Elon Musk: Federal government counters his insults against Olaf Scholz

DER SPIEGEL Elon Musk: Federal government counters his insults against Olaf Scholz 6 hours • 2 minutes reading time Elon Musk had called Olaf Scholz a fool, and now a government spokeswoman has responded briefly and succinctly. The government does not want to delete her account on X despite increasingly radical content. The federal government reacted calmly to a statement by tech billionaire and Trump supporter Elon Musk about Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD). Musk wrote in German on his online platform X on Thursday: "Olaf is a fool." With his comment, he responded to a report about the collapse of the traffic light coalition. On Friday, deputy government spokeswoman Christiane Hoffmann commented on this: "There is freedom of speech on X," she said at the federal press conference in Berlin. At the same time, Hoffmann justified the fact that the federal government continues to have an account on X. Social media is an important means for the federal government to explain and communicate its work, she said. In weighing things up, it is important for the government to continue to be represented there. Due to the extremist content that Musk allows on X, some politicians, scientists and even normal users are no longer active on the platform. Since Musk took over Twitter in October 2022, various conspiracy theorists and right-wing extremists have been unblocked there. Likewise, in many cases, more radical and inflammatory content that would have been moderated in previous years is no longer deleted on X. There are therefore isolated calls for politicians to no longer support the platform through their presence and their own contributions. (Read more about how Musk turned X into a propaganda tool for Trump here.) Habeck is back on X Shortly after Elon Musk joined, the federal government announced that it would be monitoring the development of the platform "very closely". Twitter has a special responsibility due to its impact on the public, warned government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit in October 2022. The platform reserves the right to possibly leave its own accounts. However, numerous members of the government, as well as ministries and offices, still have channels on X. The Chancellor is followed by over 900,000 users on the platform. Meanwhile, Robert Habeck (Greens) has just returned to X. Habeck left the network in 2019, citing his own mistakes when tweeting and a data leak that was also circulating on X. On Thursday he wrote: "Leaving places like this to the loudmouths and populists is easy. But making it easy for yourself cannot be the solution. Not today. Not this week. Not at this time. That's why I'm back on X."