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Elon Musk’s next target: Italy

Elon Musk’s next target: Italy
Billy Pickett
By Billy PickettNovember 14, 2024
Billy Pickett
Billy Pickett is a contributing writer to GZERO Daily, specializing in the intersection of international politics and pop culture. Billy is a former employee of Ian Bremmer's staff at Eurasia Group. Prior to that, he helped run various research programs and manage digital communications at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. He holds international affairs degrees from Fordham University in New York and the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, where his research explored how populist parties exploit identity politics to promote distrust in multilateral institutions.
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Elon Musk has been busy – speaking at Trump rallies, launching rockets into space, transforming Twitter/X into something unrecognizable, and being named to help lead a new government department under President-elect Donald Trump. Naturally, Musk is still finding time to fight with the Italian government.

On Wednesday, Musk took to X to criticize Italian judges for ruling (twice) against his pal, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. She hoped to send thousands of migrants for screening outside the EU in Albania to ease pressure on one of the busiest migration routes to Europe. The cases will now go to the EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg, with no timeline set for a decision.

“These judges need to go,” Musk wrote to his 200 million-plus followers (and everyone else on the platform who can’t escape him even with the block button). He asked, "Do the people of Italy live in a democracy or does an unelected autocracy make the decisions?”

Italian President Sergio Mattarella hit back at Musk’s foray into Italian politics, without mentioning him by name. Italy “knows how to take care of itself while respecting its Constitution,” said Mattarella, and others “must respect its sovereignty.”

Since Musk’s takeover of Twitter/X in late 2022, the site has become more popular with conservatives after removing bans on controversial far-right influencers and relaxing content moderation. Twitter’s new direction spooked advertisers and led news outlet NPR to cease posting altogether. Now, The Guardian is quitting the platform too. “X is a toxic media platform,” the UK-based outlet said, and “Elon Musk has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse.”

Disgruntled (often liberal) users are on the hunt for microblogging alternatives. While Threads has the advantage of integrating with fellow Meta apps, competitor BlueSky – which was launched by then-CEO of Twitter Jack Dorsey in 2019 – is making waves with its different user-created algorithmic feeds, reaching 15 million users for the first time this week.

Shameless plug: Don’t forget to GZERO on Twitter/X … Threads … and BlueSky.
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