Free speech also means that I can decide what speech I listen to and participate in.

Bluesky gives me those controls as an individual, Elon is taking them away and forcing his prefered politics on everyone.

https://x.com/ElonJet

> Twitter defends free speech. Do you just take everything someone says at face value?

As someone who never used Twitter before, the first thing I saw signing up to X earlier this years was a continual feed of exclusively black people doing crimes that would make Fox News blush, and people in the replies calling them subhuman. How would you describe this if not hate?

In case you're not being sarcastic...

Nov 2022, Musk promises not to ban ElonJet, a bot tracker that uses publicly available flight info: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1589414958508691456

A month later, Twitter under Musk bans ElonJet, claiming it's tracking his "real time location"?: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/12/14/elonjet...

Followed by bans of Mastodon for tweeting a link to ElonJet's Mastodon: https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/15/23511894/twitter-suspend...

And bans of journalists for covering it (perhaps for linking the Mastodon?): https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/15/media/twitter-musk-journalist...

That article also mentions Twitter banning users for linking their own Mastodon profiles: "As the furor over the account suspensions unfolded, some Twitter users reported the platform had begun intervening when they attempted to post links to their own profiles on alternative social networks, including Mastodon."

Twitter then bans all usage of Twitter to share links to competing social networks: https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/18/23515221/twitter-bans-li...

Although the policy was quickly reverted after backlash, Musk said explicitly, "Casually sharing occasional links is fine, but no more relentless advertising of competitors for free, which is absurd in the extreme": https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1604593057676300288

April 2023, Twitter blocks engagement on Substack link tweets, coincidentally after Substack announced a Twitter competitor: https://www.engadget.com/twitter-blocks-interactions-on-twee...

Twitter folds to a demand by the Indian government, for the first time censoring a tweet globally, not just in India: https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/twitter-takes-down-po...

September 2024, Twitter finally releases a transparency report after skipping for 2 years (and the data for 2022-2023 are still missing btw): https://www.wired.com/story/x-twitter-first-transparency-rep...

That transparency report shows nearly 71% compliance with legal takedown requests, compared to ~50% max across previous reports.

I don't think it violates someone's free speech[^1] to ban them or call them out for spewing slurs or hateful rhetoric towards minorities. Twitter has become unusable over the last 6-12 months since "free speech" to some people thinks that gives them the right to harass others for not aligning with their ideas of what is "normal" or "correct".

Bluesky, and in turn, other sites are full of people who've fled Twitter due to the shift in general "vibes" and rhetoric from its users. And personally, those people are much more of a joy to be around.

[^1]: https://xkcd.com/1357/

Musk kicked off a bunch of Lfetist and progressive accounts when he took over. He rigged the platform to favor people with his political views. He sold check marks to put posts at the top of conversations to drown the platform in posts from his fan club. There’s nothing about free speech happening on twitter.

The people leaving for other platforms don’t want censorship. They want to get away from a toxic environment. Claiming otherwise is either ignorant or dishonest. (I have never had an account on twitter or any similar platform; I just pay attention to what people who used to like it and now hate it say.)

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