It's been wild ride over on Twitter since Elon Musk took over.
For a supposed "free speech absolutist", Musk is proving to be anything but. He has spent the last 6 weeks, firing everybody at Twitter, going after people who criticize him, and re-enabling the accounts of every right wing hate monger that Twitter had banned in the last 5 years.
Oh - and on the side, he's been booting left wing accounts that he dubs "too woke" off the site arbitrarily.
Quite a time indeed.
The blunt reality is that Musk isn't a "free speech absolutist", he's a hypocrite. This was never about "free speech" per se, it was about control. Musk has developed a political agenda over the last few years, and it is very much aligned with the rising fascist right. This is not a good thing, and part of the reason I am slowly withdrawing from Twitter.
Since Musk took over, the level of overt bullying, transphobia, homophobia, and racism has skyrocketed. I've got a lot of the "worst offenders" long ago blocked, but it's been creeping into my timeline as a result of both changes Musk has demanded be made and people becoming more emboldened to say or copy the hate around in one form or another.
This morning, Musk had a tweet up about pronouns that was just ridiculous. Seriously, folks, what's so hard about addressing people the way that they ask you to? The whining about pronouns is little more than complaining about basic social decency. Seriously, what's so hard about using the name or pronouns someone asks you to use? Do you know them better than they know themselves?
Longer term, I think Musk's takeover of Twitter will do two things. First, it will entrench the wannabe fascists on the platform. It's not like they weren't already there, or getting preferential treatment already, with accounts like the stochastic terrorist account "Libs of TikTok" specifically on a "do not ban" list internally.
Second, it will inevitably kill the company. Musk's actions have already gutted the company's somewhat weak revenue model, and in 6 months when some of that leveraged debt he imposed starts to come due, then what? Musk isn't a great leader to start with, his management acumen is showing its limits with his decision making. I would be surprised if the company exists as an independent entity in two years.
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