Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu encouraged Elon Musk to strike a balance between defending free speech and combating hate speech during a meeting on Monday.
This is coming after weeks of criticism over antisemitic comments on Musk’s social networking platform X.
Musk has stated that X should be a place where users can express different points of view, but the firm will restrict the distribution of some posts that might be in violation of its standards, referring to the strategy as “freedom of speech, not reach.”
The billionaire, who also owns Tesla and SpaceX, claimed that his meeting with Netanyahu drew more criticism from Tesla workers than “anything else I’ve ever done.”
The Israeli Supreme Court’s authority is being restricted by Netanyahu and his nationalist-religious coalition, who claim that doing so is necessary to prevent political overreach by unelected judges.
The issue has polarised Israeli society and raised questions about the state of Israel’s democracy, according to opponents who claim that the reforms could foster corruption and the misuse of power by removing effective supervision.
In the past year, foreign investment in Israeli IT firms has plummeted, in part because of a global slowdown and made worse by investor concerns that efforts to limit the Supreme Court’s authority would eliminate an important check and balance.
