Elon Musk is expanding censorship on X (formerly Twitter) for elections.

Musk’s X is hiring “election disinformation” staff and has a slew of updates ahead of the 2024 elections. The “Freedom of Speech, Not Reach” policy suppresses content alleged to violate Twitter’s policies or upset users but does not delete the entire piece. While censoring, it gives the impression of freedom of expression. All of this was predicted from the moment Musk bought Twitter.

After all, Musk consistently panders to the Chinese Communist Party, which runs a tyrannical censorship regime. Furthermore, Musk‘s new X CEO Linda Yaccarino aligns with the anti-free speech World Economic Forum. She bragged recently of censoring to please X advertisers and contributed to a report that praised Communist China and endorsed state funding of media.

The title of the new measures “Supporting people’s right to accurate and safe political discourse on X”, is a clear indicator that the proposed measures are flawed. The Founding Fathers would be horrified to hear that people have the right to “accurate and secure political dialogue”.

For one thing, it is the essence of political discourse that people disagree considerably with each other. X will end up having to decide which side it thinks is lying (and it’s usually not the side that gets censored). That is, X will have to violate the Constitution and set itself up as a sort of arbiter of truth. Second, no one has the right to “safe” discourse. The issue with “safe” is that it is a very subjective word, and, as we have seen, leftists can label pretty much anything as a trigger for making them feel “unsafe.”

X, in addition to its title, announced that it is “currently expanding the election and safety team” with the goal of combating manipulation, exposing unauthentic accounts and closely monitoring the platform for any new threats. X has clarified that it will enforce the Civic Integrity Policy (which is misleadingly called) before and during the upcoming Presidential Election. ”

X went on to emphasize its “Freedom of Speech, Not Reach” policy. This is a censorship strategy that pretends to be protecting free speech. You can feel better because the posts which have been censored are marked.

Ironically X claimed that it was “committed” to freedom of speech based on allowing political ads on its platform. A phrase that is ominous indicates the same problem I raised above: the purpose of political advertising in an election campaign is to allow opposing sides to make different claims and accuse each other of being wrong.

X said it would “prohibit false and misleading content such as false and misleading information meant to undermine confidence in a democratic process while preserving a free and open dialogue.” “We will also create a global transparent advertising center.” Who decides what is “misleading?”

The X announcement ended by stating that X continues “to scale Community Notes,” which allows certain users approved by X to fact-check posts on the platform.

According to the Media Research Center, Twitter/X is not good at separating speech protected by the Constitution from real threats.

Political speeches are offensive to the general public and their accuracy is subject to dispute. The First Amendment is essential to our representative democracy. Without it, we would be doomed. X should axe its new censorship plans.

Musk promised to end this pernicious censorship as soon as he took control of the platform, allegedly to make it a haven for freedom of speech.