The IT Nerd

Elon Musk at the best of times could be described as an odd character. But I think he’s gone off the deep end by claiming that the U.S. Government had full access to every Twitter users DMs:

Twitter CEO Elon Musk has claimed the U.S. government had access to users private messages on Twitter.

In a wide-ranging interview with Fox News‘ Tucker Carlson, set to be broadcast on Monday and Tuesday night, Musk made the startling claims noting how he was shocked to learn that the government had full access to private communications on the platform.

The billionaire tycoon told Carlson how unaware of the fact until he joined the company and expressed surprise at the degree to which government agencies were able to monitor social media.

‘The degree to which government agencies effectively had full access to everything that was going on on Twitter blew my mind,’ Musk said. ‘I was not aware of that.’

Would that include people’s DMs?’ Carlson probed.

‘Yes,’ Musk replied.

The extensive interview with Carlson is set to air over the next two nights.

So Elon, what proof do you have that this was going on? That’s a serious question related to a serious accusation. I really hope that Elon knows that if you’re just saying stuff that isn’t true, you can get sued for that. Just ask Fox News.

In other news, two more broadcasters got slapped with the “State funded media” tag by Twitter. And those broadcasters are the CBC here in Canada and ABC in Australia. Let’s start with the CBC:

The CBC is a Crown corporation, wholly owned by the state but operated at arm’s length from government.

In a statement Sunday night, CBC corporate spokesperson Leon Mar emphasized the government does not influence CBC’s editorial content.

“Twitter’s own policy defines government-funded media as cases where the government ‘may have varying degrees of government involvement over editorial content,’ which is clearly not the case with CBC/Radio-Canada,” Mar said.

“CBC/Radio-Canada is publicly funded through a parliamentary appropriation that is voted upon by all Members of Parliament. Its editorial independence is protected in law in the Broadcasting Act.”

And as for ABC:

The ABC has hit back after Twitter updated the public broadcaster’s social media page to include the tag, ‘government-funded media’.

The public broadcaster quickly attempted to correct the mistake after the update appeared involuntarily on the ABC News’ account on Monday.

‘FYI: The ABC is a publicly funded broadcaster, governed by the ABC Charter which is enshrined in legislation,’ the account tweeted.

‘For more than 90 years the ABC has always been and remains an independent media organisation, free from political and commercial interests.’

Elon really isn’t trying to run Twitter as a business. I say that because he’s upsetting so many people and driving them off the platform as a result. And that runs counter to making money. Something that he’s been desperate to do. I wonder what it will take to get him to change course. Or is he still on a suicide mission with Twitter. I strongly think it’s the latter at this point.

This entry was posted on April 17, 2023 at 9:15 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.