ROFLMAO
Between Elon Musk buying Twitter and universities crushing the protests, conservatives (and libertarians!!!) are really now having the last laugh in the "free speech" debate. You really don't hear "it's a private company, they can do whatever they want" or "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences" from leftists these days.
I think plenty of people have said this about Twitter/X, specifically people who have voted with their feet and stopped using it. Twitter is still huge obviously but it has shrunk pretty dramatically and is an openly bleeding money wound with a lot of advertisers wanting nothing to do with it.
Twitter usage hasn't dropped dramatically, where are you getting that from? I see still it used just as much as before, just look at this thread (or really any thread in this forum).
ROFLMAO
Between Elon Musk buying Twitter and universities crushing the protests, conservatives (and libertarians!!!) are really now having the last laugh in the "free speech" debate. You really don't hear "it's a private company, they can do whatever they want" or "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences" from leftists these days.
Most leftist/liberals would say these two events validate their beliefs that the right was engaging in bad faith from the start of these “free speech” and that it was always about defending reactionary/bigoted statements that the right agreed with or at the minimum defended out of political tribalism. I mean it’s pretty hard to argue against that when the guy who acted as the biggest right wing free speech warrior bought twitter and showed his definition of free speech is Nazis freely running around and saying the most openly vile things with no crackdown but people who make fun of Elon personally get kicked off
I honestly feel that this is moreso a case of "when used to privilege, equality feels like oppression". The left isn't censored on twitter, like at all. In fact, when it comes to Israel/Palestine, twitter is easily the mainstream media where you'll find the most pro-Palestinian support after TikTok (and ahead of of the likes of Facebook, Instagram or even reddit). It's just that, since the right isn't censored either, they also have a pretty huge presence on it and the left just doesn't feel like thay should happen.
A good example is to look at any anti-trans tweet made by JK Rowling. You will end up with a similar number of people agreeing and disagreeing with her which is probably just about where the UK population is on the issue. Previously though, anyone agreeing with her would be shadow banned.
About Elon Musk banning people making fun of him, maybe that's true but it's such a drop in the ocean though, like does it even affect a double digit number of people?