I've been on the Internet literally since before there was an Internet per se (that is, on the original DOD ARPANET that became the Internet). I've been thinking about Musk's actions over the last few days. I cannot think of any instance of any Internet-related firm ever attempting a broad *** censorship of their users' *** ability to post freely available, legal information, including discussion and links to such information, except ... that in so doing, Musk joins the ranks of Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and other countries that criminalize all manner of information as part of their repressive regimes.

Musk has now bound himself to them and their philosophies, and any advertisers, firms, or other organizations doing business with him in any way, regarding any of his companies, will be doing the same by association going forward.

@lauren

You might be missing CompuServe and AOL, which were known to be heavy handed in censorship. Actual ArpaNet, not so. USENET was particularly resilient to individual asmin censorship. Though NNTP and news over UUCP was a distributed system, wasn't it.

@ParanoidFactoid Strictly speaking, those weren't even Internet services originally, and that was so early in the history of any kind of social media that the foundations weren't even clear yet. ARPANET and early Internet had Acceptable Use Policies but they can't be reasonably compared to what Musk is doing now.