NBA superstar LeBron James says he hopes that billionaire and new Twitter Owner Elon Musk takes the amount of hate speech on the platform “very seriously.”
Citing a Business Insider article that reported a surge in the use of the N-word following Musk’s takeover of the site, James decried those he claims use “hate speech” and call it “free speech.”
“I don’t know Elon Musk and, tbh, I couldn’t care less who owns Twitter. But I will say that if this is true, I hope he and his people take this very seriously because this is scary AF. So many damn unfit people saying hate speech is free speech,” James wrote.
James’ concern over the potentially dangerous effects of divisive and hateful speech on Twitter contains no small amount of irony. The Laker has contributed more than his fair share of potentially dangerous and incendiary content on the social media site.
Including, but not limited to, the time he tweeted the picture of a cop who had just saved the life of a black teenager and captioned it by saying, “YOU’RE NEXT.”
As a reminder, the officer in the above picture shot Ma’Khia Bryant, a knife-wielding black teenager doing her best to kill two other black teenagers. With zero regard for the facts, much less any concern over the physical security of this particular officer or police officers in general, James tweeted his picture in a move clearly designed to divide and create hatred.
In another instance, this time on Instagram, James seized on the already dangerous and divisive mood of the country following the January 6 Capitol riot to tweet that the police reaction to the protesters was proof we live in “2 AMERIKKKAS.”
“DO YOU UNDERSTAND NOW? “I know the answer to that,” James continued. “You still don’t cause no matter what happens you still won’t be judge, looked at crazy, chained, beaten, hung, shot to death cause of the color of your skin!!!! 2 AMERIKKKAS we live in and it was at FULL CAPACITY LIVE IN DIRECT yesterday in our Nations CAPITAL AT THE CAPITOL!”
LeBron James has over 52.3 million Twitter followers. He has never hesitated to jump into incredibly volatile situations – normally with no understanding of the facts – and use the power of his Twitter account to inflame his mostly young followers.
For his part, Elon Musk has said that Twitter’s moderation process will consist of a review board with widely varying political perspectives. Then, maybe, there will be at least one person who thinks LeBron James is guilty of exactly what he accuses others of doing.
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