Billionaire Trump surrogate Elon Musk defended his decision to strip critics of their ability to monetize content on X after cracking down on dissent on the social network.
Responding to a supporter who defended “people getting demonetized for their inexcusable behavior,” Musk declared, “Exactly. The first amendment is protection for ‘free speech’, not ‘paid speech’ ffs.”
He demonetized people who criticized him specifically. I don’t know why anyone would be too surprised by that. He’s essentially an employer of people making money on X and employers have every right to muzzle speech on the job. Of course he did that. All you have to do is read his Twitter feed to see what an onanistic, self-indulgent, narcissist he is.
In any case, his “free speech” crusade is very contingent on whose speech should be protected, not what or where. He likes to have it both ways. He argued that Twitter should not be in the business of censoring people at all — that it’s something of a town square — when it applied to Donald Trump or extremists he believed should have been allowed to post disinformation during the pandemic. But he also exercises his prerogative as an owner to censor (suspend)and demonetize people who criticize him personally. It’s all about his whims.
I’m a little bit curious about what Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, Lee Fang, and authors Michael Shellenberger, David Zweig and Alex Berensons have to say about all this. They wrote the so-called investigation of the infamous “Twitter files” alleging that the service censored people during the Trump administration. I haven’t heard a word about any of this from them. Odd.
Fuentes is one of the top white supremacists on the site. He wasn’t censored. His racist views aren’t a problem. But he has defended some of his groyper buddies who criticized Musk’s immigration views.