<
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/23/elon-musk-battle-over-the-sydney-church-stabbing-video-is-not-about-freedom-of-speech-its-to-titillate-his-followers>
"This battle was never about the removal of a single violent video for Elon
Musk – it was always going to turn into a glib culture war fought with
4chan-style memes and late-night missives featuring Musk as the free speech
antihero fighting Woke Governments of the World. At least, that is how he
wishes to portray it to his more than 180 million followers.
Musk on Tuesday responded to an interim court order from Australia’s eSafety
Commission requesting that X hide graphic and distressing videos of the recent
Sydney stabbing within 24 hours with a
Wizard of Oz meme: it’s all shits and
giggles over at X. In further posts, he took aim at the eSafety commissioner,
claiming she wants “authority over all countries on Earth”, after labelling her
a “Commissar” for requesting the removal of the video in the first place, which
depicted an attack that the NSW police have since classified as a terrorist
incident.
Musk also found the time to mock the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, in
between briefing his lawyers, to entertain and titillate his followers. If
anyone wants to see a 16-year-old-boy allegedly attack bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel
with a knife they should damn well have the right to. Governments of the world
be damned.
Musk would like us to believe that this is about freedom of speech. Except it
isn’t, at least not in any straightforward sense if we look at his record: Musk
routinely bans and censors accounts he doesn’t agree with. In 2022, for
example, he banned the accounts of several high-profile journalists from
CNN,
New York Times and
The Washington Post who had been critical of him in the
press, and suspended the accounts of several journalists earlier this year who
had been critical of Israel’s war in Gaza. He has also banned journalists who
are critical of his companies, sometimes with no explanation and fired an
employee for being critical of his company on X. In 2022, he banned an account
tracking the whereabouts of his own personal jet using publicly available data,
along with other accounts belonging to journalists who had retweeted that data
– and banned the personal account of the teenager who started it, Jack Sweeney.
The list could go on. Though he describes himself as a “free speech
absolutist”, Musk’s approach to moderation and censorship has been anything
but. These late-night tweet storms, banning sprees and ludicrous lawsuits are
not designed to protect free speech, or even to uphold the US constitution
(which does not and should not apply to Australians anyway). They are designed
to silence his critics and entertain his followers."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
