the problem is, that Musk is interlinked with the success of Tesla and their ecosystem. Idk if there can be success for either of them without eachother.
Tesla could become a normal electric car and battery storage company and be fine, thrive even.
The share price would plummet to the same valuation as other companies doing similar work, which would be disastrous for people who bought in at the insane valuation that seems disconnected from reality and has done for years.
It's such a dumb thing to lie about but lying is just part of the company culture at Tesla. Here's the lead engineer of the Cybertruck trying to rationalize the lies:
> Oh man, I ruined their anniversary with my shit talk on the internet.
No. Think more clearly. Dystopian pervasive and intensive surveillance ruined their anniversary. Willful violation of a citizen's free speech rights ruined their anniversary.
> Miller says he was told at Radio City that he could appeal the ban if he wanted to but said it’s not a priority for him.
Hooray. Extra legal frameworks administered by corporations serving their own corporate interest.
This is a late stage capitalism issue where too much power has been consolidated into the hands of too few, and so much as a single comment made publicly can blacklist you from participating in any cultural event for the rest of your life.
Think of how many radio stations, venues, internet channels etc have been bought up by megacorp.
We have all the bad parts of a Gibson cyberpunk dystopia and none of the flying cars or bio-enhancements.
While that may be technically correct I don't think it's actually correct. Just because it doesn't violate the 1st amendment doesn't mean it doesn't violate free speech.
Democracy isn't just a form of government, it is also a type of society. Part of being a democratic society is that people are generally able to respectfully express themselves without fear of being punished for unpopular opinions.
> Part of being a democratic society is that people are generally able to respectfully express themselves without fear of being punished for unpopular opinions.
Well, yes, but I'd say the more important part is that students are having their visas revoked and being pulled off the street into immigration detention because of social media posts.
in the sense in which the entire constitutional apparatus is falling appart
because citizen-president Trump is a power bully
but this was bound to happen. as we transition from orality to literacy to digital-literacy and beyond
consider why the laws are written down. consider the way language became computer languages. and then realize that what was written down must now grapple with the new technological paradigm of digital paper that writes on itself
it's like we have (re-)discovered paper and the very idea of writing down the law is a techno-social innovation sweeping the land
First amendment is protection from the government, not by the government. It wasn't the government that blocked the speech so it wasn't a first amendment issue
It is protection by the state. It is how the state is constituted. It's what the state means and offers. It's what the state is for and what, in principle, the state does.
If the state doesn't in fact do these things then you have a different state and the constitution is just a piece of paper.
It absolutely is not. In fact it is a restriction on the state.
The rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights are inherent. They are not derived from the government. We have them by nature of existing. The Bill of Rights prohibits the government from infringing on these inherent rights.
> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
It precisely says the government cannot limit your speech and is intentionally silent about everyone else.
Nowhere in your quote does it say it only applies to government. It only says that government won't make laws restricting it. It is intentionally elevating freedom of speech to a precept that is fundamental to the constitution of the state.
You have people in this thread asserting that freedom of speech is an inherent right while simultaneously supporting a corporation's ability to infringe that right and suppress speech through petty punishments.
Your main problem is that you're misconstruing the nature of freedom. Freedom isn't merely freedom from things, it's also the freedom to actually do things.
> Nowhere in your quote does it say it only applies to government.
> It only says that government won't make laws restricting it.
These are the same thing. Further, private corporations have editorial control over what they allow in their publications or on their platforms which is also free speech. Or are you suggesting that the New York Times is required by The First Amendment to publish every letter it receives? That a website is required to leave scam comments or spam up? The no corporate owned platform can moderate in any way?
An interesting precedent for sure but it’s worth noting that a company tried and failed to use this precedent to argue that spam filtering is a violation of the first amendment
It absolutely is. Freedom of speech means free speakers. If you're going to face petty punishments for the rest of your days because your criticized the "wrong" people then you are not a free speaker.
If you're serious about a free society that means you have to cop criticism, disrespect, and even mockery, most especially and particularly if you're in a position of power.
> If you're serious about a free society that means you have to cop criticism, disrespect, and even mockery
Government does, but other entities don’t.
I am not saying I agree or like it, just that 1st amendment doesn’t specifically apply here.
The general idea of freedom of speech applies and there may be state, local laws or other federal laws in play. But that’s more “in spirit” and wouldn’t hold up in court.
It’s like people being censored on Facebook or YouTube - “Don’t like it? Build your own Facebook or YouTube, pal”. Here it’s “build your own MSG, pal” I guess.
You're right but there is something to be said about the responsibility of the system/government/society to prevent private overlords who can effectively stifle/chill speech because of their monopolistic power.
Democracy doesn't just mean you get to vote on some things.
The intent of 1A is to protect the freedom of speech from those in power. The fact that non-government entities now wield the power to suppress speech doesn't change the fact that this is an infringement of free speech.
That’s not the interpretation of pretty much any court in the history of the United States.
In fact, the opposite is true: The government forcing private individuals or companies to tolerate speech on their premises or carry it in their media is considered compelled speech and as such a First Amendment violation itself.
Whether that’s still the best way of doing things is a different question, but that’s what the First Amendment is/does.
This is incorrect. An important case is Marsh vs Alabama. [1]
A person was distributing fliers in a 'company town.' Company towns were essentially privately owned 'towns' on privately owned property. They were told to stop and leave, they refused, and were arrested for trespass. The case eventually made its way to the Supreme Court where it was thrown out. Wiki has a pretty nice synopsis of the critical point:
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The state had attempted to analogize the town's rights to the rights of homeowners to regulate the conduct of guests in their home. The Court rejected that contention by noting that ownership "does not always mean absolute dominion". The court pointed out that the more an owner opens his property up to the public in general, the more his rights are circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who are invited in.
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That's unlikely to matter here but it's an important nuance to the 1st Amendment. It's also important for the future because it will, sooner or later, likely end up applying to social media companies who are doing everything they can frame themselves as a digital 'public square' for speech.
This interpretation seems like the exception proving the rule. If it were consistently applied, as you say, social media companies should logically also be required to carry all speech.
The reasonable democratic thing to do here would be to propose new legislation explicitly covering the protection of speech "on private property", pass it if deemed desirable, and just be done with it.
Of course, the problem with that is that such a law might be seen to actually contradict the First Amendment (compelled speech and all), so it would possibly have to be a constitutional amendment, and that's obviously not happening. I really have no idea on how to get out of this mess, yet doing so seems extremely important.
The point of the ruling is that 'private property' is not, in all cases, strictly defined by private vs public ownership. The more a property is treated in a fashion akin to a public property, the more the rights of the owners become constrained in a fashion similar to the 'normal' owners of public properties - the government. So for instance a similar case was Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck [1] in which somebody was trying to argue that public access TV should be considered a public space, which would lead to some rather interesting TV segments! It made its way the Supreme Court and he was ruled against, but only by a 5-4 split!
That's why I said that such protections will likely end up applying, sooner or later. The precedent for moving stuff from the private to public domain (in terms of protections of users) is quite clear and there's a willingness among the court to act on such, so this applying to things that provide free open access to far more people than any government can reach, and then try to act as their untouchable and unconstrained overlord by appealing to 'private property', is probably inevitable. Of course "inevitable" has no meaning. It could be 5 years from now, or 50.
> In Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner, the Supreme Court distinguished a private shopping mall from the company town in Marsh and held that the mall had not been sufficiently dedicated to public use for First Amendment free speech rights to apply within it.
A company towns per-se don’t exist
anymore in US? There are developer owned neighborhoods though. Mixed zoned areas with everything owned by a corporate entity, so could apply there perhaps?
> The intent of 1A is to protect the freedom of speech from those in power.
The entire First Amendment is one sentence:
> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Nowhere in there does it say anything about "those in power" in a way that it could possibly apply to a private party.
But it's also a free speech issue. You're conflating free speech and the First Amendment, but they are not the same thing, and matters of free speech do not begin and end with the First Amendment.
If people these days were human—rather than erect animals—they’d boycott companies like this into bankruptcy. The eternal consoomer just lies down and takes it.
I seem to recall that when conservatives were getting banned from social media (or any place else), the prevailing attitude was "it's a private company, and they don't owe you anything, so they can ban someone for any reason they want." Now when it's a sympathetic target suddenly nobody is saying that? People are even invoking the First Amendment, which was laughed at back then.
The difference is conservatives voices were always the ones getting the most exposure online. Their whining back then was purely political and completely unfounded. And now that they're in power and actively censoring people, it should be apparent to all how this constant appeal to free speech and the 1st amendment was deeply hypocritical.
The difference is that conservatives generally get banned for being disrespectful and hateful. E.g. conservatives generally don't get banned for saying that they disagree with gay marriage, they get banned for using slurs, insulting people, etc.
Years before he was the Republican vice presidential nominee, however, Vance openly touted that influence.
“So there’s this guy Curtis Yarvin who has written about these things,” Vance said on a right-wing podcast in 2021. Vance didn’t stop at a simple name-drop.
He went on to explain how former President Donald Trump should remake the federal bureaucracy if reelected.
“I think what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, and replace them with our people. And when the courts stop you, stand before the country and say, ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’”
This “piece of advice” is more or less identical to a proposal Yarvin floated around 2012: “Retire All Government Employees,” or RAGE.
JD Vance thinks monarchists have some good ideas (Oct, 2025)
You have the opportunity to show some integrity here, dang. Take it.