(Reclaim The Net)—Elon Musk truly “lives rent-free” in the heads of a certain political class in Europe, who go to great lengths to revile him for his political views and alliance with President Trump.
This is done by many self-styled “progressives” – in reality, those like London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who shortly before the presidential inauguration in the US penned an opinion piece in the UK press, referring to Musk as “a billionaire bully.”
But the mayor didn’t seem bothered by quite a number of billionaire “bullies” who during the past eight years (see: Big Tech-government censorship collusion) literally put profits over the interests of democracies – which is what Khan now accuses Musk of doing.
Not while that “dirty work” was done in favor of his political and ideological ilk.
It is almost as if the fear and loathing related to the realignment of Big Tech is greater than that of Trump himself, and if so, there is a good reason: all those who greatly benefited from rampant online censorship realize the power free speech has – which is why they would work so hard to suppress it.
To try to curb the tide of major social platforms turning against censorship, the likes of Khan – but also many in the EU, of which the UK is not formally a member – are now pushing for even stricter rules that enable censorship. They refer to those as “laws on harmful content.”
Lies, hate, misinformation, resurgent fascism, century-defining challenge, hard-right wing politicians (just for supporting Trump) – these are some of the dramatic and over-the-top terms and concepts now being thrown around to justify such a policy push.
Writes Khan: “A billionaire bully shouldn’t be able to use his social media platform as a propaganda tool to amplify lies and advance the cause of the far right.”
And the London mayor adds, “Nor should social media companies be able to evade responsibility for algorithms that maximize – and monetize – hate.”
That last remark is oddly synchronized – both in the timing and the messaging – with a recent EU decision to investigate the way algorithms and recommendations work on X (after being prompted to do so by Germany’s ruling politicians facing a very uncertain election next month.)
Maybe they all received the memo with the same talking points.
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