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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Yes, earning downvotes for intentionally being an asshole clearly is the better strategy.
I love the utterly obliviously un-self-reflective irony of this "Obviously everyone posting here is unemployed and needs to grow up...." schtick. Is there some sort of secret Musk adoration society where you guys hang out waiting for links to appear, or do you just visit Ars nonstop hoping that maybe today is the day they'll post something about Elon?
Sad.
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I believe Fully Autonomous Moderating System will be completed in 3months!
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- Musk has “huge responsibility” -
God help us all because I have zero trust that Musk bought Twitter to be responsible for anything other than feeding his inflated ego.
God help us all because I have zero trust that Musk bought Twitter to be responsible for anything other than feeding his inflated ego.
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Clearly from your statement, "freedom of expression" is the freedom to freely state racist and sexist messages without repercussions.
What is really stupid about people like you is you think Musk actually cares about fascists like you. He doesn't. He bought Twitter for his own goals, and they have nothing to do with your racist agenda. You will find out sooner or later.
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Ok, separate from everything else, Twitter Inc. is a US company. Its headquarters are in San Francisco and it incorporated in Delaware in 2007. Is this a controversial opinion now?
https://sec.report/CIK/0001418091
"Twitter International Company" is based in Dublin Ireland and handles account information for non-US residents.
I'm not smart enough to know how or if Musk's purchase of Twitter Inc affects it's relationship with the Ireland company.
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Look. I don't care if he buys it. I just want him to be truthful about the why.
You aren't buying a company 'to restore free speech'. He sees profit, plain and simple. His desire to take it private even supports that. So why not just say it rather than continue with this free speech crap.
He's also being a little dickish about how he's going about this.
You aren't buying a company 'to restore free speech'. He sees profit, plain and simple. His desire to take it private even supports that. So why not just say it rather than continue with this free speech crap.
He's also being a little dickish about how he's going about this.
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Bots are not speech. They are an algorithm. Twitter can, and will, still ban bots.
And it continues to amaze me how much spam, disinformation, slurs, gross memes, and falsehoods I see posted on Twitter everyday without the accounts being banned. But let's get one thing straight. Spam, to an extent, has been being regulated by Congress. Because it can be harassment or it can disrupt normal activity.
But I will say this to all the 'big names' that whine about free speech: be ready. The same controls that moderate your speech moderate every one else's.
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Apparently openly insulting Vijaya Gadde the day after Politico reported she was emotional about what the purchase of the company meant for it and her team's future hasn't already triggered a flurry of news stories that the deal is off.
If that hasn't done it then it's basically impossible for him to trigger the $1B breakup fee because that ship has sailed and it's impossible for the man to shut the fuck up.
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Musk being a disingenuous sociopath using the words 'free speech' is not a new phenomenon.
We already know that raining even thinly cloaked invective about Elon 'Pedo Guy' Musk is going to be a moderation team offense right after the deal closes even if it's an ambiguous statement of sarcasm making fun if his previous abuse rather than fact.
His actual feelings about his libertarian take on freedom of speech are genuine, the problem is he simply is a hypocrite. This is not a new problem among 1%ers.
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...who has a Bachelor of Science qualification, whereas you probably have a strong opinion about which colour Crayon tastes best.
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From the few statements and past behaviour, feels like there no clear plan, just libertarian urges. Be prepared for lots of spontaneous leadership winging it.
Kinda like a guy who builds rockets to go to Mars because humans on earth are bound to destroy themselves, without having any idea on how, once on Mars, they would govern themselves any better.
Kinda like a guy who builds rockets to go to Mars because humans on earth are bound to destroy themselves, without having any idea on how, once on Mars, they would govern themselves any better.
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I get how one can be tempted by a cheap laugh, but everyone, don't do that please. Misgendering is a no-no, regardless of whom.
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Why arent bots speech? Serious question, btw. Saying algorithm seems to be a bit simplistic, after all they dont create themselves.
If companies can be ruled by the Supreme Court to have free speech why wouldnt a bot deployed by a company be part of free speech?
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That seems untrue. The guy could be in any number of industries, but is in the stuff that he finds interesting. I mean look at Bezos - online marketplaces are pretty boring stuff, but they are a decent way to become dementedly rich. I don't actually see how he's going to make a profit off Twitter - he's loading up a giant amount of debt for the leveraged takeover, and that usually massively depresses profit in order to achieve control. It's not like Twitter has assets he's going to raid, or prices he can jack up.
There's no reason to take the statements about free speech at anything but face value -- there is a massive disagreement here about what the principle (vs the legalisms) of free speech really mean, and this is another experiment in that disagreement.
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Well, pretty obviously, the Supreme Court is dead wrong and in need of legislative correction - and bots aren't people. Don't confuse law and principle.
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"That which is the law..."
... begs the question - which country's laws? All of them at once? Or is Twitter going to pioneer an algorithm that automatically geo-blocks Twitter posts based on content that violates the laws in China, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Russia, and the dozens of other countries that restrict speech in various conflicting ways?
... begs the question - which country's laws? All of them at once? Or is Twitter going to pioneer an algorithm that automatically geo-blocks Twitter posts based on content that violates the laws in China, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Russia, and the dozens of other countries that restrict speech in various conflicting ways?
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Actually on your first, spam is illegal for certain types. Please read CAN-SPAM act of 2003.
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Gets rather relevant what the law is when the guy we are talking about says that he only cares what the law says.
And to that point, if Musk rewrites the ToS of Twitter to reflect that he might end up with being sued for breaching his own ToS if he doesnt allow bots which are not illegal in themselves. Spam can be, of course.
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I remember the sheer amount of collective brainpower that went into microanalysis of every pronouncement of the Orange Disaster, to literally no useful effect ever, despite the tenacity of the analyzers. People like that don't use words in a way that is worth over-analyzing. When the Fed makes a statement, you micro-analyze because every word has been carefully weighed. Musk just spews whatever is top of mind. Taking it too seriously is a waste of time and energy.
It misses the point - he is conveying emotion with words, trying to inspire, etc. It's a habitual thing for people like that, and as long as you view their words through the proper lens, what they're doing is at least sensible.
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Are you a Markov chain? ML of some kind? An ANotsoGI? Robot? Alien? Alien robot? Time traveler from an alternative timeline where English isn't the global language of communication?
Because if you aren't, you desperately need to work on clarifying your thoughts. That's a muddle if ever I've read one -- and I've done grad school literature coursework in English and German both.
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Well, in a separate post I argue you should not take the words of a person who operates like Musk too literally.
Bots can be kicked off Twitter, regardless of "legality", and that's exactly what I hope for here. A community of 200m people who are actually people is a different beast than one where, idk, 20m of them are actually robots spewing programming.
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Truth Social, I will say, is headed by “right wing bias.” So… what’s the difference between Twitter’s current leadership and Truth Social’s in this aspect? None.
It’s disturbing that people use their status to cause and/or encourage hate and violence over political beliefs.
This asshole, Musk, is doing it while in the middle of purchasing the company at which his victim helps lead. What a moron…. Or not. He’s trying to demonstrate what he means by “free speech” by pushing the boundaries. And if a tweet gets taken down, he can say “See! It’s the left bias!!! Free speech!!”
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Well it depends what you mean by third party.
If Musk rents a billboard in time square, or takes out an ad on the Washington Post to call someone a pedo guy, the owner of the place that ran the ad is going to be a first party co-defendant.
They might be able to escape liability if they didn’t know about the content of the ad, though that’s complex and not at all guaranteed to work, and they’re not getting out early.
Now, if Musk were to do this on Twitter (before last week anyway), plaintiff can’t sue Twitter, even if Twitter knew about the allegedly defamatory tweet. And if he tries, Twitter has an easy way to get out early without going through the whole trial.
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You left out "I wish all these racist stop the steal morons who refuse to wear a mask would hurry up and die" is not illegal.
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I agree, but a good argument requires precision. Lumping in Snowden with Antivaxxers and in the next step with Russia itself is neither helpfull nor sincere. Thanks for reminding me again not to read Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
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Anyone can be wrong (and I also think Taleb is wrong here, despite understanding where he's coming from - I think he's making a deal with the devil in that argument) - but missing out on what he has to say is a big mistake. Far and away one of the most original, interesting minds alive today.
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Statistical
Ars Legatus Legionis
TIC is a fully owned subsidiary of Twitter Inc. It exists for loopholes which allow billion dollar companies to never pay any meaningful taxes. TIC also is the holding company of dozens of different national twitter companies operating in dozens of countries. Buying "twitter" is buying all of that plus all its international assets, patents, and labor force.
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But someone should certainly ask these people how they would feel if they were misgendered, and what they think the appropriate response should be to being misgendered.
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Statistical
Ars Legatus Legionis
Software is speech (multiple rulings by the courts).
Algorithms are speech (multiple rulings by the courts)
Automated means of speech are speech (i.e. printing press was a pretty important early automated means of speech)
Speech doesn't literally mean soley spoken words coming from a human's mouth unassisted by technology. I mean if it did then nothing on Twitter by definition would be speech.
Now to be clear ALL software isn't legal protected speech but not all verbal speech is legal protected speech either.
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So given that Musk has already violated the terms of the acquisition agreement, do we think the board is still going to take the ludicrously over-valued payday, or will they drag this out to the last day and go "Oh, my goodness, you appear to have violated the terms of the agreement. We'll be leaving now, with that one billion you owe us. Ta ta, darling!"?
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It would be nice to think they'd cease the acquisition but as I noted in the other thread, money and morals seldom mix.
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I would have gone with a birds of a feather type explanation, but yours works too I suppose.
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AOL and MySpace still exist as well. Calling them hollow shells of their former selves would be overstating things quite a bit... AOL subsists largely off of people who have automatic billing and just pay their credit card every month without looking at the charges very closely. MySpace has actually found some measure of success as being a social media site for musicians, and not too terribly long ago they made a much maligned effort to return to more general relevancy by sending out an uber creepy email reminding people about all those photos they posted back in the day and are still on MySpace's servers.
I honestly feel kind of bad for kids who were born after the rise of social media. Those naked baby pictures parents posted are never going away and neither are any of the stupid things they may have said at any point in their life. How long before someone runs for POTUS (or similar office for those living elsewhere in the world) and their opposition's campaign mines old Twitter or Facebook comments from when they were in middle school?
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Uh it is even better then this.Yep, like Greg Abbott's border stunt that accomplished nothing other than costing the state more than $4 billion in GDP. But he sure "owned the libs."
It's worth noting that Abbott has doubled down and Texas taxpayers are now giving illegal immigrants a free bus ride to Washington DC. Where they promptly join up with friends and family. But they do appreciate Abbott fronting them the bus fare.
Due to a few things that would be illegal (for example being a human trafficker, kidnapper and other minor crimes) the only people on those buses are people legally in the US.
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