No, we can agree on that. Why not?

Here's the important difference (and this relates to free speech as well):

We can think someone is a an imbecile, asshole, jerk, idiot even a criminal (not talking about Musk, just in general terms). That does not mean they cease to have rights under the law.

A fundamental idea behind free speech is that, in order to protect it, we must protect speech with which we might disagree.

You don't ever have to respect or agree with me. And I can think the same of you. However, if we want to live in a civilized society and have a future, I have to respect your rights and protect you from abuse because, when the time comes, I need you to respect and protect mine with the same fervor. That's the way it works.

It is all too easy to exist in an echo chamber where we only allow and are exposed to things with which we agree. However, this does not promote an open society at all. This closes-off societies and leads to truly nasty outcomes.

Trump is an excellent example of this. His policies? For the most part, excellent and right on point. Yet, every time he opened his mouth he inspired me into projectile vomiting. Do we stop listening to someone just because we don't like their public persona? What they might look like? The color of their skin? Where they were born? The clothes they wear? How wealthy or poor they might be? Etc.

I hope not.

Must can be a jerk on X and still have rights under the law. One thing does not negate the other.

If his allegations are true, Media Matters explicitly sought to damage X and Musk through a process engineered to do just that. And, instead of bringing up the 0.000000000000009 black swan event they found to X's attention, they chose to weaponize it. This led to significant financial losses to X. This isn't right at all.

A natural process would have posting an ad somewhere requesting millions of people to provide proof of what they were looking for. Do it in the open. Why not? I am sure the New York Times would give them a full page ad for free. If a statistically significant percentage of participants identifies well documented transgressions, well, then they could have had something. That's very different from manipulating the experiment to achieve the result you want.

Can you find port on YouTube? Absolutely. It's out there. In many forms. People have reported this. Does this mean YT is a porn site or that Google promotes porn as a company policy? No, of course not. Does this mean that Google management promotes porn? No!

Can you find anti-Semitic or racist content on YouTube? Of course you can. Again, does this mean Google and the people who work there are anti-Semitic. Of course not!

Can you design an experiment to show ads being placed next to anti-Semitic, racist, pornographic and objectionable content on Google, Bing, YouTube and other platforms? Of course you can! Again, that does not prove those organizations to be any of those things.

At some point we have to behave as adults in the room. We can't have politicians and political organizations ruin society by engaging in deceitful manipulative character assassination campaigns against everything and everyone who doesn't agree with them.

At the limit you end-up becoming something like Russia (or other lands) where the cost of having a different outlook on life is life in prison, torture or death. That's what allowing the ideologically-motivated character assassination of people and organizations ultimately leads to.

Perhaps the better point is that this does not lead to anything good for society. How could it? How could politically-motivated defamation campaigns lead to good results of any kind? I can't think of a single scenario where that could be true.

So, yeah, we can hate someone, their ideas or how the handle themselves. However, we have to protect their right to protection under the law for a wide range of things, from slander to physical and financial harm, and more. That's how a society with a future behaves. Not by protecting and standing-up for only those you like.