I don't know why it's so impossible to believe there are people who truly do want free speech.
I wasn't sure if Musk was going to deliver it, but I tried to remain open-minded. I did think previous Twitter management leaned left with some admittedly difficult moderation decisions, but obviously I'm finding out that Musk is even less supportive of true free speech.
Ironically this banning of Mastodon links is the #1 thing pushing me to start exploring Mastodon or other platforms.
Because the things he says are contradictory, often very vague, and often extremely naive, either intentionally or unintentionally, regarding how hard it is to moderate content. As numerous industry leaders have pointed out, people on the Left think the Left is getting overly censored, people on the Right think the right is getting overly censored, in actuality it's an extremely complex system and the site admins just want people to stop threatening each other. Musk, however, has made it very clear that he feels the Right is being censored, and he will fix that, which doesn't bode well for people on the Left.
I'm hoping that if Musk actually does end up buying twitter, it leads to larger uptick for Mastodon.
Pre-Musk Twitter didn't specifically try to present itself as a bastion of free speech.
On top of that, in case of this particular account, Musk specifically said that it would be allowed on the platform per his understanding of free speech.
Except that Musk's Twitter in no way supports freedom of speech. For a while he banned any mention of Mastodon, or the ElonJet account, and he's banned a whole slew of antifascist accounts and journalists who report on the far right (he will claim that it's because they violated rules, but in each case it seems it was a new rule: journalism he doesn't like is "doxxing": reporting on who did what). So sure, it looks like he is willing to lose a big chunk of his net worth to change Twitter, but his intent seems to be to promote certain speech and suppress other speech, or as he would say, to kill the "woke mind virus".
Yeah, Musk's definition of supporting free speech wasn't much to speak of... better than the old guard, but really weird in ways too. For me, short of threats or calls for violence I'm pretty open to whatever... As long as you're able to as an individual block/filter. Though the NSFW content on Twitter can be pretty bad and wouldn't mind being able to selectively filter that as a user too.
I did not get fired by Elon, so that's a swing and a miss. Any other straw men you wanted to try?
You're wrong about the "average user" enjoying "free speech", of course. That's the view Twitter started out on, "the free speech wing of the free speech party". But they learned that certain kinds of speech drove away users and made it hard to sell ads, so for very good business reasons, they decided to take away the "free speech" of people to, say, shout the n-word at black people. [1]
I believe you enjoy it more, of course. But other people enjoy it less. You and Musk are making the same mistake in thinking a thing that you like is a thing that everybody will like. Running a social network means you have to create something that is liked by a very wide variety of people. And a lot of people who wave the "free speech" banner just turn out to want no constraints on their own speech, while having much less concern about creating a place where a wide variety of people can safely speak up and be heard.
Twitter is allowed to be run by jerks who ban people for any reason they want.
The problem is that people like Musk have spent ages arguing that banning fascists is bad because free speech absolutism is an important value. It turns out that free speech absolutism was never actually a value they cared about - the only thing that matters is that their guy is the one choosing the bans. If people like Musk had instead argued that platforming fascists is actually good this whole time then the discussion today would be different, but because they didn't want to publicly support fascists they had to fall back on the free speech absolutism argument, which has shattered into a million pieces.
> Musk's misguided approach to free speech, which says anything that is not explicitly illegal is allowed
What is free speech but that.....
> would have made Twitter an open forum for spreading lies and hate.
Like it isn't now. Twitter lets pretty much anything and everything except hate against specific subgroups they've decided are "protected". It really doesn't help there choices are entirely arbitrary with no internal consistency.
Well, when previous Twitter management did things like this, Musk said that they were restricting free speech. So this is at least anti "Musk's definition of free speech".
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.
It's not reasonable for someone claiming free speech absolutism & unbiased moderation. You do make a good point by pointing out Musk could have just built his own social media platform instead of crying about the moderation and blowing $44B on Twitter, only to fail to make good on his promise of free speech.
So if he purports that Twitter now limits freedom of speech, the only thing he can mean by that is hate speech, dangerous medical misinformation, conspiracy bs, or calls to violence.
I've always had a gut feeling that Musk is politically on the far right spectrum farther than most people would believe, but now that he has joined the ranks of these misguided new right-wing "muh freedom of speech"-warriors, who never had any point to begin with, it's a strong indicator rather than just a feeling.
In a word, Hypocrisy. Everyone is up in arms for Hypocrisy.
Musk's statement was that free speech would be allowed on Twitter. And yet, here he is chilling free speech. It's not surprising. It's just also really bad. So people are up in arms that they're losing a platform that, while by no means perfect, was better for free speech than it currently is.
All that was needed to obtain Elon Musk's definition of free speech was to fire the content moderation team. I don't see how an engineer working 100hr weeks will "make Free Speech happen". The irony is that Musk is running Twitter into the ground - I guess if Twitter shuts down the people sharing Musk's vision will deem the battle over free speech won since no one will ever again flag their tweet! /s
Your arguments are invalid because Musk himself bashed Twitter for similar behavior before he bought it, and all hell would have broken loose if they had banned him for it.
He proclaimed himself to be free speech absolutist and now fails miserably on multiple occasions.
It only shows that it is not about freedom of speech, but about being able to say whatever he wants.
That's not freedom, it's tyranny. Fear him if your tweets don't get his favor.
I wasn't sure if Musk was going to deliver it, but I tried to remain open-minded. I did think previous Twitter management leaned left with some admittedly difficult moderation decisions, but obviously I'm finding out that Musk is even less supportive of true free speech.
Ironically this banning of Mastodon links is the #1 thing pushing me to start exploring Mastodon or other platforms.
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