Comment by alt227

There's nothing inconsistent with people who don't call themselves "free speech absolutists" not being free speech absolutists.

There's a lot inconsistent with someone masquerading as a "free speech absolutist" whilst actually drawing the line in a different place, in this case a place which has all sorts of arbitrary new offences like references to the word "cis", ADS-B feeds, and parody accounts and whatever else has annoyed him recently whilst removing more posts at government request than his predecessors, but is mostly cool with racial hatred.

The "lane" is simple and has always been: no "right", as fundamental as it can be, is limitless. For ex. Freedom of movement is largely restricted, and the fact I can't "enter your house freely" is not a slippery slope to internal visas as the sort China uses to restrict movement internally.

Even in the US, freedom of speech IS restricted: the Supreme Court put the bar very high but it didn't say you could say anything. State secrets can't be revealed willy-nilly; even lower, you can't enter a non-disclosure agreement and then violate it.

The "lane" is that we try as much as possible to put clear, consistent guideline that apply to everyone through a legislative (actual laws) and judicial (precedent) process. This is absolutely not the same as Musk deciding on his own, inconsistent, ridiculous fits of drug-addled rage, where he bans the word "cisgender" or @elonjet for his own safety and then allows complete nazi-"WE WILL KILL YOU BITCHES" stuff - and that's only one of many examples.

The right view is, if you want to put it simplistically like this:

Progressives: Elon doesn't care about free speech, he cares about limiting the speech of progressives in favor of the extreme right

Also progressives: Free speech should have limits to protect minorities from aggressors

Nothing at all inconsistent about these two positions, regardless of whether you think that either one is a good idea, or even true.

I see it a bit differently. Progressives tend to believe speech can have limits, and generally support private citizens and companies enforcing it through shame etc.

Elon touts being a free speech absolutist, but limits speech on his platform in a … whimsical … manner.

>Pick a lane.

No, a good society should not pick lanes, but cherries.

The free market on its own doesn’t work, that’s why we have regulation in place to guide it to a place that minimises the long term damage while consumers try to maximise the short-term benefit.

It’s an interesting analogy to free speech.

>It doesnt though, thats the point.

Not a Lawyer, but threatening to kill someone is not protected by free speech right?

>They keep listening to the hate speech

The definition of "hate speech" is unclear and a made-up word to make people feel bad for being angry -> Two Minutes Hate

>>The political purpose of the Two Minutes Hate is to allow the citizens of Oceania to vent their existential anguish and personal hatred toward politically expedient enemies

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate

> It doesnt though, thats the point.

If free speech has no limit, that means you can't prevent people from arguing against the end of free speech.

Such arguments have been convincing in many places and in many times, for many different reasons. Including the USA — the things that are considered "corrupting our youth" at different times and in different ways, plus a bunch of other stuff that society just doesn't function without banning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...

> A company can sell terrible products and what should happen is people see they are terrible products and vote with their wallet to stop buying. Then the company goes out of business.

Like the 84% reduction in Twitter revenue prior to the election?

> They are still allowed to say anything they want, but their reputation is tarnished and hardly anybody listens to them and they loose their platform/influence.

Musk sued the people who pointed out to brands advertising on twitter that their reputations were getting tarnished by what their content was getting associated with on Twitter.

> The solution to all these things is education and people spending more time thinking about how they respond to things in the world.

Number of times I've personally witnessed sales clerks and customer support teams not knowing their own products suggests this is one of those solutions that sounds easy but isn't.

Had to tell one that not only did we support browsers other than Internet Explorer, but that they were themselves using Firefox at the time they claimed to only support Internet Explorer.

> > Even free speech has its limits

> It doesnt though, thats the point.

In theory. But in practive even the most staunch pro-free speech jurisdictions have limits on them. A lot for good reasons that most people would agree with (threats and fraud, stuff like that), but also some that would be absurd in other jurisdictions (obscenities for example, which is usually very locality specific).

There's a Wikipedia page with free speech exceptions in the USA. Those exceptions don't really seem weird, but just seeing that there are reasonable exceptions makes free speech absolutism less sensible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...

Free speech in the US means they cannot make specific laws against proposing ideas, but a long history of legal cases does mean there are cases when you can be civilly or criminally liable if your words lead others to harmful actions

That's not how capitalism works because the between the companies and the customers is a Mismazch in power and information.

That's why governments make rules to protect those with less indormation and power.

According to your logic cyberbullying is just free speech.

Should I wish for you to by cyberbullied, so you see first hand that free speech has limits?

And don't forget that many free speech apologetics say that free speech doesn't mean free of consequences. At this point it's clear that for most people free speech doesn't exitst because they censor their posts if say fear consequences.

>It is your opinion to colour one side or the other 'hateful', 'racist'

You should look up the word, antisemite.

>Take this same opinion and apply...

I understand why you'd want to change the subject, but no.

I also understand why you ignored the rest of my comment.

I see now that you're a promoter of exactly the insidious "hate as an equal right" mantra that turned Twitter into what it is today. While it's infected too many people, it is heartening to watch the exodus underway that's rapidly evolving it into a 4chan-esque echo chamber.

> I disagree. In this context they are 2 groups of people who disagree about something, everything else is irrelevant.

This is an absurdly disingenuous way of phrasing the situation. One group is ideological and defined by its generalized hatred towards members of the other, while the other group is an ethnic/religious group. Being jewish does not imply that you subscribe to any particular opinion or identify with either end of the political spectrum. There is no possible way this can simply be seen as as a disagreement between "two sides".

Your attempt to equate this to the Israel/Palestine conflict is equally absurd. The Hamas and the government of Israel are both committing heinous acts of terrorism in the name of hatred, bigotry and racism.