To me this is Musk in general. He is as bad as Trump for just saying anything he wants without care for any repercussions because “free speech”.
Free speech is all well and good but he applies an American style of it to us; we don’t have “free speech” in the same way as they do and never have. It’s not codified. It’s not a right. Speech comes with limitations and consequences and that’s broadly accepted here. If one can’t handle that concept well, one can just keep quiet.
I used to have some respect for him, and didn’t even have an issue with him buying Twitter, but more and more now he is clearly an idiot (he may be a great businessman but I think he’s an idiot) who needs to pipe down and just be aware of the power he has to change things globally.
It’s actually a scary amount of power one person can have.
I agree with everything you say, just not that. Keeping quiet isn’t the answer. If you believe strongly enough in an alternative, voice it. That’s how we change things. We shouldn’t be advocating to suppress opinions we disagree with.
To me, free speech ultimately boils down to the freedom to offend. And to me, it’s a basic human that trumps any laws and institutions. And it’s something we do have a good degree of in the UK, but have been eroding in recent history. As Rowan Atkinson put it, the best weapon against offensive speech is more speech, not less.
I don’t think that’s what I said. The sentence immediately prior to the part you quoted explained that the concept referred to was that we have a tradition of speech having consequences and limitations. To say to someone “be aware of what you’re saying and where you’re saying it” is not to say “don’t have the opinion”.
In an extreme level, if you thought someone was a dick, you wouldn’t rock up to their wedding and tell everyone. It’s not suppressing your opinion to say “actually don’t do that”.
Musk thinks “I have the right” and just blurts anything he wants out without any thought or consideration for the impact he can have. That is my issue. Not his opinions.
Right. I interpreted it to mean that you were saying those who disagree with that concept should shut up about it and be quiet. That’s how it read to me, which is a notion I disagree with.
Last nights debate might be the most embarrassing thing to happen to Twitter.
Hardly says ‘future of video content’ when you can’t host a livestream. And Musk having a good chuckle at lines like ‘Kamala isn’t the smartest person’ isn’t a great look when she’s smashing Trump in the polls.
I don’t think Musk really cares. He’s exclusively trying to appeal to the kind of people that a comment like that would appeal to. He seems to want to be known as an internet troll now. I hadn’t ever actually seen any of his interviews or even heard him speak until I saw a clip during a video on, I think, The News Agents. He had all the charm and charisma of a soggy tissue. It made me wonder about the sanity of a mate who was obsessed with him and thought he was the future of mankind.
After the bile and vitriol during the riots on there I’ve closed my personal X account. I’m close to closing my academic one too. Although if I remain within the academic science bubble it’s not too bad.
By the way, a bit late but on this, for some reason the American right is obsessed with Britain.
They seem to want to show we live in a police state (a lot of the evidence for this flying around is tweets about people who have been arrested for posting on social media eg after the riots). There’s also a lot about how our NHS is crumbling, how overtaxed we are etc. He’s far from the only right wing US commentator obsessed with this.
I know this because I have a friend in Texas who is very much right wing Trump aligned and he’s always sending me what’s on the current discussion list (I always try and give some context as to why actually our society isn’t burning right now but I think it falls on deaf ears).
I imagine if like Musk you are deeply entrenched in American right wing politics you may actually be genuinely concerned about the UKs rapid descent into dystopian facism
Pondering it some more, and downloading the compass chart to graffiti, I think it might be more like this, and why I tend to have some common ground with Musk’s opinions (Both in accord with Roman Atkinson’s views on free speech for instance from the other day)
I was surprised to find this was not as commonly thought throughout the UK as I originally thought it was
Though I do agree that it is crumbling, and honestly have zero confidence in it… I’ve had a broken ankle and leg misdiagnosed and a friend who’s had the same experience
Like saying; go home and try to walk on it in a few days, and then I come back for the checkup and I need to go into surgery the next day
Zero confidence in my local NHS, hope it’s only my area though
I’ve been on there from the start but just not enough people but that has started to change - it’s nifty as well you can change your handle to own domain.
I joined Threads yesterday. Took a bit of getting used to with how to tag things and so on. Genuinely impressed. The web interface is great, pinned columns like Tweetdeck.
I wonder if the news that the Telegram CEO was arrested upon landing in France yesterday, reportedly for a complete lack of moderation albeit leading to crimes much more serious than some mean words on X, might cause Elon Musk to consider reintroducing some level of moderation to X
