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Comment by agilob | Hacker News Reader

Elon complains on Twitter for not accepting freedom of speech? He fired an employee for posting a video on youtube https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/tesla-empl...

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It's less about freedom of speech and more that the individual violated their NDA.

Tesla is not a public forum. I don't know what you expect the response to be for an employee that violates terms of service of their employer and posts public criticism about the company and product. Whats the appropriate response? If you got a job at a bank and posted on social media about how the bank is evil, do you think you'd keep your job? Have some common sense.

I think that's different than complaining about censorship (often at the behest of politicians) on ubiquitous public forums. And the rules are not clear and you may not even get an explanation. And all major platforms and even infrastructure providers like AWS more or less act in unison. I think it's a valid complaint.

Twitter is also not a "public forum". They are a private company (exactly like Tesla) and can choose what people and what content they want to serve.

This. I don't know why people think that Twitter and other social platforms are public forum. People blocked by Twitter don't lose their freedom of speech. Besides, what most of the people crying about this want is not freedom of speech, it's freedom of repercussions.

Exactly. If Twitter bans you, you're free to make your own Twitter or other speech platform. That is, the internet itself, not the private sites on it, is the public square.

If what you have to say is so revolutionary, surely people will be coming to your new site in droves to hear your amazing commentary they can't get on Twitter.

Except nobody actually cares about what these people have to say, or else they'd have already done so. Half the time you can bet it's some middle aged dude pissed off that he got reported for calling someone a slur or spreading 5G-mind-control-level conspiracy theories.

And refuse to bake the cake?

This isn't equivalent. If Twitter bans someone for the sole reason they are religious, then you could argue that as a public accommodation they are discriminating against that individual. That would fall in line with the case about a refusal to bake a cake.

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