Elon Musk's 'vote Republican' tweets call Twitter neutrality into question – Firstpost

Elon Musk has expressed political views in the past, on and off Twitter. But a direct endorsement of one party over another now that he owns Twitter, raises questions about the platform’s ability to remain neutral Elon Musk used his Twitter megaphone to appeal to “independent-minded voters” on Monday, urging them to vote Republican in Tuesday’s US midterm elections and stepping into the country’s political debate that tech company executives have largely tried to stay out of — so their platforms wouldn’t be seen as favoring one side over the other. “And it feels like the public sphere is increasingly privatized and owned by these companies — and when the heads of these companies put their finger on the scale — it feels like it’s potentially skewing our democracy in harmful ways.” Musk’s comments come as he seeks to remake the company and amid widespread concern that recent mass layoffs at the social media platform could leave the company unable to deal with hate speech, misinformation that could impact voter safety and security and actors who seek to cast doubt on the legitimate winners of elections. Twitter’s policies, as of Monday, prohibit “manipulating or interfering in elections or other civic processes.” In a tweet just two days after he agreed to buy Twitter in April, Musk said that for “Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally.” And to attract the largest possible number of advertisers and users, Big Tech has tried to go this route, with varying degrees of success. In an October study, for instance, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that “Twitter gives greater visibility to politically conservative news than it does content with a liberal bent.” Musk’s tweet garnered hundreds of thousands of likes and many retweets Monday on the day before the final votes are cast in thousands of races around the country.