Gary Lineker dubs Elon Musk ‘strange chap’ amid Twitter takeover

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Football pundit Gary Lineker, 61, spoke openly on The News Agents podcast where he said that Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover could have a negative impact as he drew attention to the fine line between freedom of speech and hate speech. The Match of the Day presenter said that the CEO of Tesla Motors needs to be very careful before saying that in his opinion Elon, 51, isn’t that good at Twitter anyway.

“He is kind of a strange chap,” Gary started by saying to podcast presenters Lewis Goodall and Emily Maitlis.

“If you are going to spend 40 odd billion on Twitter you ought to be really good at tweeting but I have not been overly impressed so far.”

Chuckling to himself, Gary went on to say that he was unsure if the policy of paying $8 a month (£7) for individuals to keep their blue tick was “actually going to be a thing”.

Seemingly unbothered about keeping his verified blue tick or not, Emily then posed the question to Gary if he thinks that Twitter will change at all under the control of Elon.

To which Gary replied: “I think he needs to be very careful because there is a big difference between freedom of speech and hate speech.

“I think you need to differentiate between the two.

“You can’t just let people say and do whatever they want, that is dangerous isn’t it?”

Gary’s hesitancy towards Elon comes after the multi-billionaire has dissolved Twitter’s board of directors, making him chief executive of three companies alongside Tesla and SpaceX.

Alongside this is Elon’s well known proposal for Twitter’s future, making it a haven for “free speech”.

Having not revealed how he intends to make it so, the businessman has said publicly that the site will be “forming a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints”.

In a recent tweet, Elon, who has 113 million followers wrote, “the bird is freed,” and “comedy is now legal on Twitter,” making it seem that he intends on sticking to his promises.

However, he also said in the past that he will hold off making decisions about which banned users will be restored until he can consult with a council of outside experts.

In another tweet on October 31 he wrote: “If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me if Trump is coming back on this platform, Twitter would be minting money!”

Referring to unbanning former president Donald Trump from the site, Elon has been drumming up a storm about his future plans for the social media platform.

One of his controversial policies that has gained a lot of support from social media users, is the introduction of a charge for a verification badge.

Tweeting his views, Elon wrote: “Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bulls***.

@thenewsagents “We will be addressing the issues” says Gary Lineker on upcoming World Cup commentary, listen now on Global Player #worldcup #football ♬ original sound – The News Agents

“Power to the people! Blue for $8/month.”

To get over the issue about whether a public figures account is legitimately theirs, Elon has come up with a solution, which he also shared with his followers.

He wrote: “There will be a secondary tag below the name for someone who is a public figure, which is already the case for politicians.”

A clip from Gary’s interview was posted on social media site TikTok, where it gained a lot of attention, some agreeing with the star and others not so much.

One user, Neil Coleman Art, wrote: “Bore off Gary.”

While another, Richy Rich added: “Stick to football Gaz.”

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