This is hilarious. We've had elected officials and other public figures (among them many journalists) opine for years that Twitter is not a utility and has every right to ban anyone, up to and including the President of the Fucking United States, for any reason that's palatable to the masses.
We've had cloud and infrastructure providers meta-ban applications and services for not banning the "right" people.
And now these journalists somehow think they are or should be exempt, and cry for regulation if the private owner of Twitter doesn't comply?
Pick one. Either Twitter is a public square, in which case banning users should only happen as the result of a court order, or it's just someone's website, in which case they can do whatever the hell they want.
Some people believed Musk stood for free speech. Either Musk is a free speech reductionist, or he isn't. Going in, some people assumed he was from what they thought he'd said. What emerged was "my company my rules" which tends to mean he isn't. As a consequence any future claim to legitimacy of comment on Twitter will need to be understood as qualified.
I don't particularly care, I'm not on twitter.
I'm not seeking to disagree with you btw. Anyone who thought he was going to make it a public square had rocks in their head, no matter what they believed he said.
“It’s his platform. He can ban anyone he wants. And we can point out how he’s making up pretextual rules that just so happen to target journalism he doesn’t like.”
We've had cloud and infrastructure providers meta-ban applications and services for not banning the "right" people.
And now these journalists somehow think they are or should be exempt, and cry for regulation if the private owner of Twitter doesn't comply?
Pick one. Either Twitter is a public square, in which case banning users should only happen as the result of a court order, or it's just someone's website, in which case they can do whatever the hell they want.