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Micro blogging site Twitter generally does not adhere to the principle of ‘Free Speech’, proved Elon Musk’s 79 million Twitter followers who participated in a poll on the micro blogging platform.
Though the final results will come out within three hours from now, the overwhelming response denying Twitter has anything to do with ‘Free Speech’ seemed to have already sealed the poll results.
Tech billionaire and Founder of SpaceX and Tesla, Elon Reeves Musk had put a poll on his Twitter handle asking, “Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?”
Following the poll, millions of his followers voted for both the options ‘Yes’ and ‘No’. However, at the time of writing this report, the poll has received more than 19 Lakh votes, out of which 70.5% of voters said no, Twitter does not adhere to the principle of free speech while only 29.5% followers voted in support of it.
The mega poll seemed to have sealed the much debated issue of ‘Free Speech’ and Twitter’s alleged biased approach to it.
In fact, Musk himself knows the importance of this poll, which is proved by another tweet on that thread saying, “The consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully.” This fuelled the rumour mill with some people suggesting Musk is in the fray to take over Twitter.
The SpaceX and Tesla CEO did not reveal what suddenly prompted him to launch the poll or what consequences he was talking about. He did not even say why he appeared to doubt Twitter's commitment to free speech.
A day ago, Musk had launched another poll asking if Twitter's algorithm should be open source. With open-source algorithms, people would be able to know how Twitter decides what to show them in their feed.
Worthwhile to mention here that Twitter was at loggerheads with the government of India over removal of bad accounts during the farmers protest.
The Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) had sent three notices to Twitter in 2020-21, the latest one asking the company to block 1,178 accounts believed to be linked to Khalistan sympathisers and those backed by Pakistan.
Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had categorically said in the Rajya Sabha on February 11, 2021 that action will be taken against Social Media platforms if fake news and violence was spread through it.
He said all social media platforms will have to adhere to the Constitution of India. The Indian Constitution allows criticism of the government and the Prime Minister, but spreading fake news will not be allowed, he had stated.
