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ELON MUSK HAS been accused of censoring far-right accounts that have differing views on immigration to him.
The owner of X, formerly Twitter, is in the midst of a row online centred around the United States’ H1-B visas that allow companies to bring foreigners with specific qualifications into the country.
The permits are widely used in Silicon Valley, and Musk – who himself came to the United States from South Africa on an H1-B – is a fervent advocate.
It’s a major rift among incoming US President Donald Trump’s hardcore backers.
It started when Trump named venture capitalist Sriram Krishnan as his adviser on artificial intelligence, triggering a racially charged backlash that brought up Krishnan’s past comments advocating for green cards for skilled workers.
Musk, who bankrolled Trump’s campaign for a second term in office, said bringing in engineering talent from abroad was “essential for America to keep winning”.
This is the right position for those who want America to win.
For those who want America to lose for their own personal gain, I have no respect. Zero. https://t.co/2WxAjZzDfW
Vivek Ramaswamy, appointed by Trump as Musk’s co-chair on a new advisory board on government efficiency, suggested that companies prefer foreign workers because they lack an “American culture,” which he said venerates mediocrity.
“A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers,” he posted, warning that, without a change in attitude, “we’ll have our asses handed to us by China.”
This view has unsurprisingly sparked backlash among some fervent anti-immigration Republicans – a stance embedded in Trump’s presidential campaign.
Last night, Musk called some anti-immigration Republicans “contemptible fools”, adding they were “hateful, unrepentant racists” who would “absolutely be the downfall of the Republican Party if they are not removed”.
At least 14 conservative accounts who criticised Musk’s pro-legal immigration views said X revoked their blue tick, a verification badge given to premium account holders, according to Sky News’ US partner NBC News.
When Musk bought the site in 2022, so began a marked change in how it operated and the type of views that were promoted.
He described it as a policy of “freedom of speech” but not “freedom of reach”, meaning negative posts wouldn’t be banned but would be less likely to appear on feeds.
He also said this policy would apply to individual tweets and not entire accounts.
That said, any accounts found to be engaged in coordinated attacks to spam target accounts with mute/blocks will themselves be categorized – correctly – as spam.
Some users say that when they click into posts marked as spam, they are not spam at all, but regular posts.
False claims
Skepticism over the benefits of immigration is a hallmark of the “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement and Musk and his peer’s remarks angered some supporters who accused them of ignoring US achievements in technological innovation.
In what appears to be a pointed post, incoming White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller shared a 2020 speech in which Trump marveled at the American “culture” that had “harnessed electricity, split the atom, and gave the world the telephone and the Internet.”
It should be noted, however, that it was Englishman Michael Faraday who discovered that an electric current could be produced by passing a magnet through a copper wire.
John Cockroft, who was from Yorkshire, and Ernest Walton, who was from Dungarvan, Co Waterford, are credited with being the first to split the atom.
Alexander Graham Bell was a British subject in Canada when he invented the telephone.
Trump voiced opposition to H1-B visas during his successful first run for the White House in 2016, calling them “unfair for our workers” while acknowledging that he used foreign labor in his own businesses.
He placed restrictions on the system when he took office, but the curbs were lifted by President Joe Biden.
With reporting by AFP
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