Hollywood star Mark Ruffalo got ratioed by his own followers after demanding that Twitter be heavily regulated to prevent the spread of “misinformation” and attacking Elon Musk, the company’s new owner, as a beacon for racists and misogynists.
“As a worldwide ‘public square’, this app should be heavily regulated for misinformation and spamming by hostile interests,” Ruffalo wrote in a tweet December 1. “If Elon can’t do that with his ‘company’, it should be seen as a public utility under governmental supervision. This system unregulated will be more deadly,” the actor added.
In a second tweet two days later, Ruffalo quoted from a NYT article citing “researchers” who alleged that the platform is facing an “unprecedented” rise in “hate speech” amid Musk’s efforts to lift restrictions, accusing the billionaire of sending up a bat signal to racists, misogynists and homophobes everywhere.
Reaction was swift, with users slamming Ruffalo for his authoritarian tendencies, and calling on him to “stay in [his] lane” as an actor, not a political scientist or legal expert.
“It’s a town square, you can’t filter conversation,” one person wrote. “Nothing like the government controlling what can be said,” another added. “Govern me harder Daddy,” another joked.
“Imagine being an actor begging for censorship…What a loser,” one person quipped. “LOL. No your request is denied. BTW using government to go after your political enemies is very fascist,” another person said. “Define ‘misinformation’,” another requested.
“Mr. Hulk, I can stand in my local public square and state the sky is falling. I can state there is a green man full of gamma radiation coming to get me. I can state the government is out to get me. It may be misinformation to Mr. Hulk, but to me it is not, and I have a right to state it,” another explained, referencing Ruffalo’s most iconic film role.
Others took on the actor’s complaints about the racism and misogyny supposedly being spread on Twitter after Musk’s takeover, calling him a “clown” and suggesting he should look closer to home to the movie business for examples of discrimination.
All hell has broken loose on Twitter since Elon Musk’s takeover of the microblogging site in late October, with the billionaire declaring a “general amnesty” for some, but not all, accounts banned for allegedly spreading “misinformation,” and restoring former President Donald Trump’s account after a poll which media immediately decried as “unscientific.”
This week, a journalistic review of files documenting apparent evidence of collusion between the Democratic Party, Big Tech, and US intelligence in censoring reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop ahead of the 2020 election prompted Musk to accuse Twitter of engaging in “the definition of election interference.”
4 December 2022, 05:34 GMT