It was as inevitable as sunrise.
Elon Musk, the right-wing billionaire who flirts dangerously with extremism and conspiracy theories, took over Twitter promising that he was a champion of free speech. Now Musk is banning journalists he doesn’t like from his platform.
This morning, though, it was Scotland’s turn for a taste of censorship. Many Twitter subscribers are now talking about moving to Mastodon, the alternative social media platform, so sick are they of Musk’s behaviour. Mastodon’s Scottish arm is called ‘Mastodon.scot’. On Friday morning, anyone who posted those words was told that the tweet wouldn’t be published as “this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful”. Twitter calling another site harmful is the very definition of pot and kettle.
Read more from Neil Mackay at Herald Scotland
How do I know this censorship is happening? Well, after reading reports that Twitter was preventing users posting links to Mastadon, I simply tried tweeting the words ‘Mastodon.scot’ and was censored.
Why did Musk censor Scotland? Clearly, he wants to shut down rival sites, and doesn’t care if he smothers free speech around the world.
Earlier, Musk suspended the accounts of a series of American reporters, including writers from The New York Times and Washington Post. They’d been covering stories related to Musk banning a Twitter user who shared details about his private jet. So just reporting on matters which Musk doesn’t like gets journalists banned.
When Musk was pulled up in an online discussion forum for lying about the reasons for his attack on journalism, he simply left the meeting. He tried to claim the reporters were sneakily doxxing him - or releasing his personal details. They weren’t. They were covering a story.
Subscribe to our Unspun newsletter to read the rest of this article from Neil Mackay. Featuring the best political insight and analysis from our writers, Unspun is delievered straight to you, every evening Monday to Friday.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel