Trump’s free speech election policy outlined a bold plan to tackle what he characteristics as the suppression of free speech if he is elected president in 2024.
First, he vowed that “within hours of my inauguration” he would sign an executive order prohibiting censorship by federal agencies and limiting federal funding “to be used to label domestic speech as ‘wrong’ or ‘disinformation’ ‘”.
When former President Donald Trump announced his candidacy for president in November Credit:Associated Press
He also pledged to “began to identify and fire every federal bureaucrat involved, directly or indirectly, in domestic censorship,” and said he would “ask Congress to send me a bill amending Section 230, which generally provides content immunity to social media censorship.” For the media, “get the big online platforms out of the business of censorship. “
“The fight for free speech is a matter of life and death for America, and it is a matter of life and death for Western civilization itself,” he said. “When I’m president, this whole rotten system of censorship and information control is going to be removed from the entire system.”
Meanwhile, Musk faced backlash Friday (local time) from lawmakers, commentators and officials from across the political spectrum for suspending the accounts of at least eight journalists on Thursday without warning.
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European Commission Vice-President Vera Jourova said the move violated the EU’s digital services law, which comes into force next year, and fines companies up to 6 percent of global revenue for breaching its rules.
Musk “should be aware of this,” she tweeted. “There are red lines. Sanctions, soon.”
Musk defended his actions, saying he fired reporters because they shared his residence on Twitter (a practice known as “doxxing”) and that a car carrying one of his children was killed by a A “crazy stalker” strikes up a conversation.
“It’s perfectly fine to criticize me all day long, but it’s not okay to doxx my real-time location and endanger my family,” he tweeted.
However, journalists, including those from New York Times, Washington post And CNN said they only reported that Musk had suspended the @elonjet account – which disclosed the location of Musk’s jets.
While it’s unclear how long the suspension will last, the move has been highly controversial considering Musk claimed he was a “free speech absolutist” before taking over Twitter.
He has since allowed users back on the platform, including those who had been suspended for violating previous Twitter policies on hate speech, COVID-19 vaccine misinformation or incitement.
These include Trump, whose account was restored on Nov. 19 — nearly two years after he was banned from the platform following the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol last year.
