When tech billionaire Elon Musk first announced in April his plans to purchase Twitter and restore the social media platform as a bastion of free speech, numerous left-wing celebrities responded by announcing their own plans to leave the platform behind.
Musk’s bid to acquire Twitter was finalized this week amid a renewed chorus of vows from leftist celebrities to abandon the site, according to StreamingRant.
However, despite all of the outcry and virtue signaling, it looks like very few, if any, of those left-leaning celebrities who promised to leave Twitter if Musk took over have actually followed through on that pledge.
Celebrities who vowed to leave, invariably end up staying
The U.K. Independent reported on Friday on several celebrities who had previously vowed to leave Twitter but, as of publication, still had active accounts on the platform now owned by Musk.
That would include Jameela Jamil, star of Disney’s “She-Hulk,” who did initially deactivate her account in April but later reactivated over the summer and has continued to make posts.
Actress Mia Farrow had threatened to leave Twitter in April as well, due to her belief that Musk would make the platform “even more toxic,” but later deleted that tweet and instead appears to have since urged Musk to “Keep Twitter worthy of your previous achievements and of lawful people everywhere.”
There were also plenty of “celebrity” leftist activists, such as Shaun King and Amy Siskind, who had announced their intentions to delete their accounts and migrate to other social media platforms, like Facebook. However, both of them continue to remain active on Twitter with recent posts that are highly critical or mocking of Musk.
Even some athletes got in on the charade, such as former pro wrestler Mick Foley, according to Newsweek, who had suggested in April that he would leave if Musk took over but, as of Thursday night, was still tweeting out podcast clips and urging his followers to vote for Democrats in the midterm elections.
Similar to false celebrities’ vows to flee if Trump was elected
This is all quite reminiscent of 2016 when dozens of left-leaning celebrities had vowed to flee the country if then-candidate Donald Trump were to win that year’s election against failed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
The Hollywood Reporter did a follow-up of those celebrity pledges and found that rather than flee to Canada or Europe, as promised, the overwhelming majority of those celebrities had reneged on their vows and remained right where they were in the United States of America.
As for the months-long leftist freakout over how Musk’s takeover of Twitter would instantaneously transform the platform for the worst, some changes are likely coming, but they apparently will not be made immediately.
In a pair of tweets posted Friday, Musk wrote, “Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints. No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes.” He later clarified, “To be super clear, we have not yet made any changes to Twitter’s content moderation policies