> It's a private company, if you don't like how they moderate, you can start your own company and moderate it the way you want.

Sure. It's a private company that no longer has the support of half of its advertisers, also private companies. Which means Twitter is going bankrupt entirely through neutral market mechanics. So be it.

The real puzzler here is why did Elon insist shooting himself in both feet.

Sure, and I still say that. It's just that criticism of Musk on hypocrisy grounds is justified, because he bought Twitter to bring back free speech or something like that, which includes crimethinc, and Andy Ngo. Free speech is a uniform criteria, not a collection of special cases. The latter is hypocrisy.

There's general agreement on what "free speech" means. If Musk wants to claim free speech moral high ground, he has to put up with Chad Loder and crimethinc and Evon Latrail. If Musk bans accounts that he doesn't like that's fine, he owns that particular printing press. But he doesn't get to claim "free speech" and ban accounts, too. That's the very definition of hypocrisy.