Elon Musk acknowledged in March 27 testimony released on Monday that his posts on the platform formerly known as Twitter could financially harm the company in the long run. huffington post. The billionaire also admitted he had “limited knowledge” of the lawsuit that led to his removal.
Last fall, 22-year-old Ben Brody sued Musk for defamation, accusing Musk of promoting conspiracy theories and falsely implicating Brody in a fight between two far-right groups in Oregon. Musk’s lawyers have repeatedly requested that the transcript of his nearly two hours of testimony be kept secret, but the judge has refused.
At one point, Broidy’s attorney, Mark Bankston, asked Musk about his purchase of Twitter and how it affected his use of the site. Musk responded that he believed his posts “did remain the same before and after the acquisition.” But he acknowledged that maintaining this attitude could do more harm than good.
“Going back to that self-inflicted injury, the Kevlar shoes, I think — and I may have done — I probably did more to harm the company financially than help it, but of course, I – I do.” The owner of
Musk has repeatedly expressed confusion about why Broidy filed a lawsuit against him and the underlying details of the case. At one point, he accused Broidy’s attorney, Bankston, of raking in cash by filing lawsuits. “My — I’d like to think the real purpose of this is to get you a lot of money,” Musk said.
The lawsuit centers on a series of tweets Musk posted last summer that promoted far-right conspiracy theories and falsely linked Broidy to a brawl between Oregon’s Proud Boys and a local neo-Nazi group. Brody, who lives in California, bears some resemblance to those involved in the brawl. Online trolls were quick to assume that the fight was a “false flag” and that Brody was an undercover government agent. Musk spoke with users who promoted the conspiracy theory on X and agreed with their conclusion that the fight was likely a staged event. On June 27, Musk responded to a post containing a video of the fight and suggesting that Brody was part of a “false flag” operation. In fact, Brody was mistakenly identified by trolls as one of the men in the video.
“Looks like one is a college student (wanting to join the government) and the other may be an Antifa member, but this could be a false flag situation,” Musk wrote on Twitter.
Broidy’s attorney quoted the tweet directly. Musk argued that his post didn’t have that much impact because it was just a reply.
“Replies get 100 times less attention than the main tweet. So it’s certainly not about generating advertising revenue. In fact, advertisers generally don’t want to advertise with controversial content.” Musk said.
Broidy’s attorneys estimate that given the size of Musk’s account and his public profile, his responses remain on the site and have been viewed by more than a million people.
“Do you know the number of people who saw this and viewed this tweet is equivalent to filling all 30 major ballparks?” Bankston asked.
But Musk claims that Twitter has 5 to 8 trillion views per year, so 1 million views is not significant on the platform.
“No big deal?” Bankston said.
“Yes, success or failure,” Musk replied.
“So many people know about this, so it’s not a big deal, right?”
“Correct. What’s more, when advertisers are controversial, they don’t advertise, which means we don’t get revenue from it,” Musk responded.
Musk also admitted that he is the owner of an account called @ermnmusk, in which he impersonates his toddler son. motherboard Last year, several other media outlets exposed the mysterious account.
Musk also made clear that he did not believe Broidy, who was once forced to evacuate his home, would be “significantly harmed” by the false accusations he helped spread.
“People are attacked all the time in the media, online media, social media, but it rarely has a meaningful negative impact on their lives,” Musk said.