Amid Twitter buyout, Musk says free speech is simply "that which matches the law."
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Elon Musk, Twitter’s next owner, provides his definition of “free speech”
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Guy who canceled a customer's Tesla order because "he was rude" has thoughts on censorship at a private non-governmental business.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... rs-model-x
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... rs-model-x
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We don't fear free speech. We worked with social media to shut down incineraty, hateful, racist comments. We got tech companies to moderate their sites to prevent people from being harassed, regardless of the reason. Anyone who isn't a white male will feel the hatred and vitriol of the right-wing who thinks anyone who doesn't support the current agenda is evil.
We don't fear free speech. We will stand up to you Elon. You've taken sides with Trump, and regardless of your electric vehicle and space flight efforts, that does not absolve you of your wrongs.
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Statistical
Ars Legatus Legionis
Hooray Freeze Peach.
Spam is not illegal
Bots are not illegal
Russian disinformation is not illegal
Racial slurs are not illegal
Rants targeting transgender persons are not illegal.
Gross memes to dehumanize the targets of right wing hate aren't illegal.
Demanding that minorities go back to "their own countries" aren't illegal.
Falsehoods aren't illegal (except in very narrow circumstances).
The vast majority of what is on 4chan is also not illegal it is just gross and disgusting.
Also "Musk recently suggested he would defy governments that demand speech restrictions" seems to be incompatible with "free speech is simply that which matches the law". I mean this is Trumper level doublespeak and lack of basic logic here which I guess is the whole point. Musk wants to be the new darling of thealt-right to stroke his insatiable ego and narcissism.
Spam is not illegal
Bots are not illegal
Russian disinformation is not illegal
Racial slurs are not illegal
Rants targeting transgender persons are not illegal.
Gross memes to dehumanize the targets of right wing hate aren't illegal.
Demanding that minorities go back to "their own countries" aren't illegal.
Falsehoods aren't illegal (except in very narrow circumstances).
The vast majority of what is on 4chan is also not illegal it is just gross and disgusting.
Also "Musk recently suggested he would defy governments that demand speech restrictions" seems to be incompatible with "free speech is simply that which matches the law". I mean this is Trumper level doublespeak and lack of basic logic here which I guess is the whole point. Musk wants to be the new darling of the
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This will be a trainwreck, but a great opening for another short form text platform that doesn't want to be a moderation free for all.
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I really hope this falls apart. Apparently it's already cost Elon over $120billion in Tesla stock valuation, so maybe that plus the realization that no one wanted him to do this will cause him to back out of the purchase.
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What a vapid, moronic answer. About what one would expect from an out-of-touch techbro.
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A few weeks back, I finally made a Twitter account to see what's up. Looks like I'll be retiring it.
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I saw this posted on hacker news recently. Seems apropos here (it expands greatly on the issues of free speech, the law, and it’s relationship to content moderation mentioned in this article):
https://www.techdirt.com/2022/04/15/elo ... oderation/
https://www.techdirt.com/2022/04/15/elo ... oderation/
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Guy who fired employee for talking about his Company’s wares has thoughts on censorship at a private non-governmental business.
https://meincmagazine.com/tech-policy/202 ... -accident/
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All the libertarian freeze peach assholes might wanna read this:
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (whom you often misquote), A Clash of Two Systems.
Relevant quotes:
"The problem posed by a benign system like ours is its transparency, which causes perceptional distortions: Tocqueville understood that equality seems all the stronger when it is reduced; similarly, a system seems all the more dysfunctional when it is transparent. Hence my attacks on someone like Edward Snowden and his acolytes, who exploit this paradox to attack the West for the benefit of Russian plotters."
"Pseudo-Libertarianism Inviting Tyranny
I have trouble with many people, often naive libertarians, who think I’m like them because they like my books. But some of these want to destroy our system rather than improve it: many are full of resentment.
They do not realize that the alternative to our messy system is tyranny: a mafia-don like state (Lybia today, Lebanon during the civil war) or an autocracy. And these idiots call themselves libertarian!
This is the case of Snowden and his followers. He is an impostor. If I told you about an organization in Ryad that defends women in France against male oppression, you would laugh at me. Well, Snowden claims to defend the Americans against Google’s tyranny while operating from … Moscow!"
"On Twitter, I ended up noticing that in this naive libertarian or rather, pseudo-libertarian, ecosystem, which includes bitcoin enthusiasts, people who, like Snowden, see Covid-19 as a pretext for some dark entity to exert control over the population. This even includes anti-vaccine activists. We are at the very heart of disinformation: the goal of the Russian Disinformation Program here is to create mistrust between citizens and authorities, and to exploit everything that can bring dissension."
"It is still disturbing that libertarians come to defend an autocrat!
Libertarians are controlled by Russia because in general, they are naive people who only have first-order thoughts — they do not know how to consider the consequences of certain actions. This is what distinguishes them from classic liberals."
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (whom you often misquote), A Clash of Two Systems.
Relevant quotes:
"The problem posed by a benign system like ours is its transparency, which causes perceptional distortions: Tocqueville understood that equality seems all the stronger when it is reduced; similarly, a system seems all the more dysfunctional when it is transparent. Hence my attacks on someone like Edward Snowden and his acolytes, who exploit this paradox to attack the West for the benefit of Russian plotters."
"Pseudo-Libertarianism Inviting Tyranny
I have trouble with many people, often naive libertarians, who think I’m like them because they like my books. But some of these want to destroy our system rather than improve it: many are full of resentment.
They do not realize that the alternative to our messy system is tyranny: a mafia-don like state (Lybia today, Lebanon during the civil war) or an autocracy. And these idiots call themselves libertarian!
This is the case of Snowden and his followers. He is an impostor. If I told you about an organization in Ryad that defends women in France against male oppression, you would laugh at me. Well, Snowden claims to defend the Americans against Google’s tyranny while operating from … Moscow!"
"On Twitter, I ended up noticing that in this naive libertarian or rather, pseudo-libertarian, ecosystem, which includes bitcoin enthusiasts, people who, like Snowden, see Covid-19 as a pretext for some dark entity to exert control over the population. This even includes anti-vaccine activists. We are at the very heart of disinformation: the goal of the Russian Disinformation Program here is to create mistrust between citizens and authorities, and to exploit everything that can bring dissension."
"It is still disturbing that libertarians come to defend an autocrat!
Libertarians are controlled by Russia because in general, they are naive people who only have first-order thoughts — they do not know how to consider the consequences of certain actions. This is what distinguishes them from classic liberals."
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Which doesn't matter in the slightest. Facebook has a real name policy. Nextdoor has a real name policy. These are arguably some of the most toxic major social media platforms available.
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what a destructive asshole.
With any luck, he'll tank tesla stock, run up a bunch of legal bills, have to pay a $1B breakup fee, and go back to playing with himself in one of his boring holes...
With any luck, he'll tank tesla stock, run up a bunch of legal bills, have to pay a $1B breakup fee, and go back to playing with himself in one of his boring holes...
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If free speech could be "fixed" just because one guy gets to decided on everything, instead of a bunch of investors + vague content moderation rules... you are gravely mistaken.
In the end, as a Canadian watching on the sideline, I don't think I'll ever fully understand US citizens' fetish obsession on "free", "free speech", "freedom". It' just as foreign to me as the fetish on guns... honestly... weird.
But as neighbors, of course we care about our brothers/sisters down south, so I can only say, "Godspeed folks, Godspeed."
In the end, as a Canadian watching on the sideline, I don't think I'll ever fully understand US citizens' fetish obsession on "free", "free speech", "freedom". It' just as foreign to me as the fetish on guns... honestly... weird.
But as neighbors, of course we care about our brothers/sisters down south, so I can only say, "Godspeed folks, Godspeed."
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And while that sounds amazing to someone who is dumb, Truth Social is estimated to have barely more than a half million daily active users. Twitter has more than 200 million DAUs as of Q4 of last year with TikTok at around 50 million in the US alone.
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Ars Legatus Legionis
Yeah Trump lets the bigots out of the closet (or at least pour gasoline on that trend). They are proud to be bigots. They want you to know. They want to get in your face. Real ID works both ways. It means the bigots have the names of the targets of their hate.
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waiting for Moonshark to weigh in on whether the Ars content policy will follow suit and abide entirely by Moonlaw
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So... how, exactly, does he think the previous owners of Twitter broke the law?
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It's weird to me that everyone spends so much time analyzing what Musk means by "free speech" when he's been completely up front about it the entire time - he wants to be able to say whatever he wants and not suffer any consequences. It's an awesome policy if you're a billionaire with near-infinite resources and an army of sycophants, not so great if, say, you're a trans person who has to constantly justify your existence to two million "debate me bro" alt-righters.
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My hope is that this tanks hard enough that he's sidelined in Tesla. Probably not likely, but it would be great to see Tesla run by a non-idiot.
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Kara Swisher on Elon Musk:
The idea that people working on important things can't be bad people has to be the dumbest logical leap ever.
The Nazis had lots of very smart people working on ways to destroy the armies of the free world and cover all of Europe and probably Africa in a genocidal dark age.
So one might want to remind her that the stereotypical example of fascism in the 20th century even had people working on such important things as <gasp> rockets.
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I don't follow Musk at all and that stupid asshole still shows up in my Twitter feed thanks to their bullshit trending algorithm.
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Musk you fuckhead, that's more or less what it has been all this time to begin with
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It has to do with the right wing feeling like they're being oppressed for the first time in their lives. They dont understand it's the same thing as walking into a bar and insulting the woman then complaining then they get the shit kicked out of them by the bouncer. They feel like they should be able to say whatever they want whenever they want.
Too bad they've oppressed (and continue to oppress) women, minorities, LGBTQ people, children, etc.... Shoe's on the other foot and they don't like it so the right just gets their wealthiest person to buy Twitter to change it.
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I guess it's time to make twitter join the ranks of those other fabulous social media sites/apps like MySpace, Hotmail, AOL, and other forgettable social media services.
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