Elon Musk is not your savior PJ Media

Elon Musk is not your savior – PJ Media

Business News / By /

Elon Musk is a visionary, a billionaire, and an immigrant to America who built his fortune on tireless work and an ardent belief in core principles. His attempt to use his vast resources to buy Twitter and give back some semblance of free speech and open debate to the popular social media platform is commendable. But just remember one thing: Elon Musk is not a savior of free speech and expression. He is not your savior.





He’d probably be the first to claim that truth, but would the sycophantic media that tweeted it listen to him?

Musk’s impulse to buy the microsocial platform and reopen debate is fine and dandy, but not even the self-made force of nature thinks he’s walking on water.

“I don’t want to blow your mind, but I’m not always right,” Musk told an interviewer in a Ted Talk published this week. He cited his continuous attempts to develop and perfect self-driving Teslas.

The electric car maker’s market cap reached $1 trillion in October 2021.

It’s a safe assumption that he recognizes his imperfections in all of his exploits, such as his efforts at SpaceX to one day colonize Mars.

Related: Congress reacts as Tesla opens showroom in China’s Genocide Province

Musk’s impact on Twitter is unpredictable, but his reach is quantifiable. The Wall Street Journal reports: “Mr. It took Musk more than a decade to reach 40 million followers on Twitter in November 2020. That month it hit 80 million.”





Perhaps to soften Twitter’s impending attempt to buy it, Musk asked loudly if the format was “dying.”

Musk is smart and capable. People are happy to share this certified smart guy’s belief that Twitter is abusing its vast power to empower the left and suppress the political right. It means they are smart too. They happily share a genius’ belief that Twitter has abused its reach to wield political power and demonize those who have different ideas, like outspoken former President Donald Trump. In fact, half expect Twitter to think nothing of kicking Musk off its platform. After all, if you can do this to the President of the United States, you can, Musk, right?

It’s fun to see Musk do the censored Twitter squirm.

The micro-platform with enormous influence is comfortable with predominantly democratic political actors. Former Obama administration officials have nested like ticks in Silicon Valley.

The left’s concerns about a billionaire buying a communications company are deeply disingenuous given their hailing Amazon’s Jeff Bezos’ stake in the Washington Post.





“I think it’s important [Twitter] is an inclusive arena for free speech,” Musk said. “Twitter has become sort of a de facto town square, so it’s really important that people have both the reality and the perception that they can speak freely within the confines of the law, and one of the things that Twitter means to me should do is open-source algorithm” to show how the social media platform amplifies or censors content. He’s right. Open the black vault, Twitter.

It’s about a lot. “It’s important for the functioning of democracy, it’s important for the functioning of the United States as a free country and many other countries, to help freedom in the world on a broader scale than in the United States. The civilizational risk is all the more heightened with Twitter, we can reduce trust in Twitter as a public platform,” he told a Ted Talk audience in Vancouver, Canada, late last week. But acquisition is not a sure thing. “I think it’s going to be a bit painful and I don’t know if I’m really going to make it,” he said.

He told the audience that it wasn’t about the money. “I don’t care about the economics at all,” he said.

Musk’s idea of ​​how Twitter would work sounds like old Twitter. Free speech, according to Musk, is when “someone you don’t like is allowed to say something you don’t like. And if that’s the case, then we have free speech. It’s bloody annoying when someone you don’t like says something you don’t like, but that’s the sign of healthy free speech.”





Note, however, that due to the laws of the countries where Twitter exists, there would not be full freedom of speech. “Twitter is bound by the laws of the country it operates in, so there are restrictions on free speech in the US… But going beyond that and being unclear about who is changing what where, mysteriously promoting or downgrading tweets, no insight into what what’s going on, having a Black Vault algorithm that promotes some things and not others – I think that can be quite dangerous,” he claims.

“When in doubt, stop talking – stop [the tweet] exist. If it’s a gray area, I’d say let the tweet exist.” But here he didn’t think through what would become of Musk-owned Twitter. “[O]Of course, in a case where there might be a lot of controversy, you don’t necessarily want to promote that tweet,” he says. “I’m not saying I have all the answers here, but I think we should hesitate to delete things, ban things – just be very careful with permanent bans. I find time off better than permanent bans.”

Musk will not be the savior of all free speech, and Twitter will not be the vehicle for free speech, even under a Musk regime.

The purity of free speech may not be attainable, but it is up to the individual to seek out all the new platforms that have sprung up on the established platforms due to dystopian censorship. MySpace is still floating somewhere on the interwebs, but few use it. If there is justice, Twitter will do it. Twitter had its day and it blew it because the despotic “elites” ruled it.





If Musk takes over Twitter, great. But conservatives shouldn’t count on Elon Musk fighting for their freedom of speech.

Elon Musk, while admirable, is not your savior.