News/Commentary

Musk takes swift action, Twitter’s VP of trust and safety leaves company; fallout over censoring of ‘What Is a Woman?’

June 2, 2023 | | Print Article

In case you missed it, free speech on Twitter was put to the test Thursday as the Daily Wire’s Jeremy Boreing and Matt Walsh attempted to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the release of “What Is a Woman?” with a free screening of the documentary on the newly expanded social media platform.

As American Wire News reported, Boreing, CEO of the Daily Wire, fired off a 16-tweet thread claiming that, after watching the controversial film, Twitter pulled out of the arranged deal to air it due to two instances of “misgendering” that earned it a “hateful conduct” label.

Under its “speech not reach” policy, Twitter told Boreing that not even the Daily Wire’s followers would be able to see the film, should it be posted without editing it to the platform’s liking.

“Of course, saying ‘you have the right to speak, but we’ll make sure no one hears you’ is a bit like saying ‘you have the right to cast a vote, but we’ll make sure it isn’t counted,’” Boreing noted. “That’s not a right at all!”

Amid an avalanche of backlash, Elon Musk soon responded, calling the debacle a “mistake by many people at Twitter.”

“Misgendering,” Musk said, “is definitely allowed” as it “is at most rude and certainly breaks no laws.”

One would have thought that would have settled the issue, but “What Is a Woman?” was reportedly still being suppressed.

Leading up to the premiere, Matt Walsh noted that the film was being prevented from trending on the platform.

“We’re updating the system tomorrow so that those who follow @realDailyWire will see this in their feed, but it won’t be recommended to non-followers (nor will any advertising be associated with it),” Musk tweeted.

“Commenting & deliberate sharing will be allowed,” he added. “Sensitive content just won’t be pushed to people unless they ask for it or a friend sends it to them.”


At around 6 p.m., Dr. Jordan Peterson tweeted, “What exactly is sensitive about the What is a Woman content? I’m not being rude or provocative. We’re all here at the DW+ actively trying to figure out what’s going on @elonmusk.”

“Is ‘misgendering’ against the rules or not?” a clearly frustrated Walsh asked Musk. “You bought the company and reinstated the Babylon Bee after a ‘misgendering’ violation. Now you’re telling us that our film will be suppressed on those same grounds. This makes no sense.”

As of roughly 7:45 p.m. on Thursday — 15 minutes before the scheduled showtime –, the movie’s visibility was still limited. Twitter users were unable to retweet or share the post and were forced to go to the Daily Wire’s Twitter page to watch it, Twitchy reported.

Users found a workaround, but that did little to quell the outrage.

Speculation over the cause of the censorship was fueled by the announcement of the resignation of Twitter Head of Trust and Safety Ella Irwin.

“Irwin, who joined Twitter in June 2022, took over as head of the trust and safety team in November when previous head Yoel Roth resigned,” the Daily Mail reports. “She oversaw content moderation.”


Meanwhile, Musk was trying to find a silver lining in the controversy, noting that “The Streisand Effect on this will set an all-time record!” — a reference to a phenomenon “in which an attempt to censor, hide, or otherwise draw attention away from something only serves to attract more attention to it.”

But despite a response from Musk himself, the tweet he was responding to — one which shared the documentary — was slapped with a label.


Naturally, The Babylon Bee has some fun with the chaos, suggesting that there were still some rouge wokesters working at Twitter.


But Boreing wasn’t laughing.

“A terrible day,” he tweeted an hour before the film was to debut, “but nice to be in the fox hole with the best team in the business fighting for what we believe in.”


In the end, though it wasn’t quite the statement the Daily Wire hoped to make, Walsh had to admit that they owned Twitter’s kickoff to Pride month.

“Well, it didn’t happen exactly how I expected,” he tweeted, “but I’d say we successfully coopted the first day of Pride Month.”

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Melissa Fine
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