With Elon Musk, free speech comes at a price

Elon Musk is under growing pressure to speak out on the fate of a man from Saudi Arabia who was sentenced to death by the country’s authorities after criticizing ruler Mohammed bin Salman on X, formerly known as Twitter.

According to a report shared on August 29 by Human Rights Watch (HRW), a civil rights non-governmental organization based in New York City, 54-year-old retired Saudi teacher Muhammad al-Ghamdi was sentenced to death on July 10 by a Saudi court “solely on his Twitter, and YouTube activity” criticizing the Saudi government.

The group said the man was charged based on “his tweets, retweets, and YouTube activity as the evidence against him.” Newsweek has contacted the X media team and HRW for comment by email on Saturday.

“Repression in Saudi Arabia has reached a terrifying new stage when a court can hand down the death penalty for nothing more than peaceful tweets,” said Joey Shea, Saudi Arabia researcher at Human Rights Watch.

Documents obtained by HRW show that the charges against al-Ghamdi include describing the King or the Crown Prince in a way that undermines religion or justice, supporting a terrorist ideology, communication with a terrorist entity, and a violation of Saudi law for publishing false news with the intention of executing a terrorist crime.

Al-Ghamdi has defended himself saying he’s not a political or human rights activist but simply “a private citizen who merely expressed some concerns about the Saudi government over the X platform,” HRW reported.

Newsweek has contacted the Saudi Arabian Foreign Affairs Ministry for comment.

Musk has so far been silent about the man’s death sentence after exercising his right to freedom of speech on the billionaire’s social media platform, though he did so in a country where criticism of the Saudi leadership is routinely censored.

When Musk took over the company, then known as Twitter, in late October 2022, he said he wanted to turn the social media platform into the free “town square of the Internet,” loosening moderation guidelines and restoring the previously blocked accounts of Donald Trump, Kanye West, and Jordan Peterson.

According to Musk, free speech “simply means that which matches the law”—a definition that was criticized by many at the time who expressed concern that hate speech would proliferate on the platform without proper moderation.

In April, Jewish groups told Newsweek that antisemitism had skyrocketed on the platform after Musk’s takeover.

Tom Gara, technology communications manager at Meta, wrote on X that al-Ghamdi had only 8 followers on Musk’s social media platform.

“Why is @ElonMusk silent on Saudi man sentenced to DEATH for his Tweets by X’s second largest owner?” Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Dawn, posted on X on Friday. Dawn was the organization founded by Jamal Khashoggi, The Washington Post journalist critical of the Saudi regime who was killed in a Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on October 2, 2018.

While Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman denied ordering Khashoggi’s murder or having any knowledge of it, U.S. intelligence agencies found he approved of the journalist’s assassination.

Last month, Musk shared a post on X saying that he would help anyone incurring mistreatment from their employers for their posts on the platform.

“If you were unfairly treated by your employer due to posting or liking something on this platform, we will fund your legal bill,” he wrote on August 6. “No limit. Please let us know.”

To date, Musk has not released a statement addressing the Saudi man’s arrest.

Some on social media have pointed out to the ties between X and the Saudi kingdom, with Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz being the company’s second-largest shareholder.

“I mean he owns a platform where the second largest investor is a country that literally murders and mutilates the bodies of journalists, we can’t exactly be shocked,” wrote an X user in response to Whitson’s original post.