“Free Speech Absolutist” Elon Musk Caves to Authoritarian Censorial Bullies
techdirt.com
techdirt.com
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss --- only more extreme.
Those who pine for a black and white "absolutist" utopia are once again confronted with a reality made from shades of gray.
Extremist ideology and solutions appeal to simple minded folks struggling to navigate a scary, complicated reality.
Musk is just a posterchild for the ideology he has embraced --- the idea that real world problems have easy, simple minded solutions.
Boldly declaring yourself a "free speech absolutist" is simple and appeals to a lot of people --- unfortunately, it is also naive and a poor fit for the complex reality of social media --- as Musk himself has just proven.
Anything coming from the right should be taken with the biggest grain of salt the world has ever seen. There's a 99% chance that they're screaming about nothing and a 100% chance that they're not telling the entire truth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files
I'm not sure how anyone could say that in good faith. The government was obviously asking for and was granted censorship on a regular basis. An act of government firmly against the first amendment.
This statement shows this guy has an axe to grind and is willing to disregard obvious first amendment violations by the US government to grind it.
> David Loy, legal director for the First Amendment Coalition, said that Twitter is legally able to choose what speech is allowed on their site, noting that both the Biden campaign, which was not part of the government, and the Trump White House could request specific content moderation actions.
It's probably not good but I haven't seen any reason to think the government's relationship to twitter was other than normative for social media companies. Whether it's "nothing of the sort" of censorship is a judgement call, I can certainly see how someone could make it in good faith.
It does nothing of the sort. The government shouldn't even be requesting it. Having the FBI do it is requesting it under duress. Having the FBI do it while bringing CEOs to testify before congress doubles down on the duress.
Nice company, it would be a shame if anything were to happen to it.
>any reason to think the government's relationship to twitter was other than normative for social media companies
Yea, that's the problem, the news too. You might hate Musk and you might hate Twitter, but you shouldn't dismiss what's actually going on here.
What I have seen is government-adjacent entities that people confuse for the government like the Biden campaign request that Twitter apply their own Terms of Service policies to remove things that are not supposed to be allowed (like the nudes of Hunter, which is technically revenge porn)
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1603857534737072128?ref_s...
Looks to me like ToS violation tips, not YOU MUST CENSOR
edit: if you think the FBI wasting their resources helping Twitter identify terms of service violations is "government censorship" we will never see eye to eye on this issue. It was unusual, but definitely not a constitutional crisis.
No I suppose not. Ask yourself, why would the FBI help Twitter with their terms of service for probably a few years? Why would Twitter charge them for the privilege? Why would they do it right during the run up to an election? They don't do things just because. Why wouldn't it be a more appropriate agency like the FEC or the FCC? Would you feel comfortable if they did similar to NYT, WaPo or Fox articles? Questions everyone should think about as a voting citizen. Our government is only corrupt as we allow it to be; we've allowed a lot in the last 23 years.
Maybe alarming, maybe suspicious, but it's legal and it wasn't government censorship. Trying to frame it so only weakens your position when the facts and the laws are clearly laid out.
Please explain to me how anything in the Twitter Files shows government censorship. Did the government threaten Twitter in any way? Did they force Twitter to remove these tweets? I'd also like to point out that this supposed "censorship" took place during the Trump administration.
Of course they did. You're assuming that if they don't spell out in so many words "or we're going to do something about it" they haven't made a threat.
>I'd also like to point out that this supposed "censorship" took place during the Trump administration.
There's a reason why people complain about the deep state.
I'm not saying there is some vast conspiracy puppeting elon musk to buy and ruin twitter. But that there is some natural resistance in the system that would promote this behavior to begin with.
Anyway, no one but Musk claimed operating a social media site was as simple as “free speech.”