New defamation suit against Elon Musk over tweets reveals how the billionaire spreads misinformation and lurks on secret Twitter accounts.

Elon Musk‘s erratic posting on X, formerly Twitter, has come back to haunt him once again as a 22-year-old Jewish man pursues a defamation case over tweets in which the tech mogul baselessly suggested the recent college graduate was an undercover federal agent posing as a neo-Nazi during a street fight between far-right groups. Musk’s excruciating March 27 deposition in the matter, which a judge ordered released to the public over the objections of the CEO’s lawyer, reveals the extent to which he has continually sabotaged both himself and the social media platform he owns.

  • Zimited@lemmy.world
    340·
    8 months ago

    Truth in this case, comes from the ability to be proven wrong. If they removed it, the truth wouldn’t have a chance to be relevant and challenge the wrong statement. I assume that is what Elon has in mind when he considers his site to be more truthful. Much on the common internet these days gets shut down and removed before even being able to be challenged. Like on Reddit. Which ironically leads to less truth, since less people have their opinions challenged and are instead removed, or the challenge is removed.

    • ReluctantMuskrat@lemmy.world
      13·
      8 months ago

      Give an example of where it’s led to less truth. When X perpetuates lies, truth and the world’s welfare is harmed. Look at the number of people that died thinking covid was a lie and people that think vaccines are somebkind of conspiracy to harm them.

      • Zimited@lemmy.world
        111·
        8 months ago

        If X perpetuates a lie and doesn’t have the facilitation to allow a variety of perspectives and opinions to hold the lie accountable, that is an echo chamber and I’d agree it would be a huge problem. Elon said every person should be allowed to speak for the most part on X. If that saying holds any merit, I assume X lives up to that eventually. If it doesn’t I’m on you guys’ side about X.

        I feel if Elon Musk said covid was a lie and people took only his word for it, that is on them. Its another story entirely if there was no other trustworthy source of information or data. USA seems to struggle with that these days, so I understand how it went so wrong with Covid in some places. But yeah, a person in this case would win the game of natural selection by not only going off of what one dude/source says (probably in a casual, low effort manner at that).

        • zeppo@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          8 months ago

          Musk allows extreme right wing to flourish and boosts their falsehoods himself, but has personally censored many left voices. What he claims about “free speech” and what he does are not the same.

          • Zimited@lemmy.world
            11·
            8 months ago

            Do you have sources that show he intentionally censored voices? He would be a huge hypocrite depending on how that was done.

            • zeppo@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              8 months ago

              There are numerous examples available to anyone who looks for it. Here’s one where he banned a bunch of journalists who had been critical of him, using an excuse about “doxxing”:

              https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/twitter-journalist-suspend-1.6688110

              There’s another where he suspended the account of a prominent Tesla critic:

              https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/15/elon-musk-led-twitter-suspended-plainsite-a-prominent-tesla-critic.html

              • Zimited@lemmy.world
                11·
                8 months ago

                Thank you for sharing.

                Hm, in the first link, the journalist seems to have contributed to the incentivization of giving people the power to find and try to harm/kill Elon. I personally feel that directly incentivizing and feeding information for possible murder of an individual is one of the few things I would agree with keeping away from the app myself.

                As for the second link it reads like a red flag for me. The reasoning to the ban is not there. And any estimates of why fall short with obscurity. At least within’ the article. Generally when something is obscure I assume the worst. But part of me wonders if details were left out from the article. I’d need to do more research. Looks bad for Elon though.