Yeah, I'm personally trying to keep this related to Musk alone. There's plenty of general Twitter topics to talk about, but I have a feeling its not actually "Twitter" people want to talk about, and more about "general politics that happen to involve Twitter".
I feel like sticking to the Elon Musk topic could focus the topic? Apologies for the meta-post, but I just wanna be clear from the perspective of "what this topic should be about".
The problem is, these topics aren't really separable. Musk is buying Twitter for political reasons, and he has a
long history of throwing his money around when his politics and actions are criticized. Also, hate it or hate it, social media are now a crucial portion of global infrastructure, and there are severe political implications to these media being in the hands of billionaire owners with potentially dangerous political agendas. Of course Twitter and Musk are by no means unique in this regard, but he does have a particular penchant for drama and hissy-fits over perceived slights, and seemingly an easily bruised ego. Like it or not, this ties directly into "general politics".
Hi,
Free speech is not restricted
The definition of free speech is speech that is not restricted or censored
by the government. Freedom of speech literally does not apply on any privately held platform (within legal bounds). It is entirely legal to restrict speech far more strictly on a private platform than what the government can do for the puclic in any society with strong free speech laws - because that's not what those laws apply to. A restaurant can bar you from shouting loudly on their premises, or from wearing a shirt that breaks their dress code. Neither are restrictions on free speech.
Also, even freedom of speech did apply to private spaces, there would always be restrictions on speech. Threats of violence or murder are for example illegal in most countries. Slander is typically also, though these laws vary wildly in scope. Plenty of others too - in most countries you are compelled to identify yourself to police, for example (and compelled speech is equally in breach of "free speech" as restricted speech). Plenty of other examples too.
Outside of announcing a killing spree all should be treated the same.
So, say, you would be in favor of these forums being entirely unmoderated, and with them not having a block function? Because by your definition, both are restrictions on freedom of speech.
Fact checker has also turned into a half truth advocate for one side even though both views are usually half truths only one side can live
That ... is such a blatantly untrue statement that it just shows your massive bias. Serious fact checkers (like, say, Snopes.com) are in no way advocates for anything beyond facts. The problem you're describing is, as Steven Colbert famously put it a long time ago, that reality has a well known liberal bias. The main problem here is with so-called "conservatives" (who, depending on their beliefs, these days tend to span the spectrum from reactionaries to religious extremists to flat-out fascists) being oh-so deeply offended by the very existence of certain things and people in the world, and viewing these as inherently evil in various ways. And from this, they make up all kinds of scary stories to make other people agree with them ("trans women are assaulting cis women in bathrooms" - literally never happened; "children are harmed by early sex ed" - there is broad scientific consensus that early sex ed is broadly beneficial to the mental health, self-image and social skills of children; the same applies to nearly all right-wing rhetoric) - pure-bred scare tactics with minimal basis in any kind of truth. Or, as Kellyanne Conway put it, "alterative facts". That's what you make up when you know you're wrong but you
really want to stay in power (and ideally also hurt the people you hate).
Trust but verify. I think billionaires can be trusted, but only after they've proven themselves to the public. I think most billionaires are in fact, fine people. (In fact: if billionaires really wanted to screw over the world / this country, they absolutely have the power to do so). Most billionaires are neutral and/or even beneficial to the world IMO. There's a couple of bad actors in elite society however.
Even when we get to things like political donations or whatever, its good that billionaires are interested in politics and have... like... beliefs? Having both the money and moral aptitude to do something to the political environment is a good thing. Where things go wrong is when people are self-serving. Typical political donations IMO are those billionaires trying to help IMO, because the system is pay-to-win right now. So we do rely upon billionaires to fund the correct political candidates in our system.
If they really wanted to mess up our politics, they have the money to fund worse actors than who we have.
Wait ... have you been paying attention to the world for the past, say, half century? Stagnant wages for all but the richest; mounting environmental disasters in every direction; massive concentrations of wealth; ever-increasing undemocratic concentration of power with the wealthy (comes with the concentration of wealth, to a large degree) - the list goes on (and on, and on and on and on and on). The response to your "if billionaires wanted to screw over the world, they absolutely have the power to do so" is quite simple: yes, they have been busy doing so for a long, long time!
As for it being good that billionaires have beliefs ... not really. Seriously. Their enormous wealth gives them
massive power to influence the world in deeply troubling and fundamentally antidemocratic ways, and for the
vast majority of situations this power is used to further enrich themselves at the cost of ordinary people and the environment. Fighting health or environmental regulations, fighting unionization, fighting minimum wage increases, fighting people who they disagree with politically (in ways like buying newspapers or ... social media ...) - this isn't new. You're speaking of this as if it's all theoretical, while it has been reality for decades already.
The best thing would be for billionaires to just not exist. The mantra of them bringing the world forward is objectively untrue - most of their innovations are based on publicly funded research, and their wealth is mostly a result of beneficial conditions (such as inheriting wealth), timing, and luck. They aren't special or unique, just privileged and lucky. Entirely replaceable, and more harmful than beneficial to society.
My beef with Musk is due to his pattern of behavior over the last decade. I think I've seen enough to conclude him to be a self-serving bad actor without a doubt. But it should be noted that even self-serving bad-actors can turn over a new leaf and become productive in the long term. PT Barnum himself was a terrible actor for many decades, until late in life when he seemed to become a good philanthropist. With any luck, I'd like to see someone like Elon Musk grow up and actually become someone to truly look up to. For now, he's got this toxic tech-bro persona that's really not helpful to him or his followers.
So if you spend decades mistreating thousands of workers, robbing the societies you operate in of their wealth in order to hoard it for yourself, this is somehow alleviated if you give away some of it later? Yeah, sorry, you're being way too lenient. Heck, look at how billionaire wealth has exploded during the pandemic while essentially everyone else has struggled to get by - or just died. Billionaires are grifters sucking the lifeblood out of society, and their supposed benefits pale in comparison to the harm they do, whether directly or indirectly.