Alex Bruno
New Twitter CEO Elon Musk continues to experience “red-pill” moments, according to some. Tesla and SpaceX billionaire CEO Elon Musk has confessed that “Twitter [clearly] has a significant left-wing bias” after purchasing the prominent social media platform in the sake of free speech. According to a tweet from Elon Musk in July 2018, “To be clear, I am not a conservative. As a political moderate, I’m registered, and independent.
“I passionately backed Obama for President, but today’s Democratic Party has been hijacked by fanatics,” Musk said in April. Although he has a lot on his plate, Tesla CEO Elon Musk seems to pay close attention to what is said about him. Author and filmmaker Mike Cernovich had used Twitter to draw attention to an apparent supporter of a pro-life group’s alleged firebombing when he sent out the tweet in question.
Claimed by Cernovich: “Here you go @elonmusk since Twitter staff always lie to you about enforcement policies, maybe they can explain why a verified account is permitted to encourage terrorism without any regard for getting banned.” As far as I can tell, the account has been deactivated. “As I stated, my desire is to hew close to the rules of nations in which Twitter operates,” remarked the world’s wealthiest man, Elon Musk. Pass legislation banning it if the people want it to be prohibited else it should be permitted.”
Musk, 50, was born in South Africa and just became an American citizen in 2002, according to the New York Times. He has ideas that don’t fit cleanly into the country’s binary, left-right political framework. According to the newspaper, The name “libertarian” is often used to characterize him, although it doesn’t do justice to how contradictory and erratic his views may be.
Cernovich also pointed out that ideologically-driven Twitter moderators use a double standard:
Even if she were banned for encouraging terrorism directly, this journalist would never have considered it. Twitter workers are more likely to agree with this sentiment than not, therefore there is nothing to worry about. Nonetheless, the Babylon Bee must question whether or not a joke will be the last straw.
On the other hand, Cernovich’s Twitter feed is full of intriguing non-political items, including self-improvement advice and media whistle-blowing, despite his disappointment with former President Trump. As a result of Twitter’s new management, the blue-check cohort seems to have lost faith in the company’s ability to execute its own regulations.
If, for example, Silicon Valley acts as an arm of the federal government, then the First Amendment’s free-speech guarantees may no longer be applicable, since they are only applicable to the government sector.
By making Twitter as “as widely inclusive as possible and as trustworthy as possible,” Musk said at the Met Gala. As a result, “the public must be made aware of how each tweet is pushed or de-promoted.” The program should also be made accessible to the general public, he said.
Sacks, a digital entrepreneur who apparently was part of the so-called Pay Pal “mafia” that allegedly persuaded Tesla CEO Elon Musk to acquire Twitter, gave an insightful update on how the First Amendment could relate to current social media in an interview with Substacker Bari Weiss back in March.
Understanding that free speech in our culture has been privatized is absolutely important. Privatization of the town square is now possible. The internet did not exist when the U.S. Constitution was drafted. You could really go to a town square back then, and there were several of them around the nation. The crowd was enormous, and anybody could go up on a platform and talk, and anyone else could come to listen. Since the First Amendment protects not just freedom of expression but also freedom of expression and the press, this is why. The freedom to peacefully gather is likewise protected by this law.
So where are folks meeting today? They form these massive social networks with massive network effects. Discourse takes place there, particularly political speech. How much of the First Amendment do you still have if you are barred from the digital town square? How much freedom of expression do you have? That’s not the case, do you?
To suggest that since they are private performers, they can do anything they want isn’t adequate because they aren’t private actors at all. Too much power is given to these private players.
Your freedom to free expression in our nation is entirely in their hands. That is, in my opinion, unacceptable. That’s something the Constitution’s forefathers, the Framers, would never have allowed, in my opinion. The notion of the red pill, which has since become a cultural phenomenon, is a reference to the cult film The Matrix (1999), in which the character Morpheus provides either a red (for truth) or blue (for ignorance) tablet to Neo.
Source: BPR
