In April, when Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter, he spoke in elevated terms about fulfilling a high moral purpose. “I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy,” he said, adding “since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.”
Read that again, then read the news, then laugh hard for an hour. The transformation under Musk’s private ownership, still underway, now consists of barring prominent journalists who covered him and his suspension of an account that, using publicly available data, tracked his private jet’s movements. Such a tantrum is perfectly legal; the sole proprietor of a social media platform is under no obligation to keep it open to anyone. But by succumbing so quickly to the very censorious tendencies he decried, Musk, the self-proclaimed ”free speech absolutist,” becomes the joke and the punchline at the very same time.
Musk’s fit of pique simultaneously pulls the mask off the conservative critics who have spent years railing against so-called Twitter “shadow bans” while pushing for legislation that would force privately run networks to host many more speakers who violate terms of service intended to prevent bigoted attacks, bullying, incitement and other uncivil speech.
