Elon Musk nominated for Nobel Peace Prize for defending free speech | Hacker News Reader

Elon Musk nominated for Nobel Peace Prize for defending free speech

dailymail.co.uk

15 pointscbeach24 comments

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

> Over time, many individuals have become known as "Nobel Peace Prize Nominees", but this designation has no official standing, and means only that one of the thousands of eligible nominators suggested the person's name for consideration.[22] Indeed, in 1939, Adolf Hitler received a satirical nomination from a member of the Swedish parliament, mocking the (serious but unsuccessful) nomination of Neville Chamberlain.

https://www.nobelpeaceprize.org/nobel-peace-prize/nomination...

> There are 351 candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize for 2023 out of which 259 are individuals and 92 are organizations.

> 351 candidates are the second highest number of candidates ever. For eight years in a row the number of candidates has been exceeding 300. The current record of 376 candidates was reached in 2016.

They gave a Peace Prize to Kissinger so I don't think the prize holds that much weight really.

Adding to this the origin was likely and unofficially attributed to a virtue signalling of the name-sake due to an accident of mistaken identity. [1] Allegedly when Alfred Nobel's brother died a reporter had mistaken Alfred's brother for Alfred and referred to him as the merchant of death in the obituary who had grown rich by developing new ways to “mutilate and kill”. Alfred responded by contributing some of his fortune to developing the peace prize.

[1] - https://www.history.com/news/did-a-premature-obituary-inspir...

Note that this is just a _nomination_; previous nominees have included Vladimir Putin and Adolf Hitler (though Hitler was a joke). Quite a lot of people can nominate; there are typically a few hundred.

Kissinger actually _won_ it.

Kissinger is (still) dead. Who has the stature to replace him?

People will inevitably comment regarding the X.com suspension of Yulia Navalnaya (Alexei Navalny's wife):

“X does not have a choice but to obey local governments. If we don't obey local government laws, we will get shut down. We do our best to provide free speech that is possible under the law.” --Elon Musk

If x.com was shut down in Russia, another channel of citizen organisation and dissent would be removed. Musk is in an near-impossible position when it comes to free speech in totalitarian regimes.

---

Update: it looks like this argument is somewhat moot as Yulia's account has been restored: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/20/x-suspends-account-of-navaln...

They perfectly well have the functionality to make certain tweets and accounts inaccessible in certain regions. There's no reason to shut the account down globally.

The problem is that if Putin demands Yulia's account is shut down globally then Musk has to comply, or Putin will pull the plug on x.com for all Russians (including Yulia).

Whether or not Putin /should/ have global jurisdiction is irrelevant. He has the power to cut off x.com in Russia if x.com does something he really doesn't like.

Rock and hard place.

The Russian legal system only has jurisdiction in Russia.

Maksim Kuzminov would disagree with you.

Alexander Litvinenko would disagree with you.

https://news.sky.com/story/the-polonium-trail-how-did-the-po...

Sergei and Yulia Skripal would disagree with you.

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

Twitter is blocked in Russia since Mar 2022.

Do they actually have that capability(genuinely asking, wouldn't know how it would work)?

You know these tweets that get reported and investigated because they "don't comply with local German laws" or whatever? I would've thought if region locks were possible then this would've stopped happening a long time ago.

Yes: https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/post-withheld...

> in an near-impossible position when it comes to free speech

Also not free speech absolutists.

Hypothetically speaking, would you choose to allow Musk to be above the law in order to allow him to defend freedom of speech?

I would. But I don't think it would be a universally popular idea.

I think that 'free speech absolutism' is empty vessel. Virtue signaling.

No one in their right mind would.

One of the first things Musk did after buying Twitter was to ban the guy who published his plane movements.

Apparently acceptable free speech doesn't entail republishing already public information in a slightly more convenient format, if it annoys Musk.

Entrusting anything, especially without the protection of the law, to the apparently emotionally frail Musk would seem to be unadvisable.

Maybe if he'd treated the prior Twitter ownership's difficult decisions with that kind of magnanimity instead of demagoguery he wouldn't have played himself into wasting his money on it.

> If x.com was shut down in Russia

What the hell are you on about? Twitter has been 'restricted' in Russia since March 2022.

Interesting that this submission acheived a HN rank of #75 within minutes, but then suddenly vanished from the Hacker News list altogether.

This submission is 26 mins old, and has 10 points.

A submission that's 42 mins old, with 6 points is currently ranked #15 in HN.

Something amiss?

Seems fair to deprioritize Elon news. It rarely leads to interesting conversation.

On a more general note, this happens all the time. It's how HN works. It doesn't have much to do with Elon.

Users flagged it. That's usually the reason. This is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com