Twitter Account Suspended, Conglomerate Salinas Questions Freedom Of Expression

JAKARTA – Mexican conglomerate Ricardo Salinas, whose businesses include retail, banking and media, has criticized Twitter Inc's "censorship" so far. This comes after his account was recently suspended for violating the social media platform's abusive behavior policy.

"Freedom of expression should have no limits," Salinas said in a video message posted late Wednesday, January 18 to the Twitter account of television channel ADN 40, which is part of his business empire.

In the video, he described Twitter's move as "unfortunate censorship" and vowed to use other platforms to broadcast his message. However, Twitter itself did not respond to Salinas' protest.

Last week, Salinas, owner of Grupo Elektra SAB which includes Banco Azteca SA, got into a row with Mexican journalist Denise Dresser, who made comments on Twitter about her appearance that the company said violated its rules.

What Salinas expressed is certainly not in line with the main opinion about the freedom of social media platforms in several countries. The reason is that in the European Union, Britain, and even the United States, Twitter and other social media platforms are accused of being too free to give their users space to express themselves. This makes more and more hoax and racist content appear so that it actually creates chaos.

However, after protests emerged from Salinas, Twitter finally opened the lock on his account. Salinas also tweeted a Terminator meme and thought of himself as the Salinator. He said that his account was locked because a group of people reported themselves to Twitter for violating the platform's policies.

“Well, the good news is that after filing an appeal, the Twitter platform found that the report on my account was an act orchestrated by a bunch of crybabies with a bot account, so they returned it to me in its entirety. The person who takes it, survives, becomes mine," Salinas tweeted, on January 21, WIB.

Pues con la buena noticia que después de applear, la plataforma de Twitter encontró que los reports a mi cuenta fueron acciones organizadas por un Grupo de llorones con cuentas bots, por lo que me la devolvieron intacta .El que se lleva, se a lleva va la mía . pic.twitter.com/wgOj1WckvH

— Ricardo Salinas Pliego (@RicardoBSalinas) January 21, 2022