Twitter And Free Speech In The Musk Era: The Manhattan Contrarian Experience

Elon Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter in October 2022. Prior to Musk’s taking control, there had been many complaints, particularly from the right, of Tweets getting suppressed, down-graded, “shadow-banned,” or the like, but without anyone having detailed information of exactly what Twitter was up to. Then in December 2022 a group of journalists recruited by Musk — e.g., Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, Glenn Greenwald, Alex Berenson — started releasing lengthy Twitter threads documenting exactly how pre-Musk Twitter had “moderated” politically sensitive content to manipulate the public discussion. The releases, known as the Twitter Files, show Twitter executives in the pre-Musk era working hand-in-glove with government actors to suppress disfavored content on sensitive subjects ranging from Covid-19 protocols to climate change to the Hunter Biden laptop and Biden family scandals.

In early 2022, back when his bid for Twitter was pending, Musk had famously called himself a “free speech absolutist.” In April 2022 Musk issued this famous Tweet:

So to what degree is Musk living up to his promise to bring free speech to Twitter, including in particular allowing criticism of himself? Readers might be interested in the experience of Manhattan Contrarian on that subject.

A couple of weeks ago a guy named Randy Bock had me as a guest on his podcast. The subject of the discussion was largely the DC Circuit litigation where I am one of the counsel, CHECC v. EPA, challenging EPA’s finding that CO2 is a “danger” to human health and welfare. Shortly after we recorded the session, Bock issued a Tweet containing the video of the discussion, and also sought to promote the event by buying an ad on Twitter. To his amazement, he got a notice from Twitter saying, “We have determined that the following Tweet cannot be included in your Twitter Ads campaigns.” Twitter gave as the reason for rejecting the ad the one word “Political.” Bock took some kind of appeal, contending that there was nothing “political” about the content, but got no further response. You can view both the video of the podcast and Bock’s correspondence with Twitter at this link.

When Bock told me about this event, it occurred to me that I ought to check my own Twitter account. I have set up an automated function where a Tweet is automatically generated each time I post on this blog, and thus people can follow me on Twitter as one way of “subscribing” to the blog. Since this is done automatically, it doesn’t take any effort on my part, and I rarely check Twitter to be sure that it is operating appropriately. But I thought to check it on this occasion because I had written two posts critical of Musk, which were posted on April 9 (“Tesla’s Entry Into The Net Zero Game: ‘Sustainable Energy For All Of Earth’”) and April 11 (“Reality Versus The Tesla Energy Report, Part II”).

As an example of criticism of Musk (and Tesla), the April 9 post contained this paragraph:

Why would a Tesla put out a Report like this? It doesn’t take much thought to understand the reason. Getting the bureaucrats excited about their utopia coming to pass is the route to the mandates and subsidies for EVs and batteries for decades to come, all of which will maintain Musk as the world’s richest man. And if it all doesn’t work in the end? Somebody else’s problem.

So had anything happened with those posts?

Here is the link to my Twitter feed for @mhtncontrarian. If you go there, here is what you will find: There is a Tweet for each of my posts through March (March 1, 3, 7, 9, 12, 15, 20, 23, 26, 28), and then April 1 and 3, and then — blank until April 22 when the Tweets resume. A total of 5 Tweets are missing, two of which are the ones critical of Musk. Also deleted are Tweets promoting three other unrelated posts, one before and two after the two that criticize Musk and Tesla.

Unlike Bock, who at least got a lame one-word explanation, I can’t find anywhere where they inform me what they have done or why. But it certainly looks like Musk behaving in the usual thin-skinned manner of the big muckety-muck. “I hope even my worst critics remain on Twitter”? Sure — just as long as the criticism doesn’t appear on Twitter.

Meanwhile, I can’t deny that things have improved greatly on Twitter. Both sides of the debate on things like Covid protocols and climate change now appear to be welcome (although there may be undisclosed suppression of various sorts still going on beyond my ability to detect). Biden family scandals can be discussed. Last week, some ridiculous Tweets by Randi Weingarten claiming that she had always been in favor of reopening schools got mercilessly fact checked by the Twitter community, who quoted Weingarten back to herself.

But various critics have pointed out many ways in which Twitter continues to fail to live up to the ideal of a wide open town square. Here is an April 12 piece from FIRE listing some things they view as shortcomings. On some of these issues I agree with Musk (e.g., taking down Twitter accounts that disclosed the location of his private plane). But on other issues there is a notable theme of Musk being intolerant of any criticism that touches himself personally.

The moral is that humans are flawed creatures, and Elon Musk is no different from anyone else in that regard.