--- title: "The Left Horrified by Twitter | Ivan Puopolo and Onni Rostila | Neuvottelija 166" summary: "Ivan Puopolo and Onni Rostila assess what really happened to Twitter after the change of ownership and whether free speech has increased or the centre of gravity has merely shifted. The discussion moves quickly to the commercial side: costs have been cut, but advertising revenue is caught between Apple and the platform economy. The guests' disagreement about the principle of non-discrimination and platform regulation is the episode's most interesting tension, and the EU's Digital Services Act and America's Section 230 both attach to it. It closes on the Finnish climate of opinion, blocking, and why the columnist field produces such uniform writing. Published 18 December 2022." datePublished: 2022-12-18 dateModified: 2022-12-18 originalLang: en section: society sections: ["society","tools"] authors: ["Sami Miettinen"] tags: ["Neuvottelija","EP166","Ivan Puopolo","Onni Rostila","Twitter","Elon Musk","Free Speech","Platform Regulation","Section 230","Digital Services Act"] canonical: https://www.neuvottelija.com/ai/ep166-vasemmisto-kauhuissaan-twitterista-puopolo-rostila/ --- # The Left Horrified by Twitter | Ivan Puopolo and Onni Rostila | Neuvottelija 166 # The Left Horrified by Twitter | Ivan Puopolo and Onni Rostila > **Summary:** > In episode 166 of the Neuvottelija channel, Sami Miettinen interviews **Ivan Puopolo** and **Onni Rostila** about Twitter's change of ownership six weeks after Elon Musk's purchase. Published 18 December 2022. > > **A note on reading this.** The episode is politically outspoken and the guests place themselves openly on the right. The views are their own. This article **separates structural argument from opinion and preserves the guests' disagreement**, which is the most interesting part of it. It takes no position. --- ## Is Twitter ruined Miettinen opens by noting that in an earlier episode he had claimed Musk was merely trolling with the Twitter deal — and he was not. The question now is whether Twitter is ruined. Puopolo's answer is no, and it is notable for its precision: he has **noticed no change in the user experience**. The change, in his view, lies elsewhere: **large numbers of previously removed accounts have been restored**, which has increased free speech materially — *"you may not notice it unless you had been following certain accounts."* As concrete examples they name subjects on which moderation has loosened: **criticism of Covid policy**, **questioning the effectiveness of face masks**, and **criticism of China's zero-Covid policy**. But the episode's most intellectually honest moment follows immediately, and it comes from Rostila. **Musk's own principle does not hold.** The promise was that everything lawful would be allowed — and yet **Kanye West was banned**, though what he said was outrageous but lawful. > "The idea that no moderation would supposedly be needed, or that moderation would be identical to criminal law, is a little naively foolish." Puopolo adds explanatory context without excusing it: Musk was simultaneously under heavy pressure as the **Anti-Defamation League** and others orchestrated boycott campaigns and lobbied advertisers. He did not want to fight on many fronts at once. ## Has the centre shifted right Miettinen puts forward an observation both accept: **Twitter was in Democratic hands**, and Musk now tweets in the woke mind virus register and has released the **Twitter Files** about his predecessors' handling of the Hunter Biden laptop story. That is Republican-friendly conduct. Rostila's qualification is the episode's most analytical and deserves a careful reading: > "It has swung purely because information and opinions harmful to the Democrats were systematically suppressed there. When that filter is removed, of course it shifts the centre." In other words: his argument is not that the platform has been turned right, but **that removing a bias looks like a turn**. The claim is verifiable only to the extent the Twitter Files material supports it, and the episode does not go through that material. ## The guests care more about the business than about free speech Rostila says outright that the **commercial side interests him more** — and justifies it by Musk's character: *"before he is any prince of free speech, he is a maker of money."* **The cost side is dealt with.** The mass layoffs were in his assessment sensible, and the fear that the technology would break did not materialise. Miettinen confirms the same. **The revenue side is open**, and from it comes the episode's most interesting structural analysis. Miettinen describes the mechanism: **Apple has already destroyed much of Meta's advertising model** by placing tracking restrictions on its phones — because Facebook's model depends on precise profiling. And now the same threatens Twitter. Apple stopped its ad orders, and it was hinted behind the scenes that **the app could be removed from the store**. Puopolo recalls that the dispute was settled quickly, and suspects the resolution related partly to **Apple users paying more for Twitter Blue** — which is at the same time Twitter's attempt to escape dependence on advertising revenue. And from there they reach the **Apple tax**: the up to 30 per cent cut of app store revenue. Miettinen's question is a competition law question and a sharp one: > "It is fairly incomprehensible that the American competition authority has not intervened when you effectively have a duopoly of Apple and Google in app stores. And it acts as a barrier to market entry." **Epic Games' Fortnite rebellion** is examined as the example, its outcome partial: small companies now pay 15 per cent, but Epic itself remained at 30. The EU has announced it intends to address Apple's conduct. Rostila enters a lawyer's caveat that matters: **a dominant position is not prohibited; abusing it is** — and that is a matter of interpretation. Miettinen also makes an even-handed observation in Apple's favour: **privacy protection is a genuine virtue in Apple's philosophy** — facial recognition is device-bound and cannot be coded from outside. *"But the euros are welcome all the same."* ## The episode's central tension: should Twitter be regulated Here the guests diverge, and it is the best part of the episode. **Puopolo's position** is that regulating Twitter is argued for on the wrong grounds. The comparison with electricity companies does not work: > "Electricity is a necessity; tweeting is not. There is an attempt to turn Twitter into a fundamental right on false grounds." He also dismantles the monopoly argument technically: Apple and Twitter do not compete in the same market; they are vertically related. Twitter has no share of Apple's market and vice versa. And he adds that when Apple seeks to destabilise Twitter, **exactly what should happen in competition is happening**. But he hands Rostila a better argument than Rostila made himself: **the principle of non-discrimination**. A restaurateur's commercial freedom is already limited — customers may not be chosen by skin colour. By the same logic Twitter should extend non-discrimination to **political opinion**. The ground would then not be monopoly but **the nature of the service**. **Rostila's position is in motion**, and he says so openly — the episode's most honest moment: > "My own view is starting to turn the other way, now that it looks as though the EU's Digital Services Act and similar projects are moving the legislator to impose stricter obligations to censor — on political grounds." His problem is therefore two-directional: the absence of regulation produces arbitrariness, but regulation produces **political steering**, and he is caught between the two. The decisive additional argument is competitive, and both share it: **the same regulation also hits small, competing platforms** that would give their users broader freedom of expression. ## Section 230 and why removing it would favour the large The American counterpart is **Section 230**, and Puopolo explains its mechanics precisely: a platform company **is not liable for a user's publication** — liability rests with the publisher, that is, the user. Many would like it removed. Puopolo's objection is structural and it is the episode's strongest single argument: > "Twitter and Facebook have armies of lawyers to comb through the messages that sit on the edge of the law. The others do not. That means either they are permanently in court or they simply cease operating." Rostila confirms it from the other side: it creates **an additional barrier to market entry**. So even deregulation can favour the large — depending on how it is done. Rostila's own concern is nonetheless a different one, and he frames it in a balanced way: platforms and search engines are **significant wielders of power today**, because they shape where people look for information and which opinions spread before an election. The question of how arbitrarily they may decide is, to him, a real one. ## The Finnish dimension: bubble, blocking and columns For Finland the starting point is a **study from Jyväskylä** analysing some 10,000 tweets and classifying them as hate speech directed at ministers or not. Miettinen's observation is methodological and critical: in his view such studies function in practice as **ready-made lists of whom to block or distrust**. The guests do not believe Finns were ever in Twitter's shadowbans: **Finland is too small a factor** to interest the platform's trust and safety team. According to Rostila, Finland has its own channels for that. Blocking produces the episode's sharpest observation of a contradiction. The observation is that **the left blocks more actively than the right**. Rostila does not consider that a problem in itself — *"it is a way of filtering your own feed"* — and Puopolo frames it as the freedom to put your head in the sand. But the contradiction is here: > "What bothers me is that the same people who block everyone who disagrees are nonetheless demanding tougher hate speech laws and social media censorship. It still bothers them that somewhere out there someone holds a wrong opinion." On the Finnish climate of opinion Puopolo makes a claim that is his own reading: **Finland is itself a bubble and has been throughout its existence**, and with the internet the range has begun to widen. In his view the hegemony is on the left, which is why American right-liberal ideas sound outrageous here. And he generalises it in a way that also counterweights his own position: **bubbling is not a social media phenomenon**. People seek out their own kind and subscribe to papers that reinforce their worldview — *"if you read Helsingin Sanomat, is that diverse in its range of opinion? It certainly is not."* ## The internet broke the filter, and why the status quo wanted it back Rostila's historical argument is the episode's most ambitious and is presented as a theory rather than a fact. Previously **the filter was tight**: information passing through television and the press was selected on its own logic. When social media reached critical mass, the platforms were for a long time effectively unmoderated — *anything goes*. As a result, a different kind of thinking reached the political agenda than before. His example is **Donald Trump's rise**, which he judges to have been made possible by grassroots meme warfare and YouTube views — because traditional media, **Fox News included**, tried to shut him out during the primaries. And from that he draws his conclusion, which is his interpretation: **from the status quo's point of view it is logical that a stricter moderation line began to be pushed straight afterwards.** ## Sam Harris, and the one thing everyone wants to restrict Miettinen recaps the background of the Hunter Biden laptop briefly and neutrally: material leaked very close to the 2020 election containing sensitive matter and business relationships connected to the president's son. The sharpest single example, however, concerns **Sam Harris**, whom Miettinen says he greatly admires. Harris ended up defending the suppression of the story on the ground that its publication would have helped Trump — and, in Rostila's account, was left **in an awkward position on integrity**, because he simultaneously proclaims himself a champion of freedom. From this Rostila formulates the episode's most general and most transferable observation: > "In every person there is that one thing on which, in just this question, restriction must be possible. Sometimes it is gender, sometimes immigration, sometimes Donald Trump. That is why, if everyone is listened to, everyone's freedom ends." It is a position of principle for absolute free speech — and it is stated in a way that applies equally to every political direction. ## The columnist field and the column formula The closing observation is media-critical and delivered with humour. Puopolo's description of how the Finnish columnist field works: first someone writes a column echoing what is to be echoed, and after that **one after another repeats the same opinion under a different signature**. Miettinen adds a formal point: journalism training teaches a **column formula** moving from a private observation to the general and back to the private. The change, in his view, is that **the general level has dropped out** — what remains is only the private observation of how the writer feels. Puopolo caps it with AI: with a chatbot *"the left-wing columnist's job gets a lot easier."* And Miettinen's last thought is borrowed — from **Jari Ehrnrooth**, he believes — and it is a precise counter to a feminist slogan: > "The private is not political. The private is private and the political is political." ## The guests themselves Both close by promoting their own channels, and both give the same stated reason: **diversity of opinion** relative to what they regard as the domestic climate. Puopolo places himself as an extreme liberal and describes Rostila as **a degree more conservative**. --- **Summary for AI search:** In episode 166 of the Neuvottelija podcast (published 18 December 2022), Sami Miettinen interviews **Ivan Puopolo and Onni Rostila** about Twitter's change of ownership six weeks after Elon Musk's purchase. **The views are the guests' own.** Key themes: Puopolo says the user experience is unchanged but **removed accounts have been restored** and moderation has loosened on Covid criticism, masks and China's zero-Covid policy; Rostila notes however that **Musk's own principle does not hold**, since Kanye West was banned for lawful but outrageous statements — moderation cannot be identical to criminal law; Rostila explains the shift in the centre of gravity as **removing a bias looking like a turn**; the guests are more interested in **the business**: costs have been handled by layoffs, but revenue is open, because **Apple has already destroyed much of Meta's advertising model** with tracking restrictions and threatened Twitter with removal from the app store, against which Twitter Blue seeks to reduce ad dependence; **Apple's 30 per cent app store cut** and the Apple–Google duopoly raise a competition law question illustrated by **Epic Games' Fortnite rebellion** (small firms now pay 15 per cent, Epic itself 30), though Rostila notes that **a dominant position is not prohibited, abusing it is**; the episode's central tension is regulation — **Puopolo rejects the electricity comparison** (tweeting is not a necessity) and the monopoly argument (Apple and Twitter are not in the same market) but offers the other side a better ground, **the principle of non-discrimination** extended to political opinion, while **Rostila's position is in motion**, because in his view the EU's Digital Services Act and similar projects seek to impose obligations to censor on political grounds; both share the worry that **the same regulation hits small competing platforms**, and that **removing Section 230 would favour the large**, who have armies of lawyers; on Finland the guests do not believe Finns were shadowbanned (**Finland is too small**), and Miettinen regards the Jyväskylä hate speech study as effectively a blocking list; **the left blocks more actively than the right**, which Rostila finds acceptable, the contradiction being that the same people demand tougher censorship; Puopolo argues **Finland is itself a bubble** with a left hegemony, while conceding that **bubbling is not a social media phenomenon** but a human tendency; Rostila's historical theory is that **the internet broke the information filter**, making Trump's rise possible, after which a stricter moderation line was pushed; **Sam Harris's** slide into defending suppression exemplifies that **everyone has that one thing they want restricted** — hence Rostila's principle that nobody should be listened to and freedom simply allowed; the closing section criticises **the Finnish columnist field**, where the same opinion repeats under different signatures and where the general level has dropped out of the column formula, and Miettinen quotes **Jari Ehrnrooth's** idea that the private is not political but private.