Consequences will be important: Elon Musk asks if Twitter adheres to free speech – Mint

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, whose tweets are influential enough to often dictate the movement in cryptocurrency markets, recently asked his 79 million followers if the micro-blogging platform was adhering to the principle of free speech.

"Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?" Musk wrote on Twitter, giving users yes and no poll options.

Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy.

Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?

He asked them to vote carefully because the consequences of this poll" would be important.

Until 9 pm on Friday, his post had garnered 11,64,414 votes. More than 69% of the people had said No" and only a little over 30% of people chose yes.

This comes a day after Musk had put out another poll, asking if Twitter's algorithm should be open source. With open-source algorithms, people would be able to know how Twitter decides what to show them in their feed.

Twitter algorithm should be open source

Responding to this, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, who quit as the CEO of the company last November, said that the choice of which algorithm to use (or not) should be open to everyone".

Musk had recently also raised concerns about a de facto bias" embedded in the Twitter algorithm and its potential ripple effects.

Im worried about de facto bias in the Twitter algorithm" having a major effect on public discourse. How do we know whats really happening?" he wrote.

In the context of the Russia-Ukraine war, Musk had recently said that he was a free speech absolutist".

He had that stated Starlink will not block Russian media outlets "unless at gunpoint."

"Starlink has been told by some governments (not Ukraine) to block Russian news sources. We will not do so unless at gunpoint," the tech titan tweeted.

"Sorry to be a free speech absolutist."

The statement came even after Musk had warned that there was a high chance the company's Starlink satellite broadband service could be "targeted" in Ukraine

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Consequences will be important: Elon Musk asks if Twitter adheres to free speech - Mint