Dallas Mavericks’ owner Mark Cuban has long been known for being outspoken on a wide range of topics, and those have included Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter. Back in November, Cuban lit Musk up over his proposed changes to Twitter verification, saying “This will be a NIGHTMARE.” (That call looks pretty good in retrospect.) Now, Cuban is upset with people claiming Musk’s actions are defending free speech.
This started with Cuban saying he thinks Musk has AI-related goals for Twitter. Someone then responded with a comment including “This is why he’s pushing free speech so hard.” Cuban took exception to that, and then went back and forth with some of those who pushed back on him:
All of this is why I think @elonmusk is starting his own @truthgpt, or whatever he will call it. He gets to take the entire @twitter firehose to train or feed any open source model and have a competitor to the big 3. He can weight his own tweets and those of the sources he… https://t.co/tWk4Kfp8tv
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) May 18, 2023
He isn't pushing free speech. When @elonmusk goes out of his way to engage with and promote the accounts and tweets of people who disagree with him, then I'll believe he is about free speech. Until then, this is just an adventure for him https://t.co/1r2guorm5F
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) May 18, 2023
Everyone has access. But @elonmusk has the ultimate reach and control. Who he supports or denigrates is the Twitter equivalent of State intervention. He owns the platform, he can do what he chooses. But it's disingenuous to say Twitter is the home of free speech when he… https://t.co/SFVUndT2Cw
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) May 19, 2023
Eventually, Musk weighed in asking for feedback, and Cuban offered some:
Oops, I left out possibly the most obvious and important influence to For You timelines.
“What tweets did the people I follow recently engage with “
It stands to reason that the person with the greatest number of followers will have the greatest influence on the most number…
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) May 19, 2023
As mentioned, Cuban (seen above at a Mavericks’ game in November) has previously gone at Musk over the verification changes, which did wind up being a (only–partially–executed) nightmare. He’s also put out plenty of thoughts on AI before. And that even included him getting in a credentialing fight with ESPN in 2016 in protest of ESPN.com running some automated game stories. (That fight was eventually resolved with ESPN agreeing to link to the team’s website.) He’s also proven quite the debate opponent, and one Skip Bayless is still upset with over something that happened more than a decade ago.
But it is new and interesting to see Cuban criticizing Musk over “free speech.” That’s a mantra Musk has often tried to use to defend his controversial decisions at Twitter (but one he’s taken criticism for elsewhere, including with acceding to a Turkish government request to restrict access to some content there). And criticisms for Musk’s ownership of Twitter from a billionaire NBA team owner like Cuban are certainly interesting, and maybe add to the growing divide between Twitter and sports personalities and organizations.
[Mediaite; photo from Kevin Jairaj/USA Today Sports]
