1. Turkey is in the middle of an extremely close and consequential election. There will be a second round of voting in two weeks.
Make no mistake: @[email protected] is helping the authoritarian government cling to power by censoring tweets from its political opponents
🧵
@[email protected] 2. Twitter announced the decision to censor content in Turkey in a vaguely-worded tweet.
Musk later pledged to "post what the government in Turkey sent us."
Nearly two days later NOTHING HAS BEEN RELEASED
@[email protected] 3. Musk claims this is how things always are done. Turkey demands censorship and social media companies comply.
This is a lie.
Under previous management, Twitter fought Erdoğan's attempts to censor critics
https://popular.info/p/musk-bows-to-turkeys-autocratic-government
Elon Musk, a self-described "free speech absolutist," agreed to censor Twitter in Turkey on Saturday, the day before a critical election, at the request of the nation's autocratic government. The decision is a sharp break from how Twitter responded to the censorship requests of the current regime, led by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, before Musk bought the company. Musk has lucrative business dealings with the incumbent Turkish government through his company SpaceX.
@[email protected] 5. Twitter publicly blasted the government's actions and quickly filed petitions in Turkish court to reverse the takedown order and the ban. The takedown order was reversed two days later.
A couple of weeks later, following other losses in court, Erdoğan rescinded the ban.
@[email protected] 6. In contrast, Musk has had absolutely nothing critical to say about the Turkish government's censorship requests
Musk has simply complied and defended the decision to comply
Why is Musk, a self-described "free speech absolutist" taking this approach?
https://popular.info/p/musk-bows-to-turkeys-autocratic-government
Elon Musk, a self-described "free speech absolutist," agreed to censor Twitter in Turkey on Saturday, the day before a critical election, at the request of the nation's autocratic government. The decision is a sharp break from how Twitter responded to the censorship requests of the current regime, led by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, before Musk bought the company. Musk has lucrative business dealings with the incumbent Turkish government through his company SpaceX.
@[email protected] 7. In September 2021, Musk's space exploration company, SpaceX, signed a deal with the Turkish government to "to launch Turkey's first domestically produced communications satellite."
One of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets, which was used to launch the satellite, costs $62 million.
@[email protected] 8. Musk met with Erdoğan via video conference in December 2021 to discuss "satellite and space technologies," "autonomous electric vehicles," and "lithium batteries for Turkey's indigenous electric car TOGG."
https://popular.info/p/musk-bows-to-turkeys-autocratic-government
Elon Musk, a self-described "free speech absolutist," agreed to censor Twitter in Turkey on Saturday, the day before a critical election, at the request of the nation's autocratic government. The decision is a sharp break from how Twitter responded to the censorship requests of the current regime, led by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, before Musk bought the company. Musk has lucrative business dealings with the incumbent Turkish government through his company SpaceX.
9. Meanwhile, in India, Musk has complied with government requests to censor tweets about "a new documentary from the BBC that focuses on Indian Prime Minister Modi."
SpaceX is currently seeking "a permit to launch satellite internet services in India under its Starlink brand."
10. Musk is also censoring domestic speech, including content published on the Substack platform, which I use to publish my work.
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@juddlegum Love your reporting, Judd. But we've already liberated ourselves! Given that you clearly don't even monitor replies to this account and just have it automatically copying tweets from Twitter, I think it's YOU that probably needs liberation.
Once more shouting into the void. 🙄
Musk likes playing with fire, but funny thing about fire is it will burn you every single time. I personally can’t wait for the conflagration.
Until then, Dante is preparing Musk’s room.
Judd Legum
MSC "Arrest Trump, Already!"
HyperZonk ✊🏻
qu0th the void
AlicePaul