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So much for Elons "Free Speech"! This may come as a shock to him: Free Speech means to allow people to say something that he disagree with. Something that may
by jgaa 2y ago
So much for Elons "Free Speech"!
This may come as a shock to him: Free Speech means to allow people to say something that he disagree with. Something that may hurt his interests or even his ego. Free speech is not to allow people to say things he agree with or don't care about.
- mordae 2y agoThere never was any demand for free speech from him. He just wanted to advance his fascist agenda and used whatever means he had at his disposal.
- scott_w 2y agoWhile you’re correct as to his intentions, it’s still important to point out his hypocrisy as he called himself “a free speech absolutist,” and claimed to want Twitter to be part of that vision. He explicitly called left wing and right wing views as things he wants. Yes, we know it was all lies but not putting out the evidence allows people like Musk and his acolytes to make it the new truth without a fight.
- sirsinsalot 2y agoIt's pretty crazy. If you say something that offends him (like perhaps the financial abandonment of his kids) then you're banned. Free speech eh.
- matwood 2y agoWe really are living in a world where we were always at war with Eurasia. Musk shouted loudly to his followers his views on free speech and why he wanted to buy Twitter. And now, it’s like it never happened. This isn’t like a bias news outlet leaving out certain facts, this is Musk himself saying these things and people going along with it. It’s bonkers to me.
- jmcgough 2y agoI'm not sure you understand free speech. Free speech means he can make public threats to people without repercussions, doxx people when he feels like it, lie, and spread misinformation for personal gain. It means unbanning rule breakers, doxxers and harassers, as long as they're right-wing. Free speech does not extend to anyone who he personally disagrees with or dislikes, who will instead be banned from the platform.
- llamaimperative 2y agoLegal (first amendment) free speech certainly allows him to ban whoever he wants. However, this is the exact behavior from prior owners that he counter-positioned himself against, allegedly pursuing a broader “free speech absolutism.” That philosophy certainly would not permit arbitrary bans of people he doesn’t like. These mental gymnastics are remarkable to see.
- scott_w 2y agoI think we’re all in agreement and the person you’re replying to is being sarcastic ;-)
- aredox 2y agoRemember how he tried to get out of the twitter deal by claining there were too many bots? How is the bot situation on twitter now?
- jzb 2y agoI don’t think he ever wanted out of the deal. It was a way to keep the acquisition from being scrutinized too much.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- scarab92 2y ago[flagged]
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> Musk is dramatically more pro-speech than any other social media platform owner X is blocking private messages on the basis of their content. Every competitor with E2E as even an option clears this bar handily.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- scarab92 2y ago[flagged]
- zonkerdonker 2y agoOn the assumption you are acting in good faith, that is a very poor analogy. I think a more apt one would be: Imagine asking for a shit-free meal, and you're served a meal with just a little bit of shit in it.
- scarab92 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- zonkerdonker 2y agoOk, lets get some things straight. Musk has /claimed/ (repeatedly) that he is a free speech absolutist, and by extension that twitter is as well. This is false: https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-05-24/under-elon-musk-twitter-has-approved-83-of-censorship-requests-by-authoritarian-governments.html https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-05-24/under-el... I'm not clear on how you're defining edge cases here, and regardless, it doesnt matter. "Sorry officer, those murders back there were just a few edge cases! I've publicly pledged to a murder free life!" I see very few in this thread pretending anything
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- docdeek 2y ago[flagged]
- MattGaiser 2y agoNobody has an issue with this stance. It is that before he was the owner and as part of his argument for becoming owner, Elon had a different stance.
- onli 2y agoMany have an issue with that stance, including me. The public townsquare has rules about permitted speech, same is true for public plattforms that fulfill that role in the digital realm. Utilities are to be regulated etc. These types of censorship ought to be illegal, and e.g. in the EU this whole thinking of that the owner decides is already not the legal reality anymore.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> If I own a platform I’m not under any obligation to allow you to say whatever you like on that platform This is complicated massively by Elon's role at DOGE. Twitter has the right to block whomever they want (and always did). But given "multiple federal workers...said they’ve moved sensitive conversations from text messages and Facebook Messenger to the encrypted messaging app Signal" [1], it's unclear whether this is a private or public action. (Folks in this thread are complaining about Musk's hypocrisy in criticizing pre-Muskian Twitter for blocking accounts and content when he's doing the same thing. But again, that is eclipsed in importance by the corruption and abuse of power questions.) [1] https://www.theverge.com/news/610951/federal-workers-privacy-surveillance-signal-facebook-messenger https://www.theverge.com/news/610951/federal-workers-privacy...
- ben_w 2y agoMm. On balance, I think you are correct. But: precisely because DOGE is a QUANGO* that's much harder to demonstrate, whereas the hypocrisy is very on-the-nose. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quango https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quango
- rabite 2y ago[dead]
- matwood 2y ago“Free speech” disappeared almost immediately after the Twitter purchase. Along with all of Musks supporters changing from “we need free speech”, to “Musk owns the platform, he can do what he wants.” Pre-Musk Twitter was more about free speech, except it was trying to fight bots, hate speech and disinformation.
- abernard1 2y ago[flagged]
- BSDobelix 2y ago[flagged]
- beowulfey 2y agoI don't understand how your comment is relevant. It feels like word salad and does not appear to logically follow the PC. What is "truth to power"? Did those ex-intelligence officers survive the Musk purge? How does this all relate to the events of today?
- abernard1 2y agoThe USAID revelation revealed how they were funded. Along with thousands of other news organizations domestically and globally.
- beowulfey 2y agoYou're still not making sense. Who is "they" here, USAID? What does your second sentence even mean? How "news organizations [are funded]"? I'm seriously unclear what you are trying to say.
- genewitch 2y agoUSAID had thousands of premium subscriptions to newspapers and magazines. One such was for 8000 monthly subscriptions. I don't remember the publication with 8000 but the NYT also got money from USAID. Not sure if that's what we're talking about here. For the record I am against that practice.
- r0ckarong 2y agoHe belongs to these people that misunderstood freedom of opinion to mean that nobody gets to criticize their opinion.
- userbinator 2y ago[flagged]
- kelnos 2y agoExcept that Musk claims to be a "free speech absolutist", and part of the noise he made around buying Twitter was to stop censorship. Not that it's news that he's a hypocrite.
- alwayseasy 2y agoWhen has Signal called for a violent overthrow of the US government?
- aredox 2y agoGood of you to admit that Musk is as bad as what you hated in the past. I would even argue he's worse.
- masklinn 2y agoNo see all speech is free but some speech is more free than others. /s
- andrepd 2y agoIt certainly does not come as a shock to him. He knows what he is doing. The funny thing is if he was Russian he would be called an "oligarch" in every news piece. Since he's American he's an entrepreneur :)
- lyu07282 2y agoAlso how liberals were celebrating Elons "genius" just a decade ago will never not be funny to me, they also don't seem to mind Gates at all. I don't think they have much of a problem with oligarchy, they just want a liberal oligarchy instead.
- calmworm 2y agoMaybe news outlets were doing this but “liberals” at large were not.
- soundwave106 2y agoYou may want to look up under whose presidency it was when the United States Justice Department sued Microsoft in 1998. :) Musk was far, far less political (at least regarding his public persona) even 10 years ago; his persona was more heavily futurism oriented. Electric cars to help mitigate climate change, colonizing Mars, that kind of stuff. It wasn't really a "liberal" or "conservative" thing then. Would've been nice if he stuck on this path IMHO.
- lyu07282 2y agoBut this is exactly my point and you don't even realize it, you think a billionaire helping mitigate climate change or colonizing Mars is a good thing and not political. You don't realize that what you described is exactly what I mean by "liberal oligarchy". You don't mind if a billionaire is "helping" humanity. What I'm saying is that a billionaire doing anything grand like that AT ALL, IS oligarchy, it is not the billionaires who should mitigate climate change or do space exploration, it is all of us, collectively, through public funding, steered by a representative democracy, that should do these things, not singular private individual billionaires like Musk or Gates.
- martin-t 2y agoNot a surprise to him, he doesn't care. It's a mistake to treat people with mental disorders as having an internally consistent view of the world. Or as actually believing what they say. They are paperclip optimizers, this one optimizing for worship and power. In other words he has the antagonistic and communal subtypes: https://www.verywellhealth.com/narcissistic-personality-disorder-types-5213256 https://www.verywellhealth.com/narcissistic-personality-diso...
- murg27 2y ago[flagged]
- breakitmakeit 2y ago[dead]
- alt227 2y ago[flagged]
- immibis 2y agoYou can't criticize Elon on X...
- alt227 2y agoElon literally said: "Criticizing me all day long is totally fine" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2022_Twitter_suspensions#Explanation_from_Twitter_and_Musk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2022_Twitter_suspensi...
- aredox 2y agoAnother lie in the long list of lies from his mouth.
- alt227 2y agoHave you been on Twitter recently? 50% of it loves Musk, the other 50% openly hate him and abuse him. If what people on here are saying was true, those accounts publicly insulting him would be blocked by now.
- aredox 2y agoExcept that... They are? Of course not all of them, but those with enough reach or power to truly harm his reputation - such as journalists investigating him. He's not disappearing "Mark0394893838444" for saying "Musk is a dummy lol" but what does that proves? Meanwhile Musk has already banned the accounts of journalists for the crime of being too critical of him (on top of frivolous lawsuits clearly aimed at draining their money). The proof is not "how many people he hasn't banned" but "how many he has".
- 2y ago
- bearjaws 2y agoGo make a brand new Twitter account and check how "free" speech is. Immediately you get one very specific "sect" of free speech.
- guywithahat 2y agoWhat makes you say that? I've started using X recently and I would argue it's pretty free, you see a lot more range of opinions than on a site like reddit. Aggressively pro-trans posts come across my feed all the time, including some right-wing content