Twitter isn’t what it was since Elon Musk bought the company last October. But the judgments on the changes in the network go by neighborhoods. In the United States, Twitter has switched sides. The right now sees the little blue bird much better, just the opposite of the progressives.
A survey conducted in March by the prestigious Pew Research Center documents this shift clearly by comparing the results with those obtained in an identical poll from two years ago. In this time, the proportion of Republican Twitter users who say the platform is basically negative for American democracy has risen from 60% to 21%, while the percentage of conservatives who view it as positive has risen from 17%. to 43%.
Among Democratic tweeters, however, the share of those who believe that Twitter favors the democratic health of the US has dropped from 47% to 24% between 2021 and 2023, while the rate of those who view it badly for these purposes it has risen from 28% to 35%.
The survey, carried out between March 13 and 19 with a sample of more than 10,000 people, shows a striking and growing partisan gap in the evaluation of harassment within the platform. While nearly two-thirds of Democratic users (65%) say that harassment and abuse by other users is a major problem online, only 29% of Republican tweeters see it that way. The difference, of 36 points, is four times higher than that registered in 2021, of only nine.
Americans who vote for Joe Biden are also much more likely than supporters of Donald Trump and other right-wing leaders to believe that inaccurate or misleading information (68% vs. 37%), and the tone or civility of the discussions (50% vs. 27%), are key issues on Twitter.
The change in the opinions of each other on the social channel coincides with the one printed by Musk in the orientation and decision-making of the network regarding characters and political issues.
Since taking over the company, the billionaire has restored thousands of accounts that had been banned due to the extreme views and incitement of their owners, often from ultra, anti-Semitic or supremacist positions. On occasion, the outcry against those pardoned was such that Musk was forced to veto them after his reinstatement, in the case of rapper Kanye West when he displayed a swastika and praised Hitler last December.
One of the accounts that the potentate restored was that of Trump, which he nevertheless refused to use because he prefers to speak on his own network, Truth Social. Before formalizing the purchase of the network, the also owner of the SpaceX aeronautics company and Tesla announced in his own account his support for the equally ultra-ultra governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, as a probable candidate for the 2024 presidential elections.
The Pew Research survey is not surprising, but it is very illuminating.
