zlacker

>>crbela+(OP)
> Twitter, which was arguably the hub of wokeness

This is a fake news. Research shows that Twitter algorithmic amplification favored right-wing politics even before Musk made it even worse. See: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2025334119

> On the other hand, the people on the far left have only themselves to blame; they could tilt Twitter back to the left tomorrow if they wanted to.

Being this much clueless in pg's position is not possible. I can only assume he's consciously lying. He can see front row what Musk does with Twitter and how the "free speech" he's supposedly defending is actually "what Musk likes to hear speech", and he perfectly knows Musk is strongly aligned with the far right that he supports however he can all over the world. See for example: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/europe/article/2025/01/10/musk-dou...

>>p4bl0+Ke1
Sorry, can you back this up with some data and specificity?

I understand that you feel Musk is aligned with the far right; my question is what exactly is Musk doing with twitter, and (other than when people take the piss against him personally) how is he removing free speech that is not "far right"?

I'm genuinely interested in the details -- and they are hard to come by.

>>vessen+sk1
Elon suspended PG's account just for lightly alluding that another social media platform exists. I'm not sure why you're even bringing up the idea of free speech on Twitter. Can you imagine Discord suspending your account for lightly alluding that Slack exists?

>>threat+4o1
I do not call that a censorship of speech decision, it's a banning encouraging the competition decision, no? The company doesn't want competitors being boosted, so it makes and enforces a policy. I presume people discussing the Fediverse as a concept are not routinely suspended, although I'm too lazy to check.

>>vessen+8q1
So you imagine Discord punishing you for talking about Slack? Or Google suspending your account for talking about TikTok? On the matter of customers talking about marketplace alternatives... your instincts say "oh yes, let's exclude this from the discussion of free speech?"

>>threat+pt1
Nope, I don't imagine this because those companies make different promises to their users than X does to its. They, none of them, are part of the commons of US discourse, embedded in our infrastructure. They'd have to be universal or nearly so to even qualify for most definitions of the way the word 'censorship' applies under the US 1st amendment.

I don't take my business to Twitter, and that's fine. I choose to use Discord because, in very small part, I guess, of its attitude on content. Google would no doubt ban me for some sorts of content, but not most. Again, these are business decisions that any of these companies can make; some will lose them users (money), some will gain, that's all fine with me; they'll (generally) adjust to making the most money, e.g. serving the most economically large portion of their user base they can attract.

Musk's a wild card because he can (mostly) afford to pay extra to get a different mix of users than might be totally economically optimal, but history shows that most significant and impactful companies trend hard toward serving their customer base and trying to expand it as widely as possible.

Free speech is alive and well in the US; I can publish a website with nearly anything I want to say on it, and if it's taken down, I am allowed access to Federal courts to determine if that takedown was legal. I can email it, I can print it on broadsheets and distribute it anywhere I want, I can text it out en-masse. I cannot say whatever I want on a Disney forum, however, and that, like Twitter does not impact the question of whether or not we have free speech.

>>vessen+uw1
Publishing a website is about as good as writing a book and dropping it off in an alley trashcan. You may have a voice but you won't be given volume or oxygen. X actively drops visibility for posts linking to external sites, and bot generated blogs are polluting Google so badly that you have no luck for organic reach.

Free speech requires public spaces [digital townhalls], but any journalist breaking critical news of Musk gets muted or banned on X. [https://thespectator.com/topic/spectator-story-debunking-elo...]. This is why several major global journal outlets have taken to just entirely leaving X in protest [https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/journalists_leaving_x_bl...].