I've seen no evidence Elon is willing to burn Twitter to the ground to make a political point. to the contrary, he tried to back out the deal he hastily entered into and only went through with it when it became clear he was going to get railed by the Delaware Chancery Court.

Even if he is, it's a massive risk. Another platform that he doesn't own could simply rise and take its place.

> How much financial support is Meta and Tik-Tok giving to Republicans?

The Trump administration tried to block Tiktok (briefly). Many officials and politicans call it a national security risk, most recently the FCC chair just this week. While there are noises made about a break up of Meta, I suspect it's going nowhere.

> You're not only saying that they don't exist, but actually that the mere IDEA is problematic?

I'm saying anywhere people can in any way filter their experience, what they see will differ from the unfiltered view. Even if they see the same things, they will engage with things they like. Basically, this is inevitable. The problematic part is this only tends to get lablled an "echo chamber" when people filter in such a way that the criticizer doesn't like.

> But Kanye WAS allowed to speak, and neither Spotify or YouTube have take it down.

In case you didn't see it, I encourage you to read this HN submission from yesterday [1]. I'll also bring up the Paradox of Tolerance [2]. Free speech absolutism is the extreme view where anything can be posted. Not even 4chan has this. So when I say "nobody wants this", I mean everyone agrees there are and should be limits on speech so it's just a question of what those limits should be.

Any site that has attempted unmoderated free speech descends into a cesspit of Nazis and racists where everyone else leaves. Moreso, advertisers (who still pay for the platform) don't want to be associated with it so they leave too.

As you mentioned, Kanye still got an incredible amount of exposure for his views between various podcasts and the right-wing media (eg Tucker CArlson, Ben Shapiro) so it's not like he's been silenced. There's just one thing out of many he couldn't do because Twitter didn't want to be associated with it.

> But then again, the basic conspiratorial pattern he's using doesn't seem very different from how BLM talks about "white" people.

Free speech is fundamentally a political issue, otherwise I'd try not to get into this topic. I understand your confusion, which I certainly believe to be in good faith. I'll scratch the surface of this as neutrally and briefly as I can.

"Whiteness" and "blackness" as concepts are not equivalent. "Blackness" is an invented concept for various people who were robbed of their heritage, culture and language through chattel slavery. It's why we say "African-American" for black people but "Italian-American" or "Polish-American" or whatever for white people.

"Whiteness" as a concept is defined by two properties: 1) The proximity to power and 2) Not being black. It is a concept rooted in white supremacy. Who counts as "white" also changes. Ben Franklin, for example, didn't count Germans as "white". Now we count Italians as "white". That wasn't alwyas the case.

You are correct in that part of this is "punching up" vs "punching down" but you should also know that this idea of equivalent concepts is used by white supremacists. "White power" was a reaction to "black power" as an emancipating force in the 1960s. "White Lives Matter" (and even "All Lives Matter") are the same response to "Black Lives Matter" (BLM). They're also insidious because they imply that BLM means white lives don't matter. It's more accurate to say "Black Lives Matter Too" even though no one was suggesting white lives don't matter.

Kanye is actually pushing white supremacist views. You don't have to be white to be a white supremacist.

> But the left seems to be quite accepting with Anti Semitism that comes from Palestinians

Anti-semitism (hatred of Jewish people) isn't the same as anti-Zionism (opposition to the policies of the state of Israel). People try and conflate the two to deflect any criticism of Israeli actions. There are very valid criticisms to be made of Israel's treatment of Palestinians (eg [3]). The ADL is extremely active in American politics and spends a lot of money in races to defeat candidates critical of Israel.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33449791

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

[3]: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-...