I don't think banning of real time broadcasting private peoples' location and travel is all that bad. And if applied consistently regardless of political ideology of the broadcaster and the target, really isn't the death blow to free speech on the platform that people are trying to make out it is.
It's not quite the anything-that-is-not-illegal that Musk was blathering about (although it's possible it could run afoul of stalking laws in some countries/jurisdictions), but it's really nothing compared with the politically motivated and government involved censorship and banning that had been going on there.
Free speech is not an actual problem in the modern age, or any age. The volume is bearable. I see very little misinformation in my feed. And let's not forget how pre-Musk Twitter actively suppressed accurate information at the request of the US federal government.
It's free speech alright - within "acceptable matrix parameters".
I am entertained by how the "libertarians" on HN were shrieking "bloody murder censorship" at day-to-day moderation decisions, and now falling all over each other to defend this erratic, impulsive chaos as "Musk's right to make business decisions". Pick a lane.
Sure, and neither is Twitter banning people. The argument is that Musk will silence or get retribution against people through Twitter ownership, just as he does in other contexts.
Fair enough. I still think conservatives (and liberals, for different reasons) are vastly overestimating how much Musk will protect free speech. Slurs will obviously still be banned (likely automatically; I don't see why the platform relies on human moderation in those cases). These people are just getting a fast-track ticket to not-allowed-on-Twitter.
"generally bad and annoying" breaks whatever ideal of 'free speech' one might have. The most concrete thing Musk has said is "twitter should just follow the laws of countries", but spam bots are not illegal - USPS cannot unilaterally ban junk mail because that breaks the first amendment
Interviewer: You've described yourself, Elon, as a free speech absolutist, but does that mean that there's literally nothing that people can't say and it's okay?
Musk: Well, I think obviously Twitter or any forum is bound by the laws of the country that it operates in. So obviously there are some limitations on free speech in the US, and, of course, Twitter would have to abide by those rules. [...] No, I think, like I said, in my view Twitter should match the laws of the country
Quite a struggle for an international website, where the majority of users are outside of the US, to just say "we should follow the laws of countries" as if there's one single internationally compatible law for that.
Basically. At least with Musk there is a line of dialog and some insight on what happens. Unlike facebook, instagram or any others that censor/ban political voices that were democratically elected that oppose whatever mainstream decides is true at that moment.
Many commentators seem to think this is a sudden, recent backpedaling from a previous absolutist view on free speech. However, Musk has been promoting the "freedom of speech" vs "freedom of reach" distinction for a while, at least months before his takeover, including describing how such a policy should be implemented at Twitter.
Here's one example quote from June, 2022:
“I think there’s this big difference between freedom of speech and freedom of reach in that one can, obviously, let’s say in the United States go in the middle of Times Square and pretty much yell anything you want. You’ll annoy the people around you, but you’re kind of allowed to just sort of yell whatever you want in a crowded public place, more or less, apart from 'this is robbery' — probably that would get you in trouble.
“So but then whatever you say, however controversial, does not need to then be broadcast to the whole country. So I think generally the approach of Twitter should be to let people say what they want to do within the bounds of the law, but then limit who sees that...”
Sure I guess. But the line Musk himself drew was that he wouldn’t ban this or any account unless it was doing something illegal. It’s clearly not. So according to free speech absolutists like Musk, the banning of this account is a violation of the 1st amendment rights of the poster.
(I don’t agree with that, but I spent weeks arguing with Musk supporters about this very fact. Now all of a sudden they are saying “it’s his right to do whatever he wants with Twitter”, which I agree with. But then why did Musk buy Twitter in the first place? Well now we know: to do whatever he wanted with it, not to champion free speech rights! Which is exactly what people were worried about! It’s all so frustrating…)
Just like people who cheered Twitter and other social media companies swinging the ban-hammer left and right in the last few years, I would like to remind you that freedom of speech does not mean absence of consequences.
I still would be surprised if we saw Musk abusing his powers to make user-generated things disappear from Twitter.
The wave of bans from the muskjet thing has been quite dramatic.
It'll be interesting to see if the people who've been lauding musk for his supposedly pro free speech attitudes will reckon with what's been happening in actuality, or if they'll just accept this as "freedom for me but not for thee".
I'm sympathetic to the many newly minted free speech absolutists in this thread, but this sort of banning was always the status quo for right wingers until Musk bought Twitter anyways.
By some internet commenters. Personally I found Twitters bans distasteful. Even if they could do it.
I also find Musk's bans distasteful. Even if he can do it.
Oh, and he's revealed himself to obviously be full of shit. As is anyone cheering him on in the name of free speech. But I guess principles only last until they get in the way of petty tribalism.
Then what is musk asking about in terms of free speech since no one is going to jail when Twitter or other social media sites ban people or censor their tweets?
While I am not claiming that you personally are guilty of this, musk stans always seem like they are talking out of both sides of their mouth whenever they defend musk’s comments on free speech and jump back and forth on whether they are using the “protection from government action” definition or the “protection from condemnation of other private individuals and companies” definition
Some of us do have principles. When Twitter was suppressing conservatives, that was bad. If Musk is banning people for being critical of him, that is also bad.
1A might not be the end-all, be-all of freedom of speech, but what Musk is trying to push here is not anywhere close to freedom of speech. At all[0]. He wants to censor his critics, and has figured the easiest way to do so is to co-opt legitimate concerns about advertiser control over the Internet and use it as evidence of him being "censored". It's a very transparent attempt to do so, and Musk's commitment to freedom of speech is laughable, so we don't need to argue where the line between advertisers' freedom of association and Musk's freedom of speech actually lies.
But if you do want to argue where that line should be, fine. I'll bite.
Advertisers absolutely have too much control over speech online. 404 Media recently published an article about how brand safety filtering has more or less defunded a lot of news coverage relating to the loss of reproductive healthcare and women's rights in America. So I can empathize with what you're saying. However, I can't think of a coherent legal argument as to what the advertisers are doing wrong.
In telecom law, we have the concept of common carrier regulation, which applies to middlemen that connect two parties together. e.g. your phone company cannot bill extra for the same phone call because it happens to be valuable to you[0]. We took a look at the balance of harms and decided that a phone network that cuts off businesses to extort money out of them is worse than the burden placed on phone networks to serve all customers, even the awful ones.
How would this apply to a situation in which the edge of the network decides they don't want to associate with you? We're not talking about ad exchanges cutting off Twitter, mind. These are individual ad buyers all looking at Musk's behavior and deciding "we don't want to give this person money because it makes us look bad if we do that". Do we force ad buyers to blind-buy ad inventory to get around this? Can that even be done? How do they deal with the potential brand damage of being forced to give money to someone that people think is a censorious antisemite? Do companies just eat the loss of goodwill or do we force people to buy from companies they hate to "maximize free speech"?
At some point we have to cut the chain of logic off, before the cure is worse than the disease.
[0] More generally, my personal opinion is that free speech should have a self-defense clause: i.e. that it should not afford speech protections to acts that are contrary to freedom of speech. I think advocating Nazi ideology would count as such an act; certainly most of not all of their ideology is a blatant middle finger to the 1st Amendment. Why protect that which wants desperately to kill you?
It's not quite the anything-that-is-not-illegal that Musk was blathering about (although it's possible it could run afoul of stalking laws in some countries/jurisdictions), but it's really nothing compared with the politically motivated and government involved censorship and banning that had been going on there.
reply