https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/93b4ny/ivermectin-trends-on-twitter-because-its-fans-think-elon-musk-is-already-in-charge

Following the news on Monday that enthusiastic shitposter Elon Musk has reached an agreement to buy Twitter, several pressing questions have emerged around Musk’s particular notions of free speech, and how those ideas will influence the moderation of a platform used by billions of people. In a bracing example of the excruciatingly dumb shit that’s about to happen here, fans of ivermectin—an ineffective faux COVID treatment—have been flooding the platform with testimonials about how great it is, with influential users declaring they were “testing” the platform’s new commitment to free speech. (Elon Musk does not yet own Twitter or currently have anything to do with its content moderation.) Between that, the general conversation about the drug, and the general conversation about how the platform bans the general conversation about the drug (it does not), the latter two of which have become a near-permanent feature on Twitter, the word “ivermectin” quickly began trending among U.S. users of the platform.

Musk has long made it clear that he thinks Twitter is no longer a bastion of free speech; In his statement announcing his plan to buy the company, Musk wrote, "Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.” In an interview at a TED conference in early April, he offered a vague sense of how he thinks Twitter should approach content moderation, which is to say, it shouldn’t: “"If in doubt, let the speech exist," he said, according to CNN. “If it's a gray area, I would say, let the tweet exist. But obviously in the case where there's perhaps a lot of controversy, you would not necessarily want to promote that tweet."