Month: May 2022

During an interview at Financial Times’ Future of the Car conference on Tuesday, Elon Musk said he would reverse Twitter’s permanent ban of former President Donald Trump if he were to assume control of the social media company. Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, offered to purchase Twitter for $44 billion last month.

Musk said it was a “morally bad decision” and “foolish in the extreme” for Twitter to ban Trump amid the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the U.S. Capitol. Twitter said was meant to prevent the “risk of further incitement of violence.”  Said Musk: “I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump. I think that was a mistake. It alienated a large part of the country and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice.”

Musk has more than 90 million Twitter followers, and has been vocal in his criticism of the social network’s moderation decisions. Musk said that former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was in agreement that Twitter “should not have perma-bans.” Dorsey confirmed that he did agree with Musk, citing exceptions such as illegal behavior or network manipulation, writing on Twitter: “Generally, permanent bans are a failure of ours and don’t work.”

Musk believes Twitter exhibits a political bias that harms those on the right, saying:  “I think Twitter needs to be more evenhanded. It currently has a strong left bias because it’s based in San Francisco. I don’ think the people there necessarily intend, or at least some of them don’t intend, to have a left bias. They just, from their perspective, it seems moderate, but they’re just coming after it from an environment that is very far left.” 

Musk also repeated that while the company’s board had accepted his deal to purchase Twitter, it was not finalized:  “I will say that I don’t own Twitter yet, so this is not a thing that will definitely happen, because what if I don’t own Twitter.” 

Editorial credit: viewimage / Shutterstock.com

A Connecticut man was convicted Tuesday of all charges for murdering his wife. Despite alleging the crime was committed by an intruder, the defendant’s testimony was contradicted by a “Fitbit” activity tracker.

Following a five-week trial, a jury in Rockville Superior Court in Connecticut took less than four hours to find 45-year-old Richard Dabate guilty of guilty of all three charges — murder, tampering with evidence and making a false statement to authorities — for fatally shooting his wife, 39-year-old Connie Dabate, two days before Christmas in 2015.  The murder charge carries up to 60 years in prison. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 16. Court marshals handcuffed Dabate and led him out of the courtroom after Judge Corinne Klatt increased his bond to $5 million. He had been free after posting $1 million bail following his arrest. Dabate’s lawyer, Trent LaLima, said they would be appealing the verdict:  “I think we put on a very strong case for why Rick did not commit this offense.”

Prosecutor Matthew Gedansky said in his closing argument that Dabate hatched a plan to kill his wife and stage a home invasion as his life was about to unravel with the birth of a child he was having with another woman. Connie Dabate was wearing the activity tracker wristwatch and data recovered from the device allegedly showed she was leisurely walking around an hour after Dabate claimed she had been killed by a large masked man with a voice like actor Vin Diesel and dressed in camouflage, and tied him up at the couple’s Ellington home in December 2015. Police said the information onConnie Dabate’s Fitbit contradicted her husband’s story.

Editorial credit: Sergii Gnatiuk / Shutterstock.com