Incoming Twitter CEO says we should ‘focus less on thinking about free speech’
Concerning tweets and evidence of the political bias of Twitter’s new CEO are surfacing, including advising people to pay less attention to the First Amendment and justifying blurring the line between white people and racists.
“The kinds of things that we do about this is, focus less on thinking about free speech, but thinking about how the times have changed,” incoming CEO, Parag Agrawal, said in a 2020 interview with MIT Technology Review.
Twitter’s Jack Dorsey announced Monday that he is stepping down as CEO, effective immediately, and Agrawal, current CTO at the tech giant, will be assuming the position.
Twitter’s role is “moving towards how we recommend content and that sort of, is, is, a struggle that we’re working through in terms of how we make sure these recommendation systems that we’re building, how we direct people’s attention is leading to a healthy public conversation that is most participatory,” Agrawal also stated in the interview.
The interview, conducted in November 2020, preceded Twitter’s decision to ban then-President Trump for “the risk of further incitement of violence” following his tweets about the Capitol riot on January 6.
“Despite our efforts to serve the public conversation, as Trump’s megaphone, we helped fuel the deadly events of January 6th,” over 300 Twitter employees wrote in a letter to the company’s top executives, according to the Washington Post.
Agrawal donated to the ACLU’s effort when they took Trump to court.
The new Twitter CEO also expressed his feelings about white supremacy in a tweet from 2010. “If they are not gonna make a distinction between muslims and extremists, then why should I distinguish between white people and racists,” he said.
“This is Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s new CEO and the person who’s going to be deciding what kind of speech is allowed on Twitter:,” tweeted Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN).
“Twitter’s new CEO was ahead of his time. Vilifying white people wasn’t as popular back then,” tweeted Seth Dillon.
“This tweet which is currently going viral among the right from Twitter’s new CEO is him quoting a Daily Show segment that aired that night about stereotypes. It’s a joke about absurd stereotypes, not a factual statement. https://cc.com/video/vz5edd/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-npr-staffing-decision-2010,” tweeted CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski.
“Alert: Twitter’s new CEO Parag Agrawal previously rejected free speech in favor of “healthy public conversation,” one person tweeted.
“Free speech in the digital public square has never been more at risk with 1st Amendment-denier, Parag Agrawal, replacing Jack Dorsey as Twitter CEO,” tweeted Adam Paul Laxalt.