First, Elon Musk Made Us pay For ‘Free Speech’. Now He Decides Who’s Allowed It
The ‘saviour of free speech’ is cracking down on criticism of Israel’s genocide. What he calls the ‘faaaaar left’ is in his crosshairs. It’ll be erased so utterly, you won’t remember it was ever there
Many users of X, formerly Twitter, seem deeply misguided. They imagine that Elon Musk is the saviour of free speech. He’s not. He is simply the latest pioneer in monetising speech. Which isn’t the same thing at all.
All the blue ticks on X – mine included – are buying access to an audience. Which is why Musk has made it so easy to get a blue tick – and why there are now so many of them on the platform. If you don’t pay Musk, the algorithms make sure you get minimal reach. You are denied your five seconds of fame.
That has particularly infuriated corporate journalists. On what used to be called Twitter, they got access to large audiences as a natural right, along with politicians and celebrities. They never paid a penny. They felt entitled to those big audiences because they already enjoyed similarly big audiences in the so-called “legacy media”. They did not see why they start competing with the rest of us to be heard.
The new media system was rigged, as the old media system has been for centuries, to ensure that it was their voices that counted. Or rather it was the voices of the ultra-wealthy paying their salaries who counted.
Independent journalists, including myself, have been some of the chief beneficiaries of Musk’s X. But I don’t for a minu
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LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.