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...
"When You’re Accustomed to Privilege, Equality Feels Like Oppression"
Twitter was discriminating against right leaning views. Extreme far left views (like communism) were absolutely OK and widespread on Twitter. If one had as extreme right leaning views, he would be shadowbanned, reprioritised etc.
What is Twitter now is a fair game. Every voice is heard the same. What Twitter is doing now should have been the norm the whole time.
And the same is true for all major social networks, search engines, public funded media, universities and other organizations. When only leftists get their voice heard, they got used to it. Loosing this privilege looks like discrimination, doesn't it?
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.
So much free speech.
Where is your proof for that being true? I was a left-leaning voice that was banned from Twitter after changing my display name (not handle) to "Elon's Musk".
How is that free speech?
It's not a feel, it's real (unless you're so far to the right yourself, you don't consider the AfD, neo-nazis, TERFs, etc etc such)
Edit: lol at this getting downvoted. Some of you free speech purists really don't want to hear basic facts. Seriously. Just go look at the timeline. 150x a day is not an exaggeration. All of it in direct support of Trump, or attacking DEI and anything else associated with Democrats.
Sure, that's an anecdote of one instance, but it's so clear. And how would you do a proper study? I'm guessing you would need Elon's permission.
Domain specific knowledge is SO REAL.
(Incidentally, this is roughly why I don't believe we will ever have so called "AGI")
Of a cologne brand of some kind? "Elon's Musk" is very clearly not a person.
Go ahead, do the experiment and come back and tell me what you see.
Without it every post of a famous person was botted with 100 accounts with identical display name, pfp that tried to promote scams like with YouTube comments
As for an example of Elon making Twitter rules around speech he doesn’t like, here[8] is one that is very public and not hard to come by.
1 https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/02/elon-musk-nazis-kanye-twit...
2 https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2024/12/20/elo...
3 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/08/technology/elon-musk-far-...
4 https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/elon-musk-...
5 https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/23/business/elon-musk-nazi-jokes...
6 https://www.nydailynews.com/2024/05/02/elon-musk-reinstates-...
7 https://www.vice.com/en/article/elon-musk-twitter-nazis-whit...
8 https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-cis-cisgender-slur-twitter-185...
This is more recent: "We observe a right-leaning bias in exposure for new accounts within their default timelines." https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.01852
You can also find a lot a testimony from users like: https://www.reddit.com/r/behindthebastards/comments/1es2lfd/...
---
Now from personal experience (I've been on Twitter since 2007 and used it virtually everyday since then):
I've heard and read a lot of such testimony in particular from user who don't post much or at all and only follow a few accounts. In the last two years they've been exposed to a lot of far right content.
I've seen how the moderation team at twitter took action before musk when reporting (often illegal) hate speech and now just respond by saying that it doesn't violates the platform rules.
I've seen on the contrary people (even journalists) and political or news organization getting locked out of their account following a far right online mob against them, and then having a hard time (sometimes to the point of giving up) getting it back because the moderation team did not act.
Free speech means free speech for those you dislike too. It also means having a space for those that are disruptive, loud, and engaging in trolling. That's what those fire-and-brimstone "you're going to hell" preachers are doing at universities. (Which isn't all bad - it gives students a great opportunity to learn debate and to stand up for what they believe in.)
The ACLU has represented the Vietnam War protestors, the KKK, neo-Nazis, LGBT activists, Westboro Baptist Church members, religious followers of Jerry Falwell, flag burners, anti-abortion activists, women's rights activists, communist party members, gun rights advocates, anti-Trump protestors, BLM protestors, and more. And it's a good thing they represented every single one, because erosion of free speech for those we don't like will eventually get back to us.
Greg Lukianoff of FIRE, a free speech defender said Musk made twitter better for free speech (on balance): https://youtu.be/Er1glEAQhAo?si=2aWdSIsbKzjz0nGA&t=2853
If one were sceptical of this synchronized "political awakening" in the tech industry, that incidentally is aligned to an incoming presidential administration, one might call it some sort of gratuitous signaling of virtues. Which is hilariously ironic, and shows either a lack of self-awareness, or profound levels of shamelessness.
That said, I don't think this qualifies as newly minted removal of speech. It is the allowance of speech that was formerly removed.
To the extent you slightly implied you were interested in what I think, he certainly seems trending far-right to me, but I think you need to moderate any thoughts on Musk with the reminder that he loves the drama, enjoys trolling, and has an almost unique freedom (in the west) to say whatever he likes online. Combine that with the drugs and his current ego trip, and I don't think it's that easy to say what he actually thinks, and I certainly don't think it's worth a lot of my time to consider it deeply.
I agree that banning cis while allowing the n-word is a concrete example, thank you. Super dumb. Speaking as a cishet guy. Also, banning cis seems essentially performative for Musk's (target?) audience(s?) -- I note that anti-trans rhetoric was one of the major platform points for Republicans in this election, so it's not, like, risky performativism, just run of the mill performativism.
I thought free speech and sunlight were the best disinfectants. By leaving these accounts up and allowing other users to point out how they were misleading, everyone will learn and be wiser.
Regarding X, I still see plenty of left-leaning content, but the dynamic has undoubtedly shifted. What’s changed is that the platform no longer artificially amplifies one ideological perspective at the expense of others. Previously, algorithms seemed to prioritize content aligned with extreme left narratives while outright blocking opposing views. That system gave the impression of a dominant left-leaning consensus, that was entirely artificial.
At the end of the day, it's impossible to remove all bias so whatever system maximizes free speech is the best one.
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.
Also, it's just not true that "Previously, algorithms seemed to prioritize content aligned with extreme left narratives while outright blocking opposing views". It's a lie. Twitter's research itself revealed their algorithm favored right wing politics even before Musk. And it became a lot more true since he took power. See: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2025334119
Agreed that Elon doesn't seem to be as much of a free speech absolutist as he promised, especially if you hurt his feelings, or seem fun to ban.
The idea is he promotes the talking points that benefit the right and the Republicans. Both personally and in changing the platforms algorithms [1].
There have been reports of people disagreeing with that general 'platform' loosing their blue check marks [2], accounts being disabled, followers dropped [3] and so on to reduce the reach of left/liberal people.
He doesn't need to remove speech he disagrees with, he can drown it and amplify the messages he wants to be heard and significantly control the narrative and discussion that way.
[1]https://eprints.qut.edu.au/253211/1/A_computational_analysis...
[2]https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/elon-musk-accused-...
[3]https://finance.yahoo.com/news/big-twitter-accounts-left-los...
The idea that forming an opinion about somebody based on what they publicly repeatedly say and do over the course of years is somehow the wrong approach with This One Guy is an act of unnecessary and unjustified generosity. “Loving the drama” is not in any way exclusive to having actual opinions, and trolls are not magical beings that exist in an inscrutable superposition of possible realities that they may or may not support.
It is downright silly when someone’s conduct is so clear that the only way to defend them is to handwave away everything that they say and do and retreat into the philosophical ideal of the unknowability of a man’s heart. That is an academic exercise that’s only useful in analyzing fictional characters and has negative value when applied to real-life powerful people that fund politicians and buy social media sites to forcibly mold public discussion to fit their values.
To those I suggest they move on to BlueSky, where the preshared blacklists and ability to inform on others they despise would be more to their liking.
Alternatively, they could go touch grass.
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...].
This is also why spam is not covered under freedom of speech.
When it comes to things that people find mundane or agreeable, the stuff he posts about all day reflects what he thinks but when he gives fifty million dollars to Stephen Miller[1] in 2022 to fund his Citizens for Sanity ads[2], maybe he’s trolling or it’s drugs or whatever.
> I'm thinking about what led to his success, and how those lessons might apply to me or people I'm supporting.
This is quite literally a defense of his character. If your response to “this guy sucks, here is proof that this guy sucks” is “there is literally nothing bad he could do that justifies thinking about anything other than the positives about him”, that is what defending a person looks like.
1
https://thehill.com/policy/technology/4912754-musk-donated-m...
2
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/11/who-is-behind-citize...
Your link fails to support you. It is mostly just examples of alleged Twitter censorship, mostly of right wing-ish stuff. This has a couple of problems.
First, the claim was about what Twitter amplified, not what it censored. It is quite possible to both amplify a given type of post more and censor that type of post more. It is possible that censorship might inversely correlate with amplification so that one can be used as an inverse proxy for the other, but that would require research because it is also possible they correlate rather than inverse correlate. Something amplified draws more readers, which could increase the likelihood that someone will notice any violations of the rules and report it.
Second, even if we make the assumption of an inverse correlation between censorship and amplification to see how left and right amplification compares we would need to know how they picked which incidents to write stories about.
Reclaim the Net does not provide any information on who funds it or who runs it, it is asking for donations but doesn't say what the donations are used for. The names listed on it don't show up in search except at RTN or on sites that are reprinting RTN stories. There is just not enough information available as far as I could find to tell what biases they have when selecting stories.
The commenter you asked for proof cites a published paper in a peer reviewed open access journal that gives a detailed explanation of how it reached its conclusions. Its authors include several people who worked at Twitter and had access to its internal data.
Really, this should be uncontroversial.
In Dec 2022 he suspended the accounts of several left-leaning journalists without providing a cohesive justification: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/technology/twitter-suspen...
Posting about Ukraine is categorised as misinformation and downranked: https://x.com/aakashg0/status/1641976925064245249
Suppression of tweets in India and Turkey: https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/twitter-takes-down-po... https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/05/twitter-musk-censors...