Since his election, Donald Trump has been able to rally an entire caste that had always resisted him.
This caste, let’s call it the techno-libertarians or the neo-anarcho-capitalists from Silicon Valley, home to all the major technology companies.
And who also control the main social media.
It was first Elon Musk who, after his purchase of X, put his algorithmic machine at the service of the Trump campaign.
It was then Mark Zuckerberg, owner of Facebook and Instagram, who declared this week: “The recent elections appear to be a cultural tipping point once again prioritizing freedom of expression.”
No more content moderation and fact-checking for Facebook and Instagram.
The extent of the overthrow is poorly calculated: it is a new power and a new elite that Trump has succeeded in uniting. And who, through their technological power, will exert an influence that will go far beyond the borders of the United States.
“Freedom of expression”
Some, on the right, present them to us as the new knights of freedom of expression.
Their rallying behind Trump would have “liberated freedom of expression”, in other words.
A moment.
The only motivation that guides them is not freedom of expression, it is that of their wallet and their interests. Today, their wallets see an interest in Trump.
Beyond being in the presidential good graces, Zuckerberg knows very well that disinformation and non-moderation of content are profitable for Facebook and Instagram.
Then, if it were only a matter of freedom of expression, Elon Musk would not have put X at the service of Donald Trump’s campaign, by promoting his own tweets and those of accounts in the Trumpian sphere.
He made an editorial choice, he did not choose freedom of expression.
Which is, by the way, a good return on investment.
Musk has made a lot of money since Trump was elected. “Uncle Elon,” as he is known in the Trump family, has seen the value of his companies grow by $140 billion since November.
In front of dictatorships
Musk also has very timid freedom of expression when he faces dictatorships: China, India, Turkey.
In China, he defends the Chinese position on Taiwan, because Tesla has a gigafactory in Shanghai.
In X, he blocked a documentary criticizing Modi’s Indian government, in addition to blocking opponents of the regime. You understand: India is a good market for Tesla and Starlink.
He did the same thing for the same reasons with Erdogan’s opponents in Türkiye.
However, here he is very present in X to attack the governments of liberal democracies like Canada, the United Kingdom and Germany.
Political project
Basically, Musk and others are disguising free speech as a libertarian project that furthers their own economic interests.
And to achieve this, they destabilize liberal democracies through the large-scale dissemination of disinformation, attack the parties that want to regulate them, then put the European far-right parties in their little pocket, while not bothering dictators.
They are free speech scammers.
