Ok then. People know enough about what it means to know it doesn’t refer to not having to pay a fee to open your mouth.

It’s very clear that the headline is a little wordplay joke. It doesn’t literally convey that the journalist thought free speech means you don’t have to pay to make a twitter post. You’re taking it way too literally.

elon musk started out by saying hes a “free speech absolutist”, but twitter has been slowly rediscovering why “free speech absolutism” doesnt work.

I’m in agreement that it doesn’t work.

But it should also be called to attention that Musk never tried free speech absolutism on his platform (not that I think he actually should). He has been willing to bend over backwards in assisting dictatorships in censoring content, and he culled a lot of left-leaning and anti-Musk accounts/comments on day one. It’s always been a lie to pander to the freeze peach crowd.