Elon Musk Says Censorship Enthusiasts Are ‘Less Than Thrilled’ With Twitter’s User-Sourced Fact-Checks

Twitter CEO Elon Musk's photo is seen through a Twitter logo in this illustration, on Oct. 28, 2022. Dado Ruvic/Reuters, File Photo

Twitter CEO Elon Musk has praised the platform’s Community Notes feature for “ending censorship in guise of virtue” and handing control of the “narrative” back to ordinary people.

Musk made the comments in a tweet responding to Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon, who wrote on the platform that Twitter was previously “a place where false narratives were protected and promoted.”

Dillon stated that under Musk’s leadership, Twitter has transformed into a place where false narratives are “challenged and corrected” thanks to its Community Notes feature, which allows Twitter users to collaboratively add context to potentially misleading tweets.

Under the feature, contributors can leave notes under any tweets across the platform and, if enough contributors from different points of view rate that note as helpful, the note publically appears under the tweet.

“It’s easy to think Musk has botched everything if by ‘everything’ you mean the old system of strict narrative control. But he meant to abolish that system; that was the whole point,” Dillion wrote.

Musk responded, “Ending censorship in guise of virtue, handing control of the narrative to the people, and actually accurate fact-checking are essential goals.”

“Naturally, those who used to control the narrative and censored views they disliked are less than thrilled,” Musk continued, adding, “How tragic.”

American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten visits with striking Chicago teachers at Oscar DePriest Elementary School in Chicago, on Oct. 22, 2019. Scott Olson/Getty Images

Politifact Fact-Checked

Dillon’s comment referenced an article shared on Twitter by fact-checkers at Politifact defending the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) union boss Randi Weingarten’s actions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The article stated that early on in the pandemic, “Weingarten advocated for schools to reopen for in-person learning, provided they use safety precautions.”

“She criticized the Trump administration’s 2020 calls to reopen schools fully, but it’s misleading to claim that she opposed reopening at all,” the article read.

However, Weingarten has been widely criticized for opposing efforts to reopen schools during the pandemic. She was also in close contact with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the days leading up to its publishing of guidance on school reopening guidance.

An added context box was quickly pegged to the post via the Community Notes feature stating that while Weingarten said she wanted schools to remain open during the pandemic, she consistently wrote tweets about her support for the closure of schools well into the fall of 2020.

Several links were attached to the added context box, including one tweet from August 2020 in which Weingarten took aim at Florida governor Ron DeSantis.

Dr. Anthony Fauci in Washington, on Dec. 9, 2022. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

Twitter Tells Different Story

“CRIMINAL!! Students in Martin County, FL returned to school Tuesday; already 1 elementary class was quarantined as students showed COVID-19 symptoms. Their teacher is required to report to work even when exposed to #covid under @RonDeSantisFL order,”

“This is why @FloridaEA sued,” she added.

In another tweet attached to the post, also from August 2020, Weingarten praised the closure of the State University of New York at Oneonta as “the way to aggressively stop #covid spread.”

The added context box also linked to an article published by The Guardian in July 2020 in which Weingarten called the Secretary of Education’s call for schools to reopen in the fall of 2020 “reckless ... callous ... cruel.”

The Epoch Times has contacted American Federation of Teachers for comment.

Musk’s comments come shortly after Dr. Anthony Fauci insisted that Americans should not blame him for lockdowns during the pandemic.

“When people say, ‘Fauci shut down the economy’—it wasn’t Fauci,” he told The New York Times Magazine on April 25. “The CDC was the organization that made those recommendations. I happened to be perceived as the personification of the recommendations. But show me a school that I shut down and show me a factory that I shut down. Never. I never did.”

“I gave a public-health recommendation that echoed the CDC’s recommendation, and people made a decision based on that. But I never criticized the people who had to make the decisions one way or the other,” Fauci added.

The former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases did, however, acknowledge that the government could have taken a “better” approach to the pandemic, adding, “Anybody who thinks that what we or anybody else did was perfect is not looking at reality.”