https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-warns-elon-musk-hate-speech-donald-trump-interview-breton-x/
"As there is a risk of amplification of potentially harmful content in [the European Union] in connection with events with major audience around the world, I sent this letter to @elonmusk."
Responding to Breton, Musk tweeted out a meme containing the words: "Take a big step back and literally, fuck your own face!"
Fuck this guy, and everyone who thinks this is OK by a person with the power to sway opinion.
Seriously. It’s my new theme, but this high school shit and its approval have to stop before we kill everything.
Responding to Breton, Musk tweeted out a meme containing the words: "Take a big step back and literally, fuck your own face!"
On the one hand, that's a really crude response. But on the other hand, it's the sort of response European-style restrictions on free speech deserve...
There are plenty of things you can't say in America. For example, churches can't endorse politicians, you can't say myriad swearwords on TV (h/t George Carlin), you can't even show a nude penis, you can't libel people, often you can't show brands or play music without being sued...
A more interesting thing to me, is this so called business wunderkind and owner of a communications platform doesn't know the rules around broadcasting. You know even a $5MM company usually retains one lawyer for this kind of shit.
Would you let an individual contributor, factotum role at your company say this publically? I'd be fired fucking instantly if I said that on the company LinkedIn profile.
Oh, I agree that it was a bad idea for Musk to say that. It isn't how one maximizes Twitter's profits; scandalized European regulators can create expensive problems and advertisers won't want to be associated with such language. These might be sacrifices that a principled person would accept in order to make a defiant defense of free speech, but Musk isn't such a person. I'm not really sure why he does what he does. However, he's not wasting my money so I can just sit back and enjoy the show.
(Also, if a principled person were to risk huge sums of money in order to make a defiant defense of free speech, could he be a little more eloquent? There's an art to using profanity well, and this isn't an example of that art.)
I have to ask, what EU restrictions on free speech are there? Because I live in Europe and don't really feel all that restricted in terms of speech.
Freedom of speech isn't about saying the normal things that normal people say, because these things don't need protection. It's about saying things that are very offensive to the large majority of people. The latter is restricted in many parts of Europe and you probably don't feel those restrictions personally because they don't apply to what you want to say, but that doesn't mean that you have free speech. If the offensive people don't have it, no one has it.
I do have to concede that European restrictions on speech have not created a slippery slope to dictatorship. I still defend a nearly absolute right to free speech because that's a principle I believe in.
So basically you want people to be free to harm other people with hate speech, slander, and libel without consequences because fReE sPeeCH AbsOluTIsm?
Pretty much the only restriction in the EU that the US doesn't share is publicly calling for crimes to be committed against an ethnic group. Not something that should be allowed.
Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.
Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, 1945
We have been trying to reason with the bigots for a long time, but it has become clear that their polemic doesn't respect reason. What shall we do, then? Throw up our hands, let them erode our values and sacrifice our values on the altar of rigid principles? Die with pride "At least, we never resorted to censorship"? What good is our loyalty to that rule to the victims of that new, intolerant order?
The enemies of freedom have no qualms about using censorship and violence to silence the opposition. It is only right that we should meet them on their terms, if they will not meet us on ours.
As far as I know, that's a Twitter restriction, not a legal restriction. It isn't a restriction I would impose if I ran Twitter, but Musk's free speech rights include the right to decide what he is willing to publish on a platform that he owns. Those who disagree are free to use a different publisher. (There's a reason I'm posting here rather than on Twitter.)
Awww cant spread harm and lies to other people? Cant miseducate the public for personal gain? Can't get new ideological converts to adhere to suicidal rhetoric? Can't spread hate and harass any others different than you?
Wow its as if standards are a must for civilized society, and no progress can be made if people are always going at eachother throats being kept endlessly debating the SAME THING OVER AND OVER AGAIN OVER COURSES OF GENERATIONS