A lot has happened since Elon Musk took over ownership of one of the biggest social media platforms in the world just a week ago, things like celebrities claiming to quit Twitter because of this new development and huge corporations pulling their advertisements from the app, resulting in a huge drop in its revenue.
In light of the events that unfolded, the Tesla CEO took to Twitter to raise concerns about the matter, saying that some activist groups who happen to be against him are the ones forcing advertisers to put an end to their advertisements on the platform he now owns. He even went so far as to call it all a disruption of free speech.
And while the billionaire founder and CEO of SpaceX says activists are “destroy” freedom of speech, he tries to show how dedicated he is to preserving it, pointing out that he isn’t taking any drastic measures when it comes to the Twitter account that tracks his jet.
Related: ‘Couldn’t Pass This One’: Hellboy Star Ron Perlman Slams Elon Musk for Manipulating Free Speech, Arrested for Keeping Silence While Harvey Weinstein Terrorized Actresses
Elon Musk claims to offer free speech even to those who stalk him
News of a 19-year-old freshman named Jack Sweeney tracking the whereabouts of Elon Musk’s private jet broke at the very start of the year in January. The story came out after the latter approached Sweeney via a Twitter DM, asking him to remove the account named “Elon’s Jet” from the site which keeps a tab on all of Musk’s private jet activity.
Related: ‘They’re trying to destroy free speech in America’: Elon Musk declares war on activist groups, says Twitter won’t bow to activism after ‘massive drop in revenue’
Musk even offered to pay the boy $5,000 if he deleted that account and stopped keeping track of his plane, but Sweeney refused, saying he only thought about doing it if he was paid $50,000 instead of five thousand. While the business tycoon said he “Think about it,” Sweeney’s big payday never came, and as a result, the Twitter account that meticulously follows Musk’s jet has never been shut down either.
The Twitter CEO referenced the same in his most recent tweet when talking about the importance of free speech and his desire to preserve it. So much so that it is not even “prohibition” Sweeney’s account which has the tracking information for his aircraft.
My commitment to free speech even extends to not banning the account following my plane, even if it poses a direct risk to personal safety.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 7, 2022
Is that a good thing or is he just trying a little too hard to play nice?
Elon Musk does his best not to let go of his superior Iron Man
Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark was not only known as Iron Man, but was also famous for being a billionaire scientist with the brains of an evil genius. And when you think about it, the similarities between the MCU’s greatest superhero and real-life tech genius and billionaire investor Elon Musk are too striking to pass unnoticed.
In fact, Mark Fergus, the author of Iron Man, himself admitted the similarity between his character and Musk as he talked about drawing inspiration from the latter. And let’s not forget the whole shenanigans of charging $8 for a verified blue tick that looks unmistakably like Superior Iron Man and Extremis 3.0.
Related: Elon Musk Becomes Entirely Superior To Iron Man On Twitter, Enforces $8 Twitter Rule Fans Compare To Extremis Virus
And if Musk’s recent tweet was any proof, then he’s definitely trying to quell the evil side of his Iron Man persona. Not taking action against a teenager who tracks the movements of his private jet? There’s no way Tony Stark is letting this go.
It’s not that the OpenAI co-founder doesn’t have the resources to delete said Twitter account; he literally owns the site, he could do whatever he wanted. As far as we know, Musk might even take hardcore action against Jack Sweeney without batting an eyelid and no one would even know. But that is perhaps exactly what he is preventing himself from doing when he instead preaches freedom of expression.
He really goes out of his way to play the good cop, but there’s only so much incentive to ignore.
Source: Twitter
