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Comment by ipython | Hacker News Reader

Clearly Elon does otherwise he wouldn’t do it?

To me it reeks of a certain lack of self awareness, respect for others and questionable decision making. You can be interesting and edgy without being a total asshole.

I also question his actual interest in sustainability. How exactly does paying $40 billion for Twitter fit into that grand strategy? What about driving a wedge between large groups of people by promoting hate speech helps any positive societal level change? Even if he did, do I want to put that power in one rich man?

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Is he promoting hate speech or just not suppressing it? Who even gets to define hate speech? Often it seems to be speech that aligns with the other teams political agenda. Having a different opinion on something isn’t hate speech even if it’s a very personally held belief. “When does life begin?”, “is sex different than gender?”, “is the Ukraine war righteous, or NATO expansionism?, “should we do everything possible to fight covid, or get back to work?”. Better not fail a purity test.

There is a lot of daylight between the arguments you posit and "Sorry pedo guy, you really did ask for it"

> Clearly Elon does otherwise he wouldn’t do it?

People are allowed to express themselves?

Not people whose opinions differ from mine. /s

I see comment threads about the dude and wonder sometimes where all the hate comes from. People's dissatisfaction with society and injustice and scarcity and all bad things? But then why direct it at this person, who is working to electrify transportation, reduce the cost of space by multiples, make communication globally available, why not some oil billionaire or war profiteer or large scale polluter? Certainly they exist. They must not post jokes on social media.

Like I said before, two things can be true at the same time. I haven't shifted the goalposts here.

You bring up an interesting point: why can't you be just as effective - if not more so - by just doing the things rather than doing the things and shitposting non-sequiturs? By sucking all the oxygen out of the room, you're right, the general discourse is focused on distractions and not the real issues. If, for example, he agrees with you that the real issue is oil companies and climate change, why doesn't he focus his public energies pointing that out???

> why can't you be just as effective - if not more so - by just doing the things rather than doing the things and shitposting non-sequiturs?

Medice, cura te ipsum

>why?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome

Nice attempt to strawman my argument. Clearly he has all the rights in the world to express himself. Conversely I have all the rights to express my displeasure with his actions :)

Unfortunately I don't have $40b to throw around to amplify my speech, but that's what you get by being one of the richest people on the planet.

> Unfortunately I don't have $40b to throw around to amplify my speech

Unfortunately?

> throw around to amplify my speech

Musk was just as effective on twitter before he owned it. Owning it didn't have much to do with his own communication.

You call it hate speech, others call it free speech, who is the ultimate arbiter?

Twitter prior to Musk was full of hate speech too. You just had to be in the target group to understand that.

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