People are free to either agree with the CEO view or to not use the platform. Sad but true. At least it reminds us all that it is a private for-profit company and always has been. No matter whether the "value" of it was mostly provided by user-created contents.

Maybe he is aware of that, but wants to remind us all how internet communities were in the 00s.

Banning people for mentioning competing platforms just brings nostalgic tears.

Or maybe he doesn't, just all the benevolence social media owners would show goes down the pipe when there really are decentralized alternatives which work. When they didn't feel threatened, they could seem wiser.

same as reddit did with lemmy and kbin when they banned users and sub for mentioning it and giving migration howto's

Because anyone who cries "freeze peach!" at any provocation are really just people that want to say hateful shit without repercussions. Generally, those same people are the ones to shut other people down from expressing their own freedom of speech.

Musk was only appealing to right wing idiots who think “freedom from social consequences” is a human right and co-opt “free speech”, making it a meaningless term

Musk purported to be a free speech absolutist when he bought Twitter. He said only illegal content should be suppressed. Obviously, he's a liar. He banned tons of Leftist accounts shortly after he took over.

It’s some form of sarcasm

Logic doesn't matter. Literally do anything at all and say "it's because free speech" or "it's to stop cancel culture" and the fan boys will cheer it.

"Free speech absolutism (but not if you link to my competitor)" isn't free speech absolutism. It's just another hypocrisy to throw on the pile.

Free speech Moscow style by Eloon Muskovite

Yes. Twitter was at one point tagging links to Mastodon as "potentially harmful" and removing them.

But the one thing that's been shown consistent about Mr. Musk's ownership of Twitter is that it is consistently self-contradicting. So as Twitter positions itself as "free speech absolutist" one can rest assured that the reality will be "self-contradicting".

Let us not forget that time that Musk said that "Elon Jet Tracker" would not be banned WHILE it was indeed banned. Literally tweeting verifiably false information and then subsequently being called out on it, only for Musk to do the traditional "ignore and move on".

Yeah, I think at this point it’s easier to compile a list containing categories of platforms/people/accounts they didn’t ban :)

Just thought it was kinda funny.

Fee speech, pay $8/mo to post hate speech at your leisure.

Yeah, I think what he said was that anything allowed by law would be permitted, whatever that means. But then when they started impeding links to mastodon he was like "we don't have to let you advertise our competition >>>:(." Elon/Twitter has gotten so tedious to hear about.

Geez that's rough and must really suck. We should help all of those rich people get over their lack of personal connections. By taxing most of their money away.