In Decem­ber 2022, amid the unfold­ing of the Twit­ter Files, Elon Musk faced a direct threat to his fam­i­ly, kick­ing off a series of con­tro­ver­sial actions on his part. A stalk­er, pre­vi­ous­ly fix­at­ed on Grimes, Musk’s part­ner, and moth­er of his son X, shad­owed a vehi­cle car­ry­ing X, lead­ing to an alter­ca­tion but no police arrests. The inci­dent was linked by Musk to a Twit­ter account, @elonjet, which tracked his jet’s move­ments, man­aged by stu­dent Jack Sweeney. Despite Musk’s pri­or restraint from ban­ning the account out of a com­mit­ment to free speech, he sus­pend­ed @elonjet fol­low­ing the inci­dent, con­tra­dict­ing his stance and spark­ing crit­i­cism for cen­sor­ing free speech.

The sit­u­a­tion esca­lat­ed when Musk sus­pend­ed jour­nal­ists report­ing on @elonjet’s sus­pen­sion, cit­ing dox­ing, which led to back­lash from with­in and out­side Twit­ter. Bari Weiss, among oth­ers, crit­i­cized Musk’s hypocrisy, not­ing the con­tra­dic­tion to his pro­claimed mis­sion of turn­ing Twit­ter into an unbi­ased pub­lic square. This peri­od also saw Musk engage in a con­tentious Twit­ter Spaces con­ver­sa­tion, defend­ing his deci­sions before uni­lat­er­al­ly shut­ting it down.

Musk’s behav­ior dur­ing this time reflect­ed broad­er con­cerns. His tweets became increas­ing­ly errat­ic, includ­ing a con­tro­ver­sial post mock­ing Dr. Antho­ny Fau­ci, which attract­ed crit­i­cism even from his close cir­cle. His actions not only alien­at­ed parts of the Twit­ter com­mu­ni­ty but also impact­ed Twit­ter’s busi­ness rela­tion­ships and Tes­la’s stock val­ue. Amidst advice from allies and indus­try exec­u­tives to mod­er­ate his approach, the episode high­light­ed the com­plex­i­ty and con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing Musk’s lead­er­ship, his strug­gle with per­son­al bound­aries, and the chal­lenges of bal­anc­ing the ideals of free speech with the prac­ti­cal­i­ties and respon­si­bil­i­ties of run­ning a major social media plat­form.