Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk has delivered a plea for billionaire Elon Musk to build “a better internet” to compete with the online giants’ increasingly aggressive censorship of speech.
What are the details?
In an open letter published in Human Events, Kirk issued what he called a “public memorandum” pleading with the Tesla and SpaceX titan to enter the internet and cell phone arena for the sake of “Western Civilization.”
Kirk pointed to the recent crackdowns by social media platforms like Twitter, cell phone developers such as Apple, and server providers such as Amazon that have banned the accounts of users and even pulled at least one platform, Parler, from the marketplace under the guise of “protecting public safety” and “stopping threats of violence.”
He argued to Musk that “preserving free speech is a market opportunity,” and urged the entrepreneur in bold type:
Please use your considerable wealth and influence to start one or more new social media platforms that will provide insulation from Big Tech censorship. Also, please launch a new digital communications company that provides everything from smartphones to networks. Please start and launch everything.
Kirk closed in vowing to support Musk if he took on such initiatives before writing:
“To reach me, you can find me at… well… by the time you respond, I’m not sure where you will be able to find me. It just likely won’t be through Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, platforms from where myself and millions of others are about to be banished silenced.
Please preserve our voice. Please help. Nothing for you is out of reach.”
Musk, one of the richest men in the world, has spoken out several times against large tech companies banning materials and speech they don’t like.
Following Twitter’s lifetime ban of President Donald Trump, Musk tweeted, “A lot of people are going to be super unhappy with West Coast high tech as the de facto arbiter of free speech.”
Fox Business noted that Musk also hit out at Amazon last summer after former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson’s book, “Unreported Truths about COVID-19 and Lockdowns” was pulled from the online retailer for not “complying with [their] guidelines.”
“This is insane @JeffBezos,” Musk tweeted, calling out Amazon’s CEO and adding, “Time to break up Amazon. Monopolies are wrong!”
@AlexBerenson This is insane @JeffBezos
— Elon Musk (@Elon Musk)1591293294.0
