4 ms·

I think Elon is/was trying to bring back the "glory days" of the internet where free speech was the driving force behind tons of early internet projects. Seemin

I think Elon is/was trying to bring back the "glory days" of the internet where free speech was the driving force behind tons of early internet projects. Seemingly everyone was onboard with the internet being humanities bastion of free speech and that had to be protected at all costs. Then the wild west internet was developed into a city and well, you just can't walk around shooting your gun wherever you want anymore. And changing the law to let people do that isn't going to bring back the wild west, and is more likely to just cause a bunch of chaos.

FourHand451 4y ago
How exactly is he working toward free speech being a driving force? From what I can tell, he's just banning different people.
- Workaccount2 4y ago
  He's not, he was idealizing it. His rhetoric about free speech harkens back to the early/mid internet days. The internet today is not what it was 20 years ago when you could run a platform where rule #1 was "Free speech is absolute and guaranteed", and could actually fulfill that promise without consequence.
  - Cthulhu_ 4y ago
    20 years ago free speech was still limited by the laws - if you have a site or if you host a site that does something illegal, it'll be taken down. 20 years ago and today. Consequences haven't changed, and I feel like you're glorifying the internet from 20 years ago as some ultimate free place.
    - ethbr0 4y ago
      Really? Because the pre-9/11 Internet I remember had The Anarchist Cookbook et al. widely available, didn't have IP-related domain seizures or OS/browser-based safelists, and had Usenet and IRC instead of Facebook. It seems accurate to say we've regressed in terms of free speech absolutism.
    - Workaccount2 4y ago
      Right, websites today have vastly tighter bounds than what is allowed under the first amendment. Back then it was "if it falls under the first amendment, its a-ok here".
  - giantrobot 4y ago
    > when you could run a platform where rule #1 was "Free speech is absolute and guaranteed", and could actually fulfill that promise without consequence. This is ridiculously ahistorical. The only time you found consequence-free speech on the Internet was when the reach was small or people that might not care didn't pay attention. Platforms got shut down or censored all the time. Usenet access from an ISP's NNTP servers would often be missing a lot of groups or sometimes while hierarchies. Web hosts would take down pages or suspend accounts regularly. Even before widespread Internet access BBSes would get taken down. Steve Jackson Games' BBS got raided by the Secret Service because it had promo copy for a cyberpunk game they were writing. Rust n' Edie's BBS got taken down for software piracy and then sued because someone uploaded scans from Playboy. The whole reason PGP exists is because Phil Zimmerman was concerned talking about anti-nuclear protests would attract the attention of the government. Pretty much every aspect of old cypherpunk developments were done because there was no assumption speech on the Internet was free from consequences.
- SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
  >From what I can tell, he's just banning different people. IDK, but let's say that's exactly what it is... Look at how completely fine everyone was when it was the other group, and now are furious they feel like it could be them. Pretty astounding I think.
disantlor 4y ago
to the extent the internet was "free" it was because it hadn't yet been fully captured by capitalism
- ethbr0 4y ago
  I'd go so far as to say 'capitalism hadn't yet noticed it.' ;)
watwut 4y ago
Yeeah, when people who criticized Musk literally once have to flee their houses, due to rampant and false accusations of pedophilia from Musk friends, we can totally talk about free speech.
- p0pcult 4y ago
  Wow, got a source for this?
  - kibwen 4y ago
    https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/12/tech/twitter-files-yoel-roth/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/12/tech/twitter-files-yoel-roth/... "Twitter’s former head of trust and safety has fled his home due to an escalation in threats resulting from Elon Musk’s campaign of criticism against him [...] things took a dark turn over the weekend when Musk appeared to endorse a tweet that baselessly accused Roth of being sympathetic to pedophilia [...] A person familiar with Roth’s situation told CNN threats made against the former Twitter employee escalated exponentially after Musk engaged in the pedophilia conspiracy theory." Typical Musk MO to randomly accuse someone of pedophilia.
    - watwut 4y ago
      Yes. And Musk fans insert "he got fired due to being lazy" into every discussion of topic on Twitter I have seen ... except he resigned instead of being fired and was not even employee.
- _JoRo 4y ago
  Yeah honestly this is my biggest issue with public figures on social media. Without a second thought they can make such claims about anyone, and all of a sudden that person is receiving dozens of death threats from the crazies of the world.
ethbr0 4y ago
Well put! At it's core, the modern internet-using demographic is incompatible with the pre-2000 wild west free speech internet. To not mince words -- current internet users are not technically educated or paranoid enough, and their expectations have aligned with the guarantees provided by the current walled gardens. That was the internet of "If you run an exe downloaded off a webpage, you install a virus with zero warnings." -- That said, I do get where Elon was aiming, and I think news media is shit for either deliberately misconstruing or not understanding his position. To wit: that in a truly open marketplace of ideas, extremism will be shudden with the sunlight of transparency. So instead of nanny-stating things for people, show them how stupid neo-nazi's sound, and let them decide for themselves. What I think he underestimated was how unprepared the world (users + civil groups + government) was for a return to that model. For example, if Twitter enabled tools to help journalists correlate associated accounts... how many news organizations still exist who have staff to do that work?
DoctorOW 4y ago
I actually really like this metaphor. To extend it, I think we do have to address that part of the reason it's so hard to bring people over to this way of thinking is because deep down they personally want to shoot someone but it's easier to pretend not to understand than it is to actually defend that idea.

FourHand451 4y ago

How exactly is he working toward free speech being a driving force? From what I can tell, he's just banning different people.

Workaccount2 4y ago
He's not, he was idealizing it. His rhetoric about free speech harkens back to the early/mid internet days. The internet today is not what it was 20 years ago when you could run a platform where rule #1 was "Free speech is absolute and guaranteed", and could actually fulfill that promise without consequence.
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago
  20 years ago free speech was still limited by the laws - if you have a site or if you host a site that does something illegal, it'll be taken down. 20 years ago and today. Consequences haven't changed, and I feel like you're glorifying the internet from 20 years ago as some ultimate free place.
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    Really? Because the pre-9/11 Internet I remember had The Anarchist Cookbook et al. widely available, didn't have IP-related domain seizures or OS/browser-based safelists, and had Usenet and IRC instead of Facebook. It seems accurate to say we've regressed in terms of free speech absolutism.
  - Workaccount2 4y ago
    Right, websites today have vastly tighter bounds than what is allowed under the first amendment. Back then it was "if it falls under the first amendment, its a-ok here".
- giantrobot 4y ago
  > when you could run a platform where rule #1 was "Free speech is absolute and guaranteed", and could actually fulfill that promise without consequence. This is ridiculously ahistorical. The only time you found consequence-free speech on the Internet was when the reach was small or people that might not care didn't pay attention. Platforms got shut down or censored all the time. Usenet access from an ISP's NNTP servers would often be missing a lot of groups or sometimes while hierarchies. Web hosts would take down pages or suspend accounts regularly. Even before widespread Internet access BBSes would get taken down. Steve Jackson Games' BBS got raided by the Secret Service because it had promo copy for a cyberpunk game they were writing. Rust n' Edie's BBS got taken down for software piracy and then sued because someone uploaded scans from Playboy. The whole reason PGP exists is because Phil Zimmerman was concerned talking about anti-nuclear protests would attract the attention of the government. Pretty much every aspect of old cypherpunk developments were done because there was no assumption speech on the Internet was free from consequences.
SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
>From what I can tell, he's just banning different people. IDK, but let's say that's exactly what it is... Look at how completely fine everyone was when it was the other group, and now are furious they feel like it could be them. Pretty astounding I think.

disantlor 4y ago

to the extent the internet was "free" it was because it hadn't yet been fully captured by capitalism

ethbr0 4y ago
I'd go so far as to say 'capitalism hadn't yet noticed it.' ;)

watwut 4y ago

Yeeah, when people who criticized Musk literally once have to flee their houses, due to rampant and false accusations of pedophilia from Musk friends, we can totally talk about free speech.

p0pcult 4y ago
Wow, got a source for this?
- kibwen 4y ago
  https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/12/tech/twitter-files-yoel-roth/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/12/tech/twitter-files-yoel-roth/... "Twitter’s former head of trust and safety has fled his home due to an escalation in threats resulting from Elon Musk’s campaign of criticism against him [...] things took a dark turn over the weekend when Musk appeared to endorse a tweet that baselessly accused Roth of being sympathetic to pedophilia [...] A person familiar with Roth’s situation told CNN threats made against the former Twitter employee escalated exponentially after Musk engaged in the pedophilia conspiracy theory." Typical Musk MO to randomly accuse someone of pedophilia.
  - watwut 4y ago
    Yes. And Musk fans insert "he got fired due to being lazy" into every discussion of topic on Twitter I have seen ... except he resigned instead of being fired and was not even employee.
_JoRo 4y ago
Yeah honestly this is my biggest issue with public figures on social media. Without a second thought they can make such claims about anyone, and all of a sudden that person is receiving dozens of death threats from the crazies of the world.

ethbr0 4y ago

Well put! At it's core, the modern internet-using demographic is incompatible with the pre-2000 wild west free speech internet. To not mince words -- current internet users are not technically educated or paranoid enough, and their expectations have aligned with the guarantees provided by the current walled gardens. That was the internet of "If you run an exe downloaded off a webpage, you install a virus with zero warnings." -- That said, I do get where Elon was aiming, and I think news media is shit for either deliberately misconstruing or not understanding his position. To wit: that in a truly open marketplace of ideas, extremism will be shudden with the sunlight of transparency. So instead of nanny-stating things for people, show them how stupid neo-nazi's sound, and let them decide for themselves. What I think he underestimated was how unprepared the world (users + civil groups + government) was for a return to that model. For example, if Twitter enabled tools to help journalists correlate associated accounts... how many news organizations still exist who have staff to do that work?

DoctorOW 4y ago

I actually really like this metaphor. To extend it, I think we do have to address that part of the reason it's so hard to bring people over to this way of thinking is because deep down they personally want to shoot someone but it's easier to pretend not to understand than it is to actually defend that idea.