Democrats Ask the FTC to Investigate Musk for 'Undermining' Twitter

Elon Musk is rich enough that he doesn’t need our sympathy. And when you’re that rich, offering to help would be an insult.

But things have not been going well for Musk ever since he took over Twitter. It appears he completely underestimated the entitled arrogance of Gen Z employees as well as the amount of political trouble the anti-free-speech Democrats could make for him.

The company was a poster child for Big Tech arrogance. With 7,000 employees — about twice the number of workers that were needed — when Musk decided to trim some of the fat, the national media went ballistic.

The media were shocked, shocked, I say, that a businessperson would fire employees who disrespected him — in public, no less. It’s one thing to trash the boss in a private email, but going public with gripes and criticisms is a firing offense in any era for any employee.

But this is a separate issue. The real beef these employees — and Democratic senators — have with Musk is that the billionaire wants to allow more freedom of speech on his platform.

Since Democrats cannot stop Musk from transforming Twitter into more of a free speech zone, they want to sic the regulators on him to make him behave.

“In recent weeks, Twitter’s new Chief Executive Officer, Elon Musk, has taken alarming steps that have undermined the integrity and safety of the platform, and announced new features despite clear warnings those changes would be abused for fraud, scams, and dangerous impersonation,” the lawmakers said in a letter to FTC Chair Lina Khan.

Undermined the “safety” of the platform? Is Twitter going to leave cyberspace and start attacking liberals? It’s a thought.

Reuters:

There have been concerns that the upheaval would lead to Twitter failing to abide by a May 2022 settlement with the U.S. regulator in which Twitter agreed to improve its privacy practices and place responsibility on people who held certain positions.

The FTC said last week it was “tracking recent developments at Twitter with deep concern. No CEO or company is above the law, and companies must follow our consent decrees.”

The left has its panties in a twist because Musk has very slightly — slightly — relaxed the overly aggressive rules governing speech on Twitter. But the problem is that the left doesn’t have a stranglehold on the platform anymore. They can no longer go on a collective tirade to get someone canceled.

This doesn’t mean that the racists, the kluxers, the skinheads, and the wild men of the internet have free rein to spread hate, disinformation, and threats of violence. Twitter’s rules haven’t been altered. But they are being slightly reinterpreted to allow for a little bit more freedom of thought.

But it’s the thoughts that are the problem. They haven’t been cleared by the left. They aren’t under the left’s control.

Musk gave an ultimatum to his employees: prepare for “long hours and high intensity” or leave. It appears that hundreds are taking him up on his offer to exit. Some of the quitters are engineers who are supposed to keep the application running smoothly. Last night there was a seven-fold increase in the number of outages across the platform.

No wonder Musk tried to see a little humor in the chaos.