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Free speech is all that matters. Musk is not perfect by any means here but he is better than the rest. He is exporting the 1st amendment to us nations who don't

Free speech is all that matters. Musk is not perfect by any means here but he is better than the rest. He is exporting the 1st amendment to us nations who don't get to experience such freedoms. Which is what Twitter should have been doing, instead of kowtowing to the likes of the German and Saudi govts among others...

kristiandupont 2y ago
But Musk doesn't care about free speech, he is actively and eagerly suppressing it as well, just for the other team.
- namaria 2y ago
  That man will say anything, I don't know why anyone would pay attention to it.
- itsoktocry 2y ago
  Yes, no one is truly "unbiased" or without opinions. This is not new. But giving the "other team" a voice (my team, in some ways) is valuable, and we aren't going to give it up easily. And please, don't point to the fact that there are right-wing loons on Twitter, because there are crazies from all sides all over the internet.
  - kristiandupont 2y ago
    >we aren't going to give it up easily. Sure, I get that. Just stop pretending that it's about principle, then!
rixed 2y ago
Not sure X posture against censure is to be taken seriously though. From Al Jazeera: > In India, he agreed with an order imposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take down accounts and posts related to a farmers’ protest that swept through the country in February, their demands including guaranteed prices for their produce and debt waivers. (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/31/brazil-moves-to-block-access-to-musks-x-amid-disinformation-row https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/31/brazil-moves-to-blo...)
- mikrotikker 2y ago
  Not sure Al Jazeera is to be taken seriously.
kstenerud 2y ago
Free speech is a dog whistle. We can't have actual "free speech" in the pure sense of the term (just like we can't have pure democracy) because it would erode public confidence and destroy our democratic nations in the process. And there are outside actors currently working hard to ensure that this happens, because they want a return to the old imperial world order (where powerful nations capture territory and expand, and weaker nations die at their hands and are colonized).
- FollowingTheDao 2y ago
  > Free speech is a dog whistle. We can't have actual "free speech" in the pure sense of the term If you are in the U.S I am sorry you have this take on free speech, because it is distorted. Free speech is defined by law and the law is clear. Freedom of speech means the free and public expression of opinions without censorship, interference and restraint by the government.
  - bigstrat2003 2y ago
    That is untrue and a very frustrating error (because it's so common). Freedom of speech is an ideal that one should be able to speak their mind without retaliation. The First Amendment is the law which guarantees freedom of speech with respect to the government. The two are not the same, and private actors can (and often do) violate freedom of speech.
- klrmvn 2y ago
  It is sad that free speech became a dog whistle. Post WW2 up to at least 2000 free speech was a strong position of the left, Noam Chomsky being one of the most prominent examples. Musk isn't hard right. There is a lot of overlap positions between him and Bill Clinton (the original one from the 1990s, I do not know what he says now), except that Musk is anti-war and obviously talks like he was on Usenet. I can't understand that software engineers, who vigorously defended free speech and also the somewhat trollish communication style up to at least 2010, came to be assimilated and reprogrammed by their employers. Even Zuckerberg now backpedals and says that Covid censorship and suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story was a mistake.
notahacker 2y ago
According to its own statistics, Musk's Twitter complied with 83% of government takedown requests compared with 50% in the year before it was taken over, and he's found plenty of novel grounds for kicking people off Twitter for things which annoy him. Obviously for people whose idea of freedom of speech begins and ends at actively promoting vice signalling in regimes which have some degree of speech protection whilst doing exactly what an autocrat like Erdogan asks because "you can't go beyond the laws of a country", Musk represents an improvement, but that doesn't have anything to do with promoting First Amendment ideology overseas.
dspillett 2y ago
> Musk is not perfect by any means Musk is not perfect by any means wrt free speech. His version of being a free speech absolutist is that people who agree with him should absolutely have the right to free speech.
- bluescrn 2y ago
  > His version of being a free speech absolutist is that people who agree with him should absolutely have the right to free speech. So he's merely an equal and opposite reaction to what the other tribe have been doing for ages? He didn't fundamentally change Twitter. He bought a powerful propaganda tool/weapon and aimed it in the opposite direction. (I suppose he's also using it as his own personal megaphone, whereas the previous owners would merely ensure that chosen voices were amplified/suppressed rather than using their own voices directly) Not sure how we start to approach some sort of disarmament process when it comes to these propaganda weapons, though.
  - dspillett 2y ago
    > So he's merely an equal and opposite reaction > He bought a powerful propaganda tool/weapon and aimed it in the opposite direction. I'd say not. I don't think twitter itself wasn't aimed directly in any direction before Musk, other than “away from where firing may cause twitter problems”. They operated from a position of cowardice rather than political bias. Sometimes this was towards the right because there was a fairly centrist or centre-left¹ bias online, but it often very much wasn't. For a clear case of them not aiming at the right, look at them leaving Trump and many like him alone at a time when they were flagrantly going against twitter policies, but slapping them for that would have caused too much grief back at them. It may be a complete coincidence², but Musk first started getting really serious about taking over around the time twitter started cracking down on that group (having joked about it prior to that IIRC, though it did take over a full year for his first actual takeover bid to happen). ---- [1] These definitions are difficult. Often what America seems to see as centre-left or even actually moderate left, is things that many over this side of the big pond would see as more centrist. [2] Though I strongly suspect not.
latexr 2y ago
Twitter has demonstrably kowtowed more to authoritarian governments under Musk. https://www.vice.com/en/article/elon-musk-censors-twitter-in-turkey/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/elon-musk-censors-twitter-in... And he regularly bans journalists who don’t lick his boots. https://newrepublic.com/post/177936/twitter-suspends-accounts-journalists-critical-elon-musk https://newrepublic.com/post/177936/twitter-suspends-account... Stop listening to what he says and pay attention to what he does. You’re being swindled. > He is exporting the 1st amendment to us nations who don't get to experience such freedoms. This is particularly absurd. “The first amendment” isn’t a paragon of freedom unique to the US. And it only applies to government censorship. You can’t “export it” to other countries by means of a social network.
- itsoktocry 2y ago
  >Stop listening to what he says and pay attention to what he does. You’re being swindled. I am paying attention to what he does. I use Twitter for hours every day. The point is less about "free speech", because of course you're right, this is Musk's version of free speech. But the real issue to the left is that he's allowing speech that, in recent history, has been considered "dissenting" or restricted. The fact that in the past week we have had Zuck come out and say Facebook was pressured to censor COVID19 materials and that we have mainstream politicians and bureaucrats calling to THROW MUSK IN JAIL is insane. Utterly insane. The people behind this are getting found out, and there will be political consequences.

kristiandupont 2y ago

But Musk doesn't care about free speech, he is actively and eagerly suppressing it as well, just for the other team.

namaria 2y ago
That man will say anything, I don't know why anyone would pay attention to it.
itsoktocry 2y ago
Yes, no one is truly "unbiased" or without opinions. This is not new. But giving the "other team" a voice (my team, in some ways) is valuable, and we aren't going to give it up easily. And please, don't point to the fact that there are right-wing loons on Twitter, because there are crazies from all sides all over the internet.
- kristiandupont 2y ago
  >we aren't going to give it up easily. Sure, I get that. Just stop pretending that it's about principle, then!

rixed 2y ago

Not sure X posture against censure is to be taken seriously though. From Al Jazeera: > In India, he agreed with an order imposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take down accounts and posts related to a farmers’ protest that swept through the country in February, their demands including guaranteed prices for their produce and debt waivers. (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/31/brazil-moves-to-block-access-to-musks-x-amid-disinformation-row https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/31/brazil-moves-to-blo...)

mikrotikker 2y ago
Not sure Al Jazeera is to be taken seriously.

kstenerud 2y ago

Free speech is a dog whistle. We can't have actual "free speech" in the pure sense of the term (just like we can't have pure democracy) because it would erode public confidence and destroy our democratic nations in the process. And there are outside actors currently working hard to ensure that this happens, because they want a return to the old imperial world order (where powerful nations capture territory and expand, and weaker nations die at their hands and are colonized).

FollowingTheDao 2y ago
> Free speech is a dog whistle. We can't have actual "free speech" in the pure sense of the term If you are in the U.S I am sorry you have this take on free speech, because it is distorted. Free speech is defined by law and the law is clear. Freedom of speech means the free and public expression of opinions without censorship, interference and restraint by the government.
- bigstrat2003 2y ago
  That is untrue and a very frustrating error (because it's so common). Freedom of speech is an ideal that one should be able to speak their mind without retaliation. The First Amendment is the law which guarantees freedom of speech with respect to the government. The two are not the same, and private actors can (and often do) violate freedom of speech.
klrmvn 2y ago
It is sad that free speech became a dog whistle. Post WW2 up to at least 2000 free speech was a strong position of the left, Noam Chomsky being one of the most prominent examples. Musk isn't hard right. There is a lot of overlap positions between him and Bill Clinton (the original one from the 1990s, I do not know what he says now), except that Musk is anti-war and obviously talks like he was on Usenet. I can't understand that software engineers, who vigorously defended free speech and also the somewhat trollish communication style up to at least 2010, came to be assimilated and reprogrammed by their employers. Even Zuckerberg now backpedals and says that Covid censorship and suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story was a mistake.

notahacker 2y ago

According to its own statistics, Musk's Twitter complied with 83% of government takedown requests compared with 50% in the year before it was taken over, and he's found plenty of novel grounds for kicking people off Twitter for things which annoy him. Obviously for people whose idea of freedom of speech begins and ends at actively promoting vice signalling in regimes which have some degree of speech protection whilst doing exactly what an autocrat like Erdogan asks because "you can't go beyond the laws of a country", Musk represents an improvement, but that doesn't have anything to do with promoting First Amendment ideology overseas.

dspillett 2y ago

> Musk is not perfect by any means Musk is not perfect by any means wrt free speech. His version of being a free speech absolutist is that people who agree with him should absolutely have the right to free speech.

bluescrn 2y ago
> His version of being a free speech absolutist is that people who agree with him should absolutely have the right to free speech. So he's merely an equal and opposite reaction to what the other tribe have been doing for ages? He didn't fundamentally change Twitter. He bought a powerful propaganda tool/weapon and aimed it in the opposite direction. (I suppose he's also using it as his own personal megaphone, whereas the previous owners would merely ensure that chosen voices were amplified/suppressed rather than using their own voices directly) Not sure how we start to approach some sort of disarmament process when it comes to these propaganda weapons, though.
- dspillett 2y ago
  > So he's merely an equal and opposite reaction > He bought a powerful propaganda tool/weapon and aimed it in the opposite direction. I'd say not. I don't think twitter itself wasn't aimed directly in any direction before Musk, other than “away from where firing may cause twitter problems”. They operated from a position of cowardice rather than political bias. Sometimes this was towards the right because there was a fairly centrist or centre-left¹ bias online, but it often very much wasn't. For a clear case of them not aiming at the right, look at them leaving Trump and many like him alone at a time when they were flagrantly going against twitter policies, but slapping them for that would have caused too much grief back at them. It may be a complete coincidence², but Musk first started getting really serious about taking over around the time twitter started cracking down on that group (having joked about it prior to that IIRC, though it did take over a full year for his first actual takeover bid to happen). ---- [1] These definitions are difficult. Often what America seems to see as centre-left or even actually moderate left, is things that many over this side of the big pond would see as more centrist. [2] Though I strongly suspect not.

latexr 2y ago

Twitter has demonstrably kowtowed more to authoritarian governments under Musk. https://www.vice.com/en/article/elon-musk-censors-twitter-in-turkey/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/elon-musk-censors-twitter-in... And he regularly bans journalists who don’t lick his boots. https://newrepublic.com/post/177936/twitter-suspends-accounts-journalists-critical-elon-musk https://newrepublic.com/post/177936/twitter-suspends-account... Stop listening to what he says and pay attention to what he does. You’re being swindled. > He is exporting the 1st amendment to us nations who don't get to experience such freedoms. This is particularly absurd. “The first amendment” isn’t a paragon of freedom unique to the US. And it only applies to government censorship. You can’t “export it” to other countries by means of a social network.

itsoktocry 2y ago
>Stop listening to what he says and pay attention to what he does. You’re being swindled. I am paying attention to what he does. I use Twitter for hours every day. The point is less about "free speech", because of course you're right, this is Musk's version of free speech. But the real issue to the left is that he's allowing speech that, in recent history, has been considered "dissenting" or restricted. The fact that in the past week we have had Zuck come out and say Facebook was pressured to censor COVID19 materials and that we have mainstream politicians and bureaucrats calling to THROW MUSK IN JAIL is insane. Utterly insane. The people behind this are getting found out, and there will be political consequences.