For a self acclaimed capitalist, Elon Musk does a phenomenal job of getting publicly owned. Long before creating this generation’s “fetch”— nobody is going to call Twitter “X” and he needs to give up on it — Musk’s prior rebranding gimmick was that he was a “Free Speech Absolutist”:
I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 25, 2022
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His class of pro-free speech tweets, much like his Teslas, have not aged well. He’s actually done so much tweet censorship on his rapidly declining in value app that several articles have been written on it. If you like long form, there’s Vanity Fair’s piece on his deciding that “cis” is a slur. If you’re more into listicles, here’s a Gizmodo piece that gets straight to the point. If you are into nonprofits that track his speech abuses, I have bad news for you. From NBC News:
X Corp., the parent company of the social media app formerly known as Twitter, sent a letter this month to a nonprofit organization that researches digital hate speech and misinformation, accusing the group of making a “series of troubling and baseless claims that appear calculated to harm Twitter generally, and its digital advertising business specifically.”
The Center for Countering Digital Hate uploaded screenshots of the letter to its website Monday under the heading, “Musk threatens CCDH with brazen attempt to silence honest criticism.” In the three-page letter, dated July 20, Musk’s lawyer described the organization’s research as “false, misleading, or both” and argued that its methodologies were flawed.
It’s pretty clear that this is just an intimidation tactic on Musk’s part — it would be a hell of an uphill battle in court to beat the fostering hate speech allegations:
The Elon Effect is just more people shouting racial slurs.
I assume he likes it that way.https://t.co/hmKPSqU8uC
— Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) December 2, 2022
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My advice? Get as many screenshots as you can as soon as discovery starts. X Man over here has a tendency to dirty delete when things aren’t going his way. Which is often. Because he’s not very good at the things he does.
Twitter Threatens Legal Action Against Nonprofit Group That Monitors Hate Speech [NBC News]
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s. He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at [email protected] and by tweet at @WritesForRent.