One year after buying Twitter, jury still out on Elon Musk as free speech champion
Flap over links to Substack distract from bright spots and rejections of institutions that seek to censor in the name of misinformation.
Summary: One year has passed since Elon Musk took ownership of Twitter. His stated goal of being a free-speech champion has made some skeptical, especially with recent flaps over Substack links and media labels. If Musk, however, can resist government inference over social media content, he could end up proving his commitment was true.
It has been exactly one year ago this week since Elon Musk acquired Twitter on April 14, 2022. In the period that has followed, Musk's once vaunted aspiration about being a free speech champion has been called into question — and rightly so given the controversial practices he's done as leader of the social media platform.
Critics say instead of holding fast to the ideals of free speech, Musk has reduced that value to a caricature and taken on the role of a right-leaning fraternity president who makes only perfunctory attempts at promoting freedom of discourse. While that criticism has some merit, a few incidents stand out suggesting he's making an effort as a promoter of free speech with competing interests as CEO of a major technology platform, such as rejecting influences that seek to stifle freedom of discourse under dubious concerns about disinformation. With a significant loss in value to Twitter after Musk's $44 billion purchase is now estimated to be worth around $20 billion, that effort has come at a significant price tag for the entrepreneur.
It has been difficult for me to write this article because every couple of days, there seems to be new drama that adds another layer to Musk's leadership of the company. For example, just this week, National Public Radio and PBS bolted from Twitter in public indignation over being labeled government-funded media. The designation was something of a compromise after outcry over Twitter initially labeling the news outlets as state-affiliated media, which is something more rightfully reserved for the Xinhua news service in China. But the clarification apparently wasn't enough for those news outlets.
I don't see this development as a free-speech issue per se, although it does speak to the rules of the road Musk has implemented for discourse on Twitter. The label of government-funded media for NPR and PBS — totally accurate because the news outlets have boasted about their reliance on government funds and suggest as much by the very nature of their names — aligns with conservative interests to defund these entities as unnecessary in our current media climate. The incident also reinforces that idea left-leaning news outlets are eager to bolt from Twitter as a way to marginalize the platform amid indignation simply over Musk having ownership of it.
One serious blow to the image of Musk being a free-speech champion was the flap over an update to the platform inhibiting links in user posts to content on Substack. The change — which has since been dialed back — was reported as blocking or sharing tweets with Substack links, although links to Substack content with custom domains appears to have been exempted. The apparent reason was the debut of Substack Notes, a new feature that appears to be a competitor with Twitter as a social media platform. The new feature was incredibly under the radar in terms of new technology opportunities until Twitter made a big stink about it in a kind of Streisand effect, as pointed out by Josh Barro in a recent Substack post.
I understand business interests and legitimate about concerns not wanting to enable a competitor, but I would think Musk as a free-speech advocate would want Twitter to interface with as many other platforms as possible, especially one where users would likely make significant posts and links. Setting those interests aside, Musk ended up making enemies with his chief defender in the media — Matt Taibbi, the selected face of the Twitter Files — who left Twitter in indignation and is still gone as of today. Musk in an initial response to Taiibi called him an "employee" of Substack, which seems unlikely given Taibbi is a writer for Substack just the same as me and denied he was ever an employee of the platform. Musk has since deleted the tweet.
The entire incident seriously made me question whether Musk knows what he's doing as chief executive and not a complete charlatan. His completely juvenile response consistent with free speech, I guess. But Musk completely undercut any aspirations for the platform as a beacon for the expression ideas, especially when the underlying issue is Musk putting speech restrictions on the platform. It's also consistent with Musk making an automatic response for press@twitter.com, where reporters would go for questions about their articles, so that the reply to any and all questions would be a poop emoticon. Both moves made the platform seem like a joke.
Now let's get to the positive moves. That's where I place the exchange between BBC reporter James Clayton and Musk in an interview they did on Twitter Spaces, which was premised on objections to BBC being another media entity labeled a government-funded entity. Normally, I don't cheer over the powerful like Musk slapping down a journalist asking questions, but here it was completely laudatory because the exchange revealed the reporter was making baseless claims about disinformation.
Here's what happened: The BBC reporter told Musk hate speech has been on the rise on Twitter since Musk took control of Twitter. When Musk asked the reporter to come up with one specific example, the reporter said he was unable to offer one, even though the reporter said that assessment was based on his own feed. Musk want further and explicitly called out the reporter for lying.
Pressed by Musk after being unable to come up with an example, the reporter went to data from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue as a definitive source that has concluded a rise in hate speech in Twitter. This U.K.-based non-profit is funded by government entities in the United States and Europe as well as neoliberal organizations, such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Stood up in wake of Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, the non-profit seeks to place online content by raising concerns about hate speech and disinformation.
I'm aware of studies that have concluded a rise in hate speech, but I don't know how one could possibly conclude that because it would depend on the definitions of hate speech and the nature of wide use, as well as the faulty premise people and the free speech system aren't able to handle that, which is not the case. Nonetheless, these studies came out in short order within months after Musk acquired Twitter.
Green Greenwald had a great break down in a broadcast in Rumble this week about how these organizations are totally bogus and meant to amply anxiety in the public to make them accept more government control over content:
"These are funded by intelligence agencies to control the internet...There's all different tentacles that they have, and different tactics they use, in order to regulate and control the flow of information on the internet, and one of the most pernicious ways because it's designed to be invisible and is therefore deceitful is the fund this fake industry, this new industry called disinformation experts who traffic in this kind of analysis all the time and what they're really designed to do is to slap these labels on whatever platforms disobey their censorship orders."
When you look at the list of contributors to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, you would see in addition to government entities and non-profits other contributors are tech companies like Facebook, Google and YouTube. Twitter, however, is conspicuously absent. Musk's refusal to participate in these initial to control online is completely revelatory about the hostility he faces as CEO.
I think that will be the real test for Musk going forward on whether he 's a free-speech champion. As far as can see, he has been resisting efforts for government control of content when it goes against the approved narrative. The very nature of the leak Twitter Files under Musk demonstrates he's having none of the collusion between the U.S. government and social media companies, which appear to have had a role in the removal of information challenging COVID orthodoxy, the refusal to publish content on Hunter Biden's laptop during the 2020 election and bans on other lawful speech under the First Amendment.
If Musk can hold fast on the path, there may be cause yet to consider him a champion of free speech in a society where the value faces increased challenges — and even a lack of commitment as an institution on the decline. Otherwise, Musk's self-proclamation as free-speech champion would ring hollow as a ruse for him to make a very expensive purchase to cultivate a following in conservative circles without any real impact.