Musk explained his new approach to free speech after Twitter removed content related to a BBC documentary that was critical of the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi: “We can’t go beyond the laws of a country.” A year earlier, he had tweeted, “If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect. As a result, the company had faced bans and fought takedown requests in court. Prior to Musk’s purchase, Twitter had often pushed back on such requests, and sometimes refused to comply with them at all. The requests in question “all involve a government asking Twitter to either remove content or reveal information about a user,” according to a report from Rest of World, the publication that analyzed the data. Please point out where we had an actual choice and we will reverse it.” “I, personally, would not censor Slow Boring”-Yglesias’s Substack newsletter-“at the request of foreign authoritarian governments even if that cost me some money.” Musk soon replied, “You’re such a numbskull. “I’m a free speech absolutist,” Yglesias wrote, parroting one of Musk’s oft-repeated mantras.
The writer Matt Yglesias posted an article from El País about how Twitter, during Elon Musk’s tenure as its C.E.O., has complied with an alarmingly high number of censorious takedown requests from authoritarian governments. On May 28th, two very online know-it-alls got into a tiff on Twitter.
