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Comment by lgeorget | Hacker News Reader

I guess I'm a bit off-topic but sometimes I really fail to understand the USA culture. You can make the most outrageous and racist comments because of "freedom of expression" but making speculators lose their shit with a couple of tweets is a "textbook crime" for which you should "go to jail".

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Although that is definitely an oversimplification (there are plenty of limitations to freedom of expression), why is your description particularly odd or difficult to understand? If an executive at a public company makes misleading public statements with the intention to cause certain transactions (which may or may not be the case here), that's a pretty clear financial crime with clear victims. I don't see why jail time would be out of the question.

If you just make "outrageous" comments on twitter, why is it weird that "USA culture" wouldn't generally prescribe jail time? I'm from the USA, granted, but that sure seems like a reasonable protection of freedom of expression.

Racist comments are of course a trickier example, but I think it's perfectly reasonable for there to be a legal distinction between (protected) tasteless/offensive/insensitive statements about race/ethnicity and (not protected) statements that defame or incite violence.

Well, of course I realize that I'm oversimplifying and exaggerating but my point was that I have the impression that messing with money is a much more serious problem than messing with people in the USA.

Insulting people is a very different thing from defrauding them.

Hate crimes are treated far more seriously than monetary crimes, if that's what you're trying to get out. It's simply that merely making racist statements is not a crime in the US.

saying mean things doesn't hurt people - even if they're really horrible, they're just words. Providing guidance that is false or intended to hurt people, like Elon's tweet, is fundamentally different.

freedom of speech is not the freedom to defraud

it's as simple as that

so i agree that US law makes a bigger deal out of messing with money than messing with feelings

It's because of the belief that specific acts shouldn't be illegal, just the negative effects caused by those acts. People can say racist things all they want, but if there isn't anyone actually being harmed by it, should they be punished by the government? It's like with Musk, he's not being investigated for a stupid tweet, he's being investigated for a stupid tweet that appears to have been made with the purpose of directly influencing the stock market. Specific acts should only be made illegal if it can be proven that the specific act essentially guarantees that someone will be harmed as a result.

To add to this good explanation, that's also why slander and libel are not protected forms of speech (but they do have high standards of evidence).

You can call a person a million names to their face, but if you publish an article or book saying you think that person's a thief, and that person's life was ruined because nobody would hire them anymore, then yes you're potentially opening yourself up to legal action.

> It's because of the belief that specific acts shouldn't be illegal, just the negative effects caused by those acts.

Ah ok it actually makes a lot of sense presented that way. So it really is about "culture" then.

The first amendment guarantees freedom of speech, but it has always had limits applied. Fraud is not considered a valid exercise of free speech.

In this case it’s highly specific to the person doing the statement & the subject of the statement. And it’s not nearly as textbook as the comment implies. But the US has fairly consistent and specific case law on when speech is a crime precisely because freedom of expression was so central to the founding of the country.

Where is it different? Which countries punish racist comments but not fraud?

These days, England.

Yes costing people millions of dollars through securities fraud is a crime.

Freedom of expression doesn't mean freedom from consequences - just not from government.

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