Musk tweets fake CNN headline with photo of Don Lemon

Elon Musk, the mega-billionaire and the new owner of Twitter, posted a meme on Monday with a fake caption, credited to CNN, making it appear as if CNN host Don Lemon claimed Musk had the restrictions on the Type of content allowed reversed Twitter would “threaten freedom of expression”.

Musk – with no indication it was a joke – posted a picture which said, “CNN: Elon Musk could threaten free speech on Twitter by literally allowing people to speak freely.” The post includes a photo of Lemon appearing to be talking about Musk on air, with the imaginary Chiron among Lemon contains the same text as the heading.

In response to Musk’s tweet of the parody meme, CNN’s communications team wrote on Twitter: “This headline never appeared on CNN. Be better.”

The original fake CNN headline was published in April 2022 by the Genesius Times, which describes itself as “the most reliable source of fake news on the planet,” according to the Associated Press.

Musk, a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist,” has complained that Twitter has a history of censoring conservative viewpoints and that he would hold Twitter to strict principles of “free speech” — a stance critics have feared they might be too an increase in misinformation and hate speech on the platform. The richest person in the world closed the $44 billion deal for Twitter a month ago. “I am against censorship that goes well beyond the law,” Musk tweeted in April. “If people want less freedom of speech, they will ask the government to pass legislation. Therefore, it goes against the will of the people to go beyond the law.”

Earlier this month, Musk unilaterally decided to reactivate Donald Trump’s Twitter account after conducting a poll of his supporters that found a narrow majority were in favor of allowing the ex-president back on Twitter. On November 24th explained Musk that Twitter will grant “amnesty” to banned accounts starting this week (“provided they haven’t broken the law or engaged in egregious spam”).