Vitalik Buterin Warns Elon Musk That X's Hate Campaigns Could Hurt Free Speech

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has expressed issues to Elon Musk, arguing that the recent surge of "unhinged" hate speech and coordinated attacks against Europe on X (formerly Twitter) is jeopardizing the very future of free speech. Following a €120 million fine imposed on X by the European Commission for Digital Services Act violations—including issues with the paid verification system and lack of transparency—Buterin observed that discourse on the platform has shifted from policy debate to "emotionally-manipulative misinformation."

Buterin expressed concern that Musk has turned the platform into a "death star laser for coordinated hate sessions," specifically targeting European cities like London and delegitizing the EU. He argues that this behavior risks a massive global backlash against liberal values in the coming years. While acknowledging valid criticisms of EU bureaucracy and surveillance, Buterin maintains that X’s current trajectory—where algorithms are "arbitrarily" tweaked to boost rage over civility—is a structural risk to democratic values.

To address these issues, Buterin proposed two primary solutions:

• Algorithmic Transparency: Disclosing optimization targets so users understand what the platform is promoting and why.
• On-Chain Verification: Using Zero-Knowledge (ZK) proofs and time-stamping decisions on-chain to make the algorithm more transparent and less susceptible to manual manipulation or censorship.

Ultimately, Buterin views the survival of a unified, reformed Europe as a vital global model and fears that Musk’s "personal vendetta" against EU regulators is weaponizing the platform in a way that will eventually lead to the destruction of the free speech principles Musk claims to defend.