Yes, it's most unfortunate but hard to avoid, as most utterances that fall afoul of laws and/or policies are political in nature.

Companies that publish speech in various forms are bound by the law of the land, obviously. In the US, very few utterances fall outside the scope of the 1. Amendment to the Constitution, but threats of violence or incitement to violence do. That's a matter of law (as set forth by Supreme Court precedents), so a company like Twitter is on solid ground when they remove such posts.

But since the most prevalent issue in that regard is various actors encouraging violence against their political opponents, we're back to the rat's nest that is politics again.

It would be great if we could all just agree that incitement to violence is unacceptable, and also that free speech means we all have to accept that our beliefs may be challenged, which means being insulted and offended from time to time, but alas it's clearly not that easy.

Elon Musk
@elonmusk
"You know Twitter is being fair when extremists on far right and far left are simultaneously upset!

Twitter aims to serve center 80% of people, who wish to learn, laugh & engage in reasoned debate. ❤️"
10:41 AM · Dec 2, 2022 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1598718904830132225

Apparently, some of the deleted accounts relied on steganography:(The poster is European and uses periods rather than commas.)
Source: Tweet V here.

Regarding testimony by former Twitter employees before Congress a couple of days ago - Elon Musk: "The Woke Stasi felt the heat today ��" https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1623589561103421440

He does seem to be doing something, as opposed to nothing, about security. I clicked on the link here and it threw a 'privacy error'. When I disconnected the VPN, I got in fine. Mind you, the vpn is set up by some devious head. When you try reverse dns on it, it kind of vanishes up it's own posterior and you come back with the IP of a trunk router

Anyone on a vpn might try it. I'm on protonvpn.

Elon Musk
@elonmusk
As promised, this platform will fight for your freedom to speak!
We expect many such battles in the future.
Freedom of speech is the bedrock of democracy. Without it, America ends." https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1745348400218796183


News
@XNews
Justice has prevailed! X has successfully fought for its user's right to free speech. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has rescinded its disciplinary action against Juan David Campolargo, dropping all charges and closing the case.

Mr. Campolargo was threatened with dismissal from his on-campus job and eviction from student housing by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign based on charges that his X posts about free food on campus breached the Student Code of Conduct. Additionally, he was accused of taking food that the catering staff was discarding (with their permission) at one event.

When we learned Mr. Campolargo had been disciplined due to his X posts, we intervened to support him. If you can be punished for posting about free food, what can't you be punished for? X hired the Schaerr Jaffe law firm, at no cost to Mr. Campolargo, to submit an appeal to defend his First Amendment right to free speech, which the University had violated. The University first resisted and informed Mr. Campolargo that he was not allowed to be represented by a lawyer in their disciplinary proceedings.

Mr. Campolargo has now prevailed in his appeal and is free to resume posting on his X account and can continue his on-campus job and student housing without any issues.

We must always stand firm in the face of threats and intimidation to protect our right to free speech-- it's the cornerstone of democracy and a fundamental human right.
12:45 PM · Jan 10, 2024"
https://twitter.com/XNews/status/1745155001108877788

Your links are all wrong? They point to old twitter and not x??

Certainly not something about "him" https://futurism.com/the-byte/twitte...ical-elon-musk

Free speech my hairy behind

What's the point of posting the entire content of a link and then posting the link? The content was useless as it gave absolutely no information on what this student posted on X/Twitter. My opinion of Must has gone massively down since his purchase of Twitter and his blatant hypocrisy on what he refers to as 'free speech', meaning free as long as you agree with Must. He's been banning people from the X/Twitter site who disagree with him or are critical of him since shortly after the purchase.

I like to provide a source for any content I post on the internet.

A quick google search suggests Musk is ridiculously misrepresenting the facts of the incident anyway (a.k.a. lying).

https://www.ft.com/content/9642f1a5-...3-30e6d02e5f1b

Mr. Campolargo violated the student code of conduct by promoting an event as open, with free food, when it was in fact a closed event.

Furthermore, it's entirely unclear that Musk's lawyers actions resulted in any change at all, much less any sort of "positive" change. The school itself does not comment because student disciplinary actions are confidential. So, the only publicly available information is dubious claims from Musk's lawyers.

Anyway, representing this as a "free speech" issue is pretty ludicrous. How would Elon Musk like it if someone was posting that his home address was a place that was open to the public to enter at any time and get free food? That's not free speech, that's a malicious incitement of harassment. Same principle with a closed event being publicized as an open event with free food.

This thread makes me very glad I deleted all social media accounts & as much data as possible after dipping the tip of one toenail in that water. Now any worthwhile scandal makes the news anyhow.

Twitter is not a credible source.

But it has wonderful ads! https://www.techdirt.com/2024/01/11/...d-to-clean-up/


Still fail to understand why name "twitter" is still in action? Shouldn't everything be "x" now??

It's simple. If you say "X", you have to add "formerly known as Twitter". Otherwise no one knows what you're talking about because "X" could mean anything. So if you have to mention "Twitter" anyway, you might as well call it that.

Lol, opinions are like...., well, you know, everybody has one.