Censorship, lockdowns, arbitrary bans — Turning Twitter into the China of social media • businessroundups.org

Wow, that was fast.

When Elon Musk bought Twitter and took it private in October, I thought it would take a while for things to take a turn for the worse. Then, after he laid off about half of the company’s employees, that estimate got a little shorter.

Now, after last night’s Spaces brouhaha, in which Musk confronted journalists he banned for retweeting links about the ElonJet tracker and then abruptly shut down the feature entirely, that timeline has moved up significantly.

To be clear, Twitter isn’t going to die tomorrow or next week or even next year. But given how the past few days have played out on the platform, I’m not entirely sure how long Twitter will remain a viable platform. It’s turning into the China of social media, full of censorship, arbitrary bans, and groups of users/accounts that spring to Musk’s defense when they feel his story is being undermined.