 Believe it or not, Elon Musk is still parading around as if he's some sort of a free speech champion. He tweeted out on Wednesday untamed free speech for the win as if he actually cares about freedom of speech. And also, during Ron DeSantis' disastrous campaign launch during a Twitter Spaces event, when David Sacks introduced Elon Musk, this is how he introduced him. Elon Musk, his decision to purchase this platform last year to restore to its original mission as a beacon for free speech, and even to expose Twitter's past complicity with a government-sensitive regime, might have surprised many, but not those of us who have known and worked with Elon for nearly a quarter of a century. His commitment to freedom and his willingness to put his money in his mouth is upset the narrative he has imposed on us by our government, elite institutions and corporate media. Go ahead and send a hard up if you want to say thank you, Elon. Are you serious? We're still just going to pretend like Elon Musk cares about free speech? He said Elon Musk exposed Twitter's past complicity with government censorship as if that's still not happening. And it is, you're going to see in a moment here. And he also claimed that him buying Twitter restored it to the beacon of free speech that it once was. We're just supposed to pretend like everything that happened under his tenure as Chief Twit didn't happen. We're supposed to not believe our lying eyes. And to say that free speech is thriving on Twitter is just factually and demonstrably incorrect. Censorship on Twitter has gotten worse, I repeat worse, under Elon Musk's leadership specifically when it comes to takedown requests from governments. And we're not just talking about a marginal increase in censorship. We're talking about a 33% increase in censorship according to a new report. As El Pais explains, since Elon Musk acquired Twitter in a tumultuous $44 billion deal completed last October, the social media network has turned down very few requests for content restriction or censorship from countries like Turkey and India, which have recently passed laws limiting freedom of speech and the press. Although the billionaire owner of SpaceX and Tesla presents himself as a free speech absolutist, the social network he controls has bowed to hundreds of government orders during his first six months at the helm according to data provided by the company to a public audit that tracks pressure from governments or judges on online platforms. Twitter's acquiescence to autocratic or non-liberal regimes is not an exaggeration by critics of the social network. The data, which the public audit receives automatically, speaks for itself. Since Musk's takeover, the company has received 971 requests from governments compared to only 338 in the six month period from October of 2021 to April of 2022, fully exceeding to 808 of them and then partially exceeding to 154. In the year prior to Musk taking control, Twitter agreed to 50% of such requests in line with the compliance rate indicated in the company's last transparency report, none have been published since October of 2022, I wonder why. Following the change of ownership, that figure has risen to 83% according to the analysis of the data by the Technology Information Portal rest of the world. So let me just restate that. Twitter's compliance rate without Elon Musk was 50%, which is bad in and of itself. But after Elon Musk takes over, the compliance rate increases to 83%, that's a 33% increase in censorship. Now to be fair, there have been an increase in requests from governments, but the problem is that once you agree to comply with one, well then they're going to make more requests once they learn that you're going to play ball with them. Now we talked about both of these stories before in particular that I think drove the increase in censorship on Twitter, where Twitter essentially agreed to censor the President of Turkey's political opposition ahead of an election, and also in India they censored a BBC documentary that is critical of the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. So Elon Musk chose to play ball with both of these governments. But yet, he's a free speech absolutist. Maybe we should get a Twitter files report about how these decisions were made as well. See when political campaigns make takedown requests in the United States, that's a scandal. But when it happens from other countries, that's fine, that's just the cost of business. He is so unprincipled. Now it'd be wrong to suggest that Twitter censorship only comes in the form of government requests because Elon Musk has also censored journalists without pressure from governments. Journalists like Matt Binder, my co-host on The Leftist Mafia. He's also censored left-wing activists, pro LGBTQ plus content. And here's just some of the stories that we reported about Twitter's censorship this year alone. As Insider explains, a leaked internal Twitter message appears to show that Elon Musk directly ordered staff to suspend a left-wing activist's account on the social media platform. Bloomberg said it viewed a screenshot of the message and question involving the account of Chad Loeder, which read, suspension, direct request from Elon Musk. In a November 24th interaction with far-right accounts such as Andy Noe and others, Elon Musk told them to report antifa accounts directly to him that they believed were in violation of Twitter's terms of use and that resulted in multiple unjustified bans of left-wing accounts because he did indeed take their advice. Quote, my commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane even though that is a direct personal safety risk. Fast forward to today and that account, you guessed it, has now been banned. Twitter users and LGBTQ plus activists spotted that tweets shared by direct message no longer show a tweet preview if they include certain words. Sharing a tweet via DM should automatically bring up a preview of the tweet's contents. But now users are seeing just a plain link if the tweet contains the word trans, lgbt, lgbt plus, or BLM for Black Lives Matter. More concerningly, tweets that feature terms that are widely regarded as slurs by the LGBTQ plus community, including trans identified and T slur preview as normal. As do tweets mentioning the trans exclusionary term lgb. The concern around censorship in Twitter DMs is echoed by the UK-based Trans Safety Network which reported that preliminary testing indicates that the platform is quote deboosting tweets containing words. They include the words trans, gay, lesbian, queer, and bisexual. To be clear, that is not an exhaustive list. Not that long ago, screenshots showing a bunch of blue check Nazis supporting executions for queer people were being deleted off the platform after they were shared widely and that is presumably because it made the platform look bad to advertisers because if you see a bunch of verified users talking about how queer people should be put to death, I mean, who wants to buy ads based on that platform? There's a reason why we just see these bizarre ads all over the place on Twitter now. There's more ads and their shittier quality ads. I saw an ad for Scientology last week and it's because nobody with legitimacy, with real brand power, wants to associate with this toxic platform an environment that was cultivated specifically by Elon Musk. Now for those who've been paying attention, absolutely nothing that I'm saying here is surprising, but with that being said, we shouldn't allow Elon Musk to just get away with pretending still till this day that he supports free speech when he is literally a threat to free speech. I mean, perhaps right wingers on the platform feel as if there's more free speech because they're allowed to say slurs without fear of getting banned, but that doesn't change the fact that Elon Musk is running Twitter into the ground because he's behaving like a sensorious dictator and openly associating with far right fascistic accounts. I mean, he is subscribed. He pays to subscribe to the content, exclusive content of Libs of TikTok, a right wing stochastic terrorist account that inspired a bomb threat against Boston Children's hospitals due to lies that they spread on his platform. It's so ridiculous. He's still claiming that he cares about free speech. Like if I were exposed as that much of a hypocrite, I would just shut the fuck about free speech. I wouldn't talk about it. You can still have your right wing politics. But when it comes to free speech, I would zip my lips if I were exposed in the way that Elon Musk was exposed. But I mean, he has no shame. And for those who are shocked that he's actually more sensorious than the last regime at Twitter, I mean, him canceling the Tesla orders of journalists who criticized him years ago and busting up unions probably should have given you an indication that he would behave this way. So in closing, whenever Elon Musk talks about free speech, be sure to remind him that the reality is he is in favor of censorship. He can say he supports free speech, but actions matter. What you do matters more than your words. You could say one thing, but if you do another, then we know where you truly stand and functionally he is pro censorship. Censorship is literally worse under his leadership because he's just easily complying because he wants to do business in these countries. So he can pretend to be principled on free speech. He could pretend to be a free speech absolutist law he wants. But more and more people are learning that this is nothing but a facade.