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Comment by pfannkuchen | Hacker News Reader

Isn’t this Elon putting his money where his mouth is? He’s stated many times that he bought Twitter due to free speech concerns and not to make money. It’s kind of weird to me that people on the internet aren’t praising him for being principled, and are instead laughing at him for (expectedly) losing money.

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Whether he's morphing Twitter as a new bastion of free speech remains to be seen. Musk himself says that saying the word "cis" is a slur with threats of suspension for saying it. Meanwhile, transgender people are actively being deadnamed and harassed with no repercussions to those committing those actions. Which is a clear violation of their Hateful Conduct policies.

Then when companies decide "Hey, I don't want to give my money to a company like that" based on reports of rising hate comments and speech on the platform Elon then threatens to sue them despite their protected speech.

It's giving "free speech for me but not for thee", which rubs a lot of people the wrong way. And, to many, this incredibly public meltdown of Twitter and Elon's inability to not be the center of attention is why people are laughing. It's absurdity to the nth degree.

He also threw "decolonization" into the words you can be suspended for (part of his outreach after getting in trouble over antisemitism)

I struggle with the two-sided ness of his claims. If he wanted to build a free speech base, and burn his money doing so, that is his right, but then he can't whine and complain if his customers (advertisers) decide to take their business elsewhere. Which he does, in spades. Even more oddly, he has poor Linda Yaccarino out there pressing the flesh on Madison Avenue, trying to reassure customers that Twitter is a safe space for them to promote their brand.

The same logic applies in the other direction too, eg if I sell beer and my customers object to my spokesperson, I can be sorry about their decision, and regret their choice not to buy my beer, but I dont have the right to complain.

In both cases, a business decision was made, and the business owner must deal with the consequences.

> then he can't whine and complain if his customers (advertisers) decide to take their business elsewhere

I said this so many times it's embarrassing, but the wrong assumption is that advertisers stop buying ads because somehow the content directly damages the brand. Which I think is super naive. The reality is that organisations and media who dislike the content threaten advertisers of organising campaigns against them if they don't boycott the platform. Consumer actions (right or wrong, doesn't matter) are almost never spontaneous, they need to be organised and promoted. There are organisations that have this as one of their core businesses and have an enormous ability to influence what is published.

So Musk is not complaining about the fact that his advertisers are going elsewhere, but about the fact that political organisations are pressuring them to do so under threat of damaging their business.

Consumer pressure (aka outrage, real or invented) is certainly a factor, but advertisers seem to be coming to the conclusion that X isn't worth the agita, independently of any given week's particular rumpus.

If I'm the CMO of <bigcorp>, I can either be watching 24x7 for a blowup that is going to consume all my people and news cycles about my company for a week, or I can just give up on X and move my spend to, say, YouTube or Tiktok. I only have so many cycles in the day, and X no longer even gives me decent information about my reach (eg they withdrew from the MRC audit that advertisers use to validate reach). Pulling back is an easy decision.

Like Elon said in his Dealbook interview last November, let's see where the chips fall.

They should threaten and pressure him and Twitter until he shoves off into the abyss.

The guy is an existential threat.

Given how distasteful people find his actions, it's not surprising that people organize against them. Unless you're suggesting that his actions are viewed favorably by people (lol), but people are being brainwashed into acting in the opposite manner by some conspiracy of organizations. The more likely scenario is that most people think he acts like a douchebag, and most folks don't like associating with people who act like douchebags, and if those folks organize, more power to 'em.

It isbalmost as if he is struggling to avoid responsibility and accountability for his actions.

> He’s stated many times that he bought Twitter due to free speech concerns and not to make money. It’s kind of weird to me that people on the internet aren’t praising him for being principled, and are instead laughing at him for (expectedly) losing money.

Well, other than the whole little thing where he said "advertisers leaving will destroy Twitter and it will be all their fault".

Platforms offered advertising for, last I checked, making money.

He's not being principled, he's being an asshole.

He’s blocking and banning people left and right. I don’t think the “free speech” claim was serious.

Like many people who go on about free speech a lot, he just has his own personal definition; free speech, for Elon, _clearly_ is a term of art meaning speech that Elon approves of. There's no other way to read his actions.

In this case it was Fidelity putting their customers money where his mouth was actually.

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