Posobiec posed the question, saying "this has been the huge thing that has come out of the Twitter Files. It was a two-way street. So while you're tracking what the government was doing in 2020 vis-a-vis censorship, really leaning on the Hunter Biden laptop which was released in 2020, this is really a huge question for X going forward into 2024, because Elon, you've said that you want to be working in conjunction within the confines of the law, but the question is if that law is being enforced by the law enforcement agency of the FBI or the DHS and then they come to X and say 'these posts need to be censored , this information needs to be censored because we've determined, whatever it is, how does X make that determination?"
Musk said that X hopes to be "as transparent as possible."
"Basically we will see everything that is happening on the system and nothing will be hidden, that is the goal."
Posobiec followed up, honing in on the question.
"Well if those agencies, the FBI and DHS reach out, I believe they call it defensive briefings in 2020, which culminated in the censorship of Hunter Biden, if they started reaching out again would that be something that you or the team... would consider making public?"
Musk replied that he would not undertake censorship on behalf of the US government, and that he'd rather lose his freedoms than take the freedoms of others at the government's behest.
"We will be as transparent as possible," he said, "and frankly if I think a government agency is breaking the law in their demands in the platform I would be prepared to go to prison personally if I think they are the ones breaking the law."
Musk took over Twitter, renaming it X, specifically to enable free speech on a platform that had suppressed and censored Americans. Under the leadership of founder Jack Dorsey, then Parag Agrawal who came in after Dorsey departed as CEO, the execs were essentially guided by forces within the federal government as to what to censor and label as disinformation or misinformation.
This was exposed in the Twitter Files after Musk came aboard, which was spearheaded by journalist Matt Taibbi. It revealed they the FBI had led Twitter execs in a "hypothetical" round-table to identify misinformation, using the purported Hunter Biden laptop as an example. That was in September 2020. When the New York Post released their reporting on Hunter Biden's legitimate laptop, along with allegations of influence peddling per the findings on that hard drive, Twitter execs willfully believed it to be "Russian disinfo."
