The Elon Musk interview that nearly broke the internet

Kurt Mahlburg

December 08, 2023 5 Reactions

Shortly after purchasing the platform, the new CEO levelled the editorial playing field by removing corporate journalists’ once-privileged identifying checkmarks, instead offering the blue badge to paying subscribers.

Musk also worked closely with exiled journalists Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss on the Twitter Files to expose corruption in the media and US intelligence communities that saw the 2020 presidential election tipped in Joe Biden’s favour.

He has likewise overseen a substantial rewrite of Twitter’s user rules to better differentiate hateful conduct from honest dissent and introduced the “Community Notes” feature which allows X users to collaboratively fact-check news content — both moves that have angered woke gatekeepers.

While Twitter was once the platform of choice among corporate journalists, Musk has effectively pried it free of the establishment media’s stranglehold, allowing entrenched narratives to be challenged and information to flow freely — which surely always were some of the internet’s most redeeming features.

Far from being a kind of final-straw response to Elon Musk from an exasperated establishment, the recent boycott of X is only the latest in a long series of mainstream missives aimed at punishing the billionaire for his defence of free speech.

Since Musk bought X, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has sued him over the purchase; the Federal Trade Commission has demanded internal X documents; Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has sued SpaceX for not hiring refugees to work on its secret rocket technology; the DOJ and SEC have opened investigations against Tesla over an alleged misuse of funds to build a glass house; the DOJ has opened a criminal investigation against Tesla over its self-driving cars; and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has sued Tesla over alleged workplace harassment.

Is all of it just coincidence? Or payback?

Of course, billionaires shouldn’t be exempt from accountability. But nor should defenders of free speech be driven into the ground by the powers that be simply for defending free speech.

For me, the most powerful words of Musk’s interview were not his expletives, which I personally found distasteful.

They were the following: “What I see all over the place is people who care about looking good while doing evil.”

Feigning outrage at antisemitism on X while turning a blind eye to it on other platforms? Claiming to care about the truth while launching an all-out attack on one of its staunchest defenders?

There could hardly be better examples of “looking good while doing evil”.

With friends like those, Elon hardly needs enemies, and he likely is better off without them.  

Kurt Mahlburg is a writer and author, and an emerging Australian voice on culture and the Christian faith. He has a passion for both the philosophical and the personal, drawing on his background as a graduate architect, a primary school teacher, a missionary, and a young adult pastor. 

Image credits: screenshot / New York Times Events