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It is pretty hypocritical though for Mr. Free Speech to fire people who have concerns rather than address those concerns in a civil dialogue. Musk likes to whin

• mavhc 4y ago
  If your ability to stay alive depending on you keeping your job you wouldn't go around signing public letters. Did he attempt to supress the letter? Freedom of speech != freedom from action
  • etchalon 4y ago
    I don't understand the logic that people without power shouldn't speak up to those with it.
    • meatsauce 4y ago
      Employees have plenty of power. They have the power to work someplace else.
      • etchalon 4y ago
        "If you don't like it, move."
        • meatsauce 4y ago
          In the context of employment; yes. Bye. Turn in your badge, too.
      • justbored123 4y ago
    • mavhc 4y ago
      If you're really hungry, don't bite the hand that feeds you. If they're evil then plan ahead. If you have a full pantry, go ahead and bite. Or live somewhere where you get free food.
• notyourwork 4y ago
• foobarian 4y ago
  I don't know, what they did according to the article is a little bit more than speech. If someone did that at my workplace the silent majority would be thankful that someone removed that kind of nuisance.
• Etheryte 4y ago
  Freedom of speech does not mean being free of consequences. Much like you're free to offend, the other side is free to be offended and employment goes both ways. Firing someone because they fundamentally disagree on how the company should be run is not censorship, it's keeping only people who align with the direction you're headed.
  • countvonbalzac 4y ago
    Then Trump is free to incite an insurrection on Twitter, and Twitter is free to ban him. Which is the opposite of what Elon thinks.
    • Spooky23 4y ago
      Musk wants attention and money to do whatever he wants. Everything else is negotiable.
    • vosper 4y ago
      Twitter is free to ban Trump or others, regardless of whether Elon Musk owns Twitter. Whether to implement a ban is a decision their management can take, or not take.
    • gricardo99 4y ago
      I don't believe Elon ever stated Twitter has no right/freedom to ban (he does say a lot of bizarre things, and I don't follow too closely), but correct me if I'm wrong. Disagreeing with the Twitter policies is not the same as believing Twitter is not free to establish such policies.
      • theptip 4y ago
        He has stated that he thinks they should only ban if the law requires them to do so. For example he thinks the Trump ban was clearly problematic.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
• mlindner 4y ago
  People keep misconstruing his opinion on free speech. His opinion on free speech isn't "freedom to say anything anywhere to anyone and have no repercussions". He specifically believes Twitter should be treated as a virtual town square, i.e. you can say what you like without fear from being removed from the town square, but it has zero bearing on what people say about you on that town square. SpaceX is not a town square and never will be, nor is any private company. I doubt even Twitter employees will be able to say what they like on Twitter without fear of being fired from Twitter. It's only about removing you from the platform. There's no hypocrisy, it lines up exactly with his past actions and his past words.
  • depereo 4y ago
    This is exactly correct. It absolutely lines up with his stance that everything he does or wants to do is fine and probably good, and that people that are not him should suffer consequences.
  • jonathankoren 4y ago
    But Twitter isn't a town square either. It's a private company. No one is guaranteed an audience.
    • throwaway894345 4y ago
      Arguing that Twitter ought to moderate itself according to free speech principles isn't denying Twitter's right to free speech. I'm not going to stan Musk specifically, but this is a common misunderstanding (the general formulation being something like: "criticizing someone's free speech violates their free speech!", which is patently untrue).
    • bhauer 4y ago
      Precisely. Which is why he wants to acquire it and move it in the direction he has in mind.
    • filoleg 4y ago
      Twitter the company isn't supposed to be a town square, you are correct. Twitter the product is, though. Whether that's how you see it or not, is a separate question, but those two positions on Twitter aren't mutually exclusive.
• dylan604 4y ago
  Should they all have made Twitter posts rather than signing a piece of paper, or would Musk just claim they were bots and not real?
• meatsauce 4y ago
  This is pure nonsense. Neither Musk or his company owes you a job, and you certainly shouldn't work at his company if you disagree with his vison or politics. Shedding the woke weight has to feel good, for both Musk and for other employees, who no doubt had to endure constant whining.
  • mulmen 4y ago
    > you certainly shouldn't work at his company if you disagree with his vison or politics. Vision maybe. Politics are irrelevant to work. It is impossible to achieve 100% alignment in an organization of more than one person. And even then I'm not sure it is possible.
  • EthanHeilman 4y ago
    My question is if this is the best approach. The dissenters may care deeply about the company and they be saying publicly what many others are feeling privately at SpaceX. Would engagement in this setting reap better rewards?
    • meatsauce 4y ago
      Interesting question. If you look at other companies that give the woke cry bullies and their subjective feelings precedent over the mission, you can see that it creates a toxic workplace, hostile environments, further segmentation of workers into cliques, and other unpleasantries that hurt the mission, and ultimately the bottom line for that company. If you look at the nuances; they were fired for participating in actions that can not only be considered insubordination, but also abuse of company resources and harassment of employees who just want to do their job and not cater to the worthless feelings of people who have crippling self-esteem issues. Dumping the woke cry babies is the right decision here. Engagement only serves to embolden work cry bullies who are used to getting their way.
      • vlunkr 4y ago
        What about this open letter makes these people "woke cry babies?" The thesis of it is that his behavior online is embarrassing and bringing down the reputation of the company. That seems like pretty valid criticism to me. This guy is supposed to bring our species to another planet, but he spends his free time fighting a losing twitter battle with a satirical video game website? It's not a great look.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• cptaj 4y ago
  This is the crux of the matter right here. I hate that people are doing all these weird gymnastics to reconcile being a champion of free speech and firing people that criticize you. Yeah, guys, it might be legal (maybe not) but it IS hypocritical. If you want to champion free speech you can't do this shit. Stop with the debate team bullshit and exercise some common sense.
  • donatj 4y ago
    Hard Disagree. Just freedom in all directions. You're free to say what you want, they're free to fire you for it. That's completely consistent.
    • monktastic1 4y ago
      That's not a disagreement. Parent comment is asking for consistency. "If you believe... then..."
    • svachalek 4y ago
      That's not what freedom of speech is about. You're free to say what you want in any country in the world, once. The first amendment is about protecting you from some of the consequences of that. Not specifically firing, but that's not his issue with Twitter either.
      • rvz 4y ago
        If this was a government censoring, banning journalists, stories and the media or even blocking the whole internet and punishing companies that criticize them or to stop the letter being published, that totally violates free speech. Generally, It doesn’t apply to ‘privately owned companies’ Just like how these employees are free to criticize their employer it does not mean there are freedom of consequences and employers are just as free to fire their employees. That is why they stay anonymous and criticize their employer just like what happened with Coinbase.
      • oarabbus_ 4y ago
        > The first amendment is about protecting you from some of the consequences of that. Not specifically firing Free speech protects individuals from government prosecution only. It has nothing to do with employment or labor law.
• kareemsabri 4y ago
  I read Musk's "free speech absolutism" to mean that on platforms dedicated to speech (Twitter etc.) one shouldn't be censored / banned. I'm unclear how that means I should be able to say whatever I want at my job and still keep the job. For example, if I work at Tesla and say I think electric cars are stupid and the ICE are superior, I would imagine I would be fired. I don't think that's a free speech violation, but rather that my opinion is in conflict with the goals of the company.
• eloff 4y ago
  This kind of dialogue could be had internally. Making it a public matter is just looking for a pink slip. Maybe that's what they wanted. Maybe they're just ignorant. Either way the consequences are predictable, regardless of the company.
• rory 4y ago
  "Blanketing thousands of people across the company with repeated unsolicited emails and asking them to sign letters and fill out unsponsored surveys during the work day" is markedly different from posting something on your personal Twitter.
• bostonsre 4y ago
  Isn't the civil dialogue part immediately thrown out the window when the person posts and signs a public letter?
• 4bpp 4y ago
  Not that I'm sympathetic to the decision to fire here based on what I know (which is really just this article and what I've read in this thread), but the two issues seem to be somewhat orthogonal, in that I could imagine a consistent moral framework falling either way with different opinions on them. Someone might believe in the importance of minimising consequences for speech on a public forum such as Twitter (whose end purpose is supposedly such speech, and which is one of the main venues in which public political discourse in fact happens), while simultaneously not believing that employees of a company have the right to speak up against the interests of that company (whose purpose is making widgets and money) and be protected from the company terminating the working relationship in return. Conversely, someone might think of unfettered political debate as harmful, and believe in the importance of suppressing certain opinions they find dangerous and harmful from the public sphere, while also believing that letting employees criticise and organise against their employer is important to guarantee the welfare of employees and keep the power of employers in check. In fact, the two combinations seem respectively pretty close to the proclaimed ethos of the US and the Soviet Union respectively a century ago. Criticism of Musk's action here may come both from those who in fact are in the "free speech absolutist" camp and want both the Twitter deplorables and the corporate gadflies to be protected from retaliation, and from those who are just in the latter position and want the opposite pattern, but I think only the first group can bring a charge of hypocrisy (still incorrect, as it ignores the orthogonality) without it making themselves guilty of higher-order hypocrisy.
• AlchemistCamp 4y ago
  Free speech doesn't entail an obligation to subsidize people attacking you or your company. Trying to get people employed by other companies fired would be a problem, but firing your own employees for acting against your interests is completely reasonable.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• jhgb 4y ago
  > It is pretty hypocritical though for Mr. Free Speech to fire people who have concerns rather than address those concerns in a civil dialogue No, not really, since this has very little to do with free speech. Free speech does not mean that you can communicate with your superiors, or in fact any other person you're in some relationship with (spouse, family member, etc.), in arbitrary ways with no consequences.
  • pas 4y ago
    who knows what it means for Musk. he said (paraphrasing) that whatever is legal should be allowed on Twitter. this doesn't really mean anything with regards to his speech at work views. if we want to somehow generalize the ethos of whatever is legal should be allowed (so basically he thinks Twitter is too strict) then we might conclude that he favors more "open dialogue" and this does feel contrary to firing employees for criticism. (though I haven't seen the letter, it's possible the authors/signers explicitly said something that simply make it clear that they won't continue to work in this or that way, and the company decided that okay, the company won't change so they have to go anyway - see the Gebru ultimatum)
    • jhgb 4y ago
      Twitter is specifically a medium providing its users (the public) the ability to communicate with each other. It's literally their business. Musk's view that as a public communication medium, Twitter should be permissive, has nothing to do with internal processes at any of Musk's companies. Hell, it has nothing to do with internal processes even at a hypothetical Twitter with a more permissive user ToS since the behavior of Twitter's employees is guided by their employment contracts and guidelines, not by Twitter's user-facing ToS. This would be true even if Musk weren't to ever become a majory shareholder of Twitter.