People who manipulate media organizations usually aren't so brazen about it.
...then how do you know that Roth used to unilaterally control Twitter similar to how Musk does now?
My problem is that people who are upset about the "hypocrite" meme aren't actually believers in free speech. They don't care about the core issue one way or another. In other words, why does it matter that Elon is a hypocrite if the outcome is the same either way? Why bother complaining about it at all and take up space on this forum?
As far as this discussion on this forum goes, I don't have a problem with regarding the subject as settled and moving on. I just don't think that it's irrelevant or unimportant that Musk's supposed big justification for what he's doing is a lie. I think he'd lose a lot of support if he admitted that his primary motivation is personal rather than ideological, and that he just wants to be able to remove posts and ban people that he doesn't like.
If Musk was really the popularity desperate guy you make him out to be, he'd be a generic liberal (like all the other celebrities seeking nothing but popularity). Any person with access to google would know that demographically, the West is mostly left-leaning. Why pander to the right if he's so desperate to be popular? Your line of thinking doesn't make much sense.
Musk panders to the right for the same reason that Donald Trump, Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, James O'Keefe, Jordan Peterson, Mike Cernovich, Tim Pool, Steven Crowder, Candace Owens, Charlie Kirk, Michael Knowles, and pretty much any other high-profile political grifter panders to the right - there's no market for transparent grifting posing as political commentary on the left. If Shapiro had tried to cater to the left, he would have been quickly exposed as an idiot and broadly rejected - only an audience of conservatives would see him as an intellectual and idolize him. If Cernovich had tried to cater to the left, he would have been quickly exposed as a boorish creep and broadly rejected - only an audience of conservatives would see him as a manly stud and idolize him. Likewise, Musk had no hope of ever being a progressive hero, as his long record of deliberately flouting corporate regulations and mistreating his workers would have told against him all too clearly. Only conservatives would idolize an exploitative billionaire like him. I also suspect that only conservatives would be gullible enough to buy into Musk's carefully cultivated myth of how he's a modern-day Thomas Edison, a brilliant scientist-inventor who's personally paving the way to a golden future through his keen scientific mind and many wonderful inventions, rather than the more mundane reality of Musk not really being a scientist or an inventor at all, but a businessman who made a fortune (with the advantage of starting out with a sizable inheritance) through making the right corporate investments and acquisitions. The only thing Musk has in common with Edison is his habit of taking credit for other people's work.