Twitter, the
social media giant that self-identified free speech absolutist Elon Musk is on
the verge of acquiring, was apparently called out by an executive for left wing
bias. A video of the same is doing the rounds on the internet where this
Twitter executive can be seen talking about Twitter’s pro-left positioning, echoing
similar sentiments to Elon Musk.

Also Read | Elon Musk, an erratic visionary, revels in contradiction

The video was
released by Project Veritas, a far-right group in the United States. It features
a person named Siru Murugesan, reportedly an engineer at Twitter, who says
Twitter has a very strong left-wing bias, and right wingers are openly censored
in the company. Twitter is “extremely far left,” he said and added that many of
his colleagues would want to quit the company if the Musk acquisition goes
through, according to news agency ANI.

Murugesan said left-wing
views espoused by Twitter staff were so ubiquitous that some staff members had
to reorient their perspectives in order to fit-in.

Elon Musk, who’s
acquisition bid is on hold pending shareholder approval, is in agreement with
Murugesan in large part, at least seemingly. On May 9, 2022, the Tesla CEO
tweeted: “Twitter obv has a strong left wing bias[sic].”

One of the most
burning questions on Twitter’s policies regarding speech has been the method it
employs to censor content. Accusations have been thrown at the social media company,
especially from the American right-wing ecosystem, that Twitter denies platform
to a kind of political opinion while bolstering others.

Musk has maintained
that once he comes to run the company, he will take a different approach to
free speech that currently prevails in the organisation. While describing
himself as a free speech absolutist, Musk says Twitter, under him, will adopt a
policy that is more in tune with the laws of specific countries. He wrote
recently that he would seek policy as close as possible to the laws of countries
and if people disagreed with the law, they could vote to change it in
democracies.

Murugesan, who
sees Musk’s Twitter acquisition as a binary capitalism-socialism question, says
in the video, “He (Musk) is a capitalist and we really aren’t operating as
capitalists, more like socialist. Like we are all commie as f*ck,” he says.  

In 2018, Twitter’s
then CEO Jack Dorsey had publicly acknowledged that those who work for the
company are more left-leaning but had maintained that they don’t allow their personal
prevarications to influence company policy.

“The real question
behind the question is, ‘Are we doing something according to political ideology
or viewpoints?’ And we are not. Period. We do not look at content with regards
to political viewpoint or ideology. We look at behaviour. We need to constantly
show that we are not adding our own bias, which I fully admit is more left
leaning,” he had said.