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Free speech is the guarantee the government won't censor you. Just because Twitter shares are tradable on public markets doesn't mean they're a public utility.
by ascendantlogic 5y ago
Free speech is the guarantee the government won't censor you. Just because Twitter shares are tradable on public markets doesn't mean they're a public utility.
- fleddr 5y agoStop beating this dead horse. Musk made his comments in context of social networks. In a digitizing world where all conversation is centered into a handful of platforms, those platforms become the free speech carrier, no matter who owns them. Yes, you're technically correct, but it's irrelevant from a pragmatic point of view. A legal definition of free speech is worthless if said free speech cannot be expressed in the places where most speech happens.
- ascendantlogic 5y agoThen the laws need to change. I love how "how the constitution reads" is a dead horse.
- tptacek 5y agoThis is a thing many people believe, but it's not an axiom. The balancing of interests an "intervention" to resolve this would require come at their own cost of free association, and the lines you'd have to draw to make new restrictions on e.g. moderation workable are treacherous. You can argue that major platforms like Twitter are essential to free speech, maybe even persuasively. What you can't do is make your case as if it were a self-evident fact. It is not.
- HereIGoAgain 5y agoNot if he literally owns it.. A public company can't have a right to association divorced from it's owners. (and arguably at all)
- tptacek 5y agoIf he owns Twitter he can do whatever he wants with it. It'd be his.
- HereIGoAgain 5y agoI kind of said that weird but that's basically what I meant.
- eric_cc 5y agoNo fucking shit. Twitter needs leadership that won't censor.