Propaganda and misinformation also lead to war. Free speech is not a moral absolute.
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Elon Musk Completes $44 Billion Twitter Takeover, Fires Top Executives, and Makes Himself CEO
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I'm the one jumping from a private platform to the state? I was responding to someone who said "lies are not free speech".
This is really basic stuff. If you give someone the power to decide for everyone else what is lies and what is truth, and censor it for everyone else, they become the state by virtue of them having all the power.
Either that, or violent revolution in opposition to them. The concept of free speech is not "a common slippery slope fallacy".
No, it is a moral absolute. It's the main moral absolute that allows the others to follow. And if you're against free speech, you're for authoritarian control.
Ahistorical chest-thumping nonsense.
Remember that time that Galileo led his armies against the Church because they wouldn't allow him to argue the earth goes around the sun? Oh, right, he didn't.
It's actually very basic. If those who disagree with something are prevented from expressing themselves, you have only two scenarios from there: a) those who can't wage a war of ideas will wage a war of violence, or b) the power preventing people from expressing themselves is so powerful that it completely suppresses those people.
You just haven't thought this through deeply enough because you're lucky to live in a place that has free speech instead of people killing each other constantly over ideas.
Only a few wars are revolts, and only a few revolts are intellectual revolts.
And the Alien and Sedition acts came less than a dozen years after the Bill of Rights, signed into law by the same John Adams who signed the Declaration of Independence, and blowing a hole into the comfortable myth that the founders of our country were a bunch of Voltaires treasuring free speech above all, whom we are therefore betraying by even *considering* the possibility that entirely and absolutely unfettered free speech is not actually what they showed their position to be.
I agree with you there. Lies are certainly protected speech.
Except that we're talking about an individual platform. A private company. Not a state deciding for everyone. Forcing a private company to promote speech they disagree with is itself a free speech violation.
Again, you're arguing a slippery slope. There is no reason to link moderation of a private platform to violent revolution.
The slippery slope is you sliding from Twitter moderation to government censorship. I never said free speech is a fallacy.
That's obviously wrong. Society has always recognized reasonable limitations on free speech. Yelling "fire" in a crowded theater is the obvious example.
But a very misunderstood one.
It’s Time to Stop Using the ‘Fire in a Crowded Theater’ Quote
Oliver Wendell Holmes made the analogy during a controversial Supreme Court case that was overturned more than 40 years ago.
There are better examples -- you can't defend spilling military secrets to Putin by saying "I was just exercising my innate and absolute human right to free speech."
Galileo was just one guy. I doubt that he actually had any army divisions of his own.
A divided country on the other hand can easily descend into a Civil War.
Correct. Only outright liars are afraid of the free speech.
Again it comes down to education. Flying a national flag might appear to be an innocent patriotic act to an average guy. But somebody who has statesmanship competencies might see it as a subversive operation with an intention to divide the country depending on the context of the situation.
I'm not going to go into the whole never ending quote one line and respond out of context thing.
A few things. First, I never said Twitter had to do anything. Someone said to me that lies are not free speech and I responded to that.
You get the kind of society we live in now where people are free to voice their opinions and don't generally kill each other over their opinions because of free speech. If you take away the free speech, things may not immediately escalate into violence, but they will eventually. If you can't have a war of ideas, the people being censored will fight to the death. It has happened over and over and happens to this day.
As for reasonable limitations on free speech, now you're getting into definitions that not everyone agrees on. You could claim something is a reasonable limitation on free speech, and I could claim you are censoring things to further your own power over other people. If there can be no discussion, there can only be violent struggles for power.
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If we are going to talk about Twitter's role in this, it's more complicated. They're a private company, but it looks like they were actively colluding with the government to skew speech in the direction of the government. That is seriously, seriously wrong.
The mention of propaganda in this thread makes me laugh. Wouldn't the selective information that the media pumps outs also be propaganda?
What if Elon's twitter allowed first hand information, as you mentioned, to be seen by all. I can't help but wonder if that is what people are most afraid of.
I think we are mixing our terms here. We need to differentiate between free speech as in free from government censorship and free speech as in "there should be no moderation on a private platform."
I certainly believe in the former. The latter is not useful to me and will inevitably result in the promotion of propaganda and misinformation built to game algorithms and processes that favor engagement.
It's definitely complicated. I've read the Intercept's report, but I've also read some rebuttals that show problems with their conclusions.
That's a strawman. Propaganda and misinformation certainly cause wars. See the US invasion of Iraq.
Man, my rant here on page 18 was a little all over the place.. but hey I had to vent. 
I think I have the right considering I'll probably be seeing this (mostly) idiot man's face plastered over the news and screens for the rest of my life. 🙄 Oh and his cultist cronies and fanboys constantly defending their daddy who doesn't give 2 cents (2 💩s) about them.
I think I have the right considering I'll probably be seeing this (mostly) idiot man's face plastered over the news and screens for the rest of my life. 🙄 Oh and his cultist cronies and fanboys constantly defending their daddy who doesn't give 2 cents (2 💩s) about them.
The best I can say is that as strange as it sounds a "democratic society" is most afraid of any ideas and opinions that can shake the boat of some "public consensus" about something.
I believe that in most situations the "public consensus" is just a fancy way to describe modern day slavery. The power of the individual is what originally supposed to be one of the biggest selling points of capitalism that most people do embrace. In reality the so called "liberals" are outright stealing communists slogans like "working class of all the world stand united" and the liberals do stand united and destroy any other opinion.
Not to mention whom the founders deemed worthy of the freedoms they enshrined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Slaves , indigenous people, and women just shut up and work...
Strawman? How so. The over exaggeration and fear is overwhelming, actually hilarious. This thread has gone from the potential of Elon opening up twitter allowing people to express disagreement and an alternative view to tweets from the common folk starting wars. Yeah strawman.
Twitter employees to receive layoff emails tomorrow. That’ll ruffle some feathers. 😏
Edit: Email announcing imminent layoffs are out. Impacted employees will rcv an email by 9 am tomorrow. Twitter offices are temporarily closed and all badge access are suspended with immediate effect.
Edit: Email announcing imminent layoffs are out. Impacted employees will rcv an email by 9 am tomorrow. Twitter offices are temporarily closed and all badge access are suspended with immediate effect.
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The whole thing is funny because ever since the Supreme Court ruled that money=speech, the only people who really do have “free speech” are billionaires, everyone else is just pissing into the wind.
Think about it, when your speech has no meaning, carries no weight, has no effect on government policy, you might as well have your mouth taped shut.
Think about it, when your speech has no meaning, carries no weight, has no effect on government policy, you might as well have your mouth taped shut.
This is much more complex than this and it all comes down to education.
Metallica did a cover of the song which only has one line "free speech for the dumb".
Your speech ALWAYS has meaning and plays very well into your own or somebody else's plan(this is where your education comes into play). For example you are probably not going to run around screaming "America for Americans" while waving national flag.
Are people actually advocating “no moderation on a private platform”? If so they are nuts. Of course there should be moderation. As I understand Musk so far he is advocating fair moderation.
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When people are just basically making grunts and spouting gibberish into a void, you may think that’s free speech but it’s just empty speech.
When one billionaire can get 20 Senators on their knees within seconds to do their bidding, that billionaire has unlimited free speech. There are things that 80-90% of Americans agree on that should be done but never will and never even get any attention. The average American can’t afford to give millions to politicians to get themselves heard. So basically there’s no need for the gubmint to censor anyone because you’ve already been silenced.
The irony is that the people who scream the loudest about free speech and censorship are the biggest supporters of politicians and oligarchs who have silenced them.
Face it, the United States is an oligarchy, the people have no say in anything the government does. Saying mean things on social media to gay people and minorities doesn’t mean anyone suddenly has free speech no matter what is in Elon’s Flavor Aid.
Saying mean things on social media to minorities is still making you involved in somebody else's rigged game. This is what I meant when I said that your speech ALWAYS has meaning but the chances are that most people are not educated enough to turn this game around in their favor no do they have any "game plan or understanding what they want" to begin with.
This is the irony that you are talking about.
Politicians(and billionaires) are usually representing the consensus(if there is one) of the elite groups that they belong to. These groups are usually fighting between themselves for power. And because of that they actually "can't afford" a free speech if it goes against the interests of the elite group that they do represent.