 By now, most people know that Elon Musk doesn't actually care about freedom of speech. In fact, his commitment to freedom of speech on Twitter starts and ends with allowing people to use slurs. But regardless, if we've all seen his hypocrisy on this particular issue, he still pretends that he's principled. In fact, just a month ago, he tweeted this, if you were unfairly treated by your employer due to posting or liking something on this platform, we will fund your legal bill. No limit, let us know. Now the translation there is, if you break Twitter's terms of use for tweeting explicit anti-semitism like this and happen to get fired because of it, Elon Musk will come to your defense. Now that person didn't actually get fired for that tweet, it's just a dipshit YouTube returned edge lord, but that is an example of the only kind of free speech that Elon Musk actually seems to want to protect. And we know this because the ADL released a report in March showing that Twitter doesn't actually enforce its own policies regarding anti-semitism and he claims that reports like these scare away advertisers to the point where he views it as defamation and threatened the ADL with a lawsuit writing, to clear our platform's name on the matter of anti-semitism, it looks like we have no choice but to file a defamation lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League. Oh, the irony. And he added, to be super clear, I'm pro free speech, but against anti-semitism of any kind. Okay, well, if that's true, then prove it, enforce your own policy regarding anti-semitism, but he's not going to do that because he's okay with anti-semitism on the platform, otherwise it wouldn't be rampant. We see it all the time, right? But he also claims that he's pro free speech while threatening to sue the ADL because they published something that he doesn't like. Is that a very pro free speech move? Of course not. But he's still trying to uphold this facade that he cares about free speech. Meanwhile, one of the most egregious violations of free speech and human rights abuses is taking place under his nose. And guess what he said about it? Nothing. As NPR reports, a retired teacher in Saudi Arabia was recently sentenced to death for his tweets criticizing the country's leadership to his handful of followers according to rights advocates and his family. Muhammad al-Ghamdi, a father of seven living in Mecca, had gained just 10 followers between the two anonymous accounts he ran on X. According to Human Rights Watch, he used the social media site to rail against alleged government corruption, but was mostly re-sharing posts by more popular government critics. The sentencing of Muhammad al-Ghamdi, who was in his mid 50s, is the latest in an escalating crackdown on social media users in Saudi Arabia. While others are serving prison terms ranging from 20 to 45 years for their tweets and online criticism of the government, al-Ghamdi appears to be the first person to be sentenced to death based solely on his posts on X, formerly called Twitter and YouTube activity. So as this man awaits execution for tweets that he made to his 10 followers, do you want to know what Elon Musk has said about this? Not a goddamn fucking thing. You'd think that if he truly cared about free speech, someone getting executed over tweets would at least warrant a small condemnation. You could even just tweet about this and say this is bad, but he's been silent on this particular matter. And to be clear, this isn't just because he couldn't care less about free speech, because as Newsweek explains, in January, Musk testified in a federal courtroom in San Francisco in connection with a class action lawsuit from investors in his car company Tesla about a pair of tweets that Musk posted on August 7, 2018, suggesting he had financial backing to take the company private, even though he did not. Musk later said in court he believed he had secured the financial backing he needed to take Tesla private following a series of 2018 meetings with representatives from Saudi Arabia's public investment fund that ultimately fell through. But Musk is also tied to Saudi Prince Ali bin Talal, who became the second largest shareholder of Twitter on the same day Musk closed the deal to purchase the platform with the intent of taking it private. And as you can see here, his business partner Prince Ali bin Talal called him a dear friend and proclaimed that they're together all the way. Very interesting. So it seems to me that he is not denouncing Almagdi's death sentence because he doesn't want to offend Twitter's second largest shareholder and on top of that, he certainly doesn't want to piss off potential Saudi investors and other businesses that he has. So in other words, free speech be damned as long as Elon Musk can continue to make money. Now, to be fair to Elon Musk, this isn't a new phenomenon because Twitter has been aiding and abetting the Saudi censorship regime for quite some time. As the Guardian explains, the social media company formerly known as Twitter has been accused in a revised civil US lawsuit of helping Saudi Arabia commit grave human rights abuses against its users, including by disclosing confidential user data at the request of Saudi authorities at a much higher rate than it has for the US, UK, or Canada. The lawsuit was brought last May against ex, as Twitter is known, by Areej Al-Saddan, the sister of a Saudi aid worker who was forcibly disappeared and then later sentenced to 20 years in jail. It centers on the events surrounding the infiltration of the California company, by three Saudi agents, two of whom were posing as Twitter employees in 2014 and 2015, which ultimately led to the arrest of Al-Saddan's brother, Abdul Rahman, and the exposure of the identity of thousands of anonymous Twitter users, some of whom were later reportedly detained and tortured as part of the government's crackdown on dissent. Lawyers for Al-Saddan updated their claim last week to include new allegations about how Twitter, under the leadership of then-Chief Executive Jack Dorsey, willfully ignored or had knowledge of the Saudi government's campaign to ferret out critics, but because of financial considerations and efforts to keep close ties to the Saudi government, a top investor in the company provided assistance to the kingdom. So this begs the question, where's the Twitter files for this? I mean Elon Musk thought that it was really important for us to know that the Biden campaign asked Twitter to remove explicit photographs of Hunter Biden, so I mean if he thinks that that's important, then you would expect this to be orders of magnitude more important for a supposed free speech absolutist, no? Of course not, because he's a hack and he's full of shit. Twitter was literally fined for refusing to turn over records regarding Trump's Twitter account. Meanwhile, they'll do whatever Saudi Arabia wants. It's just laughable. But we shouldn't allow Elon Musk to continue to be silent about this while he continues to pretend to care about free speech. If you're on Twitter, remind him of this. Benjamin Dixon has been holding his feet to the fire, writing, daily reminder that Elon Musk's business partners, Saudi Arabia, are about to execute a man for retweeting criticisms of their leader to his eight followers and Elon Musk has said nothing about it. Exactly. And it's not like guilt-tripping him is going to encourage him to have a change of heart or pressure him to take action, but I do think that it's important that his legion of simps know that this man is full of shit and he's a fucking coward and he's going to sit idly by as his business partner executes one of his users on his platform for being critical of his government. It's absolutely ridiculous. And I think that it might be a little bit more difficult for him to pretend to not know about this story if the hashtag free Muhammad al-Maghdi trended on Twitter. But condemning this is really the easiest test for anyone who claims to care about free speech. So I mean, if you're still on Twitter, I think that you should ask him why he's failed this basic test, why he refuses to do the bare fucking minimum and condemn Saudi Arabia for wanting to execute someone, planning to execute someone because of tweets.