Elon Musk has issued a warning about the growing threat to free speech worldwide, as recent examples of censorship emerge from various countries. His comments follow a series of events, including the ban of his platform X in Brazil, the arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov, and revelations by Mark Zuckerberg that the Biden-Harris administration pressured Facebook to suppress information related to COVID-19.
In response to an old clip of Kamala Harris from 2019, where she advocated for suspending Donald Trump’s then-Twitter account, Musk posted, “Freedom of speech is under massive attack around the world.”
In the 2019 clip, Harris said, “I, frankly, think that based on this and all we’ve seen [Trump] do before, including attacking members of Congress, that he, frankly, should be – his Twitter account should be suspended. I think there is plenty of now evidence to suggest that he is irresponsible with his words in a way that could result in harm to other people. And so the privilege of using those words in that way should probably be taken from him.”
Musk’s warning comes amid several alarming signs of censorship globally. Just recently, Brazil banned X entirely, imposing fines of approximately $8,900 on anyone accessing the platform through a VPN. Earlier this month, Musk closed down X’s offices in Brazil, citing threats from the government to arrest a company employee.
Another example of global censorship surfaced when Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg admitted that the Biden-Harris administration pressured Facebook to limit content related to COVID-19. In a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg stated, “Ultimately, it was our decision whether or not to take content down, and we own our decisions, including COVID-19 related changes we made to our enforcement in the wake of this pressure. I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it.”
Additionally, the founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov, was arrested in France in connection with illegal activities conducted on Telegram due to its end-to-end encryption, which makes it a popular platform for free speech.