Musk’s Faulty Vision Of ‘Free Speech’ Is Driving Speech Off ExTwitter
I mean, it's not like we didn't warn Elon Musk. Free speech is not about creating a single private space where everyone gets to speak, because that doesn't support free speech. It enables the worst of society to browbeat, harass, and abuse anyone they dislike, creating a total garbage dump that drives people away and silences them.
That's not free speech. It limits free speech.
In my mind, there are two key aspects to free speech: underlying protocols that are not privately controlled that allow people to speak (but which enable others to build curation/moderation tools on top of them) and a near total limit on the government's ability to suppress speech.
ExTwitter had a chance to be a leader in this, back when Jack Dorsey endorsed the protocol approach and helped get the Bluesky project off the ground. But Elon killed that also. And now his confusion over all of this is driving speech off of ExTwitter, rather than enabling more of it.
We've already talked about how advertisers are bailing on ExTwitter, and this accelerates every time Elon says something hateful, bigoted, or ignorant. Yesterday he added to this by not just tweeting (and later deleting) a Pizzagate meme (that also misunderstands the fact that Michael Scott of The Office is the joke), but one based on an outright fabricated NY Post headline that never existed, falsely claiming that the person who debunked Pizzagate (which was actually debunked by many, many people because it was a delusional nonsense conspiracy theory) was just sentenced to jail for child sexual abuse material. Except, none of that was true.
And people wonder why advertisers are bailing.
But it's not just the advertisers. We've highlighted in the past how traffic appears to be significantly down as well, and now it's being reported that many of the companies that have pulled their advertisements have just stopped using the platform altogether.
... people familiar with the social media strategies of Paramount and WBD confirmed under the condition of anonymity that it's no coincidence: the companies have made the active decision to stop posting under certain handles on X due to concerns, including brand safety.
The blackout on X extends beyond these companies' corporate accounts, in some cases. For instance, the most high profile accounts affiliated with Disney have gone dark on X, such as@StarWars,@Pixar, and@MarvelStudios, which were previously posting multiple times a day on the platform to their millions of followers. Instead, these brands have switched over to theMeta-owned rivalThreads,where they have started actively posting.
For instance, whenThe Late Show With Stephen Colbert" on Monday shared the news that host Stephen Colbertwould be off the air this week due to appendicitis, the program did so on Threads. Prior to Musk's backing of an antisemitic post, Colbert's show, however, was primarily active on X, regularly posting videos and other content. Now, the inverse is true.
The article lists many other companies that aren't just pulling ads but stopping tweeting altogether. And that's not getting into the many individuals, including some big names, who have gone silent as well.
What kind of free speech" is it when you drive everyone away?