Twitter fails in Elon Musk’s ‘free speech’ poll

Elon Musk has accused Twitter of ‘fundamentally undermining democracy’ for suspending a satirical newsletter over a joke about transgender official Rachel Levine.

‘Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy,’ says Elon Musk, above. Picture: Jim Watson / AFP

One of the world’s richest men, Elon Musk, has accused Twitter of “fundamentally undermining democracy”, suggesting a “new platform” might be needed amid a backlash against the tech giant for suspending the account of a satirical newsletter over a joke about a transgender official.

The Tesla founder, whose forays into public policy have increased in recent months, polled his 79.1 million Twitter followers on the weekend to gauge whether Twitter “rigorously adhered” to the principle of free speech.

More than 70 per cent of over two million responses voted “no”.

“Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy,” Mr Musk, whose net worth exceeds $US200bn, tweeted on Sunday.

He posed the question: “Is a new platform needed?”

Earlier this month, Twitter suspended satirical online newspaper The Babylon Bee for naming Rachel Levine – a transgender four-star admiral who Joe Biden last year appointed an assistant secretary for health – as “man of the year”.

USA Today, a mainstream national newspaper, had a week earlier named her one of its “women of the year”.

Twitter, which says its “mission” is to allow users to “express their opinions and beliefs without barriers”, denied Babylon Bee’s appeal on Wednesday, arguing a “hate speech” violation had taken place, undertaking to reinstate the account only if the newspaper deleted the offending tweet.

“We’re not deleting anything,” Babylon Bee founder Seth Dillon tweeted from his personal account. “Truth is not hate speech. If the cost of telling the truth is the loss of our Twitter account, then so be it.”

The Babylon Bee controversy came as debate erupted across the US about transgender rights after Lia Thomas, a transgender woman, won the national university women’s swimming championship last week.

Twitter’s policies against “hate speech” and “misinformation”, especially in the wake of founder Jack Dorsey’s departure from the company in December and after the suspension of a series of high profile accounts for criticising Biden administration’s Covid policies, have triggered at least two lawsuits.

On Friday, the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a non-profit civil rights group, said it was suing the US government, which earlier this month demanded social media platforms turn over “information about sources of Covid-19 misinformation”, for pressuring Twitter to suspend critics of mandatory masks, vaccines and lockdowns.

“The Biden administration is not merely colluding with, but instrumentalising Twitter and other technology companies to effectuate their goal of silencing opinions that diverge from the White House’s messaging on Covid-19,” the lawsuit alleged.

In December, former New York Times journalist Alex Berenson, an outspoken critic of the Biden administration’s health policy, sued Twitter on free speech grounds after his account was suspended.

Frustration with Twitter has spawned a range of other conservative social media platforms such as Gettr and Truth Social, but these have failed to attract anywhere near the user base of Twitter, which launched in 2006 and claims more than 200 million active users.

Congress is weighing a series of bills to curb the power of social media giants, including the 21st Century Free Speech Bill, introduced by Republican senator Bill Hagerty in April last year, which would curtail the rights of platforms to set their own speech standards.

High-profile US commentators Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk also had their accounts suspended after tweeting the Babylon Bee story.