Why Elon Musk Doesn’t Believe in Free Speech

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Published 2024-07-12
The Billionaire Who’s Not Like Other Billionaires
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Is Elon Musk a net positive or negative for society? We spoke to people he’s worked with and researched his childhood, past business ventures like Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and X (formerly known as Twitter), and what he’s currently working on to answer this question.

Special Thanks to:
- Rachel Konrad, former Head of Communications at Tesla
- Imran Ahmed, CEO of Center for Countering Digital Hate
- Everyone we spoke to for this story

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-- VIDEO CHAPTERS --
00:00 Intro
01:34 The Rise
04:29 The X Factor
12:05 Musk’s Playbook
21:23 The Pivot
22:48 Twitter
38:07 Conclusion
41:10 Credits

About:
Johnny Harris is an Emmy-winning independent journalist and contributor to the New York Times. Based in Washington, DC, Harris reports on interesting trends and stories domestically and around the globe, publishing to his audience of over 5 million on Youtube. Harris produced and hosted the twice Emmy-nominated series Borders for Vox Media. His visual style blends motion graphics with cinematic videography to create content that explains complex issues in relatable ways.

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All Comments (21)
  • @johnnyharris
    Check out ground.news/johnnyharris to see how any news story is being framed around the world and across the political spectrum. Use my link to get 40% off unlimited access.
  • @RickyRyanRay
    The fact that they didn’t name his perfume “Elon’s Musk” makes me sad
  • One of the most annoying and polarizing things I've seen, is that many Conservatives have become convinced that all Liberals are all hard core leftists. And of course equally on the flip side, many Liberals have become convinced that all Conservatives are far right. You all basically want mostly the same things, but both sides act as if the other wants entirely opposite things. The average person, regardless of their political side, is not so unhinged. The minority does not represent the majority, but the minority speaks the loudest, and the majority never speaks at all. Thats the problem..
  • @CptVein
    Not a single mention of Elon going to court to be called a co-founder of tesla.
  • @OMDAT
    I bet Elon really enjoyed this video until 18:10
  • @NannaLaurie
    Hey Johnny, you asked about the study at around mark 30. So they write: "Therefore, although a randomized controlled experiment, our experiment does not satisfy the well-known Stable Unit Treatment Value Assumption (SUTVA) from causal inference [14]. As a consequence, it cannot provide unbiased estimates of causal quantities of interest, such as the average treatment effect (ATE)." (P.2) As in, because the users in the control group still interact with the users in the treatment group, the effect of being in the control group is not isolated. As such, the research design of the paper is not strictly considered causal. I would thus not refer to this as "robust evidence" as you say. Second (on the same page), they admit that the treatment group receives a different treatment over time - that is that their algorithm changes over time. So comparing the control group, with a treatment group that changes over time can cause some difficulties.
  • @masaisassi3730
    My grandmother used to say, “There’s no rich angels in heaven.” I understood it as, if you wanna be Rich and Powerful you have to be cruel and mean. You have to be Machiavellian.
  • @LarryBert87
    I want to see Ground news bias meter on this one
  • @andrewehyang
    “Elon buying Twitter is like a cigarette addict buying a cigarette factory” Nilay Patel
  • Currently reading the sources you provided, especially the paper "Algorithmic-Amplification-of-Politics-on-Twitter". According to the paper, the data for measuring the amount of media bias was from only a 4 month period... " based on impressions over the time period between 15 April and 15 August 2020." If this data was being gathered during 2020 and from such a short span of time, do you think there might be some major discrepancies compared to data that might have been taken from a period of several years [as opposed to 4 months]?
  • 6:48 "In the Early 2000's Tesla already existed, they were making high end cars, Elon came in as an investor" That's not exactly true, Tesla wasn't making any car when Elon joined, they didn't even have an office or a plan of what to do, that's why he has the co-founder title, he joined and funded at such an early stage of Tesla that he basically founded it. He joined in 2004, he made the arrangement with Lotus to get Elise's to electrify, and the first Tesla Roadsters came out in 2008, 4 years after Elon joined the company. You made it sound like he just invested in an existing company/project, but he contributed more than anyone else in said project, from day one
  • Antozent- they are selling around 150 self help books for the price of one (you’re welcome)
  • Elon: “make the algorithm reduce Johnny Harris’ tweets reach by a factor of a thousand”. 🤣🤣🤣
  • @KrisMadas
    26:00 It seems pretty clear that if someone went through a drastic ideology shifts during 2020, then the underlying reason must be related to COVID. And Elon himself was very vocal about being anti-mask mandates, vaccine mandates, and closing workplaces. The reason for his shift is pretty obvious.
  • @Thatguy_3362
    Dear Johnny, Help us. We need the international media focus. Bangladesh's internal situation is very agitated. Bangladesh Govt. and Student league with the police force have attacked the general students of Bangladesh, who were in the streets demanding the reconstruction of the discriminating Quota system in jobs & every govt. sector of Bangladesh. Bangladeshi Press & Media are not covering the news. We need the international media focus. Help us. Please give focus on our general students who are being attacked, blooded, or bitten. The world should know this. Plase help Bangladesh Genarel students #protect_students #bangladesh_quota_movement #SaveBangladeshiStudents #no_more_quota #boycott_students_league #WeWantPeace #wewantJustice
  • @wimpieeeeee
    He should have named his perfume "Elon's Musk"
  • A small issue with before/after Elon comparison of twitter is not accounting for changes in law. For e.g. in India far stricter IT rules were implemented which might make it harder for twitter to simply not comply with a government requests and take them to courts, because the court would then ask twitter to follow that law which tells them to follow governments directives. A lot more details underneath all this of course.