"Let people decide for themselves."Ĭhinese and Iranian government accounts have also been able to make use of the platform without the guardrails that were previously set in place such as visibility filters to curtail their reach. "All news is to some degree propaganda," he wrote in an April tweet, arguing that Putin is "not exactly my best friend" to justify his position on the matter. Twitter has even allowed Russian officials to broadcast blatant propaganda on the social media network.Īnd yet again, Musk didn't see anything wrong with that. In other words, Twitter successfully "fought back against Turkey’s ban and overreaching takedown requests in a court of law and won," Binder wrote.Īlmost a decade later, Musk's Twitter looks considerably different. Turkey's courts, however, overturned the decision roughly a month later. In fact, Turkey banned Twitter entirely back in 2014 for refusing to back down to Erdoğan's demands. Reporter Matt Binder pointed out that "Twitter used to routinely challenge Turkey’s takedown requests." Musk has made plenty of changes to Twitter since taking over, some of which extend to the way the company handles requests from governments. "This is what it means to treat freedom of expression as a principle rather than a slogan." "What Wikipedia did: we stood strong for our principles and fought to the Supreme Court of Turkey and won," Wales tweeted. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales also offered Musk some advice, pointing out that Twitter could've reacted in different ways. The two met in 2017 to sign a cooperation between Tesla, SpaceX, and Turkish firms and were seen shaking hands at last year's World Cup. Indeed, Musk's businesses have strong ties to Turkey and his personal relationship with Erdoğan is well-documented. that this is all about global influence and backscratching for his other businesses," she wrote, linking to an Electrek article about Tesla expanding into Turkey.
"Musk is amazingly bad at media, unless the penny drops and you realize. Swisher also theorized as to why Musk would back down so easily. "Being a persistent quisling to authoritarian governments upon which your other businesses are dependent has a very Vichy France vibe," referring to the French state that collaborated with the Nazis during WW2. "There is only one falling out of one head and that's Elon's," Swisher tweeted in response to the exchange. Famed journalist Kara Swisher, for instance, had harsh words for Musk. "The choice is have Twitter throttled in its entirely or limit access to some tweets. "Did your brain fall out of your head, Yglesias?" Musk shot back. After blogger Matthew Yglesias accused Musk of complying, the billionaire CEO lashed out at him.
YGLESIAS TWITTER FREE
The conservative right-wing leader has a long-established track record of stifling free speech in the country. Riffing on the phenomenon, Twitter users took to calling Musk a " free speech opportunist" following the news.Īt the time of writing, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has been in office since 2014, is leading the opposition by a slim margin during the country's elections. Put simply, Musk rolled over and essentially gave in to the demands of a dictator without putting up much of a fight.Īs such, the move shines a spotlight on the fact that Musk has described himself as a " free speech absolutist" when it's convenient for his mangled handling of Twitter - but has made plenty of decisions that suggest he's anything but. Twitter announced it had "taken action to restrict access to some content in Turkey" in response to demands starting late last week, without specifying what content would be blocked or why. When the Turkish government asked Twitter to censor the opposition during the country's election this week, the site's owner Elon Musk obediently complied.
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