UnHerd with Freddie Sayers Matt Taibbi: Has Elon Musk ruined politics?
30 snips
Sep 4, 2025 
Matt Taibbi, a former Rolling Stone reporter and current publisher of Racket News, discusses Elon Musk's impact on political discourse following his acquisition of Twitter. He reflects on whether Musk has truly delivered a freer public square, or if X has become a platform rife with misinformation. The conversation also touches on the cultural battles around free speech in both the U.S. and the U.K., exemplified by controversies involving public figures and the regulation of harmful content versus protecting free expression.
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Government-Platform Collusion Revealed
- Matt Taibbi says law enforcement and intelligence had formalized channels with platforms that shaped content moderation.
- That hidden partnership represented a new and worrying level of government influence on online speech.
Reporter Shadow-Banned During Twitter Files
- Taibbi describes being deamplified by Elon Musk after refusing to move his Substack to Twitter during their collaboration.
- That shadow-banning cost him significant revenue and shaped his view of Musk's personalised moderation style.
Two Bad Models Beat One Monolith
- Taibbi argues two bad internet governance models now exist: overt government regulation in Europe and private corporate control in the US.
- Having both models is marginally better than one global dominant approach, but speech remains in a poor state.
