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I’m surprised when I see people uncritically repeating the claim that Twitter now aims for “free speech.” It’s clear that was never true and always meant “Speec

I’m surprised when I see people uncritically repeating the claim that Twitter now aims for “free speech.” It’s clear that was never true and always meant “Speech Elon wants to allow.”

andersa 3y ago
It was always about the right wing kind of free speech - free to harass and insult people, freedom from consequences.
- nxx788 3y ago
  And freedom to "censor" speech they don't like.
  - gadders 3y ago
    When did he do that?
    - littlestymaar 3y ago
      Links to Mastodon, ElonJet, the day he banned a dozen of journalists[1], etc. [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/technology/twitter-suspends-journalist-accounts-elon-musk.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/technology/twitter-suspen...
    - nxx788 3y ago
      There are several instances of left wing folks being banned, he stated that "cis" will be disallowed on the platform, he's removed tweets at the behest of governments like the Saudis, and this post is literally about text disappearing, lol. It's not hard to find instances. Note, I think it's fine for companies to moderate speech on their platforms. No objections there. Just don't simultaneously claim you are some sort of free speech absolutist.
      - slily 3y ago
        [flagged]
      - pessimizer 3y ago
        > There are several instances of left wing folks being banned You understand that you were asked for one, right? This is not one, this is a vague claim being repeated. > he stated that "cis" will be disallowed on the platform No, he didn't. He said that "cis" being thrown as an insult to people who didn't wish to be called "cis" wouldn't automatically be discounted as harassment. Maybe I'm wrong about this - can you find a single person that was banned or censored by twitter for saying "cis?" > It's not hard to find instances. If it's too hard for you to do, why do you expect others to believe you when you say this?
        nxx788 3y ago
        [dead]
      - fit2rule 3y ago
        [dead]
- mywittyname 3y ago
  Don't forget -- freedom from having to hear left-wing ideologies or about anything uncomfortable.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    Left or right, anarchic or authoritarian, theocratic (of any flavour) or atheist, populist or technocratic, radical or conservative, Apollonian or Dionysian. There's more ways to be outside the Overton window, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy.
  - willcipriano 3y ago
    So reverse Reddit?
  - pessimizer 3y ago
    On what planet were liberal voices being censored in any way on twitter? Left-wingers were being banned because the liberals that filled their responses with invective, invitations for them to kill themselves, and appeals that they be arrested were mass reporting them.
- bko 3y ago
  Right because that's objectionable speech. You don't need to worry about non-objectionable speech because no one would care to censor it. I don't know what you mean by freedom on consequences. I guess a consequence of speech could be to get your account banned? If anything Twitter leaving up your objectionable content would result in more likely conferences of being fired or something.
  - thelopa 3y ago
    And yet, Elon has decided that a term used in academic medical research for nearly a century, “cisgender”, is a slur and banned from the platform. Funny how he wants to protect objectionable speech that aligns with his political view while restricting “objectionable” speech that doesn’t.
    - lathiat 3y ago
      From Wikipedia, while the concept has been discussed since at least 1914 the actual term cisgender has apparently only been used since 1994: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisgender https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisgender
      - thelopa 3y ago
        Cisgender is recent, but it’s also primarily used to serve as the counter to transgender. To understand “cisgender”, it’s useful to study the history of “transgender”. Transgender was introduced as a term because it encompassed a larger group of people and avoided the stigma surrounding “transsexual”. Transsexual has a history dating back about a hundred years. Since “trans-“ and “cis-“ are antonym prefixes, once you have transsexual, you have cissexual. For the purposes of Elon’s rule, it doesn’t matter whether it’s CISsexual or CISgender, he objects to “cis”.
        fenimi 3y ago
        One reason why many people, particularly feminist women, find "cisgender" a disagreeable term is because it's a linguistic concession that makes it more difficult to argue for the rights of actual female women, as it implicitly redefines "woman" to include males and "man" to include females.
- rayiner 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - tedunangst 3y ago
    And pics of his wiener!
- pessimizer 3y ago
  > It was always about the right wing kind of free speech It was always about the kind of speech that was being banned. Movement Democrats like to think of themselves as left-wing, so everything that opposes their party becomes right-wing, including people to the left of them. Movement Democrats weren't being banned for spreading misinformation, they were being encouraged. > free to harass and insult people, freedom from consequences. There were only consequences on one side with old twitter.
  - archagon 3y ago
    One side was far more unruly than the other. (And still is.)
- fit2rule 3y ago
  [dead]
13years 3y ago
Free speech is the most fragile principle of liberty. It readily makes hypocrites out of most of its strongest defenders.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  This problem is not unique to free speech. Whoever is in power doesn't see why they should follow a principle their opponents violated when they were in power, except that then no one follows the principle and everyone is worse off for it. It's no different for privacy or due process or free association. This is why we try to put these things in constitutions for governments, and build decentralized systems with no bureaucratic chokepoints for communications networks.
  - 13years 3y ago
    That is true, but the principle of speech is violated by everyday individuals with no power who espouse such values. You could say it is simply a derivative of the mindset that nearly everyone holds "liberty for me, but not for thee". We just tend to ignore or think it is irrelevant when nobody holds power. Yes, Elon and X can never be taken seriously on free speech without a pivot towards decentralization. What is happening with X is precisely the opposite. The "everything" app only provides opportunity for more control which will result in less freedom inevitably.
    - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
      > That is true, but the principle of speech is violated by everyday individuals with no power who espouse such values. The same is true of anything else. People demand their privacy and then look through their partner's phone etc. > We just tend to ignore or think it is irrelevant when nobody holds power. "Nobody holds power over others" is an impossible perfection but getting closer to it is a primary goal of a good society. > Yes, Elon and X can never be taken seriously on free speech without a pivot towards decentralization. What is happening with X is precisely the opposite. The "everything" app only provides opportunity for more control which will result in less freedom inevitably. "Everything app" is some kind of marketing BS. Is the same app supposed to protect your anonymity and do your taxes? Hold your medical records and implement opaque buggy video game anti-cheat systems? That is either a farce or a dystopia. But in practice he probably just means they're going to add some Tesla integration or cryptocurrency thing to Twitter and then people can take it or leave it.
gadders 3y ago
[flagged]
- pavel_lishin 3y ago
  [citation needed]
  - gadders 3y ago
    Lol. Have you been in a news blackout for the last year? Denying it at this point is equivalent to being a flat earther or something. Read the Twitter Files from Tabibi, Weiss, Shellenberger etc. The evidence is all there.
    - zzzeek 3y ago
      don't you mean the X Files? It certainly fits, a show all about fictionalized conspiracies
      - gadders 3y ago
        So all those twitter and government agencies that sent emails saying they were doing it were.. what? Cosplaying and writing fictional emails for LOLs?
        ryneandal 3y ago
        > To date, not a single document revealed has shown what people now falsely believe: that the US government and Twitter were working together to “censor” people based on their political viewpoints. Literally none of that has been shown at all. Instead, what’s been shown is that Twitter had a competent trust & safety team that debated tough questions around how to apply policies for users on their platform and did not seem at all politically motivated in their decisions. https://www.techdirt.com/2023/06/05/twitter-admits-in-court-filing-elon-musk-is-simply-wrong-about-government-interference-at-twitter/ https://www.techdirt.com/2023/06/05/twitter-admits-in-court-...
goodbyesf 3y ago
Experience has shown that people who scream 'free speech' just mean 'my free speech only'. Doesn't matter whether it's left or right, rich or poor, educated or uneducated, When the 'liberals' were trying to push their agenda, they screamed 'free speech'. Once they succeeded, they pushed censorship everywhere. Elon was screaming 'free speech' at twitter. Once he got control, did he allow free speech? Of course not. He just introduced his version of censorship. Hypocrisy is part of human nature.
caesil 3y ago
I'm surprised when I see a comment ascribing this to Elon deleting things upvoted higher than the comments that explain this is a normal part of how Community Notes work for so-so notes.
- nonfamous 3y ago
  I'm a member of Community Notes and while it's common for an unpublished note to be downranked by members, I have never before seen an example of a published note (visible to all Twitter/X users) later be withdrawn from visibility. In fact, I don't think there's even a process for Community Notes members to make that happen.
  - caesil 3y ago
    I'm also a member of Community Notes and I've seen it several times, as well as explanations from Twitter staff that this is how it works (this was pre-Elon).

I’m surprised when I see people uncritically repeating the claim that Twitter now aims for “free speech.” It’s clear that was never true and always meant “Speech Elon wants to allow.”

andersa 3y ago

It was always about the right wing kind of free speech - free to harass and insult people, freedom from consequences.

nxx788 3y ago
And freedom to "censor" speech they don't like.
- gadders 3y ago
  When did he do that?
  - littlestymaar 3y ago
    Links to Mastodon, ElonJet, the day he banned a dozen of journalists[1], etc. [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/technology/twitter-suspends-journalist-accounts-elon-musk.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/technology/twitter-suspen...
  - nxx788 3y ago
    There are several instances of left wing folks being banned, he stated that "cis" will be disallowed on the platform, he's removed tweets at the behest of governments like the Saudis, and this post is literally about text disappearing, lol. It's not hard to find instances. Note, I think it's fine for companies to moderate speech on their platforms. No objections there. Just don't simultaneously claim you are some sort of free speech absolutist.
    - slily 3y ago
      [flagged]
    - pessimizer 3y ago
      > There are several instances of left wing folks being banned You understand that you were asked for one, right? This is not one, this is a vague claim being repeated. > he stated that "cis" will be disallowed on the platform No, he didn't. He said that "cis" being thrown as an insult to people who didn't wish to be called "cis" wouldn't automatically be discounted as harassment. Maybe I'm wrong about this - can you find a single person that was banned or censored by twitter for saying "cis?" > It's not hard to find instances. If it's too hard for you to do, why do you expect others to believe you when you say this?
      - nxx788 3y ago
        [dead]
    - fit2rule 3y ago
      [dead]
mywittyname 3y ago
Don't forget -- freedom from having to hear left-wing ideologies or about anything uncomfortable.
- ben_w 3y ago
  Left or right, anarchic or authoritarian, theocratic (of any flavour) or atheist, populist or technocratic, radical or conservative, Apollonian or Dionysian. There's more ways to be outside the Overton window, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy.
- willcipriano 3y ago
  So reverse Reddit?
- pessimizer 3y ago
  On what planet were liberal voices being censored in any way on twitter? Left-wingers were being banned because the liberals that filled their responses with invective, invitations for them to kill themselves, and appeals that they be arrested were mass reporting them.
bko 3y ago
Right because that's objectionable speech. You don't need to worry about non-objectionable speech because no one would care to censor it. I don't know what you mean by freedom on consequences. I guess a consequence of speech could be to get your account banned? If anything Twitter leaving up your objectionable content would result in more likely conferences of being fired or something.
- thelopa 3y ago
  And yet, Elon has decided that a term used in academic medical research for nearly a century, “cisgender”, is a slur and banned from the platform. Funny how he wants to protect objectionable speech that aligns with his political view while restricting “objectionable” speech that doesn’t.
  - lathiat 3y ago
    From Wikipedia, while the concept has been discussed since at least 1914 the actual term cisgender has apparently only been used since 1994: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisgender https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisgender
    - thelopa 3y ago
      Cisgender is recent, but it’s also primarily used to serve as the counter to transgender. To understand “cisgender”, it’s useful to study the history of “transgender”. Transgender was introduced as a term because it encompassed a larger group of people and avoided the stigma surrounding “transsexual”. Transsexual has a history dating back about a hundred years. Since “trans-“ and “cis-“ are antonym prefixes, once you have transsexual, you have cissexual. For the purposes of Elon’s rule, it doesn’t matter whether it’s CISsexual or CISgender, he objects to “cis”.
      - fenimi 3y ago
        One reason why many people, particularly feminist women, find "cisgender" a disagreeable term is because it's a linguistic concession that makes it more difficult to argue for the rights of actual female women, as it implicitly redefines "woman" to include males and "man" to include females.
rayiner 3y ago
[flagged]
- tedunangst 3y ago
  And pics of his wiener!
pessimizer 3y ago
> It was always about the right wing kind of free speech It was always about the kind of speech that was being banned. Movement Democrats like to think of themselves as left-wing, so everything that opposes their party becomes right-wing, including people to the left of them. Movement Democrats weren't being banned for spreading misinformation, they were being encouraged. > free to harass and insult people, freedom from consequences. There were only consequences on one side with old twitter.
- archagon 3y ago
  One side was far more unruly than the other. (And still is.)
fit2rule 3y ago
[dead]

13years 3y ago

Free speech is the most fragile principle of liberty. It readily makes hypocrites out of most of its strongest defenders.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago
This problem is not unique to free speech. Whoever is in power doesn't see why they should follow a principle their opponents violated when they were in power, except that then no one follows the principle and everyone is worse off for it. It's no different for privacy or due process or free association. This is why we try to put these things in constitutions for governments, and build decentralized systems with no bureaucratic chokepoints for communications networks.
- 13years 3y ago
  That is true, but the principle of speech is violated by everyday individuals with no power who espouse such values. You could say it is simply a derivative of the mindset that nearly everyone holds "liberty for me, but not for thee". We just tend to ignore or think it is irrelevant when nobody holds power. Yes, Elon and X can never be taken seriously on free speech without a pivot towards decentralization. What is happening with X is precisely the opposite. The "everything" app only provides opportunity for more control which will result in less freedom inevitably.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    > That is true, but the principle of speech is violated by everyday individuals with no power who espouse such values. The same is true of anything else. People demand their privacy and then look through their partner's phone etc. > We just tend to ignore or think it is irrelevant when nobody holds power. "Nobody holds power over others" is an impossible perfection but getting closer to it is a primary goal of a good society. > Yes, Elon and X can never be taken seriously on free speech without a pivot towards decentralization. What is happening with X is precisely the opposite. The "everything" app only provides opportunity for more control which will result in less freedom inevitably. "Everything app" is some kind of marketing BS. Is the same app supposed to protect your anonymity and do your taxes? Hold your medical records and implement opaque buggy video game anti-cheat systems? That is either a farce or a dystopia. But in practice he probably just means they're going to add some Tesla integration or cryptocurrency thing to Twitter and then people can take it or leave it.

gadders 3y ago

[flagged]

pavel_lishin 3y ago
[citation needed]
- gadders 3y ago
  Lol. Have you been in a news blackout for the last year? Denying it at this point is equivalent to being a flat earther or something. Read the Twitter Files from Tabibi, Weiss, Shellenberger etc. The evidence is all there.
  - zzzeek 3y ago
    don't you mean the X Files? It certainly fits, a show all about fictionalized conspiracies
    - gadders 3y ago
      So all those twitter and government agencies that sent emails saying they were doing it were.. what? Cosplaying and writing fictional emails for LOLs?
      - ryneandal 3y ago
        > To date, not a single document revealed has shown what people now falsely believe: that the US government and Twitter were working together to “censor” people based on their political viewpoints. Literally none of that has been shown at all. Instead, what’s been shown is that Twitter had a competent trust & safety team that debated tough questions around how to apply policies for users on their platform and did not seem at all politically motivated in their decisions. https://www.techdirt.com/2023/06/05/twitter-admits-in-court-filing-elon-musk-is-simply-wrong-about-government-interference-at-twitter/ https://www.techdirt.com/2023/06/05/twitter-admits-in-court-...

goodbyesf 3y ago

Experience has shown that people who scream 'free speech' just mean 'my free speech only'. Doesn't matter whether it's left or right, rich or poor, educated or uneducated, When the 'liberals' were trying to push their agenda, they screamed 'free speech'. Once they succeeded, they pushed censorship everywhere. Elon was screaming 'free speech' at twitter. Once he got control, did he allow free speech? Of course not. He just introduced his version of censorship. Hypocrisy is part of human nature.

caesil 3y ago

I'm surprised when I see a comment ascribing this to Elon deleting things upvoted higher than the comments that explain this is a normal part of how Community Notes work for so-so notes.

nonfamous 3y ago
I'm a member of Community Notes and while it's common for an unpublished note to be downranked by members, I have never before seen an example of a published note (visible to all Twitter/X users) later be withdrawn from visibility. In fact, I don't think there's even a process for Community Notes members to make that happen.
- caesil 3y ago
  I'm also a member of Community Notes and I've seen it several times, as well as explanations from Twitter staff that this is how it works (this was pre-Elon).