If one believes Twitter has a free speech problem: Musk shouts about free speech but shut down Teslas PR department, lashes out against any criticism against him, canceled a preorder because he didn't like a journalists' article etc.
Musk is great at self-promotion and this often helps his companies in some sense, but what else does he bring to the table?
Kind of a weird example. Musk shutdown Tesla's PR department because Musk believes Tesla can get better organic press. It's unrelated, but if anything, getting rid of a dissembling PR department can only serve to promote better discussion, not suppress it.
That does mean that it’s biased to what advertisers think is OK, but it’s always going to be biased. It’s just not really a bias based on a deep agenda or underlying conspiracy. I actually believe that. There may be some controversy but nobody has really demonstrated much consistent bias, less anything more sinister.
I say this knowing Elon is (was?) South African.
I'm not sure you can call what's going on on Twitter any of these words, at least on any even slightly polarizing topics.
The mission of Tesla is not free speech, but to accelerate the transition to sustainable energy. Tesla seems to be doing just fine without a PR department, so it seems he was right to shut it down.
The mission of SpaceX is to make life multi-planetary. So of course there is no right to free speech for the employees.
But the mission of twitter should be free speech within the bounds of the law, at least according to Elon.
Currently it seems to be to move the Overton window so much to the left that you can be banned for giving the definition of what a woman is that was commonly accepted by everybody in 2010.
The problem is, his past actions don't inspire any confidence in that being the truth.
> Currently it seems to be to move the Overton window so much to the left that you can be banned for giving the definition of what a woman is that was commonly accepted by everybody in 2010.
That's the right-wing view and there are countless examples of the left-wing getting banned, and they are angry as well. I don't thing it's cut and dry.
Can you name some that weren't due to the poster threatening someone, doxing or otherwise something illegal? I honestly can't think of any off the top of my head where a left wing post/user was banned for something legal but I can think of tons from the other side.
* https://www.wired.co.uk/article/twitter-political-account-ba...
* https://www.forbes.com/sites/fruzsinaeordogh/2018/07/31/why-...
* https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/22/twitter-a...
Don't get me wrong: I'm sure more right-wing/conservatives users are getting blocked than their counterparts, but only because they are more extreme (right now) on those platforms.
While they shouldn't be banned (and I'm assuming that was fixed after that article came out if in fact they were not bots), I haven't seen any examples of specific left wing accounts getting banned for posting content as many on the right have (examples: Hunter Biden stories and the NYP, anyone posting Wuhan Lab leak theory in 2020-2021, The Babylon Bee for the Rachel Levine satire posts, etc).
And twitter knows they're getting a great deal!
I like twitter -- I can get in and out fast. In 15 minutes I can see a lot of new, interesting things, or just see what everyhing thinks is cool today.
And many of the things people complain about I don't see. I follow people around my specific interests: tech, electronics, jazz, and classical music -- and rarely see anything else. Judicious use of "block" and filters makes it rare that I see anything I don't want to see.
But I recently tried another social media plaltform: TikTok. I was surprised as a 59-year-old that I'd even understand it, but I followed people in the same categories I follow on Twitter, limit viewing to those I follow (I don't try the suggested feed) and it's nice and I'm having fun. Haven't posted yet, because I can't just type a few words or post a link and hit "send", but I'll figure that out, too.
Twitter HAS a free speech problem. This is not controversial. Now you may not agree that Twitter SHOULD allow free speech, but you can not deny that censorship exists on Twitter and it is serving the political agenda of some people.
Tech misinformation is interesting because a Chinese government account gets a flag and an American government account doesn't. A company pr account doesn't get a bias flag, but it is wholly designed around spreading misinformation. Misinformation seems to be used as an argument against not only free speech, but only leaning towards very specific directions politically.
There are hundreds of records of censored content which doesn't have anything to do with all that. This is a fact whether you agree with it or not.
Twitter has limitations on free speech, it's totally debatable if that's a problem or not.
But let's also not say that "Twitter has limitations on free speech" because it feels like a misleading euphemism. Free speech is not a spectrum. You either have it or not.
How about we just say that "Twitter doesn't have free speech".
And yes, "it's totally debatable if that's a problem or not". That I agree.
Have we become so delusional that we can’t recognize this simple fact?
No, it doesn't.
> This is not controversial.
If you keep getting in arguments about something, it's pretty silly to claim there is no controversy.
> Now you may not agree that Twitter SHOULD allow free speech
If you don't agree that Twitter should do something that it currently isn't, you by definition don't see it as having a problem in that behavioral domain.
> but you can not deny that censorship exists on Twitter and it is serving the political agenda of some people.
Private actors controlling the use of their private resources to select which ideas they will and will not promote with them is called “free speech”. So, you seem to think Twitter’s problem is that they exercise free speech.
I have to admit that this makes sense. But still kinda disturbing in this case. Because when the private resource we're talking about is Twitter, the actors behind can exercise their right of free speech for mass manipulation. That's too much power. I guess this is the problematic part.
It's not exactly the same thing as the right to free speech of a single individual or a small company.
Your logic is sound, but sometimes scale changes the rules. Especially in this very special case where Twitter has become the digital equivalent of a global town square. That's the catch.
Anyway maybe my quick arguments weren't very good after all.
But do you really not see any problems with Twitter lately? Is everything okay?
You seem smart. I'm genuniely curious.
Transparency about moderation is the easiest to fix. All everyone wants out of Twitter is to know why posts are moderated, promoted, shadow-banned, etc. It doesn't have to be super specific, in terms of moderation, but giving everyone an overall sense of how and why things are moderated the way they are, would help to restore a sense of fairness.
If he does well with Twitter in that regard, all the other platforms aren't hard to replicate if you've got the servers and money.
OR
He loses most of his wealth selling off stock to try to do this, and we learn the difference between paper and real wealth.
If you get banned or suspended, they tell you why.
They communicate their efforts like this pretty transparently. https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2022/our-ongoi...
As usual for Musk, this is a business decision that is meant to benefit him that he is trying to sell as benefitting other people.
Edit - Musk's other companies, SpaceX, Boring, and Tesla, rely heavily on government subsidies and contracts. The access he gets to politicians by controlling their newsfeeds on the social network they pay attention to is also very valuable. Not valuable for Twitter, valuable for Musk.
It wouldn't surprise me...
Twitter's biggest problem is profitability and Musk doesn't seem to care about the economics of Twitter.
What has Tesla PR got to do with free speech?
Or cancelling a pre-order?
Journalists and "the media" have little to do with free speech in general, and maybe even a negative effect on free speech if it is though that media representation is an alternative.
It's also notable that freedom to express an opinion, and freedom to express something as factual as somewhat different. Twitter generally deals with opinion (and does a poor job of dealing with facts/fact-checking).
And the right to not send a luxury good to a journalist/blogger is hardly a free-speech chilling penalty; refusing service is not censorship.
But that's what Musk wants to fix on Twitter, so I think it's applicable.
> For example, what does not having a PR dept supress?
On the face of it nothing, but if the PR dept is closed to make it harder for the press to ask questions, then it's indicative.
> And the right to not send a luxury good to a journalist/blogger is hardly a free-speech chilling penalty
Of course it is. The next reviewer (if he wants to buy one) will either not review the car or try not to upset Musk with his review.
> refusing service is not censorship.
Well, then how is refusing service to right-wing users on Twitter censorship?
> to make it harder for the press to ask questions
entirely different from censorship or suppression of speech - in fact this is the right not to speech. Free speech implies to right to information.
> The next reviewer
Same issue with paid reviews, these motivating examples are not much of a challenge to free speech.
> how is refusing service to right-wing users on Twitter censorship?
Because twitter is a platform for speech, buying a Tesla isn't the same. That said, if there weren't a few large corps monopolising social networking (and usually via shady methods) it wouldn't be so much of a free speech issue either - There would be an issue if Teslas was one of a few car manufacturers also.
He's solved the full self driving problem. He has more time on has hands...
> The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time.
So Musk is honest? because intentional or not it clear Bezo's ownership of WaPo has impacted editorial positions
Disclaimer: I'm an ex-Amazonian, and I think it is great company to work at (blue collar jobs excluded, but that's true for all warehouse and delivery jobs). Amazon managed to get rid of the middle population of a Gauss distribution regarding performance, Amazon is relentless (I like that drive for efficiency). By taking out the middle, so, the very top and the very bottom are left unchecked and un-moderated. Which breeds all kinds of problems.
And that's all the interference I care about when it comes to reporting.
Likewise what's to say China doesn't already have agents at Twitter and access to that data? It's far easier, and better, to do that in an incognito way - no?
Another example is Reddit's last round had Tencent contributing 50% of the round or $150 million; how much influence or access do they have because of that?
He cannot even solve moderation of racism in his own factory, let alone online.
I'll be ditching twitter completely. The whole thing rubs me up the wrong way in terms of what I want to associate myself with.
Facebook vibes.
Just another facebook run by another egotistic billionaire.
Not my cup of tea.