AFAIK that’s a misconstrual. Having a “verified” blue checkmark will cost $8 a month, but using Twitter and saying whatever you want on it will still be free.
Before you let that cynicism build up too much, for the record, not all of us Elon+Twitter skeptics have a problem with the $8 thing. You're just not going to hear from any one who didn't have an issue with it.
Related: Is there a quippy term or a fallacy for the (very natural!) habit of treating a random sample of a million voices and expecting a coherent message from them? I feel like it's related but distinct from a strawman.
After thinking on it, maybe it is a form of unintentional straw man. People are attacking a hypothetical position and view that is a synthesis of many people and only is combined in their mind.
There is also a reverse no true Scotsman, I've seen referenced as dicto simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid. Not as catchy as no true Scotsman but you're basically imagining a perfect Scotsman and then attacking them when they don't exist
"Weak man" is when you take a genuine-but-weak take from one of your opponents and treat them as representing your opposition in general. (That's not quite what you're asking for though, I think)
> Before it was that private companies could do whatever they wanted,
No, it was that “free speech” means private actors are free to make decisions about what content to relay.
Not that everything they choose on that (or any other) is equally good, nor that they shouldn’t be punished in the marketplace (not by the state) for their bad choices.
> That’s why in a free marketplace, Elon asserted his free speech to take over Twitter due to their perceived poor management.
That’s not really accurate. Twitter’s management took Elon to court to force him to take over so the stockholders they worked for could reap thr windfall ofnthe premium price he regretted offering and tried to tun away from.
Private companies explicitly shouldn’t do whatever they want at all. They don’t even get to decide totally whom to serve, as doing so against a protected class will quickly lead to a really bad outcome for the company.
And that’s a good thing. It is frankly ridiculous that private companies get to decide the public opinion by tweaking their algorithms, it should be managed in a similar way how we don’t allow food companies to put cocaine into their products.
In what delusional world could private companies ever 'do whatever they wanted'? We have huge legal tomes filled with laws to prevent this sort of sociopathic thinking from becoming reality for the sake of profit.
If you think the bannable offenses on Twitter only gave enough room for the left, you are not just to the right of that, but more like far right extremism. Twitter did and does, in fact, tolerate right-wing and conservative views. It is full of them.
Don't mistake hate speech, disinfo, racism or whatever you think twitter was violating 'free speech' for as being the right wing. It is not.