So "X" - nothing to see here. Elon's in control - Part XXX

You're right, Twitter or Musk doesn't have a monopoly on discourse, so why are people getting their knickers in a twist over this?

The truth is they know preaching on an established platform with established followers means that their views get more widely heard. Starting again is hard. And the reason they don't like Musk is not for some high minded reason but it's because he might change the platform so their posting doesn't get the amplification that they are used to and that people they don't like will have their platform again.

Everything else around this is just noise.

so why are people getting their nickers in a twist over twitter banning people like trump?

suddenly the same people who spouted the line that "twitter is a private company, can ban who it wants" are unhappy now that the same private company may unban who it wants also.

Very funny to watch them squirm as they fear the new twitter stewardship may not be so heavily skewed in their favour.

But it hasn't moved beyond being a private company, that's why Musk was able to buy it.

At least you recognize the issue though - it's the power of the platform and it's ability to influence. Those complaining most are effectively worried that their political opponents will be able to use Twitter again to gain influence. They don't want "the other side" to get the mic.

As for whether big tech should have such an outsized influence on discourse, well that's a different conversation and one as old as the media itself.

No it was a publicly traded company. Now it is a private company.

He can do what he wants with it and if he wants to set the whole thing on fire he’s allowed and people are allowed to gawk.

If it was going great sure a whole heap of posters I’m sure you love would be here heaping praise on how well it was going. But instead the sole executive of Twitter is spending the day sharing memes and making himself look a fool pleading with one of the richest authors in the world for 8 dollars a month and sharing soy boy memes about the proposal and unbanning antisemitic accounts. Such a wonder advertisers are distancing.

He could pull the whole thing out of the fire yet so watch this space.

You're conflating people saying what Twitter can/can't do, and what they should/shouldn't do.

Twitter can increase ads by 5x, require verification as standard for all users for $25, and ban your account unless you retweet every meme Musk tweets.

That doesn't mean they should, or that people won't talk about what a bad decision that would be or the possible ramifications of that.

Twitter has very often done things "the left" didn't like. People were calling for Twitter to ban Trump long before they actually did. Christ, the man was essentially threatening nuclear war with North Korea over Twitter. Then came the Covid misinformation. Then election fraud lies. But Twitter can let Trump on the site for as long as they wanted, because they were a private company. They did things like add warnings to some posts about Covid/Election and extended it to other public figures too, but "the left" were calling for him to be banned. Twitter didn't ban him at those points, because they could do what they wanted with their company.

So true, I mean the President of the US has a blue tick, as does 101 youtubers who sole input to the world is to tell us the new iphone is not the same as the last one, '' oh i'm so important, I need a blue tick to be like the president, I uploaded a youtube vid'' wtf

Blue ticks are every where now, you see people with them who have put a few followers, their importance is very much self importance, I'd say only have blue ticks for businesses to verify themselves, and actually relevant people, and if they are relevant they'd have 1m plus followers

I'm not seeing this supposed hypocrisy in this thread anyway.

Can't see the problem with the blue tick fee?

Twitter is not profitable most of the time, if that doesn't change it goes wallop.