So he's not a big fan of free speech after all, I see. Censoring publicly, required-by-law, freely available data is definitely not something a free speech absolutist like Elon should do. Just my two cents. Make of that what you will.
Oh, bosh. Don’t be absurd. Elon demonstrably isn’t “favoring free speech over censorship.” He’s just choosing different speech to favor and to censor.
Oddly enough, he tends to favor hate groups and dictators: “Twitter’s compliance with government demands for censorship or surveillance has risen [during Musk’s tenure] to over 80%, from around 50%.”
Elon has never had a stance favoring free speech. His behavior has been consistent since the day he took over Twitter – anything he likes will be amplified, anything he does not will be removed.
He has multiple examples of using censorship himself to protect his companies. He denied a reviewer access to their vehicle, has stifled the speech of former employees of his companies, and has tried to silence a dissenter publishing publicly available data of his plane. You've fallen for the hype; Elon merely dresses himself in the flag of a free speech absolutist. He is exactly like the establishment in this regard: speech for me, but not for thee.
It’s censorship behavior on behalf of the platform that is not applied evenly. Elon has convinced me to be a free-speech absolutist, you may not like it, I may not like it, but that’s the way it should be.
Musk is as much free speech enthusiast as he is astronaut. He is systematically and notoriously punishing any speech he does not like. He did that pretty much anywhere he had power.
Amazing how much Musk advocates for free speech for himself (he's super salty over the SEC wanting his tweets to be reviewed, due to his breaking the law previously) but will do anything he can to stifle free speech for others.
well this is rather the perfect test case - is Elon willing to allow the freedom of speech for someone who is doing something that is pretty trivial but to him personally annoying at a pretty low level?
The answer seems to be "No, Elon only wants the speech that he likes"
This does not bode well for twitter's future, or for that matter SpaceX/Tesla if Elon is going to be spending all his time as Twitter's chief censor
That's not what Elon considers free speech. It's completely fair game to hold him by his own standards. Elon mentioned this account in the same breath as the defense of free speech and committed to not banning it.
I want free speech, hence I think Elon is a tremendous hypocrite for enacting this policy. Once you start deciding whether or not things are 'safe' to say you will end up in the exact situation Jack, et al. were in when they were censoring just with different biases. He doesn't seem to understand that and is doomed to repeat their mistakes.
There is some irony now seeing those that didn't believe the banning of accounts arbitrarily was an issue under previous management decrying this move by Elon.
Does what I think of free speech matter in this conversation or does what musk thinks matters? He talks about censoring as a violation of free speech and then engages in the same sort of behavior when he does things like canceling the Tesla order of a reporter who said things he doesn’t like.
He’s an inconsistent hypocrite and there’s zero evidence that’s been presented to make me believe this move is coming from a sincerely held belief that isn’t “what’s best for Elon is the right thing”
Fair point. Elon seems to apply very different measures what counts as free speech though, depending on how much he likes it.
If my work was criticised by my boss in public with objectively (very) wrong statements, I would criticize him publicly as well (depending on the circumstances oc).
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