Censorship

Enhance said:
Read it one more time.

"I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law. "

- Elon Musk

He contradicts himself in one concise tweet. But, please, continue to enlighten us on how you know Elon and his intent so well.
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If you read the first sentence, he tells you what he means. You're just here trying to muddy the waters and apply your own presuppositions to what he's saying

 
ActualCornHusker said:
I don't think that's what Elon is saying. He's saying that content should only be moderated or censored if it is actually illegal, which is a stance that I agree with completely. 

I said a couple years ago when section 230 was a hot topic that social media giants should be treated like a utility.
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But, who decides what is illegal?

 
RedDenver said:
Elon has a notoriously thin skin, so it'll be interesting to see what happens when there's satire or criticism of him or his companies.
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As someone with only 2 layers of skin and not 3...I take offense to this and demand you apologize!!

Just kidding...I probably have like 10 layers of skin with the weight I have put on.

 
ActualCornHusker said:
If you read the first sentence, he tells you what he means. You're just here trying to muddy the waters and apply your own presuppositions to what he's saying
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His statement is actually super vague and dependent on the very subjective definition of "far."

I have no idea why people perceive him as some savior for free speech. His beliefs are typical techbro libertarianism and I'd bet dollars to donuts he starts drawing lines at stuff that looks bad for Elon or with which Elon disagrees, based solely on his past behavior.

Continuing to look at famous wealthy people as messiahs to solve our societal problems is going to continue blowing up in our faces.

 
Enhance said:
The bolded is perhaps the most curious and interesting part to me moving forward because I think some people (and of those people, mostly more conservative folks) have obfuscated the issue into something it isn't. We can find a lot of conservative opinions and memes surrounding a variety of social issues on Twitter right now. It's very easy. In fact, most prominent conservative voices that have a Twitter have not been banned from Twitter.

But, let's look at a few of those who have been banned/suspended and why:

- Trump. Banned for the risk of potentially inciting further violence following Jan. 6th. His actions were grossly negligent at a minimum.

- MTG. Routinely spread blatantly false and potentially harmful COVID-19 information. 

- Bannon. Suspended for suggesting Fauci be beheaded.

- David Duke. Banned for violating hateful conduct policy.

- Mike Lindell. Banned for spreading objectively false election conspiracies.

Obviously this is just a selection. However, two of those are related to violence. One of them was related to spreading potentially harmful information regarding a pandemic. The rest are probably up to the court of public opinion.

I feel like there's this simmering narrative out there that conservative voices have been silenced for being conservative and, in my opinion, that just isn't the case. They've been silenced for often being violent or dangerous to public safety. I imagine in Elon's world, he's going to want to allow the ridiculous (but non-violent) stuff to remain. That's his prerogative and it is what it is. But some of the other stuff is going to be a real test for him and his moderation policies. At what point does he begin to care about those things if at all? That's the answer I'm most fascinated in seeing. Basically, how far does that pendulum shift, and what is the breaking point. We know there is one and will be one at some point.
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This is a quality post. I for one thought Twitter actually did a pretty fair job with their previous moderation, for the most part (there are of course exceptions). Some stuff should be moderated. Calls for violence - bad.  Targeted harassment - bed. Medical misinformation - bad. Open racism - bad.

Very little of conservative social media posts are highly misleading (like a lot of highly shared political posts in general) but aren't ban worthy. But like with the medical misinformation stuff, a lot of it is swallowed whole and regurgitated ad nauseum by people too damn  stupid to understand why it's wrong. I would argue that's a net bad for society, and with regards to medical misinfo, potentially deadly. 

The techbro libertarianm version of free speech Elon seems to subscribe to isn't particularly appealing to me. Primarily because I don't think it's as evenhanded as they believe it is and there will be harmful secondary effects - but they're not going to be the ones effected by them, so of course they don't mind, you know?

 
Danny Bateman said:
This is a quality post. I for one thought Twitter actually did a pretty fair job with their previous moderation, for the most part (there are of course exceptions). Some stuff should be moderated. Calls for violence - bad.  Targeted harassment - bed. Medical misinformation - bad. Open racism - bad.

Very little of conservative social media posts are highly misleading (like a lot of highly shared political posts in general) but aren't ban worthy. But like with the medical misinformation stuff, a lot of it is swallowed whole and regurgitated ad nauseum by people too damn  stupid to understand why it's wrong. I would argue that's a net bad for society, and with regards to medical misinfo, potentially deadly. 

The techbro libertarianm version of free speech Elon seems to subscribe to isn't particularly appealing to me. Primarily because I don't think it's as evenhanded as they believe it is and there will be harmful secondary effects - but they're not going to be the ones effected by them, so of course they don't mind, you know?
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What everyone needs to understand is that no matter how they do it or who dies it, there will be mistakes that are totally unintentional. 
 

But, I have absolutely no faith that the American public will understand that. 

 
BigRedBuster said:
What everyone needs to understand is that no matter how they do it or who dies it, there will be mistakes that are totally unintentional. 
 

But, I have absolutely no faith that the American public will understand that. 
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This seems entirely reasonable.

As with pretty much everything in our politics, it's a lot easier for the American public to focus on winners and losers (or who to support vs. who to be mad at) rather than actually digest a difficult issue itself.

 
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