Free Speech Experts Realizing Just How Big A Free Speech Hypocrite Elon Is

On Monday, Elon Musk tweeted To fear parody or criticism is a sign of weakness."

If true, then this is Elon admitting to an astounding level of weakness. I mean, we've been chronicling for nearly two years now how Elon Musk talks a good game on free speech, but at every opportunity he's had, he has not embraced actual free speech. Instead he's worked hard to silence or punish those who say things critical of himself. This includes filing ridiculous lawsuits against two vocal critics.

But it's way more than that. It's become quite clear that Elon - especially - cannot handle criticism. If fearing criticism is a sign of weakness, Elon is among the weakest people I've ever come across.

And yet, incredibly, there are still lots of people insisting that he's a free speech absolutist" or that he bought Twitter to bring free speech back." Nothing has been further from the truth.

Thankfully, more actual free speech experts are coming to this conclusion. Trevor Timm, founder and executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, has written a piece for the Guardian calling out Musk, noting that he's become the world's biggest hypocrite on free speech."

Timm and I both agree that the old Twitter could have done a much better job with its content moderation efforts, in a manner that is supportive of free speech, but Musk hasn't even done that.

But that's not what Musk, the self-proclaimed free speech absolutist", has created. He's built a system that is the exact opposite of what he espouses, more arbitrary and more opaque than the old Twitter he relentlessly criticized - or Facebook or Instagram or any other social media platform, for that matter. And he uses his power to retaliate against his critics more than anyone this side of Donald Trump.

This is actually a key point. Even if you hated the way old Twitter moderated (and I criticized the company regularly), the simple fact is that Elon Musk's setup is way worse. He's still banning people, just much more arbitrarily and often based on his own whims. This is what people - falsely - accused the old Twitter of doing. But now Musk is doing it on a regular basis.

The only area in which he's become open is in bringing back nonsense peddlers, grifters, and people spreading hate and bigotry (and then promoting their nonsense). You can argue that platforming and promoting hatred and nonsense is pro-free speech" but eventually you end up with the Nazi bar reputation, and most of the more interesting and valuable speech moves elsewhere. It should be no surprise that ExTwitter's traffic has been dropping since his takeover.

But, the free speech problems go much deeper. As we pointed out after Musk's takeover, Twitter's former exec leadership team took a strong pro-actual free speech stance in regularly fighting governments around the world. Musk, on the other hand has regularly caved to two-bit authoritarians around the world, agreeing to pull content down whenever they demand. Timm calls this out as well:

While his content moderation decisions get the most attention, what he has done behind the scenes is arguably worse. He gutted Twitter's stellar legal department, which regularly stuck up for users' actual free speech rights in court and attempted to protect their anonymity when powerful entities would sue to expose them. And then, after Musk's first six months at the helm, Twitter went from challenging a good number of legal orders against its users to complying with 100% of them!

Timm also highlights how, at Musk's push, state Attorneys' General have started investigating" Musk's enemies for their vocal criticisms, which is the most obvious of 1st Amendment violations.

What makes matters worse is that some Republican state attorneys general - perhaps seeking favor in order to later fill their campaign coffers from the richest man in the world - are trying to piggyback on Musk's enemy of the week. Texas attorney general Ken Paxton opened an investigation" into Media Matters and the Missouri attorney general is following suit.

You don't need to be a fan of Media Matters to see how this would be incredibly chilling if the shoe was on the other foot. Imagine if George Soros attempted to bankrupt every rightwing website that accused him of being behind various leftwing plots, as those sites do on almost a daily basis.

Of course, none of this is a surprise to anyone who's followed Musk. When Musk first announced his plans to buy Twitter, we pointed that he had a long history of punishing people for speech he disliked. That included employees and even customers. Historically, Musk has shown that his instincts are deeply, deeply anti free speech. And Timm sees that as well:

Of course, this was all entirely predictable. At his own companies, Musk forces employees to sign restrictive non-disparagement agreements. He has tried to destroy whistleblowers. Tesla even once reportedly tried to get its customers to sign NDAs to get their cars repaired. There is no indication his professed principles are genuine.

Both Timm and I agree that it would actually be great if Elon were a principled free speech supporter, who understood what that term actually meant. However, Elon has shown by his actions for years (even before he purchased Twitter and renamed it) that he not only does not understand free speech, but that he is deeply antagonistic to its fundamental principles.

Elon Musk's support of free speech isn't just non-existent and hypocritical, but it's actually giving free speech a bad name. It's increasingly become an epithet. People mock those who actually support free speech, and push for greater restrictions on free speech. Musk and others like to blame the woke mind virus" or some such nonsense, but the reality is that it's hypocrites like Musk that encourage that sort of disrespect for the principles of free speech, because all the see is that the people who are the loudest going around talking about how they support free speech are a bunch of liars and hypocrites, quick to throw those principles out the window the second someone points out the emperor has no clothes.

Yesterday Elon Musk said that to fear criticism is a sign of weakness. Over the last few years, he's proved that he's Exhibit A.