Elon Musk responded to a tweet from The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro on Wednesday where he laid out what people should expect about the vision that he has for the platform in regard to free speech.
Musk, who fired off several tweets throughout the day, had his offer to buy Twitter approved by the company’s board of directors this week for $54.20 per share in a deal worth $44 billion.
“@elonmusk: Twitter should be politically neutral,” Shapiro tweeted. “WaPo and every Left-wing blue checkmark: REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.”
“You guys are giving away your game,” Shapiro added.
“Attacks are coming thick and fast, primarily from the left, which is no surprise, however I should be clear that the right will probably be a little unhappy too,” Musk responded. “My goal is to maximize area under the curve of total human happiness, which means the ~80% of people in the middle.”
Attacks are coming thick and fast, primarily from the left, which is no surprise, however I should be clear that the right will probably be a little unhappy too.
My goal is to maximize area under the curve of total human happiness, which means the ~80% of people in the middle.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 27, 2022
Musk added in a separate tweet, “For Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally.”
Earlier in the day, Musk mocked Twitter’s top lawyer, Vijaya Gadde, in a meme, which elicited a response from former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, who wrote, “What’s going on? You’re making an executive at the company you just bought the target of harassment and threats.”
Costolo simultaneously tweeted, “Bullying is not leadership.”
Musk responded, “What are [you] talking about? I’m just saying Twitter needs to be politically neutral.”
What are talking about? I’m just saying Twitter needs to be politically neutral.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 27, 2022
Musk weighed in Tuesday on Twitter’s decision to censor an explosive story that was published by the New York Post about then-Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, and a laptop that purportedly belongs to Hunter that is filled with content that was problematic for his father’s campaign.
“Vijaya Gadde, the top censorship advocate at Twitter who famously gaslit the world on Joe Rogan’s podcast and censored the Hunter Biden laptop story, is very upset about the @elonmusk takeover,” political commentator Saagar Enjeti wrote on Twitter.
Musk responded a short time later, writing: “Suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate.”
The head of Twitter’s Site Integrity Team told the Federal Election Commission (FEC) that the company censored the story because U.S. intelligence officials shared “rumors” that Biden would be the target of a hack, despite no evidence emerging that the information in the New York Post’s reporting came from a hack.
Then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told the House Energy and Commerce Committee during a hearing last year that the company made a “mistake” by censoring the story.
Related: