“Freedom of Speech, not Freedom of Reach - our enforcement philosophy which means, where appropriate, restricting the reach of Tweets that violate our policies by making the content less discoverable.”
Surprise! Our great ‘X’ CEO has brought back one more bad thing that we hated about twitter 1.0: Shadowbanning. And they’ve given it a new name: “Freedom of Speech, Not Reach”.
Perhaps the new approach by X is an improvement? At least they would “politely” tell you when you’re being shadow banned.
I think freedom of speech implies that people have the autonomy to decide what they want to see, rather than being manipulated by algorithm codes. Now it feels like they’re saying, “you can still have your microphone… We’re just gonna cut the power to it if you say something we don’t like”.
So originally, it was that he was a “free speech absolutist,” then it was that he was in favor of free speech “within the bounds of the law,” and now he’s not even in favor of that.
He never was, that was just an excuse to amplify the voice of his far-right buddies.
I know. It was more about what he said.
Freedom of (my) speech.
I don’t believe this because it gives Elon Musk too much credit and honestly I think he’s just a big loser who will latch on to whoever likes him at the time.
A series of stupid events led to Twitter being full of stupid far right nutjobs and stupid Elon decided they’re his people now because they use his stupid platform.
This seems more accurate somehow
I know, it was more a rhetorical question.
By free speech absolutist he really meant he thinks fascists should be able to say whatever they want.
By free speech absolutist he really meant he thinks fascists should be able to force you to listen to them say whatever they want.
“Down with fascism! No more free political speech!”
Non sequitur
No, he’s a free speech absolutist!
Aka
A fuckin liar who would piss himself to death if people actually told him what they think about him.
Freedom for me but not for thee
I guess it’s all about his political ambition.
Oh god, I just had a flash of a near future where he’s on the US ballot somehow. It wouldn’t be a huge surprise if he found a way. He could change the name of the States to X too!
X party. Yikes.
For any office except president (possibly not VP either, but that would be a technical issue for constitutional scholars to debate). You have to be native-born to be president.
Please, I beg you, don’t scare me.
I am better choice would be the poop emoji.
You gotta be really stupid to believe people like him. They are all the same. It’s like a mental sickness. You can feel it even just hearing him talk on TV.
I mean freedom of speech, not reach describes one boundary of the law in that nobody is required to give you a platform as far as i know.
However it does absolutely not fit to the free speech absolutism purported last year.
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“No one can act as a moderator to remove my content” This claim does align with with the principle of freedom of speech, but we have to admit that for now, complete freedom without any control can be unsafe. It could potentially lead to spams and political issues. However, the feature of not asking for phone numbers or email addresses sounds interesting, especially considering Elon is planning to introduce government ID verification.
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This is blatant advertisement. Doesn’t it violate the instance rules?
If you’re still on Twitter, you’re part of the problem.
People keep repeating this for easy self-righteousness. Again, what about small artists whose careers depend on their social media following?
Fuck Musk, but for better or worse this isn’t just about him.
Artists whose whole career depends on the whims of social media giants have dug their own hole.
*had limited choices as to which hole to dig
As they say on the Grumpy Old Geeks podcast, don’t build your house in someone else’s backyard.
I’m not an artist but I know a lot of them and basically only use twitter to follow them. And honestly, the ball is in their court. I see a lot of them complaining about shadowbans and it being impossible to grow a following. But nobody wants to jump ship to a place without an audience.
The problem being there will be no audience sitting around a new platform waiting for a show to start. They need to start double posting, IMO. Being the change they want in the world. They don’t have to quit twitter, but posting content to twitter and mastodon (for example) would give their audience a reason to move, would give them a chance to grow, etc.
There’s even apps like PostyBirb that can do the multiposting for you.
All the more reason to give their following a chance to find them elsewhere, and to follow them there when they do. There are other options; ideally standards-based federated options not susceptible to hostile takeovers by unstable billionaires
Of course, but there is a whole transition period. They can change platforms but getting their followers to join along with them takes a lot more effort. Especially given that Twitter is suppressing any links for alternative platforms.
Again, what about small artists whose careers depend on their social media following?
hope the artists like playing the Nazi bar, because that’s twitter now.
I apply to a lot of online contests and most have me ‘retweet’ the contest submission link or follow people on the platform. That is literally all I use it for.
Ever win anything?
More ads!
Sorry just noticed this notification. Yes actually! A $500 shopping spree on a gaming website.
Raise your hand if you are convinced this will not impact the people who pay for the blue checkmark. Meaning that a lot of Elon Fanbois / Bots / Fascists will be seen with theit shitty takes (since the checkmark pushes your comments up), while voices of reason will be dragged down further.
Twitter is rapidly becomming the new Truth Social and it’s sad to watch.
Well that was the whole point. His old friend Peter Thiel and others failed to set up a competing service against Twitter, so now they’re undermining Twitter. Either Twitter steps into line and becomes what they want it to be, or it dies due to the $13bn debt/tax avoidance scam that Musk performed.
$13bn debt/tax avoidance scam that Musk performed
Since I don’t follow Musk, please elaborate. I hope, you don’t mean his buying an unprofitable company for $40B was to avoid taxes…
No. I’m referring to the $13bn out of the $44bn purchase price that Twitter paid itself. As Twitter is now deep in debt, it won’t be making a profit any time soon, so there will be no tax paid on that $13bn purchase.
The $44bn purchase is broken down more or less as:
- $26bn by Musk ($20bn of which was from Tesla shares),
- $5bn from other investors, including that Saudi prince,
- $13bn in a loan that Twitter took out to buy itself on behalf of its new owners.
The process is known as a leveraged buyout, and it’s what’s killed many staple businesses that were otherwise perfectly viable, eg Toys R Us.
Dear Elon,
You say you hate socialism yet you socialized around 40% of the acquisition money.
Curious.
Overpaying and then destroying the value means that eventually, he will be able to claim losses on his taxes. This will allow him to reduce his tax liability for his profitable businesses.
That was always the point of the blue check under Elon. It’s very clear already that blue checks have vastly higher reach and engagement. This all started back in December.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/23/23523845/twitter-blue-paying-priority-replies-conversations
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Literally every single day we have idiots doing Musk’s PR work for free.
Downvote Musk spam. The billionaire doesn’t need your help ensuring his businesses stay in the 24 hour news cycle.
This is from April. Did something change with it?
This is the most important comment on this thread. I wish lemmy forced you to post the date of the article
The topic is trending on X today so I didn’t noticed the date. But I guess there might have been some updates compared to April?
You are part of the problem.
Someone predicted that they were going to slowly add back all the stuff they took out and they were right
I think most people could have predicted that. Most of the things Musk removed were there for a reason. Mostly of economical or legal nature. You cannot simply remove them if you want Twitter to someday make a profit.
Like it or not (I don’t), free speech has nothing to do with social media. Platforms are free to do this, it’s the government that can’t limit your speech like this.
Given those circumstances, I wonder if social media should be treated like infrastructure. That would fuse constitutional rights and the platform itself.
it’s the government that can’t limit your speech like this
Not all countries are free speech absolutists. If you unironically say “Heil Hitler” in modern-day Germany, that’s prison time for you. And rightfully so. Hate speech in public should not be allowed.
Not even the US is a “freeze peach absolutist”. That’s a dog whistle term for people who want to do hate crimes without fear of reprisal
Or you just get beat up, and nobody on the street has seen anything: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/14/drunken-american-beaten-up-for-giving-nazi-salute-in-germany
Vigilantism isn’t a solution… But I wouldn’t have seen a thing either.
EDIT: Ignore this post; I was running on 6 hours of sleep and no caffeine and this is why, we stay off of Lemmy early in the morning. I apologize if I hurt anyone’s feelings.
While you’re right, I think the issue here is the hypocrisy of Musk claiming to be pro free speech (specifically on his platform) only to then repeatedly limit speech he doesn’t personally like.
I feel pretty numb to right wing hypocrisy at this point. Which is probably their exact playbook.
Indeed. Personally my problem isn’t with them limiting the “freedom of speech”. It’s with them claiming they have it or that it’s even relevant there, as you’ve said.
Same page club. I think centralized social media is going to die sooner or later anyway*, so I’m thinking it’s only a problem in the short term.
*Making money from social media just sounds like some weird shit in a history book to me, like merkins. We’ll see I guess.
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Free speech has nothing to do with social media or governments. Freedom of speech is a universal, natural right that has been with our species since we gained the power of speech through evolution.
yeah not sure about that. Most of human history would say freedom of speech (and most of the concept of natural rights) is a rather newish ideology. In the past, speaking negatively of higher powers (religious organizations, ruling class, etc) could lead to sanctions, imprisonment, or death and that is still very much the case in many countries to this day. We can argue _____ is a “natural right” till you have arthritis in your hand joints but you have to be blind to think governments have nothing to do with it and its enforcement. In a utopia, maybe it is granted naturally on birth but in reality it is a “right” that has to be “fought” for (legally or with arms). Like are you seriously arguing the people of North Kor… Sorry, I mean the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea are born with this “natural right” of free speech but if they dare use it they and possibly their immediate family may be subject to torture, rape, reeducation camps, and/or work camps.
I would agree. As long as it doesn’t violate the law, people should have the right to express their opinions freely. But nowadays it’s getting pretty hard to do so.
I mean it depends, what are you talking about? Yeah I can see the point of not arresting people for dropping the N word or something or maybe doing a Hitler salute but are you referring to people using their own freedom of speech to argue/debate one’s own opinion? Maybe a companies right to associate with only those it choose to do so with (unless that discrimination is against those of protected classes). Like no company would probably want to be associated with a known verbal racist, it just hurts their possibility to get new clients or possibly sever current client relations. The reason why many companies go “woke” or stray to the left is because companies never want to have one of their advertisements right next to a Nazi/race supremacist rant, people will start associating the company with what their ad is paying for. Elon is learning in the most ass backwards way of why Twitter did X thing, in this case why twitter wasn’t the “haven” of free speech is because advertisers don’t want this and advertisers are the ones who pay a hefty chunk of the bills.
Most of human history would say freedom of speech (and most of the concept of natural rights) is a rather newish ideology.
It’s “newish” for Homo sapiens, but it originated during the Enlightenment in the 17th century. I struggle to call that “new.” However I don’t subscribe to the concept of natural rights. Rights are what people afford each other in a society. In a democracy, we vote on rights. In anarchy, rights are given and taken at the end of a gun.
It’s definitely new in the context of their comment, which says it’s been around since we had the power of speech.
My last house was older than free speech as a concept.
Universal? So I can go to all of your neighbors and tell them you’re a pedophile and that’s ok?
That’s a very strange takeaway from my comment.
I’m not sure what else universal means other than ‘applies in all circumstances.’
Well that’s just, like, your opinion, man.
You’re generally right and I have nothing to take away from that. Right now I’m talking specifically about the “law” of free speech with regard to the US Constitution.
Can we stop posting musk shit? It’s exhausting.
Have you considered joining “Enough Musk Spam”, another such community devoted entirely to posting about the thing they dont like seeing posts about?
It’s doubly exhausting for the hundreds of millions of people who are still there and are affected by this.
You can say whatever you like… in the privacy of your own cell.
Why are there people still using that garbage? It’s fucking hilarious watching everyone complain about twitter, YouTube, etc and then continue using it.
I mean, it was never about free speech. It was always about crippling a powerful communication tool that had been used to undermine Middle Eastern governments. “Free Speech” was just how Musk was able to curry favor with fascists and grift retards into paying for twitter blue.
I don’t give a fuck about Twitter, stop posting this garbage already!
Stop calling it X
But when you’re looking for a crap company and platform that’s always been bad, but is also, surprisingly, somehow now much worse, X marks the spot.
lol such a Loser shitshow.
The only thing absolute about Elmo is being a cuck.