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Raging at EU fines, Elon Musk pretends to be pro-free speech again

As we’ve reported before, Elon Musk is not the free speech absolutist he claims to be. He does like using ‘free speech’ as a defence, however, which is exactly what he’s doing right now:

Fined

As reported by the BBC, the EU is fining Musk because their pay-for-play blue check scheme is exposing users to scammers and fraudsters. Additionally, Musk’s X/Twitter platform is failing to provide sufficient transparency around its adverts, which is another big no no for the EU.

You’ll note neither of these things have anything to do with free speech.

The US government, however, is arguing otherwise:

Do you know who does believe in censoring free speech on behalf of government institutions? That’s right, Elon Musk, as Al Jazeera reported:

Twitter complied at least partially with almost every government request to take down content after Elon Musk, a self-described free speech absolutist, took over the platform, Twitter’s self-reported data shows.

The social media giant fully or partially complied with 98.8 percent of takedown requests it received from October 27, the date of Musk’s takeover, to April 13, including hundreds of requests from Turkey and India, which have faced criticism for silencing critics.

We suspect he doesn’t speak out against Turkey and India because he knows they won’t humour his petulance; they’ll just block his website.

Other ways Musk has (or would like to) restrict freedom of speech include:

Despite all this, Musk is still saying stuff like this:

You restrict freedom of speech, Elon; you do.

By your own logic, you are the bad guy – something you’d be able to figure out yourself if you weren’t experiencing the world’s longest temper tantrum:

Featured image via EU

By Willem Moore

This post was originally published on Canary.