PUBLISHED: 12:39 EDT, 13 March 2024 | UPDATED: 13:04 EDT, 13 March 2024
Former CNN host Don Lemon claims his X show has been cancelled by Elon Musk after the billionaire sat down for an interview.
Lemon claimed that he found out the partnership was over just hours after their sit-down, which was the first episode of his new series, 'The Don Lemon Show.'
'We had a good conversation. Clearly he felt differently,' Lemon said in a scathing statement, in which he said that he had entered an agreement to stream all of his shows on Musk's platform before the rug was pulled.
'His commitment to a global town square where all questions can be asked and all ideas can be shared seems not to include questions of him from people like me.'
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Don Lemon revealed Wednesday that his new X show has been canned by Elon Musk after the billionaire became 'so upset' by their unreleased interview
Lemon said that despite the show being cancelled, he will still air the interview with Musk, which covered a wide range of topics 'from SpaceX to the presidential election.'
'This will be just the first of many episodes of The Don Lemon Show,' he added. The interview is set to air on YouTube on March 18.
'While Elon goes back on his word, I will be doubling down on my commitment to free speech and I cannot wait to get started.'
The former CNN anchor was ousted from the network in April 2023 following 17 years with the company, after he sparked backlash with several controversial remarks, including branding Nikki Haley 'past her prime.'
He also faced allegations from female co-workers who claimed that he had a history of misogynistic behavior, which he denied.
After releasing his statement, Lemon took to X to release a video of himself walking through New York, where he claimed Musk was 'so upset' about their interview.
'This does not change anything about the show, except for my relationship with Elon and X,' he said.
'I know that many of you were not happy that I was doing this in the first place, and you told me so.
'I just want you to know that I did this deal because not only do I believe in free speech, but I believed that this was my best possible chance for the work that I'm doing to reach the largest amount of people.'
Lemon said that he sat down with Musk to try and share insights into the billionaire and learn more about him, including why he bought Twitter and pledged to make it a 'town square' for the First Amendment.
'But apparently, free speech absolutism doesn't apply when it comes to questions about him from people like me,' Lemon said.
The journalist refused to say exactly what it was about their interview that angered the billionaire, and told viewers they'd have to tune in next week to find out.
1/9
SCOOP: As I told him would happen,
@donlemon
, the owner of this platform Elon Musk sent a terse text to his reps: “Contract terminated” after an interview Lemon did with Musk last Friday that was not to the adult toddler’s liking, including questions about his ketamine use.
2/9
SCOOP: As I told him would happen, @donlemon, the owner of this platform Elon Musk sent a terse text to his reps: “Contract terminated” after an interview Lemon did with Musk last Friday that was not to the adult toddler’s liking, including questions about his ketamine use.
3/9
The much touted multi-million-dollar deal was a pricey effort to attract high profile media creators to X. Not so much when perpetually aggrieved billionaires in desperate need for constant affirmation run the place. So much for free speech.
4/9
I had told Don that this is exactly what would occur, including at a recent book tour event in NYC for my memoir, “Burn Book,” he moderated, despite promises by Musk and CEO Linda Yaccarino — who extravagantly touted this deal at CES to advertisers — that this time was different.
5/9
Well, it’s again clear who is actually in charge: A thin-skinned rich dude who operates via petty whims and exhausting grievances and who calls every fair question a hit piece. Who does that remind you of?
6/9
Btw X will have to pay out, so another unnecessary cost to a business going in the wrong direction. Yaccarino was jazz-handsing video efforts yesterday, knowing full well this had happened. It’s another embarrassment for which she will not blame her meddling boss, but everyone…
7/9
And here is @donlemon statement saying so.
8/9
And here is the video in which he says what went down. Nice “fur” @donlemon!
9/9
We asked Don to come on @PivotPod to talk about it OBVI and what went down.
1/3
You canceled my contract after our interview. I don’t think you believe in free speech.
2/3
You canceled my contract after our interview. I don’t think you believe in free speech.
3/3
Free speech is the bedrock of democracy x.com/cb_doge/status…
Sad Elon is sad that no one likes him anymore, not that he doesn't totally care, but he loved being admired for being a "Genius" and now he is a shytposting, drug addict, in a terminal middle-age crisis.
Sad Elon is sad that no one likes him anymore, not that he doesn't totally care, but he loved being admired for being a "Genius" and now he is a shytposting, drug addict, in a terminal middle-age crisis.
Elon Musk's X Is Suspending Accounts That Reveal a Neo-Nazi Cartoonist's Alleged Identity
Researchers and journalists have been blocked on X from sharing the alleged identity of the neo-Nazi cartoonist Stonetoss.
ILLUSTRATION: WIRED STAFF; GETTY IMAGES
X has locked and suspended the accounts of journalists and researchers who shared the alleged identity of a neo-Nazi cartoonist known as Stonetoss after the cartoonist appealed to site owner Elon Musk.
The incident, critics say, highlights once again how Musk has not only welcomed extremists onto his platform but has repeatedly boosted their conspiracies, engaged with their accounts, and seems to have protected them from scrutiny.
A lengthy X thread posted by the antifascist research group Anonymous Comrades Collective last week claimed that Stonetoss is a man named Hans Kristian Graebener from Spring, Texas. Stonetoss cartoons, which feature simple and colorful imagery coupled with racist, homophobic, and antisemitic language, have become hugely popular among right-wing communities since they were first published at least seven years ago.
In its telling, the antifascist research group linked the Stonetoss cartoonist to another anonymous racist cartoonist known as Red Panels by comparing their voices from appearances on extremist podcasts. The researchers say they found an email address linked to Graebener that was used to register the Red Panels accounts on the far-right social media platform Gab. Then, the group says, it was able to match up comments made by Stonetoss with events in Graebener’s life. In one case, Graebener took a trip to Japan in 2019 with a Houston IT company he then worked for; at the same time, Stonetoss posted a picture on X of a “welcome to Japan” sign with the comment, “Finally made it to the ethnostate fellas.” The research group has been doing this kind of work for years and has been credited with unmasking numerous other extremists, including those involved with a neo-Nazi homeschool network.
Graebener has not disputed anything the researchers uncovered. He did not respond to requests for comment from WIRED to his personal email address nor to the email address on the Stonetoss website, and he did not pick up calls from phone numbers associated with his name.
The Anonymous Comrade Collective thread got a lot of attention on X, racking up at least 13.5 million views. On Thursday, the Stonetoss account appealed to X users who have “a direct line” to Musk, X’s owner, to help to get the thread deleted. Musk has, in the past, shared an altered version of a Stonetoss cartoon about the collapse of society. “If Elon's idea of a ‘free speech’ website is one where people can be intimidated into silence, the outcome will be a site where the Stasi will drive out all dissent,” Stonetoss wrote. The account also tagged Musk and offered to share a list of people to target.
In a subsequent post, Stonetoss said this appeal was not about him but about other “artists.”
“This is about others I know personally,” Stonetoss wrote. “There is a whole ecosystem of artists out there who cannot (or have stopped) making art because of people on twitter organized to punish them IRL for doing so.” The cartoonist also added that sales of his plush toy were “going gangbusters” since his alleged identity was revealed.
Hours later, the account associated with the Anonymous Comrades Collective that posted the thread was deleted, and the account was suspended. On Friday, dozens of users, including a number of researchers and journalists, began discussing the incident and posting some of the details of the research, including Graebener’s name.
X locked down many of these accounts and ordered them to delete the offending tweet to get full access to their accounts back. Among those targeted were Jared ****, a senior research analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, who covers right-wing extremism; Hannah Gais, a senior research analyst at Southern Poverty Law Center; and Steven Monacelli, an investigative journalist for the Texas Observer. (WIRED has also published Monacelli’s work.)
X also imposed a ban on sharing the link to the Anonymous Comrades Collective blog detailing its research. WIRED verified this on Monday morning by attempting to post the link, only to be met with a pop-up message that read: ‘We can't complete this request because this link has been identified by X or our partners as being potentially harmful.”
Even with the crackdown from X, people kept sharing details of the Stonetoss investigation.
“We all just started posting his name; it was like a Streisand effect,” Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at the Harvard Law School Cyberlaw Clinic, tells WIRED. “They're just trying to censor his name, and then everyone started getting their accounts locked.”
Caraballo, who shared screenshots of the messages she received from X with WIRED, managed to circumvent the initial ban by appealing it and claiming, ironically, that she was the victim of mass reporting from antifa who were attempting to silence her right-wing viewpoint.
While that appeal was successful, Caraballo was quickly locked out of her account again when she changed her username to “Hans Kristian Graebener is stonetoss.” That resulted in a 12-hour suspension, and when her account was reinstated she was soon punished for earlier posts that shared screenshots of information about Graebener. Caraballo’s account has now been suspended for seven days. Shortly after this article was originally published, Caraballo’s account was restored by X, without an explanation.
An X representative says that the company, following a review of the actions taken against the accounts of Anonymous Comrades Collective, ****, Gais, Monacelli, and Caraballo, stood by its decision.
“The posts that were removed were all actioned correctly,” says Joe Benarroch, head of business operations at X, adding that the posts violated the company’s “posting private information policy” for “outing the identity of an anonymous user.”
While X does have a policy around sharing private information, a review of the company’s terms of service shows no mention of a policy related to outing the identity of an anonymous user, and Benarroch did not respond to a request for clarification.
“According to X’s terms of service, posting someone's name does not constitute doxing, but many accounts, including my own, have been made to delete posts that merely mention the name of the racist and antisemitic cartoonist Stonetoss,” Monacelli tells WIRED. “I've never seen enforcement like this before.”
This policy change could possibly be in response to a post last month from Musk when he wrote, “Any doxxing, which includes revealing real names, will result in account suspension.” Still, in an interview with Don Lemon released on Monday, Musk said that moderation of hate speech is akin to “censorship.”
There are now hundreds of posts on the platform that name Stonetoss as Graebener. There are also numerous accounts on the platform that changed their profile name to “Hans Kristian Graebener is stonetoss”—and they haven’t all been suspended, which suggests the account suspensions and locking were possibly targeted rather than part of the implementation of a new policy at the company formerly known as Twitter.
“This is completely arbitrary and under Twitter's own community standards it says that a name is never considered private information,” Caraballo tells WIRED. “There's an immense double standard here of the neo-Nazi comic guy being protected” by X. But then, she says, “The people that do this to anyone on the left are not only followed by [Musk] but are boosted by him. It's completely inconsistent.” To her, it seems that whoever Musk favors gets protected, and anyone else is banned. “This is also a pretext for them to be able to go after anyone that they dislike,” Caraballo says.”
Caraballo and others have pointed to accounts like Libs of TikTok and far-right troll Andy Ngo, both of which have shared private information about trans people but have not had their accounts suspended. Musk has also engaged with posts that doxed individuals on X, with seemingly no recourse for those accounts.
After they deleted their posts, most of those restricted for sharing Graebener’s name have had their accounts unlocked. However, the Anonymous Comrade Collective account that shared the details about Graebener is also suspended, and a representative tells WIRED they are unsure when or if it will come back.
This article has been updated with mention of Alejandra Caraballo’s recently restored X account.
Yup, Twitter shut me up too. Me, with my mighty reach of "I'm only on Bluesky any more, and anyway nobody reads my tweets." Me, who did not in fact violate the posted rules. For *some reason*, nobody is allowed to say the name of the Nazi-loving guy who draws Stone Toss.
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Here that Google? You got the woke mind virus. 
Now do the funny and remove it from Android store.