Elon Musk is absolutely not a ‘free speech absolutist’

Elon Musk is a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist.” He’s declared himself so committed to the unfettered, open exchange of ideas that he’s said the only way X would let a government suppress speech on its platform is “at gunpoint.” All of this explains why Musk recently allowed X to be banned in Brazil rather than comply with the country’s mandate that the social media platform block certain accounts.

It does far less to explain Musk’s history of doing that very thing in other countries — often at the behest of right-wing or authoritarian regimes.

Musk has been open to following government orders from nearly the beginning. In January 2023 — a little over two months after Musk’s takeover — the platform then known as Twitter blocked a BBC documentary critical of India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi. India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting confirmed that Twitter was among the platforms that suppressed The Modi Question at the behest of the Modi government, which called the film “hostile propaganda and anti-India garbage.”

Musk later claimed he had no knowledge of this. But in March, after the Indian government imposed an internet blackout on the northern state of Punjab, Twitter caved again. It suppressed Indian users’ access to more than 100 accounts belonging to prominent activists, journalists, and politicians, The Intercept reported at the time.

Later that year, Twitter’s Global Government Affairs account announced it had “taken actions to restrict some content in Turkey” to ensure the website “remains available to the people of Turkey.” As Slate noted at the time, Twitter imposed restrictions on certain accounts on the eve of Turkey’s national elections — and it did so amid rampant social media criticism of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. 

Twitter representatives later said the company had filed objections to court orders requiring the website to ban access to some posts and accounts. Still, Twitter suppressed the accounts and posts. “We received what we believed to be a final threat to throttle the service — after several such warnings,” Twitter said in a statement, adding it “took action” on four accounts and 409 tweets “in order to keep Twitter available over the election weekend.”

Musk has previously said that despite his personal beliefs about free speech, his “preference is to hew close to the laws of countries in which Twitter operates.” In a 2023 interview with the BBC, Musk said Twitter “can’t go beyond the laws” of the countries in which it operates. He reiterated the claim in an interview with CNN, in which he said the platform has “no actual choice” but to comply with government censorship requests.

Under Musk, the website now known as X has complied with such requests readily. Between October 2022 and April 2023, Twitter received 971 requests from governments and courts to suppress specific content and identify private information about anonymous accounts, according to Lumen data analyzed by Rest of World. It complied, to some degree, with 99 percent of those. The majority of these requests came from countries with restrictive speech laws, including India, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates.

But X isn’t always amenable to government moderation requests, nor is it particularly vigilant about removing illegal content. In January 2023, a European anti-hate speech group filed a lawsuit in Germany, alleging the platform had failed to properly moderate antisemitic content and Holocaust denial on its platform, violating both its own policies and German law. There has been a marked rise in hate speech on X since Musk’s takeover, due in no small part to Musk’s decision to fire the content moderation team and X’s Trust and Safety Council. 

Musk has also been at odds with European Union regulators over disinformation on X. In 2022, Musk said he was “very much on the same page” as the EU regarding the Digital Services Act (DSA), a far-reaching law that requires major online platforms to remove posts containing illegal content and holds them legally accountable if they don’t. But the following year, X pulled out of the EU’s voluntary Code of Practice against disinformation, a voluntary agreement that in effect functioned as a precursor to the DSA.

EU regulators have since criticized X for allowing disinformation and illegal content to remain on the platform, and EU Commissioner Thierry Breton has warned Musk that regulators are keeping tabs on the platform. Musk has, for his part, occasionally antagonized Breton and the EU regulators over their stance on X.

This April, after an Australian judge ruled that X was required to block a video showing a bishop being stabbed in a Sydney church, Musk accused the country of censorship. X’s Global Government Affairs account said the company believed the order “was not within the scope of Australian law” and said the country “does not have the authority to dictate what content X’s users can see globally.”

Some of the inconsistencies in X’s compliance with government censorship requests could be attributed to technicalities. (X did not immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment on its decisions.) Turkey and India requested that it suppress content only in their countries, while Australia tried to censor a video globally. But it’s worth noting that the video played into one of Musk’s pet causes: combating the so-called “great replacement” of white people by immigrants and people of color. Australian authorities said they believed the stabbing was a religiously motivated terrorist attack. More broadly, Musk has a history of antagonizing governments and politicians he considers too “woke.”

Musk’s other business interests may also be relevant. Erdoğan asked Musk to build a Tesla factory in Turkey last fall, just a few months after X suppressed critics’ posts. And this April, the Financial Times reported that Tesla is exploring locations for a $3 billion factory in India. The man who once said he’d only allow one of his companies to suppress speech “at gunpoint” is far less firm in his beliefs than he claims.