Elon Musk is one of the world's richest men. Businesses in electric cars, space travel and satellite powered internet for the masses have made him famous around the world. In 2024, he was at the centre of the US election as the owner of social media platform X, formerly Twitter.
His name is Elon Musk. He saved free speech. I think this election, I think it is the most important election of our lifetime.
The other side wants to take away your freedom of speech. Let me tell you, we have a new star. A star is born: Elon.
Musk has undergone a political transformation, moving him deep into right wing politics and into the center of American power. Elon Musk! I'm not just MAGA.
I'm dark gothic MAGA. Claims over free speech on social media are at the heart of much of this. The future is going to be amazing.
Until recently, Musk's politics have been hard to pin down. Here he is in 2011. I’m sort of moderate.
Sort of half. . .
Half republican, half democrat if you will. But, uh. .
. I’m somewhere in the middle. I guess I’m socially liberal and fiscally conservative.
Which I think a lot of the country is actually. So how did this political transformation take place? Journalists who reported on his career and interviewed people close to him said it started in the Covid years, when many people in Silicon Valley turned to social media as their primary source of information.
And Musk was one of those people. And very early on, he started to use social media to question the seriousness of Covid. He felt like the reaction to Covid, the lockdowns that we had, specifically in California, were overzealous, and they affected his businesses.
Forcibly imprisoning people in their homes, against all their constitutional rights. That’s my opinion, this is. .
. This is fascist. Around the same time he was going through some things in his personal life.
One of his children was embarking on a gender transition, and he really objected to that. He did not want that to happen. He became increasingly consumed with identity politics and complained that progressive values were being forced upon people.
What he calls the “woke mind virus”. Woke. Wokeness.
Woke mind virus. The woke mind virus. The woke mind virus.
The woke mind virus. Wokeness. Woke mind virus is communism rebranded.
He was also concerned with online content moderation. Twitter had just suspended the account of the Babylon Bee, which is a right wing satirical site. And they had been suspended for violating Twitter's policy against misgendering.
And Musk loves the Babylon Bee. It's one of his favourite accounts. He thinks it's really funny.
And so he really objected to that. And right before he made the offer to buy Twitter in April of 2022, you see, he's exchanging text messages with his ex-wife about the fact that the Babylon Bee suspension is wrong. And she says: “Well, maybe you should just buy Twitter” “And make it radically free speech.
” You know, reinstate common sense to the way content is moderated. In 2022, he did buy Twitter for 44 billion dollars. And later renamed it X.
He called for a digital town square without political bias. You know, it is not some right-wing takeover, as say people in the left may fear. But rather a moderate-wing takeover.
And we obviously need to get rid of the bots. And scams, and trolls, and. .
. And people that are operating huge bot armies in an attempt to unduly influence the public opinion. The changes came thick and fast.
He fired content moderation teams, including the very teams that were tasked with getting rid of the bots that he had warned against. All part of massive staff cuts to save costs. In the name of his version of free speech He reinstated accounts like conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, controversial influencer Andrew Tate, and Donald Trump.
Restoring the former president was warmly welcomed by some Republicans, who may have spotted a potential ally, sharing their views and complaints about social media and free speech. I think that Republicans have gotten very good at using the fundamental rights embedded in the Constitution as a kind of ‘political football’, such that they say: “We defend these rights and the Democrats are opposed to these rights. ” To reclaim the right to free speech for all Americans.
And ‘reclaim’ is a very important word in this case, because they’ve taken it away. I also think that there is a genuine concern about the way in which social media companies are moderating content. And I think there is a sense on the political right that the way they've drawn the lines about what counts as hate speech, what counts as harassment and bullying, has been misguided, and that we need to redraw those lines in other places.
I think that's a legitimate argument to have, and I think it's a reasonable debate that people ought to have. But it's not a debate between people who believe in free speech and between people who don't. It's a serious issue about how to draw difficult lines.
President Trump has referred to journalists as “enemies of the people”. That is hardly a pro free speech, pro freedom of the press perspective. Because the media, those people right there, they’re corrupt, largely corrupt.
They are truly the enemy of the people, they are. Musk has shown how far he is willing to go to protect his version of free speech on X. When Musk refused to ban several accounts linked to election misinformation and violence in Brazil, he was hailed as a hero by fans of former far right President Jair Bolsonaro.
But some have accused him of hypocrisy after X accepting requests to remove content from governments like India and Turkey. He’s said the platform can’t go beyond the laws of a country it operates in. If we have a choice between our people go to prison or we comply with the laws, we will comply with the laws.
So while Musk has called himself a “free speech absolutist”, it appears he has not always taken this approach. He has rules in place restricting various forms of harmful speech. Those rules go above and beyond what the law prohibits, even in the United States, which is very speech protective.
So Elon has not actually lived up to this idea that we should be allowing all lawful speech on the platform, and I think rightly so. Musk's claims to protect free speech were undermined after prominent journalists had their X accounts temporarily suspended, linked to coverage of a dispute over an account that tracked his private jet. While advertisers and users left X after changes under Musk’s ownership, its value fell.
Musk became the most followed account, and became more and more active. In early 2023, we had the Super Bowl in the United States. And, President Biden sent a tweet, rooting for the Eagles.
And then a little while later, Musk also sent a tweet rooting for the Eagles. And he was sitting there looking at the two posts side by side, and Biden's post is getting more engagement than his. But Musk has more followers.
And so he was upset by that. So he actually left the Super Bowl and flew back to San Francisco, And called this emergency meeting and asked engineers to figure out why his engagement was lower, and to fix it. And so, for a time, they were amplifying his post to be the most engaged with and the most popular on the platform.
With this huge following on X, Musk has amplified misinformation. He apologised for engaging with an antisemitic conspiracy theory. I’m sorry for that tweet or post, it was foolish of me.
Of the 30,000 it might be literally the worst and dumbest Twitter post that I’ve ever done. And amplified unproven rumors about harms from vaccines. X became his greatest tool to reach audiences and influence opinion.
And it's where he campaigned for the next president in 2024. After Elon Musk endorsed Donald Trump in July, he went all in on campaigning for Trump, and he was posting a lot more than he ever has before, hundreds of times a day. We were looking at his posts over time, and there were some days where there was a gap in his posting, only about maybe 3 or 4 hours.
And most of those posts were political, either endorsing Trump, talking about positive things that Trump might bring, or attacking Kamala Harris and saying: ‘You know, if the Democratic Party wins, then we'll never have free elections again in the United States. ’ They want to take away your right to vote, effectively. So he really threw the weight of his own account behind Trump.
He echoed unproven claims about election fraud, and unproven claims the Democrats imported undocumented immigrants to vote for them. Away from X, he poured money into a pro-Trump campaign group. According to government filings, Musk donated more than 118 million dollars, and he gave away million dollar cheques to voters.
The political calculation paid off. Musk has been picked for a role advising the White House on spending and regulation. And for now at least, appears to be very close to President Trump.
Rising share prices have added billions to Musk’s net worth, and the new Trump era could be good for Musk's business empire. Throughout his career, his companies have received billions of dollars in government contracts, and now there is concern about a potential conflict of interest. It might not always have been the plan, but what was branded as a project to protect free speech led to the transformation of a social media platform.
Buying X increased Elon Musk's fame and reach, ultimately propelling him into a position of new political influence. Elon Musk did not respond to requests for comment.
