woman smiling while wearing a green graduation cap by Juan Ramos on Unsplash
Recently, I was scrolling through my Twitter/X account, looking for new things that Activision-Blizzard was doing. I sometimes do this in order to find new gaming topics to talk about in the next episode of my podcast.
Unfortunately, someone who follows my gaming podcast account retweeted a post from someone who was a stranger to me. What I saw was a guy who, in short, spewed out a bunch of misinformation about things like student loan forgiveness. From memory, he claimed that President Biden talked about student debt relief – and never did anything about it again.
I checked that guy’s Twitter/X account, assuming that maybe he got incorrect information from someone else he knew, or from questionable websites. The majority of his tweets were misinformation about President Biden’s policies. It made me uncomfortable, and I decided to block him.
This random guy may not have known that someone who followed him retweeted his comment about student loan forgiveness, or that it ended up on a Twitter/X account that focuses mostly on the Diablo series of games.
Why did this happen? My best guess is that weird quirks, served up by Twitter/X’s algorithm, have ceased to function properly shortly after Elon Musk purchased Twitter. I think the bizarre ads, from companies you’ve never heard of, and the loss of ads from big corporations, are a clear sign that Twitter won’t last for much longer. Advertising used to be what paid the bills on that platform.
Around this time last year (December 2022), NPR reported: Elon Musk’s Twitter has dissolved its Trust and Safety Council, the advisory group of around 100 independent civil, human rights, and other organizations that the company formed in 2016 to address hate speech, child exploitation, suicide, self-harm, and other problems on the platform.
According to NPR, the council has been scheduled to meet with Twitter representatives Monday night. But Twitter informed the group via email that it was disbanding it shortly before the meeting was to take place, according to multiple members.
The interesting thing is, President Biden has been working on student loan debt forgiveness for a very long time. (NPR)
July 14, 2023: Statement From President Joe Biden on New Student Debt Relief Actions
…My Administration is delivering on that commitment. Starting today, over 800,000 student loan borrowers who have been repaying their loans for 20 years or more will see $39 billion of their loans discharged because of steps my Administration took to fix failures of the past. These borrowers will join the millions of people that my Administration has provided relief to over the past two years -resulting in over $116 billion in loan relief to over 3 million borrowers under my Administration.
But we’re not stopping there. My Administration has worked hard to secure the largest increases to Pell Grants in a decade, fixed broken loan programs such as Public Service Loan Forgiveness, and created a new income-driven repayment plan that will cut undergraduate loan payments in half and bring monthly payments to zero for low-income borrowers. And, when the Supreme Court made the wrong decision, I immediately announced a new plan to open an alternative path to relief for as many borrowers as possible… (WhiteHouse.gov)
August 14, 2023: Statement from President Joe Biden on Student Loan Debt Cancellation for More Than 800,000 Borrowers
…When I came into office, hundreds of thousands of borrowers weren’t accurately getting credit for student loan payments that should have delivered them forgiveness under Income-Driven Repayment plans or were placed in forbearance by loan services in violation of Department of Education rules.
Under these plans, if a borrower makes 20 or 25 years’ worth of payments, they get the remaining balances of their loans forgiven. But because of errors and administrative failures of the student loan system that started long before I took office, over 804,000 borrowers never got the credit they earned, and never saw the forgiveness they were promised – even after making payments for decades.
I was determined to right this wrong, and today, because of the actions my Administration took, these 804,000 borrowers who have been in repayment for over 20 years will start to see their debt cancelled. Over 614,000 of them will have all of their remaining federal student loan debt cancelled once this action is complete…(WhiteHouse.gov)
October 29, 2023: President Joe Biden’s plans to cancel up to $400 billion in student debt for tens of millions of Americans were foiled over the summer at the Supreme Court.
Still, Biden managed to erase $127 billion in student debt so far for more than 3.5 million borrowers – more than any other president in history.
His administration has used existing programs that were previously hard to access for many borrowers to deliver that relief…
…The Biden administration has evaluated millions of borrowers’ loan accounts to see if they should have their debt cleared.
As a result, it has cleared nearly $42 billion for more than 850,000 people enrolled in these plans.
Most people with federal student loans qualify for income-driven repayments plans, and can apply at Studentaid.gov…(CNBC.com)
December 6, 2023: Biden-Harris Administration Announces Nearly $5 Billion in Additional Student Debt Relief
The Biden-Harris Administration announced today the approval of an additional $4.8 billion in student loan debt for 80,300 borrowers. These discharges stem from fixes made by the U.S. Department of Education to income-driven repayment (IDR) forgiveness and Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF).
Today’s announcement brings the total approved debt cancellation by the Biden-Harris Administration to nearly $132 billion for more than 3.6 million Americans.
“Before President Biden took office, it was virtually impossible for eligible borrowers to access the student debt relief they rightfully earned,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona. “The data released today once again make it clear that the Biden-Harris Administration’s relentless efforts to fix the broken student loan system are paying off in a big way, with more than 3.6 million borrowers now approved for nearly $132 billion in loan forgiveness. This level of debt relief is unparalleled and we have no intention of slowing down… (U.S. Department of Education)
In short, it is always a good idea to do some fact checking – from credible sources – before posting misinformation on Twitter/X. The guy who posted false information about Biden and student loans failed to do some research before filling his Twitter/X account with garbage.