Elon’s X Ownership Has Become a Threat to Society, the UK Its Latest Victim

Freedom of speech does not necessarily include freedom of reach, a complaint I have often made concerning corporate vs individual access to bullshit, as well as more serious matters. The Supreme Court’s decision affirming corporate personhood, immediately turned its back on the broad public it claims to support.

I have the freedom to speak to my too-few Substack followers on occasions such as this. But Elon, notwithstanding his claim to be an actual person, now has the Supreme corporate freedom to reach the 191 million who follow his rantings on Twitter (now renamed X).     

Further, because he owns the site, he is both willing and able to place those unhinged rants at the top of all categories he considers relevant

Thus, did he enable the gathering online storm that broke across mob riots in Southport, an otherwise quiet small city in England.

Twitter, in its best years before Elon, was the platform of choice for journalists, politicians, world leaders and citizens, because of the many ways it encouraged expression, participation, and debate. More recently, X’s (Elon’s new brand for everything, including his children) zeal for what he calls free speech turned the platform into a celebration of abuse, harassment, and hate speech.

Having fired most gatekeepers, including 80% of the engineers dedicated to trust and safety, advertisers began to bail out, unwilling to see their ads appear next to Nazi, and other hate sites. Musk’s very public answer to that was, “Fuck ‘em, let ‘em go.”

And they went

Now, either unable or unwilling to pay his bills, or find an alternative source of income to shore up the road-kill into which he has turned a once profitable and honored social media site, he’s suing advertisers for abandoning X. ‘Fuck ‘em’ has now turned to ‘sue ‘em.’

We’ll soon find out if it’s possible to recover monetary damages from an advertiser who simply refuses to advertise on a hate site. My guess is it will be summarily thrown out of court. But, who knows in these times when liars go free and truth-tellers are pilloried on social media?

Money equals reach, and reach is the new currency

Mark Zuckerberg, another enfant terrible, comes to mind along with Elon, two peas in the same pod of wealth beyond any understanding of its debt to the society that enabled it. Interestingly, both child-moguls were impressionable students at the feet of Peter Thiel. Zuck was no match for the intellectual brilliance of either Musk or Thiel, but two out of three ain’t bad. And Zuck knew just enough to listen, when Peter told him how to maintain absolute control of FaceBook.

Thiel is actually the more economically modest of the three, his net worth a shade over $8 billion, compared to Zuck ($181 billion) and Musk ($223 billion). Without Peter, the other two are just ordinary rich guys. But ownership is what spins the wheel of fortune and ownership sets the rules. How else could Elon possibly ask for (and get, unless a court says no) a $56 billion payday at Tesla?

But then there’s the UK riots to answer for

Jonathan Freedland, a columnist at the UK Guardian newspaper writes, “You know who else should be on trial for the UK’s far-right riots? Elon Musk.”

“Direct guilt sits with those who brought violence to our streets, but their hatred was inflamed by lies spread on X. Of course, it’s good that so many of those responsible for a week of terrifying far-right violence are facing an especially swift and severe form of justice – but there’s one extremely rich and powerful suspect who should join them in the dock. If the UK authorities truly want to hold accountable all those who unleashed riots and pogroms in Britain, they need to go after Elon Musk…

“…Let’s remind ourselves who brought (Tommy) Robinson and a whole slew of far-right agitators back in from the cold, thereby putting X out of step with the likes of YouTube and Facebook. It was Musk, of course. He decided to make X a safe space for racism and hate almost as soon as he bought it. The effect was instant. One analysis of tweets found a “nearly 500% increase in use of the N-word in the 12-hour window immediately following the shift of ownership to Musk”. The same study also found that posts including “the word ‘Jew’ had increased fivefold since before the ownership transfer”, and something tells me those tweets weren’t tributes to the comic style of Mel Brooks.

“But Musk has not just ushered in the super-sharers of the far right: he is one himself. It was he, on his own X account, who shared with his 193m followers a fake Telegraph headline, falsely claiming that Keir Starmer planned to create “detainment camps” for rioters in the Falkland Islands, and doing it by quote-tweeting the co-leader of the ultra far-right Britain First organization. It was Musk who inflamed an already incendiary situation by tweeting of the UK, “Civil war is inevitable.”

Bruce Daisley, ex Twitter boss in the UK, has a solution

“As an ex-Twitter boss, I have a way to grab Elon Musk’s attention. If he keeps stirring unrest, get an arrest warrant.”

“In my experience, that threat of personal sanction is much more effective on executives than the risk of corporate fines. Were Musk to continue stirring up unrest, an arrest warrant for him might produce fireworks from his fingertips, but as an international jet-setter it would have the effect of focusing his mind. It’s also worth remembering that the rules of what is permitted on X are created by one of Musk’s lesser known advisers, a Yorkshire man called Nick Pickles, who leads X’s global affairs team.

“Musk’s actions should be a wake-up call for Starmer’s government to quietly legislate to take back control of what we collectively agree is permissible on social media. Musk might force his angry tweets to the top of your timeline, but the will of a democratically elected government should mean more than the fury of a tech oligarch – even him.”

Well, there you go. All equal under the law, are we? No need to baby Elon.

Even a child knows not to shit in the sandbox.