Elon Musk, the owner of X (formerly known as Twitter) called for more people to record what is happening in the world around them, saying it would “change the world.”
Musk has been a strong advocate for free speech; prior to buying Twitter, he tweeted, “Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle? The consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully.”
The consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 25, 2022
On Friday, he went further, tweeting, “Please encourage more citizen journalism! You can do live video easily from your phone. More on-the-ground reporting from regular citizens will change the world.”
Please encourage more citizen journalism! You can do live video easily from your phone.
More on-the-ground reporting from regular citizens will change the world.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 29, 2023
Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro noted, “Here is @elonmusk taking Andrew Breitbart’s citizen journalism dream to the next level.”
Here is @elonmusk taking Andrew Breitbart's citizen journalism dream to the next level https://t.co/XQhifTezYB
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) September 29, 2023
In 2011, Andrew Breitbart stated, “All we did was ask of the mainstream media was to correct their bias problem. … When they wouldn’t correct themselves, citizens in the form of the Tea Party, citizens in the form of Hanna and James and people with video cameras going everywhere, said, “If you are not going to correct yourself, we’re going to create a media in the wake of your incompetency. … And that’s what [is] happening. It’s the most exciting time in the media and unfortunately, the mainstream media is so upset about it; it covers it as if we’re the villains out there.”
Speaking with Shapiro on an X Space this week, Musk spoke of free speech, saying, “In the U.S. we are able to be much more free of speech; in some other parts of the world much less so, where we have the choice of either providing the X platform or it being shuttled or throttled. And I do believe also generally, if there is someone harboring hate, and that hate is based on sort of incorrect assumptions or bad knowledge, the best way to combat that hate is to hear it and then say why it’s not true, as opposed to someone harboring secret-antisemitism or some other form of hatred, never hearing the counterpoints as to why what they believe is false. … Often I think it’s better that somebody says something and then gets dumped on, frankly, or is corrected.”
Shapiro asked, “How can you stand up to and what sort of pledges can you make with regard to the sort of backdoor pressure attempts … when it comes to government what do you do?”
“Our policy is to resist any attempts to get censorship to the maximum degree allowed by law,” Musk responded. “In the U.S., by far the biggest pressure comes from essentially fairly far-Left activist groups and actors and coalitions. … What they’re trying to do there is impose extremely far-Left values on X and other platforms under the guise of hate speech, but it is, in fact, a matter of politics.”