Digital rights experts say the situation has created an unprecedented imbalance in power. Musk’s massive online following, his ownership of a social media platform where he can dictate content moderation rules, and his position heading a government entity with access to private data, give him a unique ability to threaten those who question him and chill dissenting speech.
“People do not feel safe speaking out in this country against the government,” said Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington. “Because the government in the form of Elon Musk and President Trump himself will catalyse retribution.”
Hedtler-Gaudette said that Musk’s decision to ridicule a blind, 38-year-old government waste expert exhibits something different: “He’s a fundamentally small person,” Hedtler-Gaudette said in an interview with The Washington Post.
Musk did not return a request for comment.
Long before Musk owned X, he used his personal account to name and shame individuals. In 2018, when journalist Erin Biba wrote that Musk attacked scientists and reporters, the billionaire quipped that he has “never attacked science. Definitely attacked misleading journalism like yours tho.” The single remark triggered a torrent of emails, tweets and Instagram posts, Biba wrote, from what she called the “MuskBros,” many with sexually offensive remarks.
After Musk purchased Twitter in 2022 and renamed it X, the site transformed. The billionaire cut the bulk of X’s trust and safety team and replaced professional fact-checking with crowdsourced “Community Notes”. As Musk’s account has swelled to 217 million followers, he has the loudest online megaphone in US politics – a megaphone further amplified by algorithms tuned to prioritise his content in people’s feeds, said Joan Donovan, assistant professor of journalism at Boston University.
Musk’s posts serve as “merely a trigger mechanism” to his followers, Donovan said, often prompting them to scour social media profiles, look up information about a target’s family members, launch cyberattacks, lodge fake complaints with their employer, or flood people with texts and phone calls throughout the night.
Shortly after taking over the site, Musk falsely posted that Yoel Roth, the site’s former head of trust and safety, was “in favour of children being able to access adult internet services”. Some interpreted the comment to mean Roth was a pedophile, prompting a wave of antisemitic and homophobic harassment that ultimately forced him to move out of his home, according to Roth’s congressional testimony.
Following Trump’s reelection, Musk has often focused on people who fit narratives popular with the president’s nationalist base.
In November, Musk retweeted a post identifying Ashley Thomas, a director of climate diversification at the US International Development Finance Corporation, questioning if taxpayers should fund her salary. “So many fake jobs,” Musk said in a tweet response, garnering more than 33 million views. His post inspired a barrage of abuse and calls for Thomas’ dismissal. “Fire her day 1,” one poster said.
When wildfires ensnared Los Angeles in January, Musk blamed minority and female firefighters for not stopping the flames sooner, posting their names and photographs. “DEI means people DIE,” Musk tweeted during the natural disaster.
After Wall Street Journal reporter Katherine Long revealed Marko Elez, one of Musk’s DOGE staffers, had made racist comments online – prompting Elez to resign – the billionaire called her “a disgusting and cruel person” and suggested she should be “fired immediately”. Ashok Sinha, a spokesperson for the Wall Street Journal, said in a statement that “we stand by our reporter and our fair and accurate reporting”.
Musk’s attacks carry a new power since Trump has taken office, Calo said. Musk is a special government employee, and his DOGE team has access to sensitive private data. As the owner of X, he can choose what content is allowed.
The combination, Calo said, gives him the unique ability to discourage the people he attacks from posting on social media. Calo argues the process is a form of jawboning, when government actors use their authority to influence content on social media accounts.
“Now, you have a literal White House-appointed official who is on his own media platform and bullying people and threatening people,” Calo said. “If that isn’t jawboning, I literally can’t imagine what that term might mean.”
Musk’s actions online may ultimately reduce the criticism he gets in the future, said Gita Johar, a Columbia University business school professor who specialises in consumer psychology. “People just anticipate being attacked, and don’t take on positions that could make you the target of online bullying,” Johar said.
While Hedtler-Gaudette has yet to face physical harm because of Musk’s post, he said he does worry about the future.
“There is a power to what happens on the internet,” he said. “As much as I like to dismiss it sometimes and laugh at it, it does have real consequences sometimes.”
