Musk, like virtually all Silicon Valley billionaires, isn’t very original when it comes to his origin story. Strange bedfellows for a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist”. The Saudi Prince, Alwaleed bin Talal, is a longtime investor in Twitter and has now even come on board as a co-investor in Musk’s venture along with various other billionaires and funds including the Qatari sovereign wealth fund (together making up $7 billion of the $44 billion). This relationship may have helped grease the wheels for Saudi agents to become employed in the company and bribe another Twitter employee to access the details of about 6,000 Saudi citizens, among them anonymous dissidents, who were subsequently arrested, jailed, tortured and even murdered. should recall the longstanding connection between him, his company and the autocratic Saudi regime. It serves the interests of the ruling elite to use social media to amp up the culture war and, thus, division among the working class.Īnyone tempted to pine for the reign of Jack Dorsey (Twitter founder) et al. The fact is transphobes, racists and sexists have always been quite free to spew their bile on Twitter (and every other billionaire-owned social media platform), where their victims are more likely to be the ones being banned if they respond with impolite language. While some liberals may be particularly horrified at the prospect of Musk (an odious, reactionary transphobe threatening to open the right-wing sewage sluices under the cause of ‘free speech’) taking over and replacing more ‘palatable’ billionaire owners, socialists will look at it all with a colder eye. The news that the world’s richest man is to take control of his favourite social media network for an obscene $44 billion (€42bn) has reopened debate about who should own and control the social media platforms. Pádraig O’Flynn, Socialist Party (ISA in Ireland)
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