Who has he censored? Please back up your claims with evidence. This isn't Twitter.

There are nicely cataloged lists elsewhere in this thread for you to no true Scotsman

I for one, if you made me pick an example, would point to his treatment of Vernon Unsworth.

He insulted Vernon, but did not censor him. So what is your evidence that Elon Musk censors people?

he tried to 'cancel' him by calling him a pedophile.

There are varying definitions of 'censorship' floated in this thread. A lot of people in this thread who are defenders of Musk are willing to apply the label censorship to 'canceling people'...or at least when certain people get push back. If we take their definition at the word, if we take it as honest, then it is reasonable to apply to his own actions.

vis a vis, by the definition of censorship floated in support of Musks purchase, he censored Vernon.

Do I buy that definition? no...but...I don't think 'cancelling' is censorship, I think its just another form of free speech thats given a hostile label to bound free speech in a hierarchical way.

Otherwise, and its worth noting this actually highlights the subtext of the overall conversation, there are two definitions of censorship being applied by some people - a broader one to speech they like, and a narrower one to speech they don't.

Bloomberg wrote Elon asked the CCP to censor posts about Tesla in China at some point. In the US, Elon is vehemently against activist short sellers.

Elon strikes me as an insecure man and opportunistic free speech champion. I don't think accounts like TESLAcharts would survive on the new Twitter. Stonks are supposed to go up, so your speech is definitely free to help that.

Once people like that get rid of inconvenient to them speech limitations, they inevitably end up with new ones, overt or hidden. There is never unconditional free speech in any society.

"In an unmoderated online forum, all speakers do not play by the same rules or have the same tools. University of Maryland professor David Kirsch has found that automated pro-Tesla Twitter accounts are responsible for 20% of the tweets about Tesla, and that the launching of these bots correlates with increases in the company’s stock price. It’s not just bots. Say something negative about Elon online, and I’ll vouch for this, the Tesla Taliban comes for you. Anyone who tells you this is "free speech" doesn’t want freedom, they want power via elimination of competitive speech."

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-04-12/musk-is-of...

Quite ironic, considering

"I mean, frankly a top priority I would have is eliminating the spam and scam bots and the bot armies that are on Twitter," he said. "I think these influence … They make the product much worse. If I had a dogecoin for every crypto scam I saw, I would have a hundred billion dogecoin."

https://www.thestreet.com/.amp/technology/twitter-deal-bots

In fact, I think Twitter announced new measures of linking bots to bot operators back in Feb, so I have no idea why this bothers Elon so much (unless being identified as the owner of the entire Tesla bot horde is exactly what he is worrying about).

Would be interested in the CCP article

See https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-07-05/tesla-s-f... for an offhand mention at the end.

Example?