X Marks the Spot

By Michael Rectenwald, Mises Institute

Ever since Elon Musk acquired Twitter, now X, the censorship regime has been hell-bent on harassing the company and Musk himself—with bad publicity, accusations of antisemitism, and advertiser boycotts. Musk struck back by threatening to sue the Anti-Defamation League, suing Media Matters for defamation, and famously telling fleeing advertisers “Go f*ck yourself.”

Musk’s X has the potential to weaken the Big Digital woke cartel, which censors content, censures and bans users, and serves as a propaganda arm of the globalist totalitarian statists whom the cartel so assiduously serves. I have argued that Musk’s X gambit would represent an important test case because it pits “the world’s richest man” against these woke cartel members and the state that benefits from their allegiance and compliance, demonstrating just how much they infringe on property rights by controlling what Musk can do with his own property.

Shortly after Musk moved to buy then-Twitter, several dozen countries and international governance bodies—including the United States and the European Union—announced the ratification of “A Declaration for the Future of the Internet,” which, among other things, aims to “bolster resilience to disinformation and misinformation, and increase participation in democratic processes.” Just two days after Musk announced that he was buying the company, the Biden administration announced the formation of a “Disinformation Governance Board,” which has since been scrapped, at least in name.

In October 2022, I noted that one of the major threats posed to Musk’s platform would come from the European Commission (EC)—with its new Digital Services Act (DSA), signed into law on November 16, 2022 and put into effect in August 2023. In fact, the EC began threatening Musk with control of his social media platform’s content from the moment...(CONTINUE READING, FREE, HERE).