One of the men who played a key role in Elon Musk's decision to buy Twitter, now known as X, said the platform is on the right track one year after the acquisition, even if it is suffering short-term struggles.
"I think a better way of looking at it is to view Twitter/X as having just undergone major surgery," Seth Dillon, the CEO of the conservative satire website Babylon Bee, told the Washington Examiner. "It's been a painful process but only because he's been cutting out cancer, not causing it."
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Dillon has been a vocal supporter of Musk and his free-speech approach to content moderation. It was the suspension of his publication that spurred Musk to take over Twitter, in Dillon's telling. The Babylon Bee was punished in March 2022 for posting a tweet referring to Department of Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary Rachel Levine, a biological man who identifies as a woman, as a man. Musk subsequently reached out and mused about the need to take over Twitter before posting a poll on his account asking about free speech, Dillon has said.
In the year since Musk paid $44 billion to take Twitter private, the platform has seen declining user growth and diminished revenues, as well as criticism from many media outlets.
Dillon, though, said he sees the trends as favorable, saying that the number of creators on the platform is growing and that people who had been silenced under the previous ownership are returning to the platform.
"Not every change has improved, but overall, I think the platform is moving in the right direction," he said.
As for criticisms, Dillon did single out the "freedom of speech, not freedom of reach" policy, which describes Twitter's efforts to limit content that violates its content policies rather than remove it outright.
"This is like telling people they're free to speak in the town square, but if they say something awful, they'll be moved into a soundproof booth," Dillon said. "Do you really have free speech if you're muted?" He said if users disagree with an account, they should just block or mute it instead.
Dillon said he sees positive developments for free speech more generally, including not just X's policy reversals but also the Supreme Court's recent decision to weigh in NetChoice v. Moody. The case in question will deal with whether states can penalize social media companies for whom they block.
However, he also said speech has been getting worse in part due to Big Tech censoring speech as well as people feeling "tremendous pressure" to censor themselves. "When we censor ourselves, we do the tyrant's work for him," Dillon argued. "We have to stop doing that. We have to reclaim our right to speak freely, and if we do that, we'll embolden others to join us."
The 37-year-old Babylon Bee CEO bought the religious satire website in 2018 from its founder, Adam Ford. The outlet moved from a focus on religious content to more political posts under Dillon during the Trump administration.
Dillon has hosted Musk on the Babylon Bee's podcast multiple times, where they have discussed politics, free speech, and the billionaire's relationship with religion.
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Dillon is still in close contact with Musk, the CEO said. Musk was the first person that Dillon called after X incorporated a video chat feature.
X's metrics have been on the decline, leading many to decry the company's future. Daily active mobile users declined 15% year over year, according to the Wall Street Journal. The majority of the platform's top advertisers have also left X, according to a report released by the marketing consultancy Ebiquity.