Erik Uden 🦣 (@ErikUden@mastodon.de)
mastodon.de
Attached: 1 image A man in Saudi Arabia has been [sentenced to death for his tweets](https://www.newsweek.com/elon-musk-silent-man-sentenced-death-his-tweets-1823779), and surprise: Elon Musk is NOT funding his legal bill as promised because there's a good chance that **the necessary data to identify this man came from the second largest shareholder of Twitter: the Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal**. Musk has been awfully silent about this as you can't really make your “freedom of speech!!” argument when you assist with killing a retired teacher for the regime critic posts they made on your platform, only possible because that regime owns a huge chunk of “your” platform.

“According to an August 29 news release by Human Rights Watch, a civil rights non-governmental organization based in New York City, 54-year-old retired Saudi teacher Muhammad al-Ghamdi was sentenced to death this year by a Saudi court on a series of charges related to his online political activism. […] Al-Ghamdi’s trial judgment claims he used his accounts on the Musk-owned platform X, formerly Twitter, as well as the Google-owned YouTube to commit his alleged crimes. […] Musk’s silence is particularly jarring given his self-professed commitment to free speech, which he often expresses in critiques of the U.S. government and institutions as complicit in an Orwellian plot to restrict free speech. […] Some online have alleged his reluctance to wade into al-Ghamdi’s case could stem from his close and long-standing financial connections to the Saudi royal family.”