Yes, he's not particularly consistent. Still, this was the account he held up as evidence that he was committed to free speech, because he refused to ban it even though he didn't like it. Now it’s banned.
He doesn't have to. However for a self-paraded "free speech absolutist" who literally said he would not suspend @elonjet in order to follow that principle, this act makes him a massive hypocrite and demonstrates his free speech advocacy to be nothing but a show.
Also, arbitrary suspensions like this when Twitter no longer has any decision-making council on such policies is not a good sign for corporate advertisers who prefer stability & reputation. Can't find those on a platform where one manchild has taken a dictatorial position.
It's a top-three above-the-fold story on https://www.nbcnews.com/ at this moment; any large advertiser is going to have brand safety folks employed specifically to keep an eye on stuff like this.
At some point I think he'll move to just not even bothering explaining anything since he knows his fans will defend him. His justification could be literal gibberish, and his defenders would be resorting to the Kabbalah to try to translate it into something coherent.
You got down-voted, but I think you're onto something.
The last couple of weeks/months of Elon to me are just another instance of a much-replicated "no fact-checking required for popularity" pattern. It turns out it never was, we just didn't have the sort of media immediacy that made it an issue at scale before.
We need more general tools to deal with these cases.
Could Elon give any rationale? Rationale of course depending on internal consistency and coherency. Elon's public persona seems to be a mess of contradictions with itself.