“Free Speech Absolutist” Elon Musk Caves to Authoritarian Censorial Bullies

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/05/15/once-again-free-speech-absolutist-elon-musk-caves-to-authoritarian-censorial-bullies/

by colejohnson66 • 3 years ago

31 22 3 years ago

techdirt.com

g4d• 3 years ago

Ultimately, it is important to strike a balance between promoting a robust exchange of ideas and protecting individuals and society from harmful content. Elon Musk's choices may not align perfectly with every person's vision of free speech absolutism, but it is essential to acknowledge the complexities inherent in such decisions and the challenging position he finds himself in.

ethanbond• 3 years ago

GPT-generated?

Anyway, no one but Musk claimed operating a social media site was as simple as “free speech.”

rini17• 3 years ago

Twitter earlier fought similar ban in Turkey and won. Wikipedia did too.

jqpabc1233• 3 years ago

Once again, we see that right wing accusations are really admissions and/or intentions.

Those who pine for a black and white "absolutist" utopia are once again confronted with a reality made from shades of gray.

Extremist ideology and solutions appeal to simple minded folks struggling to navigate a scary, complicated reality.

fsagx• 3 years ago

This is Musk being Musk. He is a contradiction stuffed in an enigma wrapped with bacon.

jqpabc1233• 3 years ago

Yes.

Musk is just a posterchild for the ideology he has embraced --- the idea that real world problems have easy, simple minded solutions.

Boldly declaring yourself a "free speech absolutist" is simple and appeals to a lot of people --- unfortunately, it is also naive and a poor fit for the complex reality of social media --- as Musk himself has just proven.

bigtex883• 3 years ago

An easy heuristic for anything coming from the right-wing in the US: if they are screaming about it, it means they are doing it. Pedophilia? They're the ones diddling kids. Censorship? The supposed "censorship" literally happened during the Trump administration. We're spending too much money? The Trump administration increased the national debt by 25%.

Anything coming from the right should be taken with the biggest grain of salt the world has ever seen. There's a 99% chance that they're screaming about nothing and a 100% chance that they're not telling the entire truth.

mnky9800n• 3 years ago

Perhaps twitter was too good at promoting whatever speech there was to the forefront and rallying people in a way that would give power to them. Thus twitter needed to be stopped otherwise power would slowly creep from the hands of those that have it to the people they rule.

I'm not saying there is some vast conspiracy puppeting elon musk to buy and ruin twitter. But that there is some natural resistance in the system that would promote this behavior to begin with.

mensetmanusman• 3 years ago

The old twitter stood up to authoritarians but also banned DMs that talked about true events in the west at the best of the US government, so it was kind of a buckshot with no coherent strategy.

jqpabc1233• 3 years ago

The new twitter doesn't stand up to authoritarians and bans anything that Musk chooses --- so it is kind of buckshot with no coherent strategy --- despite discredited claims of being a "free speech absolutist".

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss --- only more extreme.

bigtex883• 3 years ago

Which "true events" are you speaking about?

Dudelander• 3 years ago

I'm guessing misleading facts about covid or the election or something.

Clubber4• 3 years ago

Musk promised us would show the US government demanding Twitter censor people (when it showed nothing of the sort),

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files

I'm not sure how anyone could say that in good faith. The government was obviously asking for and was granted censorship on a regular basis. An act of government firmly against the first amendment.

This statement shows this guy has an axe to grind and is willing to disregard obvious first amendment violations by the US government to grind it.

giraffe_lady• 3 years ago

You should read the relevant part of that wikipedia page or maybe just all of it because it refutes your claims here.

David Loy, legal director for the First Amendment Coalition, said that Twitter is legally able to choose what speech is allowed on their site, noting that both the Biden campaign, which was not part of the government, and the Trump White House could request specific content moderation actions.

It's probably not good but I haven't seen any reason to think the government's relationship to twitter was other than normative for social media companies. Whether it's "nothing of the sort" of censorship is a judgement call, I can certainly see how someone could make it in good faith.

Clubber4• 3 years ago

because it refutes your claims here.

It does nothing of the sort. The government shouldn't even be requesting it. Having the FBI do it is requesting it under duress. Having the FBI do it while bringing CEOs to testify before congress doubles down on the duress.

Nice company, it would be a shame if anything were to happen to it.

any reason to think the government's relationship to twitter was other than normative for social media companies

Yea, that's the problem, the news too. You might hate Musk and you might hate Twitter, but you shouldn't dismiss what's actually going on here.

bigtex883• 3 years ago

The Twitter Files were a gigantic nothing-burger, hence why it fell out of the news cycle so quickly and no one gave a crap about it.

Please explain to me how anything in the Twitter Files shows government censorship. Did the government threaten Twitter in any way? Did they force Twitter to remove these tweets? I'd also like to point out that this supposed "censorship" took place during the Trump administration.

Jiro• 3 years ago

Did the government threaten Twitter in any way?

Of course they did. You're assuming that if they don't spell out in so many words "or we're going to do something about it" they haven't made a threat.

I'd also like to point out that this supposed "censorship" took place during the Trump administration.

There's a reason why people complain about the deep state.

“Free Speech Absolutist” Elon Musk Caves to Authoritarian Censorial Bullies

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