How exactly is he working toward free speech being a driving force? From what I can tell, he's just banning different people.

Yeeah, when people who criticized Musk literally once have to flee their houses, due to rampant and false accusations of pedophilia from Musk friends, we can totally talk about free speech.

to the extent the internet was "free" it was because it hadn't yet been fully captured by capitalism

Well put!

At it's core, the modern internet-using demographic is incompatible with the pre-2000 wild west free speech internet.

To not mince words -- current internet users are not technically educated or paranoid enough, and their expectations have aligned with the guarantees provided by the current walled gardens.

That was the internet of "If you run an exe downloaded off a webpage, you install a virus with zero warnings."

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That said, I do get where Elon was aiming, and I think news media is shit for either deliberately misconstruing or not understanding his position.

To wit: that in a truly open marketplace of ideas, extremism will be shudden with the sunlight of transparency.

So instead of nanny-stating things for people, show them how stupid neo-nazi's sound, and let them decide for themselves.

What I think he underestimated was how unprepared the world (users + civil groups + government) was for a return to that model.

For example, if Twitter enabled tools to help journalists correlate associated accounts... how many news organizations still exist who have staff to do that work?

I actually really like this metaphor. To extend it, I think we do have to address that part of the reason it's so hard to bring people over to this way of thinking is because deep down they personally want to shoot someone but it's easier to pretend not to understand than it is to actually defend that idea.