On PBS Frontline documentary, Kara Swisher admitted she thought maybe Elon Musk was smart because he flattered her by asking for her sage advice, and Michael Shellenberger almost admitted to spreading disinformation.
I was disturbed by Kara Swisher, in an interview on PBS FRONTLINE Elon Musk’s Twitter Takeover, who seemed to be conceding that Elon Musk was right in the end about the virus not being dangerous, even while admitting how many people have died from the pandemic virus. She seemed to think his assessment was merely premature. Hundreds of TESLA workers got covid because of the factory being opened prematurely without adequate mitigation, and we have no idea how many TESLA workers have suffered after effects in the form of Long Covid or covid complications as a result, and since then, considering people working in unmitigated workplaces are still getting covid, still getting complications, and still sometimes dying of covid. Later in this documentary Kara Swisher admits she initially thought Elon Musk would be great for Twitter, and added that Elon Musk asked her for her ideas about what to do with Twitter.
If you’re interested in a frank history of this covid contrarian billionaire, I recommend Paris Marx’s Tech Won’t Save Us podcast episode “Elon Unmasked”.
Michael Shellenberger was also interviewed in this FRONTLINE documentary and I suspect that he actually almost claimed that the whole point of free speech is the right to spread misinformation. He stopped himself but he began to say “the right to sprea…” and then stopped short and said “one person’s misinformation is another person’s point of view.”
Anti-vax disinformation and climate contrarianism are not a “point of view” – they’re lies, often deliberate lies put forth by people with a monetary investment that benefits from the lies. And the right to free speech has the purpose to protect the right for the public to speak out for redress from the government, it was not, to my knowledge, meant to protect the sales of snake oil… or oil.