Elon didn’t start a new social network, he took over Twitter. You don’t need to start a new city, you can take over existing ones by just moving there en masse and voting for your candidates. You don’t even need 44b. This is hard to do, but it’s easier than moving all the intellectual capital out of SF. Network effects are hard to disrupt.

TwitterX accounts were banned for parody violation, banned for posting links to Twitter alternatives, and now we see bans/suppression related to politics. Twitter still has an autocrat.

Calling that a free speech success undermines the call for making SF great.

Who’s being banned for politics?

The improvement is orders of magnitude better than previous administration, and that is the most important thing Elon has ever done IMO

Wasn’t the “White Dudes for Harris” account banned during their fundraising event in which they raised over $4 million?

I think Twitter has improved in some areas and failed in others. Perhaps it’s a net improvement (I won’t arbitrarily quantify as you did). But let’s dispense the fantasy that Musk, or anyone, can bring meaningful free speech while simultaneously fingering a ban button.

I also question the importance of Twitter.

Well, yes. The current major social networks globally enabled people under actual authoritarian rule, offering them a new voice to challenge their government. This may be seen as low-hanging fruit for those in modern democracies, but it’s still hard for me to discount.

Perhaps Musk has recently raised the bar relative to Meta or Google. There is porn on Twitter, after all. But people always frequented PornHub anyway.

I don’t know if this is what you meant by “done more for free speech.” I’m just skeptical of the conclusion that Musk has so improved ambient free speech in society. Has he improved free speech on Twitter? With a big caveat, yes.

Has anyone across the major social networks done more for free speech than Elon? Is it even close?