Eccentric billionaire Elon Musk originally said he wanted to purchase Twitter to promote free speech, but times may be changing with the questionable changes he has made since acquiring the platform.
A new change under platform owner Musk’s direction will require users to manually add text to links that they share. Without the added text, the post will only include an image and an overlay of the URL, on “X,” formerly known as Twitter.
Musk acknowledged on Tuesday the seemingly random change by responding to a user’s post detailing the move. “This is coming from me directly,” Musk admitted on X. “Will greatly improve the esthetics.”
MRC Free Speech America has reported on Musk’s questionable changes to the platform since the contentious purchase, including choosing Linda Yaccarino, an anti-free speech former NBCUniversal executive, to be the CEO of the company.
Musk also pushed forward with Twitter Community Notes, a questionable crowdsourced form of fact-checking and censorship.
In November of last year, Musk described X’s speech policy as “freedom of speech, not reach,” indicating that users would be censored for certain views labeled as “hate speech.” Musk never clarified what he believes constitutes so-called “hate speech.”
“New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach,” he tweeted at the time. “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter. You won’t find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different from rest of Internet.”
Unfortunately, Musk’s comments eerily mirror those originally expressed by former Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey.
In 2019, Dorsey claimed that while Twitter’s policies were created in “the spirit of” the First Amendment, the platform could no longer be “neutral” on certain political viewpoints.
“I don’t believe that we can afford to take a neutral stance anymore,” he stated. “I don’t believe that we should optimize for neutrality.”
Conservatives are under attack. Contact Twitter: (415) 222-9670 or mail to 1355 Market Street Suite 900 and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on so-called “hate speech” and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
