I would give it at least 24 hours to see if these suspensions are legit. My understanding is that X does still suspend where they detect spam, illegal activity, etc. It's possible these accounts were all linked to something that got flagged up somewhere.
It's possible (not saying this is what happened though) that this is just mistake and their accounts will be reinstated shortly.
Or maybe Elon did personally ban these journalists. If it turned out he didn't though I think a lot of you guys need to reconsider your biases.
True, but, 1. Musk is vocally anti-liberal (or really, vocally anti-things-associated-with-liberals, and vocally anti-other-things too), and 2. He expresses it in an antagonistic/mocking way.
Those two things combined are enough that it is reasonable to criticize him when a bias appears to occur. Of course, critics must be careful not to be too unreasonable. But such behavior as his is antithetical to big trust-based systems (e.g. moderation of large, entrenched social platforms), so it's important to criticize people in his position for commiting his behaviors, and to be critical/suspicious of moderation under his purview when there's a question of bias (this is the same criticism the right made, in not so many words, of pre-Musk Twitter, and which I don't think was totally unreasonable then either, though I do think the circumstances are far from perfect mirrors of each other).
Was Elon just messing with them, or was it perhaps as I suggested and just a mistake? Will you reconsider, or are you unable to accept this as a possibility?
For what it's worth I think Elon was mismanaging Twitter so I have no interest in defending him. But equally I think the idea that he's sat around randomly suspending "left-wing" journalists is kinda silly.
I don't know why this is the case, but Twitter seems to trigger suspensions quite frequently. They seemed to have tightened their spam / abuse algorithms in recent months, but the pattern as of late is that that most genuine users who get suspended are reinstated on appeal.
Musk stated he wanted transparency when he took over, and it is not silly to hold him to the standard he wanted. X could clear up all confusion in an instant. Personally, my benefit of the doubt well has run dry when it comes to this platform.
It's unclear what exactly you're classifying as the opinions of "a lot of you guys", but the parent was crucially critiquing your specific assertion that those opinions are biased, which may be true, but it is irrelevant to any uncovered reality (though that uncovered reality participates in the analysis next time this happens). I.e. your defense against the parent's criticism seems to be irrational. Whether or not X is because of Y has nothing to do with whether or not it is reasonable to believe or suspect that X is because of Y. In other words, "See? It was true/false," is a fallacious argument in this context. This was just as true when analyzing moderation before Musk, too.
It looks like Elon's claims of being a free speech absolutist don't go very far, if this article is to be taken at face value.
The most disappointing part for me is the lack of transparency. Didn't Elon talk about including explanations for why people were banned or why they had restricted reach? We can only speculate about why these people were banned because Twitter doesn't provide a public explanation. Were these people verified (paying) users as well? IMO, that would make it even more egregious.
It seems like the CTO was made aware of the situation and 15 minutes later the accounts were un-suspended. [1] https://nitter.poast.org/elonmusk/status/1744766353494376749 Probably some automated system or mass report (speculating, of course).
Bill Ackman?! Who on earth cares enough about _Bill Ackman_ to white-knight him with Twitter bans? Up until you mentioned him I'd completely forgotten he even existed.
he's trending because of the harvard plagiarism stuff, he was one of the annoying ppl on twitter about it. but apparently ackman's wife plagiarized too? idk the facts, just the headlines, i choose to ignore all that stuff bc culture war makes for bad political action
Ackman went after Gay for permitting Harvard antisemitism, which didn't get her removed. Others went after her for plagiarism, which led to her resignation. So other others went after Ackman's wife for plagiarism as a way to hurt the others. Ackman declared that family was out of bounds and that he will retaliate by doing a plagiarism review of the whole MIT faculty and the journalists who went after his wife.
If this conflagration continues ... it may have a positive effect on reducing plagiarism. But since LLMs can easily reword text, the plagiarism wars are more about the past than the future. Because now the plagiarism of concepts rather than phrases is cheap and easy and far less detectable.
Perhaps plagiarism review can move to detection of shared sequences of concepts rather than words.
Just as a side note, I'm making this comment about an hour after the submission and maybe two after the article was written and I can find all of those people on twitter. Most of them have recent comments about being back.
I don't know the exact thresholds, but [flagged] happens at some # of flags, and [dead] happens at a higher # of flags. [flagged] are de-ranked, but not made invisible or unavailable for replies like [dead] are. I guess the recourse would be upvoting - I think those counteract flags in terms of ranking. I don't know if that would do anything to remove the [flagged] display, though.
@dang, do you have any solutions for Musk related articles being flagged constantly? Clearly someone is trying to abuse the flag process. Does being flagged affect it getting on the frontpage or any effect?
Well, if you feel a flag is underserved you can vouch for the submission/comment. I think a vastly smaller number of vouches is needed to unflag something than the number of flags it took to flag it.
I know there's the downside of not being able to vouch for something until it got buried, but even so I think the end-result is reasonably democratic.
I am not in any way affiliated with HN. I don't feel the need to defend their choices before you. I merely make use of the tools provided to curate the content I want to see more/less on the website. (Also this is a purely theoretical discussion on my part, I did not flag this particular submission, even though the less I see of Musk's name, the better.)
You can vouch for a thing, but only once a certain threshold of flags has been met. I've encountered the complaint that when this threshold is reached it's usually much too late to bring the submission back to the attention of the people, so the process is not exactly symmetric.
I flag most (not all) Musk-related articles because they're flamebait that isn't intellectually thought- or curiosity-provoking. This makes them unsuitable for HN, and therefore exactly what the flagging system is for.
Maybe some people just searched for the accounts on twitter, found them, and concluded that Vice is either mistaken, or jumped to premature conclusions.
This has been happening since the day Musk took over Twitter (here's one from December 2022 https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/technology/twitter-suspen...). There are always people (including a large chunk on HN itself) who will come up with more and more elaborate excuses for his purges and maintain that he is all about free speech and neutrality. I'm sure same will happen for this one.
They do afaik. I wish flagged posts showed who flagged them at least. If there was manipulation or coordinated acts to flag submissions, it would be a lot easier to figure out.
Is there a database somewhere that keeps track of all the flagged threads on here so we can see what gets censored on a regular basis? It would be fun to k-means cluster it and see what is verboten to HN users or staff.
You're assuming the post was flagged in an effort to hide the alleged truth of the story. It's more likely it was flagged because it's political in nature. Change it to "Journalists, Rightists" and I'd flag it, as well.
I parsed this as (X Purges Prominent Journalists), (Leftists with No Explanation) at first and was pretty confused. If that should happen to anyone else, it's supposed to b (X Purges Prominent Journalists, Leftists) (with No Explanation).
No shams and the inevitable and predictable result of people not advertising the wiser position. That people are silent should come to no surprise and some might even revel in that the tables have turned on some platforms. I expect the majority to just bang their heads into the nearest table though.
Ironically it was defenders of freedom of speech and expression that were threatened with consequences.
> journalists and leftist pundits
usually you can be one of these but rarely both at the same time.
> They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words.
The next part talks about how they fall silent when pressed hard, but that was before the internet. Now they slip back, disappear, and re-emerge elsewhere. We don't even have the pleasure of their silence.
Ironically, it is the Trump supporting types that seem to really enjoy explaining their positions. Left wingers cannot handle being pressed hard -- particularly in a corporate setting -- about things like DEI and other matters they are unwilling to cede.
Press me as hard as you want! I can defend my positions easily and without getting emotional.
The mistake here is in casting left-wingers as the alternative to Trump, when Trump is so far beyond the right-wing event horizon that even Reagan-era republicans would oppose him. Please understand that the world is not so simple as left vs. right.
Fascinating perspective -- given that I completely disagree. Trump is not right wing by any historic metric. He shouts a lot. That's the only thing he has in common with "fascist dictators". His policies are not conservative. Dude spent like it was going out of style.
At the risk of repeating myself, please understand that the world is not so simple as left vs. right. "Conservativism" is irrelevant as an ideology, since it's now just a hollowed-out husk that has been adopted by authoritarian extremists in an attempt to deflect from criticisms of their authoritarian nature. And Trump is an authoritarian to the core.
There are entire communities and prominent influencers on every platform specifically dedicated to explaining leftist positions, just as there are on the right.
It turns out a lot of people love debating on the internet.
It was always pretty transparent what "free speech" meant to Elon (and many others like him). It means "I personally should be able to say and do whatever I want without consequences".
The week before he tweeted about "free speech absolutism" he canceled a dude's Tesla order because they criticized him on X.
> "I personally should be able to say and do whatever I want without consequences"
I think it's more "I'm not accountable to you people". At least that's my position. Left wingers seem to think I have to care what they think about what I say on the internet. I do not, and I will not.
The rest of who? The fringe left who is simply adopting positions that were spoon fed to them? Yeah not terribly concerned with your wants, that's accurate.
I'm not sure I follow. It's so bad there's an in-joke among the left that their memes are walls of text referencing the most dense prose you'll ever read and that the required reading will take you years to complete. The bar seems to be rather high.
Is there a similar self-deprecating joke amongst the right? What's the required reading list look like for those on the right?
Not sure I get the joke but I'm sure it's very funny to you. I don't really get into the meme world.
As for self deprecating jokes, I suppose I'd just point you to the right's love of over the top Trump impersonators who make fun of Trump's various verbal ticks and his general public speaking style.
As for "required reading" I don't believe that the various factions within non-left-wing communities have one unified reading list. You'd have to get out more and talk to some to find out what they're reading IMHO.
The point I was making is that leftists gate-keep participation by requiring reading and self-acknowledges this. That seems at odds to the notion that leftists are spoon-fed. How do you reconcile this?
I'm sure they "self-acknowledge" that their ideas are very complex. It's something I've seen leftists claim time and again. Their ideas are quite simple and flimsy from my POV.
IME, nothing impressive there. If only they'd read some Sowell instead of headlines on Reddit.
No, it is not sensible to "conclude that both of those positions are by and large rhetorical shams". An age old seeming inevitability is that longstanding gripes get their banner taken up by charlatans dishonestly using them for personal gain. This does not mean the original concerns are dishonest or invalid. Rather it means we need to scrutinize people referencing these topics to see what they actually do when they have power, rather than uncritically supporting them merely because they claim to care about something we do.
If you fear the consequences of your speech, then you are likely to self-censor, and (one can argue) you no longer have free speech. This is the argument that "Free Speech Absolutists" tend to use to justify trying to protect people from the consequences of their speech... which necessarily infringes on others' speech.
You fundamentally cannot enable people to speak without fear without infringing others' right to speak freely. In the context of a government, it is possible (only very barely, and frequently governments are unable to rise to this level) to create systems that punishes neither party and exit any and all attempts at moderation. But when you are running a social media site, this isn't a feasible option, and trying to punish people who are causing fear and limiting free speech will only cause the next wave of free speech sites to arise. Techdirt has a nice article on speedrunning content moderation: https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/02/hey-elon-let-me-help-you...
Is it a rhetorical sham? Not necessarily, in the sense that I think its proponents could very well believe in what they say. But it is a belief whose consequences hasn't been fully thought-through, and I can't see anyone who still hews to that belief after fully thinking it through.
Anyone who unironically calls themselves a "free speech absolutist" needs to go meditate under a waterfall for a few years on what the point of free speech is, and what the consequences and implications of that are.
Care to elaborate your point? I wouldn't label myself a "free speech absolutist" (seems like blowhard posturing), but my belief in freedom of speech does have an absolutist framing (it's a natural right flowing from computational enfranchisement plus the existence of cryptography).
I would give it at least 24 hours to see if these suspensions are legit. My understanding is that X does still suspend where they detect spam, illegal activity, etc. It's possible these accounts were all linked to something that got flagged up somewhere.
It's possible (not saying this is what happened though) that this is just mistake and their accounts will be reinstated shortly.
Or maybe Elon did personally ban these journalists. If it turned out he didn't though I think a lot of you guys need to reconsider your biases.
It's not bias when it's based on a pattern of past behaviour. Perhaps you need to reconsider why you are unable to accept this.
Not op, but I'm sure that not everyone watches everything that goes down on Twitter to be able to notice a "pattern of past behaviour".
True, but, 1. Musk is vocally anti-liberal (or really, vocally anti-things-associated-with-liberals, and vocally anti-other-things too), and 2. He expresses it in an antagonistic/mocking way.
Those two things combined are enough that it is reasonable to criticize him when a bias appears to occur. Of course, critics must be careful not to be too unreasonable. But such behavior as his is antithetical to big trust-based systems (e.g. moderation of large, entrenched social platforms), so it's important to criticize people in his position for commiting his behaviors, and to be critical/suspicious of moderation under his purview when there's a question of bias (this is the same criticism the right made, in not so many words, of pre-Musk Twitter, and which I don't think was totally unreasonable then either, though I do think the circumstances are far from perfect mirrors of each other).
Looks like they're all unsuspended now, https://twitter.com/stevanzetti
Was Elon just messing with them, or was it perhaps as I suggested and just a mistake? Will you reconsider, or are you unable to accept this as a possibility?
For what it's worth I think Elon was mismanaging Twitter so I have no interest in defending him. But equally I think the idea that he's sat around randomly suspending "left-wing" journalists is kinda silly.
I don't know why this is the case, but Twitter seems to trigger suspensions quite frequently. They seemed to have tightened their spam / abuse algorithms in recent months, but the pattern as of late is that that most genuine users who get suspended are reinstated on appeal.
Musk stated he wanted transparency when he took over, and it is not silly to hold him to the standard he wanted. X could clear up all confusion in an instant. Personally, my benefit of the doubt well has run dry when it comes to this platform.
It's unclear what exactly you're classifying as the opinions of "a lot of you guys", but the parent was crucially critiquing your specific assertion that those opinions are biased, which may be true, but it is irrelevant to any uncovered reality (though that uncovered reality participates in the analysis next time this happens). I.e. your defense against the parent's criticism seems to be irrational. Whether or not X is because of Y has nothing to do with whether or not it is reasonable to believe or suspect that X is because of Y. In other words, "See? It was true/false," is a fallacious argument in this context. This was just as true when analyzing moderation before Musk, too.
> Perhaps you need to reconsider why you are unable to accept this.
This is not acceptable rhetoric for HN.
https://web.archive.org/web/20240109154748/https://www.vice....
https://archive.today/lvZbT
It looks like Elon's claims of being a free speech absolutist don't go very far, if this article is to be taken at face value.
The most disappointing part for me is the lack of transparency. Didn't Elon talk about including explanations for why people were banned or why they had restricted reach? We can only speculate about why these people were banned because Twitter doesn't provide a public explanation. Were these people verified (paying) users as well? IMO, that would make it even more egregious.
It seems like the CTO was made aware of the situation and 15 minutes later the accounts were un-suspended. [1] https://nitter.poast.org/elonmusk/status/1744766353494376749 Probably some automated system or mass report (speculating, of course).
There's a theory that it's a bunch of bans for anyone critical lately of Bill Ackman - see https://twitter.com/Esqueer_/status/1744724937313837177
what a great platform for free speech when you can get banned for angering a billionaire
I was going to ask who Ackman was (yeah, I don't keep up with the twitterati) and I find he's someone who fits with Elon very well: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/jan/03/bill-ackma...
Bill Ackman?! Who on earth cares enough about _Bill Ackman_ to white-knight him with Twitter bans? Up until you mentioned him I'd completely forgotten he even existed.
Elon Musk
he's trending because of the harvard plagiarism stuff, he was one of the annoying ppl on twitter about it. but apparently ackman's wife plagiarized too? idk the facts, just the headlines, i choose to ignore all that stuff bc culture war makes for bad political action
Ackman went after Gay for permitting Harvard antisemitism, which didn't get her removed. Others went after her for plagiarism, which led to her resignation. So other others went after Ackman's wife for plagiarism as a way to hurt the others. Ackman declared that family was out of bounds and that he will retaliate by doing a plagiarism review of the whole MIT faculty and the journalists who went after his wife.
If this conflagration continues ... it may have a positive effect on reducing plagiarism. But since LLMs can easily reword text, the plagiarism wars are more about the past than the future. Because now the plagiarism of concepts rather than phrases is cheap and easy and far less detectable.
Perhaps plagiarism review can move to detection of shared sequences of concepts rather than words.
oh wait do people really think gay's resignation is about plagiarism? (this is why i try to avoid culture war stuff)
Just as a side note, I'm making this comment about an hour after the submission and maybe two after the article was written and I can find all of those people on twitter. Most of them have recent comments about being back.
Why is this flagged and why can't I vouch for it?
The Elonites don't care for this sort of thing, as it makes Dear Leader look a bit silly.
Do they have the power to make a HN submission un-vouchable?
Submissions become vouchable once flagkilled, not once flagged.
That's interesting, what's the difference between the two? Is there any recourse to reviving a flagged article like this?
I don't know the exact thresholds, but [flagged] happens at some # of flags, and [dead] happens at a higher # of flags. [flagged] are de-ranked, but not made invisible or unavailable for replies like [dead] are. I guess the recourse would be upvoting - I think those counteract flags in terms of ranking. I don't know if that would do anything to remove the [flagged] display, though.
@dang, do you have any solutions for Musk related articles being flagged constantly? Clearly someone is trying to abuse the flag process. Does being flagged affect it getting on the frontpage or any effect?
Why do you think that democratic flagging needs a solution?
> democratic flagging
how is it "democratic" when a few people can kill an article they don't agree with?
"democratic" would be upvotes & downvotes canceling each other out, which we already have.
> "democratic" would be upvotes & downvotes canceling each other out, which we already have.
Submissions can't be downvoted; we don't already have that.
Well, if you feel a flag is underserved you can vouch for the submission/comment. I think a vastly smaller number of vouches is needed to unflag something than the number of flags it took to flag it.
I know there's the downside of not being able to vouch for something until it got buried, but even so I think the end-result is reasonably democratic.
I searched the FAQ for the word "vouch" and got zilch.
Explain to me the utility of flagging as opposed to simply downvoting (I'm talking about comments, not submissions).
especially, why is there no accountability for it? Are there "frequent flaggers" who should sometimes have their flagging privileges revoked?
I am not in any way affiliated with HN. I don't feel the need to defend their choices before you. I merely make use of the tools provided to curate the content I want to see more/less on the website. (Also this is a purely theoretical discussion on my part, I did not flag this particular submission, even though the less I see of Musk's name, the better.)
I didn't say you did, but after a search I found a post by dang about it, and directed a comment to him.
Can you vouch for submissions? I've never seen that option. I can vouch for comments but not submissions
You can't unflag, can you? It is not like voting.
You can vouch for a thing, but only once a certain threshold of flags has been met. I've encountered the complaint that when this threshold is reached it's usually much too late to bring the submission back to the attention of the people, so the process is not exactly symmetric.
I flag most (not all) Musk-related articles because they're flamebait that isn't intellectually thought- or curiosity-provoking. This makes them unsuitable for HN, and therefore exactly what the flagging system is for.
Maybe some people just searched for the accounts on twitter, found them, and concluded that Vice is either mistaken, or jumped to premature conclusions.
That's beyond ridiculous. Ken Klippenstein is a great journalist and definitely should not be suspended.
They should have left for the fediverse long ago. http://b4hntuy3fimfh2227vf4f74emnya7p35i5brtqujs6leqvtclfwvj...
Most of them already have accounts on the fediverse too.
anyone got a list of recent-purged-from-X left-leaning journalists fedi accounts?
[work in progress, if you see any others let me know]
@zei_squirrel@mastodon.social
If they did - why my NZ feed stinks like communist kolkhoz?
Preparing for election season.
Wew lad. So much for "free speech"
This has been happening since the day Musk took over Twitter (here's one from December 2022 https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/technology/twitter-suspen...). There are always people (including a large chunk on HN itself) who will come up with more and more elaborate excuses for his purges and maintain that he is all about free speech and neutrality. I'm sure same will happen for this one.
Edit: as expected, this post has been flagged.
flagging is wayyy too easy on HN... I bet admins have extreme flagging powers too
They do afaik. I wish flagged posts showed who flagged them at least. If there was manipulation or coordinated acts to flag submissions, it would be a lot easier to figure out.
Or replace user id with a hash, that way one could identify patterns without premature witch hunts.
Is there a database somewhere that keeps track of all the flagged threads on here so we can see what gets censored on a regular basis? It would be fun to k-means cluster it and see what is verboten to HN users or staff.
You're assuming the post was flagged in an effort to hide the alleged truth of the story. It's more likely it was flagged because it's political in nature. Change it to "Journalists, Rightists" and I'd flag it, as well.
I parsed this as (X Purges Prominent Journalists), (Leftists with No Explanation) at first and was pretty confused. If that should happen to anyone else, it's supposed to b (X Purges Prominent Journalists, Leftists) (with No Explanation).
Where is the Free Speech Absolutist outrage? What happened to the answer to bad speech is more good speech?
Can I conclude that both of those positions are by and large rhetorical shams?
No shams and the inevitable and predictable result of people not advertising the wiser position. That people are silent should come to no surprise and some might even revel in that the tables have turned on some platforms. I expect the majority to just bang their heads into the nearest table though.
Ironically it was defenders of freedom of speech and expression that were threatened with consequences.
> journalists and leftist pundits
usually you can be one of these but rarely both at the same time.
>> journalists and leftist pundits
> usually you can be one of these but rarely both at the same time.
I didn't parse this as referring to only one person, so there's no "at the same time" here.
> They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words.
The next part talks about how they fall silent when pressed hard, but that was before the internet. Now they slip back, disappear, and re-emerge elsewhere. We don't even have the pleasure of their silence.
Ironically, it is the Trump supporting types that seem to really enjoy explaining their positions. Left wingers cannot handle being pressed hard -- particularly in a corporate setting -- about things like DEI and other matters they are unwilling to cede.
Press me as hard as you want! I can defend my positions easily and without getting emotional.
The mistake here is in casting left-wingers as the alternative to Trump, when Trump is so far beyond the right-wing event horizon that even Reagan-era republicans would oppose him. Please understand that the world is not so simple as left vs. right.
Fascinating perspective -- given that I completely disagree. Trump is not right wing by any historic metric. He shouts a lot. That's the only thing he has in common with "fascist dictators". His policies are not conservative. Dude spent like it was going out of style.
At the risk of repeating myself, please understand that the world is not so simple as left vs. right. "Conservativism" is irrelevant as an ideology, since it's now just a hollowed-out husk that has been adopted by authoritarian extremists in an attempt to deflect from criticisms of their authoritarian nature. And Trump is an authoritarian to the core.
There are entire communities and prominent influencers on every platform specifically dedicated to explaining leftist positions, just as there are on the right.
It turns out a lot of people love debating on the internet.
It was always pretty transparent what "free speech" meant to Elon (and many others like him). It means "I personally should be able to say and do whatever I want without consequences".
The week before he tweeted about "free speech absolutism" he canceled a dude's Tesla order because they criticized him on X.
> "I personally should be able to say and do whatever I want without consequences"
I think it's more "I'm not accountable to you people". At least that's my position. Left wingers seem to think I have to care what they think about what I say on the internet. I do not, and I will not.
Right wingers sure do care a lot when the rest of us don't want to hear what they say though
The rest of who? The fringe left who is simply adopting positions that were spoon fed to them? Yeah not terribly concerned with your wants, that's accurate.
Point proven :)
I'm not sure I follow. It's so bad there's an in-joke among the left that their memes are walls of text referencing the most dense prose you'll ever read and that the required reading will take you years to complete. The bar seems to be rather high.
Is there a similar self-deprecating joke amongst the right? What's the required reading list look like for those on the right?
Not sure I get the joke but I'm sure it's very funny to you. I don't really get into the meme world.
As for self deprecating jokes, I suppose I'd just point you to the right's love of over the top Trump impersonators who make fun of Trump's various verbal ticks and his general public speaking style.
As for "required reading" I don't believe that the various factions within non-left-wing communities have one unified reading list. You'd have to get out more and talk to some to find out what they're reading IMHO.
The point I was making is that leftists gate-keep participation by requiring reading and self-acknowledges this. That seems at odds to the notion that leftists are spoon-fed. How do you reconcile this?
I'm sure they "self-acknowledge" that their ideas are very complex. It's something I've seen leftists claim time and again. Their ideas are quite simple and flimsy from my POV.
IME, nothing impressive there. If only they'd read some Sowell instead of headlines on Reddit.
Exactly how much time have you spent in leftist spaces?
From what I observe they seem to be riddled with bookclub after bookclub so much so that it prevents them from doing anything at all.
What is a "leftist space"? I go wherever I want and stay however long I choose.
If you're spending a lot of time with those people and finding value in what they're saying then keep doing it. Do whatever makes you happy.
Free Speech Absolutist left twitter before Musk and are living in decentralized platforms.
No, it is not sensible to "conclude that both of those positions are by and large rhetorical shams". An age old seeming inevitability is that longstanding gripes get their banner taken up by charlatans dishonestly using them for personal gain. This does not mean the original concerns are dishonest or invalid. Rather it means we need to scrutinize people referencing these topics to see what they actually do when they have power, rather than uncritically supporting them merely because they claim to care about something we do.
> Can I conclude that both of those positions are by and large rhetorical shams?
I wouldn't be surprised if some reach that conclusion. It's much more complicated than that -- but also pretty simple:
No one feels bad for a bully that gets punched in the face even if they believe violence is wrong.
If you fear the consequences of your speech, then you are likely to self-censor, and (one can argue) you no longer have free speech. This is the argument that "Free Speech Absolutists" tend to use to justify trying to protect people from the consequences of their speech... which necessarily infringes on others' speech.
You fundamentally cannot enable people to speak without fear without infringing others' right to speak freely. In the context of a government, it is possible (only very barely, and frequently governments are unable to rise to this level) to create systems that punishes neither party and exit any and all attempts at moderation. But when you are running a social media site, this isn't a feasible option, and trying to punish people who are causing fear and limiting free speech will only cause the next wave of free speech sites to arise. Techdirt has a nice article on speedrunning content moderation: https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/02/hey-elon-let-me-help-you...
Is it a rhetorical sham? Not necessarily, in the sense that I think its proponents could very well believe in what they say. But it is a belief whose consequences hasn't been fully thought-through, and I can't see anyone who still hews to that belief after fully thinking it through.
You mean the born-rich thin-skinned man-child is not a "free speech absolutist" and is actually opposed to free speech? I am shocked.
Anyone who unironically calls themselves a "free speech absolutist" needs to go meditate under a waterfall for a few years on what the point of free speech is, and what the consequences and implications of that are.
Care to elaborate your point? I wouldn't label myself a "free speech absolutist" (seems like blowhard posturing), but my belief in freedom of speech does have an absolutist framing (it's a natural right flowing from computational enfranchisement plus the existence of cryptography).
I'm glad the free speech platform is here to protect us from speech it doesn't like.
I'm glad that Elon's free speech brigade is here, as usual, to censor this discussion by flagging it to death.
Article is 404 for me.