But... how obvious is that? Perhaps it did significantly reduce those ideas when it was active. Like, if Musk hadn't reinstated Trump's account we could be looking at a different presidency.
Yeah, I read the article. It doesn't address the possibility that the causality could be the other way around.
The stuff about Trump and Bhattacharya is just odd. Trump rose back to power after Musk bought Twitter and gave him a platform to spread lies again. Then Trump appointed RFK, who appointed Bhattacharya as a sort of token gesture.
The Fuentes stuff is just as odd - his popularity waned while he was censored, but after being reinstated to X he grew his base to a million followers. Again, how does this support the claim that deplatforming was a negative move?
I guess there's two competing narratives: deplatforming never worked, vs deplatforming was working until Musk stepped in and undid it. The article does not give any compelling arguments for the former.
There's a bit about that in the "Tyranny of the Intolerant" section. Imo the article isn't so much making a case for that as it is lifting quotations wholesale from Timur Kuran as a sort of appeal to authority to justify it's own narrative. It makes out like it's obvious that Kuran's work explains the rise of Trump and Fuentes, whilst Musk's hijacking of Twitter strikes me as a simpler more natural explanation.
But... how obvious is that? Perhaps it did significantly reduce those ideas when it was active. Like, if Musk hadn't reinstated Trump's account we could be looking at a different presidency.