AI summary:
Elon Musk's stance as a champion of free speech faces scrutiny due to his Twitter platform's direction. While Musk's purported dedication to transparency is questioned, his efforts to shape Twitter into an all-encompassing control hub have raised alarms about heightened surveillance and control. Appointing a content suppressor further fans doubts. While Musk has supported censored individuals, he's also accused of exacerbating divisions. Kanye West's return involves adhering to restrictive rules, sparking worries about constrained expression. The notion of Musk as a free speech advocate is contested, with his actions and intent arousing skepticism. Amidst a shifting Twitter landscape, suspicions grow regarding Musk's role in fostering genuine expressive freedom.
He sued Top Gear for being critical of the tesla roadster in 2008. (And before someone pipes in about that being justified despite them losing twice, because you inadvertently bought the tesla spin on that case back when people didn't yet realise Musk was full of shit, please do a bit of research.)
He lied about founding tesla and continually lied about the actual founders. When they sued for libel in 2009, Musk settled.
He banned the guy who posted publicly available information about his private jet on twitter.
The list goes on.
Musk has never been free speech. He has always been a cunt.
He still says he founded PayPal!
Okay, that one is hard to grok either way. Confinity and x.com merged, the resulting company, still Confinity, made Elon the CEO, where he was 6 months later fired for incompetence. Elon was the founder of x.com, but not Confinity, so it's more about how pedantic you want to be than anything else. Did the Confinity people found paypal, was it Thiel, under whom the name paypal came about, was it Musk? There's not really a clear answer one way or the other.