Elon is smart enough and will make this work. Had it not been because of his purchase of Twitter, we would not have a free speech oriented social media in the world.
SolarCity ended up integrated in Tesla and the same could happen with Twitter.
> Had it not been because of his purchase of Twitter, we would not have a free speech oriented social media in the world.
What? There's Gab, Truth Social and a host of other places where crypto-fascists can spew their inane nonsense. Elon's purchase of Twitter may be many things, but "freedom of speech"-anything, it ain't.
That's not what we are talking about here. We are talking about Twitter's policies or community standards favoring certain points of view over others.
Under Elon Musk, while no moderation method is ever going to be perfect, more people can express their sincerely held views without fear of censorship than under the leadership of Parag Agrawal. That's just reality.
The First Amendment is one of America's distinctive feature vis a vis other countries. It guarantees the freest expression regime there is in the world.
Elon Musk, in acquiring Twitter and firing Parag Agrawal, restored the balance in the force.
Um... Twitter isn't bound by the First Amendment. That's a constraint on government, not corporations nor individuals. Which is fine.
I own a mastodon node. If I authorize a member to post from my node, and they start spewing pro-Nazi shit? I can and will cut them off my node. It's mine, not theirs. They can go start their own if they want to spew that shit. Otherwise, people can and will assume I'm comfortable with that signal coming from something with my name on it, and they will be right. If you, personally, think that's wrong of me, you are under absolutely no obligation to appear to my node or relay my content. It's a very free country.
We constrain the government from stopping speech because it has the power of violence to do so. Individuals and corporations do not. Indeed, the case can be made that when somebody who owns a forum or message board moderates the community, they're exercising their freedom of the press. Same amendment, cuts both ways.
... And your conclusion doesn't follow from the previous statements. Regardless of the beliefs of the previous ownership, musk claimed he was "liberating" Twitter, but that didn't prove out. He basically just replaced one idea of what content isn't allowed with another idea of what content isn't allowed. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Don't get lost in technicalities and don't impute me what I never said. I never claimed that Twitter is, from a legal standpoint, bound by the First Amendment. What I said is that Parag Agrawal and team made the conscious decision to institute censorship policies incompatible with the First Amendment.
Obviously, the First Amendment case law only applies to public entities -originally only to federal entities and since the passage of the 14th amendment due to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_the_Bill_of_R... also to states and municipalities- and certain private entities that receive public money such as universities.
While how these latter policies apply to social media companies such as X/Twitter is part of ongoing debate and litigation, private social media companies, irrespective of the law cases, can decide what kind of censorship regimes they like to have.
Under Parag Agrawal and team, Twitter was a far left platform.
Under Elon Musk and team, Twitter/X is a centrist platform, meaning that neither the far right nor the far left have a free reign and the big middle is pretty much free to say anything they want as long as the First Amendment is not violated.
> What I said is that Parag Agrawal and team made the conscious decision to institute censorship policies incompatible with the First Amendment.
You actually said they don't believe in the First Amendment, but I'll take you at your word regarding what you meant. And I'd agree. They didn't run the platform in a way that gave people as much liberty as the First Amendment guarantees them (qua government).
They were running a social media platform. It's best practice when running one to not grant 1A-level privileges; doing so makes it way more likely you'll hit an actual legal snag like "this site was complicit in planning an insurrection."
Your claim basically boils down to "I like the new censorship regime; it's better than the old one." Sure; everyone has a preferred flavor of online community. But as I noted in a peer thread: Twitter does, if anything, more censorship now than it used to.
It just no longer actively pushes Nazi shit off the platform as often, and my opinion of it reflects that new reality. So does its advertising base.
(Hey, while we're on the subject: how do you feel about what it says regarding Musk's version of the First Amendment that he's suing reporters for reporting true facts?)
