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I know most peoples commitment to free speech is tenuous at best, but how many of such utterances are sincerely stated beliefs versus snarky backhands intended to remind progressives who was singing this tune not long ago?
And we cant just paper over the differences in application here. A sufficiently non-partisan crowd with warm sentiments towards the concept of free speech could be totally on-board with banning the amplification of public tracking data on completely generic grounds regarding public safety. That is not the same thing as banning people over jokes or misgendering.
I know that Elon's statements in support of 'free speech absolutism' has confused so much of the discourse around this. But he also said the platform would attempt to comply with the law, and ultimately wants Twitter to be a place for the 'sane 80%' (should such a thing exist), which of course would entail discrimination of some kind. Who exactly was expecting or wanting Twitter to turn into 4chan or kiwifarms?
It’s totally understandable to me why a South African billionaire is hypersensitive to people doxxing him after someone threatened his child. But the dominant mood I see from right wing twitter isn’t that, nor is it ‘well what goes around comes around’. It’s ‘inshallah censor our enemies’.
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