Education Week - November 23, 2022 - 6

Will Elon Musk's Takeover of Twitter
Start an Educator Exodus?
Educators are weighing whether
to leave the platform, which many
worry may become a cesspool
of hate speech and misinformation
By Alyson Klein
U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel
Cardona, Los Angeles Superintendent
Alberto Carvalho, and Randi Weingarten,
the president of the American
Federation of Teachers, may seem
like big celebrities in the world of K-12
education.
But none of them has as many Twitter
followers as Nicholas Ferroni.
Ferroni, a former soap opera actor
once named People Magazine's
Sexiest Teacher Alive, uses the social
media platform-and his 125,500 followers-to
promote LGBTQ community
rights, culturally responsive
teaching, measures to make educators'
jobs more manageable, and other
priorities.
But now, Ferroni, who teaches social
studies in Union, N.J., is wondering if
it's time to move on from Twitter.
Late last month, Elon Musk, the
billionaire entrepreneur, took over
Twitter, promising big changes he
contends will advance free speech.
Critics, though, worry Musk's policies
will instead allow the hate and dangerous
misinformation Twitter management
previously sought to squelch to
go unchecked.
For now, Ferroni, like many teachers
who have found a community on
Twitter, is in watch-and-wait mode.
" If it gets to a point where people are
brutally attacking and demoralizing
and lying about educators in general,
that's something I won't be able to
stomach, " he said.
In the days since Oct. 27, when Musk
officially took over the platform, many
educators have been similarly soul
searching. Twitter has offered teachers
and school and district leaders a
corner of the internet to interact with
their communities, swap lesson ideas,
find out what's going on in schools
around the country, air their frustrations
with the profession, and get inspired.
Some
educators-including Ferroni-have
also used the platform as
a way to showcase their side hustles
as authors, speakers, and consultants.
" I use Twitter to make my job easier,
to share with others, to grow my
network, and to learn, " said Kristina
Holzweiss, the education technology
enrichment specialist at Syosset High
School on New York's Long Island,
who has nearly 20,000 followers.
Right now, she's also using the social
media platform in part to promote the
two children's books she authored and
has no immediate plans to leave.
So far, she hasn't seen big changes in
her Twitter feed, which she chalks up to
how easy it is to curate content on the
platform. Still, she points out that " some
parts of it can be cesspools, " which is
true of all social media. " You have to
know that people are going to voice
their opinions, whatever the format is. "
The free speech debate has
serious, real-world implications
For now, Ferroni is using the potential
transformation of Twitter as an
opportunity to probe some of his favorite
questions with his students. He
said those include: " Is there a problem
with allowing complete and open and
unfiltered free speech? What is free
speech? What is hate speech? "
His classes have plenty of fodder for
those discussions.
The most prominent example of
how possible changes to Twitter may
have a big impact: After the 2020 election,
former President Donald Trump
and many of his allies in the Republican
party tweeted that there was
widespread voter fraud, despite an
overwhelming lack of evidence that
that was the case.
Twitter fact-checked Trump's assertions.
Some applauded the move.
But Trump and his allies decried it as
infringing on the president's right to
free speech, and critics of Trump said
the move was too little, too late.
Ultimately, the former president
was banned from the platform after
the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the
U.S. Capitol, which sought to block
Congress from certifying President
Joe Biden's victory. Even as Trump's
supporters stormed the building, the
former president continued to tweet
out lies about the election results, fueling
violence and putting lawmakers'
and police officers' lives in danger.
Musk has said he would allow
Trump-who has started his own platform,
Truth Social-to rejoin Twitter.
Though he originally appeared to
embrace a no-restrictions approach
to content on the platform, Musk recently
announced that he would form
a content-moderation panel with
" widely diverse views. " A spokesman
for Twitter did not respond to a
request for comment on Musk's plans.
Republican lawmakers who are big
allies of Trump-including Sen. Marsha
Blackburn of Tennessee and Reps.
Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Jim
Jordan of Ohio-have cheered Musk's
acquisition of the platform, while Democrats
expressed serious concerns.
Almost immediately after taking
over the company, Musk fired
Twitter's top executives, dissolved
its board, and laid off about half the
6 | EDUCATION WEEK | November 23, 2022 | www.edweek.org
Elon Musk speaks at the SATELLITE Conference and Exhibition in Washington in 2020. Musk is the new owner of Twitter.
staff, stoking fears that there would
be far fewer people advocating and
doing the daily work of moderating
the platform.
There was a measurable, immediate
spike in hate speech on Twitter in
the hours after Musk took the reins of
the company, according to an analysis
by researchers at Montclair State
University.
In the week prior to Musk assuming
control, specific racial slurs and threatening
language were used an average
of 84 times an hour, or a little more
than 1,000 times in a 12-hour period,
the researchers found. However, in
the 12 hours just after Musk assumed
control of the platform, that number
more than quadrupled, to 4,778 times.
Those changes were enough to send
Nate Bowling heading for the virtual
exit door.
" If you are a Black person online,
who has opinions, then bile rolls into
your mentions on a pretty regular
basis, " Bowling, who several years ago
left his job as a social studies teacher in
Tacoma, Wash., where he was named
teacher of the year, to work at an embassy
school in the United Arab Emirates,
said in a phone interview.
After the 2016 election, " I was getting
racially harassed and attacked
and called the n-word on a weekly
basis, " Bowling said. Most of the
Twitter accounts that harassed him
are no longer active, because Twitter
suspended them, he added.
But Bowling doesn't believe the platform,
under Musk, would do the same.
He's switching to Mastadon, a social
media platform with a lower profile
but also with what Bowling sees as a
more civil discourse.
He knows the change will have consequences
for his ability to reach a
larger audience to share his views on
social justice and education.
Bowling's big Twitter presence appears
to have driven listeners to his
podcast, " Nerd Farmer, " and helped
him secure speaking engagements,
including talking to real estate agents
about how segregated neighborhoods
lead to segregated schools.
He's giving that up, as well as the
nearly 24,000 followers he's accumulated
over more than a decade on
the platform. But he doesn't think he
has a choice.
" The idea that in the name of some
contorted version of [free] speech
we're potentially gonna allow bigots
and people who have fomented political
violence a place in the common
sphere? " Bowling said. " I just can't
co-sign it. "
Changes to verification could
create headaches for schools
Musk has also proposed a key
change to the verification process, in
which Twitter investigates a particular
account to determine if the person
behind it is who they say they are. This
is particularly important for distinguishing
a Twitter account of a real
official-like a school superintendent
or principal-from an imposter. Facebook,
Instagram, and other platforms
use a similar process. On Twitter, accounts
that are verified carry a blue
check mark.
Becoming verified can be a long and
opaque process. Dozens of school districts
have reportedly tried to get verification
and been rejected.
Musk has said he will allow anyone
who pays Twitter $8 a month to become
verified and will charge already
verified users the same amount to
keep their status.
It remains to be seen if that policy
would allow, for instance, a high
schooler to create an account in their
principal's name, pay $8, and then
tweet that school is closed for the week.
That could add to the confusion already
surrounding impostor accounts.
" For families, it's vital to know
whether posts about their children's
schools are the real deal, " said
Mellissa Braham, the associate director
of the National School Public Relations
Association, in an email. NSPRA
and other education groups have been
pushing Twitter and other platforms
to create a separate verification process
for schools and districts.
The contacts at Twitter who are
working with the education organizations
say they are still " committed
to that conversation, " Braham wrote.
" But of course, many details are still
emerging, " she added.
One big question heavy Twitter
users in the K-12 world are now asking
themselves: If not Twitter, where do
we go?
Suzy Brooks, the director of instructional
technology for the Mashpee
public schools on Cape Cod in Massachusetts,
recalled that when she first
joined the platform, " I met so many
people, and then when you'd go to
larger conferences, it would be like,
'Oh my gosh, I know you on Twitter!' "
said Brooks during an online panel
discussion hosted by ThriveinEDU,
an education consulting organization.
" That was always exciting. "
The Thrive panel discussed Mastadon,
TikTok, Discord, Facebook, and other
platforms, including some startups.
" I'm staying, " Brooks said. " I feel
like I'm not there to serve Twitter, it's
there to serve me. I know that there
are still things in the periphery that I
don't agree with, whether it's political
or pornography. But [Twitter is] not
where I'm gonna put my big effort into
anymore for connecting and improving
my practice. "
Susan Walsh/AP

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Education Week - November 23, 2022

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