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Freedom for me, not for thee. https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-elon-musk-ruthlessly-fired-anyone-who-disagreed-spacex-report-2021-8 https://www.businessin

Freedom for me, not for thee. https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-elon-musk-ruthlessly-fired-anyone-who-disagreed-spacex-report-2021-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-elon-musk-ruthlessly-f... https://www.businessinsider.com/free-speech-absolutist-elon-musk-censors-employees-critics-2022-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/free-speech-absolutist-elon-... https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/25/business/musk-labor-board.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/25/business/musk-labor-board... Edit: not all of these are about employees. He has attempted to get an anonymous stock analyst fired from their job due to a negative evaluation of Tesla stock.

bequanna 5y ago
Ah, all super balanced sources, but I'll bite. So your logic here is that because he fired subversive or insubordinate employees he will do the same on Twitter?
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  framing criticism as subversion or insubordination is pretty telling. this is the behaviour of a free speech absolutist? https://www.fastcompany.com/90208132/elon-musk-allegedly-silenced-an-online-critic-with-peter-thiels-playbook https://www.fastcompany.com/90208132/elon-musk-allegedly-sil... I don't doubt that if he thinks he can get away with it, he'll censor information on twitter that is harmful to the finely-crafted PR narratives he likes to make about himself and his companies. Like those battery fires and autopilot unforced/spontaneous crashes.
  - awb 5y ago
    > this is the behaviour of a free speech absolutist? Because it’s just a catchy phrase that sounds good on paper. What’s a “free speech absolutist” position on spam, NDAs, calls to violence, libel, national security, fraud, false advertising, copyright infringement, personal privacy, etc.? I don’t know of any country, platform or person that follows an “absolutist” philosophy on free speech within any reasonable definition of the word “absolute”. Everyone is a “free speech exceptionist”, it’s just varying degrees of exceptions.
    - OrvalWintermute 5y ago
      > Everyone is a “free speech exceptionist”, it’s just varying degrees of exceptions ++ Exceptions for me, but not for thee!
    - UncleMeat 5y ago
      Yep. Every discussion I've ever had with a "free speech absolutist" has gone like this. "What are your thoughts on false advertising laws?" "That's fine, because fraud is a crime and therefore not speech" People have bucketed "things I think should be legal" as "speech" and "things I think should be illegal" as "not speech" and then this makes it trivial to say that all speech should be legal because the definition is circular.
- nielsbot 5y ago
  What is a balanced source you'd cite?
  - IntelMiner 5y ago
    Given the undercurrent of their responses and initial remark. Breitbart or the like. Possibly with a remark of providing an 'equally biased on the other side' source
    - Larrikin 5y ago
      Often times the people who irrationally defend Musk and his companies, especially on this site, own stock in one or more of the various companies. Conservative or liberal criticism, real or imagined, doesn't matter since they just want to keep pushing the stock price up.
ncouture 5y ago
What matters the most is the results. In my opinion a decision like the following is totally reasonable providing you are looking for people that owns your results to be in charge: during a factory visit over issues with the Model X's window. When a worker on the assembly line proposed a solution, Musk lit into the worker's manager. "This is totally unacceptable that you had a person working in your factory that knows the solution and you don't even know that," Musk reportedly said before firing the head of the factory. I'm of the opinion that a manager's responsible to know issues raised by his subordinates.
- dtech 5y ago
  This kind of thing sounds smart, but in practice it's terrible to work with higher ups who randomly do this kind of micromanaging and attach immense consequences to it. Story I heard from a friend was of a CEO who asked a janitor if he used their store and if not why. He replied that he needed size Y of a product to efficiently store in his cupboard, size X was too small and Z too large. For months he hounded the department and forced negative performance reviews on them because there was no good way to provide Y with their current supplier. They ultimately switched to a different inferior supplier because of it (the brand the janitor normally brought) and lost several good employees in the process. They got a lot of negative feedback from customers from the switch and their revenue on the product went down.
- res0nat0r 5y ago
  This sounds completely insane, but totally on brand for Elon who needs to keep up his internet persona. If I'm in a meeting with some higher-ups above my boss and I have some suggestion to a process I think may help the company out and relay my thoughts, my boss should be fired because I can think for myself? Completely idiotic. (Note this is assuming it doesn't involve anything controversial, office politics etc, just a suggestion based on my observations that I think could help the company overall).
  - toss1 5y ago
    >>If I'm in a meeting with some higher-ups above my boss and I have some suggestion to a process I think may help the company out and relay my thoughts, my boss should be fired because I can think for myself? Completely idiotic. Tho I've got very mixed assessment of Elon Musk, he's right in this case. At the moment that you first think of the solution and mention it, your boss should not be fired. However, this was not that situation. But, from the above description alone, we know that there was a known problem, and that the employee had enough time to think about it and present it to Musk. One of two things happened. The manager had failed to put out a request like "we have problem X, please bring all ideas for solutions", and/or the employee had previously described the idea and been ignored up the chain of command. Either of those are cause for a decision of "I now fail to see why we should allow you in our plant, nevermind paying you to be here.". One of the most basic jobs as a manager is to identify problems, seek solutions and implement them. If the answer had been something like: "yes, he brought the solution to us yesterday, implementation will require P, D, and Q, and we expect to have it into production by next week", I'm sure Musk would have been fine with it.
belorn 5y ago
Freedom for me, not for thee, is the recurring theme in every discussion on censorship. Generally shared by both sides, and generally used as a description of the other side by both sides. The goal of liberty is freedom under common rules. Rules may exist but it need to apply and enforced equally. The trouble is that no one seems to want to have such rules when they themselves get effected, and so people want to carve out exceptions to common rules in order to return to Freedom for me, not for thee.
- chmod600 5y ago
  True, but we know some systems are more free and some less free. Let's understand how the parts of a system work to create freedom and try to replicate those aspects. Let's not just throw up our hands and say that freedom is never sincere and there's nothing we can do. For instance, the Constitution has been successful at maintaining many important rights, some of which are quite rare in the world.
  - belorn 5y ago
    Yes, common rules that get enforced equally for everyone works pretty well. It is the true and tested system that produce more free. Every time people suggest that social websites should operate on such rules, ie laws, people throw up our hands and say that laws don't work, or that there must be exceptions because the world is unfair and wrongs need to be addressed. Its a very difficult problem to solve since in general people really do not want to be in a system where rules are common and get enforced equally. That it happens to be the only thing that actually work is just part of the problem.
- prox 5y ago
  This is the best response sofar. Have seen some comments that only shows entrenchment while simultaneously trying to degrade “the other” Reconciliation should be the goal of any debate (at least in the political sphere)
specialist 5y ago
aka Freedom Speeches [tm]
causi 5y ago
Don't forget about when he demanded a law firm fire a junior lawyer he didn't like even when that lawyer had nothing to do with SpaceX.
- Phlarp 5y ago
  You mean the lawyer that had previously deposed him for the SEC? My pet theory is it had nothing to do with this particular individual and all about setting a precedent to other government line attorneys (play nicely now, or I'll ice you out of BigLaw later)
  - causi 5y ago
    Could be both. You will recall that time he received light criticism from a rescue diver and in return called him a pedophile and hired a private investigator to dig up dirt on him. Elon Musk is incredibly petty.
thirdwhrldPzz 5y ago
He also loves free speech except when employees discuss unions. He wants Twitters algorithms to be open, but his cars must stay closed. Requesting anything of him is anti-freedom then he projects at others how they could do better in the same contexts. He’s like a crazy TV Lenny salesman who has never actually invented anything net new. He’s playing the acquisitions of other people work game to prop up his preference to not work. Normal humans should not be given extreme leverage over other normal humans. Lie to me about “free markets” but as one of the 13% with and advanced degree, mine being in math, the average person has no ability to smell through his BS in detail, but they have a gut sense he’s just another used car salesman.
- emteycz 5y ago
  > He’s like a crazy TV Lenny salesman who has never actually invented anything net new. Lol, literally nobody invented anything new by this metric.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    When people say inventor, they think Nicola Tesla or the Wright Brothers. Elon musk is more analogous to Stebe Jobs, primarily a businessman with some engineering backgrund. Then there is the whole controversy of tesla being funded by two guys, him being an investor and forcing them out of the company.
    - olliej 5y ago
      I would say closer to Thomas Edison - at least Jobs didn't go out stealing other peoples work.
      - verve_rat 5y ago
        Didn't he steal the GUI from Xerox?
        astrange 5y ago
chmod600 5y ago
"Freedom for me, not for thee." Maybe this will remind liberals to be, well, liberal. I've seen too many "liberals" who had credibility before lose it all by using illiberal tactics. Now, see what happens when not-so-woke people start taking over the boardroom and using the same tactics. And then there's no more "but free expression is the heart of America" defense. It'll be "they are private companies and can do what they want on their platform... just like you said". And it's all so predictable.

bequanna 5y ago

Ah, all super balanced sources, but I'll bite. So your logic here is that because he fired subversive or insubordinate employees he will do the same on Twitter?

beaconstudios 5y ago
framing criticism as subversion or insubordination is pretty telling. this is the behaviour of a free speech absolutist? https://www.fastcompany.com/90208132/elon-musk-allegedly-silenced-an-online-critic-with-peter-thiels-playbook https://www.fastcompany.com/90208132/elon-musk-allegedly-sil... I don't doubt that if he thinks he can get away with it, he'll censor information on twitter that is harmful to the finely-crafted PR narratives he likes to make about himself and his companies. Like those battery fires and autopilot unforced/spontaneous crashes.
- awb 5y ago
  > this is the behaviour of a free speech absolutist? Because it’s just a catchy phrase that sounds good on paper. What’s a “free speech absolutist” position on spam, NDAs, calls to violence, libel, national security, fraud, false advertising, copyright infringement, personal privacy, etc.? I don’t know of any country, platform or person that follows an “absolutist” philosophy on free speech within any reasonable definition of the word “absolute”. Everyone is a “free speech exceptionist”, it’s just varying degrees of exceptions.
  - OrvalWintermute 5y ago
    > Everyone is a “free speech exceptionist”, it’s just varying degrees of exceptions ++ Exceptions for me, but not for thee!
  - UncleMeat 5y ago
    Yep. Every discussion I've ever had with a "free speech absolutist" has gone like this. "What are your thoughts on false advertising laws?" "That's fine, because fraud is a crime and therefore not speech" People have bucketed "things I think should be legal" as "speech" and "things I think should be illegal" as "not speech" and then this makes it trivial to say that all speech should be legal because the definition is circular.
nielsbot 5y ago
What is a balanced source you'd cite?
- IntelMiner 5y ago
  Given the undercurrent of their responses and initial remark. Breitbart or the like. Possibly with a remark of providing an 'equally biased on the other side' source
  - Larrikin 5y ago
    Often times the people who irrationally defend Musk and his companies, especially on this site, own stock in one or more of the various companies. Conservative or liberal criticism, real or imagined, doesn't matter since they just want to keep pushing the stock price up.

ncouture 5y ago

What matters the most is the results. In my opinion a decision like the following is totally reasonable providing you are looking for people that owns your results to be in charge: during a factory visit over issues with the Model X's window. When a worker on the assembly line proposed a solution, Musk lit into the worker's manager. "This is totally unacceptable that you had a person working in your factory that knows the solution and you don't even know that," Musk reportedly said before firing the head of the factory. I'm of the opinion that a manager's responsible to know issues raised by his subordinates.

dtech 5y ago
This kind of thing sounds smart, but in practice it's terrible to work with higher ups who randomly do this kind of micromanaging and attach immense consequences to it. Story I heard from a friend was of a CEO who asked a janitor if he used their store and if not why. He replied that he needed size Y of a product to efficiently store in his cupboard, size X was too small and Z too large. For months he hounded the department and forced negative performance reviews on them because there was no good way to provide Y with their current supplier. They ultimately switched to a different inferior supplier because of it (the brand the janitor normally brought) and lost several good employees in the process. They got a lot of negative feedback from customers from the switch and their revenue on the product went down.
res0nat0r 5y ago
This sounds completely insane, but totally on brand for Elon who needs to keep up his internet persona. If I'm in a meeting with some higher-ups above my boss and I have some suggestion to a process I think may help the company out and relay my thoughts, my boss should be fired because I can think for myself? Completely idiotic. (Note this is assuming it doesn't involve anything controversial, office politics etc, just a suggestion based on my observations that I think could help the company overall).
- toss1 5y ago
  >>If I'm in a meeting with some higher-ups above my boss and I have some suggestion to a process I think may help the company out and relay my thoughts, my boss should be fired because I can think for myself? Completely idiotic. Tho I've got very mixed assessment of Elon Musk, he's right in this case. At the moment that you first think of the solution and mention it, your boss should not be fired. However, this was not that situation. But, from the above description alone, we know that there was a known problem, and that the employee had enough time to think about it and present it to Musk. One of two things happened. The manager had failed to put out a request like "we have problem X, please bring all ideas for solutions", and/or the employee had previously described the idea and been ignored up the chain of command. Either of those are cause for a decision of "I now fail to see why we should allow you in our plant, nevermind paying you to be here.". One of the most basic jobs as a manager is to identify problems, seek solutions and implement them. If the answer had been something like: "yes, he brought the solution to us yesterday, implementation will require P, D, and Q, and we expect to have it into production by next week", I'm sure Musk would have been fine with it.

belorn 5y ago

Freedom for me, not for thee, is the recurring theme in every discussion on censorship. Generally shared by both sides, and generally used as a description of the other side by both sides. The goal of liberty is freedom under common rules. Rules may exist but it need to apply and enforced equally. The trouble is that no one seems to want to have such rules when they themselves get effected, and so people want to carve out exceptions to common rules in order to return to Freedom for me, not for thee.

chmod600 5y ago
True, but we know some systems are more free and some less free. Let's understand how the parts of a system work to create freedom and try to replicate those aspects. Let's not just throw up our hands and say that freedom is never sincere and there's nothing we can do. For instance, the Constitution has been successful at maintaining many important rights, some of which are quite rare in the world.
- belorn 5y ago
  Yes, common rules that get enforced equally for everyone works pretty well. It is the true and tested system that produce more free. Every time people suggest that social websites should operate on such rules, ie laws, people throw up our hands and say that laws don't work, or that there must be exceptions because the world is unfair and wrongs need to be addressed. Its a very difficult problem to solve since in general people really do not want to be in a system where rules are common and get enforced equally. That it happens to be the only thing that actually work is just part of the problem.
prox 5y ago
This is the best response sofar. Have seen some comments that only shows entrenchment while simultaneously trying to degrade “the other” Reconciliation should be the goal of any debate (at least in the political sphere)

specialist 5y ago

aka Freedom Speeches [tm]

causi 5y ago

Don't forget about when he demanded a law firm fire a junior lawyer he didn't like even when that lawyer had nothing to do with SpaceX.

Phlarp 5y ago
You mean the lawyer that had previously deposed him for the SEC? My pet theory is it had nothing to do with this particular individual and all about setting a precedent to other government line attorneys (play nicely now, or I'll ice you out of BigLaw later)
- causi 5y ago
  Could be both. You will recall that time he received light criticism from a rescue diver and in return called him a pedophile and hired a private investigator to dig up dirt on him. Elon Musk is incredibly petty.

thirdwhrldPzz 5y ago

He also loves free speech except when employees discuss unions. He wants Twitters algorithms to be open, but his cars must stay closed. Requesting anything of him is anti-freedom then he projects at others how they could do better in the same contexts. He’s like a crazy TV Lenny salesman who has never actually invented anything net new. He’s playing the acquisitions of other people work game to prop up his preference to not work. Normal humans should not be given extreme leverage over other normal humans. Lie to me about “free markets” but as one of the 13% with and advanced degree, mine being in math, the average person has no ability to smell through his BS in detail, but they have a gut sense he’s just another used car salesman.

emteycz 5y ago
> He’s like a crazy TV Lenny salesman who has never actually invented anything net new. Lol, literally nobody invented anything new by this metric.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  When people say inventor, they think Nicola Tesla or the Wright Brothers. Elon musk is more analogous to Stebe Jobs, primarily a businessman with some engineering backgrund. Then there is the whole controversy of tesla being funded by two guys, him being an investor and forcing them out of the company.
  - olliej 5y ago
    I would say closer to Thomas Edison - at least Jobs didn't go out stealing other peoples work.
    - verve_rat 5y ago
      Didn't he steal the GUI from Xerox?
      - astrange 5y ago

chmod600 5y ago

"Freedom for me, not for thee." Maybe this will remind liberals to be, well, liberal. I've seen too many "liberals" who had credibility before lose it all by using illiberal tactics. Now, see what happens when not-so-woke people start taking over the boardroom and using the same tactics. And then there's no more "but free expression is the heart of America" defense. It'll be "they are private companies and can do what they want on their platform... just like you said". And it's all so predictable.