If you’re going to shoot at the king, don’t miss.

The BBC decided it would take a swipe at Elon Musk and the new Twitter, with a tired and debunked tactic. According to the UK’s news network, “insiders” are saying that Twitter users can’t be protected from — horror of horrors — trolls:

Current and former employees of the company tell BBC Panorama that features intended to protect Twitter users from trolling and harassment are proving difficult to maintain, amid what they describe as a chaotic working environment in which Mr Musk is shadowed by bodyguards at all times. I’ve spoken to dozens, with several going on the record for the first time.

The former head of content design says everyone on her team – which created safety measures such as nudge buttons – has been sacked. She later resigned. Internal research by Twitter suggests those safety measures reduced trolling by 60%. An engineer working for Twitter told me “nobody’s taking care” of this type of work now, likening the platform to a building that seems fine from the outside, but inside is “on fire”.

Then it starts making accusations such as Twitter now being a hive of child sexual exploitation, targeted harassment, “foreign influence operations,” misogyny, and attacks on rape survivors. The author of the post, Marianna Spring, uses herself as a gauge for the hate she receives and she backs it up with a study from the University of Sheffield.

Spring’s bias is pretty obvious, but like many “journalists,” she’d never admit to it. She covers the “misinformation on social media” beat and according to her, other social media scenes are getting safer while Twitter is just becoming a cesspool. She seems very concerned with conspiracies and can’t seem to send a tweet without using some sort of mainstream media buzzword. She’s covered such topics as Twitter dropping the “COVID-19 misinformation policy” and even gave Dr. Anthony Fauci an interview specifically talking about the trolling harassment he receives.

Yet another “journalist” who wants to be the story while reporting a story.

Naturally, Musk wasn’t having it. He screenshot the tweet containing Spring’s article and torpedoed it with his typical humor.

“Sorry for turning Twitter from nurturing paradise into place that has … trolls,” tweeted Musk.

He then followed that up with a tweet mocking the BBC.

(real article from organization calling itself bbc)

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 6, 2023

Some people may get mad at Musk for not directly addressing the claims in the article, but when you really break it down…why should he? The world already knows the truth about old Twitter.

For instance, before Musk took over, Twitter was an ultra-biased leftwing hangout where anyone who expressed any kind of thought to the right of Marx or demonstrated any ability to disbelieve mainstream narratives was shadowbanned or just tossed off the platform altogether. Sometimes, you didn’t even have to do anything that broke Twitter’s rules, you could just be effective.

Moreover, Twitter was a hellscape of leftist harassment. Antifa groups could threaten and doxx with impunity. Leftists could send out tweets that absolutely broke TOS and Twitter would either drag its feet in removing them or just outright let it stand.

But then there’s the claim from Spring that sexual exploitation of all varieties is worse than ever on the site. Spring’s investigations into new Twitter apparently made her blind to how Twitter used to be. The site hardly did anything to stop the trafficking of underage pornography until Musk arrived, and in one story, a lawsuit was filed in a U.S. District Court in California against Twitter after it refused to take down an explicit video of a 13-year-old boy, even after the boy himself begged the social media site to take it down. Eventually, the DHS had to step in itself and force Twitter to take it down.

I’ve yet to find this story in Spring’s reporting.

This seems like another lazy hit job on the free speech platform from an organization that can put a lot of money into the report to make it look official. What the truth likely is, is that the “disinformation” Spring and the BBC are talking about is the usual disagreement or findings that disagree with organizations like the CDC or WHO, of which there is a lot of data disproving these organizations’ claims.

As for the trolling that Spring is so obsessed with, well…free speech means people speaking their minds and on the internet, you’re going to get some people who are just flatly mean. That said, given Spring’s obvious bias to the left, it’s a safe bet that what she considers trolling and harassment are just a lot of people disagreeing with her.

Musk was right to mock her and her incredibly biased reporting.