Two questions raised by Elon Musk s pro-Trump Twitter censorship

Meanwhile, what to make of Musk s recent post stating, Very few Americans realize that, if Trump is NOT elected, this will be the last election. Far from being a threat to democracy, he is the only way to save it! Musk went on to make a wholly unsubstantiated claim that President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris plan to turn millions of noncitizens in the U.S. into voters who will inevitably vote for Democrats.

This, on top of Musk s commandeering of the @america handle for his super PAC, the millions of dollars he has pledged to a pro-Trump super PAC, and his personal appearances on the campaign trail for Trump. Plus his efforts to gather voter registration information for his super PAC by offering $47 for every referral that results in a petition signature. (The petition pledges support for the First and Second Amendments.)

Musk s transformation of Twitter to X helps us think clearly about two issues that have been percolating about social media platforms: Should government regulations police speech on platforms for political bias? And what should social media companies do about election-related disinformation?

via www.msnbc.com

Richard Hansen.

Musk’s tweet we can make this of. He is saying that if the Democrats win the upcoming election, the flood of illegal immigrants will continue and we will get perhaps another 10 million across our unguarded borders. This will in turn lead to sharp increases in the Democratic vote in swing states where the immigrants are located by NGO planes, trains, busses and automobiles. It is not complicated. Musk is not really saying there will be no further elections; he’s saying there might as well not be. The Republicans will be in exactly the same position as they are now in California, a position Professor Hasen, a law professor at UCLA, no doubt understands. Democrats are a super-majority in California and have been since the large illegal immigration into the state over the last couple of decades.

As to these claims being “unsubstantiated” — well, ho ho. In truth, I suppose, we should aski why on God’s green earth Biden repealed all those executive orders (such as the Remain in Mexico policy on asylum seekers) and so allowed the rush of illegal immigrants across the borders. But sadly then it must remain an unfathomable mystery.  It must have been just an accident, unrelated to its obvious and foreseeable political effects. And Harris, as border czar, which she was not anyway (has that been deleted from Wikipedia yet?), had nothing to do with it, unless she did, in which case any illegal person who manages to vote in the upcoming election can do so with clear conscience. Or clear-ish. This raises the question of why the DOJ has sued Virginia, which is trying to get self-identified non-citizens off its voting rolls, but that’s an issue for another day, presumably after November 5th.

Hasen is right that we should think clearly about whether government should “police speech on [social media] platforms for political bias.” I’ve thought clearly about it and the answer is no. When the government polices speech, they do so to make sure nothing is said and therefore thought that endangers the grip of whoever is in power, on power. They do this of course in the name only of policing bias. C’mon Richard. At least you should use the approved terminology of policing “misinformation.” Or maybe that’s just Stanford, not UCLA. Repeat after me: You don’t want to police “bias”. You only want to police “misinformation.” As to Musk’s other activities — “commandeering” the @america handle for his super PAC (do you mean he stole the name? If he bought it, isn’t that ok?) and donating millions of dollars to it. Isn’t that what billionaires, like Reid Hoffman and George Soros, do? All of these actions, however one might disapprove of them, are surely protected by the First Amendment, although not being a constitutional law professor, I’m sure that the First Amendment might be viewed as having dried up on the living constitution’s selective growth and withering. As far as paying people to register to vote, well, I haven’t heard of doing that before, but I’m sure it’s legal, and if it’s not, the Democrats can sue him and probably will. Still, it’s far cry from facilitating outright ballot fraud, which some people say, or so I’ve heard — on the down low, since I’ve also heard that’s it’s wrongthink to even think it, which I hasten to add, I am not doing — may have occurred in 2020, say in Detroit, Phoenix, and Philadelphia. 

I have a counter proposal. Let’s have Congress pass a law that “polices for bias” the public statements by law professors at public universities! What’s to worry? Bias would be determined by a panel of experts who would be appointed by an unbiased Executive officer. Any ruling they made could be appealed to a federal court, so that’s fair. Professor Hasen could have no objection to that, surely. Nothing he says could be biased.