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So, how's that whole Elon free speech Twitter thing going? Turns out, not great. An article from Mike Masnick over at TechDirt has the details. Basically, back in November, shortly after Elon finished buying Twitter, he noted his belief in free speech was so strong it extended even to leaving up the Twitter account @elonjet. For those who don't know the @elonjet Twitter account used publicly available data to Tweet whenever Elon's private plane flew somewhere. Elon tweeted:
The man behind the account, Jack Sweeney, also operated a bunch of other plane tracker accounts for other billionaires (including Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and various Russian oligarchs). As of today it seems the @elonjet Twitter account, along with all the other plane trackers and even Sweeney's personal account, have been suspended. Apparently this suspension is pursuant to a new Twitter rule about sharing personal information:
It took a whole month for Elon to craft a policy to ban the account he specifically said he wouldn't ban due to his commitment to free speech. So much for the idea that the limits of Twitter moderation would be anything like "only illegal speech." It also seems (according to the TechDirt article, and I tried this myself) that you can't even tweet links to @elonjet accounts on other platforms (like Facebook or Instagram). Amusingly Elon's original tweet from November now has a Community Note on it noting what the account that was being mentioned in the tweet was and the fact that it's banned.
Twitter files dump about the internal deliberations on how this policy change and these bans came about when?
ETA:
Seems @elonjet was unsuspended. Apparently the new policy requires "slight" (no word on how long that is) delay before posting info. Although, at the time of this edit the account appears to be suspended again. Link.
ETA2:
Elon now claiming that legal action is being taken against Sweeney. Would love to hear what legal action he's alledgedly taking.
And? The ban was done according to the rule against sharing people's location data, so what more do you want? It's a private company, after all. I hope all the vile antifa doxxing accounts targeting kids get banned and prosecuted too. What else can I say but "purge them, they have no right to free speech on someone else's platform"?
Can you point to an instance of you being upset about a non-leftist account being banned? Why do you care about this one?
I'm not sure there's anything I "want" as such. I'm just amused by Elon's quick 180 on his own free speech commitments.
I'm not sure I could point to an instance of my being outraged at a leftist account being banned, tbh. I care about this one because of its plain demonstration of Elon's lie about being committed to freedom of speech on Twitter.
It seems to me to be a small modification of his old stance rather than a 180 degree turn. "Yes, he can do it" to "yes, he can do it with a 24 hour delay".
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Is there any evidence that you care about hypocrisy? Like a post somewhere where you go after the hypocrisy of your own side?
Frankly, my opinion is the opposite as I mention in another comment. I would rather someone be hypocritically good than consistently evil. That seems like a no-brainer. There was definitely a period in my life where I would have cared more about the hypocrisy than whether it was good or bad, but not now. I feel a little bad about contributing to a lowering of political discourse with my OP, by appealing to hypocrisy rather than discussing why it was good or bad on its own merits.
So, to circle back, do you have an object-level opinion about the new Twitter policy?
I still think it's a dumb policy. It seems to me there's tons of innocuous content that would be prohibited by it (say, tweeting you're at a concert with friends while at the concert) and it's not clear to me what the benefit is. Especially as this pertains to publicly available information. I think there situations where sharing someone's location can be problematic, but if I were writing the policy I'd probably require at least some kind of malicious intent element.
The most literal and strict possible interpretation of the rules is not what actually happens. "Hanging out at the beach today!" type tweets would probably not get banned.
Every time a rule is proposed people pretend like really poorly programed robots are going to rigidly enforce the strictest possible interpretation.
What seems to actually happen is selective enforcement, where e.g. normally "hanging at the beach today" is OK, but if the wrong person posts it, they get banned for violation of policy. One might imagine Trump posting a picture of a rally and getting banned for doxing a reporter visible in the pic. (Consider the "hacked materials policy" as applied to the New York Post)
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I have a really hard time understanding your worldview.
I do actually care about hypocrisy, but I think when you point it out you should be careful to compare behaviors of the same kind and scale. "Dude upset at a social media monopoly banning a newspaper in order to influence an election, is now upset he has a stalker" isn't much of a dunk.
But to go full "I don't care about hypocrisy" is a bit of a mindfuck for me.
I think it is too strong to say I don't care about hypocrisy. I do think hypocrisy is bad, but I would rather someone were a hypocrite who did good some of the time than be consistent and evil. There are (many!) worse things than being a hypocrite.
Depending on the magnitude of the hypocrisy, and the good they are doing, I suppose you could come up with a case where I'd agree, but as a general statement that's a hard sell, especially when the good is directly related to the subject of their hypocrisy.
I could never trust a person who flaunts their own rules.
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Which of course also further fuels my point this was just a “boo outgroup” post.
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Then I guess my answer to your question is "pretty well actually," because he actually seems to be learning that free speech absolutism can't be extended to groups that want to abolish free speech and destroy him. "So much for the tolerant right" is as lame an argument as when conservatives tried to use it to universal jeering and gloating.
I expected he'd eventually learn once he was in the driver's seat, but maybe he'll actually pick it up fast enough to avoid any stupid mistakes like providing the attackers a platform.
So he's... learning that he doesn't want to be a free speech absolutist? Because as I see it (as something close to a free speech absolutist), free speech can be extended to groups that want to abolish free speech and destroy me just fine. Free speech can't be abolished, and I can't be destroyed, by ways of speech alone. What you are saying, on the other hand, seems to be pretty close to the "speech is literally violence" view that I otherwise hear from progressives, despite you being seemingly anti-progressive (insofar as you wantonly suspecting OP of discriminating against non-leftists seemingly solely on the basis of getting leftist vibes from an anti-Musk account is an indication).
Don't be a free speech absolutist. The concept doesn't work.
Speech is the best coordination mechanism there is. When people start using it to coordinate meanness against people like yourself, that is in fact an existential threat to you. If they decide to oppress you, your free speech absolutism will not restrain them, nor will their rejection of it summon magical karma justice from the ether. There are principles worth dying for. The right to try to use speech to generate evil without restraint is not one of them.
Naturally, I applaud your principles to the exact extent that they seem instrumentally useful to me. This is because I'm a human. Still, your principles should probably account in some way for the evident nature of humans.
The whole concept of Free speech Absolutism is based on the idea that a specific set of rules can be codified that will flawlessly constrain human behavior, that can't be worked around or ignored, that have no loopholes. The idea that human frailty and malice can be solved by sufficiently-elegant rule design constantly runs afoul of observable reality, and yet people stubbornly cling to it. They should stop, before they get more people hurt. To the extent that rules work at all, it's when people are actually motivated to cooperate in keeping them. Absent that cooperation, no rules will ever be sufficient to fix what's broken in mankind.
It does work. People can speak about being mean to you all they want. It's not until they do something that it becomes a problem, and free speech absolutism has nothing to say about what actions should or shouldn't be allowed.
This is not as hard as people like to think it is. Allow anyone to SAY "We should kill X" and punish whoever attempts to kill X. Speech is protected, easy peasy.
The only "hard part" of this is when people try to characterize actions as speech or vice-versa, and while it's not a completely trivial problem to solve, there are many ways to thread that needle.
That distinction makes as little difference as "I can swing my fist in the vicinity of your face all I want, it's only when the impact actually happens that it becomes a problem".
People aren't against the government banning speaking out against them because words are those ittle bittle harmless things that shouldn't be banned because they're so harmless. People are against it because words are a powerful weapon and they want to reserve the use of it against the government. I'm fine with that, it's when that weapon is turned against me that it becomes a problem.
I agree they're powerful, and that's why they must be unrestrained. Granting any large body, government or international corporation, the power to censor (significant amounts of) speech is too dangerous to contemplate. So quite simply, it must remain free because any scheme where an entity is given power otherwise is not safe to try.
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I'd argue it's to reserve the use of them against society at large. Government is just society's (the organization's) corporate arm, after all, and 1A covers the first three boxes of liberty (soap, ballot, jury) in the same way the 2A covers the last box (ammo).
The government did not order neighbors to go smash windows on Crystal Night, much as they did not directly order the mass hysteria and riots over the last 2 weeks.
Your neighbors did that all on their own, and so you need protection from them- being able to tell them they're wrong is your first line of defense.
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There are a lot of different ways to say "we should kill X". Some of them actually make it a whole lot harder to keep X from being killed, and to punish those who kill X. It is entirely possible to use speech to coordinate harm against people in such a way that, once you move from speaking to acting, the people being harmed have no effective recourse.
Free speech absolutism assumes that the above either can't happen, or is too remote a possability to worry about. Both positions are dead wrong, because they ignore the simple reality that humans are social mammals, not robots. Words have consequences, and can change the world in meaningful ways. Everyone who achieves large-scale responsibility is forced, sooner or later, to grapple with this simple, obvious fact. Occasionally, for a little while, times are good enough that some people can allow themselves to forget this simple reality. Sooner or later, though...
No, I'll bite the bullet here. Sometimes, people will coordinate and do something bad and you can't prevent it, only punish afterward. I do not assume it can't happen or is remote. I ACCEPT it as the cost of allowing free speech, and it is a cost worth paying because speech categorically must remain free for society to be worthwhile at all.
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That seems like a very general argument against a lot of principles. "Don't be for the rule of law. (...) Law is the strongest mechanism for collective violence in our society. When people start using it to instigate lawsuits against people like yourself, that is in fact an existential threat to you. If they decide to jail you, your rule-of-law absolutism will not restrain them. (...) There are principles worth dying for. The right to try to use the law to sanction people without restraint is not one of them." Basically every societal policy benefits some and harms some, and, yes, those who it comes to harm tend to regret previously having supported it.
...and, you know, now that I think about it, I don't see that as a problem. Lots of people out there are enthusiastic proponents of punishing criminals and sending people to jail based on the decisions of a jury of their peers, but will curse the jury, the state and the entire legal system if they are deemed to have committed some crime and they are the ones sentenced to prison - especially if they believe themselves to be innocent. Were they wrong to have been for legal punishment before it was levelled against them? Would you hold it against them that they flipped opinion once they pulled the short end of the stick? Should an argument like "you know as well as I do that the legal system sometimes punishes innocent people, and if that were to happen to you, you would rage against it; so it is hypocritical of you to be a proponent of it now" persuade the pro-law-and-order individual to change their stance?
It's an argument that very few principles are strong enough to be terminal.
Law is not the strongest mechanism for collective violence. Human will and human cooperation are.
Beyond that, though, all you have is a somewhat confused and uncharitable description of the simple principle that rule of law is not a terminal value. We assent to the law, to society, because we believe that doing so will deliver a better life for ourselves and for people in general. From John Brown to the Warsaw Ghetto to Omelas, History and philosophical theory overflow with examples of cases real and readily imagined in which it is better to reject the rule of law than to consent to it. One need not declare war on society over the slightest legal inconvenience, but likewise one need not bow to law that is plainly destructive of the good. Sometimes laws are bad, and the only recourse is to break them or to tear them down. Do you disagree?
If people hate you or your group, it's possible for them to use the law as a weapon against you. If they do so, especially if they do so for reasons that seem irrational or evil to you, why should you accept oppression to preserve a law that exists to stamp on your face? This principle, the recognition that law used as a weapon will inevitably lead to conflict, should ideally serve to keep people from abusing the law in this way. Far from undermining the common peace, such a recognition preserves it by not allowing foolish people to lie themselves creating a conflict they are powerless to end.
It's a reasonable argument. Only, how "innocent" are the "innocent" people in question? Innocent in the sense that they've spent their lives peaceably and with goodwill to their fellow men? Innocent in the sense that they didn't do this particular crime, but definately did dozens of other crimes? Innocent in the sense that they did do this crime, but you can't prove it? Innocent in the sense that they did it, you can prove it, but you proved it the wrong way so procedure says we let them get away with it?
And on the other hand, why are they caught up in the system? Is it a legitimate accident of fate, wrong place, wrong time? Is someone out to get them? Is someone out to get anyone like them, and they were the first [X] handy? Is there a coordinated campaign to find a way to screw them, and to hell with the law?
Inconvenient questions, to be sure. The Correct Answer(TM) is to put one's faith in the system, in the rules, in the Proper Procedures, and trust that everything will work out for the best, in this best of all possible worlds. That answer worked pretty well when we had a high trust society, when everyone was pulling together. It appears that it works somewhat less well when we only have enough trust for credit cards to work.
This is all a long way round to return to the original point: Your systems and your rules and your procedures aren't what society runs on. They never were, and they never will be. The foundation of any society is trust and good will, and the institutions, the rules and procedures are built on top of that foundation. When the foundation goes, how can the structures built upon it remain standing? All the principles you're pointing to are good and useful... provided we have mutual trust in our fellow man's investment in our common peace and prosperity. Without that, it's foolishness, nothing more.
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It is. "The Torah is not a suicide pact" is one example of the same argument. As with most such general arguments, the problem is that an escape hatch designed to avoid the very worst of consequences quickly swallows all the principles it applies to. For instance, not allowing people to plan murders on the platform quickly leads to the most milquetoast of things as being tantamount to planning a murder and thus prohibited (this was the fig leaf for the Trump ban, after all). The only way around that is basically good faith, people with as much dedication to the law as the rabbinate who can actually be trusted to keep such general exceptions in check. But good faith actors are thin on the ground; good faith actors with authority even less so, and no procedural safeguards can constrain the bad-faith ones.
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I am very interested in hearing how an automated account posting publically available flight plan information "want[s] to abolish free speech."
The information is public because there wasn't an obvious reason to make it private, and making it private would presumably impose additional costs.
I'm comfortable asserting that the account is posting the flight information of billionaires because the person who made it doesn't like billionaires, and sees this as an easy way to hurt them as badly as he can without getting in too much trouble. Granted, mass-dissemination of specific information about their movements and locations doesn't hurt them very badly; the additional risk added to their lives is likely infinitesimal. But it didn't cost him much of anything to do, and he didn't get in trouble, and it is, after all, the thought that counts. He's doing his part to make it slightly more likely that something very bad happens to a person he doesn't like, and in a way he can't be held accountable for. When this sort of behavior is tolerated, it proliferates. When it proliferates, the odds of something bad actually happening can go up a whole lot.
I'd guess it's probably pretty unlikely that he's doing this specifically about Musk's pro-freedom-of-expression stances, and rather was already doing it simply because he despises billionaires. Still, I'm confident he's not actually on Musk's side on the Free Expression question either. If Musk hopes to preserve the liberal ideal, people like this guy absolutely are his enemy, and must be fought.
Does that paint a clearer chain of logic for you?
[EDIT] - Nope, Sweeney appears to be a Musk fan and a plane nerd, and the above culture war narrative is baseless.
No. This guy tracked lots more wealthy people that Elon, and no one of them complained that putting publicly available info on Twitter makes them feel unsafe. Including Russian oligarchs, who possess fraction of Elon's net worth while having several magnitudes more of serious enemies.
So, it is not "poor Elon so afraid, please stop", it is more like "how dare you lowly peasants look at mighty lord!"
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Isn't "he's a nerd who likes flight data" just as plausible? It's hard to tell, as pushshift's twitter data is private because twitter doesn't let one publicly index twitter, so I can't search his now-suspended tweets, but his website looks a lot more like 'plane nerd' than 'anticapitalist'
It's not the way I would bet, or just have bet, but if there's no evidence of him being generally anti-billionaire and lots of evidence of him being a plane nerd, a prompt mea culpa is the appropriate response. Certainly I've presented no evidence of him actually being anti-billionaire, and that website looks pretty plane-nerdy, so that's good enough to shift my opinion.
https://instagram.com/p/CSGXpRLrT90/ Looks like he's just a SpaceX fan, sad case of friendly fire. (Also he has a truth.social account, and I'm pretty sure a communist can't enter that website without being struck by lightning or mysteriously bursting into flame).
If Musk was smart he'd offer the guy a job.
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I think billionaires who push green products should have their energy intensive consumption highlighted. A significant portion of Elon's wealth comes from our collective taxes and higher prices on basic cars subsidizing expensive cars for big spenders to save the planet. Him burning some fraction of that energy savings galavanting alone in a jet should be publicized along with all the other rich doing the same.
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What a strange reply. This is obviously about Elon's hypocrisy re: free speech. You going after OP and invoking the "private company" spell, as if OP was using that same excuse pre-Elon-Twitter, is against the spirit/letter of this place.
https://www.themotte.org/post/155/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/25045?context=8#context
He wasn't just using the "private company spell," he spent a week acting shocked that anyone could have a problem with the government censoring people via a partnership with Twitter. I don't think he cares about the object level issue he's talking about, it's just a way of sneering.
Fair enough. I didn't know you'd been keeping track of this particular user's views. This context helps.
You're right that I jumped too hard, sorry. The whole "pretending not to get it" tactic on both twitter fed-censoring and the Sam Pantythief affair got me irrationally angry, and I lashed out.
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I think I was pretty clear in that post and I'll be clear now. Twitter has not violated the First Amendment in either its conduct in 2020/2021 nor by banning the @elonjet account. As @czr notes I am merely amused by the quick demonstration of Elon's own hypocrisy on the topic of free speech.
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