There are some still holding out hope that Elon Musk will implement freedom of speech on Twitter. However, I am not among them. To me, his first few days have shown that he is going to back down completely, and at this point, it’s possible Donald Trump won’t even be allowed back on.
The fact is, if he was going to do freedom of speech, he would have come in like a whirlwind and just done it. He could have very easily fired every employee at Twitter and brought in his own people. Twitter is not a complicated website. A team of skilled programmers could take over from the old staff and no one would really notice. Instead, like Donald Trump when he became president, Musk has decided to keep much of the staff.
The troubles started immediately after he took over, when he tweeted that he is going to form a council of “widely diverse viewpoints” (i.e., Jewish Sanhedrin) to decide what speech is allowed.
Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints.
No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 28, 2022
That pretty much proved that we were not getting anything close to what was promised.
Just to be clear – we were promised that all speech allowed by the law would be allowed. That was explicitly promised when Musk described “what I mean by free speech.”
By “free speech”, I simply mean that which matches the law.
I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law.
If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect.
Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 26, 2022
He has also openly described himself as a “free speech absolutist.”
Starlink has been told by some governments (not Ukraine) to block Russian news sources. We will not do so unless at gunpoint.
Sorry to be a free speech absolutist.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 5, 2022
We were promised that. That was the discussion.
When he took over, people started spamming “nigger.” I and many others told people not to do this, but it doesn’t matter – there was a 100% chance that was going to happen, and Musk could not possibly have been surprised by that.
The bitchy faggot house nigger LeBron James complained that his feelings were being very badly hurt by people saying this mean word.
Elon then responded to that house nigger LeBron by retweeting a Jew who is working on “trust and safety” saying that they are deleting all the n-word accounts.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 30, 2022
Some people are saying “oh well, it’s okay if we can’t say nigger.” Those people do not grasp the gravity of what has happened here. This is not about saying nigger. It is about Musk openly bowing to a grievance group – LeBron James – and implementing censorship.
He had already stated that the policies on speech had not changed. If the staff was deleting nigger spam accounts, he could easily have just said nothing at all. Instead, he went directly to the whining feelings nigger and said “sorry, master – we shut down those words that hurt your feelings.”
Musk knows that the whole world is watching him right now. He took over and instead of saying “okay, we’re doing free speech now,” he announced a censorship council, and then started directly catering to political correctness whiners.
I would not necessarily be opposed to a policy on saying nigger. Despite popular perception, I don’t personally think an environment where everyone is just doing nigger spam is conducive to productive discussion (necessarily). However, I think the solution is to simply downrank posts that use this word or other slurs, to make it so only people seeking those kinds of posts see them. Right now, Twitter is filled with porn, but you only really see it if you’re looking for it. I have used Twitter a lot and rarely run across porn.
Everyone needs to remember: you could do nigger spam on Twitter as recently as 2017. That is not that long ago. The world was different then, but it is not that long ago. The idea that the whole world is dependent on people not saying the word nigger is inconceivable to me.
That said, it may be possible to have a policy of “no racial slurs” without going onto the slippery slope of censorship. That is not ideal, but maybe it is possible. What is not possible is to cater to the worst kind of whining people – with LeBron James being second only to Jonathan Greenblatt – and vow to make sure their feelings are not hurt. Preventing hurt feelings is the slippery slope, because absolutely anything can hurt LeBron James’ feelings. He’s an extremely emotional person.
If you’re devoted to protecting LeBron’s feelings, how can you not be devoted to protecting the feelings of Jonathan Greenblatt or sobbing blue-haired feminists?
Elon Musk was tested and he failed, and this can only go in the wrong direction.
He should have brought a new staff in immediately, said there will be some hiccups in the first few days, and just done whatever it was he was planning to do. If he would have come in strong with “okay, you can say what you want but you’ll get a week ban for the n-word,” that would have been acceptable to me. It’s not ideal, because I think there is room for a slippery slope there, but saying “you just can’t say this one word” is a lot better than what we have now.
Instead, he waffled, and then he pandered to the worst whiner.
Meanwhile, the media is gloating about how he’s going to keep banning people the ADL wants him to ban. The ADL issued an official list of people they want to ensure are not allowed back on, including Nick Fuentes.
Nick Fuentes was then banned, again, after Musk took over.
Again: he could just as easily have avoided this. He could have just fired the entire moderation staff and then said “okay, give us a few days here, we’re figuring things out.” That would have been very easy.
Instead, he fired the Paki Vagina but kept the Jew Yolo. Frankly, he could have told Vagina “okay, we’re saying nigger now, okay?” and she wouldn’t have cared. Pakis don’t care, they just want money. Jews on the other hand are going to be constantly working to censor, no matter what.
There is no reason at all to believe that real free speech is going to be allowed on Twitter. It’s completely unclear what exactly Musk is doing, or why he would pay $44 billion just to not do what he said he was going to do, but here we are.
People can shill for him if they want, but every single sign we’ve seen has been bad – and the fact that we have to try to read signs in the first place is absurd. Why are we reading signs? He has had time to figure this out. He spent $44 billion. He should have been able to release a 700-word essay about what exactly he plans to do. He did not need to form a council. He’s in charge. It’s his decision, and if he forms a council, it’s still him making the decision, meaning the council is totally superfluous.
It’s possible we will get something out of this. Maybe Donald Trump and other Republicans will be allowed back on. That is to say: maybe we’ll get the 2020 norms back. But it does not look like we’re getting 2017 norms back. I would be surprised at this point if Ye is even allowed back on. Ye has hurt LeBron James’ feelings, and Musk has made it clear that protecting LeBron James’ feelings is of the utmost importance to him.
Of course, I hope I’m wrong. If I am wrong, I will happily go back to praising Elon Musk. However, the basic reality is that every indicator shows that I am not wrong, and there will not be free speech on Twitter.
Just to be perfectly clear: I am totally willing to play by the rules if Musk decides to do some kind of “no slurs, but politely stated political beliefs are okay” system, and I think all other reasonable people are willing to play by those rules. I wasn’t going to say slurs anyway, because I think there is something to be said about slurs degrading the quality of the conversation. I do not think this is going to be possible, and I think that Jew Yolo will ban me just for being me.
But we’ll see. We shall see. Indeed, we shall.