I can attest to the fact that X/Twitter is a cesspool of misinformation and hate.

It was before Elon Musk took it over, and remains so today. The claim that it is any worse than before Musk took it over is ridiculous; it is selective memory, partly driven by the fact that the elites who believe this fiction curated their feeds by only talking with each other. Now that they have to see what others say they are appalled.

I have no sympathy for them in the least, both because their memories about the golden age of Twitter are BS, but also because they ignore the fact that the MSM is one of the biggest purveyors of misinformation, and they are big mad that they now get fact-checked and don’t have a monopoly on disinformation.

Because the largest purveyor of disinformation is the MSM, and the American people are waking up to that fact.

This article by the Washington Post is a perfect example of just how ridiculous the MSM has become.

One year after billionaire Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion to revive its business and make it less “woke.”

He has achieved only one of those goals. https://t.co/BQjFLWtBcs

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) October 28, 2023

In some ways this article is perfect. It took four Washington Post reporters to whine about how X/Twitter is no longer a cesspool of hate and misinformation exclusively pushing a Left-wing narrative, but one in which both Left and Right-wingers can argue it out with both truthful and non-so-truthful assertions.

At the root of the Washington Post’s complaint are two facts that count above all others: 1) conservatives are no longer throttled, and 2) the MSM is no longer considered the ultimate arbiter of truth and reliability.

In this first point, the Post fails to acknowledge the reason why conservatives are suddenly finding an audience on Twitter: they aren’t throttled artificially by the platform. Everybody knows that conservatives were censored on Twitter, and once the algorithm was freed suddenly people were allowed to read what they said.

Of course, the Washington Post pooh-poohed the Twitter Files story, and we all know why. They liked the censorship and are appalled that it no longer exists.

No surprise there, as it is apparent that the universal assumption of everybody at the Post is that anybody to the right of Ibram X. Kendi is a liar.

The journalisming gets even worse! Washington Post whines that @elonmusk is "throttling traffic to the New York Times" in order to "degrade the public's ability to find authoritative information"… because the New York Times is the authoritative source on "who blew up a hospital… pic.twitter.com/XKVpT1nCFK

— Christina Pushaw 🐊 🇺🇸 (@ChristinaPushaw) October 27, 2023

It is their second complaint, though, that is outright hilarious. Their complaint that alternate voices are allowed to be heard on X/Twitter is based upon a laughable contention that the MSM is a reliable source of information.

Come on!

Their big example is coverage of the Israel-Hamas war, and their most specific example is coverage of the hospital parking lot explosion.

Even the way they frame this complaint is ridiculous. In their example, they reinforce misinformation and want us to accept that the MSM was somehow a reliable source of information on what happened.

The overall impact of these changes has been to degrade the public’s ability to find authoritative information, according to NewsGuard, a nonpartisan company that monitors media credibility. That failure has been particularly consequential during the Israel-Gaza war, when Twitter was central to disseminating unproven narratives, such as who blew up a hospital in Gaza.

Nobody blew up the hospital. The MSM is still spreading misinformation about what happened.

Here is the “blown-up” hospital. It is a parking lot.

The hospital was not blown up. They complain about misinformation regarding this event, and can’t even get the story right even now.

A Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket misfired and landed in a parking lot. The hospital lost some windows but otherwise was unscathed. This isn’t disputed except by Hamas, its supporters, and…The New York Times.And that small crater didn’t come from a bomb, obviously. That’s why The New York Times showed a photo of a different building that was bombed to illustrate its story on the hospital.

Pure misinformation.

By now everybody knows the MSM completely blew the story, and that became clear quickly because independent intelligence accounts on Twitter and elsewhere demonstrated conclusively that the MSM’s story was simply regurgitated Hamas propaganda. Later official intelligence sources confirmed what OSINT got right almost immediately.

Even the Post concluded that the most plausible explanation was a PIJ rocket, despite having reported Hamas’ version at first. Who spread misinformation? The MSM.

It is the story that spawned a thousand think pieces about how the MSM blew it. And New York Times reporters themselves had a pretty good idea they were spreading misinformation.

Internal messages obtained by VF reveal there was immediate concern inside The New York Times over the paper’s Gaza hospital bombing coverage.@charlottetklein reports: https://t.co/nob66Z8EYO

— VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) October 24, 2023

Yet the Post wants us to learn this lesson: trust the MSM to get the story right. Twitter got it more right than the Washington Post, and the Post is pissed.

The MSM still hasn’t gotten the story right. The New York Times is still claiming that maybe Israel hit the hospital.

NYT Keeps Digging: We Don't Accept Israel's Evidence in Hospital Blast

So much for the New York Times’ “editors’ note,” and so much for the First Rule of Holes.https://t.co/W3CXXjTmtv

— Ed Morrissey (@EdMorrissey) October 25, 2023

Anybody who paid attention during COVID and the retrospectives that have sprung up by now knows that the “authoritative” sources got just about everything wrong. Random people on Twitter were often more discerning and accurate than the MSM sources, yet we are to believe that it is a tragedy that the MSM is no longer the sole purveyor of information on Twitter.

Amid these shifts, the platform has become a cacophony of misinformation and confusing reports, according to new research from the University of Washington, which found that self-described news aggregators and open-source researchers far outperformed traditional media on the site during the Israel-Gaza war.

“Twitter used to be where politics and news conversations were being shaped on a minute-by-minute basis. I don’t think it’s because I’m a Democrat or on the left — it’s just no longer a place to get accurate information,” said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director under President Barack Obama.

Twitter’s decline has spawned or revived a host of rivals, such as the nonprofit Mastodon and Meta’s Threads. But none has replaced the pivotal role Twitter once played in global debate.

In other words, Twitter’s role in the global debate used to be magnifying the lies of the MSM, and fails to do so now.

I spend an inordinate amount of time on Twitter, given its usefulness as a source for news stories. I can assure you that there is no dearth of Liberal content on the platform, and there certainly is no ideological uniformity. What there is, and what bothers the media mavens so much, is a diversity of voices.

Want to find pro-Israel content? It is there. Pro-Hamas? It is there. Moderate? It is there. Outrageously biased? It is there. This is called free speech, and the media used to be all for it.

Twitter can be infuriating, and I actually don’t recommend it to people who want to maintain a constant and healthy blood pressure. I am bombarded by so much pro-Hamas propaganda that it makes me ill. But that, in my judgment, is healthy. I see plenty of everything, and it gives me a sense of the range of opinions out there.

What is at stake for the MSM is their control of the narrative. They were able to spread the most ridiculous propaganda–pure misinformation–about Trump because they controlled the infosphere for years. Remember when Mueller was going to prove Russian collusion? The Washington Post and the New York Times got Pulitzer Prizes for regurgitating lies, and it bothers them no end that they only control 90% of the information out there now, instead of 100%.

I have called Twitter a “sewer with some diamonds scattered within the muck,” and that is as true today as it was a year or two ago. But in this, it is no different than the curriculum of a modern college or university and actually has more useful content.

Musk’s Twitter is far from perfect, even in promoting free speech. It turns out to be extremely difficult to exercise even the most modest curation, which few people would assert should be completely abandoned. Everybody agrees that threats and incitement should be suppressed, and deciding what fits those categories is difficult.

But in this Musk’s Twitter is generally better, allowing a wider range of opinions and sources than before. There are still head-scratching decisions, and these can be infuriating.

As for the MSM losing its monopoly on disinformation? It makes it all worthwhile.