Tesla CEO hyperlinks to an unsubstantiated article about Nancy Pelosi’s husband earlier than deleting his submit.
Elon Musk, Twitter’s new proprietor, tweeted an article containing a conspiracy idea concerning the assault on United States Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband earlier than deleting the submit hours later.
Musk’s tweet on Sunday linked to an article making unsubstantiated claims about Paul Pelosi’s private life and the function it might have performed in final week’s assault at his and his spouse’s house in San Francisco.
Musk tweeted the article by the Santa Monica Observer, a web site with a historical past of publishing misinformation, after Hillary Clinton posted an LA Occasions article concerning the suspected attacker, David DePape, and criticised Republicans for spreading “hate and deranged conspiracy theories”.
In response to Clinton’s tweet, Musk posted the article whereas including there was a “tiny risk there could be extra to this story than meets the attention”.
US media shops have linked DePape, who’s accused of attacking Pelosi with a hammer, to blogs posts espousing far-right and excessive views on-line, together with the QAnon conspiracy idea.
Musk, who has described himself as a “free-speech absolutist”, appeared to have deleted his tweet a number of hours after posting it with out rationalization.
The Tesla CEO’s controversial tweet comes as his $44bn buy of the social media platform is on the centre of a heated debate concerning the limits of free speech within the digital age.
Musk, the world’s richest man, has criticised Twitter’s moderation insurance policies and accused the social media big of getting a left-wing bias.
The billionaire has confused the necessity for a “frequent digital city sq.” the place a variety of beliefs might be debated, whereas insisting he doesn’t favour a “free-for-all hellscape”.
Critics have expressed fears that Musk’s possession of the platform may end in a surge in hate speech and misinformation, whereas conservatives have heralded the takeover as a corrective to Large Tech censorship.