Elon vs Twitter update: Elon helped America win , Tesla stock through the roof

https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-m...dia-free-speech-11649973814?mod=hp_opin_pos_1

Elon Musk Wants to Buy Twitter
If his $43 billion bid wins, what would he do about free speech and political censorship?
By The Editorial Board
April 14, 2022 6:40 pm ET

Well, this could be entertaining. In a week Elon Musk has moved from holding a 9.2% stake in Twitter with a seat on the board to offering to buy out the social-media site for $43 billion cash. The offer is causing a meltdown in progressive circles that don’t appreciate Mr. Musk as much on free speech as they do when he’s building electric cars.

“I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy,” Mr. Musk wrote in announcing his bid. “I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form.” He is offering $54.20 a share. Before his stake went public, the stock was trading near $39. Twitter lost $221 million in 2021 and $1.1 billion in 2020, and it might miss its target for user growth. Many shareholders will want to take Mr. Musk’s money and run.

This is a business gamble for Mr. Musk. But at the Ted2022 conference on Thursday in Vancouver, Canada, he said: “This isn’t a way to make money. My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization. I don’t care about the economics at all.”

We doubt that last claim, though he seems to be serious about free speech. And he may have turned to a buyout offer when he realized that he couldn’t achieve what he wanted with a single board seat in a company whose employees seem not to like him.

“How are we going to reconcile this decision with our values?” one employee asked on an internal Slack messaging channel, per the Washington Post. “We know that he has caused harm to workers, the trans community, women, and others with less power in the world.” The fiduciary duties of being a board member also might have been stifling.

But it’s an open question what he has in mind when he says “free speech.” The First Amendment protects p*rnography, jihadist propaganda, harassing insults and more from government prohibition. But private sites can regulate speech under current law, and drawing lines isn’t always straightforward. Calls to violence are generally banned on Facebook, and most users are glad they are.

Twitter has stoked discord because some of its boneheaded calls indicate that its staff has taken sides in America’s political and cultural wars. During the 2020 presidential race the site blocked the New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s wayward laptop.

Did nobody with stature in the building argue that it would backfire to prohibit a reputable newspaper’s article about the son of the Democratic presidential nominee? Groupthink may be part of the problem, due to a monoculture in Twitter’s San Francisco office. If Mr. Musk does succeed in his bid, perhaps he’d try to break the Bay Area culture of progressive conformity by moving Twitter to Texas.

Twitter’s board will probably fight Mr. Musk’s offer, and the reaction on the political left has been fear and loathing. That’s all the more reason to welcome it. Some conservatives want to regulate the internet giants, giving the Federal Trade Commission power to enforce an impossible standard of “neutrality.” This would lead to even more political discord.

Mr. Musk’s attempt at a market solution is far more promising. He could make a great social contribution if his takeover succeeds and he can find the right balance between free speech and sensible moderation.

Appeared in the April 15, 2022, print edition as 'Elon Musk Wants Twitter.'
​

​

 

I actually wasn’t arguing that posts should be censored if they aren’t thoughtful or constructive. I was saying that the idea of “free speech” ultimately leading to truth only works if you have an environment in which people are encouraged to express opposing views in a thoughtful and constructive manner. Twitter doesn’t and has never provided that environment. Its very design doesn’t lend itself to such discourse, I think.

Now, some might argue that “finding truth” is not the end goal of free speech. That allowing people to freely express themselves is an end in itself, even if it leads to widespread misinformation and harm. Perhaps there’s something to that.

But I am talking about what are the conditions under which free speech can promote actual truth finding, since that was the point that was raised which I was responding to.

 

Got it. That definition makes it less "absolute" since it depends on judgment on what is harmful or dangerous.

I have a different definition. It's someone who believes that speech should never be restricted, period. I don't know if that person exists though.

 

I just heard some of Musk's TED talk discussing his offer to buy Twitter. His comments seem more measured than some are portraying them has. I don't think he would turn Twitter into an anything goes forum. He did seem open to blocking posts that are overly offensive and while he doesn't like outright bans would be open to putting posters into "timeouts" or other things.

It sounds like Elon Musk Twitter would still have terms of service that would allow for removal of posts and posters.

 

I was attempting to find a definition that might actually apply to functioning people in today’s society. I can’t imagine a person actually existing who thinks that people should be allowed to blurt out answers during an exam, or yell out profanity during a silent prayer at a church, for example.

 

@AroundTheWorld

On free speech, the truth finding process, and the “marketplace of ideas” metaphor:

https://www.thefire.org/does-free-s...uments-against-free-speech-from-nadine-stros/

This article doesn’t necessarily bolster the argument I was making, but is interesting and relevant nonetheless. I think I need to dig in to this entire article series (this is just part 13).

 

LOL, I can't either, and that's why I think it's good to define it. People that claim to be "absolute" supporters of free speech without defining it clearly (and they rarely do), usually mean much less than my definition and it often means whatever people want it to mean based on their interpretation.

Just the idea of plain old "free speech" is not that well agreed on either. We have very different ideas of what that is and it has different meanings between different cultures, contexts, and usage.

Going back to Mr. Musk, he proclaims to be a champion of free speech (which to me means closer to the idea of absolute free speech), but he's not based on his history and his support for China. His idea of free speech is I think based on his judgment of "useful speech" in different contexts. In China, speaking out in some and being quiet in multiple areas is useful. In the US, speaking out against covid restrictions is useful for him, but spreading lies, he has indicated that is not useful. Some people jumping on his 'absolute' free speech bandwagon probably assumed a great deal of what he is for because of his marketing style of proclaiming he's a champion of free speech.

 

I see a lot of straw man arguments for people to attack, "“For democracy to survive, we need to better control of what people can say” which I don't think anyone ever said.

Twitter does need change, all public forums require content moderations - that's why people here were happy to have a MODERATOR assigned to the D&D. No one felt their speech was being oppressed by having a moderator.

Twitter needs to do a few things to address its problems.

1. It's not clear what is and what is not against its terms of service. Having clearer lines would be helpful. What constitutes harassment? What constitutes illegal activity? What constitutes hate? What constitutes info that may result in harm to another?

2. The second problem is that when people do get their content restricted in anyway, they tend to cry about it and make a big fuss to say their speech is being violated. I think there needs to be an appeal process and clearer rationale for why content was restricted.

3. Twitter needs people to sign more than a TOS, but a different shorter document that outlines what is allowed on the platform and why. This goes back to number one a bit but relates more to why does Twitter exist? What is the purpose of the platform? Why does Twitter have the rules it does?

I think a lot of that would go a long ways to addressing the larger concerns people have.

 

Of course it is! Twitter as the town hall shouldn't be presumptuous enough to position itself as the sole arbiter of truth. That's exactly where this Padrag soyboy simply doesn't get it at all. Hate speech, promotion of Nazism and direct incitement of violence are things that are pretty much defined in the law. But determining what "truth" is is NOT Twitter's job. And that's where they have been overstepping.

 

actually that's an argument made by Max Boot, paraphrased

 

I had never heard of Max Boot before, but just reading what he writes, he seems like a complete moron, and a wacko woko.

 

https://www.tiktok.com/@elonmusklive/video/7086124791677177094?_t=8RVjY32B16b&_r=1

1000 % correct

 

In the US, Twitter is a private company. As a private company in the US, they can almost do whatever they want to with their ToS.

If we think it's a "public town square" (which btw is not an adequate definition for social media platform where users can follow others, block others, be robots, operate 24/7, reach every point of the globe within ms, probably more likely operate as a bunch of private town squares by people with similar viewpoints who usually choose to not see the other town squares and with blocks are sometimes excluded....), then it needs to be under some type of government control making it no longer a fully private entity.

BTW, the promotion of Nazism is legal in the US.

 

People who make a product available to the public have a responsibility to ensure that it is not weaponized in a manner that will do obvious harm to society.

I don’t think Twitter should be in a position where they are deciding what is true and what isn’t. Agreed. But they also shouldn’t be enabling the wild-fire like spread of false information to its users.

So — what is the solution? This is what I’d like to see addressed from Musk or like-minded free speech enthusiasts. Saying we should just keep platforms like Twitter or Facebook as is, but do away with all mechanisms that are in place to slow down spread of false information, to me, will not improve the situation.

Also — you cut off my sentence in what you quoted and inserted a period that wasn’t there. Please don’t do that.

 

Yes, on that one, the laws differ in different countries.

 

You cannot have both. Once you decide that "false information" should not spread, you make yourself the arbiter of truth. So you should stay away from deciding what's false and what's right.