We previously saw how Twitter/X was banned in Brazil on the basis that Elon Musk had been picking arguments with the authorities over there after his company was asked to suspend the accounts of certain users. Musk claimed that the judge who made this demand was making “illegal orders to censor his political opponents”.
Anyway, self-proclaimed “free-speech-absolutist” Musk presumably decided personal wealth was more important than his claimed “principles”, or someone over at X has managed to make him to so - or maybe he just woke up in a different mood. Anyway, he’s capitulated, deciding to comply with Brazil’s requirements to appoint a local legal representative, remove some users and pay fines.
It’s not new news that his principles have always been for sale, whether financially or ideologically. CNBC reminds us that whilst he may believe in free speech for himself - isn’t that always the way with these folk? - he’s not so keen on it for his employees, journalists, bloggers, analysts, researchers, regulators or even some of his customers. Oh and you’re not supposed to use the words “cis” or “cisgender” on his platform.
And neither has X under his leadership been sanctuary for all content, untouched by moderator hand. Which is, to be clear, a good thing in general - but also makes his previous response to Brazil rather hypocritical. In the first 6 months of his leadership, Twitter both received way more government orders than it had in the preceding year and also took action to comply with a far higher percentage of them.
Per a Rest of World article:
The data, drawn from Twitter’s reports to the Lumen database, shows that between October 27, 2022 and April 26, 2023, Twitter received a total of 971 requests from governments and courts. These requests included orders to remove controversial posts, as well as demands that Twitter produce private data to identify anonymous accounts. Twitter reported that it fully complied in 808 of those requests, and partially complied in 154 other cases.
Of course if you’re an extremist that happens to lean the same way as he does politically then you’re all good. Witness the return of some very unpleasant accounts to X since he bought it and the consequent increase in hate speech.
As Charlie Warzel wrote in his Atlantic newsletter:
He has reinstated legions of accounts that were previously banned for violating Twitter’s rules and has emboldened trolls, white-nationalist accounts, and January 6 defendants.
…
A social-media platform will always reflect the values of its owners…
Not everyone dislikes this of course;. Musk’s command-and-control is an ideologically charged policy that goes far enough in the right direction that far-right groups are attempting to nominate their hero Musk on the basis of his free speech claims for the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, an award that has been previously won by the likes of Nelson Mandela, Malala Yousafzai, Aung San Suu Kyu and Kofi Annan.