The Thursday Twitter debut of conservative commentator Matt Walsh’s film “What Is a Woman?” was hamstrung by apparent censorship efforts. Although Elon Musk indicated these censorial efforts were a mistake made “by many people at Twitter,” it was a collective mistake not quickly remedied as the Daily Wire crew continued to observe limited reach and “hateful conduct” labels well into the night.
Musk simplified matters Friday morning, posting a link to the video on his own page for the edification of his 141.8 million followers. He captioned the video post, “Every parent should watch this.”
The original post shared by Musk now has over 22.7 million views, 40.1K retweets, and 99.7K likes as of the time of publication.
— Elon Musk (@Elon Musk)
Musk endeavored to make sure those who felt betrayed by the film’s rocky debut knew of its amplified broadcast, writing to Chloe Cole, a woman who suffered a double mastectomy and puberty blockers as a child, “Fixed.”
Following Musk’s Friday effort to make good on previous commitments to free speech, Matt Walsh tweeted, “It’s been a wild 24 hours. It began with Twitter labeling our film hate speech and completely suppressing it, and ends with all suppression lifted and Elon Musk himself tweeting out the film and urging people to watch it. A huge win.”
Amid the Twitter turmoil, the company’s head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, stepped down, reported the BBC. Irwin’s team would have been responsible for limiting the visibility and spread of the film.
Musk, who had indicated that the censorship of Walsh’s film over allegations of misgendering was a “mistake by many people at Twitter,” suggested the departures on the trust and safety team were “Director related.”
TheBlaze previously reported that Daily Wire co-CEO Jeremy Boreing detailed the deal his organization made with Twitter to provide the film on the platform.
“Twitter responded with enthusiasm and offered us the opportunity to buy a package to host the movie on a dedicated event page and to promote the event to every Twitter user over the first 10 hours,” wrote Boreing. “We accepted and signed an agreement. After we signed, Twitter asked to see the film to better understand what parts may ‘trigger’ users, so they could better prepare their response. They said they were still all hands on deck for launch, so we sent them a screener.”
Boreing indicated that after Twitter reviewed the film, the company not only reneged on the deal but suggested Twitter “would actually limit the reach of the film and label it as ‘hateful conduct’ because of ‘misgendering.'”
The specific content that ran afoul of the Twitter censors was an instance in the film when a father refers to his daughter as “her” and a scene where a store owner employed the correct pronoun when referring to a transvestic councilman.
Musk responded Thursday afternoon, writing, “It is definitely allowed. Whether or not you agree with using someone’s preferred pronouns, not doing so is at most rude and certainly breaks no laws.”
Boreing followed up, noting that upon posting the supposedly problematic clips to Twitter, “they were indeed labeled ‘hateful conduct’ and the share functions were disabled on the posts.”
Musk’s ultimate circulation of the film comes just hours after he indicated he would be “actively lobbying to criminalize making severe, irreversible changes to children below the age of consent.”
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