Leftist Academics Flee as Musk’s X Ends Their Censorship Reign: How Free Speech Sent the Ivory Tower

[rangerrebew]

Leftist Academics Flee as Musk’s X Ends Their Censorship Reign: How Free Speech Sent the Ivory Tower Packing
15 hours ago Charles Rotter

Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, or X as it’s now called, has brought an abrupt shift in the dynamics of the platform. For years, X functioned as an echo chamber where progressive academics freely exchanged ideas, often without much opposition. It was an exclusive club, and Musk’s open-door policy shattered it. With censorship dialed back and banned accounts reinstated, Musk’s version of free speech drove many academics away, leading to a marked decrease in engagement among their ranks.

An article titled The Vibes Are Off: Did Elon Musk Push Academics Off Twitter ? documents this retreat. It shows a significant drop in activity, especially among verified users, following Musk’s acquisition. Emphasis below is mine.

This article addresses a narrower empirical question: What did Elon Musk’s takeover of the platform mean for this academic ecosystem? Using a snowball sample of more than 15,700 academic accounts from the fields of economics, political science, sociology, and psychology, we show that academics in these fields reduced their “engagement” with the platform, measured by either the number of active accounts (i.e., those registering any behavior on a given day) or the number of tweets written (including original tweets, replies, retweets, and quote tweets). We further tested whether this decrease in engagement differed by account type; we found that verified users were significantly more likely to reduce their production of content (i.e., writing new tweets and quoting others’ tweets) but not their engagement with the platform writ large (i.e., retweeting and replying to others’ content).

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ps-political-science-and-politics/article/vibes-are-off-did-elon-musk-push-academics-off-twitter/28F45D508BE8F50C95F0F2BBEC48BB10

The data points to a familiar pattern: when left-leaning narratives lose control of the conversation, proponents either cry foul or flee​. Now, if you combine this exodus with the insights from Mitchell Langbert’s 2018 study on the political affiliations of elite liberal arts college faculty, the story becomes even clearer.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/10/28/leftist-academics-flee-as-musks-x-ends-their-censorship-reign-how-free-speech-sent-the-ivory-tower-packing/

[Smokin Joe]

I thought the atmosphere over there had become cleaner...

[Bigun]

I thought the atmosphere over there had become cleaner...

It has! Not nearly as much BS now that people are free to come back at the posters of nonsense.

[Smokin Joe]

It has! Not nearly as much BS now that people are free to come back at the posters of nonsense.

That and the Leftist snarky snots get dogpiled, too.

[DefiantMassRINO]

Academia has been a safe space for liberals.  They are not used to being challenged, especially by their students or junior faculty.

They are losing their elitist monopoly power over thought, and are having to compete in the marketplace of ideas.