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Notes -
Kanye West is banned from Twitter. So obviously any definition of free speech absolutism doesn't include him.
Snark aside - and the anti Elon crowd is quite snarky - the whole free speech for people in meltdown or not quite mentally stable is interesting question. My approach to human rights have often been - approve of them as long as I get to define who the humans are. So it turns out that my approach to free speech is that while I will go to extremes to protect the free, I don't consider the incoherent ramblings of a drunken hobo as speech.
On the other hand while it is easy to say "Cut his access to the social networks until he has cool down, so he stop hurting himself" and probably it is the best thing to do - I can see how a policy of for your own good can be used to cull all the edgy content.
Ye's post that Musk identified as an "incitement to violence" was a swastika embedded in a Star of David, to signify how both sides should love each other. I don't understand why he'd identify that as an incitement to violence, and I think it'd have been better for Musk to just admit he's doing this because Ye is off his rocker.
It's ironic to see free speech warriors pulling the same move the wokes do: yes, we're for free speech however some things just can't be tolerated but are still being defended as speech so we're going to use the "incitement to violence/harassment is not protected speech" exception.
Let's wait and see if it takes on the utterly stretched, mutilated character "danger" has in woke discourse as the need for exceptions grows.
This assumes that Musk is, or ever was, a "free speech warrior." Actual free speech warriors are in fact extremely skeptical of claims of incitement to violence, and insist that that exception be extremely narrow, and certainly not nearly narrow enough to encompass that post. Most obviously, see the relevant Supreme Court precedent
We can think of things like free speech is binary or on a continuum.
If you think of it as a binary, then Musk doing this action means he doesn’t support free speech.
If you think of it like a continuum, then Musk is providing more free speech while trying to balance other priorities.
And the latter view is consistent with what Musk said from the start.
Right, but I find it frustrating that people are just now realizing this. People on the left have been saying the same thing forever - It's not that we don't support free speech (we do), but, like Musk & nearly everyone else, we think that there should be some limits placed speech when it comes to the internet.
Musk isn't doing anything new or different here. It's what's always been done. Twitter has always moderated content that they believe to be harmful. Musk is doing the same exact thing but he just has a different definition of what 'harm' constitutes. If you agree with his new definition of harm, great. But you should at least realize that this is still a highly circumstantial process and is fully susceptible to bias as it's always been.
Well, I think the difference is most people on the left were moving towards less free speech (in really objectionable ways).
As a concrete example, people on the left supported labeling as misinformation tweets about covid that disagreed with government data. That seems like a central example of free speech that is so far on the continuum that it ceases to be free speech (eg only government approved speech allowed). That’s a bit Different compared to this.
I think there's a little more nuance than that. While I can't speak for every case, most of the warnings I saw were placed on tweets whose sources were fully or partially unknown. Now, the government certainly isn't all-knowing, but in terms of getting the most reliable data, it's hard to argue that numbers from hospitals submitted to the government were as questionable as random unverified sources. (Note: this is all dependent on wether or not you think the government intentionally and maliciously doctored the numbers to manipulate people. If that's what you think I don't think we'll be able to see eye to eye).
We also need to consider the unique nature of the pandemic - If people get bad info, they put themselves & others at serious risk. In that sort of scenario, it's hard for me to justify using bits and pieces of less verified data instead of government data (as we have in the past). I don't think it's an easy decision at all and I also can how bad it looks from the other side. But if you frame it as "Private company opts to promote verified data in attempt to save lives" it's not as bad.
Getting wrong info often has spillover effects. Once you allow for that and start saying “only government approved sources because it is too dangerous” you have no free speech.
Also questioning data doesn’t require believing that the government is lying (eg you argue with methodology). Or bringing up other data / idea (eg lab leak).
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