Washington, D.C. Though the billionaire owner of X (the social media company formerly called Twitter) Elon Musk proudly claims to be a free speech absolutist, a transparency report put out by X reveals that he is not. In fact, it reveals quite the opposite. X’s transparency report shows that, in the first half of 2024, the company complied with more than 70 per cent of government requests to take down content, an increase of 20 per cent since 2021, the last time that X made such a report public, before Musk took over the company.
This raises questions about Musk’s own public embrace of free speech, given that the level of compliance with the governments’ takedown requests was much lower under the previous leadership, which Musk is known to have denigrated as ‘pro-censorship’.
The country that generated the majority of these takedown requests was Japan, with nearly 47,000 government demands sent to X in the first half of 2024 alone. The company obeyed 79 percent of them. ‘We may file or serve objections for requests that are legally defective, overly broad and/or appear to impermissibly burden free expression,’ said an X spokesperson.
Musk’s own personality and output, critics say, belie his public rhetoric. Though Musk and the X CEO Linda Yaccarino sing the platform’s praises of free speech, internal data has revealed a number of governmental censorship requests which have increased since Musk’s takeover, and the company has faced criticism for suspending journalists and critics, as well as for quietly bowing to Brazil’s government censorship demands after having previously defied them.
Musk’s moves have given free speech advocates pause. They wonder if the current leadership at X truly is as committed to free expression as advertised.
Sources:
- X Transparency Report, 2024
- Reuters, “X’s Compliance with Government Requests Increases Under Musk Leadership,” 2024
