Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk on Saturday claimed that the risk of something bad happening to him or even literally being shot at is “quite significant”. In a two-hour-long audio chat on Twitter Spaces, Mr Musk stated that he “definitely” wouldn’t be doing any open-air car parades.
“Frankly the risk of something bad happening to me, or even literally being shot, is quite significant,” he said, adding, “It’s not that hard to kill somebody if you wanted to, so hopefully they don’t, and fate smiles upon the situation with me and it does not happen … There’s definitely some risk there.”
Elon Musk Says His Assassination Risk is “Quite Significant”: “Frankly the risk of something bad happening to me or literally being shot is quite significant. I am definitely not going to be doing any open-air car parades.”
Source: https://t.co/thJ94gap7b pic.twitter.com/P4vQ2gTQZz— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2023) December 4, 2022
Further, during the discussion, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO spoke about the importance of free speech and his future plan for Twitter. He said that “at the end of the day, we just want to have a future where we’re not oppressed. (Where) our speech is not suppressed, and we can say what we want to say without fear of reprisals”.
“As long as you’re not really causing harm to somebody else, then you should be allowed to say what you want,” Mr Musk added.
The tech billionaire also stated that throughout history, free speech has been “highly unusual, not common. So we have to fight really hard to keep that because it’s such a rare thing and it’s by no means something that’s default”.
“Controlled speech is the default, not free speech,” he said.
Notably, Mr Musk’s discussion on Twitter Spaces came a day after journalist Matt Taibbi published internal communications among Twitter’s top brass, showing the platform suspended and censored users who commented on the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story. Mr Musk claimed that the files show Twitter “was acting like an arm” of the Democratic National Committee in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential elections.
He also teased the release of more files in the near future and said, “We’re just gonna put all the information out there and try to get a clean slate we will be iteratively better and it will force other media companies to also be more truthful or else they’ll lose their readership”.
But during the Twitter Spaces chat, Mr Musk also acknowledged that the so-called “Twitter Files” release had included some missteps, including a few cases which he thinks should have excluded some email addresses.
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