Ep. 728 - Last night Elon Musk did something deeply disturbing on Twitter

The Breakdown with Shaun King

The North Star

News, Society & Culture

4.8 • 12.6K Ratings

🗓️ 16 December 2022

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

After saying for months on end that he wanted Twitter to be the "Town Square of the World" and that he believed in what's called "free speech absolutism" - which is basically the belief that all speech should be allowed all the time - Elon Musk made a deeply disturbing pivot.

After weeks of bringing back conservatives to Twitter that were actually suspended for repeated violations of Terms of Services, Musk began suspending MAJOR accounts from the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, The Intercept, Mashable, and more.

In the entire history of all social media, we've never had a day where accounts like that have been banned. Some people are calling it the "Thursday Night Massacre," and while that may sound harsh, today I want to tell you why I think it's absolutely a sign of things to come on Twitter - and in our country and world.

Let me unpack and explain it.

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Love and appreciate you all.

Shaun

Transcript

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0:30.0	I am deeply disturbed by something that Elon Musk has started on Twitter.
0:36.0	Yesterday, one by one, he began banning major accounts,
0:43.0	accounts with hundreds of thousands, even millions of followers,
0:47.0	from CNN, from the New York Times, from the Washington Post,
0:51.0	from Mashable, from my former place of employment,
0:56.0	the Intercept, and these were mainly tech journalists,
1:01.0	who were on the Elon Musk beat.
1:04.0	Banned, many of them even have accounts saying that they are permanently banned from the platform.
1:10.0	It is a deeply disturbing provocation and escalation of what it means to have a filthy rich billionaire owning Twitter.
1:21.0	All while he talks about right-wing accounts that should have never been banned from the platform,
1:28.0	it is certainly a sign of things to come there on Twitter,
1:33.0	but I think it is actually a sign of something even worse than that.
1:38.0	Let me unpack and explain it, glad to be back.
1:41.0	This is Sean King, you are listening to?
	...

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