Thoughts on Elon Musk buying a stake in Twitter?

So is this edited and leaving out important information?

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I donā€™t click on TikTok links but unless that link is to the entire hearing - yes it is by definition edited and most probably leaving out important information.

Ha ok

Another link. Not tik tok. Guess this is edited too? True sign that someone is guilty is when they canā€™t answer a simple yes or no question.

Imo Twitter did most likely sensor people whose views didnā€™t align with theirs. And again IF thatā€™s true Iā€™m freaking glad Musk brought attention to it

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Twitter is a private company, they are more than welcome to decide what they want to allow on their platform and what they donā€™t. That shouldnā€™t be news to anyone or considered a gotcha.

The Trump Administration aka the government trying to get tweets they didnā€™t like censored is actual news. 1st amendment says government canā€™t restrict the speech of others, not that private companies, citizens and platforms canā€™t choose who and what they associated with.

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Thats true. But when you go around telling Congress, etc, that you arenā€™t doing what you actually are doing, thatā€™s a different issue altogether.

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Twitter is a social media platform and should be abiding by the first amendment. ā€œsocial media companies have First Amendment rights with respect to their own speech , they do not have an unconstrained right to suppress the speech of othersā€

And while maybe we can interpret that differently, they should be called out for only suppressing the side that they donā€™t agree with. Donā€™t get me started on the algorithms that are set up on these sites. Now if itā€™s a post that is hate speech or trumps posts in regards to last Januaryā€™s nightmare then yes that shouldnā€™t be allowed either.

Exactly. And thatā€™s what Iā€™m watching. They arenā€™t answering questions or doing the ā€œIā€™m not aware of thatā€. Answer the yes or no questions. If you arenā€™t lying you have nothing to worry about.

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Social media companies arenā€™t public goods. Thereā€™s definitely an argument to be made that social media companies should be an actual public good. But they are non-government private companies. They arenā€™t bound by the 1st amendment.

The 1st amendment binds the government and only the government. Private citizens, companies and platforms are not constrained by the 1st amendment to provide ā€œfree speechā€ opportunities nor can they be forced to associate with others.

Just as I am under no obligation to host someone I find vile or listen to viewpoints I vehemently disagree with at my home or anywhere else, private companies and platforms have the same right to not host individual speech and to not associate (also part of the 1st amendment). Itā€™s why Elon Musk can ban the accounts heā€™s chosen to ban on Twitter since he purchased the platform. Same behavior.

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Yes, Elon Musk can run Twitter as he pleases. What he could get in trouble for would be lying to Congress about what he is doing. People said Twitter was taking actions against certain posters. Twitter denied that. The truth is though, they were.

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Yup!!!

No, Twitter has no obligation to respect the speech of others. They do in fact have an unconstrained right to suppress the speech of others on their own platform.

Think about this very forum that youā€™re on. The speech of every poster here is suppressed and constrained by forum guidelines and moderators. You are not free to post whatever you want either here or on Twitter.

Iā€™m not sure where you got that phrase you quoted, but whoever said it is deeply ignorant of the what the First Amendment actually says.

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Like flat-earthers, etc.

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I see no problem with people posting flat earth theories. Itā€™s silly, itā€™s science that has been done ages ago, but whatever floats their boat. Iā€™d prefer to know if a science colleague is a flat-earther before we write that proposal together.

Iā€™m not on Twitter and have never been a fan of Muskā€™s, but here are my observations from the outside. There seems to be a lot more animosity against Musk since he bought Twitter (lots of hit pieces in the media, news articles only naming the make of a vehicle in an accident if itā€™s a Tesla etc.) but also a lot less news articles passing tweets off as reporting. All of this just makes me want to join Twitter. Not going to though.

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The COVID deniers and anti-vax nut-jobs were much more dangerous than flat-earthers.

Twitter, a private company, had no obligation to give them a platform. Just like CC has no obligation to give them a platform. Even if they went to Stanford.

Not sure what you mean, but Twitter is become more of a cesspool by the day. Misinformation abounds.

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More issues with another Musk-ran co:

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/elon-musks-neuralink-probed-over-material-shipments/

ā€œThe Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine said medical files it obtained for the monkeys suggest that transported neural devices may have been contaminated with antibiotic-resistant pathogens including Staphylococcus and Klebsiella, which can cause pneumonia, bloodstream infections, and meningitis. The group said the devices have also have been contaminated with Corynebacterium ulcerans, an ā€œemerging human pathogenā€ that can produce fatal diphtheria. The devices may also have come from monkeys infected with Herpes B.ā€

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Iā€™m not on Twitter so I canā€™t qualify nor quantify the level of insanity that one might find there. The difference between flat earth and Covid, however, is that there is still a lot to research and determine with regards to Covid. Itā€™s relatively new science that continues to be done as we speak. I am interested in hearing ideas that might be left or right of center. Reading science journals, and news articles from different countries was (and still is) helpful in understanding some of my own skepticism in the face of so much certainty with regards to Covid and Covid policy in my state and the country.

I was getting very annoyed before Musk bought Twitter that journalists would quote Twitter and call it a day with their reporting or research. I donā€™t see that happening so much any more. Maybe they donā€™t want to be associated with the platform anymore? I donā€™t know, but itā€™s a good thing. Go talk to people.

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You can find that same quote here: Social media companies and common carrier status: a primer | Brookings

I think ā€œdeeply ignorantā€ is too strong. There are colorable arguments on both sides about whether social media companies can (let alone should) be regulated as common carriers, and thereā€™s an appeals court split on the issue, which the Supreme Court will ultimately need to resolve.

Fundamentally the question is whether social media companies are more like a telephone company (which canā€™t refuse to serve people who might use their phone lines to convey opinions the company disagrees with) or newspapers (who can curate the content according to the editorā€™s preferences).

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Itā€™s worth noting that the article that quote comes from ā€” while, yes, it does include the line ā€œsocial media companies have First Amendment rights with respect to their own speech, they do not have an unconstrained right to suppress the speech of othersā€ ā€” the author is including that line in a section of ā€œsome arguments people might make in favor of government regulation of social media companiesā€, but says repeatedly that, in their opinion, those arguments are incorrect.

Villasenor (the author) mentions, clearly, at the beginning of his article ā€œI think that the First Amendment should prevent government attempts to regulate social media companies as common carriers.ā€

He wraps it up by reiterating himself: ā€œregulating social media companies as common carriers would contravene the First Amendment. It would also create a cascade of problematic consequences, including making many online spaces even more toxic than they are today.ā€

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I donā€™t disagree. However the Fifth Circuit took the opposite view when Texas passed a law declaring that social media companies would be regulated as common carriers.

And thereā€™s a lot of nuance in telecommunications regulation about common carrier status. Many new companies who you might naturally think of as common carriers (including for example Elon Muskā€™s Starlink satellite system) say that they arenā€™t common carriers because it comes with burdensome FCC regulation. But Iā€™m doubtful that they would have strong grounds to appeal a new law declaring that they were common carriers.