Remember in the days before Elon Musk bought Twitter, when it seemed like posts by conservatives were constantly flagged as misinformation and forced to be removed, while liberals could lie and lie and lie without any accountability whatsoever?
Back in those days, conservatives were also regularly having their accounts temporarily suspended and even permanently banned. I was banned for the horrible crime of speaking the truth about transgenderism on the platform.
A year and a half ago, my Twitter account was permanently suspended after I accurately pointed out that gender dysphoria is a mental illness. Prior to that, I had been temporarily suspended for sharing an article I wrote here at PJ Media about Richard "Rachel" Levine, Joe Biden’s assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services. The article correctly emphasized that Levine is a man, not a woman. It wasn't until Elon Musk bought Twitter and gave amnesty to those who were wrongfully banned that I got back on.
I haven't agreed with everything Musk has done with the platform. I think renaming it X is ridiculous, and opening up verification to anyone willing to pay a monthly fee diluted the significance of verification. At least conservatives would finally receive equal treatment and not face censorship or suppression just for saying something the leftist gatekeepers don't approve of.
Of course, in addition X not censoring conservatives, leftists are starting to feel the wrath of others calling them out for their lies, with fact-checks Community Notes for posting false information. How many times did that happen under the old regime? It may have happened on occasion, but more often than not, the double standard allowed leftists to lie without any accountability whatsoever.
It was, to say the least, extremely frustrating. But things have certainly changed. In fact, just this week, users slapped Joe Biden with a Community Note for making a grossly misleading claim in a post on X/Twitter.
Joe Biden has been telling whoppers about his job creation record for years now, and under the old regime of Twitter, his lies stayed up on the platform unchecked. Now, users have often attached Community Notes to his tweets.
When Biden claimed this week that nearly 800,000 manufacturing jobs have been created on his watch, it lacked the context that the vast majority of those jobs were recovered jobs that had been lost due to the pandemic shutdowns. In reality, more like 175,000 have been created once you account for the pre-COVID employment numbers.
We’ve created close to 800,000 manufacturing jobs since I’ve taken office.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) December 5, 2023
While most of us find it refreshing to see Biden and other leftists finally getting called out for their lies, liberals have been less amused. When Musk came through with his promise to make the platform more conducive to free speech, many tried to migrate to alternative platforms like Mastodon. Mark Zuckerberg even launched his own Twitter clone, called Threads, which, despite its huge launch, has failed to retain active users.
The old days of Twitter serving as a bastion of censorship of conservatives and unchecked leftist lies almost feel like a bad memory now.
