What is Musk using his power for?
US entrepreneur Elon Musk, multi-billionaire and boss of the social network X, is one of the most influential people in the world. He backs former President Donald Trump's election campaign, provokes with his political statements and interprets freedom of speech very broadly on X. European commentators take a closer look at the immense power he wields.
Alarmingly influential
Musk is using his enormous power in dubious ways, writes Jornal de Notícias:
“Musk is far more than just a billionaire today. He is one of the most powerful individuals on the planet. And since he is not a politician, he has an almost infinite ability to influence the thinking of others and the course of events. ... The musketeer of free speech has become a versatile influencer. He is tolerated for his eccentricity and has defied the rules of common sense by taking advantage of favourable regulatory laws and the ignorance of an army of followers shooting from their keyboards. So far, he has won the first battles of the war.”
Irresponsibility as a business model
Ouest-France takes X boss Musk to task:
“He took the liberty of tweeting that 'civil war' in the UK was 'inevitable', prompting the new British Labour government which has been in power for less than a month to appeal to his sense of responsibility. ... The timing seems anything but innocuous from a political perspective. However, a sense of responsibility is precisely what the social networks lack most. Mr Musk likes to hide behind a pseudo-sacred 'freedom of speech' which gives him licence to say anything and everything. ... This is the moral Achilles heel of the internet giants and also the reason for their gigantic profits. Irresponsibility is their business model.”
A champion of free speech
Columnist Ed West defends Musk's self-proclaimed crusade against the censorship of political correctness in The Spectator:
“I happen to agree with Musk that Britain's free speech laws are troubling, even if comparisons with the Soviet Union are silly (the USSR imprisoned 200,000 people just for telling jokes). Britain suffers worse from the extremes of American-driven progressivism because we have no First Amendment, which means that people regularly get arrested and prosecuted simply for saying or posting things.”
A destabilising Maga supporter
La Vanguardia considers Musk to be dangerous:
“President Biden has reiterated that Trump would pose a real threat to US security if he were to win the election. With Musk's unconditional support and active involvement in the campaign, this danger multiplies. ... Musk has allowed X to become a hotbed of hate, far-right propaganda and disinformation. ... Moreover, he has joined the Maga movement (Make America Great Again), which feeds the theory of mass population displacement and the need for mass deportations [of immigrants] to prevent the 'extinction of civilisation'. ... He has also distributed AI-created fake videos of Kamala Harris and accused her of trying to provoke 'a holocaust'.”
A dangerous high-tech oligarch
La Stampa warns:
“The owner of X, the most widely used social network for debates and news, has filled it with fake news, extremism and conspiracies, some written by him and some shared by him. He supports Trump, and has interviewed him. He wants to influence the American elections. And when he's disappointed by certain election results, he fuels revolts. Not just over the question of innocence/denial regarding the attack on Capitol Hill on 6 January. He has turned the former short messaging service Twitter into an 'online home' for right-wing extremists and helped trigger the riots of recent days in the UK.”