1. "Free speech" refers to the government, not private companies.
2. There is some speech that has no place in the public square. Hate speech, threats, and harmful conspiracies, as examples.

The "censorship" from before Musk took over was mostly banning hate speech, death threats, and calls for violence. Sometimes all three were in the same tweet.

Now it's banning union organizing and people wanting to be paid a fair wage for a day's work. Totally the same.

Private companies moderating content != censorship.

And I think you have a wrapped few of how it went down.

Pre-musk moderation was a necessary evil to combat spam, fake news and hate speech. Nobody was cheering, except when some notorious idiots got the boot. Then we were just laughing at the idiots. Fine, call it cheering if you want.

Now, we are mostly just all laughing at Musk destroying his investment.

I don't care if he censors the UAW or whatever. Go ahead and censor everyone except dogecoin evangelists.

And yeah, people can say stupid shit I disagree with. But I reserve the right to laugh.

I'm not going to hang out in a bar that allows Nazis to hang out. You can if you like, but people are going to call you a Nazi supporter, and they will be right. If you don't allow Nazis in your bar, they can still stand outside and freeze peach as much as they want, you are not curtailing anyone's freedom. So, yes, I cheer businesses that don't allow Nazis and I am critical of businesses where the management trolls unions (and allows Nazis), and that's not hypocritical in any way because there's a difference between good things and bad things. Anyway, enjoy your Nazi bar, weirdo.

Always resist censorship.

Can I follow you around with a siren that I turn on every time you attempt to speak?

I think exceptions need to be made for obvious propaganda, disinformation, gaslighting, and hate speech. Dangerous lies and calls for violence do not need a platform, that's quite different from silencing people for merely having a different opinion.

First, twitter removing a post/banning a user/enforcing a policy is free speech. The government preventing it is anti-free speech. The government cannot tell the New York Times what to publish or not to publish, and it likewise cannot force twitter to do so. I cannot force the Washington Post to publish my op-ed on how bananas should be banned because they’re phallic and make me uncomfortable. Twitter has the right to suspend the UAW account, or delete all of its posts, or whatever it wants to do.

People are upset because Elmo uses his right to suspend and so on as personal vendettas. He’s erratic, unstable, and impulsive. Again, it’s his company and it’s his right. Hell, given that he’s destroyed between 70% and 90% of a $44B company’s value by indulging in his idiotic whims, I wouldn’t expect anything different. A literal dart-throwing chimp would be a better manager. It’s obvious why Jack Dorsey got a guaranteed buyout at $54.20 when he agreed to hold onto his $1B holdings during the transition. He could now technically shut down twitter by removing up to 25% of its remaining valuation. If the Saudis got a similar deal, that’s another $1.5B. So Elmo isn’t just paying $1B per year servicing the debt he took on to stupidly buy a company in an industry he knows less than nothing about, those guaranteed buybacks are like additional loans that can be called in at any time If he did end up tanking the value of the company down into the $4B range, it is closing in on being worth less than $0.

So this is to be expected, just like him fucking with the NYT and anyone else he disagrees with is to be expected. People can still call it out as indicative of who he is.

And you know this is nothing like censoring hate speech or dangerous disinformation. You’re just making a bad faith argument.