A new report claims that Twitter employees are “panicking” over the appointment of tech philanthropist Elon Musk to the company’s board, expressing concern that the African-American billionaire may restrict their ability to ban and censor users that they disagree with.
Reuters reported on Thursday that Musk’s appoint to the Twitter board “has some Twitter employees panicking over the future of the social media firm’s ability to moderate content.”
The Twitter employees expressed that they were “concerned about Musk’s ability to influence the company’s policies on abusive users and harmful content,” and fearful that “his views on moderation could weaken years-long efforts to make Twitter a place of healthy discourse, and might allow trolling and mob attacks to flourish.”
Like many Big Tech corporations, Twitter disregards the First Amendment protections for free expression detailed in the U.S. Constitution, choosing instead to impose its own set of internal rules that mirror the moderators’ own individual political and social biases.
Musk has described himself as a “free speech absolutist.”
As Valiant News previously reported, Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, had previously polled his 89 million Twitter followers to ask whether they believed Twitter followed the First Amendment.
When his followers voted no, he asked what should be done. Many assumed Musk was considering founding his own social media company, and were surprised to see him become Twitter’s largest single shareholder.
Agrawal called Musk “a passionate believer” in Twitter, but also an “intense critic of the service,” and suggested his presence on the board will “make us stronger in the long-term.”
While Twitter’s politically slanted censorship of conservative speech has long been a topic of contention in right-wing circles, the issue drew more mainstream attention during the 2020 U.S. presidential campaign, when Twitter censored a New York Post article about Hunter Biden’s personal laptop and later banned President Donald Trump.
