So, is anyone buying Twitter's claim that the 'Memphis' bans were caused by a software bug, ie. an 'accident'? If so then I guess that makes them 'quite biased', right?
Ahh, conveniently ignoring the parts of the picture that don't fit your attempted narrative. That's the ticket!
Or does pre-Musk Twitter get a pass for bans that Musk's Twitter doesn't?
Why would it? Your argument seems to hinge upon ignoring relevant things and then turning around and accusing others of ignoring irrelevant things.
BTW I only omitted the 'reason for suspension' column because it wouldn't fit in my post and summarizing them would be too much work. They are all there on the Wikipedia page for anyone to check out - not that they are particularly relevant. A ban is a ban, whether deliberate or caused by a 'technical glitch'. Both causes are problematic.
I'd be kinder here, except for the part where you omitted such and then tried to fill in the gap you left with aspersions and misleading comments.
The difference is that before Musk took over Twitter 'conservative' members were complaining about it, while afterwards 'liberal' members were. The problem is we don't know if this is a real effect or just selection bias. Lets say some 'glitch' caused 10,000 random members to get banned. If a few of them happened to be Musk haters you can bet they would be crying foul, and then it looks like they are being targeted because they are the only ones you hear about.
Part of that's fair in a general sense, but you've provided no evidence to believe that it's actually in play. Part of that's an eye-roll worthy rewriting of history.
Before Musk took over, there were complaints from all across the spectrum and the complaints varied significantly when it came to how rooted in reality they were. Before Musk, the objective of the company was obviously focused on profit, though, rather than pushing some agenda. Yes, a number of right wingers did get banned - generally for very reasonable cause. Bear in mind the larger situation that was going on for a moment - the political right wing acting very, very badly and dishonestly in pointedly harmful ways. Promoting violence, for example, isn't some praiseworthy thing.
Musk swooped in spouting right wing CT justifications with little grounding in reality, added an amount of debt that made company bankruptcy nigh certain, and made a bunch of mindbogglingly terrible changes in line with right wing CT complaints and pointedly endorsed a right wing political party. He's created plenty of reality based cause to be wary of political bias in ways that a general profit motive does not. He's created plenty of reality based reason to distrust his claims that he supports Free Speech and much reason to believe that what he actually supports is a caricature of Free Speech.
but when I asked for evidence of this the reply was 'Twitter served better as a free speech platform before Musk' and 'If one were quite biased in favor of doing so, you could buy the 'It was an accident!" excuse' - which is why I had to look it up for myself.
Rewriting recent history again, eh? "Twitter served better as a free speech platform before Musk" was NOT a reply to such a request for evidence. It was a reply to you claiming that X is still serving as a free speech platform.
Dishonesty does your argument little good.
The Wikipedia list shows that prominent members were being both deliberately and 'accidentally' banned long before Musk took over. But even that list is biased towards 'notable' examples.
Of course it is.
There may be many thousands who were banned that we don't know about.
Thousands? See the History part of your link. Hundreds of thousands of accounts have indeed been banned in many years for various offenses, especially relating to terrorism. That's not changed under Musk.
Over 200,000 accounts in around a month in India alone, to poke at an example.
Still, before you try to crow victory and try to somehow use that as exoneration, the history section from your link also has a very relevant bit to the more specific discussion -
Many anti-fascist activists were purged from Twitter in November 2022 after Musk outsourced content moderation decisions to the platform's users, notably inviting right-wing journalist Andy Ngo to report anti-fascist accounts directly to him. Among those suspended were a group that provides armed security to LGBT events, accounts parodying Elon Musk, and a Palestinian news outlet known for criticizing the Israeli military.
Musk pointedly gave content moderation decisions to right wing political extremists! He made it perfectly clear that he intended to be personally involved in getting left wing accounts banned! Accounts parodying Musk were targeted as part of that!
Oh, but you try to argue that it's unreasonable to take any clues from that. Uh huh.
But the worse thing is that those of us who push back on that get accused of being 'fanbois'
If the shoe fits...
of whatever it is that's being vilified, when nothing could be further from the truth. It's not about liking or not liking something, but accepting the facts as they are, not just believing what you want to be true.
Sure. Taken as a general matter, that's entirely fair. When you're ignoring the facts and context and putting forth outright lies as you just did in your post (intentionally or not, I don't care) about what's been said to try to defend your position, while also throwing up fair generalities that just don't actually apply, that's not fair at all.
