Elon Musk claims to be a “free speech absolutist,” but almost every time we look more closely at that claim, we discover that he’s one of the most censorial, free speech suppressors around. He just got called out by a judge for filing a SLAPP suit seeking to punish an organization for its speech. And then earlier this year, he funded Gina Carano’s SLAPP suit against Disney.
The Carano lawsuit was under the program that Musk announced last year about how he would fund various lawsuits in support of free speech. The Carano lawsuit was clearly a SLAPP suit designed to suppress Disney’s own speech.
In the last week or so, Musk has funded two more lawsuits, to great fanfare among his loudest supporters. But, once again, the details of both show that Elon Musk is supporting anti-free speech attacks, rather than the reverse. The first is paying to support Dr. Kulvinder Kaur Gill’s judgment against her:
What’s odd, of course, is that while ExTwitter’s announcement claims that this is a “government-supported effort to cancel her speech,” it does not explain what the lawsuit was or why there was a judgment against her. It implies that the lawsuit was about being “subjected to investigations,” but it was not. And that’s because… Dr. Gill filed a SLAPP suit in Ontario against 23 doctors, journalists and media outlets to try to suppress their speech, after they criticized her anti-vax posts.
The district court dismissed the case, and Gill appealed. The appeals court upheld the lower court’s ruling, which used the Canadian equivalent of an anti-SLAPP law. The $300,000 that she owes is to cover the legal costs of the people she sued to try to punish them for their speech.
The appeals court clearly notes that the reason they’re making Gill pay fees is because she sought to “use the legal process improperly to shut down debate on matters of public interest.”
So, no, Elon paying the money she owes is not in defense of free speech. It’s the exact opposite. She owes that much money because she tried to silence people after they criticized her. The Canadian government is not trying to “cancel” Gill’s speech. They’re getting her to stop trying to cancel others’ speech, and to pay up for the hellish experience she put people through in trying to punish them for their speech.
This is Elon Musk helping someone get away with abuse of legal process to punish critics for their speech. That’s why it’s so ridiculous that in claiming ExTwitter will pay the judgment, to see the company claim:
Free speech is the bedrock of democracy and a critical defense against totalitarianism in all forms. We must do whatever we can to protect it, and at X we will always fight to protect your right to speak freely.
This whole lawsuit was about trying to suppress people’s right to speak. As was made clear by the judgment, which ExTwitter and Musk apparently don’t want you to look too closely at.
Next up, ExTwitter announced that it was funding a lawsuit by Chloe Happe against her former employer, Block.
Block fired her last year after it became aware of two somewhat horrific tweets she made under a pseudonymous ExTwitter account. Only one of the two tweets is included in the lawsuit and it’s this one, and it’s not clear to me how anyone could say that this tweet is about “political opinions.”
When confronted about the tweets, Happe lied and said she did not make them. She was then fired a few weeks later. Her lawsuit, in Missouri state court, claims this violated Missouri’s anti-discrimination law, but that’s clearly misrepresenting the law in question. The law is about issues “relating to elections.” In other words, companies can’t fire you for donating to a politician.
The post above has nothing to do with elections. It has nothing to do with “political beliefs.” It is nothing but pure hateful nonsense. Block has every right to fire her because of its own rights of association, as well as simply because she lied to them. Your right to free speech means the government can’t punish you for your speech, but others have every right (their own First Amendment association rights) to want nothing to do with you. And that’s all that’s happened here. Hoppe is facing the consequences of her disgusting speech.
But, again, just as Elon seemed fine with content moderation when it was to protect a literal neo-Nazi, here he’s financing a bullshit lawsuit to protect a hateful transphobic user who got fired for their own actions.
It’s weird how Musk seems focused on supporting SLAPP suits and frivolous, vexatious lawsuits that are against free speech, with all the many ways in which a wealthy individual could help fund defenses to SLAPP suits (i.e., actually protecting free speech). Then again, maybe it’s not so weird. It’s almost as if he’s not really a free speech supporter at all.
