It's only a problem if you want Twitter to survive as a platform where they at least try to uphold something akin to free speech. If you want it to become irrelevant then I guess it doesn't matter, and there is no problem. But if Elon says he wants it to be a place of free speech and he doesn't behave in a way that backs that up according to public opinion (which is highly subjective) then there will be some issues retaining users. Really it seems like an impossible task.
Indeed I gave Twitter a second chance because of this and this
makes it doubly hard to defend. I already cared little about defending the cult of personality thing.
Why would you have to defend anything like that to use it? Who makes any of the products or services you use? Do you defend the Chinese Communist Party when you buy anything made in China or by a Chinese company? Or defend petroleum and war profiteers and petrostate regimes whenever you fill your gas tank or take a flight or a bus somewhere?
I was defending the ideas he was pushing not defending Elon himself. All I’m saying is it makes it harder to defend free speech when people get to pretend he actually doesn’t really care about free speech because he makes occasional/rare exceptions to the rule for his own benefit.
Obviously it’s still way better situation than quiet censorship for everyone outside the Overton window and via gov request Vs a small very public group of cases for a billionaire’s petty exceptions to the rule, but it’s not helping the cause in the culture war pushing for censorship.
Okay thanks for the answer. That's interesting, I can easily defend free speech regardless of what anybody else says or does.
And so far I think the direction he's taking Twitter looks very promising in injecting some diversity into the social media landscape and shaking the government-corporate attacks on speech. Maybe not very much and may be futile in the long run with a meek subservient populace who beg to be ruled, but certainly better than before.
Agreed, the lesson from this for most Elon defenders is probably stick to your values and don't blindly defend celebrities.
The lesson for others to not be hysterical and look at the bigger picture of the net gain of reducing censorship (and the fact Twitter was already an ideological disaster that can either only get better from here.... or die - win/win) is probably going to hit a brick wall.
They have their own ideological battles to pick. And Elon handed it to them wrapped in a bow. So they might as well take the victory lap.
I don't think banning of real time broadcasting private peoples' location and travel is all that bad. And if applied consistently regardless of political ideology of the broadcaster and the target, really isn't the death blow to free speech on the platform that people are trying to make out it is.
It's not quite the anything-that-is-not-illegal that Musk was blathering about (although it's possible it could run afoul of stalking laws in some countries/jurisdictions), but it's really nothing compared with the politically motivated and government involved censorship and banning that had been going on there.
