It didnt take long for the places to shift between the right and the left on Twitter.
To make it clear, I dont align myself with either side and see the Twitter takeover as nothing more than a political change of power over one of the current "open forums" online.
Twitter never stood for free speech, Twitter by design cannot provide free speech, Elon Musk will not bring free speech to Twitter.
That being said, its still fun to see how behavior of these two sides mirrors itself.
Prior to Elon Musk buying Twitter cries from the right were heard about censorship and suppression of free speech. Most of those affected being controversial figures coming from the extreme right.
Now that Elon has taken over you are seeing complaints from the left for the exact same thing.
The same "Its a private company" arguments that were used by the left are now used by the right. "Its not free speech suppression. Its just Twitter policy."
When your focus is hating your ideological opponent and you commit your life to destroying that enemy you cannot make any significant strides forwards. The right got the chance to not be like the leftists before, they chose to be the same.
Just like the leftists in charge would ban the right wing extremists. Elons Twitter started with the leftist ones.
Remember this crazy nut?
Apparently she changed her name to Elon Musk as a funny. She got permabanned.
A few days later, H3H3, a person that used to be quite funny 5-6 years ago but turned into a whinny leftist asshole, wrote some funnies as a parody. He even added it in his bio. He was permabanned as well.
If you agree with the bans or not is besides the point. These two people have quite big audiences.
One is well known in the mainstream and the other on the internets.
Just them two are enough to flip the narrative of Twitter standing for free speech.
It doesnt matter what is true or not, all that matters is how much you hate the other side which makes you receptive to what ever claim against the other side there is.
If you hate George Soros just a little bit, you will maybe believe that he is using his money to fund leftist riots. If you hate him a lot you might believe he drinks infant blood.
It took a week and here we already are.
Makes me wonder what the leftist Parler will be called. 😅
Today's free speech advocates are posers. All they do is waste their time arguing with platforms, shortly after being inconvenienced. Everyone can hear them saying they don't have free speech. How does that make sense? Then if you use your ability to speak freely in order to challenge this idiocy, they'll tell you you're a monster because you don't stand for free speech. WTF?
Free speech is something to be fought over but never attempted by either side to provide to everyone.
If you control it, why give it to your enemy? When you lose control, why stop complaining about it?
And in circles we go.
And when someone actually creates solutions its ignored. I mean Bluesky didnt give two shits about Hive when our core team talked to them. Will Twitter? Will anyone? Ofc not.
Free speech is just a term that is looked favorably upon but hated by anyone that has clear political affiliations.
Solution sitting right here that also provides the freedom to act, just in case sitting around talking shit isn't enough. Can have the words heard and the needs met, all in one. No dice. WTF?
An entire attention economy was built around this supposed 'free speech' being under attack. Perhaps this solution hurts their bottom line. Better to drag it out and milk that fucker for all its worth.
not to toot my own horn but I memed the shit out of the situation :)
Drop one in the comments. :D
this one I shared on twitter in response to Musky boy encouraging people to vote republican
You really stir the pot. Haha.
It's in my job description :)))
Not that I think Twitter ever was or will be a shining beacon for free speech but I'm not sure impersonating someone to impugn their character qualifies. Sure, you could argue that this is all just parody and it should be obvious that it isn't really Elon Musk making these tweets but the fact of the matter is there will be millions of people who think it is him. A better question might be how equally this policy is enforced. If someone changes their name to Kathy Griffin and tweets stuff to make her look bad (I mean worse if that is possible) then would they be banned?
At the end of the day this is a good thing. Hopefully this will drive more people away from twitter and make for a more competitive social media environment...and maybe even drive a few people to use platforms like Hive.
It was clearly parody. But that doesnt matter. As I said. Its about the narrative of twitter being a free speech platform Elon is pushing.
I thought for a second that maybe the left will now claim that absolute free speech is not good. Instead what they will do is simply claim that Twitter actually isnt about free speech at all. Thats its about suppressing the speech of their political affiliation and a playtoy for a manchild.
So in other words their argument will be that not much has changed (except maybe now it is a single manchild vs. a bunch of children).
Free speech in the Constitutional sense (not that that applies to a private platform anyway) is primarily about freedom of political speech (as opposed to say yelling fire in a crowded theater or threats of violence). I don't think it extends to impersonating others though unless it IS obviously parody. I'm quite certain however that while it may be obvious to you and me there will literally be millions of twitter users who it will not be obvious to. They will see Elon's name and Elon's picture and assume it is from Elon. The blue checkmark next to the name even reinforces that. I doubt those individual were trying to parody Elon Musk so much as they were trying to get themselves banned to prove some kind of point. From the first twitter screenshot it looks like a warning was given about labeling something as parody when impersonating someone. It's hard to see that as some egregious violation of free speech. A warning no doubt ignored in order to become a Twitter martyr.
In any case, whether or not it is about suppressing speech of those of a certain political affiliation depends on how equally the policy is enforced. It can't really be argued that Elon is suppressing those of a certain political affiliation if he does the same for all political affiliations. Whether that's happening or not, I don't know. Remains to be seen I guess. Right now I suspect it is mostly those of a certain political persuasion doing this to prove a point so it will look a little one-sided right now regardless.
I knew this is Gonna happen though even in a funny way she was impersonating which even I believed that tweet was made by real Elon Musk, so won't say only in that case it was against free speech.
But well, I have seen enough in Twitter how free speech ain't exist and do not agree with these bans.
Eventually can't do or expect more from Centralized stuff. Have seen this all coming but it's Fun to see Twitter becoming a Circus. !LOL
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i really do not trust elon musk!
I dont trust anyone. When I was born I asked my mother:
Blue check verification obviously comes with a responsibility that you CAN NOT change your verified name and, especially, you can't change your verified name to the name of another blue check user. That's just not parody.
If you want to do parody, start a new account on 0 follows and do parody... you can't use your Blue Check to be someone else.
Your twitter @ makes you distinct and you obviously can parody by changing your name. Its just that twitter apparently doesnt allow it even when its obvious and listed in bio.
The blue checkmark is a product of the twitter system. If you impose rules based on the checkmark then its rules executed can stifle free speech.
They were banned instead of their checkmark simply removed.
But that is besides the point. Its the fact that this happened and the fact that you can create a narrative over this that actually, no, Elon doesnt want free speech, he just wants to punish leftists, leads to nothing but a directly inverted perception of Twitter. The perception the right had becoming the leftist perception.
Specifically because "someone" owns it. He owns it.
The open forum cant be owned by anyone to be accepted by everyone as an open forum.
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