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Fraserh02

macrumors regular
Jun 18, 2017
108
410
I don’t think people realise but you can have free speech and limits on harassment and hate speech. These are two distinct things. I think he’s been more concerned about how people have been shut down due to ‘misinformation’ which is a loosely defined term with too many caveats. I personally see this as a win for society. There isn’t a popular platform that allows free and open conversations and dialogue as they’ve been too concerned about their shareholders as opposed to the beginning overarching future of open dialogue. This should allow an open platform to all, but can still have limits and moderation for harassment such as death threats for example. As much as I disagree with Trump politically, I didn’t like that he was removed from Twitter and YouTube even recently due to misinformation. Because who decided what is misinformation? For example, some political stances or scientific discoveries can take time to be determined to be true, and in the meantime could be seen as misinformation. Yes there can be harm caused by false statements, but taking those voices away instead of countering arguments with dialogue is way more of a slippery slope. I understand private businesses can act how they like and protected speech in America only applied to government and not businesses, but social media has become essential the way in which thoughts and expressions are now shared and this is dangerous to moderate (other than as mentioned for examples of harassment). Although the terms on hate speech and harassment etc will need to be defined, at least without having to worry about shareholders then they can concentrate on these issues without any politics involved. Or at least this is my hope! I may be proven wrong.
 
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yaxomoxay

macrumors 604
Mar 3, 2010
7,412
34,216
Texas
As a user since 2008, I plan to remain for now and see how it goes...
..but I'm highly skeptical based upon Elon's often childish and petty conduct over the years.

The proof will be in the pudding
This is probably the adult way to look at this. Even if someone doesn’t like the owner, it’s the platform that matters. Let’s see what happens.
 

sw1tcher

macrumors 603
Jan 6, 2004
5,491
19,261

iObama

macrumors 65816
Nov 16, 2008
1,042
2,237
To me there are two issues:

1. Harassment: Plainly unacceptable, period.

2. Hypocricy: No matter your political opinions, you have to at at least agree that its mostly conservatives being banned from Twitter while we still have Putin, radical fundementalists and continuing to use the platform.

I think Elon can address the later while not impacting the former.

That's what happens when most of the blatant bigotry toward minorities and incessant trolling come from the right.
 

turbineseaplane

macrumors Pentium
Mar 19, 2008
15,004
32,157
I don’t think people realise but you can have free speech and limits on harassment and hate speech. There’s are two distinct things.

People realize that just fine, but it requires content moderation and rules.

The devil is in the details there and it's incredibly hard (likely impossible) to craft rules that necessarily require fairly objective definitions of hate speech, harassment, truth claims, etc
 
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