"Let That Sink In": Three Years After Elon Musk's Takeover, Has X Restored Free Speech?

A look back at the "Twitter Files," government jawboning, and the messy, flawed, but critical battle for the digital town square.

At a time when over 12,000 are arrested in just one country for simply posting a meme or posting an opinon different than a normie would post, let’s look back at when Twitter was taken over by Elon Musk three years ago, converting into a mostly free speech platform, now called X. You’ll remember Musk famously coming into the San Francisco headquarters with a kitchen sink to highlight he’s put everything on the line for the $44 billion acquisition, and stating “Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!”

Since then, we have learned a lot about how bad things had gotten, not just at Twitter, but for free speech around the globe. At the time, Twitter had two buildings in San Francisco, one completely vacant, and the other at only 5% capacity with workers, unused SaaS applications costing the company millions each year, and the replacement of new tampon boxes in the men’s bathrooms (even though no one was there, new tampon boxes were installed, and the old thrown away). The waste happening at publicly traded Twitter is perhaps only seen proportionately with the U.S. Government. Lunch in the Twitter cafeteria cost $400 even though nearly no one was there. True insane level waste. There are no such free lunches at X.

And now, with the $44 billion purchase, taking it private, put the adults in the room with the mandate to restore banned accounts and a free speech directive. For example, the likes of President Trump and Jordan Peterson had their Twitter (now X) accounts restored, with the promise ( though I still feel it goes on to a lesser extent ) of eliminating shadow-banning by the “Trust and Safety Group.”

And then we learned through the “Twitter Files” that the federal government was jawboning not just Twitter, but most social media companies, violating the First Amendment under the Biden administration and part of the first Trump administration.

Perhaps I should not have been surprised when X’s new free speech policies were highly criticized, so a small number of people went to find their safe space over at Blue. Most notable was in 2024 when a Brazilian judge (Moraes) ordered Twitter/X to break Brazil’s own law as X was allowing what he thought constituted “hate speech”; X shut operations preemptively, faced a ban, and complied—highlighting how anti-free-speech government regimes force private firms to bend (state intervention distorting markets). It must be difficult for X to adhere to their principles when countries like Brazil are anti-free speech.

That isn’t to say Musk and X get it right all the time. There was another notable dust-up in 2023 between Musk and Matt Taibbi (who was instrumental with the Twitter Files and a strong ally to Musk’s vision of free speech). In April 2023, Substack (Taibbi’s primary publishing platform) launched a short-form notes feature competing with Twitter. Musk responded by restricting Substack links on Twitter, labeling them as unsafe and throttling engagement (shadowbanning). Taibbi publicly criticized this as hypocritical, given Musk’s free-speech rhetoric, and announced he’d prioritize Substack over Twitter. Musk took offense, accusing Taibbi of bias due to his Substack ties. While Taibbi was not removed from X, like he would have been under a similar scenario if it were still Twitter, Taibbi was shadowbanned. Then in February 2024, Taibbi released private DMs from Musk showing escalating tension, with Musk calling him “dead to me” and alleging shadow-banning was due to Taibbi’s supposed Substack payments. Taibbi denied this and framed it as retaliation. Musk unfollowed him and publicly distanced himself. No evidence emerged of a full removal/restoration cycle, but the shadow-banning claims held up in reporting from both left-leaning (e.g., New Republic) and right-leaning (e.g., NY Post) sources.

But, I think I’ve gone too far afield of what this article was supposed to be about: How free speech has been somewhat restored on the social media platform. So, while X and other social media companies still use shadow banning, it is far less than three years ago.