Musk’s free speech claims go unfulfilled

So much for free speech absolutism. Elon Musk proclaimed his devotion to expression above all else when he took over as Twitter CEO — but his tenure has seen the platform become, in many ways, more restrictive. A recent report on global government-ordered takedowns is the latest example.

Rest of World, a nonprofit publication that covers global technology, examined self-reported data on companies’ compliance with requests from authorities to take down users’ posts or hand over their data. It found that Twitter hasn’t refused a single demand since Mr. Musk took over. Those demands, meanwhile, have only mounted: Surging from 550 in the six months before the site’s sale to more than 970 in the six months after. Twitter’s records show that it fully complied in 808 requests and partially complied in 154. What they don’t show is a single case in which it did not acquiesce. The numbers come from the Lumen database maintained by Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.

The increase in demands probably results from the alarming trend of harsh anti-free-speech laws around the world, in India and Turkey especially. Germany, too, has increased enforcement. But the changes at Twitter, which answered our request for comment with an automated emoji reply, are obvious.

Twitter hasn’t published a transparency report since Mr. Musk bought it. The company’s reports to Lumen have stopped altogether, though it’s unclear whether that is intentional or one of many technical malfunctions that have plagued it of late. Mr. Musk himself told the BBC: “We can’t go beyond the laws of a country. If we have a choice of either our people go to prison or we comply with the laws, we’ll comply with the laws.”

He’s right that platforms face difficult choices in the era of socalled hostage-taking laws, when countries are forcing foreign firms to put employees on the ground as bullying leverage. But social media sites shouldn’t simply accept that a repressive country’s interpretation of its laws is the correct interpretation — much less that those laws are consistent with international human rights laws. Twitter used to know how to stand up for itself and its users: suing the Indian government over “arbitrary” and “disproportionate” removals; refusing to censor protest content in support of opposition politician Alexei Navalny in Russia, where the service is now banned.

Today in India, Twitter is blithely agreeing to block journalists, authors, politicians and even poets. The only parties able to express themselves as they desire, it appears, are those with the power to shut dissident voices down. In Mr. Musk, the data suggests, they have found a willing ally.