Why would you have to defend anything like that to use it? Who makes any of the products or services you use? Do you defend the Chinese Communist Party when you buy anything made in China or by a Chinese company? Or defend petroleum and war profiteers and petrostate regimes whenever you fill your gas tank or take a flight or a bus somewhere?

I was defending the ideas he was pushing not defending Elon himself. All I’m saying is it makes it harder to defend free speech when people get to pretend he actually doesn’t really care about free speech because he makes occasional/rare exceptions to the rule for his own benefit.

Obviously it’s still way better situation than quiet censorship for everyone outside the Overton window and via gov request Vs a small very public group of cases for a billionaire’s petty exceptions to the rule, but it’s not helping the cause in the culture war pushing for censorship.

Okay thanks for the answer. That's interesting, I can easily defend free speech regardless of what anybody else says or does.

And so far I think the direction he's taking Twitter looks very promising in injecting some diversity into the social media landscape and shaking the government-corporate attacks on speech. Maybe not very much and may be futile in the long run with a meek subservient populace who beg to be ruled, but certainly better than before.