Maybe the government needs a meta organization that upholds freedom of speech enforcement from platforms and companies that get broad Section 230 protections. I.e Facebook, X, Twitch, Youtube, etc. If a company can just purge you soruce of speech entirely the country protections seem lacking for the public welfare. Curious what other people think. I know an agency like this is rife to partisan infiltration but if its roll is to for unbanning rather than banning I think the scope of its potential abuse would be extremely narrow.

And he's been obviously. And objectively deeply partisan outside of X. The OP's supposition that he'd be partisan on X in the run up to an election is a fair and reasonable one, independent of what Jack did.

You can no more run a social media website without moderation than you can run a nuclear reactor without a moderator.

What people don't want to admit to themselves is that censorship isn't always a bad thing. Realizing that requires a degree of nuance that the internet currently doesn't support.

A right leaning person might say, it is just to prevent people with means from receiving welfare. A left leaning person might say, means testing can leave gaps where some people are unserved.

The right leaning person says, "it is unjust to censor", the left leaning person says, "that system has a side effect -- if you are tolerant of hate speech, others will leave".

I don't know if this holds always, but now that it's pointed out, I see it in a lot of places.

And it's ok for you to not identify as cis. You get to have whatever identity you want.

We are discussing a platform that censors discussion when that discussion includes trans and not trans people. Unless you are X, the platform, I don't think your identity is germane. (And once again, you are valid.)

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-63999452

https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitter-suspends-bot-acco...

Lol

I do not know what your information diet is like, but if you would like help, I'm sure folks would be willing to talk and listen.

I can find you many, many cases that demonstrate your claim (only the left believes in censorship) is false.

Then how did he get elected in 2016 with a heavy social media presence and then continue using Twitter as his primary direct communication method as POTUS up until 2021?

I think he won because the Democratic Party acted like a broken record(and still does) lecturing and belittling a good chunk of the electorate. Chances are that even with so much economic pain and whole clown show, the democrats will lose again if they defy(again)a big part of the electorate.

(I selected that from google as an example of the term but it turns out to be quite a read, of stories from around and before WW2)

Manipulation of elections is OK as long as you do it with money.

Early in the war, did Starlink rapidly supply free terminals to Ukraine, or to Russia?

Is Starlink continuing to providing civilian and defensive services to Ukraine, or to Russia?

Has Starshield historically provided offensive communications services to Ukraine, or to Russia?

Did Ukraine or Russia received tens of thousands of Starlink terminals from allied governments, with ongoing subscription costs funded by those allies?

When Starlink discovered that Russians were using smuggled Starlink terminals, did they work with the Ukrainian government to carefully whitelist all terminals operated by Ukrainians, disabling the ones operated by Russia? Or was it the other way around?

Which country's defence minister publicly thanked SpaceX for their rapid cooperation in countering their opponent's military use of Starlink?

Can you identify a single documented instance of SpaceX knowingly supplying equipment or communications services to the Russian military?

A SINGLE INSTANCE??

I think the only think you've been "following pretty closely" are anti-Musk propaganda spreaders. I'm personally very disappointed in Musk's rhetoric, but in terms of military matters his opinions are irrelevant, equivalent to any drunk idiot spouting opinions between beers. But it's pretty clear to me that without Starlink, Ukraine could have lost the whole war within months.

Remember, Musk would have been entirely within his right to explicitly refuse all military use of consumer Starlink. He didn't. No matter how much of a dick he is with his words, no matter how brain broken Twitter has made him, he cannot take away what he has done for Ukraine. By choosing to answer their call for help, he did more to save Ukraine than could ever be expected of any one person.

Sure, he could have - and then Biden would have invoked the DPA and forced him to do so anyways, removing him from SpaceX if required. Private individuals cannot meddle in US foreign policy and we have laws to prevent it.

> He didn't. No matter how much of a dick he is with his words, no matter how brain broken Twitter has made him, he cannot take away what he has done for Ukraine.

I won't deny that Starlink is vital for Ukraine, but Musk is on the record calling for Ukrainians to capitulate. He's been very consistent about that.

The fact that he provided Starlink terminals under duress does not make him a saint.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/blinken-refuses-criticize-m...

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/ukraine-loses-starlink-...

https://observer.com/2026/09/why-elon-musk-is-giving-zelensk...

The guy is in such close contact with Putin it made the news many times. To the point where he defended claims of being a Russian asset by saying they couldn't pay him enough. As if they had negotiated it lol. He's a slimy guy who cozies up to dictators and fascists.

Cutting U SAID was a big win for Russia and it was one of his most cherished political contributions so far via doge. Celebrating it with a chainsaw...

https://www.dw.com/en/us-court-allows-musks-doge-to-make-fur...

I could keep going but I know your type. It's pointless.

I know. Users can't downvote direct replies on HN.

Even if we accept the most favourable interpretations of the wacky conspiracies you've alleged, including the dodgy speculation in your linked articles, I would still argue that Musk's contribution to Ukraine's defence through Starlink vastly outweighs any actions that might have benefited Russia. In fact it's difficult to overstate how consequential Starlink has been to Ukraine's ability to defend itself. I think it's reasonable to hypothesise that Starlink is one (of many) but-for causes of Ukraine continuing to exist today.

Meanwhile, despite all this hypothetical love of Russia, Starlink (and Starshield) are still available to Ukraine and not Russia. As my favourite YouTube analyst William Spaniel is fond of saying: "Don't listen to what they say, watch what they do."

https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/10/16/musk-pushed-trump-to-...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/10/16/musk-appro...

Please stop defending trillionaires while they chuck innocent lives into the meat grinder and the war machine.

Hence why Musk was supposedly "asking Trump".

Maybe that's true.

I'm reminded of the old adage: "If I told you to jump off a cliff..." Ultimately, Musk is a civilian - at most, he's a regular buffoon who should keep his nose out of such affairs. Whereas the very idea of a president taking military advice from the aforementioned buffoon isn't just further buffoonery, it's something far greater than that. It's probably not strictly treasonous, but it's got that kind of flavour.

Just like how meta is blocking no kings protests right now, musk asked the white house to slow down Starlink. This is the way things are now. Tech bro oligarchs decide politics with money. Just like how musk is pushing for the afd in Germany and meta is tooling with the Brazilian election. Why else did musk buy twitter? I'm done discussing with you. It's not worth anyone's oxygen.

This effect is self reinforcing, if you are leftish, and you are in a tightening space, why would you stay?

It's really disheartening.

[1] https://daringfireball.net/2026/10/x_once_again_marks_the_sp...

(I wouldn't want to be in a community with the people who went back to the Nazi bar anyway, so it works out for me. Can barely catch up with my Bluesky and Mastodon feeds as-is.)

https://bsky.app/profile/antibot4navalny.bsky.social/post/3m...

So they do have some proof?

People who measure traffic to sites supposedly plagued by russian bots (the ones we care about here: trolls, disinformation, etc.) saw absolutely no dip in traffic

I mean, we can use a little common sense and assume that there were fish in the river, right?

Do you think that if tomorrow a Google data center goes down the NSA spyware, botnets and other online campaigns go down? I very much doubt it

I don't think any of this is controversial. Bloviate all you want about Google and rivers or whatever the fuck, I think we're getting into the weeds and really losing the plot here.

> We can use a little common sense

What you read:

> This assumption is irrefutable proof!

Thanks bud.

In that context it's pretty obvious "bots" are referring to disinformation or "troll" bots, not bots doing indexing/scraping.

So he has some proof? So the jury is still out, so this is controversial, right?

Uh? That's odd. In my country I don't vote because I don't feel represented and I encourage others in my situation to do the same. Would I get banned for saying that?

https://help.x.com/en/rules-and-policies/election-integrity-...

(Australian compulsory voting: discuss)

But even in situations where someone would potentially want to vote and a tweet misleads them to believe it's not worth it, why is that worse then a tweet misleading them to believe that a certain political option will work in their favor?

More participation makes it harder to influence enough voters in a single direction to make a significant difference in outcomes.

And, at least in US politics, my experience is that most candidates do not stand on a single issue but rather a broad spectrum of political ideology. I think it would be pretty rare for all of the candidates to have no difference in alignment with you on any of the hundreds of issues at play. Especially if you are participating in primary elections which tend to have a greater diversity of positions.

Literally none of "them" represent any part of your position on what is typically a wide array of different issues? Not any of the state and local candidates? Not a single national candidate? You have no position, whatsoever, on local ballot issues?

That seems deeply myopic or extraordinarily unlikely.

"Listen to that guy" gets people listening and encourages at least the chance of someone going, "wait, actually I don't like what this guy is saying, what are other guys saying?"

I don’t know why a smaller voting population would preclude any of the things you mention.

I’ve heard this said by acquaintances before, but even when someone finally says what they want to hear they find another reason to not vote… without exception.

Whenever the topic shows up I always tell people to vote and that there’s no good reason to not vote if you legally can.

There’s a good reason not to vote: you have to go and vote. If I could vote from home, maybe.

If the younger generation becomes a sizeable voter demographic, then the politicians will notice. A new party might also show up to take those vote, giving them influence and negotiation power.

But for that to happen, the younger generation have to vote. That’s why I’m so adamant in discussions with acquaintainces that they need to vote and that the only valid reason to not vote is legality.

A standard drop of water is 0.05 ml. A standard household bucket is about 3 gallons. So the proverbial "drop in the bucket" is 0.0004%.

So, for all you naysayers out there saying this is just a drop in the bucket, it's literally x10 that.

Why, if they could get this up to a repeatable process and ban 13,000 accounts per day, that would be 1.5% every year. After a couple of years of work, that might even be perceptible to the average user. Sounds like the problem is well in hand.

Not sure why number of accounts matter at all, even more if you are depending on internal Twitter investigations to determine that without knowing any of the methodology to detect those, etc.

But sure, you can always defend Twitter if that's the hill you want to die on.

I think it's fair to assume that if x.com refuses to provide stats that are easily obtainable for them (eg. views or followers), that those stats aren't favorable to them.

The 0.004% richest Amreicans hold the majority of US wealth. I would not be surprised if the 0.004% top X users in terms of followers have a majority of followers as well.

So implying that because 0.004% is a small proportion of total users, this user ban is unconsequential seems flawed to me.

That is massively false. It’s closer to 5%. Still really bad IMO but 0.004% is a ludicrous thing to claim

https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distr...

The top 1% is ~35% or so and this fraction is rising.

If you think there is a wealth inequality problem, I would encourage you to call out bad information, because it is the simplest way for opponents to discredit your position.

(Clearly this is what I am doing…)

Nah, it’s more like the top 5% hold half. The top 0.1% are at ~13%.

Yeah, Im sure its all “After careful review,”

In other news I just read today how Gough Luis account got banned for posting organic content and linking to his own blog. https://goughlui.com/2026/10/15/opinion-death-of-the-old-int...

Sad but accurate summary about current state of internet is “There is no incentive to be honest, aside from having a conscience.”