Elon Musk is no champion of free speech
Elon Musk is no champion of free speech
He's a right-wing ideologue with a vicious mean streak who loves to abuse his power.
fElon had no problem censoring content for the right-wing Turkish and Indian governments. It's because Twitter has never been a beacon against censorship. And fElon is happy to censor content that the government considers dangerous if it embarrasses wealthy authoritarians. He just won't do the same thing in Brazil because Lula is a leftist, not an authoritarian.
He also won't do it because he has an affinity with the violent, fascistic thugs who assaulted Brazil's capital. Brazil's MAGA tried to imitate our Jan. 6 insurrection and attacked Brazil's federal government buildings in their capital, Brasília, on Jan. 8, 2023, to stage a coup.
Brazil's government and courts have been fighting since then to combat right-wing disinformation that fueled that attack. Musk has been aiding the other side, the Brazilian "Bolsominions" who again want to try to stage a coup and put Bolsonaro back in power. Brazil has TONS of election deniers (just like we do here in the US). They claim Lula didn't legitimately win, and Bolsonaro should still be in power.
They talked openly on Twitter about organizing another coup against the democratically elected government and they spread dangerous fake news about alleged faulty electronic voting machines to rile people up. Musk refused to cooperate with the legitimate government because he's a lunatic ideologue who feels like he has to throw his weight around and act insufferable to seem important.
He left them no choice. Brazil's government had to act. After Musk posted a picture of Judge Moraes behind bars and said he's the real criminal, Brazil ordered the bank accounts of his sister company, SpaceX, frozen and will potentially seize that account to pay the ~$3 million in fines Twitter has accrued. Brazil doesn't fuck around and will take on big money in ways the United States will not. Musk isn't used to being challenged like this and obviously fucked this whole thing up, badly.
I mean, he really screwed the pooch. Brazil makes up 7% of Twitter's userbase and accounts for a sizeable amount of its revenue. Soon enough, other countries may start to follow Brazil's example. The EU is currently investigating Musk for Twitter's lax moderation policies. If Twitter loses the EU market, Twitter becomes a severely wounded bird.
Pavel Durov is a billionaire, too, and he just got arrested for a dozen VERY serious crimes in France due to Telegraph's lax moderation policies. Today, Musk said he is scared to travel because he could get arrested for the same things Pavel did.
Musk's wealth is tied up in stocks and stock options and the loans taken out on their collateral. We don't know how much of his wealth is liquid, but his wealth is probably mostly based on the value of Tesla and SpaceX stock plus Twitter's value as a company.
But Twitter could lose A LOT of value, because it may never be let back into Brazil. And other countries may be eager to follow Brazil's lead. Twitter could easily become barred in other large countries in addition to being barred from Brazil which has a population of 200 million. If that happens, Twitter could essentially lose all value. It's a barely profitable company with no growth and a shrinking market. That's not going to be worth much.
If Twitter can't achieve profitability, Musk may have to sell Tesla stock to prop it up. If Musk has to keep selling Tesla stock, that stock will tank. And if Tesla stock tanks, there goes all of his accumulated wealth.
SpaceX is the one bright spot, but they also may have just lost out on the Brazilian market, which includes 250,000 paying customers for Starlink ISP already and is poised for more growth.
I don't think he comes out of this unscathed. And I also see the potential for a serious downside here that could leave him more than just a little bit scuffed up.
Link to tweet
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