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Comment by _ea1k | Hacker News Reader

He backed away from unlimited free speech pretty quickly. Sometimes he's said it has to do with a legal boundary, but he hasn't had consistency about that.

He's been pretty clear that hated by ~50% and fine with the other 50% of the population is the old line, not the new one.

Where that puts the threshold is still an open question, and unfortunately one that will likely be answered somewhat capriciously. Then again, that's not really different from before.

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It seems like he's going to establish two lines. One right and one left. The current line will shift to the right and allow more anti-vax/conspiracy garbage, but continue to disallow wignats and *nats. Meanwhile we'll get a new line on the left, so you can't say stuff like 'Whiteness is the root of all evil' anymore. At least that's how I'm interpreting his comment about 'being for the 80%.

Twitter before Musk banned Babylon Bee, a Christian version of The Onion, for this:

"The Babylon Bee, was suspended by Twitter, after it had mockingly awarded transgender government official Rachel Levine the title 'Man of the Year.'"

This is the type of speech that Elon believes should be allowed, and I agree. He has repeatedly said freedom of speech absolutism is still subject to laws, and inciting violence past that line, but clearly not transgender satire.

> This is the type of speech that Elon believes should be allowed, and I agree.

And yet when the same satire it directed at Musk, he blows a gasket. Jeph Jacques[1] changed his profile picture and name to Musk's and tweeted (paraphrasing) "I like drinking my own piss first thing in the morning" and got permabanned for it. It was clearly satire to me, and broke no laws AFAICT.

1. Author of Questionable Content webcomic

Rules against impersonation had been on the platform since 2018. IMO if you can't do satire without making your self indistinguishable from the person you are satirizing, you suck at it.

It says a lot that a tweet saying "I drink piss everyday" is indistinguishable from a real Elon tweet

Drinking his own piss is more of a Jack Dorsey move.

You mean bad satire is banned? Switching pages faster than Musk.

IMO repeatedly accusing a rescue worker of pedophilia is just as likely to provoke violence as Kanye posting a Nazi symbol on Twitter.

Going back to 2005 style internet free speech (or even 2010) sounds perfectly reasonable.

No one complained about banning a dude posting swastikas unironically in 2005. The Overton Window has radically changed since then and not for the better.

> He's been pretty clear that hated by ~50% and fine with the other 50% of the population is the old line, not the new one.

More like 20% for both of those numbers [1]. Most choices are non-binary ... most Americans just don't care about Elon.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1304563/us-adults-impres...

That's a fair point, tbh. I probably shouldn't have defined it as hated vs fine. Its more like unacceptable to have access to twitter vs acceptable to have access to twitter.

Neither position necessarily implies approval of the person or content.

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