Elon Musk, Twitter & Free Speech

Since Elon Musk officially took over Twitter on October 27th, a lot has been said about the future of the platform and the wider implications this will have on society.

The legacy media has been especially critical, claiming that Musk’s “free speech absolutist” attitude will give way for the rise of misinformation.

What I find ironic in this statement is that the same media that is protected by the first amendment, freedom of speech and the press, is literally advocating for less freedom of speech when it comes from sources they cannot control.

The establishment media has been very comfortable for a long time controlling the narrative and lately, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic, has been cracking down on differing points of view, comfortably claiming that they are doing this in the name of stopping misinformation.

Not only has the legacy media been complacent in the slow erosion of the fundamental principle of liberal democracies- freedom of speech and thought, but they have been doing so in collusion with the government.

Twitter in the past has been criticized for heavily censoring or shadow-banning certain figures on the political right, simply because they don’t agree with their takes. What is more, there were no clear guidelines on what those safety policies were and it all…