Twitter trolls are a joke to Elon Musk

When I was targeted with anti-Semitic abuse on Twitter earlier this year, I felt upset and violated. But had I known that it was just an “over-thetop” insult – frankly, a bit of a joke – I wouldn’t have worried.

You see, according to social media law as set out by Elon Musk, Twitter is a “rough-and-tumble” platform, on which slurs should be not taken as statements of fact.

That is the tech billionaire’s defence in a motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought against him by British diver Vernon Unsworth – one of the heroes who rescued a young football team from a Thai cave earlier this year. Musk called Unsworth a “pedo guy” on Twitter, after he had the audacity to slam the Tesla founder’s plan to provide rescuers with a submarine as a “PR stunt”. Mr Unsworth is, quite rightly, suing for £59,000 in damages.

Except that – wait! – Twitter is, Musk and his lawyers tell us, “a social networking website infamous for invective and hyperbole”. Any “reasonable reader would not have believed that Musk – without ever having met Unsworth, in the midst of a schoolyard spat on social media, and from 8,000 miles afar – was conveying that he was in possession of private knowledge that Unsworth was sexually attracted to children,” the court papers read.

Well, that’s all right then! Presumably when Tommy Robinson tweeted that “Islam promotes killing people”, he was pulling our legs, too.

And the Troll Patrol Report, published this month, which found that 7 per cent of all tweets sent to female journalists and politicians in the UK and US were abusive or problematic (34 per cent more so for women of colour)? Lighten up!

Mr Musk has done us all a favour by explaining that we don’t have to take anything on social media seriously. Someone should tell all those people worried about cyber-bullying, radicalisation and online dating fraud.

Now I understand why Twitter refused to accept that the vile caricature of a Jew I was tweeted “violated its rules” and take it down. It was all a big over-the-top fuss about nothing. Silly me.