You’re not being shadowbanned, dude — people just don’t like your tweets that much.
Ban Me Daddy
The world’s richest man is now claiming that his speech is being suppressed on Twitter — but we can see the tweet he posted about it just fine.
“My tweets are being suppressed!” Musk raged under the display name “Naughtius Maximus,” in an apparent reference to the character Nortius Maximus from “Monty Python’s Life of Brian” who is best-known for a song from the film called “You Mean You Were Raped?“
That questionable context in hand, Musk followed up with another tweet tagging Twitter, the company’s verification page, and Parag Agrawal, the company’s current CEO.
Less than an hour later, Musk again referenced “Monty Python And the Holy Grail” by tweeting, without threading, context, or commentary, a meme gif of a character from the film yelling “Help, I’m being suppressed!”
Again, we can see all theses tweets just fine.
Dealer’s Choice
Curiously, Musk’s unsubstantiated claims of tweet suppression came just after Twitter shareholders voted in favor of him taking over the company in spite of his repeated requests and pending court maneuvers geared towards withdrawing from the $44 billion dollar deal.
This is not, of course, the first time the world’s richest man has claimed that he’s been “shadowbanned,” or had his posts secretly suppressed, by the social network that he initially tried to buy over supposed free speech concerns.
He joked earlier this year that a “shadow ban council” was reviewing his grainy-image meme tweets, and right-wing commentators like Sean Hannity have pushed conspiracy theories claiming that Musk’s takeover bid “exposed” an internal shadowbanning campaign.
Like most people who claim they’ve been shadowbanned, it’s unlikely that there’s an any conspiracy to suppress his speech on Twitter or anywhere else — and, as in most other cases when folks cry shadowbanning, any lowered engagement is likely the result of people simply being annoyed by or disinterested in their posts.
More Muskery: Elon Musk Furious That the Government Isn’t Giving Him More Free Money