When he took over Twitter, Elon Musk promised to unleash its animal spirits and roll back censorship. He has called himself a “free speech absolutist”.
That designation has come under serious scrutiny since, with the billionaire accused of tilting the the platform in all sorts of ways to suit his own ends.
He is an especially fraught situation today, though, as a guest of Saudi Arabia.
Musk and other titans of US industry were treated to a lunch with Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince on President Donald Trump’s lavish visit to the Gulf.
Here are Trump, Musk, and the crown prince saying hello:
.@elonmusk greets @POTUS and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman inside the Saudi Royal Court pic.twitter.com/793zuBcocJ
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) May 13, 2025The history of Twitter, later X, in Saudi Arabia is a deeply unhappy one.
Free speech absolutism is anathema to Crown Prince Mohammed and his officials, who tightly suppress dissent.
Often, anonymous posts on networks like X are the only way Saudi dissenters can spread their message. It can cost them dearly.
A recent example appears to be Ahmed al-Doush, a British man detained in Saudi Arabia and sentenced to ten years in prison.
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Read MoreHis family say the reason for his detention is a critical tweet, posted years ago.
(The opaque nature of Saudi justice means that it’s often never made public why someone has been punished, or even that they have.)
In 2023, the Saudi courts sentenced a man to death for posts on X and YouTube. Mohammad bin Nasser al-Ghamdi was given the death penalty despite having only 10 followers, Amnesty International said at the time.
After an international outcry, his execution was called off.
In the same year, Fatima al-Shawarbi was handed a 30-year prison sentence for tweeting critically of the Neom megacity project, activists said.
The list goes on.
Musk is hardly alone as a social-media tycoon who doesn’t have much interest in confronting autocrats.
Google, Facebook and others have been comfortable with censorship and repression in countries like China, Thailand (where criticising its monarchy is illegal), India and Turkey.
But Musk breaking bread with the Saudi ruler is an especially vivid example.
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