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Offline Roundy

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Re: Free Speech Warrior Elon Musk
« Reply #20 on: December 20, 2022, 11:43:22 PM »
CNN: After Twitter users voted to oust Elon Musk as CEO, he wants to change how polls work.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/20/tech/elon-musk-twitter-polls

Summary:
"You know... After people voted to have me leave twitter, I think we should make policy polls votable only by people who pay for twitter."

Democracy Capitalism in action.
Dr. Frank is a physicist. He says it's impossible. So it's impossible.
My friends, please remember Tom said this the next time you fall into the trap of engaging him, and thank you. :)

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Offline honk

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Re: Free Speech Warrior Elon Musk
« Reply #21 on: December 22, 2022, 05:30:24 AM »
People who manipulate media organizations usually aren't so brazen about it.

...then how do you know that Roth used to unilaterally control Twitter similar to how Musk does now?

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My problem is that people who are upset about the "hypocrite" meme aren't actually believers in free speech. They don't care about the core issue one way or another. In other words, why does it matter that Elon is a hypocrite if the outcome is the same either way? Why bother complaining about it at all and take up space on this forum?

As far as this discussion on this forum goes, I don't have a problem with regarding the subject as settled and moving on. I just don't think that it's irrelevant or unimportant that Musk's supposed big justification for what he's doing is a lie. I think he'd lose a lot of support if he admitted that his primary motivation is personal rather than ideological, and that he just wants to be able to remove posts and ban people that he doesn't like.

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If Musk was really the popularity desperate guy you make him out to be, he'd be a generic liberal (like all the other celebrities seeking nothing but popularity). Any person with access to google would know that demographically, the West is mostly left-leaning. Why pander to the right if he's so desperate to be popular? Your line of thinking doesn't make much sense.

Musk panders to the right for the same reason that Donald Trump, Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, James O'Keefe, Jordan Peterson, Mike Cernovich, Tim Pool, Steven Crowder, Candace Owens, Charlie Kirk, Michael Knowles, and pretty much any other high-profile political grifter panders to the right - there's no market for transparent grifting posing as political commentary on the left. If Shapiro had tried to cater to the left, he would have been quickly exposed as an idiot and broadly rejected - only an audience of conservatives would see him as an intellectual and idolize him. If Cernovich had tried to cater to the left, he would have been quickly exposed as a boorish creep and broadly rejected - only an audience of conservatives would see him as a manly stud and idolize him. Likewise, Musk had no hope of ever being a progressive hero, as his long record of deliberately flouting corporate regulations and mistreating his workers would have told against him all too clearly. Only conservatives would idolize an exploitative billionaire like him. I also suspect that only conservatives would be gullible enough to buy into Musk's carefully cultivated myth of how he's a modern-day Thomas Edison, a brilliant scientist-inventor who's personally paving the way to a golden future through his keen scientific mind and many wonderful inventions, rather than the more mundane reality of Musk not really being a scientist or an inventor at all, but a businessman who made a fortune (with the advantage of starting out with a sizable inheritance) through making the right corporate investments and acquisitions. The only thing Musk has in common with Edison is his habit of taking credit for other people's work.
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Offline Lord Dave

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Re: Free Speech Warrior Elon Musk
« Reply #22 on: December 22, 2022, 06:02:05 AM »
I also suspect that only conservatives would be gullible enough to buy into Musk's carefully cultivated myth of how he's a modern-day Thomas Edison, a brilliant scientist-inventor who's personally paving the way to a golden future through his keen scientific mind and many wonderful inventions, rather than the more mundane reality of Musk not really being a scientist or an inventor at all, but a businessman who made a fortune (with the advantage of starting out with a sizable inheritance) through making the right corporate investments and acquisitions. The only thing Musk has in common with Edison is his habit of taking credit for other people's work.
I thought thats what Edison was: a business man who didn't (or barely) invented anything, then spent his time discrediting his rivals because he was a huge asshole.
Like the time he told the US Navy that Radar was stupid.  Or the time he used AC current on stray animals (he paid kids to find) to kill them publically as a way to show how bad AC was and how safe DC was.


Seriously, Musk is pretty damn close to a modern day Edison.  Including the whole myth about how great they are.
If you are going to DebOOonK an expert then you have to at least provide a source with credentials of equal or greater relevance. Even then, it merely shows that some experts disagree with each other.

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Offline AATW

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Re: Free Speech Warrior Elon Musk
« Reply #23 on: December 22, 2022, 05:57:27 PM »
No one actually believes in free speech. It's a made up idealistic gibberish concept, like communism or a perfect circle. It's not real. It doesn't exist in reality. Everyone has some "I believe in free speech... but". Pointing out that people don't believe it (like Musk) makes for plain boring intellectual circlejerking.
People do believe in free speech, but free speech doesn’t mean you can literally say anything you like. The classic “shouting FIRE in a crowded theatre”. That isn’t covered by free speech for the obvious reason that you could cause a panic which could harm people (unless there actually is a fire of course). Free speech means you should be free to express differing opinions without censure. Yes, there is a “but”, the but is about saying things which could harm others. There are obvious grey areas here. If a social media platform decides to censure disinformation then that makes them the arbiter of truth, which is problematic. But it’s also problematic if someone posts something about how drinking bleach will stop you getting Covid.

TL;DR, I don’t think this is a simple issue, but if you’re going to buy Twitter and bang on about how you want it to become a bastion of free speech then it’s not a good look to ban the accounts of a load of journalists who have criticised you. (I believe these accounts have now been reinstated)
Tom: "Claiming incredulity is a pretty bad argument. Calling it "insane" or "ridiculous" is not a good argument at all."

TFES Wiki Occam's Razor page, by Tom: "What's the simplest explanation; that NASA has successfully designed and invented never before seen rocket technologies from scratch which can accelerate 100 tons of matter to an escape velocity of 7 miles per second"

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Offline honk

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Re: Free Speech Warrior Elon Musk
« Reply #24 on: December 23, 2022, 05:42:53 AM »
No one actually believes in free speech. It's a made up idealistic gibberish concept, like communism or a perfect circle. It's not real. It doesn't exist in reality. Everyone has some "I believe in free speech... but". Pointing out that people don't believe it (like Musk) makes for plain boring intellectual circlejerking.
People do believe in free speech, but free speech doesn’t mean you can literally say anything you like...

While I understand where you're coming from, you're making an entirely unnecessary concession here. There is no conflict between freedom of speech as a general concept and privately-owned websites having and enforcing rules about what you can or can't say on their platforms. Twitter has never needed to "justify" how enforcing its rules fits into the broader scope of free speech any more than you would need to justify your decision to walk away from a random asshole bothering you on the street. For that matter, no reputable website relying on user-generated content, let alone a for-profit one, would ever limit its rules to simply be no more than the scope of the law. That's how you end up with another /b/. It was ludicrous that Musk would ever think it was a good idea for Twitter, and it's even more ridiculous that so many people agreed with him.
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Rama Set

Re: Free Speech Warrior Elon Musk
« Reply #25 on: December 23, 2022, 07:54:26 PM »
Proof being how quickly he walked back his tolerance for unmoderated content on Twitter. He is very quickly understanding that Twitter’s previous management wasn’t just evilly trying to push their woke agenda.

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Offline honk

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Re: Free Speech Warrior Elon Musk
« Reply #26 on: November 20, 2023, 04:00:51 AM »
In the latest update to this story, Musk is now fighting for free speech by suing the media organization Media Matters for America for...uh...accurately reporting that ads for mainstream brands are appearing alongside Nazi garbage and other hate speech that Twitter now allows. You might wonder exactly how you can sue over a story that is in fact true, but you have to bear in mind that Musk personally hated this story, and it led to a lot of lost ad revenue for him as corporations immediately began abandoning his website, so surely that tips the scales a bit. And besides, Media Matters made alternate accounts! And repeatedly refreshed their page! Those things are illegal, right?
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Offline Tom Bishop

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Re: Free Speech Warrior Elon Musk
« Reply #27 on: November 20, 2023, 06:20:39 AM »
Without X Argentina's new president would probably have been heavily demoted by Twitter's previous owners and we would never have been blessed with his wonderful words of wisdom.

« Last Edit: November 20, 2023, 06:39:11 AM by Tom Bishop »