<![CDATA[Community Notes]]><![CDATA[dictator]]><![CDATA[free speech]]><![CDATA[Russia]]><![CDATA[Russian disinformation]]><![CDATA[twitter]]><![CDATA[Ukraine]]><![CDATA[Volodymyr Zelensky]]>Featured

Elon Musk Calls Out Zelensky and Community Note Manipulation – Twitchy

February 21, 2025
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On Wednesday, we shared with you how Trump had called out Volodymyr Zelensky as a ‘A Dictator without Elections.’ In the same TruthSocial post, Trump also said that Zelensky ‘is very low in Ukrainian Polls.’ This and some off-the-cuff comments led to the Hill attempting a fact-check on that issue:





From the article:

‘I mean, I hate to say it, but he’s down at a 4 percent approval rating,’ the president said from his Florida Mar-a-Lago resort during the signing of several executive orders. 

Recent polling of Zelensky’s approval rating does not match up with Trump’s claims; The Hill has reached out to the White House to comment on the discrepancy.

About 57 percent of Ukrainians trust the country’s president, according to a Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) survey that was released Wednesday, while 37 percent don’t.

That marked a 5-point uptick in support for Zelensky, after the December iteration of the poll found that 52 percent trusted him while 39 percent did not.

But in our prior piece, we addressed the issue of polling, writing in response to someone who claimed that Zelensky is more popular in Ukraine than Trump is in America:

[I]s he attempting to measure a person’s popularity in a country that has no freedom of expression? And if we can have accurate opinion polls in Ukraine, why can’t we have elections? Seriously, we doubt opinion polls at the best of times. As we have frequently joked, according to polls, Hillary Clinton won the 2016 election.

So bluntly, we don’t trust anyone’s data on Zelensky’s popularity under the best circumstances—and these are not the best circumstances. If you are a critic of Zelensky who lives in Ukraine and someone asks you what you think of Zelensky, are you going to take the risk of being honest?

This led Amuse to post the following:

The cut off text says:

The US intel community estimates support at around 4% which is the number Trump has been citing. Don’t bet against Trump.

This in turn apparently got Community Noted which in turn led to fireworks from Elon Musk himself:

Recommended

The cut off text says:

It should be utterly obvious that a Zelensky-controlled poll about his OWN approval is not credible!!

If Zelensky was actually loved by the people of Ukraine, he would hold an election. He knows he would lose in a landslide, despite having seized control of ALL Ukrainian media, so he canceled the election.

In reality, he is despised by the people of Ukraine, which is why he has refused to hold an election. I challenge Zelensky to hold an election and refute this. He will not. 

President Trump is right to ignore him and solve for peace independent of the disgusting, massive graft machine feeding off the dead bodies of Ukrainian soldiers.

First off, we are not quite sure what the Community Note said because it had been nuked by the time we caught on to this story.

But we are gratified to finally see some recognition that Community Notes can be just plain wrong. For instance, we caught a Community Note not only being flat out wrong about the law, but demonstrating no understanding of how you find the law itself. (Hint: If you want to find out what a statute says, you start with the text of the statute, not a website describing a statute using different words.)

But we found Musk’s decision to call out Zelensky for being basically a dictator more interesting. And that wasn’t the only time he did that. For instance, podcaster Konstantin Kisin wrote:

The cut off text reads:

America went further and rounded up Japanese Americans and threw them into internment camps.

Pardon us for breaking in, but did he actually cite Japanese internment as a precedent justifying what Zelensky was doing, as opposed to being something awful America shouldn’t have done?

Kisin goes on:

No, Zelensky hasn’t suspended ‘independent media’. He has suspended pro-Russian media. Even Orwell, arguably the greatest defender of free speech of the 20th century, acknowledged the need for state restrictions on media during war. The idea that in WW2 we would allow pro-enemy propaganda on our airwaves is absurd.

There are many legitimate criticisms to be made of the way this war came about, the way both the Ukrainian and Western leadership have behaved and the failure to end this war when it became clear that Ukraine had done its best and lost.

But the spectacle of people sitting in warmth, comfort and plenty lying and misrepresenting a country and a people who are courageously fighting to defend their land against a bully is sickening and people who engage in this should be deeply ashamed.

They won’t, of course, because to most of them the war in Ukraine isn’t a real thing. It’s just a topic for online click farming. The only silver lining is we’re really finding out who’s who.





Of course, what this really amounts to is cherry picking bad behavior of others to justify Zelensky’s bad behavior, and admitting the charges that he is suppressing the opposition is true, but it’s a good thing! To the people claiming that Zelensky is not a dictator, we ask: How is he not a dictator? What element of the definition of ‘dictator’ doesn’t apply to Zelensky?

In any case, Musk responded to him:

And really, we don’t see anything in the Ukrainian Constitution that prevents an election. We suggested yesterday that a presidential election couldn’t be held during martial law. But we appear to have been wrong on this point. Now, this author is not a Ukrainian lawyer, and furthermore, we are working on a translation of their constitution into English so there are two good reasons to admit we could be wrong about this, but we only found two parts of the constitution that indicates elections are influenced by the introduction of martial law.

First, Article 83 says:

In the event of the introduction of martial law or of a state of emergency in Ukraine, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine assembles within a period of two days without convocation.

In the event that the term of authority of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine expires while martial law or a state of emergency is in effect, its authority is extended until the day of the first meeting of the first session of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, elected after the cancellation of martial law or of the state of emergency.

The Verkhovna Rada is their legislature, and thus this section only seems to apply to that body. And it still makes it theoretically possible to hold elections for this legislature in the middle of a war but we don’t need to get into that because that has nothing to do with the election of the president.

Additionally, Article 157 says that ‘The Constitution of Ukraine shall not be amended in conditions of martial law or a state of emergency.’ But we aren’t talking about amending the constitution, just what it currently says.

So, we are not seeing anything in their constitution that prevents Zelensky from holding an election. Again, this author is not a Ukrainian lawyer, and he is working off a translated copy of their constitution, so we could be wrong. But it sure doesn’t look like anything is preventing them from holding elections under their constitution. So, the question is why doesn’t he? Maybe there is a statute in the way, but statutes can be amended or, if necessary, repealed.





People can change their minds, you know. For instance, we supported Ukraine and Zelensky, until Zelensky became a dictator. Now, we don’t care which dictator rules Ukraine.

True, allowing Community Notes to be used as a tool to suppress monetization was a violation of Musk’s professed belief in Freedom of Expression. We hope he changes his mind about this.

Except the issue was more than whether or not he liked it, but whether or not it actually had a reliable source. This note didn’t.

Frankly, the feature started going downhill the moment Community Notes could be used to block monetization. Once people knew they could hurt their ideological enemies financially, fascist busybodies had all the incentive they needed to abuse the system. Take that away and we think Community Notes becomes much better, and much less important.

As if they can’t get corrupted over time.

The same way we did when the Confederates held about one third of our country.

No, the whole point is for it to be accurate and rely on good sources. And if it is producing results that are factually wrong, then the process needs to be changed.





The cut off text:

For comparison, during the COVID-19 pandemic, over 70 countries postponed elections, including local and national votes, due to safety and logistical concerns (source: International IDEA, “Global Overview of COVID-19: Impact on Elections,” 2021). Ukraine’s situation, with active combat and occupation, presents far greater obstacles. 

Conclusion

On the balance of evidence, it is normative for countries to cancel or postpone elections during foreign invasion, incursion, or attack, particularly when direct occupation and ongoing hostilities render free and fair voting impossible. Ukraine’s decision aligns with this norm, supported by historical examples (UK, France, Poland), its constitutional framework, and international guidelines (Venice Commission). While Musk’s criticism highlights democratic ideals, it does not account for the extraordinary circumstances Ukraine faces. Zelensky’s choice to extend terms under martial law is both legally mandated and practically necessitated, consistent with global precedents for such crises.”

This is true. It is very normal for countries to do this. In fact, the normal state of humanity throughout history has been despotism of one form or another. Human slavery was a near-constant in human existence that wasn’t even seriously questioned until the 1700’s. Freedom and democracy is decidedly abnormal.

So in that context, you’ll forgive this author if we don’t want to be ‘normal.’

We won’t cut and paste the whole list, but its equally ridiculous to say Putin enjoys 78% approval. We frankly get skeptical when any politician is said to enjoy more than 75% approval. We’re not saying it never happens—it probably did with George Washington early in his presidency—but we are saying we get suspicious, especially if we don’t know whether a specific country has true freedom of conscience.





Of course that is anecdotal, even if every word he is saying is true.

That appears to be quoting their statutory law because it definitely isn’t in their constitution. Statutory law can be changed.

The cut off text:

It makes average X followers afraid to ask questions or comment at all  fear of having your account stifled or locked 🔔🇺🇸🕶

Twitter/X is much better under Musk. But it is far from perfect and it still seems to be biased against conservatives. The metaphor we use is that under the current regime, conservatives are having to fight with one hand behind our backs. Under the old regime, we had to fight with both hands tied. And apparently we only need one free hand to win most arguments. Heh.

The voters think there can’t be an election? How exactly did you determine that they believed this without … you know… voting?

This author was suspended for two weeks for a joke that we labeled as a joke, twice.





The cut off text:

Instead, we see another example of how authoritarian leaders manipulate and control info to stay in power. Let’s keep calling out this kind of nonsense for what it is!

Of course, all of this made us wonder if Zelensky might cut off Twitter/X in Ukraine just like he might have cut off TruthSocial in retaliation for what Trump said about him. But then we saw this post:

A little googling around suggests that there is some truth to this. Starlink appears to be important to the Ukrainian war effort, although we are not sure it is as critical as ‘Mostly Peaceful’ makes it out to be. Still, Zelensky might decide not to pick a fight with Musk for this exact reason.

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