Twitter repeatedly denied that right-wing users were being shadowbanned. That turned out to be false.
A month ago, someone on HN patronizingly explained to me that Twitter's moderation was "primarily dictated by building an advertiser friendly platform": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33652282 The Twitter files have made it clear that this user's claim, "Twitter's moderation policies weren't primarily dictated by their political views", was false.
If Twitter's moderation was primarily about staying advertiser-friendly, they would've announced their shadowbans publicly, so advertisers would know they were safe advertising on Twitter as a platform. There wouldn't be any interesting revelations to be had.
As for doxxing, I see rules against doxxing as pro free speech. Doxxing doesn't contribute meaningfully to the public discourse. It just intimidates people into silence, interfering with speech exercise.
Free speech is a subtle concept: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/01/is-it-possible-to-have... A ban on doxxing advances free speech as I understand it. You're welcome to disagree, but I don't think my position is unreasonable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33995312
>he has doxxed critics in the past in much more damaging ways
Can you point to a case of, say, Yoel Roth's real-time location staying up on Twitter even after the recent rule change which prevents doxxing?
It appears to me, based on the article you linked, that Yoel fled his home in the wake of ordinary criticism. Not doxxing specifically. Ordinary criticism kind of has to be allowed -- it's essential for our democracy that e.g. citizens are allowed to criticize politicians. But doxxing is where I draw the line.
It seems this is why Mastodon was banned: https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/15/elon-musk-suspends-mastodo...
Elon is far from perfect. But his child was physically threatened, and he responded by implementing restrictions which I consider to be correct anyways (as I stated -- doxxing is anti-free speech IMO). I think people are making more of this than it deserves. It's good if you have a CEO who's capable of changing their mind.
In any case, whatever happened to the old "Twitter is a private company, they can do what they want" argument? Right-wingers aren't the only hypocrites here.
People mocking the "Twitter Files" are saying that it's stupid, there's not really anybody calling for the government or some other actor to step in and stop them from doing it.
Nobody has demonstrated any difference between Twitter's description of its own policies and the actual facts. They said they did not shadowban (prevent a user's posts from appearing to other users without their knowledge) and Taibbi and Weiss have confirmed that such functionality does not appear to exist in Twitter.
There's similarly no evidence that Musk's child was "physically threatened" other than his own say-so, and he's a known liar.
For both the Trump ban and the Hunter Biden story, it seems Twitter did not follow its own policies.
>Taibbi and Weiss have confirmed that such functionality does not appear to exist in Twitter.
Where?
In any case, I think this depends heavily on exactly how you define "shadowbanning". You can define "shadowbanning" so it conveniently excludes all the account-level suppression Twitter did. But the broader point is: Why weren't they transparent about the type of account-level suppression they were doing?
>There's similarly no evidence that Musk's child was "physically threatened" other than his own say-so, and he's a known liar.
I'm not sure what lying you are referring to. In any case, are you willing to grant that Elon's actions are understandable if he's telling the truth about his child?
No, I don't think it's understandable for Musk to respond to someone stalking him by modifying Twitter policies to retaliate against another person with no connection to the stalking.