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Comment by lowkey | Hacker News Reader

- I believe he can launch rockets into space and land them on their own footprint.

- I believe he can revolutionize auto manufacturing and disrupt a 100 year old industry replacing fossil-fuel burning dinosaurs with clean electric vehicles that outperform them and that appeal to the general public

- I believe he can allow quadrapelegics to interact with the world in ways never thought possible

- I believe he can, to a great degree, restore free speech on social media even if it is messy and imperfect at times

- I believe that innovation is hard and just because he boldly claims he is going to Mars or make cars drive themselves - and hasn’t done it yet, is no reason to discount the possibility that he might actually pull it off one day

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Mostly I agree, modulo "he knows how to make teams to do XYZ", which I'm happy to count for the same reason I'm happy to blame him personally when those teams he's ordering around do something I don't like:

> I believe he can, to a great degree, restore free speech on social media even if it is messy and imperfect at times

I strongly disagree with this.

Even if I ignore the proxy of all the investors writing off their buy-out loans by 75%, even if I ignore that when people link me to random threads I can only see the specific one linked and not any reply because of an invisible paywall^w account-wall, even if I ignore that loading a random tweet now often takes 26 seconds or more (yes, I did just record my screen to get that number), even if I ignore that undesirable stories can be buried by an avalanche of alternative narratives and not just by censoring the truth…

There's still the problem of Musk intervening politically in ways that, although totally legal, are exactly the kind of thing he was complaining about before the takeover: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_suspensions

Yes and:

I'd like someone, eg Musk, to define "free speech". Start with some of those "first principles" he likes so much.

Then, per "theory vs reality" cliché, I'd like someone, eg Musk, to explain or demonstrate or larp or interpretative dance what "free speech" looks like in practice. Maybe even point to an existing example.

For bonus credit:

- explain relationship between "free speech" and news feeds (algorithmic hate machines)

- explain operation of "free speech" multinationally

- explain how to balance "free speech" and moderation

- enumerate the tradeoffs of, downsides due to, and consequences of "free speech"

You’re a fool tricked by another fool who shouts loudly that they support free speech while they ban speech left and right.

For goodness sake, ElonJet was banned and you can’t even say the word “cisgender” on the platform. How delusional are you?

Also Musk has banned mentions of his own transgender daughter, who now posts on Meta’s Threads app instead.

X is like a textbook case of why total autocracy isn’t actually good management practice. Musk has become the Henry VIII of social media.

I prefer that to the CIA having a direct line to the top of the platform and free reign to use it for propaganda, yes.

ElonJet was a live geotracking site for private jets. You can post cisgender, it just comes with a warning.

Before, people were being banned for using "him" instead of "her" to describe biological males who self-identified as women. People were secretly de-amplified for criticizing the government policy of lockdowns. It was censorship on a whole different magnitude.

So your response is “it was worse in the past”?

Two wrongs don’t make a right. Either you’re a “free speech absolutist” or you’re just a lying charlatan. Elon is clearly the latter, the evidence is right in front of your eyes and you choose to make excuses.

ElonJet is posting publicly available information and isn’t banned on other platforms. Something coming with a warning is the same as restricting speech.

> Something coming with a warning is the same as restricting speech.

Placing a warning is generally not considered a restriction on free speech but rather a tool to inform or protect audiences.

In contrast, restricting free speech involves preventing someone from expressing their views or censoring content outright. Warnings are typically seen as a way to balance free expression with the responsibility to inform audiences.

> In contrast, restricting free speech involves preventing someone from expressing their views or censoring content outright.

You mean like suing people for saying true things, and encouraging the government to criminally investigate for people for saying the same? Because that is exactly what Musk has done in the past year.

I’m not saying anything about Musk.

I’m simply saying that it is false to claim that attaching a warning to something is restricting free speech.

Two good examples are the government warning on tobacco product or cancer-causing warnings in public spaces.

These are warnings and do not constitute restriction of free speech.

The warnings undoubtedly come with a derank in the Twitter algorithm, so it's very much not the same.

But if you want to get really technical then this isn't even about "free speech". A platform restricting speech has nothing to do with "free speech" as it is defined in the US constitution. That's all about governments creating laws that punish people for certain speech.

But hey, we're in a world where Elon spouts nonsense about being all about "free speech" so the world has lost that meaning anyway.

Free Speech means more than Free Speech under the law. It also refers to the permissiveness of private platforms.

So this is just yet more nonsense.

Yes, it was much worse in the past.

People are only being banned for impersonation and live geotracking. In the previous Twitter, you were banned, shadow-banned, de-amplified, etc, if you expressed views that the political left disagreed with.

You want to justify and downplay the latter my presenting Musk as equally villainous. It's disingenuous mental gymnastics to advance your censorious and authoritarian agenda. Getting Twitter back to being censored is what motivates the incessant attacks on Musk.

Let’s say you’re right. There is only one side claiming they are “free speech absolutists”. There is only one side demonstrably lying to you. It’s Elon Musk. You’re being duped by a billionaire and you’re too blind to see it.

I'd much rather X under Musk while he doesn't live up to his free speech absolutist claims than X under the establishment, where you must use left-wing gender pronoun conventions or be banned.

You're okay with the previous authoritarianism that was imposed that's why you'd prefer a return to the previous setup. If you believed in political neutrality and Free Speech, you would be hardly annoyed by Musk not being as committee to Free Speech as he claims, while he reverses what had been an overwhelming censorship program.

I really wonder if he is not focused enough

Ya, 3.5 out of 5 ain't bad.

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