Amid Fox's declining viewership, Elon Musk's Twitter becomes the new hub for right-wing media.

Elon Musk could be positioning Twitter to replace Fox News as the networks views plummet from the recent firing of Tucker Carlson and its bank account suffers from settling a hefty defamation suit with Dominion Voting Systems.

For years, Fox News has attracted the right-wing base and served as a powerful force in Republican politics so much so that officials target the networks coverage as a political tactic.

But with the recent firing of Carlson, who raked in millions of views, Foxs recent ratings have slumped and its grip on the Republican base is slipping, presenting a ripe opportunity for another platform to surpass the networks reign.

Its basically a far-right platform now, Wendy Via, co-founder and president of Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, told Salon. Musk is either ignoring or eliminating the civil and human rights rules that have been put in place over the years in the name of newsworthiness or free speech, which is an entirely false proposition.

Musk has used this as an opportunity to establish the network as the centerpiece of right-wing media offering Republican governor Ron DeSantis a space to officially launch his presidential campaign in a live Twitter-streamed conversation and letting Carlson bring some version of his show on the platform.

But thats not where it ends. The Daily Wire, a prominent conservative news outlet, has also announced plans to stream all of its top shows directly on Twitter.

The Daily Wire hosts are key figures in popularizing the rights campaign against wokeness. Its co-CEO Jeremy Boreing told Axios in a statement that Twitter is the largest free speech platform in the world.

If Elon Musk stands by his commitment to make Twitter a home for free speech and delivers on monetization opportunities and more sophisticated analytics for content creators, I imagine we will invest even more into the platform, he said.

The new owner of Twitter has already won over the far-right by relaxing Twitters policies on hate speech and disinformation and reinstating previously banned right-wing extremists.

His actions are increasing Twitters reputation as the wild west of disinformation, said Jill Garvey, chief of staff at Western States Center.

This is the place now where people can go who want to spread conspiracy theories and content that is not allowed on other platforms, she said. Fox News isnt going anywhere so the threat may be less about Twitter replacing Fox News and more about Twitter just becoming an ever-expanding network of places where disinformation can spread.

Soon after he acquired ownership, the platform saw nearly a fivefold increase in the use of the n-word, the most engaged tweets were overtly antisemitic and the site was flooded with anonymous trolls spewing racist slurs and Nazi memes.

Now as Fox deals with legal troubles facing its organization – including a lawsuit filed by former producer Abby Grossberg, who alleges she endured a hostile work environment while working on Carlsons program – Musk is allowing users like Carlson to continue feeding fringe conspiracy theories to a mass audience on his platform.

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