8 ms·

Is this a principled defense of free speech or a case of a man treating ostensibly independent companies as divisions of his personal conglomerate?

r0ckarong 2y ago
The only speech this man wants to be free is his own.
- teekert 2y ago
  Do you have any examples where he blocks other people's speech?
  - timeon 2y ago
    For example: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65609123 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65609123
  - defrost 2y ago
    Opposition parties and activists in India and Turkey - both at the request of the governments there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41387061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41387061 There are other examples, those two should suffice.
    - teekert 2y ago
      He's selective wrt which governments he is giving into, he's not blocking anything himself. Would you rather: He obeys all governments? Obeys no governments?
      - defrost 2y ago
        You asked for examples where he has blocked peoples speech. I provided examples of where he has blocked peoples speech.
        teekert 2y ago
        Sorry, I was asking in context of OP "The only speech this man wants to be free is his own.", seems like there is no evidence of him bringing this statement into effect, I was looking for such evidence, as in: He blocked someone by himself for himself.
        defrost 2y ago
        It appears that Musk is currently aligned with more extreme right wing conservative voices, he appears to tweet and retweet in their support, he blocks the oposition of such governments in Turkey and India, he more recently seems to support both Trump and Bolsonaro, both right wing election deniers who encouraged attempts to overthrow elections. I have no particular insight into Musk, I speak only to the observation that he appears to support some voices over others and as such that is "his voice" - those who say things he supports and whose opponents he blocks.
      - EasyMark 2y ago
        I think the point is that he shouldn’t lie about selective “free speech” in Brazil he seems all for it to the point of getting kicked out of the country. With more friendly regimes he is happy to censor other voices than the official “state”voice. I think people are looking for consistency and honesty rather than the charade his currently projecting.
        dazilcher 2y ago
        So he's a hypocrite. Like most people are. Doesn't change the fact that in this case he happens to be fighting a good fight.
  - ofrzeta 2y ago
    How about this? https://newrepublic.com/post/177936/twitter-suspends-accounts-journalists-critical-elon-musk https://newrepublic.com/post/177936/twitter-suspends-account... "This is at least the fifth time that X, under Musk, has purged accounts that are the slightest bit critical of him, his friends, or causes he supports"
    - teekert 2y ago
      Ok yeah, that's pretty bad indeed.
    - mike_hearn 2y ago
      That article says the suspensions lasted only a few hours. In no way were they "purged", and the first three named accounts all are highly active. MintPress News journalist: https://twitter.com/alanrmacleod https://twitter.com/alanrmacleod (active, posted in the last hour) Intercept journalist: https://twitter.com/kenklippenstein https://twitter.com/kenklippenstein (active, posted 46 minutes ago) Texas Observer journalist: https://x.com/stevanzetti https://x.com/stevanzetti (active, posted 2 hours ago) If these are the best examples of Musk engaging in censorship then he must be doing a very fair job indeed! A more likely explanation is that the suspensions were related to anti-botting activity, as they came back from suspension with fewer followers than before. Journalists buying Twitter followers is not unheard of, unfortunately: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/journalists-struggle-explain-why-they-bought-fake-twitter-followers-n843871 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/journalists-struggle-ex...
  - r0ckarong 2y ago
    https://freespeechproject.georgetown.edu/tracker-entries/elon-musk-fires-twitter-employees-for-criticizing-him/ https://freespeechproject.georgetown.edu/tracker-entries/elo... https://electrek.co/2022/12/20/tesla-wont-tolerate-dissent-against-elon-musk-fired-two-employees/ https://electrek.co/2022/12/20/tesla-wont-tolerate-dissent-a... https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-staff-slam-elon-musk-did-you-bother-to-learn-2022-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-staff-slam-elon-musk... https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/former-ceo-tesla-criticized-musk-he-easily-angry-likes-fire-employees https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/former-ceo-tesla-criticized-m... Oh wait, you mean suppress people ON TWITTER? This is an entirely different search query.
danw1979 2y ago
I think it’s probably both.
seydor 2y ago
It's one thing leading to the other. It is what it is. Are the judge's (possibly illegal) moves motivated by interpretation of the law or by personal vendetta? Hard to tell , but i'm glad for less censorship.
- pavlov 2y ago
  As the past two years of Twitter's evolution have shown, more power to Elon Musk actually leads to more censorship. He's running the social media service like a kingdom where lèse-majesté is the gravest offense, promoting himself and blocking any topics that he doesn't personally like (including the existence of his own daughter who posts on Threads now). Old Twitter had flawed content moderation processes, but at least there was a process.
  - seydor 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - hkt 2y ago
      Violent?
      - seydor 2y ago
        A judges' orders are delivered via the threat or the use of violence.
      - ivewonyoung 2y ago
        Here's some examples of the judge's overreach from a 2022 NYT article. https://archive.is/plQFT https://archive.is/plQFT Police showing up at 6am to search your house because you happened to be in whatsapp group where someone else joked about a coup is definitely violence.
    - sebazzz 2y ago
      There is freedom of opinion, not freedom of speech.
piva00 2y ago
The court orders for Twitter in Brazil were way more tame and based on judicial procedures than orders that Elon followed from Turkey and other less democratic countries. There's no visible rhyme or reason why he's fighting the Brazilian courts much harder than orders from other less democratic countries, something else is happening unrelated to free speech or any lip service he pays to.
- boesboes 2y ago
  > other less democratic countries That's your rhyme and reason if you ask me, he just loooooves (wannabe) dictators
- seydor 2y ago
  He may be doing it for personal ego reasons. But OTOH it is pointless to 'fight' the judicial system of e.g. Russia, or flawed democracies like Turkey which stage a coup. OTOH brazil is somewhat more democratic and it makes sense to appeal to their democratic institutions. <Mandatory "i don't like elon" to avoid flagging />
  - piva00 2y ago
    > But OTOH it is pointless to 'fight' the judicial system of e.g. Russia, or flawed democracies like Turkey which stage a coup. OTOH brazil is somewhat more democratic and it makes sense to appeal to their democratic institutions. Even when giving Elon some leeway to have reasonable doubt I still believe the argument falls flat when he attempts to coat it with his "free speech defender" persona against Brazil but not against dictatorships. If he's willing to challenge Brazilian courts to the point where Twitter becomes unavailable to the public why wouldn't he do the same in places with much less freedom of speech? It simply doesn't make sense using his public rationale, if he was a free speech absolutist he wouldn't allow Twitter to exist in places where free speech is impossible and is gagged by dictators' court orders. He's fighting Brazilian courts way too hard given his stance on Turkey, Saudi Arabia, etc. Is he a puppet? Has he ulterior motives in Brazil? We can't really know from public information but that there's something fishy and wrong going under wraps, it is.
- 2y ago
teekert 2y ago
Looks to me like Brazil is treating ostensibly independent companies as divisions of Musks personal conglomerate. They blocked the funds of Starlink because of X related business. So why are you saying this?
- Beatus 2y ago
  Wasn’t it because Starlink refused to implement the court ordered ban of X?
hereme888 2y ago
The former
fmajid 2y ago
You will find Musk's pretend "free-speech absolutism" is highly selective, and only applies to far-right voices. He's repeatedly censored his critics and journalists on his platform.
- 6nf 2y ago
  Example?
  - malermeister 2y ago
    https://theintercept.com/2022/11/29/elon-musk-twitter-andy-ngo-antifascist/ https://theintercept.com/2022/11/29/elon-musk-twitter-andy-n...
    - mike_hearn 2y ago
      X and US law both have rules against incitement of imminent violence. It's one of the only exceptions to the First Amendment. X extends that to making violent threats in general. Those accounts were doing the latter and sometimes the former. The @vps_reports account named in the first tweet in your story is a good example. The Intercept claims they were suspended for engaging in "journalism", "organizing" and "documenting extremism". X claims they were suspended for making violent threats. If we follow links a bit further we see what sort of tweets @vps_reports was making: https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1596074770193604609/photo/1 https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1596074770193604609/pho... > "One last thing. ChayaRaichik10 should live in fear for the rest of her days. It's only fair. Put the PHOBIA in her transphobia." (there are several more examples like that) It's not surprising that such people would fall afoul of an anti-threat rule if enforced fairly. Pre-Musk, people like that could make violent threats on Twitter, or even coordinate mob violence there, as long as they were threatening right wing people. Musk fixed that. The Intercept is being dishonest.
throw0101d 2y ago
> Is this a principled defense of free speech or a case of a man treating ostensibly independent companies as divisions of his personal conglomerate? Musk was happy to block Twitter content for Erdoğan before the 2023 Turkish election,[0][1] and block Ukraine from using it to hit the Russian navy.[2] [0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/05/musk-defends-enabling-turkish-censorship-on-twitter-calling-it-his-choice/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/05/musk-defends-ena... [1] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/05/twitter-musk-censors-turkey-election-erdogan https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/05/twitter-musk-censors... [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/musk-stopped-ukraine-attack-russian-fleet-starlink-rcna104019 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/musk-stopped-ukraine-atta...
- postepowanieadm 2y ago
  Ukrainians used twitter to hit the russian navy?
  - jowea 2y ago
    Previous poster meant Starlink usage by Ukraine.

r0ckarong 2y ago

The only speech this man wants to be free is his own.

teekert 2y ago
Do you have any examples where he blocks other people's speech?
- timeon 2y ago
  For example: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65609123 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65609123
- defrost 2y ago
  Opposition parties and activists in India and Turkey - both at the request of the governments there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41387061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41387061 There are other examples, those two should suffice.
  - teekert 2y ago
    He's selective wrt which governments he is giving into, he's not blocking anything himself. Would you rather: He obeys all governments? Obeys no governments?
    - defrost 2y ago
      You asked for examples where he has blocked peoples speech. I provided examples of where he has blocked peoples speech.
      - teekert 2y ago
        Sorry, I was asking in context of OP "The only speech this man wants to be free is his own.", seems like there is no evidence of him bringing this statement into effect, I was looking for such evidence, as in: He blocked someone by himself for himself.
        defrost 2y ago
        It appears that Musk is currently aligned with more extreme right wing conservative voices, he appears to tweet and retweet in their support, he blocks the oposition of such governments in Turkey and India, he more recently seems to support both Trump and Bolsonaro, both right wing election deniers who encouraged attempts to overthrow elections. I have no particular insight into Musk, I speak only to the observation that he appears to support some voices over others and as such that is "his voice" - those who say things he supports and whose opponents he blocks.
    - EasyMark 2y ago
      I think the point is that he shouldn’t lie about selective “free speech” in Brazil he seems all for it to the point of getting kicked out of the country. With more friendly regimes he is happy to censor other voices than the official “state”voice. I think people are looking for consistency and honesty rather than the charade his currently projecting.
      - dazilcher 2y ago
        So he's a hypocrite. Like most people are. Doesn't change the fact that in this case he happens to be fighting a good fight.
- ofrzeta 2y ago
  How about this? https://newrepublic.com/post/177936/twitter-suspends-accounts-journalists-critical-elon-musk https://newrepublic.com/post/177936/twitter-suspends-account... "This is at least the fifth time that X, under Musk, has purged accounts that are the slightest bit critical of him, his friends, or causes he supports"
  - teekert 2y ago
    Ok yeah, that's pretty bad indeed.
  - mike_hearn 2y ago
    That article says the suspensions lasted only a few hours. In no way were they "purged", and the first three named accounts all are highly active. MintPress News journalist: https://twitter.com/alanrmacleod https://twitter.com/alanrmacleod (active, posted in the last hour) Intercept journalist: https://twitter.com/kenklippenstein https://twitter.com/kenklippenstein (active, posted 46 minutes ago) Texas Observer journalist: https://x.com/stevanzetti https://x.com/stevanzetti (active, posted 2 hours ago) If these are the best examples of Musk engaging in censorship then he must be doing a very fair job indeed! A more likely explanation is that the suspensions were related to anti-botting activity, as they came back from suspension with fewer followers than before. Journalists buying Twitter followers is not unheard of, unfortunately: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/journalists-struggle-explain-why-they-bought-fake-twitter-followers-n843871 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/journalists-struggle-ex...
- r0ckarong 2y ago
  https://freespeechproject.georgetown.edu/tracker-entries/elon-musk-fires-twitter-employees-for-criticizing-him/ https://freespeechproject.georgetown.edu/tracker-entries/elo... https://electrek.co/2022/12/20/tesla-wont-tolerate-dissent-against-elon-musk-fired-two-employees/ https://electrek.co/2022/12/20/tesla-wont-tolerate-dissent-a... https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-staff-slam-elon-musk-did-you-bother-to-learn-2022-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-staff-slam-elon-musk... https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/former-ceo-tesla-criticized-musk-he-easily-angry-likes-fire-employees https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/former-ceo-tesla-criticized-m... Oh wait, you mean suppress people ON TWITTER? This is an entirely different search query.

danw1979 2y ago

I think it’s probably both.

seydor 2y ago

It's one thing leading to the other. It is what it is. Are the judge's (possibly illegal) moves motivated by interpretation of the law or by personal vendetta? Hard to tell , but i'm glad for less censorship.

pavlov 2y ago
As the past two years of Twitter's evolution have shown, more power to Elon Musk actually leads to more censorship. He's running the social media service like a kingdom where lèse-majesté is the gravest offense, promoting himself and blocking any topics that he doesn't personally like (including the existence of his own daughter who posts on Threads now). Old Twitter had flawed content moderation processes, but at least there was a process.
- seydor 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - hkt 2y ago
    Violent?
    - seydor 2y ago
      A judges' orders are delivered via the threat or the use of violence.
    - ivewonyoung 2y ago
      Here's some examples of the judge's overreach from a 2022 NYT article. https://archive.is/plQFT https://archive.is/plQFT Police showing up at 6am to search your house because you happened to be in whatsapp group where someone else joked about a coup is definitely violence.
  - sebazzz 2y ago
    There is freedom of opinion, not freedom of speech.

piva00 2y ago

The court orders for Twitter in Brazil were way more tame and based on judicial procedures than orders that Elon followed from Turkey and other less democratic countries. There's no visible rhyme or reason why he's fighting the Brazilian courts much harder than orders from other less democratic countries, something else is happening unrelated to free speech or any lip service he pays to.

boesboes 2y ago
> other less democratic countries That's your rhyme and reason if you ask me, he just loooooves (wannabe) dictators
seydor 2y ago
He may be doing it for personal ego reasons. But OTOH it is pointless to 'fight' the judicial system of e.g. Russia, or flawed democracies like Turkey which stage a coup. OTOH brazil is somewhat more democratic and it makes sense to appeal to their democratic institutions. <Mandatory "i don't like elon" to avoid flagging />
- piva00 2y ago
  > But OTOH it is pointless to 'fight' the judicial system of e.g. Russia, or flawed democracies like Turkey which stage a coup. OTOH brazil is somewhat more democratic and it makes sense to appeal to their democratic institutions. Even when giving Elon some leeway to have reasonable doubt I still believe the argument falls flat when he attempts to coat it with his "free speech defender" persona against Brazil but not against dictatorships. If he's willing to challenge Brazilian courts to the point where Twitter becomes unavailable to the public why wouldn't he do the same in places with much less freedom of speech? It simply doesn't make sense using his public rationale, if he was a free speech absolutist he wouldn't allow Twitter to exist in places where free speech is impossible and is gagged by dictators' court orders. He's fighting Brazilian courts way too hard given his stance on Turkey, Saudi Arabia, etc. Is he a puppet? Has he ulterior motives in Brazil? We can't really know from public information but that there's something fishy and wrong going under wraps, it is.
2y ago

teekert 2y ago

Looks to me like Brazil is treating ostensibly independent companies as divisions of Musks personal conglomerate. They blocked the funds of Starlink because of X related business. So why are you saying this?

Beatus 2y ago
Wasn’t it because Starlink refused to implement the court ordered ban of X?

hereme888 2y ago

The former

fmajid 2y ago

You will find Musk's pretend "free-speech absolutism" is highly selective, and only applies to far-right voices. He's repeatedly censored his critics and journalists on his platform.

6nf 2y ago
Example?
- malermeister 2y ago
  https://theintercept.com/2022/11/29/elon-musk-twitter-andy-ngo-antifascist/ https://theintercept.com/2022/11/29/elon-musk-twitter-andy-n...
  - mike_hearn 2y ago
    X and US law both have rules against incitement of imminent violence. It's one of the only exceptions to the First Amendment. X extends that to making violent threats in general. Those accounts were doing the latter and sometimes the former. The @vps_reports account named in the first tweet in your story is a good example. The Intercept claims they were suspended for engaging in "journalism", "organizing" and "documenting extremism". X claims they were suspended for making violent threats. If we follow links a bit further we see what sort of tweets @vps_reports was making: https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1596074770193604609/photo/1 https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1596074770193604609/pho... > "One last thing. ChayaRaichik10 should live in fear for the rest of her days. It's only fair. Put the PHOBIA in her transphobia." (there are several more examples like that) It's not surprising that such people would fall afoul of an anti-threat rule if enforced fairly. Pre-Musk, people like that could make violent threats on Twitter, or even coordinate mob violence there, as long as they were threatening right wing people. Musk fixed that. The Intercept is being dishonest.

throw0101d 2y ago

> Is this a principled defense of free speech or a case of a man treating ostensibly independent companies as divisions of his personal conglomerate? Musk was happy to block Twitter content for Erdoğan before the 2023 Turkish election,[0][1] and block Ukraine from using it to hit the Russian navy.[2] [0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/05/musk-defends-enabling-turkish-censorship-on-twitter-calling-it-his-choice/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/05/musk-defends-ena... [1] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/05/twitter-musk-censors-turkey-election-erdogan https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/05/twitter-musk-censors... [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/musk-stopped-ukraine-attack-russian-fleet-starlink-rcna104019 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/musk-stopped-ukraine-atta...

postepowanieadm 2y ago
Ukrainians used twitter to hit the russian navy?
- jowea 2y ago
  Previous poster meant Starlink usage by Ukraine.