Ethereum Co-founder Vitalik Buterin Blasts Elon Musk: “X Has Become a Death Star for Hate”

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin criticised Elon Musk’s leadership of X, saying the platform, once viewed as a symbol of free speech, has increasingly shifted into a venue for orchestrated hate campaigns that he believes could undermine the very principles Musk claims to defend.

In a series of posts on Tuesday, Buterin said that recent waves of online hostility, particularly attacks targeting Europe, appeared “unhinged” and closer to “a coordinated attempt to delegitimize” than meaningful debate. He pointed to what he described as “apocalyptic attitude” and generalizations about the region, adding that such commentary did not reflect his own experience after spending “an average of two months every year there for the last decade.”

Coordinated Hate Machine?

Buterin directly urged Musk to reconsider his role in shaping the platform’s discourse and said,

“I think you should consider that making X a global totem pole for free speech, and then turning it into a death star laser for coordinated hate sessions, is actually harmful for the cause of free speech. I’m seriously worried that huge backlashes against values I hold dear are coming in a few years.”

He warned that the ability to mobilize large-scale hostility under the banner of open expression risks triggering political and cultural pushback that could weaken commitments to free speech overall. Buterin also suggested Musk is influencing the platform’s visibility algorithms in ways that amplify polarisation, and said that he appeared to be “actively tweaking algorithms to boost some things and deboost other things based on pretty arbitrary criteria.”

As long as such control exists, Buterin said, it would be preferable “to boost niceness instead of boosting ragebait.” His comments come as debates intensify over how major social platforms, increasingly concentrated in ownership, balance moderation, influence public discourse, and define the boundaries of acceptable speech. The remarks also come at a time of a major directional shift at Farcaster, a decentralized social network Buterin once endorsed, which announced it is moving from a social-first design to a wallet-centric model.

Buterin’s Privacy Push

Last month, Buterin donated 128 ETH each to messaging projects Session and SimpleX, as he expanded his support for privacy-focused communication tools. The Ethereum co-founder explained that the two platforms are working to strengthen decentralization by offering end-to-end encrypted messaging without phone-number registration and by improving protections against Sybil and denial-of-service attacks.

He said the sector’s next priorities include permissionless account creation and stronger metadata privacy. Buterin added that both projects publicly list their donation addresses and, while still imperfect, represent active efforts to advance privacy-preserving communication.

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