X Has a Free Speech Problem — and I'm Living It

X recently suspended my account for “violating our rules against inauthentic behaviors.” That was the entirety of the explanation. X cited no specific post, identified no pattern of misconduct, and offered no definition of what, precisely, it considered inauthentic about my activity. There was no warning. I appealed, asked for specifics, and followed up. I received nothing in return. X’s own policies state that its authenticity rules target manipulation through fake accounts, coordinated behavior, and deceptive content — and that users may appeal suspensions made in error. In my case, the appeals process has led nowhere.

That silence should concern more than just me.

I was not impersonating anyone, using bots, running fake accounts, purchasing engagement, concealing my identity, or orchestrating any coordinated campaign. I posted under my own name, in my own voice, on matters of public concern. (You can still see my news and views on Threads.)

I also created images lampooning the president. After Trump decried the cost and design of the Obama library — and after renderings emerged of his planned library skyscraper-hotel-marina-event space complex — I created a parody concept for a “Trump Presidential Library.” 

The post that appears to have triggered the suspension was a Trump-as-George-Washington cartoon captioned “I cannot tell a lie. Biden did it,” accompanied by commentary on the erosion of accountability and democratic norms.

That is called political speech. It is also called satire. Both have been protected forms of expression in democratic societies for centuries. And both were, by any reasonable definition, plainly authentic.

The contradiction is difficult to ignore. X accused me of “inauthentic behaviors” — yet every post was written under my own name, expressed my own views, and linked to my own commentary or clearly recognizable parody. Meanwhile, the broader ecosystem of political media on that same platform routinely carries content that is racist, threatening, dehumanizing, or incendiary.

Consider the record. The same platform that suspended me for political satire has hosted presidential posts threatening to annihilate an entire civilization, profane ultimatums directed at foreign governments, and language that, from any other account, would almost certainly trigger enforcement. The enforcement gap is not a matter of interpretation. It is a matter of record.

I condemned disinformation about vaccines, wrote about the politicization and demonization of science, criticized cuts to education and research, and voiced concerns about attacks on the news media and the degradation of truth in public life. Trump and many of his allies, by contrast, have normalized language that casts journalists as “enemies of the people,” opponents as “traitors,” and entire communities as threats — language that sits comfortably on the platform, uncontested and unenforced, and that routinely edges to the boundary of criminal incitement without quite crossing it.

Elon Musk acquired X with a promise to make it a more open arena for public expression. That promise deserves scrutiny when a real person, posting under his own name, can be suspended for political criticism and satire — and then offered nothing but silence in response. “Free speech” as a platform value cannot be selectively applied based on whose speech is at issue.

This is not a customer-service complaint. It is a question about who gets to speak in the defining public forum of our time — and who decides.

X is among the most consequential communications platforms in public life. Politicians use it to shape narratives, announce policy, and dominate news cycles. Journalists use it to report, distribute, and break news. Researchers and experts use it to interpret events in real time. X is, of course, a private company, and the First Amendment constrains government action — not the moderation decisions of private platforms. But that legal distinction does not end the inquiry. When a sitting president uses social media as a de facto channel of governance, and when participation in that public square can be revoked through vague accusations and opaque processes, platform governance becomes a matter of legitimate democratic concern.

Many people responded to my suspension by saying I was better off without it — that X has become a cesspool, that suspension is practically a badge of honor. I understood the sentiment. But that response, however satisfying, concedes too much. It accepts that a platform of this consequence can suppress lawful political opinion without evidence, without explanation, and without recourse — and that the appropriate response is simply to walk away.

Platforms have a genuine responsibility to remove spam, fraud, threats, harassment, and coordinated manipulation. No serious person disputes that. But when a platform accuses a user of “inauthentic behaviors,” it should be able to identify the conduct, cite the specific post, explain which rule was violated, and provide a genuine review process. Without that, policy becomes pretext, enforcement becomes theater, and whatever trust remains evaporates.

If a platform this powerful can silence lawful political speech this casually — with no justification, no process, and no accountability — the consequences extend well beyond any single user. For businesses, journalists, researchers, and policymakers who depend on X as a channel of record, the absence of due process is not a minor inconvenience. It is a societal risk. Platforms that want to be treated as essential public infrastructure must be held to the governance standards that come with that role.

This article also appears in O’Dywer’s PR. 

Update, April 20, 2026: Well, it ended the way it started – without warning or explanation. The suspension is over. The point of my article remains the same, of course. 

A Hundred Years Is Too Long to Wait

Today is the anniversary of the Civil War’s opening shot. On April 12, 1861, Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter, beginning a bombardment that would launch four years of slaughter. That war did not erupt because America had settled its deepest racial contradiction. It erupted because the country had postponed it — and postponement, in America, has a way of becoming a habit.

America has settled into a troubling rhythm: roughly every hundred years, the nation makes a major formal advance against racial injustice — only after long resistance, bitter struggle, and blood. The Declaration of Independence in 1776 gave us the principle. The 13th Amendment, ratified in 1865, abolished slavery. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 dismantled segregation and legal discrimination. None arrived cleanly or uncontested.

Start with the Declaration. Americans rightly celebrate it as the nation’s statement of human equality. But even at its creation, the promise was narrowed by political cowardice. Congress deleted Jefferson’s passage condemning slavery and the slave trade — in part to satisfy South Carolina and Georgia, and in part because northern commercial interests were implicated. The founding document offered a universal creed while shrinking from a full confrontation with human bondage. The first great American statement against inequality was compromised before the ink was dry.

Then came the century of evasion, rationalization, and bloodshed. Defenders of slavery wrapped themselves in the language of property, local control, and constitutional restraint. But the historical record is unambiguous: secession was driven by the determination to preserve slavery. Confederate vice president Alexander Stephens said so plainly — the Confederacy, he declared, rested on slavery and white supremacy as its cornerstone. Even emancipation was denounced as ruinous, lawless, and socially catastrophic. Yet the 13th Amendment, ratified in 1865, abolished slavery nationwide. It was a giant step, but one taken only after war, slaughter, and years of arguments designed to make justice seem impossible.

A century later, the country had to fight again over whether Black Americans would enjoy rights already promised on paper. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed segregation in public accommodations, addressed employment discrimination, and promoted school integration — but it did not emerge from consensus. It came after years in which Southern states and local authorities met civil rights demands with arrests, beatings, police dogs, fire hoses, and organized obstruction. In Birmingham, police attacked young demonstrators with dogs and high-pressure hoses. In Mississippi, Freedom Summer volunteers faced beatings, arrests, bombings, and murder. In Selma, state troopers brutally assaulted peaceful marchers on a bridge the whole country watched. The law passed, but force was used again and again to delay, block, and punish its moral logic.

That is the real pattern. America does move — but only after making the targets of injustice endure another generation, or three, of excuses. The 1770s gave us the promise. The 1860s abolished slavery. The 1960s dismantled legalized segregation. We should take hope from that progress, but not comfort from its pace.

A hundred years is too long to wait for another leap forward. We should not resign ourselves to hoping that the 2060s will finally bring the next great breakthrough. The pattern has repeated twice. A country that has already postponed justice through slavery, segregation, and generations of excuse-making forfeits the moral right to postpone it again. Refuse to let the pattern repeat a third time. Demand change now — not after another century of delay.