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Remember the Arab Spring and how Twitter was hailed as a tool for the masses to fight against their oppressors? And remember how Elon bought Twitter, loudly pro

Remember the Arab Spring and how Twitter was hailed as a tool for the masses to fight against their oppressors? And remember how Elon bought Twitter, loudly proclaiming he was doing so to defend free speech? I'm mildly curious to see how X tries to justify this, but I suspect they've reached the stage where they don't even need to pretend to pay lip service to their notional values.

meibo 2y ago
They haven't had proper PR since the end of 2023. They don't respond, if it blows up you might get an one-liner Elon tweet.
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
You can also ignore any justification X gives, all the statements coming from Musk and the other tech companies and the government are untrustworthy or deceptive. But people are still hopeful in that Musk saying "free speech" actually gives them any reasing to keep using Twitter.
- abernard1 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - ta1243 2y ago
    The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer.
    - abernard1 2y ago
      Your comment is quite extraordinary as Orwell's work dealt with an unthinking bureaucracy resembling the Soviet Union. He also had the foresight to see the U.K. could be a totalitarian state. An honest assessment of the revelations of USAID spending and its funding of literally thousands of media companies via direct grants or voluntary purchases would suggest the information environment surrounding this is not entirely benign. And it would suggest that reasonable people can also dispute the pure intentions of a system that makes it almost entirely impossible to fire people, and was started as a soft power system for US foreign policy.
      - kzs0 2y ago
        But how does any of that relate to banning signal links regardless? This is an effort to reduce self-organization and solidarity between affected normal people. It isn’t just USAID, 100,000+ people are being illegally terminated across the government (probationary employees who are only allowed to be fired for “performance,” but many/most have fine reviews and/or just started). If a bunch of new people are being fired after having just moved or started new positions, why wouldn’t people try self organizing to support their coworkers who just had their lives upended?
        abernard1 2y ago
        My comment was simply in direct relation to the poster's comment about trustworthiness of government. But as to your assertion of "illegally terminated," let me provide some context. Not a single lawsuit has provided evidence of damages under law. One of the TROs has been shot down outright. This is key, as the judiciary requires law to be violated to intervene. They are not an HR department, and there are existing remedies for this in the administration. No such violations warranting legal action outside of the existing system have been shown. Not only this, they went district "judge shopping" on a Friday night, two hours prior to close. Many of these judges are now being shown with extremely inflammatory political rhetoric showing bias, and one will have articles of impeachment drawn. The circumstances surrounding this judicial action are so unprecedented, that when the Administration appealed showing evidence of fraud and illegal behavior, they "asked" the judge if they should allow it. The point of this is to show the frivolity of the suit: not only does the judiciary not determine Executive Power under Article II, they're asking the judge if the judge should take executive action to break the law. While law is subject to interpretation, it is not clear (and I do not believe) these employees are being terminated illegally, the least of which is they have yet to describe the legal circumstances under which their termination is unlawful. Unlike common wisdom, the federal judiciary is not-coequal with the Legislature and the Executive; the Supreme Court is. Article III specifies that federal courts called "inferior" courts are subject to the leisure of Congress. These courts have been disbanded twice in history and do not hold the power that popular culture thinks they do.
      - Juliate 2y ago
nailer 2y ago
[flagged]
- Majestic121 2y ago
  > Security researchers at Mysk first noticed the issue on Sunday night, Feb. 16. They reached out to me via DM and we were able to confirm the various different ways (DM, post, profile bio, etc.) that X was blocking “Signal.me” links. From the article, no they can't.
  - nailer 2y ago
    They're unlocked now with a spam warning added. Occam's razor wins again. https://x.com/JeremiahDJohns/status/1891554583756845526 https://x.com/JeremiahDJohns/status/1891554583756845526
yodsanklai 2y ago
> I'm mildly curious to see how X tries to justify this, They won't. They will say they're the champion of free speech, and that'll be enough for the fan base.
- netsharc 2y ago
  If they were actual gaslights, self-powered gaslighting would solve the world's energy issues.
- waonderer 2y ago
  "Free speech" on a centralized platform always seems fishy. One can't expect it from Elon at least. He always has extreme/polar thoughts on various subjects.
energy123 2y ago
If you capture a high enough proportion of the attention bandwidth, you cease having to answer questions or be accountable. It's quite scary how powerful this is.
bergen 2y ago
If your sycophants eat everything you'll throw at them there won't be any need for justification. Which completely baffles me. The US digital technology sector seems to be full of yes man and groupthink, and it's getting worse.
- andrepd 2y ago
  I think some people are so motivated by "hate" (for lack of a better word) they they pretty much would shoot their foot off with a sawed-off if someone told them it would "own the libs". It's like you say: there is not even need of justification, Musk is "our guy" and that's that.
- SiliconSplash 2y ago
  There is plenty of criticism of Elon Musk coming coming from both sides of the political spectrum. I am consider myself right of centre and I hear plenty of criticisms of Elon Musk coming from the right. The complaints are completely different though. The big problem with any of these discussions (especially online) is that a lot of people are intellectually lazy and assume the other-side is comprised of brain dead zealots who only support the most extreme positions.
  - SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
    I don’t think it’s quite right to say they assume it. News outlets and online platforms intentionally cultivate that idea, because in the modern era they directly optimize for engagement, and I’m substantially more likely to click on people saying or complaining about outrageous things than measured criticisms from a perspective I don’t share.
    - SiliconSplash 2y ago
      Maybe it is a bit of both. However the end result is the discourse online is frequently frames on the idea that the if you are part of Group A, then Group B is full of sycophants. I am also dubious whether I am actually talking to a real person in a lot of these discussions, but that is another discussion entirely.
madeofpalk 2y ago
They won't. They'll lie, some will buy it up and they'll cary on. This behaviour is completely consistent with what they've been doing since purchase. Why start now?
masklinn 2y ago
> I suspect they've reached the stage where they don't even need to pretend to pay lip service to their notional values. It took 6 weeks for that milk to rot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2022_Twitter_suspensions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2022_Twitter_suspensi...
- nomilk 2y ago
  X/Twitter should publicly provide a suspension reason - that would help a lot in verifying whether the account did/did not break TOS. A justification [0] of sorts is provided for the journalist suspensions: > Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2022_Twitter_suspensions#Explanation_from_Twitter_and_Musk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2022_Twitter_suspensi...
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - _heimdall 2y ago
    That's not a new problem though, platforms have been kicking people off with no clear reason for years.
    - masklinn 2y ago
      Those platforms have not, however, been billing themselves as champions of unfettered free speech before handing out arbitrary unexplained bans when their feelings got hurt or they disliked the speech.
      - _heimdall 2y ago
        Companies market themselves in ways that disagree with how the companies operate all the time. Marketing is frequently misaligned with what the company or product actually is.
murg27 2y ago
[flagged]
- sjsdaiuasgdia 2y ago
  That's because it was a nothingburger. Remember how Taibbi got an agency name wrong and used that to make a bunch of conjectures that didn't actually align to reality? If you don't, maybe you should refresh your memory.
- cheema33 2y ago
  > Remember how he exposed government meddling with twitter and everyone called it nothing burger. Please provide actual evidence of said government meddling with Twitter.
  - jasonjayr 2y ago
    IIRC, Twitter(and several other social media platforms) was asked to limit/block accounts that were spreading Covid misinformation at the height of the pandemic. You know, the kind of stuff a functioning government interested in protecting ALL of it's citizens would do. That's "heart" of this "government meddling" excuse. I would say there is all sorts of "government meddling" going on right now, with all the uncertanty and mess with all the services + departments we all rely on over the last month....
    - graemep 2y ago
      A government might want to do it for good motives, but its still a restriction on free speech. Otherwise you are appointing some group of people to decide what is "good speech" and "bad speech" and banning the latter.
  - aspenmayer 2y ago
    I can't speak to the evidence or lack thereof, but this is what they were referring to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files
- 2y ago
everdrive 2y ago
>Remember the Arab Spring and how Twitter was hailed as a tool for the masses to fight against their oppressors? The Arab spring was a populist uprising. It's not clear that there were actually positive outcomes; just increased geopolitical instability. Twitter has always been a social media platform, and definitionally it has therefore always increased extremism and populism. I find it incredibly disheartening that people think Twitter has only become a malevolent force under Musk. Musk's changes to the platform are certainly unsettling, but Twitter was _never_ a net positive for anyone.
- gman83 2y ago
  At least at the time, we thought it could be a tool for populist uprisings in authoritarian countries. Now it seems like they just want to promote populist uprisings in democratic countries.
  - everdrive 2y ago
    I'd argue it's a tool for extremism and populism everywhere; the weakest Arab governments simply crumpled first, however the same pressures are applied to all governments.
  - DrScientist 2y ago
    Isn't there a common theme though whether authoritarian or democracy? That's the tension between those in charge who think they know better ( and may well do ) and the populace. In my mind, the failure on the democracy side has been the rise and rise of managing the message, and the fall of free speaking politicians - modern political comms is positively Orwellian - in part in response to the overwearning power for certain media groups to run a negative campaign to get what they want. Politicians were cowed. If you look back at historic TV footage of politicians from 50 years ago - the level, subtlety and honesty of debate is much better. Not sure how you fix it - the money+internet allows anybody to try and control the democratic process - but part of it has to be politicians being braver in speech and deed. In speech, for example, Bernie Sanders didn't shy away from owning the word socialist - when he first came to prominence it was used as an unthinking label that the media thought should instantly disqualify him - but instead he took the opportunity to re-define it. In deed - rather than clamp down on the voices of the many, the government should be looking to curtail the power of the few - Elon Musk is currently dismantling government and while I'm sure there is lots to fix, the reason democratic governments and laws exist is to challenge and constrain the power of the few ( every one is equal before the law ).
BSDobelix 2y ago
[flagged]
xzjis 2y ago
"Freedom of speech" on Twitter is nothing more than Newspeak for censorship. In reality, the goal has always been to silence minorities who already struggle to express themselves, while allowing hate, racist, homophobic, and transphobic language to run rampant. It is a form of indirect censorship, through the self-censorship of minorities who fear speaking out. Then comes direct censorship, where certain terms or links are banned.
- glowiefedposter 2y ago
  [flagged]
- concordDance 2y ago
  > In reality, the goal has always been to silence minorities who already struggle to express themselves This particular clause seens very unlikely. One could want an increase in racism and homophobia on a platform without specifically wanting there to be less black people (for example) speaking out. That the -isms cause said people to speak up less would likely be a (pleasant?) side effect rather than the primary goal.
  - atoav 2y ago
    It is very simple: 1. Inherited rich kids like Elon often have a strong feeling that they are better then the rest of humanity. 2. But it turns out if you are a leech on society like that sooner or later people stop accepting that (remember: he pays less in taxes and gains more in government subsides than most people) 3. So in order for people not to turn against you sooner or later you need to keep them split into subsections that are in conflict with each other. The more split they are, the more wealth you can extract. That is the age old strategy of divide and conquer and if you ever wondered why your political system seemed to be split down the middle 50:50, that is your answer: people with money profit from it being so.
    - concordDance 2y ago
      Even granting that, you would want MORE LGBTQ+/minority speech. The more energy people spend arguing with each other about culture war, the more dividee they are and the less they have for trying to change inequality. Trying to silence LGBTQ+ etc people goes directly against the goal you posit.
bboygravity 2y ago
Maybe it was a mistake?
- rsynnott 2y ago
  Twitter appears to make a lot of mistakes of this sort. Tsk. Very careless. I mean, who knows, they may claim that; I believe they did after the period where they banned people for using the dread word 'mastodon': https://fortune.com/2022/12/18/twitter-suspends-paul-graham-venture-capitalist-supportive-of-elon-musk-after-he-tweets-about-mastodon-link/ https://fortune.com/2022/12/18/twitter-suspends-paul-graham-... But c'mon, now, if you believe that you'll believe anything.
rsynnott 2y ago
I mean, I think at this point everyone knows that, in this context, 'free speech' should be read as 'speech that Musk likes'. (This is the case for most people who go on about 'free speech' a lot, really.)
yamrzou 2y ago
No one is a free specch absolutist; those who say use it as a cover to not clearly state their values and what they stand for.
qwertox 2y ago
There is so much censorship going on on Twitter through the use of dark patterns, that it's embarrassing to claim it to be something like a fortress of free speech. Let alone the fact that you need to have a subscription in order to obtain a "somewhat fair" exposure. It's ridiculous.
paganel 2y ago
> Remember the Arab Spring and how Twitter was hailed as a tool for the masses to fight against their oppressors? That was a pure US State Department/the Blob move, as soon as social media turned against them they were very quick into crying wolf and saying that said social media needs to be curtailed and protected against outside foreign influences. I'm a mr. Calin Georgescu voter from Romania (you might have heard of him in VP Vance's recent speech held in Munich), so you can understand how come I view things this way.
McDyver 2y ago
> [...] Twitter [...] X is not Twitter. Twitter was a tool for free speech. X is a tool for Nazi propaganda. I think people still haven't come to terms with that.
camillomiller 2y ago
Look up “leggi fascistissime”. It’s appalling how people don’t see the obvious playbook that’s unfolding here, down to the claims of “defending democracy”
- spicy-punk-fog 2y ago
  Most people are living automatons who find excuses in being too busy, too scared or too confident in believing "that's history, it can never happen again, we're living in a modern world" to notice things unfolding around, which is exactly what brought fascism to life back then.
bamboozled 2y ago
Absolutely no one should be surprised anymore. It was all a projection.
ismthetism 2y ago
Nah I think the ship has sailed on lip service. He is/was all about defending the "right" kind of free speech, anyway. They don't have to pretend anymore. The man saluted at an inauguration, I think all pretense has left the building.
rpastuszak 2y ago
FYI I had some time in the morning so built a simple site to share Signal links on X: https://link-in-a-box.vercel.app https://link-in-a-box.vercel.app HN Post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43078736 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43078736
Refusing23 2y ago
when a 'leader' takes away your rights he will claim its to protect you.

meibo 2y ago

They haven't had proper PR since the end of 2023. They don't respond, if it blows up you might get an one-liner Elon tweet.

Cthulhu_ 2y ago

You can also ignore any justification X gives, all the statements coming from Musk and the other tech companies and the government are untrustworthy or deceptive. But people are still hopeful in that Musk saying "free speech" actually gives them any reasing to keep using Twitter.

abernard1 2y ago
[flagged]
- ta1243 2y ago
  The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer.
  - abernard1 2y ago
    Your comment is quite extraordinary as Orwell's work dealt with an unthinking bureaucracy resembling the Soviet Union. He also had the foresight to see the U.K. could be a totalitarian state. An honest assessment of the revelations of USAID spending and its funding of literally thousands of media companies via direct grants or voluntary purchases would suggest the information environment surrounding this is not entirely benign. And it would suggest that reasonable people can also dispute the pure intentions of a system that makes it almost entirely impossible to fire people, and was started as a soft power system for US foreign policy.
    - kzs0 2y ago
      But how does any of that relate to banning signal links regardless? This is an effort to reduce self-organization and solidarity between affected normal people. It isn’t just USAID, 100,000+ people are being illegally terminated across the government (probationary employees who are only allowed to be fired for “performance,” but many/most have fine reviews and/or just started). If a bunch of new people are being fired after having just moved or started new positions, why wouldn’t people try self organizing to support their coworkers who just had their lives upended?
      - abernard1 2y ago
        My comment was simply in direct relation to the poster's comment about trustworthiness of government. But as to your assertion of "illegally terminated," let me provide some context. Not a single lawsuit has provided evidence of damages under law. One of the TROs has been shot down outright. This is key, as the judiciary requires law to be violated to intervene. They are not an HR department, and there are existing remedies for this in the administration. No such violations warranting legal action outside of the existing system have been shown. Not only this, they went district "judge shopping" on a Friday night, two hours prior to close. Many of these judges are now being shown with extremely inflammatory political rhetoric showing bias, and one will have articles of impeachment drawn. The circumstances surrounding this judicial action are so unprecedented, that when the Administration appealed showing evidence of fraud and illegal behavior, they "asked" the judge if they should allow it. The point of this is to show the frivolity of the suit: not only does the judiciary not determine Executive Power under Article II, they're asking the judge if the judge should take executive action to break the law. While law is subject to interpretation, it is not clear (and I do not believe) these employees are being terminated illegally, the least of which is they have yet to describe the legal circumstances under which their termination is unlawful. Unlike common wisdom, the federal judiciary is not-coequal with the Legislature and the Executive; the Supreme Court is. Article III specifies that federal courts called "inferior" courts are subject to the leisure of Congress. These courts have been disbanded twice in history and do not hold the power that popular culture thinks they do.
    - Juliate 2y ago

nailer 2y ago

[flagged]

Majestic121 2y ago
> Security researchers at Mysk first noticed the issue on Sunday night, Feb. 16. They reached out to me via DM and we were able to confirm the various different ways (DM, post, profile bio, etc.) that X was blocking “Signal.me” links. From the article, no they can't.
- nailer 2y ago
  They're unlocked now with a spam warning added. Occam's razor wins again. https://x.com/JeremiahDJohns/status/1891554583756845526 https://x.com/JeremiahDJohns/status/1891554583756845526

yodsanklai 2y ago

> I'm mildly curious to see how X tries to justify this, They won't. They will say they're the champion of free speech, and that'll be enough for the fan base.

netsharc 2y ago
If they were actual gaslights, self-powered gaslighting would solve the world's energy issues.
waonderer 2y ago
"Free speech" on a centralized platform always seems fishy. One can't expect it from Elon at least. He always has extreme/polar thoughts on various subjects.

energy123 2y ago

If you capture a high enough proportion of the attention bandwidth, you cease having to answer questions or be accountable. It's quite scary how powerful this is.

bergen 2y ago

If your sycophants eat everything you'll throw at them there won't be any need for justification. Which completely baffles me. The US digital technology sector seems to be full of yes man and groupthink, and it's getting worse.

andrepd 2y ago
I think some people are so motivated by "hate" (for lack of a better word) they they pretty much would shoot their foot off with a sawed-off if someone told them it would "own the libs". It's like you say: there is not even need of justification, Musk is "our guy" and that's that.
SiliconSplash 2y ago
There is plenty of criticism of Elon Musk coming coming from both sides of the political spectrum. I am consider myself right of centre and I hear plenty of criticisms of Elon Musk coming from the right. The complaints are completely different though. The big problem with any of these discussions (especially online) is that a lot of people are intellectually lazy and assume the other-side is comprised of brain dead zealots who only support the most extreme positions.
- SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
  I don’t think it’s quite right to say they assume it. News outlets and online platforms intentionally cultivate that idea, because in the modern era they directly optimize for engagement, and I’m substantially more likely to click on people saying or complaining about outrageous things than measured criticisms from a perspective I don’t share.
  - SiliconSplash 2y ago
    Maybe it is a bit of both. However the end result is the discourse online is frequently frames on the idea that the if you are part of Group A, then Group B is full of sycophants. I am also dubious whether I am actually talking to a real person in a lot of these discussions, but that is another discussion entirely.

madeofpalk 2y ago

They won't. They'll lie, some will buy it up and they'll cary on. This behaviour is completely consistent with what they've been doing since purchase. Why start now?

masklinn 2y ago

> I suspect they've reached the stage where they don't even need to pretend to pay lip service to their notional values. It took 6 weeks for that milk to rot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2022_Twitter_suspensions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2022_Twitter_suspensi...

nomilk 2y ago
X/Twitter should publicly provide a suspension reason - that would help a lot in verifying whether the account did/did not break TOS. A justification [0] of sorts is provided for the journalist suspensions: > Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2022_Twitter_suspensions#Explanation_from_Twitter_and_Musk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2022_Twitter_suspensi...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- _heimdall 2y ago
  That's not a new problem though, platforms have been kicking people off with no clear reason for years.
  - masklinn 2y ago
    Those platforms have not, however, been billing themselves as champions of unfettered free speech before handing out arbitrary unexplained bans when their feelings got hurt or they disliked the speech.
    - _heimdall 2y ago
      Companies market themselves in ways that disagree with how the companies operate all the time. Marketing is frequently misaligned with what the company or product actually is.

murg27 2y ago

[flagged]

sjsdaiuasgdia 2y ago
That's because it was a nothingburger. Remember how Taibbi got an agency name wrong and used that to make a bunch of conjectures that didn't actually align to reality? If you don't, maybe you should refresh your memory.
cheema33 2y ago
> Remember how he exposed government meddling with twitter and everyone called it nothing burger. Please provide actual evidence of said government meddling with Twitter.
- jasonjayr 2y ago
  IIRC, Twitter(and several other social media platforms) was asked to limit/block accounts that were spreading Covid misinformation at the height of the pandemic. You know, the kind of stuff a functioning government interested in protecting ALL of it's citizens would do. That's "heart" of this "government meddling" excuse. I would say there is all sorts of "government meddling" going on right now, with all the uncertanty and mess with all the services + departments we all rely on over the last month....
  - graemep 2y ago
    A government might want to do it for good motives, but its still a restriction on free speech. Otherwise you are appointing some group of people to decide what is "good speech" and "bad speech" and banning the latter.
- aspenmayer 2y ago
  I can't speak to the evidence or lack thereof, but this is what they were referring to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files
2y ago

everdrive 2y ago

>Remember the Arab Spring and how Twitter was hailed as a tool for the masses to fight against their oppressors? The Arab spring was a populist uprising. It's not clear that there were actually positive outcomes; just increased geopolitical instability. Twitter has always been a social media platform, and definitionally it has therefore always increased extremism and populism. I find it incredibly disheartening that people think Twitter has only become a malevolent force under Musk. Musk's changes to the platform are certainly unsettling, but Twitter was _never_ a net positive for anyone.

gman83 2y ago
At least at the time, we thought it could be a tool for populist uprisings in authoritarian countries. Now it seems like they just want to promote populist uprisings in democratic countries.
- everdrive 2y ago
  I'd argue it's a tool for extremism and populism everywhere; the weakest Arab governments simply crumpled first, however the same pressures are applied to all governments.
- DrScientist 2y ago
  Isn't there a common theme though whether authoritarian or democracy? That's the tension between those in charge who think they know better ( and may well do ) and the populace. In my mind, the failure on the democracy side has been the rise and rise of managing the message, and the fall of free speaking politicians - modern political comms is positively Orwellian - in part in response to the overwearning power for certain media groups to run a negative campaign to get what they want. Politicians were cowed. If you look back at historic TV footage of politicians from 50 years ago - the level, subtlety and honesty of debate is much better. Not sure how you fix it - the money+internet allows anybody to try and control the democratic process - but part of it has to be politicians being braver in speech and deed. In speech, for example, Bernie Sanders didn't shy away from owning the word socialist - when he first came to prominence it was used as an unthinking label that the media thought should instantly disqualify him - but instead he took the opportunity to re-define it. In deed - rather than clamp down on the voices of the many, the government should be looking to curtail the power of the few - Elon Musk is currently dismantling government and while I'm sure there is lots to fix, the reason democratic governments and laws exist is to challenge and constrain the power of the few ( every one is equal before the law ).

BSDobelix 2y ago

[flagged]

xzjis 2y ago

"Freedom of speech" on Twitter is nothing more than Newspeak for censorship. In reality, the goal has always been to silence minorities who already struggle to express themselves, while allowing hate, racist, homophobic, and transphobic language to run rampant. It is a form of indirect censorship, through the self-censorship of minorities who fear speaking out. Then comes direct censorship, where certain terms or links are banned.

glowiefedposter 2y ago
[flagged]
concordDance 2y ago
> In reality, the goal has always been to silence minorities who already struggle to express themselves This particular clause seens very unlikely. One could want an increase in racism and homophobia on a platform without specifically wanting there to be less black people (for example) speaking out. That the -isms cause said people to speak up less would likely be a (pleasant?) side effect rather than the primary goal.
- atoav 2y ago
  It is very simple: 1. Inherited rich kids like Elon often have a strong feeling that they are better then the rest of humanity. 2. But it turns out if you are a leech on society like that sooner or later people stop accepting that (remember: he pays less in taxes and gains more in government subsides than most people) 3. So in order for people not to turn against you sooner or later you need to keep them split into subsections that are in conflict with each other. The more split they are, the more wealth you can extract. That is the age old strategy of divide and conquer and if you ever wondered why your political system seemed to be split down the middle 50:50, that is your answer: people with money profit from it being so.
  - concordDance 2y ago
    Even granting that, you would want MORE LGBTQ+/minority speech. The more energy people spend arguing with each other about culture war, the more dividee they are and the less they have for trying to change inequality. Trying to silence LGBTQ+ etc people goes directly against the goal you posit.

bboygravity 2y ago

Maybe it was a mistake?

rsynnott 2y ago
Twitter appears to make a lot of mistakes of this sort. Tsk. Very careless. I mean, who knows, they may claim that; I believe they did after the period where they banned people for using the dread word 'mastodon': https://fortune.com/2022/12/18/twitter-suspends-paul-graham-venture-capitalist-supportive-of-elon-musk-after-he-tweets-about-mastodon-link/ https://fortune.com/2022/12/18/twitter-suspends-paul-graham-... But c'mon, now, if you believe that you'll believe anything.

rsynnott 2y ago

I mean, I think at this point everyone knows that, in this context, 'free speech' should be read as 'speech that Musk likes'. (This is the case for most people who go on about 'free speech' a lot, really.)

yamrzou 2y ago

No one is a free specch absolutist; those who say use it as a cover to not clearly state their values and what they stand for.

qwertox 2y ago

There is so much censorship going on on Twitter through the use of dark patterns, that it's embarrassing to claim it to be something like a fortress of free speech. Let alone the fact that you need to have a subscription in order to obtain a "somewhat fair" exposure. It's ridiculous.

paganel 2y ago

> Remember the Arab Spring and how Twitter was hailed as a tool for the masses to fight against their oppressors? That was a pure US State Department/the Blob move, as soon as social media turned against them they were very quick into crying wolf and saying that said social media needs to be curtailed and protected against outside foreign influences. I'm a mr. Calin Georgescu voter from Romania (you might have heard of him in VP Vance's recent speech held in Munich), so you can understand how come I view things this way.

McDyver 2y ago

> [...] Twitter [...] X is not Twitter. Twitter was a tool for free speech. X is a tool for Nazi propaganda. I think people still haven't come to terms with that.

camillomiller 2y ago

Look up “leggi fascistissime”. It’s appalling how people don’t see the obvious playbook that’s unfolding here, down to the claims of “defending democracy”

spicy-punk-fog 2y ago
Most people are living automatons who find excuses in being too busy, too scared or too confident in believing "that's history, it can never happen again, we're living in a modern world" to notice things unfolding around, which is exactly what brought fascism to life back then.

bamboozled 2y ago

Absolutely no one should be surprised anymore. It was all a projection.

ismthetism 2y ago

Nah I think the ship has sailed on lip service. He is/was all about defending the "right" kind of free speech, anyway. They don't have to pretend anymore. The man saluted at an inauguration, I think all pretense has left the building.

rpastuszak 2y ago

FYI I had some time in the morning so built a simple site to share Signal links on X: https://link-in-a-box.vercel.app https://link-in-a-box.vercel.app HN Post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43078736 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43078736

Refusing23 2y ago

when a 'leader' takes away your rights he will claim its to protect you.