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If Mark Zuckerberg posted a “Harris/Waltz” lawn sign in front of his house, how quickly do you think there would be a Congressional hearing on “election interference”? But Elon Musk is currently He has directly tinkered with the sites he owns to promote his favorite political candidates, even seizing people’s accounts to promote Trump.
One of the main reasons Elon bought Twitter (he claimed) was because he believed (incorrectly) that existing management was using the site to promote a political ideology. It was to prevent this. That didn’t actually happen, but it did lead to Musk’s declaration days after Twitter’s board agreed to his company’s takeover proposal:
If you don’t know, it’s because Musk said, “For Twitter to be worthy of the public’s trust, it must be politically neutral. That effectively means it should equally sway the far right and the far left.” There will be.
Things aren’t always like that. Elon not only supported Donald Trump, appeared at his rallies, and turned ExTwitter into a non-stop propaganda-driving campaign ad for Trump (while also posting blatantly false and misleading information through his own account) (He has repeatedly promoted claims that invite the United States to become one of President Trump’s biggest donors.)
Imagine how the Republican Party would react if a social media CEO did the same thing in support of Kamala Harris.
Oh wait, you don’t even have to imagine. Because the MAGA world had a fever dream of pretending they happened, even if they didn’t.
In the last election, Mark Zuckerberg didn’t endorse either candidate, didn’t spend billions of dollars supporting either candidate, and didn’t use Facebook or Instagram as a campaign site. What he did was fund politically neutral voting infrastructure efforts to ensure the 2020 election was free and fair. And for that, he was falsely accused of election interference and tipping the scales against Biden. Donald Trump accused Zuckerberg of criminal behavior and threatened him with prison time for his actions. And just recently, under pressure from Representative Jim Jordan over that funding, Mr. Zuckerberg apologized for it and vowed never to fund election infrastructure again.
Again, he wasn’t doing anything partisan at all. But now Elon has turned the entire (shrinking) platform into a pro-Trump campaign site. And no one complained about Zuckerberg’s spending on voting infrastructure.
Now, to make things even worse, Elon seized the username from another account that is not officially associated with ExTwitter and used to further promote Donald Trump.
ExTwitter is his site and he has the right to take over anyone’s handle if he wants. He’s done it before, but historically it was ExTwitter related. The most notable example is when he acquired the @X handle from Gene X. Hwang.
But over the weekend, reporter Matt Binder discovered that Elon had swiped the account of someone with the username @America on ExTwitter. Musk turned it into a nonstop propaganda feed for Donald Trump. He also includes the account in his bio.
Such a neutral. I trust you very much.
What’s even more incredible is that the former owner of the @America account (although he hasn’t used it recently) has criticized Elon’s political views in the past. Binder has tracked that when Musk acquired @America, he gave the original account the slightly less memorable @America123_12. Very creative. But the description suggests that the person who owned it disputes Musk’s false political views.
Again, I’m just trying to imagine what the whole MAGAsphere/Fox News/etc. thing is like. If Zuckerberg used someone’s Instagram handle to endorse a Democratic politician, the world would go completely insane. Or if Jack Dorsey ever did it on Twitter.
Representatives Jim Jordan and James Comer, as well as Senators Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, and Josh Hawley, have already announced hearings to bring these CEOs to Capitol Hill to discuss bias. I would have yelled at him.
But when it comes to masksโฆnothing. I’m not saying there should be a Congressional hearing here. That can’t be true. Mr. Musk has the legal right to do this, and Congress should have no say in the matter. But that’s also true about Zack and his election infrastructure spending (which didn’t benefit either candidate), and you know the Republicans turned it into a big issue.
Here, it is clear that Musk is now using his control over the website to make decisions about users that directly support Trump. And it’s at least worth calling out the hypocrisy.
Still, if we take Elon’s own words literally, Elon Musk has said that ExTwitter is no longer worthy of the public’s trust. So stop giving it to them.
Filed Under: Prejudice, Donald Trump, Election, Elon Musk, Social Media
Company: twitter, x