Dear John,

Elon Musk has installed himself as the arbiter of free speech on Twitter.

In his short time at the helm of the social media platform, not only has he frozen the accounts of journalists he disagrees with, but also he has now bowed to a request of India’s right wing government to censor access to a BBC documentary they did not like.

Neither action is acceptable, and taken together, they suggest the emergence of a disturbing pattern of censorship based not on the principles of free speech, but on Musk’s own erratic priorities.

Tell Elon Musk to reinstate the censored BBC documentary, and to stop silencing journalists now.

In December, Twitter suspended the accounts of reporters for CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Intercept, and several others, due to tweets they had written critical of Elon Musk.

The reporters discussed Musk’s handling of the @ElonJet account, which tracked the whereabouts of Musk’s plane using public data. The reporters did not post any location data themselves -- which they could’ve, again, using only publicly available data -- nevertheless, Musk suspended their accounts claiming they had posted “assassination coordinates”.

Give me a break.

Now, after much backlash from the United Nations, the European Union, and many many others on Twitter, Musk agreed to reinstate the reporters’ accounts, but with a catch: they would have to delete the tweets. Most refused Musk’s demands and are still banned from the site today.

Steve Herman of the Voice of America called the rules “arbitrary and capricious,” Drew Harwell of the Washington Post said Musk “can ban anyone he wants,” but the rules “just so happen to target journalism he doesn’t like,” and Donie O’Sullivan of CNN said “it’s all a bit rich coming from a so-called free-speech absolutist.”^[1]

Public pressure on Twitter and Musk does in fact have an impact. When enough of us speak up, policies can, and do often change. That’s why we can’t take this sitting down. We must join together and call on Twitter to stop silencing journalists now. Please add your name.

Let’s be clear, it’s not just journalists. Non-journalists are being censored too.

India’s right-wing government says, at its request, Twitter censored access to a BBC documentary critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s role in a massacre in Gujarat. Twitter also removed posts by opposition members of the Indian Parliament, and even blocked Indians from seeing posts by the actor John Cusack or anyone else linking to the documentary.

At the same time Musk is putting his thumb on the scale to block content he himself does not like, he has also fired thousands of Twitter employees responsible for moderating hate speech and misinformation. He has also begged Trump to come back, despite his original ban for using the platform to incite violence.

Allowing people on the platform who incite violence while censoring posts exposing a government leader’s role in a violent massacre is exactly the opposite of what should be expected of a platform theoretically built on free speech.

Musk needs a reminder that freedom of speech should not be reserved solely for the speech deemed worthwhile by one powerful billionaire. Tell Elon Musk: Stop silencing journalists on Twitter now.

Thank you for doing your part to support free speech.

Robert Reich
Inequality Media Civic Action

^{[1] Journalists who won’t delete Musk tweets remain locked out of Twitter}