Elon has never said this is what he wants to do with twitter. This is just something people keep assuming.
Interviewer: You've described yourself, Elon, as a free speech absolutist, but does that mean that there's literally nothing that people can't say and it's okay?
Musk: Well, I think obviously Twitter or any forum is bound by the laws of the country that it operates in. So obviously there are some limitations on free speech in the US, and, of course, Twitter would have to abide by those rules. [...] No, I think, like I said, in my view Twitter should match the laws of the country
Interviewer: Right. So you can't incite people to violence like a direct incitement to violence. You can't do the equivalent of crying fire in a movie theater, for example.
Elon Musk: No, that would be a crime.
Shouting fire in a crowded movie theatre is not, and never was, illegal. It was an analogy in a court case which was then overturned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...
Interviewer: But here's the challenge, is that it's such a nuanced difference between different things. So there's incitement to violence. That's a no, it's illegal. There's hate speech, which some forms of hate speech are fine. I hate spinach.
"I hate spinach" is not hate speech, and importantly, hate speech isn't even illegal.
Well, in US there are certainly attempts to make it so. There is definitely framework in place and there is the mores. The time seems ripe too given how people seem afraid of what people might say if you let them.
There are definitely hate speech laws in other countries.
For the record, I am sympathetic to your stance, but I am not sure it is accurate.
I'm not actually American, but my understanding is that there have been prior attempts, especially in some US states, to make hate speech illegal, but each time it just gets knocked down because it violates that pesky first amendment.
The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that most of what would qualify as hate speech in other western countries is legally protected free speech under the First Amendment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_Stat...
Now, if you're saying "All twitter should just follow the laws of the country", now you've got to decide which country?, because most Twitter users are not in the US, and Twitter operatates - has business entities and employees - in other countries apart from US.
You pose an interesting question and I might not have sufficient information to give you a full picture, but I might try to show a glimpse of what I think may be happening.
Someone somewhere decided it may be a good idea to expand existing framework ( hate crimes[1] ), which was relatively easily adopted in America due to historical ( slavery ) and political factors ( combating racism ).
[1] https://www.justice.gov/hatecrimes/laws-and-policies
With that in mind, the first step is saturating the media with opinions indicating some sort of support for a policy/law change ( in this case hate speech - links with sample articles follow - note how old some of those are ):
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/29/why-ameri...
https://newint.org/sections/argument/2012/12/01/is-hate-spee...
https://www.ihrb.org/news-events/press-centre/the-challenge-...
https://theconversation.com/the-idolization-of-free-speech-i...
Once the population is sufficiently primed, one can run it through congress. It is not a weekend project.
Note that it is exactly the same pattern with encryption battles, but at least that one has clear originators ( usually three letter agencies ).
If/when the Democrats restructure the Supreme Court to have a liberal majority, overturning Brandenburg with a single ruling becomes on the table, and the door is open for hate speech legislation.
I don't think any of the current sitting life time appointed supreme court justices have expressed any will at overturning that decision.
The whole difficult part of 'hate speech' is that it often is highly offensive and nasty, but what people find highly offensive and nasty differs (e.g. an atheist stating there is no god is deeply hateful and offensive to many people, or being pro-abortion). Ugh. I can't even.
> And in fact the line from Justice Holmes in Schenck v. United States is “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.” That “falsely” is what’s doing the work, both in Justice Holmes’s hypothetical, and in how such a false shout would be treated by First Amendment law today. Knowingly false statements of fact are often constitutionally unprotected — consider, for instance, libel, fraud, perjury, and false light invasion of privacy. That would presumably apply to knowing falsehoods that cause a panic.
Also see: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1038.
That said, this doesn't change your broader point that it seems that most people (myself included) are not very clear on 1A exceptions.
"If in doubt, let the speech exist. If it's a gray area, I would say let the Tweet exist. In a case where there's perhaps a lot of controversy, you would not want to necessarily promote that Tweet. I'm not saying I have all the answers here, but I do think that we want to be very reluctant to delete things..."
(Seek to about 19:40 in the interview: https://youtu.be/cdZZpaB2kDM)
Of course it can turn into a cesspool. Of course there are ways around that problem. Like allowing more customizability for users.
For example: an ‘old Twitter’ filter that would only show content compatible with the old moderation norms.
Use your imagination, intelligent tech folks, instead of airing the same hyperventilating opinions.
I think we've had plenty of years to demonstrate a way to make it work without the toxicity and damage to society, yet we've not done so - even with the most scrutinized platforms in history and the world's most capable software engineers.
We are social creatures. Social media is not at all an incarnation of 'society' in which we can function.
That actually kind of mirrors my politics. I think freedom is what you get when every movement, crusade, and ideology simultaneously fails.
This isn't nihilism. It's a belief that problems are best solved without force.
The problem occurs when those ten percents use the ensuing outrage to recruit.
yeah that sounds great but the devil is in the details and they have always been. I feel like Musk gets tunnel vision in his thought process. Like he goes "A leads to B, B leads to C, and then C leads to D and done." without contemplating the complexities along the way. It's interesting because he's not naive to business and how things work. He's certainly gotten things done in timelines that people thought impossible and even laughed in his face but other times he has wildly missed.