Elon Musk can ban all the journalists he wants from Twitter. But he's a free-speech fraud

So here I am over on Mastodon and Post, feeling like a guest who arrived two hours early for a party, waiting for my friends to arrive.

Oh, I’m still on Twitter, which at the moment feels like being in a big house that’s on fire, but the flames haven't quite reached me yet. And the whole watching-the-car-race-for-the-wrecks aspect is intriguing.

And boy, Thursday night was a multicar pileup. Elon Musk summarily banned several journalists, including from the New York Times, Washington Post and more. This set off a truly bizarre night of stupid polls, Twitter Spaces drama and a serious reckoning over whether this is a platform worth sticking around on.

Musk banning journalists isn't a First Amendment issue. It's just hypocrisy

To be clear: Musk’s move is not a First Amendment issue, any more than it was when the previous regime suspended Donald Trump (among others). He has every right to ban whomever he wants. He has every right to bring Trump, along with whatever white supremacists and bigots and purveyors of hate speech and misinformation he wants to pal around with, back to Twitter.

Musk bought the toy and he can break it. But please stop calling him some kind of heroic champion of free speech.

Please. On that front, Musk is a fraud.

He talks a good game. Hypocrites often do. But while he's seemingly fine with anyone saying anything about anybody, that standard doesn't appear to apply to him.

Thursday night really was wild. Word spread quickly about the bans; users started tweeting their Mastodon and Post handles. (Musk also suspended the Twitter account for Mastodon. So much for competition.)

Musk claimed the suspensions were because of violations of Twitter’s rules — which he created just the other day — banning private jet trackers. Including the one used to track his private jet, of course. He said the suspended accounts, some of which had reported on the ban, had revealed his “exact real-time location, basically assassination coordinates.”

Oh come on.

Later Musk joined a Twitter Spaces — an audio discussion on the platform — hosted by Kate Notopoulos, a journalist for Buzzfeed. It included Drew Harwell of the Washington Post, one of the banned reporters.(Evidently he wasn’t banned from Twitter Spaces.) Harwell told Musk he never posted his address. Musk said he did. That went on for a bit, and soon Musk was gone.

A little while later the entire conversation was shut down. Friday, all of Twitter Spaces was disabled.

“We’re fixing a legacy bug,” Musk tweeted. “Should be working tomorrow.”

You don't say.

Musk also posted a poll Thursday night asking when he should restore the suspended accounts, ranging from “now” to “tomorrow” to seven days or longer.

“Now” was winning when Musk tweeted, “Sorry, too many options. Will redo poll.”

He then tweeted a poll with only “now” and “7 days” as options. On Friday, “now” was winning handily, with 58% of the vote.

Think about this for a moment. Musk turned the suspension of legitimate journalists into a game, like someone asking which team users thought would win the Fiesta Bowl or something. And then he changed the rules. It’s ludicrous.

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Musk's tweet about Fauci wasn't just offensive and stupid. It was irresponsible

If he wanted attention — duh — Musk got it. Last week he tweeted, “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci,” managing in one tweet to offend just about everyone with his lunatic call to go after Dr. Anthony Fauci, the retiring chief medical adviser to the president. Everyone except, of course, the far-right carrions angered at Fauci’s COVID-19 recommendations. It was irresponsible and stupid. But it was free speech.

Funny how that works.

What becomes of Twitter is now, more than ever, an open question. It’s easier to navigate than the complicated Mastodon. It’s also more familiar.

Or was, at least. What’s going on there now is strange and ugly.

I’ll stay, for the time being. But it’s getting harder to justify. In addition to all of the stupid things Musk has done to the platform, it’s just not that much fun anymore. It’s become a parody of itself; Twitter is now just about Twitter.

Who needs the hassle?

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Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Twitter: @goodyk.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Elon Musk bans journalists on Twitter. What a free-speech fraud