Bill Ackman says he’s ‘learned a lot’ from Elon Musk’s X – Quartz

Activist investor Bill Ackman is a fan of Elon Musks social media platform X and the debates and conversations he has on the site.

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Ackman, who has become known for his lengthy essay-style posts on X, lauded the platform as a safe haven for free speech in a conversation at the TED 2024 conference in Vancouver last week.

Im a big fan of X. I think it really is an open free speech platform, Ackman said. Ive learned a lot, and its affected my views, my politics, my insights. And I think its one of the few places you can go and have a true free speech platform.

The negative is, of course, youre going to confront hate speech and vile speech and things that are the detritus of free speech, he added. But I still think its a very, very good thing.

When Musk bought X (then Twitter) back in October 2022, he acknowledged that the site could not become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said without consequences. Musk said he was setting out to create a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO is a self-proclaimed free speech absolutist.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a nonprofit organization focused on online hate speech, reported last September that hate speech has continued to climb on X since Musks acquisition of the site. X Corp., the company behind the platform, sued the CCDH over how the group collected data from the site. The suit was dismissed by a federal judge last month.

Ackman, CEO of the hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management, made headlines last year after he launched a crusade to oust the president of Harvard University at the time, Claudine Gay, over the schools response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. Ackman has continued to express his support for Israel on X in the months since.

Gay resigned in January after facing the pressure from Ackman and other major donors, as well as drawing mounting criticism of her congressional testimony on campus antisemitism and accusations of academic plagiarism.

Following Gays resignation, Ackman penned a several-thousand-word post on X calling diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs on college campuses an inherently a racist and illegal movement.

Several TED fellows resigned in January after TED announced Ackmans participation in the annual conference. In a letter addressed to TED leader Chris Anderson, the fellows wrote that Ackman has defended Israels genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people and has cynically weaponised antisemitism in his programme to purge American universities of Pro-Palestinian freedom of speech.

Following the fellows resignations, Ackman told several news outlets that he stands unapologetically with Israel and against antisemitism and terrorism, while strongly supporting the Palestinian people.

Attempts to cancel speech and eliminate the free and respectful exchange of ideas among people with differing views are driving much of the divisiveness that plagues our nation, he said. Truth, wisdom and ultimately peace are the result of the free exchange of ideas and debate, precisely what Ted is all about. It is sad that this is not more widely understood.

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Bill Ackman says he's 'learned a lot' from Elon Musk's X - Quartz