 Elon Musk has practically bent over backwards to appease conservatives on Twitter. He has unbanned dozens of prominent right-wing accounts, he interacts with them regularly, and in the case of Twitter user CatTurd, he made CatTurd's personal concerns a priority on day one. Fast forward to today, and they're still not happy with Elon Musk. In fact, some of these conservatives are outright attacking him. Twitter user Zscroll shared these hilarious screenshots of conservatives claiming that they are still shadow banned. So Charlie Kirk complained about conservatives seeing lower Twitter engagement, directly questioning if they've been suppressed, and Sean Davis chimed in to say that it's as bad as it's ever been despite Elon Musk being in control. Jason Nelson claims that he doesn't see a bunch of right-wing accounts, including Elon Musk's, demanding an explanation and presumably wondering if the $11 that he paid for Twitter blew got him shadow banned, and even CatTurd is still angry tweeting, all conservative accounts are being throttled and hidden again, just like before Elon Musk took over ownership. Adding, he's not seeing the people who he follows, and it's actually, quote, way worse than it was before Elon's takeover. But this one's my favorite. Dear Elon Musk, just so you know, the new algorithms are so bad, we might as well be invisible. This is horrible. Now, if you'll notice, he says this in a tweet that received nearly 30,000 likes and 2.3 million views, but yet he might as well be invisible. I swear to God conservatives are so damn melodramatic, and I don't know what they're talking about. Maybe our algorithms got swapped, because when I log onto Twitter, specifically on my 4U page, I see nothing but posts from right-wingers. Matt Walsh in particular, I always see him, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Elon Musk as well when I'm not following Elon Musk, so I really don't know what they're complaining about. But to be fair, everybody's experience on Twitter seems pretty different these days. Either way, there is censorship on Twitter, but it doesn't necessarily just pertain to right-wing complaints about censorship. There's actual censorship going on at the behest of very, very powerful interests. And this censorship is manifesting in Orwellian ways. The Intercept reports, Twitter and YouTube censored a report critical of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in coordination with the government of India. Officials called for the big tech companies to take action against the BBC documentary exploring Modi's role in a genocidal 2002 massacre in the Indian state of Gujarat, which the officials deemed a propaganda piece. In a series of posts, Kanshan Gupta, senior adviser at the Indian government's Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, denounced the BBC documentary as, quote, hostile propaganda and anti-India garbage. He said that both Twitter and YouTube had been ordered to block links to the film before adding that the platforms have complied with the directions. Gupta's statements coincided with posts from Twitter users in India who claim to have shared links to the documentary but whose posts were later removed and replaced with a legal notice. So to be clear, both Twitter and YouTube, they are censoring a documentary that exposes crimes against humanity committed against minorities in India by the current Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi. They are in this instance essentially behaving as state TV, where they're just doing what the government wants them to do, allowing the citizens to hear what the government deems is appropriate. Now, this is the takedown request from the Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting that was sent to Twitter. And on page two, you can even see actor John Cusack was also part of their takedown request since he also shared a link to the BBC documentary in question here. And as a result, John Cusack's Twitter account has been banned in India since Twitter did decide to agree with the takedown request. Now, despite this ban on this particular documentary, some opposition members of parliament in India are defiantly sharing links to it and calling out the censorship on Twitter. And good on them for sharing this. You know, it's difficult to speak truth to power, but as members of parliament, they really are leading by example. And I commend them for what they're doing here. Now, this is a dangerous precedent. Should these big tech companies comply with the requests of government when it comes to other issues? What if Saudi Arabia says that we demand that you censor pro LGBTQ plus content or atheist content in our state? What if Israel demands that Twitter or YouTube censor anti apartheid rhetoric or pro Palestinian rhetoric, Palestinian liberation content? It's a really dangerous game to play. But a lot of these big tech companies comply with the demands of governments because if they lose out on that market and end up getting banned in these particular states or regions, well, then that's an entire advertising market that they're losing out on. They lose revenue. So they have an incentive to abide by the commands of these governments, even if the requests that they are making are explicitly authoritarian. Now, YouTube is equally culpable here to be fair. But what they did here is unsurprising because YouTube always bows to every single demand that the powerful makes, especially advertisers. They will do whatever advertisers want. And it's really frustrating, but this is the reality. Elon Musk, however, claimed that after he purchased Twitter, things would be different. It wouldn't be this way. He would respect freedom of speech. But predictably, as many of us on the left pointed out, that was nothing more than hot air. Now, Elon Musk actually responded to this when he was asked about it by Twitter user Viva Free. And this person says, what's going on, Elon Musk? Twitter seems to have gone from freedom of speech, not freedom of reach to outright censorship in no time at all. Musk responded saying, first I've heard it is not possible for me to fix every aspect of Twitter worldwide overnight while still running Tesla and SpaceX, among other things. Now, since this user had Elon Musk's attention, he decided to ask Elon Musk about other right-wingers like the quartering getting banned because, you know, of course, priorities, right? Now, this response by Elon Musk's own standards is completely indefensible. He claimed that he cared so much about freedom of speech that he was willing to commit to personally looking into the concerns of one Twitter user on day one, Catern. But when it's brought to his attention that an entire government petition for Twitter to censor a documentary that's critical of its prime minister, well, you know, I can't be looking into every single thing and be concerned with everything that's going on worldwide. I mean, I'm also running these other companies. Do you understand why this is a deeply unserious individual? Because if you claim to care about freedom of speech, you have to be consistent. And now is the time when you prove it to us. But he fumbled, he fumbled there. And I also find this inexcusable because you are the owner of Twitter. And if you claim to care about freedom of speech, don't you have protocols in place so that way lower level staffers know how to respond when they get these takedown requests from foreign governments? It's ridiculous. And honestly, it's shocking to me that feigning ignorance is his go to defense here because I think that there's other motivations here at play that he's not talking about. The intercept continues, Modi's government in India regularly applied pressure to Twitter in an attempt to bend the social media platform to its will. At one point, the government threatened to arrest Twitter staff in the country over their refusal to ban accounts run by critics. When Musk took over, Twitter had just a 20% compliance rate when it came to the Indian government takedown requests. When the billionaire took the company private, some 90% of Twitter India's 200 staffers were laid off. Now the Indian government's pressure on Twitter appears to be gaining traction. Why? Well, a key difference may be Musk's other business entanglements. Musk himself has his own business interests in India where Tesla has been lobbying so far without luck to win tax breaks to enter the Indian market. So Elon Musk has millions, possibly billions of reasons to comply with the takedown requests of the Indian government. Are you picking up what I'm putting down? This is a massive market. So perhaps he's thinking, well, if I comply with their censorship demands, maybe they'll give me the tax breaks that I need to bring Teslas to the Indian market. And to be fair, we don't know what his motivations are. Maybe he really is ignorant here. But at a minimum, this is still disturbing because this is a conflict of interest. His business interests create a conflict of interest if he is going to be managing Twitter in an impartial way. And more importantly, this has serious implications for freedom of speech. And it's scary because believe it or not, freedom of speech is more serious than the concerns of right-wingers who are mad that their friends got banned for saying the N-word. Freedom of speech gives individuals with no power the ability to criticize the powerful, large institutions that control their lives. And it seems like Elon Musk isn't taking the most serious elements of freedom of speech that seriously. Or maybe he just doesn't know, which is still a failure on his part because if you claim to care about freedom of speech, something like this would have never happened in the first place on the platform. But if you've been watching my show, you know that his whole freedom of speech thing is nothing more than window dressing to appeal to right-wingers who were angry that they were getting banned because they couldn't not violate the terms of service because they are constantly espousing hate and slurs. So Elon Musk, he doesn't actually care about freedom of speech when push comes to shove. But if you're surprised by this, then you very clearly haven't been paying attention.