> Elon's critics rightly point out the problems with his arbitrary rule by fiat, but who among his critics are proposing anything more principled than his behavior? By and large, people are calling him a hypocrite without articulating any more principled vision for how social media platforms should be run.
Most people aren't supplying anything more principled. The reality of it is that it's REALLY DIFFICULT to run a generic-purpose social media platform. Twitter, pre-Musk takeover, had a whole bunch of teams, working groups, councils and employees whose task was to basically try to reduce the effects of Masnick's Impossibility Theorem[0] as much as possible. It is an established fact that Musk threw out the majority of these groups shortly after he took over the site.
The main reason people call Musk a hypocrite is because he was also very vocal about what he wanted to replace those policies with: unbridled free speech, with the only limitation being the law. He has not publicly abandoned this principle yet and to the contrary, still occasionally barks up the accounts of some far right users about how he's going to "restore free speech" on Twitter. By all public accounts, he's still believing in that idea, whilst also transparently setting policies on stuff that very much doesn't align with that belief (see this policy change, the recent banning of ElonJet and so on and so forth).
> This sounds like basically codifying the current Elon Musk mode of governance. Are you really suggesting that the Internet would be better if every social media site was operated in this way, as long as it is explicit in the rules?
It probably would be. I think it would actually improve the general state of the internet if people were aware more that the sites they use are effectively ran on the whimsy of other people. A lot of people live under the illusion that one singular website is supposed to be their free room to dump whatever thoughts they want. This idea both goes against the original goal of the internet and does not line up with reality. Codifying this sort of thing matters more than you think. It means people know where they stand. Nowadays this stuff still largely exists in the Terms of Services of most sites (not to mention that a big part of free speech is not a requirement to host anyone else), but being more open about that would be a much better move for transparency reasons.
So uh... yes? I am explicitly advocating for the implosion of generic purpose social media, I think what it has done on a broader scale is extremely damaging to society.
[0]: https://www.techdirt.com/2019/11/20/masnicks-impossibility-t...