Twitter Maverick Elon Musk: 10 Instances of User Suppression by the Self-Proclaimed Free Speech Advocate on Twitter

In the ever-evolving world of social media, Twitter has been making headlines for a series of events that have raised questions about free speech, censorship, and platform manipulation.

Recently, the micro-blogging site faced criticism for borking Substack on its platform, preventing users from retweeting, liking, or commenting on Substack links. This move, while not fully explained by Twitter, has sparked debates about the platform's handling of external services.

Elon Musk, Twitter's new owner, has been at the centre of several controversies. He announced that the words "cis" or "cisgender" are considered slurs on Twitter, a decision that has been met with controversy given the terms' neutral and clinical nature. Musk also took legal action against the college student who runs the @ElonJet account, and later claimed the ban was due to past doxxing by Washington Post columnist Taylor Lorenz, who denies the allegation.

Twitter has also been accused of platform manipulation and spam by banning accounts organising the #BlockTheBlue campaign. The campaign aimed to boycott Twitter Blue, Twitter's paid service, which appears to lower the visibility of non-paying users.

In a bid to maintain order, Twitter has banned journalists who wrote about @ElonJet for violating the company's doxxing policy. A total of 10 journalists had their accounts suspended for tweeting links to their own stories about @ElonJet. The ban on Lorenz, however, was later rescinded after Musk's claim that she had doxxed him was found to be untrue.

Twitter has also complied with government censorship requests, with Elon Musk's Twitter cooperating with government censorship requests 80% of the time. Notably, the platform obliged to the Indian government's request to block links to a BBC documentary critical of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and actor John Cusack was banned in India after tweeting a link to the documentary.

Congressman Adam Schiff read an article about Musk's censorship of Twitter users into the federal record at a House Judiciary Committee hearing. The article highlighted Musk's actions on Twitter seeming to violate his own personal definition of free speech.

In a more controversial move, Twitter shut down Revue, Twitter's newsletter platform, after Jack Dorsey posted a critical essay on it. This decision has raised questions about the platform's commitment to free speech and its handling of dissenting opinions.

As Twitter continues to navigate these challenges, it remains to be seen how the platform will evolve and what changes it will implement in the future.