(NewsNation) — Billionaire investor and television personality Mark Cuban said X, the former Twitter, is “only as free as Elon [Musk] wants it to be,” adding that the Tesla owner is the “ultimate arbiter of everything on here.”
“He can intimidate. He can alter the algorithm. He can suspend anyone he wants at any time. And the biggest power play is him making everyone think their speech is free speech. Until he decides it isn’t, and there is nothing any of us can do about it,” Cuban said in response to professional gambler Haralabos Voulgaris on Monday.
When Musk’s acquisition of Twitter was announced in April 2022, the billionaire shared a vision for the platform, including “making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans.”
“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Musk’s statement read in part.
But Cuban called that into question after he ran a poll about presidential candidates that received 804,000 votes but only 656,000 engagements. The “Shark Tank” star pointed to the existence of “anonymous accounts” on the app, a concept against Musk’s own 2022 statement.
“I know everyone thinks this platform is a bastion of free speech,” Cuban said in his post. “I see the opposite.”
On Monday, a Brazilian Supreme Court panel unanimously upheld the decision to block X nationwide after months of feuding between Musk and Justice Alexandre de Moraes about free speech, misinformation and far-right accounts.
It’s not the first time Cuban has called Musk out for his approach to running X. During an interview with “The Daily Show” in August, he accused the South African entrepreneur of tailoring the platform to his own preferences via algorithm design.
Cuban has also spoken about AI and social media’s influence on the upcoming election, arguing that the current election cycle is being “driven” by artificial intelligence and algorithms.
Cuban backed President Joe Biden prior to his exit from the race, specifically defending his handling of the economy. He has since tweeted in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris multiple times. Musk is a vocal supporter of former President Donald Trump.
