Elon Musk banned me from X for my journalism. No one should be surprised about it in this era, when the prevailing view in Silicon Valley is “Free speech for me but not for thee.”

That ethos reinforces why we should be concerned about Musk’s takeover of the platform and, more to the point, oligarchs’ control of our main forms of communication.

Musk’s X, and now increasingly Meta, are shirking the responsibilities of owning and operating the world’s venues for sharing information, while taking advantage of these platforms for their own agenda-driven objectives.

My own brush with these hypocrisies went like this: My X account was suspended on Sunday because of a news story I authored. X accused me of violating X’s “doxing” rule — meaning that I shared someone’s personal, private information without permission.

The rule is rarely, and inconsistently, enforced, and more to the point, no reasonable person could think my story violated it.

Moderation on X doesn’t seem to exist to help keep anyone safe. My news story put no one and nothing in danger.

Yesterday, news broke that Meta decided to get rid of fact-checking on its platforms in favor of something like X’s Community Notes.

Zuckerberg’s move is in line with X’s capriciously enforced doxing........

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