Twitter owner Elon Musk muting accounts that annoy him is nothing new. Musk removed the Twitter account @elonjet that posted the billionaire's flight data publicly, which seemed like an apolitical, if childish, move to combat criticism against him. Like with child rearing, though, something as seemingly innocuous but immature as that should be corrected early on.
But we're dealing with a grown man here, and one of the richest in history. So, he gets to do what he wants to and no one can stop him from sending his detractors to the cornfield or renaming his pet "X".
Several popular left-leaning accounts critical of Musk had their accounts suspended early this month, then reinstated following complaints.
The accounts, which were restored within hours, all have over 75,000 followers and are known to be left-leaning. The temporary bans drove immediate claims of censorship from some X users online, who pointed to past instances in which the platform suspended similar types of users.
Kat Tenbarge, NBC News
Musk claimed that the suspension was an accident and that the accounts must have gotten swept up with a routine bot and scam account purge. This seems, how should I put this, unlikely.
In other Twit- sorry, X, news, Musk's been shifting around Twitter's format to resemble it's youthful sibling, Tiktok. The platform is now purportedly video-based, less so the online "town hall" of Internet's past. Everyone's on Twitter- ah, X, sorry again, and not Tiktok or Instagram for videos, right? Not just for links to furry porn and for yelling at strangers about their bizarre politics? Often with the same account?
None of this had to happen. No one wanted Twitter stripped down to a dilapidated Instagram Reels feed. It happened only because Musk was lying when he claimed he didn't care about the economics. Twitter always lacked a path to being worth anything near what Instagram or TikTok was worth. Twitter was simply great at one thing: short text blasts that arrived in perfectly curated feeds exactly when people sent them. There was value in that—not $44 billion of value, but people liked it.
Alex Kirshner for Slate
In the meantime, what with no recourse for online debate, I'll be Screaming Into the Void.
