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He's already said that he'd follow all local laws so it would be interesting to see if he can find the elusive path of maintaining free speech, following the la
by altacc 4y ago
He's already said that he'd follow all local laws so it would be interesting to see if he can find the elusive path of maintaining free speech, following the law and not having Twitter being a toxic cesspool used mainly to shout down those not our your "side".
Personally my reservations are because I think running a social media site is a lot about understanding people and defining a healthy culture for your elusive market place of ideas. Musk has admitted he doesn't understand people, is a self-confessed troll & edgelord and and Tesla's culture seems less than ideal. So lacks any of the qualifications I see as being needed to run something like Twitter. Maybe there's some other Musk magic that will do what so many others have failed to do.
- hyperpallium2 4y agoIt will be an interesting foreshadowing of how he will govern the Mars colony.
- hef19898 4y ago>> He's already said that he'd follow all local laws Is Twitter available in on of the following countries? China, Saudi-Arabia, Russia, Turkey? Since we know the answer I'm looking forward to see how helping those local governments go after "dissidents" will be aligned with Musk's high ideals of free speech.
- hickimsedenolan 4y agoIt is available in Turkey.
- hef19898 4y agoExactly! And in Turkey people get charged with supporting terrorism by tweeting negative stuff about Erdogan. On the surface of it, Musk should be against that, free speech and all that. Supporting local law would mean supporting authorities in finding those users. One way out would be to just retreat from, in this example, Turkey. But since this whole affaire started with "ElonsJet" refusing to shut down, and Musks reaction was a teenagers "Then I'll buy this company and fire you", I'm inclined to believe free speech is going to be ok as long Musk is criticized.
- recuter 4y ago> Exactly! And in Turkey people get charged with supporting terrorism by tweeting negative stuff about Erdogan. Sadly, not just in Turkey but increasingly in what you'd consider developed "western" countries. This is concerning. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2021/14/introduction/enacted https://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2021/14/introduction/enac... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country Certainly he could retreat from places like Turkey and China. Alas, increasingly there is nowhere left to run. You can be inclined to believe what you want, we can just wait and see what happens no?
- kubb 4y ago> Sadly, not just in Turkey but increasingly in what you'd consider developed "western" countries. This is concerning. Bullsh*t alert! Name one western country that charges people for terrorism for criticizing Erdogan.
- kubb 4y agoEvery single answer to this has moved the goalpost by the way. Unbelievable.
- namecheapTA 4y agoYou can get locked up for very mild 'hate speech' in the UK. And I don't even mean hate speech, but posting "I hate these people and this is why", not "violent acts towards so and so!"
- nailer 4y agoA Scottish man in the UK was recently charged with saying the only good British soldier is a dead one.
- kubb 4y agowhat a legend, what did they charge him with?
- Nathanba 4y agoit really doesn't require such extreme examples. The EU will also ask for all kinds of censorship. Germany just made wearing the 'Z' illegal, meaning that any kind of pro-russian viewpoint will have to be censored. There is only one country on earth that has decent free speech and it's the US
- raxxorraxor 4y agoI hope nobody listens to the German government on speech rules and nobody should. There should be a rule that you have to make it through 1 century without creating 2 dictatorships before you can even say anything about allowed or forbidden speech. And no, none of these dictatorships had anything close to free expression like some people hilariously and tragically suggested.
- mmmmmbop 4y agoWhich are the two dictatorships you are thinking about? Your proposed rule might be unpractical, since it would disallow the U.S. government from from saying anything about free speech for at least 30 more years (see [1] and [2]). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A...
- School-Cotton 4y agoThey presumably meant the Nazi period (1933-1945) and the period of SED rule in East Germany (1949-1990).
- robonerd 4y agoIt's a sliver over a hundred years ago now, but Germany was also under a military dictatorship lead by Hindenburg and Ludendorff from 1916 through 1918.
- afro88 4y agoHe'll do both. Free speech in countries that have laws that allow/support it. But the thing everyone forgets is that he has very strong ties to the US government. From a free speech perspective, this is as good as the government taking over twitter, but much better PR
- CydeWeys 4y ago[flagged]
- TheCondor 4y agoAside from the 15minutes when it was just developers and tech dorks, was it ever non-toxic? I love how “free speech” comes up when these assholes limit what you can say to a tiny few bytes, it’s fundamentally limited to name calling, slogans, sound bites and head lines rather than actual real discourse and content.
- shishy 4y agoI think he already explained the mindset here by differentiating between moderating speech, and moderating behavior. So people who say certain things might still be banned or violate guidelines because of how they say it, but the event would probably be misrepresented as infringing on the right to free speech.
- esyir 4y agoTone policing good. I unironically believe this, especially if tone policing allows actual discussion, rather than shouting matches.
- malfist 4y ago
- bitshiftfaced 4y ago> Musk has admitted he doesn't understand people, is a self-confessed troll & edgelord and and Tesla's culture seems less than ideal. So lacks any of the qualifications I see as being needed to run something like Twitter. That's why he's perfect for this task. Most decision-makers feel intense scrutiny and tip toe around things that cause backlash, especially things that threaten the status quo. When you're oblivious to how people will react to your vision, you're more able to follow through and make it to the other side.
- otterley 4y agoThis sort of thinking is how wars and genocides get started. Being decisive and following through on execution is an important skill, but ignoring other stakeholders’ opinions has downsides that are best not ignored.
- rootusrootus 4y agoWhat does "the other side" look like in this case?
- bitshiftfaced 4y agoJust glancing at his feed, Elon seems to talk about spam bots, free speech, making the extreme left and extreme right equally unhappy, and shadow banning. Sounds like he wants more fairness and transparency in how Twitter moderates content.
- imroot 4y agoIf I am on Twitter's Trust and Safety team, I'm sweating bullets today.
- stjohnswarts 4y agoThey should all be looking for choice B companies. I suspect there will be a mass firing/exodus for anything involving security or feed algorithm teams.
- avs733 4y ago> He's already said that he'd follow all local laws I'm all for a good damning with faint praise, and this definitely put a smile on my face. I'm still convinced this is just the Twitter board calling Musk's bluff. Lets say this does fall through, the SEC, Tesla, and SpaceX fall out could be REALLY bad.
- jimkleiber 4y agoSpeaking of the SEC [0]: > In 2018, he came under fire after tweeting that he was considering taking Tesla private, and the SEC charged him with fraud. Musk agreed to a court-approved deal in order to settle the charges, which required that Tesla lawyers review any social media posts containing information "material" to shareholders. Months later, after he was called out for defying the order, the settlement was amended to include a specific list of topics Musk needs permission to tweet about. The list includes tweets about the company's financial condition, production numbers or new business lines. > The SEC notified Tesla that two of Musk's tweets from 2019 and 2020 — one about Tesla's solar roof production volumes and one about the company's stock price — hadn't received the required pre-approval, the Journal's Dave Michaels and Rebecca Elliott reported. I find it hard to overlook that at least one thing that might be motivating him to buy Twitter is to tweet however he wants to tweet, regardless of US law. [0]: https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/01/tech/elon-musk-tesla-sec-tweets/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/01/tech/elon-musk-tesla-sec-twee...
- mulmen 4y agoWouldn't he need to buy the SEC then?
- jimkleiber 4y agoI'm not saying he would be able to tweet however he wants, but perhaps a desire to do so, aka, to not have the SEC tell him how to communicate on a platform he bought for ~$43B. I just see it as a potential escalating standoff between the SEC and Musk. Perhaps I'm looking too deep into this and he really does care a lot about other people having freedom to tweet whatever they want. I think there's just a good chance that the SEC ruling telling him he needs to have his Tesla tweets reviewed before sending them could also be motivating him to buy Twitter.
- TrapLord_Rhodo 4y ago> find the elusive path of maintaining free speech, following the law and not having Twitter being a toxic cesspool used mainly to shout down those not our your "side". Verified, real people will change the dynamic. > Admitted he doesn't understand people, is a self-confessed troll & edgelord and and Tesla's culture seems less than ideal. He got all those self-confessed trolls & edgelords together, created companies in hard sciences and made everyone rich in the process. I worked at Tesla, it was a good time.
- DyslexicAtheist 4y ago> interesting to see if he can find the elusive path of maintaining free speech I am also utterly gobsmacked how people here jump to the defense of billionaires. > Taking a moment to think about how utterly crazy it is that in 2022 a company with a significant dataset of private and public communications, that has municipalities, companies and governments on the platform, can switch ownership with pretty much zero scrutiny -- https://twitter.com/emilybell/status/1518580094649966592 https://twitter.com/emilybell/status/1518580094649966592
- dragonwriter 4y ago> utterly insane how people here jump to the defense of billionaires. The discussion forums hosted by a startup accelerator are friendly to major capitalists? Who would have expected it?
- gspr 4y agoNice how you swapped "billionaires" for "major capitalists" in building your straw man, there!
- dragonwriter 4y agoBecause there are a whole bunch of non-haut-bourgeois billionaires?
- dfdfsdfasdfsaf 4y ago
- jjeaff 4y agoStartup types are basically the archetype of "temporarily inconvenienced billionaires".
- jimbokun 4y agoI don't see the relevance. Whatever laws protect that data or communications will continue to exist. And if you're just taking it on good faith that the current ownership won't do anything shady even if there's no laws preventing it, that's a much bigger problem to address.
- rectang 4y agoTrolls, disinformation spreaders, and "free reach absolutists" are going to be thrilled with the megaphone Musk will provide them to drown out their enemies. Welcome to Voat 2.0.
- robonerd 4y ago> Welcome to Voat 2.0. Or Reddit 1.0? That's what reddit used to be, and reddit got quite popular when it was like that.
- rectang 4y agoMaybe so! There were big followings for /r/CreepShots and /r/rapingwomen. And lots of free-reachers who were apoplectic when Reddit at least tried to do something about it. If Musk can dial up the abuse on Twitter, Reddit 1.0 can live again.
- faeriechangling 4y agoThen Reddit slowly had its commitment to free speech chipped away, starting innocently with banning things like /r/jailbait and then abhorrent stuff like /r/coontown and then some time passed and they banned /r/chapotraphouse for being edgy and to prove they were cool because they banned left wingers. I don't see how twitter changing ownership will change anything structurally at Twitter. Jack Dorsey started out as a free speech champion many years ago. The things people say cause real problems for real people and at some point the rubber meets the road. A large site like Twitter is at the mercy of the politics of the world. Even stuff like "Twitter will comply with local laws" is a subtle concession to local censorship laws. Cracks in the facade are already appearing before Musk even owns twitter.
- ceeplusplus 4y agoAnd yet stuff like /r/BlackPeopleTwitter exists where if you don't "prove" you're black you're not allowed to post. There's a fundamental difference between being required to comply with a legal order to take something down and taking down content because you decided someone _might_ not like it.
- mdoms 4y agoLet's be absolutely clear, Musk does not care about your free speech. He has a history of shutting down speech he doesn't like and will continue to do so.
- stjohnswarts 4y agoHe is basically Thiel with even more "fuck you" money, and now he owns a huge megaphone that approaches the size of his ego.
- kodah 4y ago> defining a healthy culture for your elusive market place of ideas After taking part in the "DevOps" cultural revolution, I feel that there is no path to mandating culture. Culture is the summation of ideas, practices, and values of all parts that participate in a system. If you try to discriminate against participants in order to get "the culture you want" then you'll end up doing some nasty discrimination along the way. That practice is also, ime, heavily correlated with ideological hell holes that lose relevancy the minute they gain relevancy because they're frozen in time along the timeline of acceptable ideas.
- lucius_verus 4y agoThe bit about "following the law" was so poorly thought out. Musk's comments at TED made it seem like he both: (1) confused Bill of Rights guarantee that the government won't censor speech with some law that prohibits private companies from moderating speech on their platforms (not a thing) (2) failed to consider what it means to "follow the law" when your platform operates in multiple countries with incompatible laws. Do you comply with an authoritarian regime that demands you take down tweets (https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/24/22451271/police-india-raid-twitter-tweets-government-manipulated-media https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/24/22451271/police-india-rai...)? How about content that is specifically banned in some countries but not others, like Germany's strict hate speech laws (https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/twitter-germany-nazis/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/twitter-germany-nazis/)? These are actual problems Twitter has had to deal with, and I don't get the impression that Musk realizes how complicated it it is.
- iloveparis 4y ago
- sidibe 4y agoNoone could have known social media moderation could be hard! Just like in 2017 he had no way of knowing his cars wouldn't drive themselves cross country by 2018
- tekknik 4y agoHow about we start with not banning US politicians?
- tigershark 4y agoDo you mean the one that attempted a coup and utterly failed, like all the things in his life? I don’t think there is another person in the entire world that managed to bankrupt not one but TWO casinos. And I think that you guys are very lucky that he didn’t succeed in his half-assed coup, otherwise you would help Russia instead of Ukraine, and would have become soon after that a bankrupt state with all the world against, same as Putin current track record.
- vinay_ys 4y agoMusk had no qualifications to run a rocket company. He didn't have much qualifications to run a car or solar company either. But he has done well by any measure of success. The only qualification that he seems to need is clear thinking based on first principles and genuine conviction and perseverance at super hard problems even while facing total personal destruction. And total personal destruction is always a real possibility with him – as he always seems to be all-in betting everything every time. So, if he fails spectacularly at his stated goal for twitter, I wouldn't be surprised (and neither will he be, I bet), but it would be sad to see that.
- ChainReaktion 4y agoBut what exactly is “the law?” It’s not like this stuff is cut and dried even within the US. Posted this elsewhere, but free speech laws are some of the trickiest legal issues we grapple with in the US, and many statues hinge on the intent behind the speech. How is Twitter supposed to implement this (hypothetical) new policy? Do they always give posters the benefit of the doubt? Seems ripe for abuse. Assume the worst? Probably more censorious than it is today. Punt to the courts? Great, moderation now takes years and costs thousands of dollars. What is the standard of proof to take down a tweet? Preponderance of the evidence? What evidence is admissible? Does Twitter just internally recreate the US trial court system to manage this? What about cross-border disputes? What about laws that directly conflict? What about international law? Treaties to which the US is not a party (eg Protocols I & II of the Geneva Convention)? If “following the law” were easy we wouldn’t have so many layers and judges
- antiterra 4y agoIt’s fair to assume any substantial site with user created content has some significant agreements/settlements with attorneys general in various jurisdictions. Those will likely be the stickiest, outside of ones with direct judicial determination.
- judge2020 4y agoTo be fair, 'free speech' isn't even something a company can force themselves to follow. Short of selling to the US Government (who would have to explicitly accept such an offering), being bound by free speech isn't possible without making your own rules for what qualifies as free speech and what happens when the platform 'violates' it - ie. you can't say "take all matters of violating your first amendment to civil court" since corporations, by design, cannot violate your first amendment rights.
- dillondoyle 4y agoDoes local = national? what about conflicts legally - or ethically as a US corp. China access using CCP rules. Russia too.
- overgard 4y ago> following the law and not having Twitter being a toxic cesspool used mainly to shout down those not our your "side". Well, from that perspective I don't think it can get any worse.
- clint 4y agoyou have noooo idea then :cringe:
- Epiphany21 4y ago>the elusive path of maintaining free speech What's so elusive about it? Let people say what they want and give users a robust word and account filtering system. If you think your ideas and values won't stand up to public scrutiny, then perhaps you should do some self-reflection. If it's just a matter of your own comfort, use the block/mute/blacklist controls.
- altacc 4y agoThe full quote is “ elusive path of maintaining free speech, following the law and not having Twitter being a toxic cesspool used mainly to shout down those not our your "side".” The path is balancing all that. It’s not just about people being “uncomfortable”, there is very real & hurtful abuse on social media, some of which breaks laws that Twitter will also need to respect. Just adding more filters does nothing to build the open public square that Musk seems to want to curate. More filters & blocks just creates smaller echo chambers.
- Epiphany21 4y ago> The full quote is “ elusive path of maintaining free speech, following the law and not having Twitter being a toxic cesspool used mainly to shout down those not our your "side".” Frankly, I didn't think the rest of your quote added anything meaningful to the first part. Rather than being rude I was just going to leave that out and hope you picked up on it. My reasoning was as follows: Twitter is already forced to follow US laws where the legal system is willing to enforce them, and "toxic cesspool" is highly subjective. When it comes to handling the mob mentality, I've already offered my thoughts and suggestions in my previous comment. >Just adding more filters does nothing to build the open public square that Musk seems to want to curate. So, which is it then? Is it a public platform, or a publisher curating content? Either way, Twitter couldn't exist without the taxpayer footing the bill for ARPANET, which is why I think they should be forced to allow all legal speech on their platform. >More filters & blocks just creates smaller echo chambers. Explain why it's bad for "echo chambers" to exist. Why shouldn't people be allowed to mind their own business and tend to their own spaces? I do this daily by choosing to not use 90% of the modern web.
- xfitm3 4y agoLet's hope this is the beginning of rolling back woke culture.
- craftyguy 4y ago> He's already said that he'd follow all local laws so it would be interesting to see if he can find the elusive path of maintaining free speech, following the law and not having Twitter being a toxic cesspool used mainly to shout down those not our your "side". At least in the US, there is no law that says non-government things have to offer "free speech" to customers. Womp womp.
- smeej 4y agoThe number one thing Elon Musk does well is deploying the right people who will get the job done. He solves very few problems himself, personally, with ideas from his own mind. He just recognizes the people who will be able to solve the problems and brings problem and problem solver together. There's no reason that should be less effective with Twitter than anything else.