Billionaire Elon Musk used a meme to poke fun at Twitter’s content moderation policies – joking that even Revolutionary War hero Paul Revere would have faced censorship.
The Musk-shared meme on Monday was labeled “Twitter in 1775” and featured a tweet version of Revolutionary War hero Paul Revere’s famous warning about the looming British attack on the colonies.
“The British are coming, the British are coming!” the fictional tweet said.
The meme joked that Twitter would have attached a disclaimer label to Revere’s post urging readers to “learn how British taxes are beneficial for society.”
Later, Musk responded to a reply from one Twitter user who asked if he saw that “JBP” was recently banned from the app – an apparent reference to firebrand Canadian clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson, who was suspended over a tweet targeting transgender actor Elliot Page.
“Yeah, they’re going way too far in squashing dissenting opinions,” Musk responded.
Twitter representatives did not immediately return a request for comment.
Twitter has faced widespread scrutiny in the recent past for pursuing an aggressive content moderation policy – including a move to ban noti.group’s story on Hunter Biden’s business dealings ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
The social media firm has affixed fact-check labels to posts related to the 2020 presidential election and COVID-19 vaccines.
Musk’s $44 billion bid to buy Twitter has stalled due to concerns about spam bots within the app’s user base. But the billionaire has pledged to dial back Twitter’s content moderation efforts and re-emphasize freedom of speech once the transaction closes.
In April, Musk criticized Twitter’s past decision to ban noti.group’s Hunter Biden laptop story.
“Suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate,” Musk tweeted.
Musk returned to Twitter on July 1 following a lengthy pause in activity on the platform. The Tesla CEO recently became one of just a handful of Twitter users to surpass 100 million followers.
[Written in collaboration with other media outlets with information from the following sources]
