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Comment by ginger2016 | Hacker News Reader

ginger2016

Elon Musk wants to set the bird free. But is the bird going to be free? Even free speech people don’t like speech that is critical of their beliefs, the pressure on Elon Musk to widen the definition of hate speech will be significant. The pressure from advertisers will force him to cave.

There will be pressure from platform owners like Apple and Google as well. If the moderation is weak Apple could decide to remove the Twitter app like they did to Parler.

Elon buying Twitter isn’t going to set the bird free, for sure it made the cage a little bigger.

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> Even free speech people don’t like speech that is critical of their beliefs

Indeed. The fastest I've ever been banned anywhere on the Internet was forums that were ostensibly focused on "free speech." The term seems to be used ironically.

> Even free speech people don’t like speech that is critical of their beliefs

This is like saying people that like apple pie don't like apple pie. Yes, there are liars and hypocrites out there but those aren't the true believers.

That said, despite the challenges out there, that doesn't mean you just give up the fight for free speech. There will always be bias but the goal here is to even the playing field so we can return to a time where the rules are applied evenly to all players.

"Pressure from advertisers" implies the advertisers are paying more than the marginal utility of the ads themselves in some kind of corporate-back-scratching model.

If the ads provide a ROI, then other advertisers will gladly jump on board.

100% this. Big advertisers don't stop spending because they have a moral objection to the content, they stop spending when the customers who disagree with the content boycott and make a lot of noise.

Also big advertisers can stop spending because the people who make decisions on ad money spend ideologically disagree with Musk moderation policy. The decision makers are not robots, they have biases too.

WSJ is reporting some advertisers are planning to leave if Trump is re-instated.

And where do the people make noise about these types of things? Twitter. If they just stop promoting that content and turning a few keyboard warriors into news items, then companies will be none the wiser, and will happily spend money.

But even in the case they decide to jump ship, other companies will fill the gap. Do you think all the NFL players are going to leave the platform? All the sports journalists? No amount of internet outrage is going to change them, they're too stuck on the platform.

That's not quite how pressure from advertisers work. Ads can't provide ROI if people aren't looking at them, and turning Twitter into a hellscape a la Truth Social/Parler/Gab/etc. is a surefire way to drive away users, which drives away advertisers. They also don't want their ads to be shown next to that kind of content, which will further pressure Musk to bolster content moderation.

Groups can force advertisers to leave the platform. YouTube doesn’t monetize content that is not palatable to advertisers. Similarly whole of Twitter can become unpalatable if problematic speech is not moderated.

E.g. Musk said in the past he will draw the line at legal speech. Assume that Ye (Kanye) posts his early morning rant next week, and it is critical of several groups of people based on religion or race. That speech is legal, but highly problematic, is Musk owning Twitter going to make a difference in the way Ye’s problematic speech is handled in the future, I think not.

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