Who is trying to ban political speech? On what social media site can you not, for example, criticize Joe Biden, Donald Trump, or any other politician—or any of their policies?

The only thing that’s been banned is hate speech, misinformation, and , temporarily, potentially hacked information. If one of your hypothetical restaurants was the “neo-nazi” or “white supremacy” restaurant, it would go out of business because decent people would never want to be associated with it. I assume you wouldn’t either, so I don’t know what you expect the natural outcome to be.

Is it restricting free speech to say that those who believe whole races of people are inferior and worthy of contempt and mistreatment not be given a space in these forums? That speech should be protected by law, and the government shouldn’t intervene to stop it, but we don’t have to be friends with or facilitate these people spreading their message. Even Musk, the supposed “free speech absolutist” quickly buckled in light of Kanye’s recent “I love nazis” rant and post. It can sometimes be difficult to determine what constitutes hate speech, but it certainly shouldn’t be conflated with political speech.

And I’d have you note that there’s no true monopoly. Donald Trump and Kanye were banned from the top sites. They, in turn, both either bought or made their own social media sites. Anyone who wants to hear from them, and presumably anyone who has been similarly banned, can always go to Truth Social or Parlor. And now, they’re even making inroads on Twitter. The political arena is rife with phony claims of victimhood; we don’t need any more of it.