With Twitter founder Jack Dorsey stepping down as CEO, it was announced that Parag Agrawal – the company’s current Chief Technology Officer – will take over the leadership role.
Agrawal, concerningly, is a vocal opponent of free speech and the First Amendment, and has sent tweets about all white people being racist:
“If they are not gonna make a distinction between muslims and extremists, then why should I distinguish between white people and racists.”
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) October 26, 2010
The Indian-born migrant has used his tenure as Twitter’s tech chief to lead research on how best to silence voices across the platform under the myth of “fake news” and dismiss the ideals America was founded upon, often quoting his favorite leftist celebrities.
In a November 2020 interview, Agrawal said the following, as reported by multiple sources online:
Former CTO and new Twitter CEO Agrawal in November 2020 interview: “Our role is not to be bound by the First Amendment… focus[ing] less on thinking about free speech, but thinking about how the times have changed.”
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) November 29, 2021
“It’s called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.” – George Carlin. http://bit.ly/cgZo31
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) November 1, 2010
Eleven years prior, Agrawal sentiment was very different, showing his evolution to his current mindset toward freedom in the Free World:
I am not sure what is more troubling: death of free speech or that “peace in society” is threatened if a book is not banned.
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) April 17, 2010
Agrawal’s work placed him at the helm of Project Bluesky. The research project was launched under the guise of establishing decentralized standards, supporting social media companies in the promotion of posts and providing users with greater control over the content they see.
Bluesky was further marketed as making it easier for social media networks to enforce restrictions against hate speech and other forms of online abuse.
The true Axis of Evil in America is the genius of our marketing combined with the stupidity of our people – Bill Maher. #quote
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) April 6, 2010
In 2019, Twitter purchased Fabula AI, an alleged machine learning startup that helps spot “fake news”. The details of the acqui-hire deal were not made public. At the time, Agrawal said that the purchase will “improve the health of the conversation” on Twitter.
The purchase occurred prior to the 2020 Presidential elections, helping Twitter “weed out the bad eggs.”
Many leading experts have noted that Agrawal’s new leadership position in Twitter will make the platform significantly worse for censorship.
.@jack was the last of the tech CEOS who at least on a personal level was committed to free speech. His departure is probably going to make Twitter a lot worse for censorship (which is truly saying something)
— Saagar Enjeti (@esaagar) November 29, 2021
Meanwhile, competitor social media firm GETTR CEO Jason Miller said of the changes at Twitter:
“As the CEO of a social media startup, I know how difficult it is to run the company day-to-day. It must be even harder when you’re always trying to find new ways to trample freedom of speech. But for years, Jack Dorsey has been the master of multitasking: censoring opinions he doesn’t like, canceling users, silencing one of America’s oldest newspapers, and unfairly influencing a presidential election.
“Dorsey’s strangling of free expression is why GETTR needs to exist, and for that I suppose we should all be grateful. Without the crushing oppression and virtue signaling of the Big Tech oligarchs, millions of people from around the world wouldn’t be searching for a new social media home. Unlike Dorsey, GETTR is here to stay, and we will always protect the rights of people to speak their minds.”