> Tracking the movements of wealthy targets in real time has zero value in terms of political freedoms
I mentioned factual disagreement, and those still exist. Without conceding any of those, this is our moral and philosophical disagreement. I don’t think the power of the state should bar all speech that you personally decide has 0 political value.
I think the first amendment rightly tolerates speech, even speech that many people strongly disagree with. I think the government should be extremely hesitant about telling people they can’t speak because their words have “zero political value”.
And I would vigorously oppose a party who is attempting to use the government to punish someone for speaking.
Look, if Elon Musk brings an action that alleges very clear defamation, or if he shows that Sweeney was actively inciting harassment I’d consider otherwise. But if the legal action is only for the actions publicly alleged (posting flight information), that’s simply protected speech by the first amendment. A lawsuit to suppress clearly protected speech is legal thuggery, and I would vigorously oppose that lawsuit.
In much the same way I’ve donated to the ACLU who has stood up for the rights of people I despise to speak.
On their own, whether a case is civil and whether the case is between only regular citizens has nothing to do with free speech. The First Amendment applies to government enforcement of civil lawsuits. In the US, if I write a social media post "John Doe is a bad person." with no other context (opinion, not a statement of fact [1]), then my post would be not defamation and also would be free speech, even if my post were to damage John Doe's reputation.
Defamation is not protected speech i.e. is not free speech. Elon Musk's party is arguing that Musk didn't defame Ben Brody.
> he wants to see the first amendment function with autistic precision
I really wish we'd stop defining social media broadly as a first amendment issue. Elon Musk has the right to speak his mind without fear of government reprisal, he doesn't have a constitutional right to broadcast his asinine opinions to millions of people.
Not really, but free speech goes hand-in-hand with free association. Musk obviously has the prerogative to ban people.
> do you also support banning anti-vaxx misinformation at the height of a societal health crisis?
Nope, but again it's their perogative.
> do you support calling Musk out on his hypocrisy here?
I don't particularly care.
At the end of the day, free speech is the foundational freedom in the US. It's the 1st amendment for a reason. There's no use in arguing against it, it's an ultimate virtue whether people support it or not.
Clearly a private company do whatever it wants, BUT free speech is an ideal and
Twitter should nevertheless try to uphold it, as the de facto public square on the internet.
>> Why isn't telling someone to shut up protected free speech?
You know the first amendment doesn't apply to people right? It's a restriction on what the government can or can not do. The government can't restrict your free speech. Your employer can. Twitter can too, and that's what Elon is against.
I agree that he could have just ignored them, but he chose to ignore them completely by getting them out of his company. That's his choice.
> failed to acknowledge that it would give more power to the most powerful.
I highly disagree with that. Limits on free speech has always the goal consolidate power or having the prerogative of interpretation. Musk is an exception here and it isn't even clear how serious he means it. He will comply with laws and maybe do a snarky tweet. How terrible... Maybe he forces users to identify themselves and milk them dry. Who knows? Maybe he becomes a ascetic and donates all his riches to the preservation of penguins.
But restricting speech is a tool of the powerful because nobody else could restrict it in the first place. I don't know how these contradictory ideas are even able to spread...
Economic regulation on the other hand is entirely different here of course...
> I don't advocate that speech shouldn't have consequences.
We already have free speech and consequences. Twitter and Musk have nothing to do with free speech issues.
You want absolute freedom of speech but then you want to limit a company and platform in what it says, which it does by allowing or disallowing certain content? And you would prefer a single person, who has a history of devious activity, having totalitarian control over said company and platform? It doesn’t make sense.
> No matter how fair Elon thinks he is, a completely private entity or person cannot guarantee unbiased free speech.
The gov has shown to be unwilling to hold free speech laws to social media companies, and Twitter has been so aggressive in censoring dissident political opinion.. what else are you proposing we do?
> Does labor law supersede Musk's first amendment rights? I don't get it.
I don't think first amendment rights mean you have the right to literally say or write whatever you want, such as a threat, without consequence. And Musk did make a threat, it was just a milder one than to send in the Pinkertons.
> Freedom of movement no more guarantees your right to purchase a ticket aboard a private, commercial flight, than freedom of speech guarantees your right to post to a private, commercial forum.
It is the government that prevents you from flying on the private commercial airline. Not the airline owner. If the government was preventing people from posting certain messages on private commercial form, that would certainly be a violation of the First Amendment.
> What free speech? The government isn't preventing these awful people from spewing their hate. Companies refusing to host their content is not a violation of the first amendment.
By your logic, the first amendment has no salutary rationale. We allow Neo nazis to march merely because the first amendment prohibits us from stopping them from marching, and for no other reason. There is no animating principle that we might consider applying to other contexts even where the first amendment isn’t legally required. That view is anathema to how the first amendment has long been understood. (There is a reason the ACLU has repeatedly defended the right of neo nazis to march. And it isn’t because they’re preoccupied with the technicalities of the law. After all, the government does a lot of other unconstitutional stuff that doesn’t merit the ACLU’s involvement.)
If you want to say there is a substantive difference between say Facebook and public streets, that’s fine that warrants differing treatment, that’s fine and I probably agree with you. But saying that the first amendment doesn’t apply to private corporations doesn’t prove anything more than it’s not literally illegal for Facebook and Twitter to do this. It doesn’t say anything about whether it’s an appropriate policy in view of the principles embodied in the first amendment.
> Regardless what you think or feel about the guy, he is a former US President - we aught to know what he thinks, even if we disagree or think it's outlandish - no?
So he aught to be able to grab a soap box and stand on your lawn every day and preach? He is a former US president so you are proposing he can go onto private property and say whatever he wants at any time.
> How can we, as a society, claim to value free speech, yet allow social discourse platforms to censor and silence political enemies?
Because you misunderstand free speech. Is the government going to arrest you for posting on twitter? No. However no one is required, not even the government, to provide you with a platform to speak on.
You want free beer speech. Speech without paying for it. Speech without restriction of any kind by anyone at any time. Why should we care about that?
>Yet another guy who thinks he's a government entity
Free Speech is more than just a legal right, it is an important social institution. We impose stricter controls on government entities than we do on business entities, but that doesn't mean that business entities don't have huge effects of the freeness of speech in our culture.
>Refusing to do business with someone isn't censorship, _it's speech_.
It is censorship and it is also speech. Some types of this speech are not legal, for example: Refusing to do business with someone based on their race is illegal.
It's not entirely clear to me that we as a society have thought through the consequences of making political discrimination wholey legal.
Do we allow businesses to blacklist customers based on political affiliation?
Do we allow businesses to blacklist customers who support abortion or gay marriage?
Do we allow employers to fire you if you don't agree with them politically?
> No-one's campaigning to remove Breitbart's license to do business
You are campaigning to compel Shopify to say what you want and in doing so impinge on the speech of another. This assaults not just Breitbart's freedom of speech, but also Shopify's. While legal, this is also directly harmful the freeness of speech in our society.
> I think there are plenty of scenarios where the law should discriminate between the latter and the former,
I don't see why this is the case. Private entities are made of people. If Twitter vehemently disagrees with something, I don't see any reason why the government should force them to go against their wishes.
> very broad category that encompasses everything
This is exactly the problem. While there is an argument that Twitter was wrong in the specific case, the implications of having the government force Twitter to say/amplify things they don't believe are __chilling__. Restricting speech is bad enough, but often understandable, this is frankly several steps beyond what I'm comfortable with.
> Ok... so according to this article, Elon can start censoring Democrats and any left wing ideas and that should be ok, right? That wouldn't violate free speech. He can get funding from the RNC, work with Republicans who are not in government, and let them dictate how the platform should be run. Twitter can become a right wing haven, having massive amounts of influence on the public without any challenge from the other side, and that should be perfectly fine, correct?
> But these are communications platforms. Restricting the right to free speech does have negative consequences...
I take issue with the argument that promoting these social media platforms is tantamount to fostering free speech and denouncing them amounts to eroding this right. No one should expect technology assisted broad cast abilities as part of a doctrine of governments and the State not restricting speech.
> This is why the US enshrined free speech as the first amendment of the constitution.
You're right, it wasn't very charitable, I took it quite literally, and that means the 1st amendment has absolutely no bearing on preserving the right of one person when that is trampling on the publishers rights.
> Technical means of defying censorship, like this one, help to preserve that right.
I did miss the nuance there because I get angry that there appears to me an impression in the general populace that the 1st amendment applies everywhere and gives people carte blanche to say whatever they please without consequence.
I mentioned factual disagreement, and those still exist. Without conceding any of those, this is our moral and philosophical disagreement. I don’t think the power of the state should bar all speech that you personally decide has 0 political value.
I think the first amendment rightly tolerates speech, even speech that many people strongly disagree with. I think the government should be extremely hesitant about telling people they can’t speak because their words have “zero political value”.
And I would vigorously oppose a party who is attempting to use the government to punish someone for speaking.
Look, if Elon Musk brings an action that alleges very clear defamation, or if he shows that Sweeney was actively inciting harassment I’d consider otherwise. But if the legal action is only for the actions publicly alleged (posting flight information), that’s simply protected speech by the first amendment. A lawsuit to suppress clearly protected speech is legal thuggery, and I would vigorously oppose that lawsuit.
In much the same way I’ve donated to the ACLU who has stood up for the rights of people I despise to speak.
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