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Elon Musk has suspended a slew of liberal journalists and pundits from Twitter. It is, as Benjamin Braddoc puts it, a red wedding for the liberal establishment. I initially believed that he was just the "controlled" opposition of the deep state, obviously he's stepped on way too many toes for that. This imo underscores an important truth to the ultra principled who believe in free speech absolutism and neutral institutions, the overton window won't shift the other way just to punish the "heretics" who've assailed this sacred virtue. Social media, our Frankenstein, has made it insanely easier for mob rule to influence culture (not that it wasn't already).
I still don't believe we're witnessing complete course reversal, but this could just be the first legitimate W for the right.
EDIT: It looks like he's lifting the suspension.
Alternatively, it suggests that right wing "free speech" warriors never had a principled commitment to free speech as a value and were just angry that they were getting moderated and criticized.
Alternatively alternatively, it suggets that Elon Musk never had a principled commitment to free speech as a value and given the opportunity will punish people who criticize him.
What is a "legitimate W" and why would this be the first?
Name 3.
My impression is that libertarians and various other flavors of principled free-speech absolutists have always been vanishingly thin on the the ground and that support for free speech amongst the mainstream right has always been much more about a valuing tradition and a preference for "your rules enforced fairly" than classical liberalism and free speech as principles.
I'm reminded of a comment from a week ago or where someone said something to the effect of "it would be terrible if people were actually held accountable for all the mean things they say" and I got downvoted for asking "would it?".
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Free speech is a Nash equilibrium we left long ago. It's not coming back for a while I fear. For even if one has principled commitment to the idea they would not be able to enact it and sustain political ends as we stand. As Popper would have it pistols are meeting pistols at the moment.
Your best bet is getting Dorsey or some of the other decentralization people to manage some technical solution to make censorship impossible. Or to win a culture war so thoroughly we can be high trust again. Both difficult, if worthy, endeavors.
Hot take: Free Speech is basically fine and getting kicked off Twitter is not that big a deal. Most discourse around "Free Speech" has very little to do with actual freedom of speech as opposed to winning/losing popularity contests. And, perhaps more importantly, the attendant influence it gives you over defining the standards of intellectual respectability and polite conversation. Notably, there is ferocious concern over moderation policies on private forums and very little attention given to actual legal constraints on speech, of which there are many (hate speech and anti-discrimination laws, defamation laws, BDS laws, false advertising laws, IP laws, SCOTUS rulings detailing exigent limits on speech, police violence against protesters, etc...)
The promise of freedom of speech has never been that you wouldn't be judged for what you say. At any given time and place, there are opinions which are considered out of bounds despite being perfectly legal to hold and say. These will get you tagged as an asshole, idiot, or lunatic if you espouse them and which may induce people to exercise their freedom to disassociate from you and encourage others to do the same. This is not a matter of freedom of speech, this is basic human social dynamics. The sticking points now are:
a) conservatives have generally held sway in public spaces while liberals were transgressive. Very recently, this has ceased to be true in many spaces. This puts a lot of conservatives, especially on the far right, in the novel position of risking opprobrium for expressing their social and cultural views. (Of course, there have always been views that were too right-wing even where conservatism was the 'default', but that has usually meant actual mask-off Neo Nazis as opposed to, say, spouting racial slurs or harassing trans people).
b) there's been a divergence in viewpoints. Compared to 20 or even 10 years ago, liberal and conservative social views are significantly further apart. Combat with the above and you wind up with a recipe for conflict, since you have a significant fraction of the population with non-overlapping ideas of what constitutes respectable behavior. This is the break in equilibrium.
c) the creation of large, centralized for a designed to stir shit (i.e. Twitter and Facebook) creates discursive FOMO where not have access to these platforms feels like being silenced, even though its actual impact on your ability to speak freely is pretty marginal.
Free speech is at least the ability to express unpopular political opinions unmolested. If it does not include this it is useless.
Given twitter fads have led to legislation and formal and informal organizations that target people with specific opinions to destroy their lives, I find it hard to call buy in to the public square a fear of missing out. Yeah it's fomo alright, of missing out on your ability to use your natural rights because your declared ennemies will punish you for it. Not to mention all the people whose business requires online outreach.
And unlike your characterization, people are indeed mad about Austrian blasphemy laws and the general tyranny of the British State in this particular area.
Define 'unmolested'. If you go out and say "I think eating babies is good and we should legalize it" and as a result everyone decides you're a creep and ostracizes you, have you been 'molested'? If the answer is no, we're just quibbling over what should get you ostracized. If the answer is 'yes', how do we reconcile a conception of freedom of speech that requires people to listen you with the listeners' own freedoms?
Twitter is not the public square. It is a popular private forum. You have no more 'natural right' to use it than you do to use the bathroom at the Carlton Club. If Twitter wants to ban people - whether for transphobia or orchestrating harassment or criticizing Musk - that's their prerogative.
It can be economically beneficial to have access to Twitter for business purposes, but that doesn't oblige Twitter to grant you access any more than Amazon or FB or spacebattles.com. Today Twitter unveiled a policy prohibiting linking to other social media. This is probably going to be a mutually harmful policy, but it is well within Twitter's right to make.
In the United States, which we were clearly talking about, discourse around free speech revolves almost entirely around the moderation policies of social media sites and only very occasionally touches on actual legal restraints or state violations of free speech. I am not a fan of British policies but they are not the policies of the United States.
My answer is yes and it doesn't require you to listen. It does require you however not to destroy the lives of baby-eating supporters by refusing to do business with them. Ostracism without due process I don't see as a legitimate form of punishment.
There are only two equilibriums I see here: either we go for the no and do pure libertarian contractualism and abolish the CRA, you don't have to bake the cake and "niggers need not apply" is allowed. Or we go for the yes, which is my preference, and the State actively prevents you from dissolving things like employment contracts on political grounds as it does in my country.
De jure nonsense. It is the public square, that you refuse to acknowledge it has become so because it is privately structured means nothing.
Besides, I don't recognize the difference between public and private institutions as meaningful. Especially at that size. Twitter, much like the NYT, is a part of the US government.
You easily forget about obscenity and "prurient interest".
These are contradictory statements. If I can't disassociate from baby eaters because I find them objectionable, I am in effect required to listen to them.
The US has an equilibrium on the subject: there is a defined list of protected classes which you cannot use for a basis for discrimination. Despite the hand-wringing over Twitter's moderation policies from people like Hawley or Cruz (or Trump), there is little appetite on the American right for making political affiliation or views a protected class. You may see it floated occasionally in an op-ed, but no one in Congress has taken up the torch. Likely because making political affiliation a protected class would be materially costly to Republicans in ways far more substantial than the gains (making political affiliation a protected class isn't going to stop you from getting banned from Twitter for violating content policies or inciting harassment, but is it going to effectively require non-partisan redistricting).
Expand on this. What makes it the public square? This invariably seems to be made as an unsupported assumption. As far as I can tell, the unstated argument is that Twitter providing access to a large audience, but the same can be said for almost any successful social media platform or traditional media outlet.
(To say nothing of the idea of there being a singular public square being ridiculous)
I'm not sure what your point is here? My list of legal exceptions to free speech rights in the US was not intended to be exhaustive, and Obscenity is not a major element of contemporary discourse around free speech.
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Hilariously Wikipedia included "without fear of social sanction" in its definition of freedom of speech. This was eventually narrowed to the current definition of only legal restrictions to prevent reactionary elements from using it as cover
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It's always the "cultural heterodoxy" that campaigns for free speech to accommodate as many dissidents as possible and freely criticise the regime, the left used to be the champion of free speech as early as the 2000s and now that they've ascended to "orthodoxy" status, they treat it as a far-right dogwhistle, their own rendition of "heresy". And of course, the right has been guilty of censorship for the longest of times. It just shows that you're either in control or you aren't.
And given what a huge platform Twitter is and its ability to influence culture, given that it so easily enables mob rule like I said, I do think it is a W for the right now that it's veering closer to them.
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Anyone who thinks either party takes free speech seriously hasn't been keeping score for long enough. I know "both sides are bad" is a a very tepid take, but its just true on this one. Both sides have stuff they wish everyone would just shut up about, and unscrupulous enough legislators to give a shot at enacting controls on speech given the right political climate.
This is why organizations like the ACLU are important, in theory at least.
I don't think many people are surprised to see a Republican turn out not to care very much about freedom of speech. The interesting things is that Elon Musk, specificallly, has turned out not to care about freedom of speech very much and is doing things he explicitly said he would not do not long ago, using very similar excuses that the left has used to censor its political opponents, namely a nebulous concern for safety.
People keep repeating this, but none of them have bothered to make the apples to apples comparison of discriminating against political viewpoints versus banning real-time location doxxing. Until they do, this is just more 'Boo Musk' weaksauce.
Wake me up when Elon starts banning people for referring to Rachel Levine by their preferred pronouns.
It may not be the same or even as bad, but it is certainly noteworthy that Elon Musk is turning out to be a hypocrite who doesn't care as much about free speech as he said he did.
I will consider it noteworthy once everything in the Twitter files and the incestuous relationship between SV, the state, and the media (some of banned themselves being implicated in the drops) receives the same measure and moreso.
Unt then - No. I really dont find this noteworthy at all despite your insistence. The last 10 years has been a graveyard of high-minded tech companies loudly pledging their allegiance to free speech suddenly doing an about-face and reneging on that promise when it was convenient. The mainstream conversation about hypocrisy on social media platforms will not start at Elon Musk.
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Is it though? I haven't followed this Musk saga, but aren't they just tell where the jet that belongs to Elon is?
It's like if Lady Gaga had a concert, than some people on twitter would say "hey, Lady Gaga will be at this Concert Hall at 19:00", it wouldn't be considered "doxxing" really. Flight radar and such are great tools that are beneficial to our society.
Someone named Scott Alexander had this essay: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/07/29/against-signal-boosting-as-doxxing/
I don't think those are comparable. Signal-boosting some offensive tweet written by a nobody might increase his visibility tenfold. Meanwhile signal-boosting public information about Musk will increase risk to him or his family only marginally.
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Sadly the ACLU has completely betrayed its principles. It makes me sad; I was so impressed by them as a teen, and now they're up there with the UN Women's Twitter account.
ACLU was formed as the legal defense fund for CPUSA - they haven't betrayed their principles.
https://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/blog/baldwin.pdf
The famous cases like Skokie Illinois was classic "signal boost people that make the other side look bad" (only works when you have total control of the press) combined with "create a reputation for our organization as principled that will allow us to be more effective a boosting left wing causes".
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yeah thats why my support for them is only theoretical and not practical.
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