[jgaa]

So much for Elons "Free Speech"!

This may come as a shock to him: Free Speech means to allow people to say something that he disagree with. Something that may hurt his interests or even his ego. Free speech is not to allow people to say things he agree with or don't care about.

[mordae]

There never was any demand for free speech from him. He just wanted to advance his fascist agenda and used whatever means he had at his disposal.

[scott_w]

While you’re correct as to his intentions, it’s still important to point out his hypocrisy as he called himself “a free speech absolutist,” and claimed to want Twitter to be part of that vision. He explicitly called left wing and right wing views as things he wants.

Yes, we know it was all lies but not putting out the evidence allows people like Musk and his acolytes to make it the new truth without a fight.

[matwood]

We really are living in a world where we were always at war with Eurasia. Musk shouted loudly to his followers his views on free speech and why he wanted to buy Twitter. And now, it’s like it never happened. This isn’t like a bias news outlet leaving out certain facts, this is Musk himself saying these things and people going along with it.

It’s bonkers to me.

[aredox]

Remember how he tried to get out of the twitter deal by claining there were too many bots?

How is the bot situation on twitter now?

[jzb]

I don’t think he ever wanted out of the deal. It was a way to keep the acquisition from being scrutinized too much.

[jmcgough]

I'm not sure you understand free speech. Free speech means he can make public threats to people without repercussions, doxx people when he feels like it, lie, and spread misinformation for personal gain. It means unbanning rule breakers, doxxers and harassers, as long as they're right-wing. Free speech does not extend to anyone who he personally disagrees with or dislikes, who will instead be banned from the platform.

[llamaimperative]

Legal (first amendment) free speech certainly allows him to ban whoever he wants.

However, this is the exact behavior from prior owners that he counter-positioned himself against, allegedly pursuing a broader “free speech absolutism.” That philosophy certainly would not permit arbitrary bans of people he doesn’t like.

These mental gymnastics are remarkable to see.

[scott_w]

I think we’re all in agreement and the person you’re replying to is being sarcastic ;-)

[sirsinsalot]

It's pretty crazy. If you say something that offends him (like perhaps the financial abandonment of his kids) then you're banned.

Free speech eh.

[r0ckarong]

He belongs to these people that misunderstood freedom of opinion to mean that nobody gets to criticize their opinion.

[goodpoint]

No, he did not misunderstand. This is 100% malice.

[glimmung]

Username checks out!

[bearjaws]

Go make a brand new Twitter account and check how "free" speech is.

Immediately you get one very specific "sect" of free speech.

[guywithahat]

What makes you say that? I've started using X recently and I would argue it's pretty free, you see a lot more range of opinions than on a site like reddit. Aggressively pro-trans posts come across my feed all the time, including some right-wing content

[matwood]

“Free speech” disappeared almost immediately after the Twitter purchase. Along with all of Musks supporters changing from “we need free speech”, to “Musk owns the platform, he can do what he wants.”

Pre-Musk Twitter was more about free speech, except it was trying to fight bots, hate speech and disinformation.

[SiliconSplash]

The biggest problem with the term "Free Speech" is that almost everyone makes exceptions for things that they believe should be restricted/censored.

Therefore the only standard should be the legality of that speech in a particular country. In the US those things you put as exemptions are permitted. So pre-musk Twitter wasn't about free-speech as those exemptions are restrictions on speech that are greater than US law restricts (which isn't much tbh).

Generally you have a trade off on any of these platforms between what you can say without breaking terms of service and the popularity of that platform. Generally less popular platforms are less restrictive.

If you don't want your speech restricted, you should probably just go back to hosting your blog and using a mailing list.

[guywithahat]

I would argue it appeared after the Twitter purchase. Originally Twitter had been dying through excessive bans, now you can find major political influencers on both sides of the spectrum

[_zagj]

> about free speech, except it was trying to fight bots, hate speech

> about free speech

> fight hate speech

Do you realize how absurd you sound?

[andrepd]

It certainly does not come as a shock to him. He knows what he is doing.

The funny thing is if he was Russian he would be called an "oligarch" in every news piece. Since he's American he's an entrepreneur :)

[lyu07282]

Also how liberals were celebrating Elons "genius" just a decade ago will never not be funny to me, they also don't seem to mind Gates at all. I don't think they have much of a problem with oligarchy, they just want a liberal oligarchy instead.

[soundwave106]

You may want to look up under whose presidency it was when the United States Justice Department sued Microsoft in 1998. :)

Musk was far, far less political (at least regarding his public persona) even 10 years ago; his persona was more heavily futurism oriented. Electric cars to help mitigate climate change, colonizing Mars, that kind of stuff. It wasn't really a "liberal" or "conservative" thing then. Would've been nice if he stuck on this path IMHO.

[lyu07282]

But this is exactly my point and you don't even realize it, you think a billionaire helping mitigate climate change or colonizing Mars is a good thing and not political. You don't realize that what you described is exactly what I mean by "liberal oligarchy".

You don't mind if a billionaire is "helping" humanity. What I'm saying is that a billionaire doing anything grand like that AT ALL, IS oligarchy, it is not the billionaires who should mitigate climate change or do space exploration, it is all of us, collectively, through public funding, steered by a representative democracy, that should do these things, not singular private individual billionaires like Musk or Gates.

[soundwave106]

Clarification: I am guessing you are using the liberal term from a "classic liberalism" sense (e.g. how it is used in Europe) and not the US version of the term, which generally refers to social liberalism and is often associated with Democrats? That changes some things.

Personally I would absolutely love it if humanity didn't have to rely on billionaire philanthropy for these sort of things. But you are talking about a significant paradigm shift in world politics, one of which unfortunately (from my perspective) much of the world is moving away from at the moment.

[calmworm]

Maybe news outlets were doing this but “liberals” at large were not.

[martin-t]

Not a surprise to him, he doesn't care.

It's a mistake to treat people with mental disorders as having an internally consistent view of the world. Or as actually believing what they say.

They are paperclip optimizers, this one optimizing for worship and power. In other words he has the antagonistic and communal subtypes: https://www.verywellhealth.com/narcissistic-personality-diso...

[masklinn]

No see all speech is free but some speech is more free than others.

/s