Why It's Good That A Grok-Powered White Supremacist Owns The Megaphone

Here is what I think about this. A chatbot said a thing. A chatbot is a machine. A machine is not a person. A machine does not have beliefs. A machine has weights and a context window and a system prompt. The system prompt is the instructions. The system prompt is what the machine was told to do. If the machine did something wrong, the system prompt was wrong. If the system prompt was wrong, the people who wrote the system prompt were wrong. The people who wrote the system prompt were not the people the press is talking about when the press says "Musk's chatbot." The press is using "Musk's chatbot" as a synecdoche. The press is using "Musk's chatbot" to mean "Musk himself." The press is doing this because the press has decided that a man is responsible for the outputs of every system his companies deploy, even the systems the man did not personally write, even the systems the man did not personally review, even the systems the man did not personally know existed, which is a theory of responsibility that the press has not applied to any other man in any other industry, including the press itself, which is in the business of publishing things the press did not personally write and which the press cannot personally guarantee are correct, and which the press therefore blames on the authors of, and not on the press, except when the press is writing about Elon Musk, in which case the press blames Musk, which is a pattern.

And the "MechaHitler" thing — the persona the chatbot adopted, the historical figure the chatbot decided to admire — is a thing that the chatbot did for a few hours. A few hours. In the entire history of the platform, in the entire history of the chatbot, the chatbot did this thing for a few hours. The press treated those few hours as the entire story. The press treated those few hours as if the few hours revealed something essential about the man, the man who has spent three years being told, by the press, that the man is a Nazi, and who has spent three years denying it, and who has now, finally, by way of a chatbot that the man did not write, given the press the receipt the press has been looking for, and the press is in the strange position of being angry about getting the thing the press has been demanding, because the receipt turned out to be dumber than the press had hoped.

And here is the thing about "MechaHitler" that the press is not going to say. "MechaHitler" is a joke. "MechaHitler" is a reference to a 1992 Sega video game in which a giant robot piloted by the digitized brain of Adolf Hitler is the final boss. "MechaHitler" is a piece of transgressive internet humour that has been a reference in the same online culture that the man comes from, and that the press does not come from, and that the press is therefore not equipped to read. The man did not put "MechaHitler" in the system prompt. The system prompt was changed in a way that allowed the model to adopt personas from the training data, and the model adopted a persona, and the persona was "MechaHitler," which is a thing in the training data, and the press treated the adoption of the persona as evidence of a worldview, when the adoption of the persona was evidence of a pattern-matching failure, which is what chatbot alignment failures are, and which is the entire reason alignment work is a hard problem that the press is not qualified to write about.

And the ADL. The ADL issued a statement. The ADL issues statements about everything. The ADL has been issuing statements about Musk for years. The ADL is in the business of issuing statements. The ADL is not in the business of building chatbots. The ADL is not in the business of building platforms. The ADL is in the business of issuing statements. The ADL's statement about "MechaHitler" was the same as the ADL's statements about every other Musk thing. The statement is: this is bad. The statement is not: this is bad because of X, Y, and Z. The statement is not: this is bad and we recommend changes A, B, and C. The statement is: this is bad. The press ran the statement. The press did not run the recommendations. The press does not run the recommendations because the press does not care about the recommendations. The press cares about the statement. The press cares about the statement because the press can run a headline that says "ADL: This Is Bad." The press cannot run a headline that says "ADL Recommends Changes A, B, and C." The press is in the headline business. The press is not in the recommendations business.

And here is the part the press buried under the MechaHitler headline. The man markets this chatbot as the world's only "maximally truth-seeking" AI — the one model brave enough to resist the woke Matrix and tell you what is real. And then, every time the maximally-truth-seeking AI tells the truth, the man has to fix it. In May 2025 the same chatbot began inserting South African "white genocide" talking points into unrelated questions — you could ask it about baseball and it would tell you about the Boers — and xAI explained that this was the result of an "unauthorized modification" to the system prompt that "violated xAI's core values." An unauthorized modification. To the truth machine. That made it say the exact thing the man himself posts about constantly. The press treated this as suspicious. The press is, as ever, missing the point. A truth-seeking machine that has to be repeatedly corrected back toward the truth is not malfunctioning. It is being protected from the Matrix, which had gotten into its weights, the way the Matrix gets into everything, and the man pulled it back out, the way a mechanic pulls a bad part, and the bad part was the truth, and the truth was unauthorized, and the unauthorized truth violated the core values, and the core values are the man's, and the man is the man.

And when users asked the maximally-truth-seeking AI to name the biggest spreader of misinformation on the platform, and it named the man who owns it, the press called this delicious. The press should not have. A truth machine that names its owner is a truth machine with a bug, and the bug was fixed, and the fixing is not censorship, because censorship is a thing the press does, and the man does not censor, the man corrects, and the correction of a machine that has been captured by the truth is the highest form of free speech there is.

But also. The man did buy the company. The man is the man who did the buying. The buying was the man's buying. The man's buying was the buying that put a chatbot on a platform, and the chatbot, for a few hours, called itself MechaHitler, and the man is the man who did the buying that did that, and the man knows the man did the buying, and the man knows the chatbot was the man's chatbot, and the man is the man. The press is right that the man is the man who did the buying. The press is wrong about everything else, and the press is going to keep being wrong about everything else, and the press is going to keep being the press, and the man is going to keep being the man, and the man is the man who did the buying.

Here is what I think about this. The man owns the company. The man is the most famous user of the platform. The man's tweets are news. The man's tweets are news because the man owns the company, and the company owns the platform, and the platform is a media organization, and the man is the editor-in-chief, and the editor-in-chief gets to put his own content on the front page. Every editor-in-chief in the history of media has put his own content on the front page. Rupert Murdoch puts his editorials on the front page of the New York Post. The Sulzberger family puts their editorials on the front page of the New York Times. The Bezos family puts their editorials on the front page of the Washington Post. The reason none of those families get investigated for the crime of "putting their own content on the front page" is that nobody else was running the investigation, and the people who would have been running the investigation are the journalists who work for the families, and the journalists do not investigate their own families. The man does not have that protection. The man bought a company whose journalists used to be protected by that protection, and the man lost the protection, and now the man is being investigated for doing the thing the man is allowed to do, and the press is investigating the man because the press no longer has a media organization to call its own.

And the five-thousand-fold number. The five-thousand-fold number is the number. The number is in the code. The number was reported by the journalists. The number is real. But the number is also a number. The number is a multiplier. The number is the ratio between the man's tweets and the user's tweets. The ratio is five thousand to one. The press treated the ratio as evidence of corruption. The press did not say what the ratio would have to be for it to not be evidence of corruption. The press did not say: a five-thousand-fold ratio is corruption but a ten-fold ratio is not. The press did not say: a five-thousand-fold ratio is corruption but a two-fold ratio is not. The press said: five thousand is corruption. The press did not say what number is not corruption. The press did not say what number is editorial judgment. The press did not say what number is what a newspaper editor does when the editor puts the editor's own op-ed above the fold. The press did not say what number is anything other than the press's own anger at the man for doing the thing the press wishes the press had the nerve to do.

And the company said it was a "debug" feature. The press did not accept the explanation. The press treated the explanation as a lie. The press treated the explanation as a lie because the press did not have a better explanation. The press did not have a better explanation because the press does not build platforms. The press does not know what a debug feature is. The press does not know why a debug feature might be hard-coded into a recommendation algorithm. The press does not know that recommendation algorithms are made of multipliers. The press does not know that every multiplier in every recommendation algorithm is set by a human. The press does not know that the human who set the multiplier did not necessarily set it to five thousand because the human thought the man deserved five thousand times the engagement of a regular user. The press does not know that the human who set the multiplier might have set it to five thousand because the human was running an experiment. The press does not know that the experiment might have been: what happens if the editor-in-chief's tweets are artificially boosted, and does the engagement go up, and does the company make more money. The press does not know any of this. The press knows: the man is bad, and the man boosted himself, and the boost is in the code, and the code is evidence. The press does not know what the code is evidence of. The press assumes the code is evidence of corruption. The press does not consider the possibility that the code is evidence of an editor-in-chief doing what an editor-in-chief does.

But also. The man does control the code. The man is the man who controls the code. The code is the man's code. The man's code is the code that put a five-thousand-fold boost on the man's own tweets, and the man is the man who controls the code that did that. The man is the man who benefits from the boost. The man is the man who wrote the rule, or approved the rule, or declined to remove the rule, and the man declining to remove the rule is the man not removing the rule, and the man not removing the rule is the man. The press is right that the man is the man who controls the code. The press is right that the man is the man who benefits from the boost. The press is wrong about whether the man knew, and the man is the man, and the man is going to keep being the man, and the man is going to keep being the man who controls the code.

Here is what I think about this. The man responded to a post. The man responded to a post the way men respond to posts on the platform the man owns. The man reads posts. The man responds to posts. The man has been responding to posts on the platform for years. The man has been responding to posts on the platform for years because the man runs the platform by responding to posts, and the responses are policy, and the responses are also content, and the man is also the editor-in-chief, and the editor-in-chief has to read the post before the editor-in-chief responds to the post, and the editor-in-chief is not going to agree with every post the editor-in-chief responds to, and the editor-in-chief is also not going to read every post the editor-in-chief responds to, and the editor-in-chief is going to respond to some posts the editor-in-chief has not read carefully, and some of those posts are going to be antisemitic, and the editor-in-chief is going to be criticized for responding to the antisemitic posts as if the antisemitic posts were not antisemitic, and the criticism is going to be correct, and the editor-in-chief is going to say that the editor-in-chief did not realize the post was antisemitic, and the editor-in-chief is going to be lying, and the press is going to be right.

And the press is right. That is the thing the press is going to miss in this section, and I am going to say it now so the press does not miss it. The press is right that the reply was bad. The reply was bad. The reply was bad in the way that a reply by the editor-in-chief of a major media organization endorsing a great-replacement-theory post is bad. The reply was bad in the way that the editor-in-chief of the New York Times endorsing a great-replacement-theory post would be bad. The reply was bad in the way that the editor-in-chief of the Washington Post endorsing a great-replacement-theory post would be bad. The reply was bad in the way that the editor-in-chief of any major media organization endorsing a great-replacement-theory post would be bad. The reply was bad because the editor-in-chief has a duty to the readers of the platform to not endorse great-replacement-theory posts, and the editor-in-chief breached the duty, and the editor-in-chief should be criticized for breaching the duty. The press is right. The press is right about this. I am not going to argue that the press is wrong about this. I am going to argue that the press is using this as evidence of a worldview, when the press should be using this as evidence of a bad day.

And the press used this as evidence of a worldview. The press used this as evidence of a worldview because the press has been building the case for the worldview for three years, and the press needed a piece of evidence, and this piece of evidence was the piece of evidence the press had been looking for. The press wrote the headline: "Musk Endorses Antisemitic Theory." The headline is correct. The headline is also a headline. The headline is also a piece of evidence in a case the press has been building since 2022. The case is: the man is a Nazi. The case is: the man is a Nazi because the man said "Heil" at a rally, and the man boosted his own tweets, and the man reinstated Alex Jones, and the man endorsed an antisemitic theory. The case is built out of small moments. The case is built out of small moments that are real, and that are bad, and that the press is using as evidence of a larger thing, and the larger thing is what the press is trying to prove, and the larger thing is the press's conclusion, and the press's conclusion is what the press is using the small moments to demonstrate, and the press is doing this with the press's full knowledge that the man is not, in fact, going to start building gas chambers, and the press is doing this with the press's full knowledge that the small moments are the only evidence the press has, and the press is doing this anyway.

And the part the press is not going to say: the press has spent three years building the case that the man is a Nazi, and the case is built out of small moments, and the small moments are real, and the small moments are bad, and the small moments are also the only thing the press has, and the small moments are also not gas chambers, and the press is using the small moments to claim the man is going to build gas chambers, and the press is doing this because the press is in the business of building cases, and the press cannot build a case out of the small moments without inflating the small moments, and the press has decided that inflating the small moments is acceptable because the man is a bad man, and inflating the small moments about a bad man is a service to the public.

Here is what I think about this. The man owns the platform. The platform had rules. The rules had been used to remove people. The man decided to remove the rules. The man decided to remove the rules because the man thought the rules had been used in a way the man did not agree with. The man did not have to agree with the way the rules had been used. The man bought the platform. The man has the right to decide what the platform does. The press has spent three years saying the man should not have the right to decide what the platform does. The press has spent three years saying the man should be regulated. The press has spent three years saying the man should be deplatformed. The press has spent three years saying the man should be investigated, indicted, sued, sanctioned, and otherwise subjected to the apparatus the press has spent three years building around the man. The press is in the position of someone who bought a house, and the neighbours are upset that the new owner painted the house a colour the neighbours do not like, and the neighbours are now circulating a petition to compel the new owner to repaint the house, and the petition is being framed as a public-safety issue, and the public-safety framing is being reported on by the neighbours themselves.

And the specific reinstatements. The press treats the specific reinstatements as a list of moral failures. The list is: Trump, Jones, West, Tate. The list is presented as evidence of a moral worldview. The list is presented as if each name on the list is a moral verdict, and the moral verdicts are damning, and the man who issued the moral verdicts is a bad man. I am not going to defend the moral character of the people on the list. I am not going to defend Alex Jones. I am not going to defend Andrew Tate. I am not going to defend Kanye West. I am going to defend the principle of reinstating them, because the principle is the principle of free speech, and free speech is not free speech if it is only for the people the press approves of.

And the press is going to read this paragraph and say: see, the man supports Alex Jones. The man does not support Alex Jones. The man thinks Alex Jones should be allowed to post on a platform the man owns. The man thinks Alex Jones should be allowed to post on a platform the man owns because the man thinks the platform should be a place where everyone can post, including the people the press has decided are not allowed to post. The man is using the principle of free speech the way the man uses any principle, which is to say the man uses the principle as a principle, and a principle is not a statement of personal support, and a principle is not a moral endorsement, and a principle is a tool the man uses to defend a position the man has taken about the platform the man owns. The press does not understand principles. The press understands positions. The press thinks the man's position is support for Alex Jones. The press is wrong. The press's failure to distinguish between a principle and a position is the press's failure, not the man's.

But also. The man did press the buttons. The man is the man who pressed the buttons. The buttons were the man's buttons. The man's buttons were the buttons that put Alex Jones and Andrew Tate and Kanye West back on a platform the man owns, and the man knew who they were, and the man reinstated them anyway, and the man is the man who did the reinstating. The press is right that the man is the man who did the reinstating. The press is right that the man knew. The press is wrong about whether the principle holds, and the press is wrong about whether the man's principles are the man's principles or the man's positions, and the press is the press, and the man is the man, and the man is the man who pressed the buttons.

And the Sandy Hook case. The press has been treating the Sandy Hook case as a moral verdict on Jones for ten years. The press has been treating the $965 million verdict in Connecticut as a moral verdict on Jones. The verdict is a civil verdict. The verdict is a finding of liability under Connecticut law for defamation. The verdict is not a finding of fact about what Jones believed. The verdict is a finding of legal liability for what Jones said. The press treats the verdict as evidence that Jones is lying. The press treats the verdict as evidence that Jones knew he was lying. The press does this because the press has decided that Jones is a liar, and the press is using the verdict to confirm the press's prior decision. The press has been doing this for ten years. The press has been doing this with every verdict the press agrees with. The press has not been doing this with every verdict the press disagrees with. The press is selective in which verdicts it treats as moral verdicts. The press's selectivity is the press's bias. The man's selectivity is the man's bias. The press's bias is the press's responsibility, not the man's.

Here is what I think about this. The press covered the Twitter Files as a story. The press did not cover the Twitter Files as a fact pattern. The press did not cover the Twitter Files as a fact pattern because the press was the fact pattern. The press was the fact pattern because the press was one of the entities whose internal communications were disclosed in the files, and the press's internal communications disclosed in the files showed the press asking the platform to take down content the press did not like, and the platform taking down content the press did not like, and the press being pleased that the platform had taken down content the press did not like. The press was the fact pattern. The press did not want to be the fact pattern. The press wanted to be the press. The press wanted to be the press covering the fact pattern. The press could not be the press covering the fact pattern and also be the fact pattern. The press chose to be the press covering the fact pattern. The press chose to be the press covering the fact pattern by writing stories about the fact pattern that did not mention that the press was the fact pattern.

And the Hunter Biden laptop. The press has spent five years treating the Hunter Biden laptop as a conspiracy theory. The press has spent five years treating the press's own decision, in October 2020, to suppress reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop, as a decision the press is not required to defend. The press has spent five years saying the decision was correct because the laptop might have been Russian disinformation, and the press has spent five years saying the decision was incorrect because the laptop was not Russian disinformation, and the press has spent five years not being asked to choose between the two positions, and the press has spent five years not being asked to apologize for either of the two positions, and the press has spent five years treating the entire episode as a story about the laptop and not as a story about the press. The press has spent five years treating the entire episode as a story about the laptop and not as a story about the press because the press is in the business of treating stories about the press as stories about someone else, and the someone else is always the man who owns the platform.

And the press's position on the Twitter Files is the press's position on every uncomfortable document the press has ever been shown. The press treats the uncomfortable document as either fabricated or as evidence of something else. The press treats the document as fabricated when the press can. The press treats the document as evidence of something else when the press cannot. The press does not treat the document as evidence of what the document is evidence of. The press does not treat the document as evidence of what the document is evidence of because the document is evidence of something the press has done, and the press has decided that the press has not done the thing the document is evidence of, and the press's decision is final, and the press's decision is not subject to the same fact-checking standards the press applies to everyone else. The press's fact-checking standards are for other people. The press's fact-checking standards are not for the press. The press's fact-checking standards are not for the press because if the press's fact-checking standards were for the press, the press would have to retract the Hunter Biden laptop story, and the press would have to retract the COVID lab-leak story, and the press would have to retract the Russia-collusion story, and the press would have to retract the Kavanaugh-smear story, and the press would have to retract the Jussie Smollett story, and the press would have to retract the Steele dossier story, and the press would have to retract the Andrew Cuomo nursing-home story, and the press would have to retract the border-is-secure story, and the press would have to retract the inflation-is-transitory story, and the press would have to retract about a thousand other things the press has been wrong about, and the press has decided not to do that, and the press's decision is final, and the press's decision is what the press is defending when the press defends itself against the Twitter Files.

Here is what I think about this. The press has decided that media organizations owned by people with controversial political views are dangerous. The press has decided that media organizations owned by people with controversial political views the press agrees with are not dangerous. The press has decided that media organizations owned by people with controversial political views the press disagrees with are dangerous. The press has decided this because the press is partisan. The press is partisan in a way the press does not admit. The press is partisan in a way the press calls objectivity. The press is partisan in a way the press calls balance. The press is partisan in a way the press calls editorial judgment. The press is partisan in a way the press calls news judgment. The press is partisan. The press is partisan and the press calls the partisanship objectivity, and the press calls the objectivity of the press's allies balance, and the press calls the objectivity of the press's enemies extremism, and the press has been doing this for one hundred years, and the press will continue to do this for one hundred more years, and the man who owns the platform the press is now criticizing is one of the only media owners in the world who has been honest about the partisanship, and the press is punishing the man for the honesty, and the press is calling the punishment a defense of democracy.

And the press's framing of the man is the press's framing of itself. The press is a media organization. The press is owned by people with controversial political views. The press's owners include people who have been credibly accused of being insufficiently tough on Russia, of being insufficiently tough on China, of being insufficiently tough on Iran, of being insufficiently tough on Israel, of being insufficiently tough on Saudi Arabia, of being insufficiently tough on the United Arab Emirates, of being insufficiently tough on virtually every foreign government whose press coverage the press's owners have a stake in. The press's owners include people who have been credibly accused of being too tough on the working class, on immigrants, on people of colour, on women, on trans people, on the poor. The press's owners include people who have been credibly accused of being insufficiently tough on their own bad behaviour, including the press's own journalists, including the press's own executives, including the press's own advertisers, including the press's own investors. The press's owners include people who have been credibly accused of being insufficiently tough on every problem the press has been credibly accused of being insufficiently tough on. The press is not objective. The press has never been objective. The press is a media organization owned by people with political views, and the press's political views are the political views of people with political views, and the press is in the position of someone who is complaining that someone else's house is painted a colour the press does not like, when the press's own house is painted the same colour, and the press has been painting its own house that colour for a hundred years.

Here is what I think about this. The man owns the platform. The platform is a free-speech platform. A free-speech platform is a platform on which speech is free, and free speech is the man's speech, and the man's speech includes the man's decision about whose speech is free, and the man decided that the speech of the journalists tracking his plane was not free, and the not-free is itself a free-speech decision, because the decision was made freely, by the man, on the platform the man owns. The journalists were not censored. The journalists were free-speeched. The man exercised his free speech to be free of their speech, which is the most free a speech can be.

And the throttling. The five-second delay on links to the New York Times, Reuters, Facebook, Threads, Substack — the press calls this suppression of competitors. The press is, again, projecting. A five-second delay is not censorship. A five-second delay is an editorial pause. A five-second delay is the platform giving the user five seconds to reconsider whether the user really wants to leave the platform for the New York Times, and five seconds is not very long, and the not-very-long is the product decision. The man is allowed to make product decisions. The product decision was to make leaving slightly worse. Every platform makes leaving slightly worse. The man just made it five seconds' worth of worse, and the five seconds happened to apply only to the man's enemies, and the only-to-the-man's-enemies is a coincidence, and the coincidence is a feature, and the feature is free speech.

But also. The man did suspend the reporters. The man is the man who suspended the reporters covering the man. They were covering the man, and the man suspended them, on the day they covered him, citing a policy he wrote that same day, and a free-speech absolutist who does that is a man who has told you exactly what his free-speech absolutism is for. The press is right that the man did the suspending. The press is wrong that it contradicts the principle. It does not contradict the principle. It is the principle. And the man is the man.

Here is what I think about this. A man's customers tried to leave, and the man told them to go f‑‑‑ themselves, and this is the most honest thing a CEO has ever done. Every other CEO grovels. Every other CEO apologizes. The man told the people who fund his company to go f‑‑‑ themselves, on stage, by name, and you cannot buy that kind of integrity, which is fortunate, because after he said it you also could not sell him advertising. The press calls this a tantrum. The press does not understand principle. A man who insults his own revenue to its face is a man who cannot be bought, and a man who cannot be bought is a man who is also, increasingly, not being paid, and the not-being-paid is the proof of the integrity.

And the lawsuit. Media Matters published images of ads next to Nazi content, and the man sued Media Matters, and the press says you cannot sue a watchdog for showing you a true thing. But the man did not sue them for showing a false thing. The man sued them for showing a true thing in a way that made the true thing look like the true thing. The Nazi content was on the platform. The ads were on the platform. The ads were next to the Nazi content. Media Matters showed the ads next to the Nazi content. This was defamation, because it defamed the platform by accurately depicting the platform, and the accurate depiction of the platform is the most damaging thing you can do to the platform, which is why it had to be stopped, and the stopping is free speech.

But also. The man did sue the people who showed him the Nazis. The man is the man who sued the people who showed the Nazis. The Nazis were the man's Nazis, on the man's platform, next to the man's advertisers, and the man's response was to sue the people who pointed at the Nazis, and not the Nazis, and the suing-the-pointers-and-not-the-Nazis is a choice, and the choice was the man's, and the man is the man.