It has been almost a year and a half since Elon Musk took over the site that used to be known as twitter. Musk made big promises in the realm of freedom of speech, political independence as well as an end to bots. I will admit, I supported Musk taking over the platform from its previous owners, because I really believed that the previous owners were corrupt and in bed with institutions. However, I am going to be writing this piece without bias, as I also believe that Elon hasn’t done everything exactly right. Let us begin.

Point One: Political Independence

I will rate X’s political independence as mixed. Initially, I would have given it an A. When Musk took over, he did a good job exposing how Twitter was working with the US government to suppress information. The Twitter Files were an act of brilliant transparency that needed to be released. X did, and sometimes still does, a good job of operating independently of the US government. However, with the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza going on, Musk has shown a bit of a bias towards accounts that prop up a hawkish foreign policy. I have also heard rumors of certain parts of his monetization mechanisms being handled by Israeli companies. Correct me if I am wrong. Given how it is much more politically independent than the previous regime, I will give it a B- for now.

Point Two: Freedom of Speech

Freedom of speech was the argument that Elon Musk used to gain control of twitter. In the past, Twitter would enforce their content moderation policies so arbitrarily that everyone was in fear of being banned or suspended for any reason at any time. Of course, most of the people living in fear of this were accounts associated with the global right-wing of politics. Twitter had essentially created an echo chamber where liberal voices were elevated and right-wing voices were suppressed. Many of the people I originally followed when I joined the platform in 2018 are no longer there. So when Elon showed up and said that he was going to allow freedom of speech to flourish on the platform I naturally supported his takeover. Once again, initially, he did not disappoint. I saw some of my original mutual’s accounts again. Now, while I do believe that freedom of speech on X remains at an all time high compared to what it was previously, there are still some big problems. First of all, the shadowbans still exist. Shadowbanning was one of the biggest tools of the old regime to suppress speech, as it basically limited account visibility. Eliminating the shadowban should have been one of the first things that Musk did when acquiring X. I cannot speak as to why he has not done so yet, but I believe that he must. The second strike against him is the hiring of Linda Yaccarino as CEO. This woman has ties to Joe Biden, who used her to create a Covid vaccination promo. She is an obvious neoliberal shill who has even termed the phrase “freedom of speech, not freedom of reach.” The heck does that even mean? We still do not have a concrete answer. The truth of the matter is that ever since she was hired, there has been an uptick in suspensions. I give X a C on this. It should have been so easy to just stick with the principles of free speech.

Point Three: Bots

Anyone who was on X during the summer of 2023 remembers the time where our activity was restricted in order to combat bots. It was like you could only be on for a couple minutes a day before you couldn’t reload your feed due to your session timing out. It was really annoying, and from what I can see now, apparently didn’t work. I have seen more bots on X now than I did before the servers underwent whatever they underwent that summer. Everywhere I look, you have onlyfans chicks botting responses under unrelated posts. It isn’t just them either. When I go and look at a post relating to, the war in Gaza, for instance, I will see a bunch of replies that either repeat what the initial post is saying, or I will get a bunch of unrelated posts for random stuff. It is annoying, and I do not understand why this is happening considering the entire point of the summer maintenance was to stop it from happening. I would go so far as to argue that all of this automation spamming suppresses free speech as the conversation is drowned out in a sea of botted replies. With all this in mind, I rate it an F until they can figure out what is going on here.

Point Four: Monetization

During the summer of 2023, Elon Musk introduced monetization for people who became verified on X and had 500 followers and 5 million impressions (interactions on posts) within the last three months. I wrote a piece when this first came out and I thought it was a great idea. I still think it is a great idea. The problem is, due to the fact that there are shadowbans still in place as well as freedom of speech in doubt, I think the system’s opportunities have become unequal. I have seen accounts who had previously made hundreds to thousands of dollars on X when the policy was first implemented trickle down to double to single digit dollars now due to shadowbanning and advertisers not willing to advertise on their posts. I will rate monetization as a C because I think it is a good idea, but it could be implemented better if people weren’t held back by shadowbans and other technicalities.

Point Five: X Premium

X Premium is X’s subscription service. Basically, you pay monthly or annually in exchange for verification. This is nice, because it makes it easier to get verified when previously verification was limited to the Twitter elite of usual suspects. X premium supposedly gives you better exposure and allows you to try and access monetization. Anyone can apply although be warned, it takes a while to get approved. I personally have no problems with Premium as is, but I have heard rumors (rumors, mind you) that eventually the goal is to get everyone signed up for premium. I get that X is a business, but I do not believe that signing up should be a requirement for being allowed to use the platform. That would just cause more people to leave and then you would just wind up in an echo chamber of those who are willing to pay. Given how many people just dislike Elon for personal reasons, that would probably not go over well for the platform. I believe that Premium should be voluntary and that people should be allowed onto the platform whether they are paying or not. People are already paying voluntarily anyhow, there is no need for a conscription. I’ll give Premium a B for now in it’s current form but I don’t think it needs to be mandatory.

Point Six: External Links

In order to combat advertising for competitors, external links to other social media sites were banned. This also applied to news outlets, in which linking a story would only provide the cover image and not the title of the story. This was probably the most unwelcome change because I think it is pointless. Also, some people have multiple accounts over multiple platforms for exposure reasons. I don’t think that people should have to go through extra hoops in order to allow others to access their content. Thankfully substack isn’t on that list. I rate this policy a F simply because I see no point in it.

There might be several things I am missing, but I wanted to write this piece to talk about my gripes with the platform in its current state as well as my assessment of Elon sticking to his promises. While I credit Musk for liberating us from the old Twitter oligarchy, I am going to grade X with a C, because while it is much better than what came before, it also can be so much better than it is currently. Most of it is being held back by little technical nitpicks that shouldn’t be as big of an issue as they are. I believe that if Elon kept his promise of X being an online version of the public square without all of the weird stuff, I would have graded it an A. Get rid of the bots, get rid of the shadowbans, get rid of Linda, and keep Premium voluntary. Also, that amnesty that was announced back during the early days should have released everybody that was banned, but it didn’t. I know because most of the people I was following who had been banned by the old regime are still gone. Do more than the bare minimum and I will give it an A.

If anyone has any other input to add onto this, please feel free to leave a comment or share so others can also add their thoughts.

Oceanus