Elon Musk’s free speech crusade targets Jack Dorsey’s Block

Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) is paying legal fees for a free speech lawsuit against Jack Dorsey’s company, Block. The irony is immediately obvious to long-time users of X: Dorsey co-founded Twitter, sold it to Musk so that he could focus on Block, and now X is paying to litigate against a Block employee.

Specifically, Chloe Happe v. Block Inc., involves a former Block employee who alleges that she was fired from her job at the company for statements she made on pseudonymous X accounts. She claims her two accounts were satirical and that she made the comments during private, non-working hours.

Nevertheless, despite the non-work related nature of these social media posts, Musk’s X is corporately funding her lawsuit against Block.

Don’t like Twitter censorship? Just buy it

Musk’s complaints against Dorsey’s version of censorship at Twitter were so great that he decided to simply acquire the platform outright. In 2022, Musk acquired Dorsey’s company in a transaction involving a group of investors.

Musk had previously criticized Twitter’s handling of obvious criminal activity like child exploitation while Dorsey was in charge. He now leads the censorship policy with plenty of examples of personal, editorial intervention.

Before Musk purchased Twitter, he vindictively promised to release ‘Twitter files’ that, in his opinion, would prove that Dorsey allowed politically motivated and US government-supervised content moderation on the platform. Musk was personally involved in revealing those files.

At the time, Dorsey fired back, criticizing Musk’s decision not to release all of these files at once, and questioning why he was involved in editorial decisions and crafting news media, rather than operating a social media platform for user (not owner) generated content.