‘Free Speech Absolutist’ Elon Musk Temporarily Bans Journalists, As ‘Free Speech Absolutist’ Bill Ackman Threatens SLAPP Suit Against Journalists

Content Moderation

from the free-speech-only-for-my-friends dept

On Tuesday morning, former politician Tulsi Gabbard, who had to have the 1st Amendment clearly explained to her by a judge after she filed a ridiculous lawsuit to restrict the free speech of others, announced that she had cut a deal with Elon Musk to bring a “news show” to ExTwitter. Hilariously, she claimed that she did this because “freedom of speech is a fundamental right in America” (again, a court had to teach her what that meant not that long ago).

At around the exact same time, “free speech absolutist” Elon Musk was busy banning a bunch of reporters from ExTwitter for saying things that upset him and his pal Bill Ackman.

The social media platform gave no explanation for the sudden purge, saying only that the accounts “violate the X rules.” The X rules prohibit violent or hateful speech, child exploitation, private information sharing, and fake information.

But the accounts in question do not post that kind of content. The reporters who were banned include Steven Monacelli, a journalist at the Texas Observer who covers extremism, and Ken Klippenstein, who covers national security for The Intercept. Last year, Klippenstein published a piece on the errors with Tesla’s self-driving feature, and Monacelli noted that X shadow-banned the Intercept author since then.

MintPress News reporter Alan MacLeod, who recently has extensively covered Israel’s approach to the war in Gaza, and leftist podcaster Rob Rousseau were also suspended Tuesday.

The accounts for @liamnissan, @zei_squirrel, and the TrueAnon podcast were suspended, as well. The @liamnissan account posts mostly comedic commentary, including criticisms of Musk. The TrueAnon podcast provides left-wing analysis of current political events and conspiracy theories.

The @zei_squirrel account is another left-leaning commentator who has been critical of Musk in the past. In a post on their Substack Tuesday, the @zei_squirrel writer noted that they had recently begun to criticize Bill Ackman, a hedge fund billionaire and friend of Musk’s who helped lead the campaign against former Harvard University President Claudine Gay. Ackman’s wife was recently accused of plagiarism, the same charge that brought down Gay.

For what it’s worth Ackman has been going on a bit of a bender lately following the accusations of plagiarism against his wife. He’s been making up nonsense about how in the “early days” of 2009 no one thought there was anything wrong with straight up copying Wikipedia without attribution, which is just wrong. Wikipedia uses a CreativeCommons Attribution-ShareAlike license, which means it expects “attribution.” And was not, in any way, in the early days in 2009.

Still, Ackman, who helped push the witch hunt against Claudine Gay over her speech, and who is now threatening to file a laughably bogus SLAPP defamation suit against Business Insider for reporting on his wife’s alleged plagiarism — suggesting his support for “free speech” is a bit questionable as well — also falsely claims that Elon Musk is somehow a supporter of free speech. I mean, the content excerpted in two separate tweets just days apart is something else (I’d post screenshots of the tweets, but Ackman uses ExTwitter like it’s a blog and posts what appear to be trillion-word tweets.)

So, first he claims (falsely) that because MIT’s integrity handbook didn’t explicitly call out Wikipedia until 2013, it was okay to copy text directly from Wikipedia until then, and that this might somehow be defamatory (it is absolutely not):

To be clear, Neri did not use Wikipedia as a source, but only for the definitions of 15 words and/or terms for her dissertation.

While there was no way for us to do this research in the 91 minutes we were given before Business Insider published its story, our lawyers found it in about 24 hours.

This finding wipes away 15, or more than half of the plagiarism claims made by Business Insider at 5:19pm last Friday night.

According to the Cornell Law Legal Information Institute: In order to prove “prima facie defamation,” “a plaintiff must show four things: 1) a false statement purporting to be fact; 2) publication or communication of that statement to a third person; 3) fault amounting to at least negligence; and 4) damages, or some harm caused to the reputation of the person or entity who is the subject of the statement.”

This leads me to a few question for the @X legal community. If you look at all of the evidence that has emerged over the last few days, do you think Neri has been defamed under the four factor test above?

As multiple people pointed out to him in response, the actual standard for defamation of a public figure is actual malice, and he claims (again, not understanding the law) that because his wife is “an intensely private person” that makes her not a public figure, which is also… not how any of this works.

Anyway, just days earlier, Ackman went on a different rant (also about his wife) in which he concludes two ponderously long tweets that no one actually read in full with:

Lastly, if X was not independently controlled and governed by a free speech absolutist, Neri and I would not have had the ability to respond in a rapid fashion in a public forum where free speech is allowed, encouraged, and respected. I would also not have had the ability to reach millions of people with what I believe are important messages.

And I would not have been able to be nearly as effective in my campaign to help save the higher education system in our country, and I represent just one of hundreds of millions of grateful users.

So thank you @elonmusk !!! and thank you @lindayaX for holding strong

And, the two “free speech absolutists” are pushing each other to file a lawsuit to silence free speech they dislike:

Eventually, Elon unbanned the accounts after a nonsense peddler asked him what was happening, and Elon promised “to investigate.” He later claimed that they “do sweeps for spam/scam accounts and sometimes real accounts get caught up in them.”

Of course, this is what plenty of people (such as myself) pointed out about mistakes that were made in the past under Twitter’s old management, and people like Elon insisted that it couldn’t possibly be mistakes, and was all about ideological censorship.

The simple fact is, any platform has to do some level of moderation, and as soon as you do that, you’re going to make mistakes. I’d give Elon and ExTwitter the benefit of the doubt that this was just a mistake if (a) he had done that to previous management, though he did not and (b) if the accounts in question weren’t all found to have recently criticized Elon and/or Bill Ackman.

Given Elon’s own unwillingness to give the benefit of the doubt to others, why should we give him the benefit of the doubt here?

Either way, Elon is free to do whatever he wants on his platform. But absolutely no one should be under the illusion that what he’s doing has anything even remotely related to “defending free speech.” He is making decisions based on his own personal whims and foibles, which includes an extraordinarily warped sense of free speech that permits suing critics.

Filed Under: bill ackman, content moderation, defamation, elon musk, free speech, journalists, neri oxman, slapp suits, tulsi gabbard
Companies: twitter, x