I think this will lead to outcome that few people cheering for this are anticipating. Musk, Thiel etc. will back an alternative platform that will host JRE, Lex, Jordan Peterson etc. and in the long term it will win due to being less restrictive. Which in the long term is prob a positive thing.
Rogan was already on less restrictive platforms, which was why those episodes were available to begin with. He chose to go on a potentially more restrictive site, in exchange for an immensely lucrative contract. I'm sure if someone offered Samuel L. Jackson $100 million to host a children's show (yes, I know) he would quite willingly hold his famously coarse tongue.
Also even if your prediction is correct, that's "less" restrictive, and still not completely open. There will always be rules because whoever's paying for the service, whether it be advertisers, subscribers, or billionaires, has a list of things they really don't want to hear.
After living first part of my life in USSR I would prefer a dominant platform to be with minimal restrictions. Large platforms need capital so billionaire or crowdfunding or some crypto project or whatever else eventually this demand for least restrictive platform to exist will be met by some project.
I am not "lumping" Rogan and Lex :) Rogan, Lex and Musk are friends, Lex often talks about desire of creating an alternative platform, Musk actually replied on Twitter at some point that he is thinking of funding an alternative platform. I bet Chamath Palihapitiya and David Sacks would gladly pile on the funding.
This is where "private company" arguments start to fall apart when it comes to free speech because at some point, you need hosting or a network connection.
Yeah, there's a big difference between "We don't want to host your content on our public-facing platform" and "We don't want to sell you digital infrastructure."
I'm all for the right to control how you present to the public, even if you are Twitter.com, but locking groups of people out of commerce just feels sinister.
Political yard signs have an outsized effect on certain demographics too, but should that mean that once you start putting up yard signs you have to put up all yard signs?
