The ongoing Elon Twitter saga: "insert demographic" melts down

[Werewolf]

They don't believe in freedom of speech. They believe in freedom from being held to account for anything they do or say - and only for them and their mates.

That does seem to be a thing.

If someone doesn't like what you've said, and refuses to deal with you again, or do business with you because you're allowing stuff that goes against their principles, that's not them infringing on your "freedom of speech" it's them exercising their rights.

It's also funny when people think that the first amendment means private companies cannot have their own rules, and even funnier when they can't seem to grasp that the first amendment has some limits, and that outside the US other governments may or may not have similar laws but also might have tighter restrictions in some cases because in their recent history they've seen exactly what happens when it's left unchecked. Apparently one of the best ways to filter out the neo nazies pre musk was to set your location to Germany, as the twitter system back then would apply an algorithm that took into account that pro nazi stuff is actively illegal in Germany.

What's possibly funniest is a libertarian type who thinks businesses should be free from as many (all?) regulations as possible can't understand that another business might not want to anything to do with yours if your business is seen as being bad to be associated with.

It's also deeply amusing the idea that large, often conservative companies are "woke"* because they don't want advertising sitting next to stuff that actively goes against their carefully cultivated PR image that in some cases they've spent decades and untold billions creating. For example Coke and their "I'd like to teach the world to sing" advert and literally decades of "it's the drink for everyone to enjoy" stuff really doesn't sit well next to posts calling people inferior and needing to be "dealt with" due to a difference in skin colour or religion.

*Or don't have a very good idea of who buys their stuff and what they think, and have people involved in decision making whose job is specifically to try and make sure that if they make a public statement or do something it's less likely to have an adverse effect on the people that are "profitable" now and understand the trends for the future (IIRC one of the reasons Disney get so much flak from some idiots is because Disney knows exactly how much of the market is untapped/unrepresented and how much money there is in the likes of the "pink" dollar and various markets and aim content at them to get that sweet sweet merchandising money)

 

[Roar87]

I've watched just about every debate he did that is on YT and read several of his books and so I know he would not have been the Elon fan you think he would, especially the way he's acted in the last few years, Hitch didn't suffer fools and Elon has acted like a fool so many times. Sam Harris used to consider Elon a friend but has been very vocal on what a douche Elon has turned into.

At no point in any of my posts have I one single time said Christopher Hitchens would be an Elon Musk fan. You've created a strawman argument and assigned it as my position, are you aware of that and you're doing it anyway? In which case you're intellectually dishonest, or are you blind what is being written? Either way, do better.

Once again Lex with his "lets just all love each other and the world will be beautiful". I'm not sure if he actually believes that crap or its just part of his act.

Sam Harris isn't apolitical, he's a Democrat, he supported Hillary Clinton, he has an intense dislike for Donald Trump. His views are basically those of a hysterical arrogant American Democrat. Elon Musk isn't a free speech absolutist. He literally doesn't even want to debate views like? So much ignorance on display.

Do you think if I walk out into London today and I say I want to gas every Jew in the world I should be free from any consequences?

The context and details really matter here. If you were having a private conversation and were overheard, then yes I think you should be free from any consequences that are governmental. If you were directing this at a Jewish person in order to intimidate or harass them, or you were calling for people to join you in this act, then this would be harassment and intimidation, or a call to harm others, in which case you should be prosecuted. If you were chanting it in public then that would be classed as intimidation and harassment, so absolutely not covered under free speech.

 

[Christmas themed thank]

That does seem to be a thing.

If someone doesn't like what you've said, and refuses to deal with you again, or do business with you because you're allowing stuff that goes against their principles, that's not them infringing on your "freedom of speech" it's them exercising their rights.

It's also funny when people think that the first amendment means private companies cannot have their own rules, and even funnier when they can't seem to grasp that the first amendment has some limits, and that outside the US other governments may or may not have similar laws but also might have tighter restrictions in some cases because in their recent history they've seen exactly what happens when it's left unchecked. Apparently one of the best ways to filter out the neo nazies pre musk was to set your location to Germany, as the twitter system back then would apply an algorithm that took into account that pro nazi stuff is actively illegal in Germany.

What's possibly funniest is a libertarian type who thinks businesses should be free from as many (all?) regulations as possible can't understand that another business might not want to anything to do with yours if your business is seen as being bad to be associated with.

It's also deeply amusing the idea that large, often conservative companies are "woke"* because they don't want advertising sitting next to stuff that actively goes against their carefully cultivated PR image that in some cases they've spent decades and untold billions creating. For example Coke and their "I'd like to teach the world to sing" advert and literally decades of "it's the drink for everyone to enjoy" stuff really doesn't sit well next to posts calling people inferior and needing to be "dealt with" due to a difference in skin colour or religion.

*Or don't have a very good idea of who buys their stuff and what they think, and have people involved in decision making whose job is specifically to try and make sure that if they make a public statement or do something it's less likely to have an adverse effect on the people that are "profitable" now and understand the trends for the future (IIRC one of the reasons Disney get so much flak from some idiots is because Disney knows exactly how much of the market is untapped/unrepresented and how much money there is in the likes of the "pink" dollar and various markets and aim content at them to get that sweet sweet merchandising money)

What I find most bemusing is that people don't think companies will do what they always do, i.e. they go where the money is.

Apple is not "woke" because they genuinely care about furthering the cause - I have no doubt their employees do - because Apple is a corporation with no feelings or emotions but because their customer base likes woke stuff and they've done the research which says they'll sell more phones if they do.

It's really not difficult to understand but yet people conflate it with some grand conspiracy that they are trying to brainwash us all.

There are plenty of companies that are "anti-woke" but they aren't as successful as those that aren't and therefore they reduce in number every year. Companies reflect society, they do not shape it. Never have, never will.

The freedom of speech debate is about 1% of how bad people actually think it is. People are being cancelled - but it is not Nigel Farage and co and is not the people shouting about being cancelled which is a contradiction in terms because we know exactly what they think because funnily enough they haven't been cancelled.

These people are massively in favour of freedom of choice until they want to force people to listen. That's the problem, just because you are free to spout nonsense it doesn't mean I have to listen to it. If people don't want to listen to it, why do they have to be forced?

 

[VincentHanna]

I always find it funny how people who claim to believe in free speech above all other laws, somehow don't believe in freedom of movement. If you're going to do freedom, it should be universal, not pick and choose.

Hey now, I was randomly and by chance born on this piece of land (that somebody once decided to draw some lines on a map, making it a country)

Nobody else randomly born elsewhere, who through no fault of their own happened to be a poorer/war-torn/climate-ruined area of land should have the right to come to this piece of land!!

 

[Christmas themed thank]

At no point in any of my posts have I one single time said Christopher Hitchens would be an Elon Musk fan. You've created a strawman argument and assigned it as my position, are you aware of that and you're doing it anyway? In which case you're intellectually dishonest, or are you blind what is being written? Either way, do better.



Sam Harris isn't apolitical, he's a Democrat, he supported Hillary Clinton, he has an intense dislike for Donald Trump. His views are basically those of a hysterical arrogant American Democrat. Elon Musk isn't a free speech absolutist. He literally doesn't even want to debate views like? So much ignorance on display.



The context and details really matter here. If you were having a private conversation and were overheard, then yes I think you should be free from any consequences that are governmental. If you were directing this at a Jewish person in order to intimidate or harass them, or you were calling for people to join you in this act, then this would be harassment and intimidation, or a call to harm others, in which case you should be prosecuted. If you were chanting it in public then that would be classed as intimidation and harassment, so absolutely not covered under free speech.

Okay so just to confirm, you are in favour of having terrorists walk around our streets planning attacks but if they do it privately they should be free from consequence. Jesus. Christ.

 

[Roar87]

Okay so just to confirm, you are in favour of having terrorists walk around our streets planning attacks but if they do it privately they should be free from consequence. Jesus. Christ.

No, that's not what you've stated though.

Jesus. Christ.

 

[Christmas themed thank]

No, that's not what you've stated though.

Jesus. Christ.

You said if you were having a private conversation in which I said I would like to gas all the Jews in the world I should be free from government consequences. Therefore you are saying that you support conspiring to commit terrorism because that is exactly what conspiring to commit terrorism is. Do you understand that terrorism is planned in private conversations? They don't sit on the TV and discuss it before it happens.

 

[Roar87]

You said if you were having a private conversation in which I said I would like to gas all the Jews in the world I should be free from government consequences.

Yes, that is a hypothetical private opinion, although obviously outrageous, I don't think the Police should break your doors down, unless you're formulating a plan to actually do it.

Therefore you are saying that you support conspiring to commit terrorism because that is exactly what conspiring to commit terrorism is. Do you understand that terrorism is planned in private conversations? They don't sit on the TV and discuss it before it happens.

But I don't support someone planning an actual attack lol. That's not the same thing.

The context and details really matter here.

 

[Colonel_Klinck]

At no point in any of my posts have I one single time said Christopher Hitchens would be an Elon Musk fan. You've created a strawman argument and assigned it as my position, are you aware of that and you're doing it anyway? In which case you're intellectually dishonest, or are you blind what is being written? Either way, do better.

You posted a link to Hitch talking about freedom of speech in your defence of Elon, implying he'd defend Elon.

Sam Harris isn't apolitical, he's a Democrat, he supported Hillary Clinton, he has an intense dislike for Donald Trump. His views are basically those of a hysterical arrogant American Democrat. Elon Musk isn't a free speech absolutist. He literally doesn't even want to debate views like? So much ignorance on display.

You think Hitch was apolitical? He would have used his every breath to eviscerate Trump. I wish he was still alive as it would have been joyful to watch him intellectually destroy Trump apologists. We need voices of reason like his more than ever.

Is Elon apolitical? You think telling his 140m followers to vote Republican was apolitical? Is him promoting right wing accounts and talking points such as the great replacement conspiracy apolitical? You seem fine with someone being political as long as they support your politics. Sam Harris has been defending free speech for as long as I've followed him, though as others have said it doesn't come free of consequences and that is what Sam is saying and Hitch would have been saying the same thing.

 

[Penfold101]

Yes, that is a hypothetical private opinion, although obviously outrageous, I don't think the Police should break your doors down, unless you're formulating a plan to actually do it.



But I don't support someone planning an actual attack lol. That's not the same thing.

Weirdly, I actually agree with Roar here - there is nothing wrong with having an opinion and discussing it, however vile others may consider it. Should you start planning something or take any form of action over it, THEN the law gets involved.

The moment you start writing things down, buying supplies, set up a message group to plan things then you should prepare yourself for arrest.

 

[Christmas themed thank]

Weirdly, I actually agree with Roar here - there is nothing wrong with having an opinion and discussing it, however vile others may consider it. Should you start planning something or take any form of action over it, THEN the law gets involved.

The moment you start writing things down, buying supplies, set up a message group to plan things then you should prepare yourself for arrest.

The problem is, where on Earth do you draw that line?

If we did exactly what you said - i.e. not listening to private conversations - we'd have had a lot more terrorist attacks.

 

[PlacidCasual]

Obeying the law is a non-negotiable requirement and social media companies need to apply it as is required by each jurisdiction they are in, that's straight forward. But beyond this legal requirement social media companies appear prior to the Twitter purchase have also been applying their own/or owners political bias on moderation. Now given the size and near monopoly some of these companies have some some types of communication that's not ok. In the US these companies have a privileged position in the law that they are not liable legally for the content of their customers as long as they are not "publishers". But in applying their political bias they have been crossing the line a bit on this element which is why there has been push back. This is different from arguments about advertisers complaining about the location of their adverts in relation to offensive but legal content. As a company you want to make you advertisers happy, that doesn't mean you need to censor legal but offensive content. My view has been Elon Musk desired to allow legal but offensive content but has just done a bad job of it. In my opinion I find it more desirable to have legal but offensive content than to censor on the grounds of political World view. To be honest I find some of the twitter pile on's by the self righteous far more offensive than the ill informed words of some knob end. Because the pile on's often seem to have much more real World implications with supine corporations/organisations bowing to pressure from wannabe activists ultimately punishing people who have legitimate but contentious views.

I don't use Twitter and have no intention of joining, but I am interested in what happens there because like it or not it has an impact on how politics and journalism are organised in a way that affects me.

 

[Penfold101]

The problem is, where on Earth do you draw that line?

If we did exactly what you said - i.e. not listening to private conversations - we'd have had a lot more terrorist attacks.

Oh it’s a nightmare from a privacy point of view - there has to be some sort of hint and suspicion that police can go from to begin surveillance in the first place. They can’t just randomly choose someone and invade their privacy on the hopes of them turning out to be plotting an attack. Something must put them on the radar to begin with, and a judge must sign off on it as being legal surveillance with reasoning behind it to establish if they’re just expressing opinions or if they actually want to plan something and carry it out.

That’s how I believe the system works anyway - in no way do I believe they get it right every single time or that they shouldn’t be held accountable if they get it wrong and ruin someone’s life. It’s an absolute minefield, but there is a difference between expressing an opinion in your private life and publicly inciting hatred with a view to taking action or causing others to do so.

I’ve spent 23 years in the military and as much as I disagree with a lot of what Roar has to say, I will defend his right to hold those views and discuss them. Rules of engagement still apply though…

 

[Sankari]

Twitterx gets the boot from Australia's misinformation code.

X has had its status as a signatory to the Australian code of practice on disinformation and misinformation revoked following a complaint that it didn’t allow the reporting of misinformation during the Voice to parliament referendum.

DIGI, the industry association that oversees how social media platforms regulate misinformation, ruled through an independent sub-committee on Monday that X had “committed a serious breach” of the code and had not co-operated with its processes.

...Reset director of research and policy Dr Rys Farthing said the outcome placed Australia where Europe was in 2019, when it was broadly recognised that the voluntary disinformation code had failed.

(Source).

Nevertheless, I'm sure we can all remain confident that Musk is committed to—

Social media researchers have canceled, suspended or changed more than 100 studies about X, formerly Twitter, as a result of actions taken by Elon Musk that limit access to the social media platform, nearly a dozen interviews and a survey of planned projects show.

Musk's restrictions on critical methods of gathering data on the global platform have suppressed the ability to untangle the origin and spread of false information during real-time events such as Hamas' attack on Israel and the Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, researchers told Reuters.

The most important method was a tool that gave researchers access to data about 10 million tweets per month. Twitter notified researchers in February it would end free academic access to this application programming interface (API) as part of an overhaul of the tool, according to an email seen by Reuters.

Oh.

 

[Murphy]

Obeying the law is a non-negotiable requirement and social media companies need to apply it as is required by each jurisdiction they are in, that's straight forward.

If the internet worked like that you'd have a point but it don't.

Should this forum obey the law in Iran simply because people in Iran can access it?

 

[PlacidCasual]

If the internet worked like that you'd have a point but it don't.

Should this forum obey the law in Iran simply because people in Iran can access it?

I honestly can't decide what your motivation is sometimes and that is why I so rarely engage with your replies. If you can't see the difference in application of the law between Facebook and Twitter and this forum there is no point discussing the issue.

 

[Werewolf]

If the internet worked like that you'd have a point but it don't.

Should this forum obey the law in Iran simply because people in Iran can access it?

Iran is not even on our top 100 countries we have on the forum.

There is also a bit of a difference between a service that has a major presence in various countries and a service that has a handful of users.

If you run a service that has a large number of users (millions) in a country and are for example actively doing business in that country then you need to follow the law in that country as it applies to you, this goes for everything from companies selling individual items to companies selling services such as advertising.

It's really weird how Twitter used to be able to comply with the laws in the countries it operated in, then suddenly about a year ago it started having real problems.
It couldn't have been anything to do with Musk firing all the local employees and the likes of the legal advisors that worked in offices in those regions for Twitter to help ensure it followed the laws, not to mention all the native speakers whose ability to actually read and understand complaints from those countries makes a huge difference in the ability to comply with the laws (it sort of helps when you are actively operating inside a country to have staff who both know the laws as they pertain to your business in that country, and can speak the local language).

 

[JRS]

As a company you want to make you advertisers happy, that doesn't mean you need to censor legal but offensive content.

But if those advertisers are unhappy about being in the same postcode as this "legal but offensive" content, what then? D'you appease them and remove it, thus keeping them on-side and the advertising money flowing in? Or d'you just accuse them of whatever the hell 'wokery' means this week, and watch them pull their advertising to spend their money elsewhere?

One of these is likely to make the shareholders think that you're not running the company particularly well

 

[Murphy]

I honestly can't decide...

No, i know you can't.

Iran is not even on our top 100 countries we have on the forum.

There is also a bit of a difference between a service that has a major presence in various countries and a service that has a handful of users.

I agree but where do you draw that line and who should be drawing it?

For that matter how would you go about enforcing it, setup a country wide firewall like China.

 

[Roar87]

You posted a link to Hitch talking about freedom of speech in your defence of Elon, implying he'd defend Elon.

There was no implication, I think you know that and you've simply resorted to lying.

You think Hitch was apolitical? He would have used his every breath to eviscerate Trump. I wish he was still alive as it would have been joyful to watch him intellectually destroy Trump apologists. We need voices of reason like his more than ever.

Yeah, shame really, instead we're left with what we see here, people who can't remain honest in their posting.

Is Elon apolitical? You think telling his 140m followers to vote Republican was apolitical?

I think Elon has political views, Elon isn't a registered Republican though, he voted Democrat, he will vote based on how he feels about a particular candidate at that time. I also do that, I've voted for 3 different parties since I was 18.

Is him promoting right wing accounts and talking points such as the great replacement conspiracy apolitical?

I think you seek to put him in extremist positions to discredit him, fortunately most of us have the intelligence to spot this. Again, dishonesty.

You seem fine with someone being political as long as they support your politics.

I'm not sure you know what "my politics" actually are lol.

Sam Harris has been defending free speech for as long as I've followed him, though as others have said it doesn't come free of consequences and that is what Sam is saying and Hitch would have been saying the same thing.

I don't rate Sam Harris at all, each to their own though. He clearly doesn't actually support free speech.