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Comment by Ajedi32 | Hacker News Reader

Is there any actual evidence of foul play here? Could just be the note got enough bad ratings to stop being featured. Not that removing it would be entirely out of character for him, but Musk has gotten community notes applied to his Tweets before and always maintained that that was allowed and a good thing.

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Musk always maintains something until he steps on his ego. Remember when twitter was supposed to be a "free speech" platform?

Musk has lost all benefit of the doubt, and then some.

Okay, but this is still an implied accusation with zero evidence. Surely losing the "benefit of the doubt" doesn't mean you can just make up any story you want about someone and use that to demonize them until there's definitive proof your accusation is wrong?

Life is not just this or that. Life is also highly likely this or likely that. When you have a track record and make a lot of people have this image about you, many people will operate on highly likely’s or likely’s about you. Musk is no exception.

And who is the arbiter of what’s highly likely? You? I? Jumping to conclusions without evidence is lynch mentality. But maybe people are ok with that.

> But maybe people are ok with that.

Definitely true for many. Elon Musk is enemy number one since he disrupted social media. It is getting to the point that I have coworkers posting snide off-topic comments on internal chat throughout the day whenever he does something. All of his achievements are ascribed to luck, and every Twitter change is bad and attributed to his personal meddling. It's not entirely unwarranted considering there is some precedent, but the public hysteria is disproportionate for sure.

You, I and everyone else and when enough people operate on highly likely’s, we stop being as interested in the why. For good reason, too. People like Musk will expect us to look at each action with a clean pair of eyes, and use it to stall or confuse the masses.

I’m sure lynch mentality is more involved and includes other motivations such as wanting to kill somebody. You’re taking things a bit too far.

When someone is known to fabricate or exaggerate, a sensible recourse is be default skeptical of what they say. That isn't the same as to be default unskeptical of what their opponents say.

It's basically the gish gallop applies to morality.

It takes far more energy to debunk bullshit than create it.

Zero evidence? We’re using his history of being a little bitch boy to assume he removed it. It’s not that far of a stretch.

Removing it on Musk's orders wouldn't be foul play anyway. He owns the business. He can decide how it operates, including preferential treatment for himself.

But it would be hypocrisy. Which is great for stirring up a mob because people are rightly contemptuous of it, but then mobs don't always care for demanding strong evidence first, which can be a problem.

Is Musk a hypocrite? Sure, anybody who's been paying attention already knows this. It's completely unsurprising that he would grant himself special powers on the platform he owns.

Whether he actually did in this case hardly matters. Twitter/X is Musk's toy and he's going to play with it in whatever way pleases him.

One should already bake into their perception of Twitter/X an expectation that Musk will use it for his own ideological purposes, and weigh their trust in the platform accordingly.

> Is Musk a hypocrite? Sure, anybody who's been paying attention already knows this.

Musk is an infamous controversial figure. To find out if he's a hypocrite, or more of a hypocrite than the average rando, you would need some evidence. But because he's an infamous controversial figure, it's easy to find a mountain of unsubstantiated innuendo. The volume of it tells you nothing except that he has a lot of critics. To know anything you would have to look at specific examples.

This one doesn't seem strong.

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