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I don't know why anyone would trust Musk to champion free speech. He has no background with any org that works on protecting free speech. He hasn't done work w

I don't know why anyone would trust Musk to champion free speech. He has no background with any org that works on protecting free speech. He hasn't done work with the ACLU. Billionaires buying media companies has been great for broadcasting the billionaire perspective, but mixed at best on free speech. A lot of people currently decrying moderation activities on US social media sites as being against free speech are the same people supporting bills, mostly in state governments, that limit free speech.

MetaWhirledPeas 5y ago
> He has no background with any org that works on protecting free speech. I would argue Starlink occupies that role.
- sofixa 5y ago
  That's a very wild claim. How did you make that jump and why Starlink and not every other ISP?
  - kietay 5y ago
    I’m assuming because they offer open ISP services inside jurisdictions where the government censors the Internet.
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      Not in its current iteration, which relies on ground stations in or near those countries. You're not gonna get Starlink service in China or Iran, even if you can get a dish.
      - NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
        He recently sent a truckload of dishes to Ukraine...
- dahart 5y ago
  > I would argue Starlink occupies that role. Please do. What is Starlink doing to protect free speech?
  - MetaWhirledPeas 5y ago
    Sending dishes to Ukraine?
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      Ukraine is currently under martial law and has significant restrictions on speech; it's (justifiably) illegal, for example, to report on troop positions. Starlink isn't changing that; it just provides internet access, filtered through a local ground station subject to any local laws and filtering that are applicable. China has internet access, but not free speech. Same for Russia.
      - 4khilles 5y ago
        The ground stations aren't in Ukraine. So, Ukraine doesn't have a means of enforcing whatever restrictions on speech come with martial law.
areyousure 5y ago
> He hasn't done work with the ACLU. https://twitter.com/aclu/status/1009186716593393664 https://twitter.com/aclu/status/1009186716593393664 Contrast: https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-is-our-new-aclu-11589322149 https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-is-our-new-aclu-11589...
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  The WSJ, in that article, calls California's pandemic restrictions "The most sweeping restrictions on liberty ever seen", which is just an absurd assertion. Even if you scope it to the US or even California, where Japanese-American civilians, including children, were once relocated into internment camps. This is why people tend to roll their eyes at the WSJ opinion section. (The journalism side, to be clear, is top-notch.)
  - marcusverus 5y ago
    > The WSJ, in that article, calls California's pandemic restrictions "The most sweeping restrictions on liberty ever seen", which is just an absurd assertion. Even if you scope it to the US or even California, where Japanese-American civilians, including children, were once relocated into internment camps. Obviously the internment of Japanese folks during WWII was far more intrusive than the COVID restrictions. But that doesn't contradict the statement--they didn't say "the harshest restrictions" or "the most egregious restrictions", they said "the most sweeping restrictions". The word sweeping is an adjective meaning 'wide in range or effect'. It is simply a matter of fact that the COVID restrictions, which affected ~40 million people and resulted in the closure of 40,000 businesses, were a more sweeping restriction on liberty than the internment of 120,000 Japanese during the War.
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      If you wanna be that charitable towards the claim, you've still got to contend with the draft, wartime rationing, censorship during WWII, the Sedition Acts, and many others.
samstave 5y ago
Interested in hearing your take on Bill Gates' qualifications in various segments...
- rchaud 5y ago
  Bill Gates spends his ill-gotten monopoly profits on funding research and wide scale critical public health and education programs across the world and including America. That's on an order of magnitude difference than the world's richest meme-sharer purchasing the software company that provides the meme-sharing infrastructure.
- mcdonje 5y ago
  Mixed reviews. The Gates Foundation pushed an initiative to grade teachers based on student test scores, essentially. That only made problems in the education sector worse. Ask any teacher and they'll tell you what the problems are, and untalented teachers is pretty far down the list.
  - themitigating 5y ago
    That wasn't their intention, the Gates Foundation has done massive amounts of good work, just because there are unintended consequences doesn't change the intent
    - mcdonje 5y ago
      They swooped into a field they were not experts in and caused problems. Intentions are beside the point. They thought they were the smartest ones in the room but they didn't understand the underlying issues.
nradov 5y ago
The ACLU no longer works on protecting some aspects of free speech. https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/558433-the-aclus-civil-war-over-old-values-free-speech-only-for-the-woke/ https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/558433-the-aclus-ci... Which state government bills are you referring to?
- ohwellhere 5y ago
  I live in Charlottesville and the ACLU caught a lot of flak for supporting the KKK in a rally earlier that summer before the August 12 Unite the Right rally. When they backed down was the first time I started to pay attention that maybe some of the criticism against the left's assault on speech was legitimate. (For the record, I am very far left, but from a time when true free speech was a sacred left value.)
  - LanceH 5y ago
    The left has numbers now and many are changing their tune to embrace an authoritarian stance on the "proper" issues.
- mcdonje 5y ago
  https://www.chalkbeat.org/22525983/map-critical-race-theory-legislation-teaching-racism https://www.chalkbeat.org/22525983/map-critical-race-theory-...
- dahart 5y ago
  That article is a discombobulated conservative rant that accuses all corporate America of being leftist (please), and contains zero verifiable details that support the title, as far as I can tell. What, exactly, is it saying the ACLU did? What, exactly, is it referring to? The only sentence that even attempts to answer that question is: “an ACLU official said it was perfectly legitimate for his lawyers to decline to defend hate speech.” That statement is a fact. Hate speech is explicitly exempt from U.S. Free Speech protections. If you’re going to defend Free Speech, please read a little about the limitations on Free Speech, and some of the history that brought about those limitations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#Limitations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#Limitations Limits on Free Speech is as much a conservative value as a liberal value. Framing this as a leftist takeover of “woke” values is a thinly veiled misinformation FUD campaign designed to confuse you about what U.S. values are and convince you liberals are attacking, while hypocritically doing all the attacking. Don’t let this junk work on you, stay curious and seek verifiable facts, not tribal opinion.
legulere 5y ago
He tried to silence a teenager that was writing about him on twitter.
- missedthecue 5y ago
  This is the weirdest criticism to me. That teenager had a very popular Twitter account shared in a couple major publications, whose sole purpose is to show the world Elon's live location. This is especially odd coming from the privacy maximalists at HN. How long would it take you to report a Twitter account that Tweeted out your live location daily? Be honest. And then you use the word 'silence' which is far more ominous than saying that he offered the kid $5000 for what was about 15 minutes of python.
farmerstan 5y ago
ACLU of 2021 no longer supports free speech. The ACLU of the 80s and 90s were a bastion of free speech.
- themitigating 5y ago
  Evidence?
  - farmerstan 5y ago
    The former head of the ACLU from the 80s who famously defended the Nazis for free speech even though he is Jewish has been rallying against the current ACLU for precisely this reason.
  - nickrubin 5y ago
    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06/us/aclu-free-speech.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06/us/aclu-free-speech.html

MetaWhirledPeas 5y ago

> He has no background with any org that works on protecting free speech. I would argue Starlink occupies that role.

sofixa 5y ago
That's a very wild claim. How did you make that jump and why Starlink and not every other ISP?
- kietay 5y ago
  I’m assuming because they offer open ISP services inside jurisdictions where the government censors the Internet.
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    Not in its current iteration, which relies on ground stations in or near those countries. You're not gonna get Starlink service in China or Iran, even if you can get a dish.
    - NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
      He recently sent a truckload of dishes to Ukraine...
dahart 5y ago
> I would argue Starlink occupies that role. Please do. What is Starlink doing to protect free speech?
- MetaWhirledPeas 5y ago
  Sending dishes to Ukraine?
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    Ukraine is currently under martial law and has significant restrictions on speech; it's (justifiably) illegal, for example, to report on troop positions. Starlink isn't changing that; it just provides internet access, filtered through a local ground station subject to any local laws and filtering that are applicable. China has internet access, but not free speech. Same for Russia.
    - 4khilles 5y ago
      The ground stations aren't in Ukraine. So, Ukraine doesn't have a means of enforcing whatever restrictions on speech come with martial law.

areyousure 5y ago

> He hasn't done work with the ACLU. https://twitter.com/aclu/status/1009186716593393664 https://twitter.com/aclu/status/1009186716593393664 Contrast: https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-is-our-new-aclu-11589322149 https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-is-our-new-aclu-11589...

ceejayoz 5y ago
The WSJ, in that article, calls California's pandemic restrictions "The most sweeping restrictions on liberty ever seen", which is just an absurd assertion. Even if you scope it to the US or even California, where Japanese-American civilians, including children, were once relocated into internment camps. This is why people tend to roll their eyes at the WSJ opinion section. (The journalism side, to be clear, is top-notch.)
- marcusverus 5y ago
  > The WSJ, in that article, calls California's pandemic restrictions "The most sweeping restrictions on liberty ever seen", which is just an absurd assertion. Even if you scope it to the US or even California, where Japanese-American civilians, including children, were once relocated into internment camps. Obviously the internment of Japanese folks during WWII was far more intrusive than the COVID restrictions. But that doesn't contradict the statement--they didn't say "the harshest restrictions" or "the most egregious restrictions", they said "the most sweeping restrictions". The word sweeping is an adjective meaning 'wide in range or effect'. It is simply a matter of fact that the COVID restrictions, which affected ~40 million people and resulted in the closure of 40,000 businesses, were a more sweeping restriction on liberty than the internment of 120,000 Japanese during the War.
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    If you wanna be that charitable towards the claim, you've still got to contend with the draft, wartime rationing, censorship during WWII, the Sedition Acts, and many others.

samstave 5y ago

Interested in hearing your take on Bill Gates' qualifications in various segments...

rchaud 5y ago
Bill Gates spends his ill-gotten monopoly profits on funding research and wide scale critical public health and education programs across the world and including America. That's on an order of magnitude difference than the world's richest meme-sharer purchasing the software company that provides the meme-sharing infrastructure.
mcdonje 5y ago
Mixed reviews. The Gates Foundation pushed an initiative to grade teachers based on student test scores, essentially. That only made problems in the education sector worse. Ask any teacher and they'll tell you what the problems are, and untalented teachers is pretty far down the list.
- themitigating 5y ago
  That wasn't their intention, the Gates Foundation has done massive amounts of good work, just because there are unintended consequences doesn't change the intent
  - mcdonje 5y ago
    They swooped into a field they were not experts in and caused problems. Intentions are beside the point. They thought they were the smartest ones in the room but they didn't understand the underlying issues.

nradov 5y ago

The ACLU no longer works on protecting some aspects of free speech. https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/558433-the-aclus-civil-war-over-old-values-free-speech-only-for-the-woke/ https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/558433-the-aclus-ci... Which state government bills are you referring to?

ohwellhere 5y ago
I live in Charlottesville and the ACLU caught a lot of flak for supporting the KKK in a rally earlier that summer before the August 12 Unite the Right rally. When they backed down was the first time I started to pay attention that maybe some of the criticism against the left's assault on speech was legitimate. (For the record, I am very far left, but from a time when true free speech was a sacred left value.)
- LanceH 5y ago
  The left has numbers now and many are changing their tune to embrace an authoritarian stance on the "proper" issues.
mcdonje 5y ago
https://www.chalkbeat.org/22525983/map-critical-race-theory-legislation-teaching-racism https://www.chalkbeat.org/22525983/map-critical-race-theory-...
dahart 5y ago
That article is a discombobulated conservative rant that accuses all corporate America of being leftist (please), and contains zero verifiable details that support the title, as far as I can tell. What, exactly, is it saying the ACLU did? What, exactly, is it referring to? The only sentence that even attempts to answer that question is: “an ACLU official said it was perfectly legitimate for his lawyers to decline to defend hate speech.” That statement is a fact. Hate speech is explicitly exempt from U.S. Free Speech protections. If you’re going to defend Free Speech, please read a little about the limitations on Free Speech, and some of the history that brought about those limitations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#Limitations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#Limitations Limits on Free Speech is as much a conservative value as a liberal value. Framing this as a leftist takeover of “woke” values is a thinly veiled misinformation FUD campaign designed to confuse you about what U.S. values are and convince you liberals are attacking, while hypocritically doing all the attacking. Don’t let this junk work on you, stay curious and seek verifiable facts, not tribal opinion.

legulere 5y ago

He tried to silence a teenager that was writing about him on twitter.

missedthecue 5y ago
This is the weirdest criticism to me. That teenager had a very popular Twitter account shared in a couple major publications, whose sole purpose is to show the world Elon's live location. This is especially odd coming from the privacy maximalists at HN. How long would it take you to report a Twitter account that Tweeted out your live location daily? Be honest. And then you use the word 'silence' which is far more ominous than saying that he offered the kid $5000 for what was about 15 minutes of python.

farmerstan 5y ago

ACLU of 2021 no longer supports free speech. The ACLU of the 80s and 90s were a bastion of free speech.

themitigating 5y ago
Evidence?
- farmerstan 5y ago
  The former head of the ACLU from the 80s who famously defended the Nazis for free speech even though he is Jewish has been rallying against the current ACLU for precisely this reason.
- nickrubin 5y ago
  https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06/us/aclu-free-speech.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06/us/aclu-free-speech.html