If you thought Elon Musk buying Twitter would open the door to a free speech platform, the joke is on you.
So says conservative radio host Jesse Kelly.
Kelly tweeted on Wednesday, “PRO TIP: If your state cannot count every vote on election night, there’s cheating in your state. Entire nations count their votes on Election Day.”
“If you can’t, it’s because you don’t want to,” he claimed.
The platform slapped his tweet with a “Misleading” label which prevented it from being replied to, shared, or liked. It also included a link to information about “why election experts say elections in the US are safe and secure.”
https://twitter.com/JesseKellyDC/status/1587833014544994306
In a tweet on Thursday, Kelly wrote, “Elon has no idea. Y’all are so excited but there’s ZERO chance The System would actually allow an open forum of free speech.”
“You think they’ve gained this much control just to hand some back over? Grow up. No chance,” he added.
Kelly then claimed the label on his tweet was “Exhibit A.”
https://twitter.com/JesseKellyDC/status/1588225069087690753
If you’re on Twitter, you can see Kelly has been able to tweet since the Wednesday morning post.
His account was not locked for a week or suspended. Nor was the post taken down. Instead, there was a label put on it that limited how users can interact with it.
Additionally, Kelly was perfectly capable of taking a screenshot of the tweet with the label and sharing it — at least as of Thursday morning — without limitation.
It is one thing to want a platform where people joke and voice their opinions without fear of being permanently banned. And it is one thing if you are outraged by a platform taking sides on an issue where there is not an agreed-upon view.
But getting upset because a platform put a label on a tweet that has no evidence and undermines trust in our electoral system is a little dramatic. That is especially true when you are a figure such as Kelly who has over 500,000 followers on Twitter.
It simply is not a concrete fact that there is “cheating” if all the votes are not counted by the end of election day. But there is evidence of people making threats against election workers based on conspiracy theories.
And it is irresponsible to throw out such claims — even if you’re just trying to be provocative.