[olalonde]

My understanding is that Elon's position is to defer to the law regarding speech. So it would make sense that censorship is increasing in some countries while decreasing in others. In the US, Twitter was previously censoring a lot of legal speech and I believe that's what mostly concerned him.

Edit: I perhaps used "free speech" a bit ambiguously in the previous comment. I edited it to "principles" to avoid causing more debate about semantics.

[mthoms]

It makes sense if he only cares about certain types of speech. Given he censors more overseas than previous Twitter leadership did (without getting banned) - it's really hard to argue he is motivated by principles rather than politics and money.

Furthermore, a person who is strongly principled on freedom of speech would not ban people he disagrees with. Yet, he's done that in spades. I mean come on. Can we just stop with this pretending?

[olalonde]

I can't say I have followed this enough to form a strong opinion, but let's say you are right, what would be an alternative motivation? Can we at least agree that this wasn't a decision driven purely by short-term profits? And can we agree that it was done at some personal cost? For example, his public image taking a big hit. Surely, Elon must have anticipated the impending backlash from both advertisers and mainstream media.

[mthoms]

We can certainly agree on that. I think the problem is that he's now motivated by ego above all else. Elon is... different.