Tesla boss gets a slice of the megaphone that lands him trouble again and again
Social media service Twitter saw its stock surge on Monday because tech thinkfluencer Elon Musk took a 9.2 percent stake in the company. Musk acquired his share in the firm on March 14, and before the sale was disclosed to the public on Monday, April 4, in an SEC filing, he used Twitter – a free social media service – to freely impugn Twitter for exercising its constitutionally protected right to moderate speech on its platform. Twitter stock is up 27 percent right now. “Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy,” Musk wrote to caption a Twitter poll. “Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?” Musk has made a habit of talking to his audience of 80 million Twitter followers about free speech without really defining what he means by it. He recently defended Starlink’s policy of ignoring government requests to block Russian government media service RT by stating, “Sorry to be a free speech absolutist.” Yet his declared free speech absolutism has been less enthusiastic with regard to the Twitter user who posts the location of his private plane. And it has got him in trouble with the SEC, which sued him and subsequently settled over his August 7, 2018 tweet that he could take Tesla private for $420 a share. Musk’s tweeting also caused problems with America’s National Labor Relations board, which in March, 2021, directed him to remove an anti-union tweet that was deemed to be unlawfully coercive.
