His commitment to his free speech is unwavering.
Nah man, jokes are forbidden on HN.
A boy who trades the family cow to a wandering peddler for magic beans is credulous. But a boy who buys the magic beans a 10th time from the the same scamp who is broadly known to also sell sawdust flour and moldy bread is an extra level of foolishness.
Extending Musk the benefit of the doubt required that one willfully ignore his history of deceit. That was (and is) an error. Cf. Rumsfeld and Iraq.
Twitter is a promotion service, just like Facebook (in each, they let users promote themselves in exchange for being targeted for promotion by others). The entire point of it is to promote content. It is not a content platform, except by coincidence.
Once you “maximum derank” somebody, you are denying them access to the whole point of the service.
By all means, ban the users you don’t want. Keep your service free of toxicity. Nobody likes a forum full of trolls. But don’t call it “free speech”
Legal free speech has only to do with retribution via criminal liability from government organizations, alongside freedom to disassociate from speech and expression that you don't like
Twitter is not a government organization and is also not capable of levying criminal charges against anyone, and is free to disassociate from speech and expression it doesn't like thanks to the 1st amendment. Yes, this is the same capability as anyone else and the same possibility as Twitter operated before, aside from different choices of who its leadership chooses to dis/associate with.
It is an accurate commitment to free speech.
/s