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Comment by hauget | Hacker News Reader

The First Amendment of the US Constitution defines free speech as protection from government interference in free expression. Twitter is a corporation, free speech laws don’t apply. It can ban anyone it likes. This is perfectly legal.

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Right. Everyone knows this. We've all heard that a million times now.

But the term is being used in this context in a looser definition.

The irony is that many people have cited "free speech" in reference to past actions taken by Twitter that they disagreed with politically. And, of course, the biggest irony is that Musk was one of them.

The other irony is that many people cited "private enterprise" in reference to past actions taken by Twitter that they agreed with politically.

I agree that there is some hypocrisy on both sides.

The irony is that Elon said he was buying Twitter in order to enact his "free speech absolutist" policies, and it turns out he really just wanted to ban elonjet and apparently every journalist on his beat.

The comment didn’t say “free speech laws” it simply said free speech which is broader.

I'm not sure how much free speech we should assume on someone else's private platform. In theory Elon Musk could close Twitter off to everyone, but his closest friends. In the same way that only a few people can use my phone to make calls. I'm no Musk supporter, but Twitter is his now -- if we don't like it, we should roll out a new "Twitter" -- which I'd happily switch to.

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