Joe Biden unhappy with Elon Musk for buying a platform that "spews lies"
The relevance of social media platforms in swaying global politics was first highlighted with the rise of Facebook (rebranded later to Meta), which was accused of manipulating information based on user demographics. Twitter, which was recently acquired by Elon Musk, got the short end of the stick as US President Joe Biden accused the website of spewing lies.
Biden attended a fundraising event in Chicago for upcoming elections, wherein he called out Elon Musk for purchasing Twitter. He stated:
“Now what are we all worried about? Elon Musk goes out and buys an outfit that sends and spews lies all across the world.”While the Biden administration has previously clarified its stance to promote the suppression of hate speech and misinformation on social media platforms, the president highlighted the lack of supervision on Twitter, adding:
“There's no editors anymore. There's no editors. How do we expect kids to be able to understand what is at stake.”Ever since Bitcoin (BTC) launched in 2010, the crypto community chose Twitter as its home for discussing various nuances and attaining consensus on the decisions made. Musk’s $44 billion Twitter acquisition came with a promise of free speech. However, with the increase in hate speech, numerous advertisers have backed out from doing business with Twitter over content moderation concerns.
Musk’s immediate course of action for Twitter includes imposing an $8/month fee for users that wish to retain their account verification.
Related: Elon Musk faces class-action suit over mass Twitter layoffs
Supporting Musk’s Twitter acquisition drive, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, the CEO of crypto exchange Binance, chipped in $500 million using fiat currency.
Binance has laid out plans to form a team to support Twitter’s blockchain efforts, however, an official statement is currently being awaited.