You have to admit, the “free speech” shield-wielding megalomaniac working so hard to keep people from freely accessing info isn’t exactly great optics.
Sure but my point is the Twitter experience is trash and not required like, say, paying an evil ISP or interacting with Google (for 99.9% of people abandoning and fully dodging Google is incredibly difficult). It’s working out for him because people won’t leave (even though engagement and user numbers are still below pre-acquisition numbers). It only has value because of his acquiring it with his other company. Prior its value was tanked. It’s a crap site that isn’t profitable and serves as a mouthpiece for his politics and whims.
You don't need an ISP or Google either. It's incredibly difficult for some people to leave either, but it's also incredibly difficult for some people to leave Twitter.
Except some people still want it, thats the uncomfortable truth that lots of people cant accept. I see lots of comments giving different reasons people think that other people cant leave twitter, but at the end of the day millions of people still like and use it all the time. Thats why its still there.
I'm very much on the side of xcancel and nitter on this one, but I do think it's fair to point out that Twitter is free of monetary charge. It's not free in the sense that you do have to provide some personal information and data to them in exchange for that free account, but it isn't a huge roadblock for most people, however annoying it may be.
Now that said, I sure hope Elon will pivot this and make these services unnecessary. I'm not holding my breath though.
The biggest frustration for a lot of people is that their municipalities use Twitter almost exclusively to communicate with their constituents, it _sucks_. I've pleaded and begged my city and county to have some other form of communication, in addition to Twitter/X, to mass distribute information.
The phrase "free speech" does not typically mean "free as in beer," rather it means "free as in freedom," so in this case you're conflating the two meanings of "free" in English.
The fact that Twitter is login-gated makes it objectively less free as in freedom.
Generally we in the western world consider ourselves 'free' citizens. Yet to live this life you need to register your birth, get a social security number, and enroll in education etc.
I dont see signing up to twitter any differently to this. You register with an email address and you are granted access. Similarly to registering a birth and being granted access to 'society'.
Many feel X, or gating access to X, is fundamentally unjust, superseding the guidelines.
Feeling injustice converts the loss into a claim: "I didn't just lose free access, we're owed free access." The GP questioned whether the inconvenience is an injustice. The flags came because that question threatened the claim.
Free speech talk decorates a claim that, imo, doesn't really have much purchase.
Twitter is heavily login-gated, to the point that I can't see Twitter threads at all unless I have an account. I do not wish to make an account. Services like Nitter/XCancel allow me to read those threads, making that speech more free.
Yes, it is. It seems self-evident to me that the speech on Twitter is more free when it isn't behind a login wall. How could it not be? If you'd like to provide an actual counter-argument, I'd be happy to consider it.
"Freedom of speech" means you are allowed to express your opinion without fear of being censored or persecuted for it.
It is not the same kind of "free" as in "no cost". Twitter is a paid service. To access Twitter, you have to pay for it. Either by purchasing a subscription or viewing ads.
Think of it as having to buy a newspaper before being able to read it. That doesn't stop the paper's editors from being able to criticize the government.
> "Freedom of speech" means you are allowed to express your opinion without fear of being censored or persecuted for it.
This is one way to define it, yes, but Musk is a self-described “free speech absolutist” which I would argue means that he feels speech should be maximally free.
> It is not the same kind of "free" as in "no cost".
I have never meant it in that way, and I’m not sure why you thought I did.
> To access Twitter, you have to pay for it. Either by purchasing a subscription or viewing ads.
This is possibly pedantic but this statement as written is false. I can view single tweets just fine, and I don’t see ads.
> Think of it as having to buy a newspaper before being able to read it. That doesn't stop the paper's editors from being able to criticize the government.
That analogy doesn’t really work here, IMO. My only point is that it’s objectively true that speech behind a login wall is less free (as in freedom) than speech not behind a login wall, and so a (non-hypocritical) “free speech absolutist” should always prefer the latter.
He is a hypocrite, so he defines it however is convenient at the time. But I think my interpretation is a reasonable one for someone calling themselves a free speech absolutist.
Then they should be glad Nitter instances are offloading some of their traffic, right? Some requests are cache hits, so I handled that whole request myself and spared an Elon server from handling it.
I mean, you could easily construct a mirror image of both of those, and I would say that that's closer to the reality of what the content available to downrank is actually like. I don't think questions like yours are engaging honestly or in good faith.
The person you’re replying to isn’t going to substantively respond, because fragile snowflakes typically won’t engage when they recognize that answering a simple question exposes their hypocrisy.
Free Speech isn’t about who is listening, it’s about who is speaking. Just because you can’t hear it doesn’t necessarily mean the person did not speak freely.
I am speaking about free speech (lowercase, in the colloquial sense), not Free Speech (the constitutional right). In the context of this type of free speech, if you have two identical posts, and one is behind a login wall and one isn’t, the one not behind the login wall is objectively more free.
> I am speaking about free speech (lowercase, in the colloquial sense), not Free Speech (the constitutional right).
So am I.
If a comedian is doing a bit at a bar and they charge a $5 cover to get in is that infringing on “free speech”. Of course not, that’s absurd. Why would be it any different online?
To live in our 'free' western society you must register your birth and get a social security number. You also need to attend education. This is effectively 'registering' for access to 'society'. I dont see giving twitter an email address to view content on their platform as any different to this.
> Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction.
Nobody is being censored by the inability of a third party to act as a parallel distribution channel. Nor does freedom of speech have anything to do with entitlement to an audience. No website infringes upon freedom of speech by having a paywall on UGC, as neither the contributors nor readers are worse off than if the site didn't exist.
I have no idea what definition you're using, and I've commonly seen people who make your argument demonstrate all the same sorts of bias they allege Musk to have.
I agree, but also, it gets kinda messy here because Musk's "free speech" purchase if twitter was based on his understanding that Twitter not publishing content they deemed inflammatory or misinform was a violation of free speech, which I also don't think is true?
So I guess we're several layers of misunderstanding deep at this stage, and X's lockdown is ironic if its not free speech according to the flawed understanding of free speech it advocates? I dunno.
The accusation was that Twitter was working with the US government to censor speech on the government's behalf. Which would be a first amendment violation. The FBI's defense is that they technically never ordered Twitter to take down anything, but merely "flagged" posts and sent those flags to Twitter execs.
This type of loophole was (likely) closed after the ruling of Murthy v. Missouri and the "Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship" executive order.
Is that a first amendment violation though if they voluntarily complied?
It’s a private company. Free speech doesn’t mean I’m entitled to use your property to post and amplify my speech.
I also find the context of the whole thing suspect since Trump in his second administration has openly used the FCC and other federal pressures to attack speech he doesn’t like and Musk’s X has not been “free speech absolutist.”
I always thought it was just the far right being mad their side wasn’t in charge, and that when they got in power they would be even worse. That seems vindicated.
>Is that a first amendment violation though if they voluntarily complied?
The entire point of the case was to determine exactly that. Read the judgement. If it were an open and shut case, it never would have made it to the supreme court.
>and that when they got in power they would be even worse. That seems vindicated
How in the world did you get to that conclusion from Murthy v. Missouri and the "Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship" order?
From the open use of the FCC to threaten television networks for saying things the president doesn't like? Among many other examples? That's just a particularly overt one.
I'm just saying overall behavior -- outside this specific case -- is not consistent with a regime (or a larger political movement) that believes in free speech. It's consistent with "we want to be the ones in charge determining speech," with opposition to Twitter's previous moderation being motivated by that rather than principled belief in free speech.
The net effect of the Twitter takeover was not to make it a free speech absolutist platform but to shift the pattern of selective boosting and selective de-boosting and moderation to one that favors the far right's message.
I would argue that when he is talking about "free speech" he is always referring to the more general, non-US-Constitutional meaning of the phrase; i.e. the freedom to say what you want without being censored. So when a discussion about free speech on Twitter comes up, I assume that's the kind of free speech we're discussing. To bring in the the more narrow, first amendment meaning of the term is just a distraction or diversion.
I assumed the parent post was referring to the Constitutional meaning when they said "Yes, we all know what 'free speech' really means and it has nothing to do with X," but if I misunderstood then I apologize!
Heavy regulations are the reason why we have the John Deere semi monopoly. The regulatory entry cost is in the millions for any new player to enter the market so no one wants to compete and provide better service.
Every regulation looks good or at least defensible in abstract, especially when some peddler is trying to sell it and the consequences aren't obvious yet.
This is just not true - their machines are purposely opaque and loaded with DRM. Regulation in this area could potentially make the entire system more efficient and cheaper for everyone at the cost of JD's predatory practices. In addition to owners there are lots of independents who could work on JD equipment, but they are all literally locked out.
It depends on who writes the regulations. Today money writes the regs and people pay the price. Take money out of politics. But all three branches are captured. Anything that resembles returning power to the people is derided as socialism. So the result is power over the people.
Given how each tractor manufacturer is essentially associated with its own specific country, I'd say this industry is a great example of how mature industries tend to consolidate into monopolies while getting propped up by regulatory capture greased by concerns over natural security. So while the regulatory costs you cite may indeed be onerous, simplistic calls merely for "less regulation" don't bear out.
the cost of starting a company that makes a line of tractors combines and sprayers is probably second only to an aircraft manufacturer in difficulty and complexity
I think China has this all sorted, we should just have a free market without tarrifs. Let the market provide us the best, un-enshittified products we can find. I am old enough to remember when that was a conservative position.
The conservative position is always whatever benefits conservatives at this moment. Back when they supported a free market, a freer market benefitted them. When market regulations benefitted them, they supported a more regulated market.
I call bullshit until you cite evidence. Farm equipment doesn't even need to comply with road vehicle requirements. What special regulations does a farm equipment manufacturer need to comply with that don't apply to any other industrial manufacturer?
I'm still on an iPhone 11 that I bought second-hand a few years ago when the iPhone 15 was the newest. The battery life isn't great which is the only thing tempting me to upgrade, but I'll still put that off as long as possible.
Other than the battery I have no complaints. It's a phone. I can make calls, send texts, browse the web, check maps, take photos. What more do I need? Why waste money?
I can't even tell the difference between newer iPhone models. Why do people upgrade every year? What's the point?
I believe that sentiment started to die out around the time people realized a Nazi gained control over the world's centralized communication hub. Whether that says more about the communication, the nazi, or the people is a question for the ages.
They just announced the new "Omacom foundation" last Friday, with $8 million of funding from prominent tech people. That's why it's getting current flurry of attention
Knowledge for its own sake is great, but it's worth noting that many "useless" fields of mathematics turned out to be very practical in the long run.
Number theory was long thought to have no practical application, but now it's the backbone of cryptography. Boolean algebra was developed in the 19th century (George Boole died in 1864), decades before it was used to build computers.
Those "useless" theorems being proved today may turn out to unlock a world-changing technology centuries from now. When the breakthrough comes we'll be grateful for the people who laid the foundations.
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