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Comment by powera | Hacker News Reader

There is a certain sense that Elon Musk paid $44 billion to do this, so he has every right to do so.

He likely has a _right_ to, but it does make his whole ‘free speech’ thing look a little silly (of course, it’s not the first of his actions to do that, by a long shot). Observers have a right to make fun of him for doing so, too.

I don't understand how it is anti free speech.

Well, when previous Twitter management did things like this, Musk said that they were restricting free speech. So this is at least anti "Musk's definition of free speech".

Unless it violates something like the Sherman Act[1]. Obviously we don’t know if they are actually doing this throttling and I don’t know whether it would be considered anticompetitive behaviour under that act but it is an example of where even though he has paid the money he doesn’t have the right to do so.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act

The Sherman Act doesn't ban "anticompetitive behavior" exactly, it bans anticompetitive agreements. If you own a company, you can do whatever you want to screw over your competition. If you get together with some of your rival companies and agree to work together to screw over the rest of the competition, then you run afoul of the law.

I was thinking agreements were section 1 and anticompetitive behaviours were section 2. This bit https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/45

That said, I'm no expert and was just using it as an example.

He owns Twitter, he probably has the right to do it as a private platforn owner, and it is still worth calling him out for doing it. Freedom of speech he is exercising is not freedom of criticism of speech.

Its especially worthwhile because Musk sold himself as an absolutist of a view of free speech in which platforms like Twitter were not exercisers of free speech but actors whose decision to shape and bias content violated their users rights to free speech.

Yes, and other people have every right to criticize him for doing it.

Nyoo not my favorite meme master 100 billionaire!!!

Sure. And we have every right to call him an asshat who has made a fool of himself with his bleating about freeze peach, and lazy hypocrisy.

Properties like Twitter are more than just some corporation, it's a user base, and a history of user activity built on user generated content. That was trusted to an organization that, effectively, no longer exists.

He's legally free to do this, but morally is a whole other thing.

I mean of course he has a right to do it; just like he has a right to throw away the sole valuable part of the thing he paid for (the brand). That doesn't make it any less stupid.

I made this argument in response to people who called him out for calling Twitter employees back to the office. It is interesting, the response to the "well he owns it" argument seems to be correlated almost entirely with whether you agree with the substance of the action, independent of the righteousness.

There is also a sense where it is frankly bad that having a lot of money means you get to do this.

> There is a certain sense that Elon Musk paid $44 billion to do this, so he has every right to do so.

Even though you can argue the free speech angle regarding news publications such as the new York times, I'm not so sure if blacklisting links to competitors such as Threads is something that sits well with antitrust agencies.

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