I've seen several pundits and tweets spouting this nonsensical position, but none of them bother to elaborate. Can someone explain the idea behind this?
Can someone explain how Musk buying Twitter in order to promote freedom of speech is a danger to free speech?
- Thread starter ThunderCat98
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Easy. It’s a threat to liberal freedom of lies and censorship of people they disagree with.
It’s not. You can pretty safely discount anything that anyone banging that drum says.
Elon also isn’t (probably, nobody can see his mind I guess, but this feels like a safe assumption) doing it to altruistically promote free speech. He’s doing it because he wants a social media platform, as he’s talked about in the past, and he sees an opportunity to get Twitter for less than he thinks it’s worth. In this case your interests may align with his, similar to how many on the left worship(ped?) him for pushing the EV. Don’t be too surprised when down the road they don’t.
Elon also isn’t (probably, nobody can see his mind I guess, but this feels like a safe assumption) doing it to altruistically promote free speech. He’s doing it because he wants a social media platform, as he’s talked about in the past, and he sees an opportunity to get Twitter for less than he thinks it’s worth. In this case your interests may align with his, similar to how many on the left worship(ped?) him for pushing the EV. Don’t be too surprised when down the road they don’t.
There’s no reason that has any validity that is good for the country. They lose some of their ability to control the narrative, such as with the Hunter Biden laptop. They banned hundreds of people over that and suppressed any news of it during the election cycle. Now that it is proven true, they have not re-established those accounts nor banned the real disinformation sources, the ones who claimed to know it was fake.
lt is beyond stupid to let a private company be the arbiter of “truth”, especially one with a proven track record of being far left and often 100% wrong in their censorship. I’m not saying they can’t do what they want as a private company, but I would like to see a required warning label on their site, much like on a pack of cigarettes. I also think Nike should be required to put “Warning: these shoes were produced by slave labor” on their boxes.
lt is beyond stupid to let a private company be the arbiter of “truth”, especially one with a proven track record of being far left and often 100% wrong in their censorship. I’m not saying they can’t do what they want as a private company, but I would like to see a required warning label on their site, much like on a pack of cigarettes. I also think Nike should be required to put “Warning: these shoes were produced by slave labor” on their boxes.
The public rejections of his offer by members of the board should be a sign the platform’s real worth isn’t fiscal but in controlling narratives.
That’s kind of a dumb take. Is that the case in every board that plays defensively against a takeover attempt?
If you completely ignore the fact he’s offering well above the monetary value, sure.
Every takeover offer is above the current stock price. Otherwise they’d get instantly laughed out of the room.
Do you think the board’s actions are in the best interest of the shareholders?
I don’t have the inside knowledge into Twitter’s financials that they (or Elon) does. I know that the offer is well below the 12 month high, which lends plausibility to the idea that it isn’t that good of an offer. Or at least isn’t an obvious must-accept.
They’ve lost money the last two years - a lot of money. Their proposed dilution seems a little nuts if I was a shareholder.
Musk is playing chess with them at this point. Unless something catastrophic occurs, even if he’s not successful in the takeover, his maneuvering means he’ll likely walk away with a sizable profit.
They lost money last year due to a one time hit from a lawsuit. In 2018 they made 1.2B and in 2019 they made 1.4B in profit. You could pretty easily say that 2020 and 2021 were hammered by an advertising downturn due to Covid and that they ought to get back to strong profits.
I’m playing devil’s advocate here. I don’t really have an opinion as to if Elon’s offer is good for shareholders, only that I don’t think it’s a no brainer.
I’m playing devil’s advocate here. I don’t really have an opinion as to if Elon’s offer is good for shareholders, only that I don’t think it’s a no brainer.
Their board members are paid between 200k and 300k per year for a part time gig. Musk is talking about taking Twitter private. So.....
I don’t mind the back & forth. With numbers this substantial, it’s a financial soap opera at this point. I don’t quite buy his free speech angle but I do think there’s some truth in there about the value of the narrative w/ a media platform. Look at the Hunter Biden fiasco. I don’t think it would have swung the election but several outlets did actively suppress the story for a reason.
The only free speech issue here is most people don't have a clue what freedom of speech means.
THe issue is social media and the news media are in bed with liberal Democrats. All you have to do is look back at the period of 2015 to 2020. They march in step with them, cover for them, and produce the most popular man in history who can barely form a sentence and has to have the Easter Bunny deflect him away from questions. They cover for it and are basically just a wing of the liberal Democrats. Same for Hollywood.
The feel a man like Musk is a threat to that bond. They don't want alternative voices or opinions because it exposes them for who they are.
The feel a man like Musk is a threat to that bond. They don't want alternative voices or opinions because it exposes them for who they are.
No one has a right to "free speech" on twitter. There is a gray zone with publisher versus platform, but until we get new laws, new court rulings, etc....Twitter can do what it wants.
I don't know the solution, but I view Twitter as the de facto new public/town square. I don't view the general "internet" as that square, as the that to me is like saying the general outdoors (the woods, the park, the streets) is the internet....where people go for information and discussion is twitter/town square. It makes me very uncomfortable that some entity (be it the government, or the company, or what I believe we see now - the company and the govt in lock step) can control speech at that town square.
I don't have a good solution though. I'm sensitive to the private rights of a company and on the other hand I don't love the idea of heavy handed input from the government telling twitter it must allow all tweets.
I don't know the solution, but I view Twitter as the de facto new public/town square. I don't view the general "internet" as that square, as the that to me is like saying the general outdoors (the woods, the park, the streets) is the internet....where people go for information and discussion is twitter/town square. It makes me very uncomfortable that some entity (be it the government, or the company, or what I believe we see now - the company and the govt in lock step) can control speech at that town square.
I don't have a good solution though. I'm sensitive to the private rights of a company and on the other hand I don't love the idea of heavy handed input from the government telling twitter it must allow all tweets.
That last part is the rub. I consider government forcing speech to be an abridgement of free speech. If we consider Twitter to be a publisher, government would then be abridging freedom of the press, it's really no different than the government telling a book publisher what they should publish.
When it comes to those basic 1A freedoms, government regulation is rarely the answer.
Musk can do what he wants to if he buys Twitter. I think it's a dumb way to spend a good portion of his fortune, but that's another discussion entirely. If he wants to upset the apple cart, or even (gasp) lobby to increase his power and wealth, he's be better off to buy an actual media outlet, like Bezos did.
All twitter has to do is be honest. That’s the big rub. Come out and say hell yeah we censor shit we don’t agree with. Instead we get platitudes that everyone knows are fals
