Joy Reid of MSNBC didn’t hold back when she presented a blistering assessment of Elon Musk’s ‘free speech’ policies to a live audience of millions earlier this week.
Following his successful bid to buy Twitter, the Pretoria-born billionaire has shocked the digital world this week. While his followers have praised the decision as a win for online freedom of expression, opponents claim that his ownership would only increase the level of harassment and abuse already prevalent on the site.
He wants to bring greater ‘political neutrality’ to the table, according to the Tesla and SpaceX CEO:
For Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 27, 2022
“He misses apartheid” – US commentator makes wild claim
Elon Musk’s vision for the social media network, however, is not shared by everyone. The mega-rich mogul, according to Reid, a senior contributor to MSNBC, ‘simply wants the freedom to be a bully.’
However, that wouldn’t be her most divisive stance on the subject. Elon Musk, according to the political pundit,’misses the old South Africa,’ and this Twitter acquisition’shows he wants apartheid back,’ he added.
“It was distressing to a lot of people, not least … to the people that work at Twitter. A lot of them, probably not all of them, are just worried about what becomes of their company. There has been this lawsuit against Tesla, and Elon Musk himself is a Twitter troll. His idea of freedom means freedom to be a jerk.”
“He wants to be cruel and to have no one be able to stop him. The enjoyment they get from being in this ‘town square’ is being able to harass people, being able to attack people. the misogyny was crazy on Twitter for a while. With Elon Musk, I guess he misses the old South Africa in the 1980s, he wants that back.”
Joy Reid
- You can watch a clip of the incident, and subsequent reaction, here…