First someone came and and accused Musk of helping to rig elections on Turkey by suppressing one of the candidates on Twitter.
Musk got mad at him and called him stupid. He said he had to suppress one candidate as was requested by Turkish Gov or else they would turn off all of Twitter.
He basically admits to rigging the election and uses the excuse that they would shut off Twitter in Turkey if he didn’t participate. It’s still wrong either way.
Later he comes back saying all social media sites are doing it because “they have to” but Twitter is the only one being transparent about it. The only reason he’s being transparent is because someone just exposed him.
Musk is deep state. The starlink satellites he runs is a mega spy program to spy on us. The brain chip he made is for mind control. The electric stuff he is pushing for more more control. His mom has all kinds of cult pics. He dressed up as Baphomet for Halloween and occasional throws up the devil horns signs. He’s also a billionaire. No billionaire is a good person.
It's a complete bullshit.
When in Russia Telegram was banned, Durov (Telegram owner and creator) just updated app to use proxies and VPNs. So, Telegram continued to work without any significant problems and even gained more popularity not only in Russia, but in many other countries too. Today, Telegram in Russia is not banned and I think it is even more popular than Whatsapp or Viber or whatever, among all that crappy centralized survellance shit.
Musk could do the same without any problems at all, since he have much more resources than Durov had. And gain some more users on that.
All that centralized messengers/social networks/etc use their userbase as a source of profit for owners. From selling data collected from user smartphones, to taking enormous loans using userbase as a pledge. Twitter is no different from Telegram or other messengers/social in the way userbase is monetized.
So Musk is just lying about real reasons behind that decision.
I think Musk isn't lying about his reasons. He wants to make Twitter the everything app so it has to be legit to tie into bank accounts and such - it can't go underground like Telegram in your example.
It's a net lose-lose either way. He either is a disruptor and being all coy about it. Or if he is being legit then this is just par for the course because of how large Twitter is and how big corp and big government are so crucial for the business or the brand image that he has to kowtow to their "requests".
In the end someone above Elon somewhere is calling the shots no matter what. Be it a handler or a separate, corrupt figure