Comment by staunch | Hacker News Reader

Comment by staunch | Hacker News Reader

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I agree sites had different policies and I'm (intentionally) simplifying the history.

> Neither one of them had any common carrier protections to protect or to lose by these policies.

That is precisely the reason sites had a light moderation touch for years. I'm not sure where you're getting that from? The consensus (from lawyers I was advised by personally) was that too much moderation would open you up to liability, and so most social sites just enforced their ToS without wading into full scale moderation.

> I can't name any prominent American politicians who really want social media to publish everything that's allowed under the First Amendment. Do you know of any?

I'm sure there's probably at least one, but I have no interest in what politicians say they want. They're so often the people the Supreme Court is protecting us from. To me the question is what principles should guide us, and my answer is the First Amendment.

> I don't think that he understands how broad the First Amendment actually is...

I think he does understand how broad the First Amendment is. I also think he's probably much more willing to sacrifice short-term (or even long-term) revenue than most people would expect. I don't claim to know for sure though. And he might change his mind in the future.

What makes you think he is willing to sacrifice short term revenue?

- He's a businessman. You could argue that you need to be successful to have the resources to help people

- He sued Top Gear because of a somewhat negative car review of the original Tesla Roadster [1]. Would an advocate of free speech to the level some want here do that? Maybe he changed though, maybe he only wants free speech when it doesn't hurt him.

I'm honestly asking where the image of a champion of free speech comes from, besides what he says he'll do?

[1]https://www.wired.com/2012/02/tesla-vs-top-gear/ [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/elizahaverstock/2022/02/15/elon...

> What makes you think he is willing to sacrifice short term revenue?

Because we already know from his past behavior that he's willing to make long-term bets. And his statement that he doesn't view his interest in Twitter as a money-making venture.

> He sued Top Gear because of a somewhat negative car review of the original Tesla Roadster

That's a very biased way to frame it. IIRC Top Gear admits that they faked part of the review to make Tesla look bad, after Tesla proved that they had.

Believing in free speech doesn't mean you can't sue people that you believe have violated laws.

Or perhaps he simply made a mistake of judgement going after them legally and was wrong to do so. That's also not inconsistent with a belief in free speech.

> Believing in free speech doesn't mean you can't sue people that you believe have violated laws.

Musk doesn't just believe in free speech, he's called himself a “free speech absolutist”.

- One can either be a free speech absolutist, or not.

- If you are a free speech absolutist, you must take a position that all speech is permissible. Because if you don't then you aren't an absolutist, because one could then always take the absolute position that all speech is permissible.

- If you insist that it's okay to be an absolutist on free speech but still maintain that some speech is not permissible, then really we're not talking about free speech anymore but instead negotiating exactly what classes of speech are not permissible.

- Therefore, if Musk really is a free speech absolutist as he claims to be, he must support Top Gun's right to shamelessly lie about his product. As a matter of principle, libel is perfectly okay for a free speech absolutist. If you claim it's not, then I can find you a free speech absolutist who disagrees.

- Therefore Musk is either lying about his motives or he doesn't understand enough about the nuances of free speech to know he's doing. Either way he definitely shouldn't be trusted as a standard bearer or avatar for free speech.

Musk seems to have used the term "free speech absolutist" as a means of contrasting his First Amendment-style view of free speech with the severely qualified and diminished version currently available on platforms like Twitter.

So I agree that you're technically correct about what "absolutist" means, but I don't think it makes a difference in this case.

Anyone who is willing to run social media services as if they were bound by the First Amendment has my support. They may fail but at least they'd be trying to do the right thing, which is better than what we have today.

It's easy to project your hopes and dreams onto a person when you discount the meaning of their literal words and replace them with your own biases. I have no illusions that Musk's own conception of "free speech" is not just as qualified and diminished as what Twitter offers. If Musk had a legitimately impressive adherence to the principles of free speech, backed by deed, that would be one thing. If he could put his money where his mouth is in literally any other context, that would be a data point. But Musk's record on free speech is the opposite; he often uses the legal system as well as his own wealth to exert pressure which is anti-free speech. To be clear I'm not saying he is wrong to do this, but he's wrong on the basis of free speech. Indeed, Musk is very keen to restrict the speech of others when he feels that speech harms him. That's reasonable, but not principled.

Taken as a whole, to me this just indicates that Musk is not a free speech absolutist but instead a fair-weather supporter of free speech; he's for free speech when it works for him, but also anti-free speech when it works for him. This makes him no better or worse than anyone else IMO, but it certainly doesn't make him the standard bearer of free speech.

However, the thing that does make him worse than everyone else is that he lies about it. He calls himself a free speech absolutist knowing full well the meaning of those words. He's trying to paint himself as a champion when in fact he's not, which makes him either delusional or a manipulative liar. Either way, he shouldn't be the one at the helm of Twitter, if the rationale is that it would be a boom for free speech. It would just be more of the same. Welcome to the new boss, same as the old boss.

> It's easy to project your hopes and dreams onto a person when you discount the meaning of their literal words and replace them with your own biases. I have no illusions that Musk's own conception of "free speech" is not just as qualified and diminished as what Twitter offers.

Right there you're doing what you accuse me of doing, just in the opposite direction.

I will admit that I am doing that to some extent, but I feel I have some reason to believe I'm more likely to be right.

One major reason is that everything he has said seems to align with what was a very common viewpoint just a few years ago, which is best summarized by the Voltaire quote:

"I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

That's the sentiment behind the First Amendment and what I believe Elon Musk most likely believes in.

> ...which makes him either delusional or a manipulative liar

There are many more explanations for his past behavior other than him being delusional or a liar. He could have nuanced views, have simply failed to live up to his own ideals in specific instances, have justifications you can't imagine, etc. In any case, it's almost certainly a false dichotomy.

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