I can tell you're being sarcastic and think this is some kind of "gottcha, ya hypocritical lefties", but that is exactly what will happen if he takes it over and tries to make it all about "free speech". It's happened plenty of time in the past. This will just end up being another version of the same story that's been repeating for decades now. It will turn into the cesspool and no one of any note will want to be on it anymore. Whatever new thing takes its place will be open-ish at first, eventually gravitate towards "left-leaning", become popular enough that businesses and news outlets start posting to it, and ultimately become a target for the rich to take over. The cycle has already started, kids do not have any interest in Twitter.
I doubt Musk cares about free speech and I doubt much would actually change if he took it over. He might give powerful people less trouble, but it wouldn't mean anything for the plebs. He just wants to own a major platform because that's what billionaires do.
The problem that the article is pointing out at least is that the free speech idealists don’t actually seem to have a vision to realize their ideals, and in many cases behave in ways that are counter to the absolutist rhetoric that they’re using to rally popular support for their new platforms or takeover bids.
But yes, ultimately the (U.S.) government is not able to tell businesses what content to moderate (or not moderate) because that would be a first amendment violation, so the only solution for people unhappy with current platforms is to migrate to new ones.
The U.S. is very much "able to tell businesses what content to moderate (or not moderate)", it's just that those businesses legally can ignore that. But what if the businesses are happy to do as they're told because of other factors? Factors such as: being in agreement with the orders, fearing spurious SEC/IRS/... investigations and audits, etc.
>don’t actually seem to have a vision to realize their ideals
It doesn't help when infrastructure also refuses to host or handle payments for your platform for wrongthink. That said you're right in that the alternatives have been built with perplexingly questionable data harvesting and security protocol.
> But yes, ultimately the (U.S.) government is not able to tell businesses what content to moderate (or not moderate) because that would be a first amendment violation, so the only solution for people unhappy with current platforms is to migrate to new ones.
Migration is not what's best for society. The migration to silos creates thought bubbles, is a barrier to cross-pollination of ideas, and potentially creates extremist.
The ideal social network is a federated network with individuals selecting their own content filtering/moderator. It's possible for all nodes of the network to communicate, and the important responsibility of moderation is removed from the platform. Removing nodes form a network and adding them to a separate network (migration) doesn't solve anything at scale.
> But yes, ultimately the (U.S.) government is not able to tell businesses what content to moderate (or not moderate) because that would be a first amendment violation
And yet, the US Govt has done exactly that and Twitter et al fell right in line.
Why respond in this way? GP was clearly using a facetious argument to indirectly make an interesting point, and that makes it a serious argument worthy of more respect than you gave it.
You don't have to accept others' opinions -indeed, you must reject many such-, but if we are to live in a civilized society, we have to accept that others have differing opinions.
> On the other hand, if we don't call this stuff out, we're going to continue in in reverse gear.
Please do not get hyperbolic about how deadly covid-19 is. I'm sure you know quite well that that's very much a matter of debate, and that there is a lot of room for debating various trade-offs in public policy, etc.
It's trivially obvious that one can make covid policy absurd. For example, we could just exterminate all humans and stop worrying about covid cases and deaths!
One need not reach such an absurd hypothetical to reach actually-applied policies that many -most, even- find too absurd. There must be a limit to covid-zero-like policies, and we must be free to debate it in order to find that limit. We must even be free to employ facetious, sarcastic, or sardonic humor -- these all can be legitimate modes of argument, especially when the other side is not open to any debate. Disallowing debate is a recipe for disaster, and also for mockery.
Oligarchs owning media and having it run PR is not new, both locally (Orban, Babis , Berlusconi) and globally (Kochs, Murdoch, Bezos).
What is new is the free speech angle - but that seems to be just Musks ego. Musk is doing what every other billionaire is doing, but has to spin it as saving the world, somehow.
Media is far more open and diverse today than at any time in human history. Historically it was impossible to publish anything without approval by an editor or publisher, a lot of money, or political power. Publishing was capital intensive and more regulated than it is today.
Yes, but media being owned by a few families rhetoric used to be in the "conspiracy theory" territory until now. Musk has been pretty open about that, remember his "who do you think owns the press" tweet?
Well, with everthing wrong about Bezo's treatment of employees and workers, his ownership of the WP is somewhat different from those other examples. For now.
I think Musk has knowingly cultivated an audience of sycophants who rarely read past headlines. Some of their commentary is hilarious, as if he is a messiah. We saw it with the Tham Luang cave rescue, Ukrainian skylink, and now with "free speech". Each time he delivers nothing, yet improves his image among followers. He has undoubtedly been successful, but I question his motives, character, and ability to actually improve equity and wellbeing of the population. Just a man with a lot of money and ego to match
Is it? Or maybe he's identified a legitimate opportunity considering that about half the nation feels as though twitter et al are more likely to clamp down on discussions of their ideas under the guise of "misinformation"? Stroking his ego is a bonus.
From a strictly business perspective, there's room for a public square which is friendlier to right leaning thought. Arguably from a sociological/political perspective as well.
What's interesting to me is that people see making a company _private_ and therefore limiting its ownership to just a few people is somehow going to make it more conducive to free speech. How does closing something off and putting it under one person's auspices make it more open?
Right leaning thought is already welcomed in large portions of the public square. Right-wing media outlets are very successful and have been for a long time, and people can get all sorts of opinions broadcasted there. There are also multiple right-wing Twitter alternatives out there for anyone upset about Twitter's (relatively lax, honestly) moderation. Despite any complaints about Twitter moderation the fact is that plenty of people are able to broadcast right-wing views there.
Could additional places to communicate be useful? Sure, why not. Are we lacking them? Absolutely not.
COVID disinformation did result in right-wing speech being theoretically suppressed in some places, but that's because a lot of right-wing people were openly and loudly broadcasting absolute nonsense, which got their general ability to speak on those platforms curtailed. That was a self-inflicted wound, though, and not something that really can get fixed by new platforms.
I'll also note that many media outlets people call "left-leaning" openly welcome and platform right-wing speech. CNN, ny times, etc frequently hire right-wing politicians and commentators to "balance" their commentary.
>COVID disinformation did result in right-wing speech being theoretically suppressed in some places
Example of disinformation being rightfully suppressed: COVID19 could never, ever have been propagated to the world from a lab leak in China, and saying otherwise means you are TrumpNaziKKKracist.
The solution is simple. The platforms should take full advantage of the protections granted by Section 230, while designing the platform to support pluggable 3rd party moderation. You don't want to see Nazi posts, or have them reply to your tweets? Opt for a moderator that provides that. Third party moderators could even supplement content, particularly those that go viral, with fact checking or contrary views as chosen by the user.
Will people still opt for no or biased moderation and be susceptible to fake news? Certainly, but with some tweaking, proper incentives, and quality trusted moderation, it would be enough to improve discourse and fact finding compared to what we have now, which is one dominating group controlling what we think and see.
I'm not defending Facebook or Twitter, but they largely follow laws serving the public. The laws are not perfect, but the goal should be improving them, not free speech absolutism. Social media should be regulated, not given absolute power. Giving a billionaire like Musk absolute power is a bad idea. There ought to be counterweights.
Every time there is an anti-regulation push it's always shady people trying to get away with something bad. Musk himself is keen on market manipulation. These people always portray the government as inefficient and evil, and say that we should get rid of it instead of improving it. The government is however what stops people like Musk creating the kind of dystopias only sociopaths can. They still manage, but there should be a limit how much power one man can have, because no one is infallible.
