First, I would like to thank God for blessing me with the skills to run my own website rather than be subjected to the whims of random billionaires and their monopolistic platforms.
Elon Musk took over Twitter (in a rather hostile way) with the promise of free speech. He even claimed to be a “free speech absolutist” and said he would only ban content which is illegal. After the recent banning spree, it is clear that Musk’s free speech isn’t as “absolute” as promised.
One of the first signs that Musk’s free speech promise wasn’t genuine is the way in which he restored the account of former president Donald Trump. If Musk believed in free speech absolutism, he would have just unbanned Trump. But no, instead he posted a poll on whether Trump should be unbanned. Free speech most definitely does not mean that a simple majority can decide who gets to speak. Musk also used the idiotic phrase “Vox Populi, Vox Dei” which translates to “The voice of the people is the Voice of God.” Despite being written in Latin, that’s a stupid freaking quote. The voice of God is the voice of God, not the voice of the people. And attempting to elevating ourselves to the level of gods would be a foolish mistake.
Musk also said that he was so dedicated to free speech that he would not suspend the ElonJet Twitter account, a bot account which tweeted whenever Musk’s private jet arrived or departed at an airport. Well now Musk has banned ElonJet, claiming he was “doxxing” him (he wasn’t, flight data is public information) and it was a threat to his personal safety (it isn’t, because ElonJet was just reposing public data). Musk is also banning journalists talking about ElonJet. So much for “free speech.”
And finally, Musk is blocking links to Mastodon, a decentralized Twitter alternative. This is an abuse of Twitter’s monopoly power, as it prevents people from telling their followers where else they can follow them. It would seem that Musk is worried that people might finally start leaving Twitter in meaningful numbers. It is very hard to break the network effect (when people use a product because it’s what everyone else is using) of a social network, but Musk might have managed it.
Of course, the “free speech absolutism” was never going to work out. Almost every time a platform does this they end up going back on it when they realize that letting people say literally anything leads to a bunch of nazi bs and adult content that nobody wants. If you are the only major platform that allows something, you become the platform for that thing. It turns out people don’t like platforms filled with such garbage.
Anyway, I’m going to stick to my blog, and I suggest you get your own website rather than relying on social media. Social media is nothing more than a cash-grabbing operation designed to extract every last milligram of your attention and personal data. Personal websites, however, do not suffer from this nearly as much. JimmyNet, for instance, does not try to get you addicted, and only keeps a record of basic analytics. It’s just me having fun with a little server. Of course, making a website can be difficult, but using something like WordPress let’s you make one without any coding skills. And if you run a website, you can post on it and still link to your posts on social media.
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