Elon Musk Makes Big Promise On ‘X’ For Free Speech

Elon Musk, owner of X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, has made a broad promise: that his company will fund the lawsuits of anyone who faces unfair treatment at work due to their activity on his platform.

Over the past ten years, it has become a common fear: that your activity on social media — a post, retweet, or even just a “like” can become weaponized by a mob, the media, or professional activists to torpedo your career.

Now, Elon Musk is promising to fight back.

Elon Musk Twitter X

“If you were unfairly treated by your employer due to posting or liking something on this platform, we will fund your legal bill,” said Musk in a post on X over the weekend. “No limit. Please let us know.”

In a follow up post, Musk said he would go even further, promising that the lawsuits will be “loud,” and that X will also seek to hold the boards of directors of companies accountable.

“And we won’t just sue, it will be extremely loud and we will go after the boards of directors of the companies too.”

It is currently unclear what criteria will be used to select lawsuits to back, or who to contact at X to get the lawsuits funded.

Frequently, these mob and media-driven ostracizations are sparked by little more than off-color jokes. A review of firings related to social media posts conducted by The Conversation in 2022 looked at over 300 cases of social media related firings caused by social media posts.

The review found 28 percent involved allegations of racism, 7 percent involved allegations of other discrimination behavior “like queerphobia and misogyny,” and 16 percent involved “offensive” or “insensitive’ posts.

Late last month, Musk said that monthly users of X reached a “new high” and shared a graph that showed the latest count as over 540 million.

The figures came as the company is going through organizational changes and is looking to boost dropping advertising revenue.

It was also the latest in a series of comments from X executives claiming strong traction in usage, after Meta Platforms launched a direct competing platform called Threads on July 5.

After 17 years with an iconic blue bird logo that came to symbolize the broadcasting of ideas to the world, billionaire Musk renamed Twitter as X and unveiled a new logo in July, marking a focus on building an “everything app.”