Elon Musk: The Phony Free Speech Absolutist
He censors on behalf of leaders he likes and stands up to those he doesn’t
Dear Readers:
Despite claiming he would champion unfiltered discourse, Elon Musk’s takeover of the social media platform now known as X has been marked by ideologically driven moderation practices and selective compliance with the rules and regulations of various countries.
Musk’s moderation practices, combined with his inclination to engage in “vexatious, performative litigation,” is antithetical to cultivating an open discourse culture. Instead, Musk’s actions foster an even more polarized, less accountable platform.
My latest video for The UnPopulist examines two prominent of examples of Musk’s response to government pressure for content moderation (see if you can spot the difference in how Musk reacts). After watching—and subscribing to our YouTube channel—answer this question for us in the comments: What could Musk do to actually champion freedom of speech for everyone on his platform?
Landry Ayres
Senior Producer
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Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla and Space X and owner of the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, styles himself as one of society’s great champions of free speech. He has explicitly framed X, his rebrand of Twitter, as a singular haven for the free flow of ideas. A self-professed “free speech absolutist,” Musk has a rather grandiose view of his role in the battle between free speech and censorship, at one point even suggesting that reforming Twitter from its allegedly left-favoring ways amounted to “a battle for the future of civilization.” As Musk sees it, he is on a crusade against woke censors tirelessly committed to stifling the free exchange of ideas. When asked why he bought Twitter on Joe Rogan’s podcast, Musk revealed that he did so to stop it from being used as an “information technology weapon” intended to spread the speech-restricting “woke mind virus” to the whole world. “In order for the virus to propagate, it must suppress opposing viewpoints,” he said. Musk claims he bought Twitter to stop the spread.
Genuine defense of free expression is a noble, worthwhile endeavor—which makes it all the more unfortunate that Musk, like many self-styled free speech crusaders, is anything but a friend of the right to speak freely. He is arbitrary about the kind of speech he allows on his platform, construing the word “cis” a slur and threatening to ban accounts who use it, and on occasion disallowing negative coverage of Tesla. That might be hypocritical but ultimately his prerogative and not a violation of speech rights. But what’s truly dumbfounding is that while claiming to oppose censorship, Musk has repeatedly attacked the First Amendment rights of those who have said things he doesn’t like. In court and elsewhere, Musk advocates censorship by the state, sometimes putting his effectively unlimited resources into undermining core legal protections for free expression. Musk is hardly alone in pretending to fight censorship while trying to expand it, though he’s the most glaring embodiment today of the inverted relationship between free speech rhetoric and actually living out free speech principles. That makes him a threat to free speech, not its greatest defender.
“POV: It’s 2030 in Europe and you’re being executed for liking a meme,” Elon Musk dramatically proclaimed on X last Saturday. The ominous pronouncement came as news broke of the arrest in France of his fellow tech-billionaire Pavel Durov, founder and CEO of Telegram, a messaging app. X erupted in howls of outrage as right-wing influencers and outrage-peddling newsletters anointed Durov the latest martyr in the war against free speech. … Content moderation on social media platforms, a term that reactionaries have sought to make synonymous with “censorship,” is a broad practice that covers everything from disrupting terrorists to dealing with trolls. It often involves making hard choices about online speech to shape platform norms and conduct that enable the platform to deliver a certain experience to users. It does at times veer into bad calls that stifle free expression—but the other side of the equation involves tackling actual crimes.
Durov’s arrest is not about the former but the latter. Explicitly criminal activities have flourished on Telegram for years. Reducing this incident to a skirmish in some “global war on free speech,” a narrative popularized by Musk and his Twitter Files profiteers, oversimplifies the complexities of content moderation and ignores the nuance of this specific case, turning committing crimes into an issue of free speech. …
As I write this, Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, and a chorus of conspiracy theorists have escalated their hysteria campaign, suggesting, also without any evidence, that the “Biden-Harris” administration may have been involved in Durov’s arrest.
Free speech deserves to be jealously guarded. But the ill-advised and off-base response to Durov’s indictment on platforms like X that encourage follower-chasing influencers to engage in performative moral outrage does not advance this cause. To the contrary, in fact. If it seems that free speech has become a license for terrorism, money laundering, and the sexual abuse of children—and is being used to thwart the investigation of these crimes—this cherished right might well face a public backlash.
Durov and Telegram might yet be exonerated from the charges they face—and we should indeed reserve judgment as the case unfolds. But nothing about his arrest to date suggests that it has anything to do with “free speech.”
The narrative that global authoritarian censors are persecuting a free speech hero is pure myth-making in this case.
© The UnPopulist, 2024
I am both a free speech absolutist and and a free market absolutist.
Elon Musk is free to market his antisocial media platform any way he chooses. He is free to promote speech he likes and censor speech he doesn't. But Elon wants it both ways. He wants to operate freely BUT he doesn't want the market consequences of his moderating policies.
He wanted to sue businesses who publicly withdrew their advertising from X-itter because they did not want to be associated with a platform that was, in fact, promoting Jew hatred.
My own personal decision to abandon Twitter--- long before it was X came during the first weeks of Russia's war on Ukraine. It became impossible to sort out the avalanche of propaganda flooding the field from all sides. Suddenly a nation that was only slightly less corrupt than Russia was being held aloft as the last chance to save democracy in Europe. The only questions in my mind were: does a sovereign nation have the right to defend itself against the invasion of a hegemonic power? Would it be prudent in this particular case to assist that sovereign nation in resisting that invasion? The answer to both was, yes! No need to post the latest unsourced pictures of atrocities captured on a mobile phone. No need to post "I Stand with Ukraine" virtue signals all over the antisocial media universe. No need to try and sort out the awful truth from the trolls jamming the internet from Russian bot farms.
Respected reporters had become mere "influencers" trying to drive the story. Rather than reportage appearing and then being disseminated to social media--- social media was driving the reportage itself.
I had seen this act repeated for a few years around issues of less importance but to see it in overdrive when there was so much at stake just was enraging to me. So I made the market choice and left the platform like Elvis left the building. I have not missed it. My engagement with other antisocial media platforms has radically altered as well. I follow no one and don't seek followers. I engage in platforms in which I am likely to get more value from (like the Unpopulist and The Bulwark) than waste my time and energy. I try not to be a troll and wish others would try as well.
If one doesn't like the way an antisocial media platform operates leave it.
Make the invisible hand move.
It is of course ok to criticize Elon Musk/ X especially as it pertains to potential contradiction, or out-right hypocrisy. What is not ok is leading with the premise of "ideologically driven moderation practices and selective compliance with the rules and regulations of various countries" being problematic post takeover when the same was true pre purchase (Twitter).