Elon Musk Doesn’t Care About Free Speech – The New Republic

In no way has Musk shown a genuine commitment to free speech, even as he continues to pay lip service to the concept. And his decision over the weekend to censor tweets in Turkey may have been his most egregious violation yet. Pressed by Substacker Matt Yglesias on Saturday, Musk responded in a typically petulantand revealingfashion. Did your brain fall out of your head, Yglesias? he tweeted. The choice is have Twitter throttled in its entirety or limit access to some tweets. Which one do you want?

Its obvious which one Musk wants, but the choice here is far from obvious. Musk could have dared Erdoan to block Twitter entirely in Turkey. If Erdoan had blinked, then Musk would have looked noble for once. If Erdoan instead blocked Twitter, at least his supporters and opponents would have been silenced equallyand such a move would have made his authoritarianism even clearer to voters.

Musk also argued that, well, everyone complies with these requestsand that he was, in fact, being more transparent than his peers. This is par for the course for all Internet companieswe are just going to be clear that its happening, unlike the others, he tweeted. Except thats really not the case. In 2014, Erdoans government blocked access to Twitter after it refused requests to censor accounts in the lead-up to local elections. Twitter responded by telling users how to circumvent the ban; access was ultimately restored two weeks later, after an uproar.

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Elon Musk Doesn't Care About Free Speech - The New Republic