wall Street Journal, November 12, 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/twitters-advertising-exodus-accelerates-despite-outreach-from-elon-musk-11668262920↩
- [12]Sarah E. Needleman and Tim Higgins, “Elon Musk Claims Apple Is Threatening to Remove Twitter From App Store,” Wall Street Journal, November 28, 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-attacks-apple-tim-cook-over-advertising-and-censorship-11669662024↩
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