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Comment by mcdonje | Hacker News Reader

I don't know why anyone would trust Musk to champion free speech.

He has no background with any org that works on protecting free speech. He hasn't done work with the ACLU.

Billionaires buying media companies has been great for broadcasting the billionaire perspective, but mixed at best on free speech.

A lot of people currently decrying moderation activities on US social media sites as being against free speech are the same people supporting bills, mostly in state governments, that limit free speech.

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> He hasn't done work with the ACLU.

https://twitter.com/aclu/status/1009186716593393664

Contrast: https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-is-our-new-aclu-11589...

The WSJ, in that article, calls California's pandemic restrictions "The most sweeping restrictions on liberty ever seen", which is just an absurd assertion. Even if you scope it to the US or even California, where Japanese-American civilians, including children, were once relocated into internment camps.

This is why people tend to roll their eyes at the WSJ opinion section. (The journalism side, to be clear, is top-notch.)

> The WSJ, in that article, calls California's pandemic restrictions "The most sweeping restrictions on liberty ever seen", which is just an absurd assertion. Even if you scope it to the US or even California, where Japanese-American civilians, including children, were once relocated into internment camps.

Obviously the internment of Japanese folks during WWII was far more intrusive than the COVID restrictions. But that doesn't contradict the statement--they didn't say "the harshest restrictions" or "the most egregious restrictions", they said "the most sweeping restrictions". The word sweeping is an adjective meaning 'wide in range or effect'. It is simply a matter of fact that the COVID restrictions, which affected ~40 million people and resulted in the closure of 40,000 businesses, were a more sweeping restriction on liberty than the internment of 120,000 Japanese during the War.

If you wanna be that charitable towards the claim, you've still got to contend with the draft, wartime rationing, censorship during WWII, the Sedition Acts, and many others.

> You've still got to contend with the draft, wartime rationing, censorship during WWII, the Sedition Acts, and many others.

The only comparably broad measure you've listed is wartime rationing. But the fact that wartime rationing was as broad in scope as the COVID restrictions hardly renders the WSJ's claim absurd.

The draft permits the government to force any male citizen 17-45 into the military, where they lack significant Constitutional rights, can be sent to die in combat, and be summarily executed.

The Sedition Acts variably restricted the First Amendment rights to criticize the government of anyone in the country.

How are these not broad?

Yet all you have shown is that the WSG claim is debatable, not that it absurd.

Is it possible that you, like the WSG, enganged in a bit of hyperbole to tru to make a point?

No. California's restrictions haven't been "The most sweeping restrictions on liberty ever seen" no matter how charitably you approach and scope the claim. I entirely stand by my opinion that it's absurd to state that.

There exists entirely plausible interpretations of "sweeping" that place the california restrictions above the examples you cited. The draft only targeted males of specific ages, the sedition act removes a much "smaller" set of rights...etc

To be clear, I think the WSG claim is hyperbole. However it is a claim that could be reasonably argued to be correct and is thus not literally "absurd". Thus I would class is as hyperbolic and your use of the word as figurative.

He tried to silence a teenager that was writing about him on twitter.

This is the weirdest criticism to me. That teenager had a very popular Twitter account shared in a couple major publications, whose sole purpose is to show the world Elon's live location.

This is especially odd coming from the privacy maximalists at HN. How long would it take you to report a Twitter account that Tweeted out your live location daily? Be honest.

And then you use the word 'silence' which is far more ominous than saying that he offered the kid $5000 for what was about 15 minutes of python.

The ACLU no longer works on protecting some aspects of free speech.

https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/558433-the-aclus-ci...

Which state government bills are you referring to?

I live in Charlottesville and the ACLU caught a lot of flak for supporting the KKK in a rally earlier that summer before the August 12 Unite the Right rally. When they backed down was the first time I started to pay attention that maybe some of the criticism against the left's assault on speech was legitimate.

(For the record, I am very far left, but from a time when true free speech was a sacred left value.)

The left has numbers now and many are changing their tune to embrace an authoritarian stance on the "proper" issues.

https://www.chalkbeat.org/22525983/map-critical-race-theory-...

That article is a discombobulated conservative rant that accuses all corporate America of being leftist (please), and contains zero verifiable details that support the title, as far as I can tell.

What, exactly, is it saying the ACLU did? What, exactly, is it referring to? The only sentence that even attempts to answer that question is: “an ACLU official said it was perfectly legitimate for his lawyers to decline to defend hate speech.”

That statement is a fact. Hate speech is explicitly exempt from U.S. Free Speech protections. If you’re going to defend Free Speech, please read a little about the limitations on Free Speech, and some of the history that brought about those limitations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#Limitations

Limits on Free Speech is as much a conservative value as a liberal value. Framing this as a leftist takeover of “woke” values is a thinly veiled misinformation FUD campaign designed to confuse you about what U.S. values are and convince you liberals are attacking, while hypocritically doing all the attacking. Don’t let this junk work on you, stay curious and seek verifiable facts, not tribal opinion.

Hate speech is explicitly exempt from U.S. Free Speech protections.

That’s not true. The US restricts speech that incites imminent criminal behavior. That’s all.

The ACLU is famous for defend a Nazi rally through a Jewish town of Skokie, IL.

That ACLU is dead now.

https://www.aclu.org/cases/shurtleff-v-city-boston-no-20-180...

In an amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court, the ACLU and ACLU of Massachusetts argue that Boston’s denial of Camp Constitution’s request to display its flag violated the group’s free-speech rights

On March 2nd 2022. You made the claim the ACLU is dead , what evidence do you have to support that?

The state-level ACLU seems to be more immune, but the national level ACLU is fracturing and advocating speech limits.

https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2017/8/20/16167870/aclu-hat...

That is not legally correct. Hate speech is not explicitly exempt from US free speech protections. There is no such law, you're just making things up. Unless it contains an explicit incitement to violence, hate speech is completely legal. The link you cited doesn't support your point.

The internal ACLU policy is apparently now to consider politics when deciding which speech to defend. As a private organization they're free to make those choices but it's disappointing to see them retreat from the values that I and other liberals hold dear.

https://fee.org/articles/the-aclu-is-no-longer-free-speechs-...

And I am perfectly well aware of what real US values are. Condescending advice from someone ignorant about basic Constitutional law is not helpful or appreciated.

> Hate speech is explicitly exempt from U.S. Free Speech protections. If you’re going to defend Free Speech, please read a little about the limitations on Free Speech, and some of the history that brought about those limitations.

Your own link makes it clear that in the US, hate speech is protected speech.

"Hate speech is also protected by the First Amendment in the United States, as decided in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, (1992) in which the Supreme Court ruled that hate speech is permissible, except in the case of imminent violence"

ACLU of 2021 no longer supports free speech. The ACLU of the 80s and 90s were a bastion of free speech.

Evidence?

The former head of the ACLU from the 80s who famously defended the Nazis for free speech even though he is Jewish has been rallying against the current ACLU for precisely this reason.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06/us/aclu-free-speech.html

> He has no background with any org that works on protecting free speech.

I would argue Starlink occupies that role.

That's a very wild claim. How did you make that jump and why Starlink and not every other ISP?

I’m assuming because they offer open ISP services inside jurisdictions where the government censors the Internet.

Not in its current iteration, which relies on ground stations in or near those countries. You're not gonna get Starlink service in China or Iran, even if you can get a dish.

He recently sent a truckload of dishes to Ukraine...

> I would argue Starlink occupies that role.

Please do. What is Starlink doing to protect free speech?

Sending dishes to Ukraine?

Ukraine is currently under martial law and has significant restrictions on speech; it's (justifiably) illegal, for example, to report on troop positions. Starlink isn't changing that; it just provides internet access, filtered through a local ground station subject to any local laws and filtering that are applicable. China has internet access, but not free speech. Same for Russia.

The ground stations aren't in Ukraine. So, Ukraine doesn't have a means of enforcing whatever restrictions on speech come with martial law.

Interested in hearing your take on Bill Gates' qualifications in various segments...

Bill Gates spends his ill-gotten monopoly profits on funding research and wide scale critical public health and education programs across the world and including America.

That's on an order of magnitude difference than the world's richest meme-sharer purchasing the software company that provides the meme-sharing infrastructure.

Mixed reviews. The Gates Foundation pushed an initiative to grade teachers based on student test scores, essentially. That only made problems in the education sector worse. Ask any teacher and they'll tell you what the problems are, and untalented teachers is pretty far down the list.

That wasn't their intention, the Gates Foundation has done massive amounts of good work, just because there are unintended consequences doesn't change the intent

They swooped into a field they were not experts in and caused problems. Intentions are beside the point. They thought they were the smartest ones in the room but they didn't understand the underlying issues.

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