Yeah, I don't know why anyone thought Twitter would be a "bastion" of free speech. His history proves otherwise.
Were we reading the same threads? I've seen countless people on HN predicting exactly this sorta thing happening, even myself.
Any criticism I've ever said of Tesla or Elon usually initially gets up votes and then half a day or even a few days later receives a lot of down votes. I always assumed it was people invested in his stocks doing it on their own, but his antics on Twitter show he's the kind of person that might actually employ people to down vote people critical of him and his companies.
Now, some subset of people will be for and against anything, so if you filter selectively HN supports any and ever narrative.
But the Twitter acquisition has blown some big holes in the myth. He talked a good game about free speech, but it was clear from his initial bid for Twitter that he didn't really understand the realities of the business or the difficulties of hosting speech at scale. And since he took over, he has stepped onto turf a lot of people here understand quite well: running a business, managing software development, and the dynamics of online forums and social media.
And I expect this disillusionment will continue. Somebody described the Twitter acquisition as "fragile narcissist buys criticism factory", so I expect Musk will feel emotionally compelled to engage with Twitter personally, rather than doing the sensible thing and turning it over to somebody competent while turning his attention back to his at-risk car company.
So look for more of him pursuing personal grudges and putting far-right political views (e.g. "The woke mind virus is either defeated or nothing else matters") into action with absolutely no regard to his pieties around free speech. In the US right, "free speech" is often code for "the powerful should never experience criticism or accountability". That may seem weird, but it's a specific instance of the more general point: "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." Cross that with "free speech" and you get what Elon is doing: free speech for the right people, arbitrary deranking and account bans for the wrong.
That's a succinct way to put it. I like that.
He's never going to develop 'systems that can patrol the speech' because he's far too vain and think skinned to allow actual open dialogue. Like every other conservative, the only speech he really cares about is his own, and he is completely comfortable banning or delisting speech he personally doesn't like. He's tyrant man child.
Ever look in the mirror? That's a lot of hate and presumptions to assume about one person. And Elon is most definitely not a conservative. He has stated he voted democrat his whole life. His support for republicans is only recent and says he is not against voting democrat sometime in the future.
Personally, I was skeptical of his claims to free speech and still am (especially given how he's handled it thus far). You simply can't have free speech platforms. You need protocols designed to achieve such a thing. Something like Twitter is always doomed to be censored.
But my disagreement ends there. I'm enjoying the Twitter files releases. Seeing the cooperation between Twitter and the feds is both unsurprising and unsettling.
> Dude bought a company.
Approximately nobody thinks Twitter is just another company. Clearly Musk doesn't think that; he's waxed poetic about how important it is to the future of humanity. Its hundreds of millions of users don't think it's just another company either. It demonstrably played an important role in journalism and public discourse.
It's almost as if there are actual consequences to what he is doing, and what happens to twitter.
What dude actually did was disrupt communities, which after all the talk about free speech, seems to have been a lot of the point.
Despite whatever personal feeling about Twitter you may have, some people liked it, formed social bonds there, and worked hard to post fun and interesting content. Not all of it was political outrage. Moderation policies were put in place by the old Twitter to make the experience of those people better, and Musk took those protections away. So now those people are in fact leaving after facing a deluge of hate that all of a sudden (for whatever reason) surged when Musk took over. That's the problem. Now my social network is spread across post, mastadon, substack, reddit, and twitter. And for what? To turn Twitter into Truth Social, which itself is trying to be Twitter? It's all so pointless and yet real damage to real relationships is being done.
If Twitter is the town square, Elon Musk is a natural disaster which rips through the town and destroys houses, forcing your friends to move to different towns. My problem isn’t that I made friends in the town; my problem is the natural disaster that ruined my town.
Social ties are important to people, no matter where and how they form. Breaking that up has real consequences. I’m sure you would feel the same way about your own social connections, and you wouldn’t appreciate someone blaming you for those ties being weakened by external forces.
There is no assumption. It's based on the things he's said and done
>And Elon is most definitely not a conservative.
Yes he is.
>He has stated he voted democrat his whole life.
His word means nothing, but regardless, you can be conservative and vote Democrat. The Democrat party is for the most part the republican party with less bigotry.
>His support for republicans is only recent and says he is not against voting democrat sometime in the future.
His support for the GOP comes when they tried to overthrow the government and have installed a far-right religious fanatic majority on the highest court in the land? Yeah, he's conservative.
I am completely fine with that.
Edit: I should probably point out this is sarcasm used to highlight the absurdity of the original posters "I'm fine with fascists ('non-establishment right') being back on twitter"
My comment was exaggerated to highlight how absurd the OP's comment of "I'm completely fine with having 'non-establishment right' back" was. Because it boiled away any semblance of reality that these were awful people
I'd heard of claims of labor disputes and other unsavory stuff at the Tesla factories, but honestly, I don't know of a single car company in the world without a history of and ongoing labor tensions.
The self driving was obviously a fantasy and Musk got way over his skis on claims there, but he's far from alone.
Watching him drive Twitter into the ground has been a revelation for me.
This is just your partisan blinkers talking. Someone on the right could equally say “social justice” on the US left is often code for “now I take your stuff”. Both statements are partisan, largely inaccurate, and wholly unconstructive.
There are many people on the right deeply committed to free speech, like David French. There are many non-partisan institutions committed to free speech, like (formerly) the ACLU and (now) FIRE. There are many left wing people deeply committed to free speech, like those people fighting Florida’s “anti-woke” speech laws.
Abolitionism. Civil rights. Gay rights. Liberal triumphs built on free speech, on free criticism, even in the face of overwhelming odds. Don’t cede free speech to petty partisanship. Nothing good will come of it.
He's not a congressperson, senator, or governor and has limited influence on the current base of the US right-wing.
(I don’t identify as a member of the right, to be clear, but these are just very obvious trends for anyone that actually observes the right, rather than just making assumptions guided by partisan antipathy.)
Sure, but my contention is that at best the intellectual right doesn't matter, and at its worst it's now an oxymoron.
I agree that there are people on the right committed to free speech and who demonstrate it through action, and good for them. But there are also a lot of people who, as with Musk, use it more as a fig leaf. And there are plenty who are openly opposed to it.
And I think being honest about that is one of the best to keep it from becoming purely a partisan issue.
Those who are interested in technology in itself
And those who are interested in technology as a means to be one rich and maybe powerful
I would argue there is not a single one.
If someone can explain how this is damaging to freedom of speech I am very interested to know.
So if Musk literally did nothing but continue that pattern, he could justifiably make the claim that it's as close to a bastion of free speech as could be allowed on a social media site of its size.
Looking forward to more of these twitter file releases.
From what I saw it was just some people on Bidens campaign team reaching out asking Twitter to take down some tweets that contained leaked nudes of Bidens son, in line with Twitters ToS.
I feel like I've missed the boat on this, everyone is pointing at a smoking gun, but I haven't seen it yet.
It's not just about "some nudes of Biden's son". It is about the suppression of a NY Post story about a laptop his son lost. It had details about conversations and taking money from foreign nationals. Supposedly, it was deemed Russian disinformation, but that was all a lie. It was real.