Three days after Elon Musk purchased Twitter, the tech billionaire posted and deleted a tweet spreading a baseless anti-LGBTQ conspiracy theory about the recent attack on the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco.
The episode underscored the pressures that Musk, a self-styled “free speech absolutist,” now faces in running the popular social media website — particularly in how to place limits on misinformation and hate speech on its service. Musk has pledged to advertisers that Twitter won’t become a “free-for-all hellscape” under his leadership, but at the same time pronounced that unfettered speech should be the norm on the site.
Musk himself appeared to test those limits Sunday, responding to a tweet by Hillary Clinton, the former first lady and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, in which she assailed the Republican Party for spreading “hate and deranged conspiracy theories” that she said encouraged the man who attacked Pelosi’s husband, Paul, inside the couple’s home Friday.
