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Comment by Forgeties79

9 hours ago

You have to admit, the “free speech” shield-wielding megalomaniac working so hard to keep people from freely accessing info isn’t exactly great optics.

10 comments

Forgeties79

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immibis2  8 hours ago

Optics and logic are two different things. The optics seem to be working out well for him, for some reason.

  • Forgeties79  5 hours ago

    Sure but my point is the Twitter experience is trash and not required like, say, paying an evil ISP or interacting with Google (for 99.9% of people abandoning and fully dodging Google is incredibly difficult). It’s working out for him because people won’t leave (even though engagement and user numbers are still below pre-acquisition numbers). It only has value because of his acquiring it with his other company. Prior its value was tanked. It’s a crap site that isn’t profitable and serves as a mouthpiece for his politics and whims.

    You can all walk away. You don’t need it.

freedomben  9 hours ago

I'm very much on the side of xcancel and nitter on this one, but I do think it's fair to point out that Twitter is free of monetary charge. It's not free in the sense that you do have to provide some personal information and data to them in exchange for that free account, but it isn't a huge roadblock for most people, however annoying it may be.

Now that said, I sure hope Elon will pivot this and make these services unnecessary. I'm not holding my breath though.

  • Operyl  9 hours ago

    The biggest frustration for a lot of people is that their municipalities use Twitter almost exclusively to communicate with their constituents, it _sucks_. I've pleaded and begged my city and county to have some other form of communication, in addition to Twitter/X, to mass distribute information.

  • angoragoats  9 hours ago

    The phrase "free speech" does not typically mean "free as in beer," rather it means "free as in freedom," so in this case you're conflating the two meanings of "free" in English.

    The fact that Twitter is login-gated makes it objectively less free as in freedom.