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by likeafox 1116 days ago
>However, this was not an oversight but a conscious decision, underscoring his commitment to uphold freedom of speech over profits.

Why did the same commitment to speech over profit not apply to his decision making when he filtered Substack, or Mastadon URLs?

1 comments

My understanding is that Elon is mainly interested in eliminating ideologically and politically motivated censorship. He has recently given an interview on what he calls the "woke mind virus"[0], in which he talks about his views on free speech. Banning links to a Twitter competitor would not necessarily be inconsistent with this objective.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFEaTk--tZo

It's certainly not consistent with being a "free speech absolutist", which was the descriptor he gave himself.
The first definition I found on "free speech absolutist":

> Free speech absolutists believe that any limitation on political speech is veering into dangerous territory. They believe that restricting free speech in any way, including curbing insulting or factually incorrect speech, means assigning gatekeepers who decide what can and cannot be expressed in public.

Twitter's censorship policy does seem to have moved in that direction in general.

But I grant you that the terms are a bit overloaded and it's not always clear what people mean by them.

PS: Edited "free speech" to "principles" since it was causing much debate about semantics.