X CEO Elon Musk, in a recent interview with Human Events senior editor Jack Posobiec, said he’d be willing to go to prison if the federal government demanded he censor information on his social media platform.
Posobiec referenced the Hunter Biden laptop story that was censored on the platform – known at the time as Twitter – prior to the 2020 presidential election and Musk’s ownership.
He asked Musk if he would consider making it public if authorities reached out to him to suppress stories in a similar manner.
“We will be as transparent as possible,” Musk replied.
“If I think a government agency is breaking the law and there are demands on the platform, I would be prepared to go to prison personally if I think they are the ones breaking the law.”
Trending Politics co-owner Collin Rugg posted audio of the comments and remarked: “This is why Elon Musk is the perfect person to own X.”
RELATED: Trump Says Musk is a Free Speech Hero Who Has Done a Great Service to This Country
Elon Musk Says He’s Prepared To Go To Prison To Protect Free Speech
As has been covered on these pages extensively, certain releases of internal Twitter files through Musk and various journalists have shown how the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) interacted with the platform to suppress “Russian disinformation” – the Hunter Biden laptop scandal – while others showed similar efforts in controlling the narrative on COVID.
Former Twitter executives have acknowledged that they suppressed the Biden laptop story before the 2020 presidential election but denied that they did so at the behest of law enforcement officials. Other heads of competing social media companies suggested the need for suppression and censorship was strongly implied by the bureau.
Even beyond those major stories from the era of former President Donald Trump, there are further stories of attempted censorship.
The Political Insider covered a report released over the summer by the House Judiciary Committee, which alleged the FBI colluded with a Ukrainian intelligence agency to pressure major social media platforms to remove accounts that were perceived to be spreading Russian disinformation.
Some of the social media accounts flagged for removal belonged to Americans, “including a verified US State Department account and those belonging to American journalists.”
Musk Is A Free Speech Hero
X CEO Elon Musk has long accused the federal government of having “full access” to user accounts on the platform before his arrival. Such control even, according to him, included access to individuals’ private direct messages (DMs).
“The degree to which government agencies effectively had full access to everything that was going on on Twitter blew my mind,” he said.
Musk this past February exposed a little-known State Department agency – the Global Engagement Center (GEC) – as a leading source of federal censorship efforts in the United States and “a threat to our democracy.”
Former President Donald Trump has praised Musk for doing the country “a big service” for pulling back the curtain on alleged collusion between the FBI, the Biden campaign, and the media to meddle in the 2020 election.
He has called the visionary billionaire chief of X a free speech “hero.”
“Yeah, I’d say he’s a hero. I think that it’s a big part of his legacy,” Trump praised. “I think it’s more important than other things he’s done.”
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