Billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk has made a shocking revelation in an exclusive interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson. According to Musk, the United States, along with foreign government agencies, was granted “full access” to direct messages of private citizens on Twitter prior to his takeover.
In the interview, Musk expressed his concerns about artificial intelligence (AI), his Twitter acquisition, and his future plans for the social media platform that he bought last fall. He accused his predecessors at Twitter of allowing U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies to read users’ direct messages on the platform, calling it among the most “absurd” discoveries he made since purchasing the company for $44 billion.
“The degree to which government agencies effectively had full access to everything that was going on on Twitter blew my mind,” Musk told Carlson. “I was not aware of that.”
Musk said he is moving to create a feature that would give users the option to encrypt direct messages with the hopes of limiting government interference. Musk said he hopes to unveil the new addition later this month. If the encryption option is selected, “no one at Twitter can see what you’re talking about,” he explained.
The new encryption feature for direct messages would effectively give “the finger” to U.S. intelligence agencies and their counterparts abroad who’ve long relied on the platform to gather intel, Carlson told viewers. Musk said he has already received “indirect complaints” from various agencies about the crackdown, quipping that while they’re displeased with the move, “I think people are a little concerned about complaining to me directly in case I tweet about it.”
Musk has made it his personal mission to expose the coordination between the tech giant and the federal government to moderate content, particularly with his release of “The Twitter Files,” which granted independent journalists access to Twitter’s archives for a series of reports, including what led to former President Trump’s suspension and the government’s role in Twitter’s censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story.
The tech tycoon has emerged as one of the biggest newsmakers over the past year following his acquisition of the platform, which hit a nerve for Democrats and the liberal media because of his expressed ambition to restore free speech on a platform perceived as having an ideological bent towards the left.
Musk also addressed his concerns with artificial intelligence and his plans to establish an alternative to ChatGPT, an AI app developed by progressive programmers that he helped initially fund, but now fears can lead to “civilizational destruction” if mismanaged.
In conclusion, Musk’s revelation of the government’s access to Twitter’s direct messages has once again brought the issue of privacy to the forefront. It remains to be seen how successful his encryption feature for direct messages will be and whether it will limit government interference.
