A Rebuttal To Alex Berenson

And in defence of Elon Musk, oddly enough.

Once again truth has led to an unusual place. Alex has done reasonable work that has earned the ire of the likes of pharmaceutical Pfizer shill Scott Gottlieb, but it feels like he’s been a bit too quick on the trigger finger on Elon Musk.

Elon Mask

There are certainly valid criticisms of Elon Musk. The lack of unsuspension of many important accounts — amongst those Steve Kirsch, Dr McCullough, Dr Malone, Dr Wolf and no doubt more — still stuck in limbo.

All whilst Elon is kicking up a storm with ‘the Twitter files’ which feels more like a rehashed recap of what we already knew; Hunter laptop was real, Trump was banned for political reasons, Twitter was engaging in government directed censorship. And the whole Elon ‘in bed with mRNA manufacturing’ thing with CureVac.

Alex Seems To Think Elon Said Things He Didn’t

However in this case, it does not feel like Alex’s criticisms are valid. Alex seems to twist Elon’s words by remarking that:

Musk turned Roth’s words - which cannot possibly be read as a defense of pedophilia or child sexual exploitation - into this

But Musk didn’t say it was either paedophilia or child sexual exploitation (CSE). So where is Alex getting this interpretation from? He doesn’t give an explicit quote or an example from Elon of any sort of direct accusation.

It seems to be Alex’s own interpretation based on Yoel’s own actions. Ironically, Alex quotes Elon’s very words which clearly don’t say either “pedophilia” or “child sexual exploitation”.

Elon Musk @elonmusk

@elizableu Looks like Yoel is arguing in favor of children being able to access adult Internet services in his PhD thesis:

Elon also makes clear what he does say is opinion, with the words “looks like” and not “is”. And it isn’t an unreasonable take, it does look like that. Why should a dating app be facilitating underage children in any case? Creepy alert.

Alex later on repeats the remark again:

I can’t believe I have to say this, but no one - not Elon Musk or anyone else - has presented any evidence that Roth supports child pornography or sexual abuse.

Elon hasn’t presented any evidence because Elon simply has not made that claim. You have, Alex. It feels very much like Alex is triggered emotionally here for some reason.

That said, no-one can deny the writings of Yoel Roth are super-creepy, like this one Ian Miles Cheong found from 2012, where Roth apparently can’t distinguish crying children from porn? What?

Alex Thinks Elon Should Be Psychic?

Alex goes on to oddly berate Elon Musk for his retroactive choices, because apparently Elon should be psychic and automatically aware of people’s possible guilt immediately, by saying Elon tried to keep Yoel Roth on the Twitter team.

Sure, but it’s not like Yoel said ‘hey look at this PhD thesis where I try to argue children should access adult dating services’ and Elon jumped up and said ‘just the man’. Elon likely tried to keep him on because he was a senior lead, and you know, those people have passwords and access to vital services. You don’t ever fire senior leads from programming projects until you’re sure you’ve got all the passwords and access codes from them.

Weirdly Alex is trying to have his outrage cake and eat it too here. Elon should have fired Yoel for something Alex is trying to argue he hasn’t done, that Elon didn’t say he did? What?

Alex Incorrectly Claims Elon Reduced the CSE Team

To be fair, Alex is ‘just’ repeating a claim from Bloomberg (although simply repeating someone else’s claims is not immunity from defamation), but in journalism you’re supposed to check your sources. Alex claims Elon reduced the CSE team via a number of odd statements.

The first of which he declares the sole purpose of every single Twitter staff member is simply to ‘keep Twitter free of abusive material’.

Alex doesn’t supply any evidence to back up his claims of what worker roles were fired, and just assumes that is all they did. As someone who previously worked in Big Data, the idea that 75% of staff were purely working on ‘abusive material’ seems patently absurd.

A workforce will comprise of everything from janitors to server operators, from programmers to beta testers, InfoSec, management, PR, HR and more. Is Alex trying to suggest even the cafe workers Elon fired were meant to keep abuse material down?

In truth, Bloomberg’s claims of Musk “halving” the CSE team were contradicted by Twitter employee Ella Irwin, the new head of Trust and Safety at Twitter, who had publicly stated that the CSE team had 0 engineers and very few employees at the start of 2022, before Musk had even bought Twitter (this was 3 days before Alex’s post):

This blows a hole in both Bloomberg’s and Alex’s narrative that Elon was undermining the detection of CSE on Twitter. In-fact, many non-mainstream, non-Elon-hostile outlets have reported that since Elon’s takeover, CSE has actually gone down.

It is one of the better qualities of Elon, although The Daily Beagle is deeply cynical of any painted hero of yore, so we reserve judgement (no-one wins a medal for doing what should have already been done in the first place).

Alex Tries To Blame Elon For Any Harm That Might Happen To Yoel (If Any)

An incredibly weird take. Did Alex blame Jack Dorsey for every shooter and every murderer who used Twitter to reach a conclusion? Surely by their enabling violence, such as with Antifa, anyone injured or killed, the former CEOs should be guilty of as well?

There might be readers who agree — fair enough, but it isn’t a view Alex has expressed before or consistently. He’s holding Elon to a standard he didn’t even hold the previous Twitter CEOs. Or even Scott Gottlieb. Gottlieb literally falsely accused Alex of violence but he didn’t say ‘if blood flows, it will be on Scott Gottlieb’s hands’. Meanwhile, Elon taking a tepid take on Yoel’s own words is incitement to blood spillage?

Any time Twitter defamed people with false labels of “misinformation” regarding poison shots, leading to violence and harassment of the unvaccinated — you know, the kind of reckless thing Yoel Roth did — Alex did not say ‘blood’ was on the hands of Yoel Roth or the prior Twitter execs. They killed people with false medical information but that kind of opinion is bloodless, right Alex?

But if Elon expresses a view on material he has read — a view that advocates no action and proposes no response — and has shown evidence for it, he’s suddenly guilty of all harms? Seems very anti-free speech there Alex. Elon should just ‘shut the f—k up’ with his opinions, right?

Even if Yoel was a former employee of Twitter, even if Elon was his prior boss, even if the thesis is public where anyone can read it, even if it echoes exactly what Elon thinks it says, even if many other people express similar views, Elon should close his trap, keep silent, what he saw was purely a coincidence.

Alex Laughably Suggests An Agency Should Investigate

The same sort of agencies that “investigate” the harms of the SARS-CoV-2 shots? The same ones that “investigated” the Hunter Biden laptop? The same ones that gave Jeffrey Epstein one years house arrest after “investigating” him despite him being convicted of raping 14 children? Those ones?

But investigate what, exactly? Elon doesn’t specify a crime. Terrible opinions written in a PhD thesis are not illegal in the United States, no matter how grotty, low quality or disgusting they might be. The power of the First Amendment.

First Amendment eagle sez grotty opinions are protected. Sqree!

The PhD thesis was public, so if it was illegal, it would have already prompted an investigation by the University. But Alex seems to be appealing to a weird psychic outcome here — how does he not know that Elon hasn’t already referred materials to be investigated?

Ironically, Twitter has a prior history of allowing ‘groomers’ on their website, even declaring the term ‘hate speech’. Twitter even allowed paedophiles to discuss their attraction to children publicly prior to Elon’s takeover, even as early as 2018, which will have no doubt occurred during Yoel Roth’s watch. Inconvenient contradictions that Alex is hopefully, simply not aware of, and not instead intentionally ignoring.

It genuinely feels like Alex Berenson is scraping the barrel on this one. Hopefully it wasn’t in response his being blocked by Elon Musk, which, for the record, Elon has the right to do. Alex is still free to post on Twitter, yes?

So long as you’re not suspended from the town square, it is fine for individuals to block whomever they do not wish to see. It is more than can be said for several accounts, who don’t even have that.

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