Elon Musk warns that freedom of speech is under worldwide attack

Elon Musk warned that free speech across the world is under attack. This comes as multiple examples of censorship around the globe have popped up in recent weeks. Musk's platform X has been banned in Brazil, the Telegram founder was arrested, and Mark Zuckerberg let the cat out of the bag that the Biden-Harris administration pressured Facebook to suppress information related to COVID-19. 

Musk posted in response to an old clip of Kamala Harris vouching to suspend Donald Trump's then-Twitter account in 2019, "Freedom of speech is under massive attack around the world." 

"I, frankly, think that based on this and all we’ve seen [Trump] do before, including attacking members of Congress, that he, frankly, should be – his Twitter account should be suspended. I think there is plenty of now evidence to suggest that he is irresponsible with his words in a way that could result in harm to other people. And so the privilege of using those words in that way should probably be taken from him," Harris said at the time.  

The warning from Musk comes amid several major signs of censorship on the world stage. Yesterday, Brazil banned X from the country entirely and will impose fines of about $8,900 on people who access X through a VPN. Earlier this month, Musk closed down X's offices in Brazil, with the company and Musk saying that the government was threatening to arrest an employee at the company.  

Other examples of the threat of censorship appearing around the world recently included the admission from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg that the Biden-Harris administration pressured Facebook when it came to people posing information about COVID-19. "Ultimately," he continued, "it was our decision whether or not to take content down, and we own our decisions, including COVID-19 related changes we made to our enforcement in the wake of this pressure. I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it," he stated in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee. 

In addition to this, Telegram founder Pavel Durov was arrested in France in connection to illegal activity that happens on Telegram without oversight. This is due to the end-to-end encryption network that it uses, and it has become known as a platform for free speech.