In what seems like a bid to make the site formerly known Twitter* as unappealing to the Left as humanly possible, Elon Musk has made the decision to unban conspiracy nut Dominick McGee (AKA “Dom Lucre”) after he was kicked off the site earlier this week for sharing incredibly disturbing Child Sexual Abuse Materials (CSAM) that no normal human being should even know how to access.
“I’m told that this account was suspended for posting child exploitation pictures associated with the criminal conviction of an Australian man in the Philippines,” Musk tweeted initially. However, following pressure from McGee’s supporters, claiming that he was being banned for his criticism of Democrats — something one imagines could be accomplished without a picture of an infant being tortured — he reinstated the account and lied about who had seen the pictures.
“Only people on our CSE team have seen those pictures. For now, we will delete those posts and reinstate the account.”
And yet, screenshots show that over 3 million people saw the image.
McGee is a QAnon person who seems to believe he is “fighting” child sexual abuse by sharing pictures of children being sexually abused, though pretty much anyone with any expertise in this area would agree that he is not.
“Generally speaking, even if it is redacted, if it’s clear it’s a child, it’s still CSAM,” Gavin Portnoy, vice president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, told the Washington Post.
The site previously had a no-tolerance policy for accounts that share child sex abuse material, but Musk has clearly decided that there simply must be an exception to that rule for conspiracy-obsessed far-right zealots whose fan bases he relies upon for his daily ego boost sessions. This will likely be received well by neo-Nazis like Nick Fuentes who are obsessed with marrying 16-year-old girls.
McGee, who has a monetized Twitter account, denied sharing child porn to Twitter and claimed that the real reason his account was suspended was for criticizing Obama.
This is certainly an odd take, given that Musk is working very hard to turn the site into a right-wing hate site and making it as repulsive to the Left as humanly possible — by, for instance, doing things like unbanning someone who shared CSAM to the site just because they are a far-right wackjob.
Yoel Roth, the former head of trust and safety at Twitter who had to take his family and leave his home after “Dom Lucre” accused him of condoning pedophilia, took a moment to gloat a little over on Bluesky.
“I’m sorry,” Roth wrote. “Just have to post a big ol’ lol about the fact that this guy blew up my life by saying I condone pedophilia, and then he turns around and does this.”
While Dominick McGee is free to go back to making money off of his Twitter presence despite sharing sexually explicit pictures of a child being abused, one thing was too much for Musk to take — a video ad criticizing Republicans for interfering in people’s sex lives.
The video, which we previously covered here on Wonkette, featured a couple on the verge of having sex and talking about getting a condom, only to be stopped by an elderly Republican gentleman telling them they can’t use one.
Not only has the ad been banned on the social media site, but the Progress Action Fund, which produced the ad, was put on a search and suggestion ban, meaning that you could not even look it up if you wanted to. (It now has a Twitter-supplied warning over its profile suggesting that you back away from viewing its “sensitive content.”)
No actual reason has been given for any of this, and given that there is a ton of actual porn on Twitter already, it’s not as if they can say it was just too steamy.
Elon Musk has long considered himself a warrior for free speech, though he seems to have made it clear here that — much like the site’s policy against CSAM — it doesn’t apply to everyone.
*As Stephen previously noted, we will not be calling Twitter “X” here, because that’s ridiculous. We’ll just continue to call it Twitter until it, much like Raquel/Rachel from Vanderpump Rules, gives up and goes back to its original name on the advice of its psychologist.
O/T, but I've gotta tell someone. Yesterday, I posted that my favorite of our patients had passed away, the nicest old lady I've ever met. I say old, she was only 60, but still. I got invited to her memorial service. Through all of the painkillers she was on, and the actual pain of cancer, she remembered me and asked for me by name, and her husband agreed. I just...I don't even know what to say to that.
I have this belief that Musk is getting paid by oligarchs , dictators, and authoritarians worldwide to kill twitter which was once a place where information deleterious to those bad actors could be safely shared, and thus hamper pro-democratic movements worldwide.