Elon Musk’s absolutist version of free speech has put the world’s richest man and his social media platform X in the crosshairs of governments around the world.
In the UK, authorities are considering stricter rules on sites like X after a spate of fake news sparked online unrest. In India, X was ordered this year to remove posts and block certain accounts in response to farmers’ protests. And in Brazil, Musk is battling with the country’s Supreme Court over its orders to block users who spread fake news.
Taken together, these measures amount to a crackdown by some of the world’s largest democracies on what authorities see as a wave of hate speech and disinformation. Any attempt to restrict expression on social media runs up against Musk’s laissez-faire approach to user contributions, a promise of “free speech” that he passionately defends on the site formerly known as Twitter, which he acquired for $44 billion in late 2022 and promptly converted to X.
That commitment to allowing users to say what they want has cost X advertising revenue and put him at the center of political battles around the world. “It turns out that free speech is actually very expensive,” he posted earlier this year. Critics say the defense of “free speech” has shielded users who spread hate speech and falsehoods.
While major social media companies are familiar with the issues facing X, Musk is adding additional elements to those disputes – including claims from opponents that he is revealing his own political bias.
“What’s different is how he’s putting so much of this in the spotlight,” says Katie Harbath, a former public policy executive at Meta Platforms Inc. and currently global affairs officer at Duco Experts, a consulting firm that works with companies on trust and security issues. “Their method of fighting back is very aggressive.”
Following the arrest of around a dozen people in the UK for inflammatory online content related to recent unrest, Musk responded “truthfully” to a post by the leader of Britain’s Reform Party, Nigel Farage, in which he called current Prime Minister Keir Starmer “the greatest threat to free speech that we have seen in our history.” Starmer’s office pushed back against Farage’s comments on Monday, but avoided a war of words with X’s billionaire owner.
The latest challenge for Musk, according to Variety, came when Olympic boxing champion Imane Khelif filed a cyber-harassment complaint in France that named the billionaire. Her lawyer told the magazine that Musk and other well-known figures had amplified online attacks on Khelif’s gender identity, which was questioned on her way to winning a gold medal in women’s boxing during the Paris Olympics.
Representatives for Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Any action against X raises questions about how far governments will go to restrict content they deem harmful, especially in democracies that value free speech. No platform has borne the brunt of their efforts more than X, which has been spreading controversial content since long before Musk took over.
This was perhaps most notable during Donald Trump’s first term in office, when the then-US president pushed the boundaries of Twitter decency and forced the company to act on free speech. After Trump posted falsehoods about mail-in voting ahead of the 2020 election, Twitter began labeling his posts with links to more information but did not remove them. He was eventually suspended after the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, but after purchasing the company, Musk restored Trump’s account.
Since taking the helm, Musk has largely abandoned X’s previous efforts to curb misinformation, relying instead on crowdsourced community notes and asking users to police themselves. Musk has made drastic cuts to the teams that wrote and enforced company rules, part of a cost-cutting measure but also a move consistent with his belief that X was too harsh when it came to controlling user expression.
Earlier this week, Musk received a warning letter from Thierry Breton, the EU’s Internal Market Commissioner, urging X to comply with regional rules against harmful content, especially in light of recent violence in the UK. Breton’s letter – posted on X – reminded Musk that the Union is already taking formal action against the platform for alleged violations of the Digital Services Act.
Musk responded to Breton with a snarky, profanity-laced post to his nearly 200 million followers on X. On Wednesday, he posted a picture of himself laughing with the caption: “When they keep telling you you’re a threat to free speech because you stand up for free speech. ‘Wait, are you serious?'”
Combating fake news is a top priority for EU officials, who recently strengthened their powers to deal with illegal and harmful content. The EU can now impose fines of up to six percent of annual turnover on major social media platforms if they violate new content moderation rules.
In the US, restricting content on X is a political challenge ahead of a hotly contested election. Musk, who is increasingly aligned with conservative figures, endorsed Trump for president last month and is backing a super PAC that supports the Republican candidate. On Monday, Musk hosted a more than two-hour conversation with Trump on X, flattering his guest and promising him a role in a future administration should the former president win in November.
Democrats have taken advantage of Musk’s support for Trump, complaining that X throttles or blocks posts that espouse liberal views or favor Democratic candidate Kamala Harris. Representative Jerrold Nadler, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, has called on the Republican-led panel to investigate whether X’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok spread false information, including that Harris missed voting deadlines in nine states.
Under U.S. law, regulators have little power to ban harmful online content. That’s because of a provision in the 1996 Communications Decency Act, known as Section 230, that insulates websites from liability for third-party content on their platforms. While lawmakers from both parties agree on the need to update the nearly three-decade-old measure, Republicans and Democrats are fiercely divided over what changes should be made.
Authoritarian governments have shown less restraint in their use of X. After a disputed election that opponents and international observers say he lost, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro announced on August 8 that he would block access to X in the country for 10 days. He accused Musk of fomenting unrest by questioning the vote count for X and posting “Shame on dictator Maduro.”
Elsewhere in Latin America, Brazilian officials are embroiled in a protracted dispute with X over the site’s postings from disgruntled supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro who claim, without evidence, that his defeat in the 2022 election was due to fraud. After Bolsonaro supporters stormed buildings in the capital Brasília in January 2023, Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes launched an investigation to determine whether Musk had tried to use X for a “disinformation campaign” and ordered the suspension of some accounts in Brazil.
Musk initially responded that he would defy the court order, accused Moraes of violating free speech rights and called for his impeachment. The company later relented and said it would comply with the court order after all.
On Tuesday, Musk reignited the dispute by releasing confidential instructions purporting to come from Moraes. Musk used the documents to claim that X “was asked to censor content in Brazil, where censorship requirements require us to violate Brazilian law! This is not right.”
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With support from Billy House, Daniel Carvalho, Benoit Berthelot, Olivia Solon, Ellen Milligan, Eleanor Thornber and Jeff Stone.
