401–410 of 1001 posts
Elon, if you’re reading, pull the plug. Nuke the entire site from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure.
I hope people realize that he is just trying to protect his favorite stock manipulation platform.
I'm not sure Musk knows what he's doing, this feels like a personal vendetta. I'm also not sure he has any likelihood of succeeding in the first place, I wouldn't necessarily assume anyone is going to take him up at that price. And (quite frankly) I don't think that Musk is a very good free speech activist. I think he's regularly hypocritical about free speech and regularly engages in his own forms of censorship; I d…
The only people with coherent philosophies of free speech are for absolute freedom of speech or absolutely no freedom of speech.
It's by pusuring incoherence, by threading the needle between those extremes that we create an open, free speech culture where freedom is the norm and censorship occurs only in extreme situations.
I generally agree with the rest of your post ("who cares?"). I would add that if Elon buys twitter and deletes it, I would be fine with it.
> Free speech absolutism is possible and is beneficial I don't think we have evidence to support this. Pursuant to the last major thread on the topic, I was thinking further about it, and realized that the vast majority of progress civilization has made has been under conditions much more regulated in terms of which ideas may propagate. We've never had a situation where fake news can and does spread the way it does t…
I couldn't agree more. I motion that we ban your speech immediately from this moment forward ;)
Kidding aside, you've set up a false dichotomy. While absolute free speech itself (holocaust denial, etc.) is absurd, history shows that you can either have absolute free speech or you have censor authorities abusing their powers for political gains. In the real world those are your only two options.
I'm not sure Musk knows what he's doing, this feels like a personal vendetta. I'm also not sure he has any likelihood of succeeding in the first place, I wouldn't necessarily assume anyone is going to take him up at that price. And (quite frankly) I don't think that Musk is a very good free speech activist. I think he's regularly hypocritical about free speech and regularly engages in his own forms of censorship; I d…
Anything pushed to its logical extreme becomes its own opposite. Since society can't or won't reign in either corporate or social media, perhaps we should remove all restraints and let then destroy themselves, and hopefully each other.
Further, how could Musk possibly be any worse than @jack, Zuck & Sandberg, Murdochs, Theil, etc, etc.
Pox on all their houses.
I don't have an opinion over the consequences for politics over this, I'm just excited over the potential shakedown of the social media landscape that I grew to despise. Musk is an activist, can make it or break it. He is absolutely right over its enormous potential, all the problems it has - as a business or ones it creates for the society - can be solved. Free speech absolutism is possible and is beneficial once yo…
If you believe on principle, the right of private companies to moderate content, then you must support all kinds of absurd outcomes: Twitter deciding to subtly push pro-Russian viewpoints, Facebook deciding to boost antivax content etc.
Are those actions evil or wrong? Not really, but I also don’t think they’re the actions of an ardent believer in free speech which this thread is making him out to be.
Saying you believe in free speech and acting out a belief that everyone should have an equal right to say their piece without fear of being silenced are two different things.
1 https://www.techtimes.com/articles/271211/20220130/elon-musk...
From observing various internet forums, including this one, I noticed that people from the "first world" countries don't know the value of free speech and often take it for granted. Sometimes even coming to such views as "free speech is dangerous" and that "we should limit free speech" (by blocking the views I don't like). Understand this: limits on free speech are far more dangerous to society than allowing fringe e…
Speech/information needs to be processed/filtered/analyzed. People may not be equipped to deal with certain information - hence we try to manage it externally and internally.
Suppressing from of information starts at early, at childhood. We try not bombard our children with all the information indiscriminately. We curate and provide age appropriate information to ensure optimal development and growth.
Once a person becomes adult they are supposed to gather and process information on their own. However, even as adults we are susceptible to deception. Our judgement can be fooled, feeling can override our logic.
In conclusion, I think there's a need for curation of the information/speech. Not forbidding it outright, but certainly to help humans discern facts from fiction, for example.
> Free speech absolutism is possible and is beneficial I don't think we have evidence to support this. Pursuant to the last major thread on the topic, I was thinking further about it, and realized that the vast majority of progress civilization has made has been under conditions much more regulated in terms of which ideas may propagate. We've never had a situation where fake news can and does spread the way it does t…
You know for such a scientifically-minded group as HN, we sure seem to embrace Whig History as if it's axiomatic that the progress we've made thus far is some sort of global maxima.
We don't have a control group timeline. We don't know the type and speed with which we'd have made different progress under different intellectual or social regimes.
There is absolutely NO reason to believe that the path we've taken has led us to the Best Of All Possible Worlds.
There’s an account called Elon Jet which uses publicly available information to track Elon's private jet and post take off and landings. Elon offered 5k to the owner to take it down[1]. He has blocked loads of people for mocking or disagreeing with him. Are those actions evil or wrong? Not really, but I also don’t think they’re the actions of an ardent believer in free speech which this thread is making him out to be…