Does Elon Musk fear for his life? The new boss of Twitter said on Sunday that he was aware of a risk of assassination “rather important”, during an audio chat of several hours on Twitter Spaces, during which he also justified his free speech policy on the social network since his takeover. He also returned to the “Twitter Files”, shocking revelations about Twitter interference in the 2020 US presidential election which, in France, were met with absolute silence from the mainstream media.
During his speech, the boss of Tesla implied that he could not expose himself too much in public at the risk of putting his life in danger: “I definitely wouldn’t do an outdoor car parade. Let me put it this way”, he quips. And to continue: “Frankly, the risk of something bad happening to me, or even being literally shot, is quite significant”. Il “It’s not that hard to kill someone (…) I hope they don’t, I hope fate smiles on me and it doesn’t happen…”he added.
“A future where we are not oppressed”
Moreover, the new boss of Twitter explained that what we all want is “a future where we are not oppressed (…) where our voice is not suppressed, and where we can say what we want without fear of reprisal”he explains, believing that “As long as you’re not actually hurting someone else, you should be allowed to say whatever you want.”
Since its takeover of the social network, the multi-billionaire has restored the suspended Twitter accounts of several personalities, including that of former President Donald Trump. On the other hand, other profiles such as those of Dr. Robert Malone or Dr. Peter McCullough remain to this day still blocked by the blue bird.
Now fired, the social network’s previous moderation team was repeatedly criticized after suspending accounts “who have not broken the law or engaged in spamming”. Since November 23, the company has also ended its policy of “fight against disinformation on Covid-19”. A decision that poses a “big problem”, had estimated Emmanuel Macron on December 1st. During an interview with the American channel ABC, on the sidelines of his state visit to the United States, the French president said: “I think we need to tackle this head-on, I’m in favor of the exact opposite, more regulation. We’re doing it. [en France] and we do it at European level.”
Supporter of the Canadian Freedom Convoy, a fervent supporter of freedom of expression according to a libertarian conception, Elon Musk has made no secret of his opposition to health restrictions since the start of the Covid-19 crisis. “Telling people they can’t leave their homes and that they would be arrested if they did is fascist. It is not democratic. It is not freedom. Give people back their damn freedom”he denounced in April 2020, during a conference call for financial analysts.
Elon Musk was also asked about the Twitter Files. Friday evening, he published on the social network the documents proving an “interference” of Twitter in the previous American elections through the scandal linked to the “laptop” of Hunter Biden, the son of the current President of the United States Joe Biden . A first series of documents, internal conversations in the social network, were unveiled by journalist Matt Taibbi.
The exchanges show that Joe Biden’s team was asking Twitter employees to remove specific political content in October 2020, just weeks before his election as President of the United States. Employees of the social network deliberately suspended and censored links on this case, claiming a breach of the platform’s policy on privacy. “hacked material”.
Twitter, “an arm” of the Democratic Party
“If Twitter approves a team’s bid before an election by shutting down dissenting voices in a crucial election, that’s the very definition of election interference”, Musk said. And to add: “Frankly, Twitter was acting like an arm of the Democratic National Committee, it was nonsense”.
He explains that he granted access to Matt Taibbi as well as another journalist, Bari Weiss, “unobstructed access” to old internal documents, another part of which will soon be revealed. “I don’t control the narrative. It’s just obvious that there’s been a lot of scrutiny and suppression of information, including things that affected the election…“, he said.
The Twitter boss, however, admitted to blunders when publishing the “Twitter Files”. He mentions, for example, the “a few cases where I think we should have excluded certain email addresses”.
“The idea here is to tell the truth about everything that happened in the past in order to build public confidence for the future (…) We can’t all agree on one thing. .. but we can guarantee transparency“, Musk told his listeners.
The former responsible for the main content moderation decisions at Twitter, Yoel Roth, quoted in the “Twitter Files”, and who has not ceased to criticize Elon Musk since the takeover of the social network, reacted to the disclosure of the internal conversations. “Publicly posting the names and identities of frontline employees involved in content moderation puts them at risk. This is fundamentally unacceptable,” did he declare.