TheDimSide

Sorry Elon, but you need to understand what's happening. I have defended you from day 1, but there are subtleties at play you don't see yet. I hope you will. You've made a massive sacrifice in taking on Twitter. The Twitter files may be the best thing for free speech in the last few years. Things on the platform are much better today than they were when you took over. However, there are still random suspensions going on. I was suspended in January for jokingly suggesting we should "tar and feather" a friend of mine. Many people still go missing and we don't know what happened. What's more, your war with Substack is dumb beyond belief. X is not suitable for long form essays, at least not yet. Substack links being deboosted is demoralizing for people like me who built a presence in both platforms. Why are you forcing me to choose between two good platforms? I see X, substack, and Rumble as three platforms that are grappling with the same problem. Rumble appears to be a lot more consistent about defending its creators right to speak (e.g. shutting down access to France instead of banning RT). X has not figured that problem out yet. The problem, I worry, is not that you don't believe in free speech. I believe you feel it in your bones. However, I worry that your competitive streak is getting the better of you. You cannot own free speech, and the idea of an "everything app" sounds like a prison to many many people given what happened the last few years. What I, and many others, would like to see, is simple declarative statements about what the rules are, and some way to trust that they will be followed consistently. You said Alex Jones can't come back because you perceive what he said on another platform to be unforgivable given your experience with your firstborn. Your feelings are understandable, and many of us, parents also, share your revulsion. But you know that freedom of speech is for the people that say things we don't approve. If your feelings can act as justification for enforcement of rules, you have to understand many of us have trust issues. It is scary as hell to build on a platform that can suspend you without recourse, while allowing others to post your home address with no action (this happened to me last January). For better or worse, @chrispavlovski doesn't feel like he will suspend my Rumble channel without explanation. And I do understand that X is a much larger ship that takes time to turn around. We are all here and are all with you. But we are also not blind to the ghosts in the machine that still constrain us every single day. I believe in you, and most of all your ability to make mistakes and learn from them. I still think the odds are you'll come to understand all this in time. And while not every problem can be solved in a day, you can choose to make an alliance between platforms that support a minimum standard, including free speech, today. (And yes, that includes freedom of reach for the lawful but awful). Rumble, Substack, and X should be preferentially integrated with no barriers between them. Yes, there is a chance those platforms may compete with different offerings. But you have said many times that moats are for losers, and speed of innovation is the only moat that matters. So lets see some friendly competition, and above all, let's unleash the power of unfettered human collective sensemaking. X is still where the arena is. Let's keep it that way.