A year after the release of Matt Walsh's "What is a Woman?" documentary, Twitter ends up in controversy, and an executive quits

[Dan Druff]

Weird story all around at Twitter yesterday, and it involved the 2022 documentary "What is a Woman".

Matt Walsh has a show on Daily Wire (Ben Shapiro's network), which for awhile was pretty much a cookie-cutter conservative broadcast. However, Matt latched onto the niche of calling out leftists regarding outrageous positions on gender ideology and trans issues, and has pretty much defined himself that way over the past 2 years.

On June 1, 2022, "What is a Woman" was released through Daily Wire's premium subscription site. It was never made available for free anywhere, up until now. It was very well liked within conservative circles, and those on the left of course hated it.

The "documentary" was not so much that, but rather an expose of the absurd gender ideology that has infested many power structures in the US, including medicine, psychology/psychiatry, education, and politics. To Walsh's credit, he does not present himself as unbiased, and it's clear from the start that he is very against the gender ideology.

He does attempt to have polite discussions with various leftists, most of whom are in positions of some kind of power, and many of them get nasty with him when they get flustered. The central theme of the documentary goes back to the title -- that seemingly no one on the left can define what a woman is and isn't.

I did not bother to buy "What is a Woman". While some of the cilps looked amusing, it seemed that it wouldn't be showing me anything new. I'm already very aware that some leftists have completely absurd views of gender ideology, especially when it comes to children. Seeing Walsh trigger some of them wasn't worth the money.

A year later, Daily Wire co-CEOs Ben Shapiro and Jeremy Boering realized that they weren't getting much present value from this documentary. Sure, it got attention and drove new subscriptions, but anyone who wanted to pay for it would have likely done so by now. They came up with the smart idea to release it for free "for 24 hours" on Twitter. They made some kind of agreement with Twitter to do this, which I don't understand, because $8/month Twitter Blue subscribers can already post videos up to 2 hours long.

Anyway, the agreement involved Daily Wire paying something to Twitter to post their documentary up there, and Twitter agreed.

However, Twitter came back to them and claimed that they had two problems with the documentary -- two portions where a person featured in the video (not Walsh or anyone at Daily Wire) "misgendered" someone else. Daily Wire was told to either edit out these parts, or their video would be heavily restricted in distribution! These orders came from unnamed people at Twitter, and not Elon Musk.

Jeremy Boering (and other conservatives) then raised hell about it:

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https://twitter.com/JeremyDBoreing/status/1664255322758709252

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https://twitter.com/JeremyDBoreing/status/1664255324763693057

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https://twitter.com/JeremyDBoreing/status/1664255326781054978

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https://twitter.com/JeremyDBoreing/status/1664255329670971392

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https://twitter.com/JeremyDBoreing/status/1664255332661743617

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https://twitter.com/JeremyDBoreing/status/1664255334846799873

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https://twitter.com/JeremyDBoreing/status/1664255337296191490

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https://twitter.com/JeremyDBoreing/status/1664255339309531139


So what happened next? I'll continue next post.

[Dan Druff]

Elon Musk then promised the restriction wouldn't be there, only to have it appear about 20 minutes after posting.

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https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1664324213023424531

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https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1664426206798782473


Elon seemed to backtrack and called it "sensitive content", and defended it not showing up in people's feeds, even if they follow Daily Wire:

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https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1664433607224467456

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https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1664435953459396608


Finally, after several hours, the video appeared normally (it may be missing below if 24+ hours after posting):

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https://twitter.com/realDailyWire/status/1664424891372941312



But wait! There's more...

[Dan Druff]

Ella Irwin, who has been Head of Trust and Safety for Twitter for the past 7 months, abruptly resigned shortly after the video was posted.

She confirmed this to Reuters, but did not state why she left, nor did Elon comment: https://www.reuters.com/technology/t...ed-2023-06-02/


Ella Irwin took over for Yoel Roth, a left-wing gay man who had been outspoken against Trump and conservatives, but surprisingly stayed with Twitter during the new Elon Musk regime. He did not last long, especially once it became clear that he and Elon had very different ideas regarding what to allow on Twitter. Roth left in early December 2022, and shortly thereafter the "Twitter Files" were released, which showed that Roth had a role in the biased censorship during the previous regime.

Anyway, Ella Irwin was not nearly as controversial as Roth, and in fact most people didn't know who she was.

It is not clear if she resigned because she was mad that "What is a Woman" was going to be allowed unrestricted on the platform, or if she got angry that restrictions were put on in the first place. I'm guessing it was the former.

It seems likely to me that she was angry Elon overruled her, and in fact publicly stated that someone at Twitter had made a "mistake" with the decision.


I am guessing that Irwin was like Roth -- a leftist wolf in sheep's clothing, mainly working under Elon to quietly keep Twitter more censorious than Elon himself would like. When this documentary was released, and she restricted it, she probably realized that she would no longer be able to accomplish the quiet censorship from behind the scenes, and quit her job. That's my best theory.

Note that there have been complaints during Irwin's regime that there have been mysterious bans and suppressions against conservatives, despite Elon clearly stating that such ideological censorship would not occur there. I bet it will come out that Irwin was responsible for that.



Elon needs to hire someone who is committed to libertarian free speech principles, and stop trusting leftists under him to run it as he would.

[Mission146]

Ella Irwin, who has been Head of Trust and Safety for Twitter for the past 7 months, abruptly resigned shortly after the video was posted.

She confirmed this to Reuters, but did not state why she left, nor did Elon comment: https://www.reuters.com/technology/t...ed-2023-06-02/


Ella Irwin took over for Yoel Roth, a left-wing gay man who had been outspoken against Trump and conservatives, but surprisingly stayed with Twitter during the new Elon Musk regime. He did not last long, especially once it became clear that he and Elon had very different ideas regarding what to allow on Twitter. Roth left in early December 2022, and shortly thereafter the "Twitter Files" were released, which showed that Roth had a role in the biased censorship during the previous regime.

Anyway, Ella Irwin was not nearly as controversial as Roth, and in fact most people didn't know who she was.

It is not clear if she resigned because she was mad that "What is a Woman" was going to be allowed unrestricted on the platform, or if she got angry that restrictions were put on in the first place. I'm guessing it was the former.

It seems likely to me that she was angry Elon overruled her, and in fact publicly stated that someone at Twitter had made a "mistake" with the decision.


I am guessing that Irwin was like Roth -- a leftist wolf in sheep's clothing, mainly working under Elon to quietly keep Twitter more censorious than Elon himself would like. When this documentary was released, and she restricted it, she probably realized that she would no longer be able to accomplish the quiet censorship from behind the scenes, and quit her job. That's my best theory.

Note that there have been complaints during Irwin's regime that there have been mysterious bans and suppressions against conservatives, despite Elon clearly stating that such ideological censorship would not occur there. I bet it will come out that Irwin was responsible for that.

Elon needs to hire someone who is committed to libertarian free speech principles, and stop trusting leftists under him to run it as he would.

I basically agree with the principle, but I can't imagine that Libertarian free speech principles would be terribly good for business. He can ask me and I'll run the shit. It's going to turn into a troll fest. I honestly don't think I'd prohibit anything, even illegal musings, as long as the site couldn't be held legally responsible. Of course, if someone did violate the law with a statement, we'd hand over everything we had on the person.

[SlowRoll]

the grift is soooo strong in this circle of right wing "intellectuals".

druff, you are much much smarter than the demographic that these people are speaking to.
they don't followers who are going to complain about their shitty razors.
they want followers who are going to get riled up by the misleading headlines and then buy all the shit they are selling. buy some god damn precious metals!

real housewives drama rebranded for angry borderline q anon folk...

[splitthis]

This is a must watch. Horrific satanic abusive shit by lib squad freaks.

[dwai]

[Dan Druff]

Today Elon is sharing the documentary and encouraging people to watch, and is also bragging about the Streisand effect of yesterday's controversy.

[Dan Druff]

the grift is soooo strong in this circle of right wing "intellectuals".

druff, you are much much smarter than the demographic that these people are speaking to.
they don't followers who are going to complain about their shitty razors.
they want followers who are going to get riled up by the misleading headlines and then buy all the shit they are selling. buy some god damn precious metals!

real housewives drama rebranded for angry borderline q anon folk...

I watched it free last night.

Was entertaining enough.

In general, political documentaries suck because they are edited to make the point they want to make. They only feature the scenes where the opposition acts the most ridiculous.

With that said, the modern gender identity fanatics really are ridiculous.

[Dan Druff]

Elon Musk now has his Twitter profile stating "handsome / brilliant".

That's not Musk trying to brag about his looks or intelligence.

It's a line from Walsh's documentary, where he argues that he wants his pronouns to be "handsome and brilliant", and wants to compel everyone to call him that because he says so. Walsh stated this to demonstrate the ridiculousness of people choosing their own pronouns and expecting others to use them, even if they don't agree with them being correct -- similar to how nobody should be compelled to call Walsh handsome or brilliant.

Musk must have enjoyed that part, and now has that in his own profile.

I really am enjoying how much Elon Musk is trolling the left with Twitter, and yet everyone on that side can't bring themselves to quit the service, because that's where everyone is. The shoe is finally on the other foot.

[Dan Druff]

I also want to mention that Ken Scalir was on the "handsome and brilliant" train more than 30 years ago.

The first 3 words of every personal ad he ran in the newspaper were "Handsome and smart..."

Once again, Ken Scalir proves to be ahead of his time.

BTW, Ken is predicting DeSantis will be the 2024 nominee, and he's usually good at calling this stuff.

[lol wow]

the scalomon brother got this yall