Elon Musk’s $43B buy-out of Twitter is making waves throughout the world as he makes moves to transition the platform from a censorship model to a beacon of free speech, within the bounds of the law.
Twitter sadly garnered a reputation for censoring conservative political views and those that weren’t in line with their staff’s liberal views culminating with the closure of President Donald Trump’s account and over 90 million followers after the January 6 Capital entry by hundreds of people on both sides of the political spectrum.
As the internet’s town square, Musk tweeted about the importance of restoring Twitter to be a place of open and important dialogue, not the surpression of truth. “Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy.”
Twitter also came under fire for manually suppressing certain news stories including a story on Hunter Biden. They later claimed it was a total mistake, but never admitted why or who. By not using an open-source algorithm, and instead manually censoring certain posts, Musk knew it was time to act.
Pre-Musk, Twitter also locked The NY Post out of its account for more than two weeks, accusing that their exposé used hacked information. The CEO at the time stated, that it was a “process error.”
With Musk’s wealth growing at an exponential rate, it’s interesting that he has not pursued the philanthropy route, instead choosing to take the lead in reimagining the public portal and helping to assure free speech in America and therefore around the world.
“When it comes to donations, I’d say it is very difficult to give away money effectively,” said Musk.
“If you care about the reality of doing good and not the perception of doing good, then it is very hard to give away money effectively,” he said. “I care about reality. Perception be damned.”
Instead of traditional philanthropy, Musk has made it his mission to get to the heart of our democracy and make sure there is a public platform that promotes the free and legal exchange of ideas and speech without censorship.
“By “free speech”, I simply mean that which matches the law. I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law. If people want less free speech, they will ask the government to pass laws to that effect. Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.'”
On another note, Christian satire news outlet, Babylon Bee interviewed Musk earlier this year. He shared that he was open to salvation in Christ.
