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So it looks like Elon Musk officially owns all of Twitter now, and he's already fired the CEO, CFO, and policy chief. I don't have any strong opinions on this, but does anyone want to stake some predictions?
Musk presents himself as a free speech absolutist, which is encouraging to me, but I'd be concerned about the conflict of interest. I anticipate there will be some accusations of throttling unfavorable opinions about either him or his companies (RIP rogue driverless Tesla videos). I think the tension between unrestricted speech and a quality user experience will continue to be a problem, as I can't identify an obvious solution. Blue checkmarks are making hilariously cataclysmic remarks but I predict Twitter will remain a favored haven for the journalist class.
did a control-f on this thread for the word "china" and nothing came up, so I'll just point out that before Musk took over Twitter China had no leverage over the platform to censor views they find objectionable, given that Twitter is already inaccessible in China. But Musk has a lot to lose if China were to pull their support for Tesla, since so much of Tesla's manufacturing capacity is located there.
Which means that if China were to, say, take offense at the views of people who are pro-Taiwan or anti-Xianjing-concentration-camps and wanted those views taken off of Twitter, they have a really tempting point of leverage! "That's a nice Tesla business you've got there, Musk, shame if something were to happen to it."
This is definitely the sort of thing that's already happened to other businesses over which China has had leverage-- see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzchung_controversy for when Blizzard fired a bunch of people for being vocally pro-Hong Kong on stream, presumably to avoid China financially penalizing Blizzard in retaliation.
Elon really likes China but he also strongly opposes censorship, at least so he claims. These seem antithetical , so i don't know.
I don't have any problem reconciling these.
Free speech with few bounds is great. It enhances human dignity, exposes bad actors, and enhances the chances that we're accurately evaluating reality. However, it's not without its drawbacks. People can demagogue, they can spread lies, they can even spread socially damaging truths.
China is a sovereign nation and it's not my place to castigate them over their speech policies. They are in a better position to judge the consequences of unfettered political speech on their society, and they've decided the benefits aren't worth the costs. Maybe they'll change their mind some day, but outside pressure to do so would likely be counterproductive.
It also seems like U.S. allies don't get the same level of criticism that China gets re: free speech. In the U.K. you can be punished by the state for posting a picture of your dog doing a Hitler salute. AFAIK canine Hitler impersonations are still legal in China.
Yes and in my experience the best way for demagogues to do the latter two is to claim that their opposition is doing them and needs to be censored so that their half-truths can go uncontested.
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