Elon Musk’s Twitter Censored Turkish Dissidents, Just Before an Election
Turkey held a presidential election in May, 2023. In the weeks leading up to it, the government of incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan asked Twitter to ban four accounts and take down 409 tweets. That included the accounts of an investigative journalist and a Turkish businessman who’s criticized Erdoğan.
Free speech crusader Elon Musk could have defended his users from a government who didn’t want its people to hear their voices. Instead, Twitter bent over and did Erdoğan’s bidding.
“We received what we believed to be a final threat to throttle the service — after several such warnings — and so in order to keep Twitter available over the election weekend, took action on four accounts and 409 Tweets identified by court order,” the company tweeted about the decision.
Journalist and provocateur Matt Yglesias tweeted criticism about the takedowns. Elon Musk responded:
Did your brain fall out of your head, Yglesias? The choice is have Twitter throttled in its entirety or limit access to some tweets. Which one do you want?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2023
In other words, free speech is less important than maintaining the Turkish people’s access to Twitter, even if that means people only get to see content approved by the Turkish government.
