The Free World is in crisis in regards to freedom of speech and expression. We all need to remember that at no time in history have those who have restricted speech been the good guys ,and that is fact.
No one supports deliberate disinformation but unfortunately its part of the process....Let people make their own decisions, if not then who gets to make the call as to what is truth and what is not?
In the U.S. we have seen our Government try to control speech and then flat out lie to support their narrative. You are not free if you cant express yourself or your opinions without fear of retribution.
People have to be “allowed to be wrong” in the expression of their views/beliefs/speech because if they aren’t, then who gets to decide what actually is considered “wrong” and what can and cannot and should and should not be said, or thought, for that matter???
Is it just me or does it seem to be a bit strange that when it comes to being censured, it's never TicTok?
Right, like I'm sure that there is no dis/misinformation or outright propaganda being deliberately disseminated on a site joined at the hip to the Chinese government. Are they too afraid to poke the dragon?
Don't kid yourself. X is not a free speech platform. It is a billionaire ownee social media platform. They down rank and censor there too.
The way forward is Nostr. It's decentralized, free, hooked into crypto (if you want). The development community has even created Nostr-based websites that auto-populate with posts, by keyword.
You can choose your own client apps as you wish. I use Amethyst on a deGoogled (GrapheneOS) phone for example.
prior to X, we/america had a reputable and largely objective news industry, print and TV.
If someone or some media site crossed the line, they were roundly called out for it, and corrections and apologies were front page news. Not so today, if they even occur. Online formats are no better. "Meta" clearly bends the rules of fairness, they attribute it to "oh, our algorithm had an error, which we have fixed". BS to me. They knew what they were doing, waited to see what happens while "millions of viewers" consumed false info, then they got caught, but no consequences.
In the past 10 years, and probably starting maybe 20 years ago, the print industry started to be coopted by those who wanted to control what was seen/read. I loved reading print news, but not today. Television faced a similar evolution if you will, esp on the news reporting side.
For me, there is hardly a paper I can read that does not turn my stomach with the blatantly false information they print. Re TV, we don't even have a cable connection, and when I do see show offerings, they are so full of woke crap and garbage, that I don't watch. I have not watched a new weekly show for 5-7 years. The content does not interest me. Cable news is corrupt, and getting worse. They mostly get revenue from Pharma, and that is who they are true to.
re your point about servers and hosting your own show. I dont know what that takes, but I imagine you will still need to go through a major platform/provider to get to the masses who may want to hear or see you. I dont know anything about it, but it may be out of reach for the average person.
I’ve followed the work of economist Robert Reich for decades. Long before he was Labor Secretary under the Clinton administration, he was writing fascinating books on industrial organization and American living standards. Agree or disagree, I always learned from him and enjoyed the challenge of grappling with ideas that challenged my assumptions about the world. I’ve always regarded him as an honest observer.
This weekend, he wrote an article for the UK newspaper the Guardian in which he calls for the social platform X (formerly Twitter) to be banned and for its owner Elon Musk to be arrested for allowing “disinformation” and “misinformation” on the platform. “Regulators around the world should threaten Musk with arrest if he doesn’t stop disseminating lies and hate on X,” he wrote.
Reich is among many in the censorship camp who have proclaimed certain views to be dangerous to public order and therefore worthy of prosecution.
Reich’s call to jail Musk comes exactly at the time when the seemingly unthinkable happened in Brazil. A Supreme Court judge named Alexandre de Moraes, who apparently exercises autonomous autocratic power, outright banned the entire platform in the country. It is the most popular news application in the country. He further imposed criminal penalties on anyone who uses the app through a Virtual Private Network at $10,000 per day.
It is unenforceable of course but it opens up possible investigations of every single political dissenter in the country. Already there have been grave questions surrounding the legitimacy of the 2022 election that took ex-president Jair Messias Bolsonaro out and brought to power ex-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The voting results provoked the largest public protests in the country’s history, and hardened a resistance that has depended on alternative news sources, simply because the mainstream news in the country appears largely government-controlled.
It is not even controversial to say it plainly: this censorship is not about blocking falsehoods and misinformation. It is about entrenching a certain political perspective, that of Lula and his party. In the backdrop of the ban on X, the government had leaned hard on every other social-media platform to ban many accounts and throttle alternative voices. They were secret orders, and issued as such, but every platform complied.
Believing such requests were contrary to Brazilian law, which Elon Musk has pledged to follow as he must, X refused to block accounts simply because a judge told him too. After all, the Brazilian constitution says the following:
“Art. 5 IX—the expression of intellectual, artistic, scientific and communication activities is free, regardless of censorship or license; Art. 220. The manifestation of thought, creation, expression and information, in any form, process or vehicle, shall not suffer any restriction, in compliance with the provisions of this Constitution. § 2 Any and all censorship of a political, ideological and artistic nature is prohibited.”
Presuming those words to be the law, Elon refused to ban accounts and incurred the wrath of Lula’s party. Elon is hardly alone in facing this choice in the world of communication technologies. Every platform has a deep record of contact with government agents, in most every country. Most comply, which is why the Internet in general is a different place than it was five years ago. What’s been called the “Censorship Industrial Complex” is built out, global, and highly effective.
Elon paid $44 billion for Twitter precisely because he wanted it to serve as a bulwark against the incursions on free speech. This has cost him immensely in terms of advertising dollars. The advertising consortiums boycotted the platform. And keep in mind why. It is not because his rebranded platform was tilted politically to the right. It is because it permits the freedom to speak within the bounds of the law. That is not what the powers-that-be want these days.
Notice that the U.S. State Department has not expressed any real opposition to what is happening in Brazil, which is deeply disturbing. Ten and 15 years ago, the United States was the leading champion of free speech throughout the world. It insisted on social media that was open and free of government influence, even to the point of condemning Russia for demanding a backdoor to Telegram, even congratulating the CEO Pavel Durov for leaving the country.
Those days appear to be over, as many U.S. elites—Robert Reich among them—have tacitly approved of what is happening in Brazil. Certainly the Democratic ticket has had nothing to say, while the Republicans are now at least making an issue of it.
I’ve been in close contact with Brazilians throughout this ordeal. They are scared. They feel they are next on the list, not because they supported the 2022 “insurrection” which was really a mass protest. My friends have never publicly doubted the outcome of the election. And yet as opponents of Lula’s brand of socialism, they feel themselves to be targeted. And they warn that the United States could be next on the list.
It does appear these days that free speech hangs by a very thin thread. It’s helpful to imagine how things would be if Elon had not stood up and said no. All the other platforms fully went along without saying anything publicly even if they resented the bullying privately. Elon and X are being targeted precisely because he stood up and flatly said that the actions of the government contradict the laws of the country, which he has sworn to follow.
As of this writing, X is banned in China, North Korea, Russia, Turkmenistan, Myanmar, Venezuela, Iran, and now Brazil. It is banned in all these countries for one reason only: it permits people to be exposed to a variety of points of view. What’s at issue here is simple. It is politics. In all these countries, you can have all kinds of opinions on food, music, and technology but you must stay away from politics and, in some cases, religion, but even that is connected to politics too.
Freedom and democracy depend fundamentally on an informed public, which in turn exercises influence over the regime under which people live. That is the basic idea of post-feudal systems of governance. If we don’t have that, we have autocracy or totalitarianism. Some countries are fine with that. But presumably Western nations favor a different course, which is why free speech has such an exalted position in law.
Now this commitment is being put to the test, especially with communication tools that have opened the range of people’s opinions as never before. We believe that people have the right to speak and the right to hear. It is quite the commentary on our times that it has required the courage and commitment of one man who happens to be a multi-billionaire to make it real for the rest of us.
Because of my many travels in Brazil and because several of my books have been translated to Portuguese, I’ve developed a special interest in this case. It has startled and saddened me to see that the New York Times’s own coverage has tilted in favor of restrictions. I truly never thought I would live to see the day when such a fundamental postulate of civilized living would come into question and be so threatened in our time.
I want the freedom to read and comment on the works of Robert Reich. But according to his own words, he does not want you or me to have the right to read perspectives that contradict his own views. No one wins from this game. A forced consensus is not a stable one. If the censors win, they will inherit control of a distrustful and angry population. No one benefits from that.
I think the problem is that we essentially outsourced the concept of free speech to one global company (X/Twitter). If all of our communication goes through the server farms and algorithms of one company, how can we even call it "free"?
I think the solution is not to obsess about X and who they are banning or who they are banned by. No, the solution is to create a resilient information ecosystem that does not rely on one single company. We need more and better connected blogs, substacks, podcasts etc, and then we no longer even have to obsess about X for communication.
The problem is that people don’t understand or appreciate freedom of speech until it is gone. If X is taken down, do you really think Substack is immune to the same treatment?
The problem I have with X is that it is this one tool that everyone uses. Essentially, it is the single point of failure for free speech. If X has a monopoly on free speech, then yes, this will be a huge vulnerability to free speech.
Maybe substack is a bad example because it is also an individual company. But the point is: If people just use their individual websites and blogs, then no one can take those down. There are so many different ways in which people can express their views and opinions on the internet. If we took advantage of those, then we wouldn't have to worry about X.
I just think it is inappropriate to call X "free". It is a closed for-profit company with opaque algorithms that amplify specific messages. It is not a haven for well-researched facts and reflective thought that people seem to think it is.
what do you mean, that X is the only public "free" speech platform in the world? instgram, facebook (both stifled free speech at the behest of the Biden admin), tiktok (owned by the Chinese who control the outputs), Parler that was effectively shut down by Amazon, at the behest of the Biden admin.
X is essentially taking on the government censorship, by allowing virtually any view to appear , as are many others.
Then you have Rumble who is still very open and honest. Spotify with Joe Rogan.
AS you say, we have hundreds if not thousands of online forums folks can choose from to get their "news" , but they all have to have a platform in which to distribute their views. The platform is the key. Biden and Brazil and other supposedly developed countries are working to limit or shutdown those platforms, Brazil and X for example.
France and the dude they just arrested for vague and unspecific charges that may result in his platform being shutdown.
Musk is working very hard to keep his platform open and available.
The X theory here is a false flag to me. Keep up the good work Elon!!
Agree...Zuckerberg recently admitted to caving to government pressure to suppress information. Like it or not X is the only truly free spech platform right now.
I agree with what you say and understand why you are worried. But I disagree with your solutions.
I think the underlying problem is the reliance on platforms. As long as we rely on big platforms for communication, then we will always be vulnerable. Vulnerable to censorship by the platform and vulnerable to someone shutting off the platform.
On the other hand, there is no way anyone could stop you from hosting your own website and saying whatever you want to say. In that sense there is always free speech and it is impossible to keep you from what you want to say.
What the big platforms do is not enabling free speech (that is possible in many ways as I said) it is amplifying certain forms of speech. And I think this is really the question that people argue about. It is not: what are we allowed to say? But what type of speech should be amplified to billions of people?
full disclosure, I dont publish anything, just off and on comments re stories of interest on TFP, Daily Wire etc.
I feel you are confused though. To get your "message" out there, on your own website, you must use a platform. I have gmail. IF gmail (google) were pressured by the admin, or other countries governments to limit "misinformation, hate speech, etc", then they can easily turn off those messages. Thus limiting free speech. You can see folks who post on Youtube. Same thing applies, if Youtube is pressured, they can easily reduce ones exposure to the world.
I dont see X doing this , or doing this to any degree. The typical "inciting violence" , or "threatening someones life" on line, exceptions are minimal on X.
I feel Musk has stood his ground on what he is pressured to limit.
I think of Fuckerburg and Meta, who now admits to caving to government pressure and FBI "threats" and actively sensored and limited exposure to election issues, serious covid concerns etc. I feel he did this because he wants to be out in front of the fallout that is coming from all the government sensorship and curtailment of free speech the past 8+ years. Think about it, none of this occurred prior to Trump running for president in 2015-2016. Suddenly, we need to ensure our "democracy is secure", and people only see "fair and balanced news". What a croc of shit.
The other thing I don't get about X is: X/Twitter exists for about 10 years. So, if X is indeed essential for free speech and democracy, how could society ever evolve before X was invented? How is it that people put so much faith in X, when society has come so far before X was invented?
What does Norway owe us? Nought. We, or rather the Scots, owe them. De Jure much of the Highlands and Islands are by right Norwegian property. The Scots stiffed them out of the Kingdom of the Isles in the 15th century. Sad. All that oil they like to bang on about doesn't actually belong to them. When we've seen off the Starmtroopers, perhaps we should partition "Scotland" between England and Norway; we take the Eastern Shoulder as far as Edinburgh and they everything North of Loch Ness. The bill's due and we should send in the bailiffs . Wee Krankie and her be-kilted drunk & drug-addled Baubies can go hang. :-)
I appreciated the article on the assault on free speech around the world, and the necessary defense of Elon Musk as he is vilified by authoritarian regimes. Richard Reich's comment , as reported in the article, is shameful, and a foreshadowing of what will happen even here, if the first amendment is dismantled on the specious grounds of "misinformation" and "hate speech". Michael Moynihan's interview with the brave and "intrepid" Matt Taibbi on Honestly today was so important and timely. thanks.
Leave it to centrist Ollie to point out “right-wing” fake news. No fake news on the left. None. The legacy press is all real news. The only fake news comes from the right. You know, the democracy ending right wing political party where freedom is taken away and the US spirals into chaos and blah, blah, blah, etc, etc, etc. God have you nothing else to say?
I’m not sure that phrase is well stated but I did not interpret as you did. I think he highlighted “right-wing fake news” because so much of it turned out to be truth and people with an agenda are often afraid of truth and want it censored.
“There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech and especially around our democracy.”
This is just appalling. Guarantee you they'll try and prosecute Elon Musk for something if they come to power. And if the get control of the House and Senate, probably anyone who "misgenders" etc.
"What School Didn't Teach Us" - what a great series!
"And in a move to “decolonize the curriculum,” professors at the University of Nottingham in Britain have dropped the term Anglo-Saxon. The course in Viking and Anglo-Saxon Studies will now be titled “Viking and Early Medieval English."
"Anglo-Saxon" is largely a 19th Century Victorian affection, like "British". We've been the Englisc/Angelcynn since at least the Eighth Century. Among other things it leaves out the Jutes and Frisians, whose contribution to the English Settlement was not inconsiderable, and the Brythonic admixture; probably 40% of the whole and which seems to have happened far earlier than commonly thought. Cerdic, Ceawlin, Cedda and Cædwalla; hallowed founders of Wessex all carry Brythonic, "British" Celtic, names; and the better part of the Heptarchy was established around Romano-British civitates. Yes - I AM reclaiming "Diversity & Inclusion" as Early English invention! :-) Oh!... and mustn't offend our Northumbrian Correspondent by leaving out the considerable Norse contribution to the English Nation c.800-1100 AD. Bastard Normans needn't apply however. ;-)
The Free World is in crisis in regards to freedom of speech and expression. We all need to remember that at no time in history have those who have restricted speech been the good guys ,and that is fact.
No one supports deliberate disinformation but unfortunately its part of the process....Let people make their own decisions, if not then who gets to make the call as to what is truth and what is not?
In the U.S. we have seen our Government try to control speech and then flat out lie to support their narrative. You are not free if you cant express yourself or your opinions without fear of retribution.
People have to be “allowed to be wrong” in the expression of their views/beliefs/speech because if they aren’t, then who gets to decide what actually is considered “wrong” and what can and cannot and should and should not be said, or thought, for that matter???
Is it just me or does it seem to be a bit strange that when it comes to being censured, it's never TicTok?
Right, like I'm sure that there is no dis/misinformation or outright propaganda being deliberately disseminated on a site joined at the hip to the Chinese government. Are they too afraid to poke the dragon?
Don't kid yourself. X is not a free speech platform. It is a billionaire ownee social media platform. They down rank and censor there too.
The way forward is Nostr. It's decentralized, free, hooked into crypto (if you want). The development community has even created Nostr-based websites that auto-populate with posts, by keyword.
You can choose your own client apps as you wish. I use Amethyst on a deGoogled (GrapheneOS) phone for example.
Check it out, be ahead of the curve.
again thanks for the dialogue
my thoughts,
prior to X, we/america had a reputable and largely objective news industry, print and TV.
If someone or some media site crossed the line, they were roundly called out for it, and corrections and apologies were front page news. Not so today, if they even occur. Online formats are no better. "Meta" clearly bends the rules of fairness, they attribute it to "oh, our algorithm had an error, which we have fixed". BS to me. They knew what they were doing, waited to see what happens while "millions of viewers" consumed false info, then they got caught, but no consequences.
In the past 10 years, and probably starting maybe 20 years ago, the print industry started to be coopted by those who wanted to control what was seen/read. I loved reading print news, but not today. Television faced a similar evolution if you will, esp on the news reporting side.
For me, there is hardly a paper I can read that does not turn my stomach with the blatantly false information they print. Re TV, we don't even have a cable connection, and when I do see show offerings, they are so full of woke crap and garbage, that I don't watch. I have not watched a new weekly show for 5-7 years. The content does not interest me. Cable news is corrupt, and getting worse. They mostly get revenue from Pharma, and that is who they are true to.
re your point about servers and hosting your own show. I dont know what that takes, but I imagine you will still need to go through a major platform/provider to get to the masses who may want to hear or see you. I dont know anything about it, but it may be out of reach for the average person.
rich
The Global Showdown Over Free Speech
ADKq_Nav0iyrRveHKOCJDwZjE8wzH3FR8iFXaKktFpOsEzihmtrFcPRITsNMDLR0n6XN64MJROESHyZwsO2DjpoFDFOBTK8WMHn6WBU7W4jM7OwEIWxt44JGTg4R_sC-G03nvenXX4v3mMc5IeGWVTyMCKohg4Qy6v-p9ndDZQFhM1aQpwIKoJmB6i3XCg=s0-d-e1-ft.png
By Jeffrey Tucker
Commentary
I’ve followed the work of economist Robert Reich for decades. Long before he was Labor Secretary under the Clinton administration, he was writing fascinating books on industrial organization and American living standards. Agree or disagree, I always learned from him and enjoyed the challenge of grappling with ideas that challenged my assumptions about the world. I’ve always regarded him as an honest observer.
This weekend, he wrote an article for the UK newspaper the Guardian in which he calls for the social platform X (formerly Twitter) to be banned and for its owner Elon Musk to be arrested for allowing “disinformation” and “misinformation” on the platform. “Regulators around the world should threaten Musk with arrest if he doesn’t stop disseminating lies and hate on X,” he wrote.
Reich is among many in the censorship camp who have proclaimed certain views to be dangerous to public order and therefore worthy of prosecution.
Reich’s call to jail Musk comes exactly at the time when the seemingly unthinkable happened in Brazil. A Supreme Court judge named Alexandre de Moraes, who apparently exercises autonomous autocratic power, outright banned the entire platform in the country. It is the most popular news application in the country. He further imposed criminal penalties on anyone who uses the app through a Virtual Private Network at $10,000 per day.
It is unenforceable of course but it opens up possible investigations of every single political dissenter in the country. Already there have been grave questions surrounding the legitimacy of the 2022 election that took ex-president Jair Messias Bolsonaro out and brought to power ex-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The voting results provoked the largest public protests in the country’s history, and hardened a resistance that has depended on alternative news sources, simply because the mainstream news in the country appears largely government-controlled.
It is not even controversial to say it plainly: this censorship is not about blocking falsehoods and misinformation. It is about entrenching a certain political perspective, that of Lula and his party. In the backdrop of the ban on X, the government had leaned hard on every other social-media platform to ban many accounts and throttle alternative voices. They were secret orders, and issued as such, but every platform complied.
Believing such requests were contrary to Brazilian law, which Elon Musk has pledged to follow as he must, X refused to block accounts simply because a judge told him too. After all, the Brazilian constitution says the following:
“Art. 5 IX—the expression of intellectual, artistic, scientific and communication activities is free, regardless of censorship or license; Art. 220. The manifestation of thought, creation, expression and information, in any form, process or vehicle, shall not suffer any restriction, in compliance with the provisions of this Constitution. § 2 Any and all censorship of a political, ideological and artistic nature is prohibited.”
Presuming those words to be the law, Elon refused to ban accounts and incurred the wrath of Lula’s party. Elon is hardly alone in facing this choice in the world of communication technologies. Every platform has a deep record of contact with government agents, in most every country. Most comply, which is why the Internet in general is a different place than it was five years ago. What’s been called the “Censorship Industrial Complex” is built out, global, and highly effective.
Elon paid $44 billion for Twitter precisely because he wanted it to serve as a bulwark against the incursions on free speech. This has cost him immensely in terms of advertising dollars. The advertising consortiums boycotted the platform. And keep in mind why. It is not because his rebranded platform was tilted politically to the right. It is because it permits the freedom to speak within the bounds of the law. That is not what the powers-that-be want these days.
Notice that the U.S. State Department has not expressed any real opposition to what is happening in Brazil, which is deeply disturbing. Ten and 15 years ago, the United States was the leading champion of free speech throughout the world. It insisted on social media that was open and free of government influence, even to the point of condemning Russia for demanding a backdoor to Telegram, even congratulating the CEO Pavel Durov for leaving the country.
Those days appear to be over, as many U.S. elites—Robert Reich among them—have tacitly approved of what is happening in Brazil. Certainly the Democratic ticket has had nothing to say, while the Republicans are now at least making an issue of it.
I’ve been in close contact with Brazilians throughout this ordeal. They are scared. They feel they are next on the list, not because they supported the 2022 “insurrection” which was really a mass protest. My friends have never publicly doubted the outcome of the election. And yet as opponents of Lula’s brand of socialism, they feel themselves to be targeted. And they warn that the United States could be next on the list.
It does appear these days that free speech hangs by a very thin thread. It’s helpful to imagine how things would be if Elon had not stood up and said no. All the other platforms fully went along without saying anything publicly even if they resented the bullying privately. Elon and X are being targeted precisely because he stood up and flatly said that the actions of the government contradict the laws of the country, which he has sworn to follow.
As of this writing, X is banned in China, North Korea, Russia, Turkmenistan, Myanmar, Venezuela, Iran, and now Brazil. It is banned in all these countries for one reason only: it permits people to be exposed to a variety of points of view. What’s at issue here is simple. It is politics. In all these countries, you can have all kinds of opinions on food, music, and technology but you must stay away from politics and, in some cases, religion, but even that is connected to politics too.
Freedom and democracy depend fundamentally on an informed public, which in turn exercises influence over the regime under which people live. That is the basic idea of post-feudal systems of governance. If we don’t have that, we have autocracy or totalitarianism. Some countries are fine with that. But presumably Western nations favor a different course, which is why free speech has such an exalted position in law.
Now this commitment is being put to the test, especially with communication tools that have opened the range of people’s opinions as never before. We believe that people have the right to speak and the right to hear. It is quite the commentary on our times that it has required the courage and commitment of one man who happens to be a multi-billionaire to make it real for the rest of us.
Because of my many travels in Brazil and because several of my books have been translated to Portuguese, I’ve developed a special interest in this case. It has startled and saddened me to see that the New York Times’s own coverage has tilted in favor of restrictions. I truly never thought I would live to see the day when such a fundamental postulate of civilized living would come into question and be so threatened in our time.
I want the freedom to read and comment on the works of Robert Reich. But according to his own words, he does not want you or me to have the right to read perspectives that contradict his own views. No one wins from this game. A forced consensus is not a stable one. If the censors win, they will inherit control of a distrustful and angry population. No one benefits from that.
Sent from my iPhone
Gary W. Novara
good article, I like the content and you seem informed overall.
I like to make my own decisions on what I read, and make my own mistakes as well, that is what freedom of speech means.
rich
Freedom is never given; it must be fought and litigated anew by each generation.
I think the problem is that we essentially outsourced the concept of free speech to one global company (X/Twitter). If all of our communication goes through the server farms and algorithms of one company, how can we even call it "free"?
I think the solution is not to obsess about X and who they are banning or who they are banned by. No, the solution is to create a resilient information ecosystem that does not rely on one single company. We need more and better connected blogs, substacks, podcasts etc, and then we no longer even have to obsess about X for communication.
The problem is that people don’t understand or appreciate freedom of speech until it is gone. If X is taken down, do you really think Substack is immune to the same treatment?
The problem I have with X is that it is this one tool that everyone uses. Essentially, it is the single point of failure for free speech. If X has a monopoly on free speech, then yes, this will be a huge vulnerability to free speech.
Maybe substack is a bad example because it is also an individual company. But the point is: If people just use their individual websites and blogs, then no one can take those down. There are so many different ways in which people can express their views and opinions on the internet. If we took advantage of those, then we wouldn't have to worry about X.
I just think it is inappropriate to call X "free". It is a closed for-profit company with opaque algorithms that amplify specific messages. It is not a haven for well-researched facts and reflective thought that people seem to think it is.
X is to free speech what pornhub is to free love.
uh Felix
what do you mean, that X is the only public "free" speech platform in the world? instgram, facebook (both stifled free speech at the behest of the Biden admin), tiktok (owned by the Chinese who control the outputs), Parler that was effectively shut down by Amazon, at the behest of the Biden admin.
X is essentially taking on the government censorship, by allowing virtually any view to appear , as are many others.
Then you have Rumble who is still very open and honest. Spotify with Joe Rogan.
AS you say, we have hundreds if not thousands of online forums folks can choose from to get their "news" , but they all have to have a platform in which to distribute their views. The platform is the key. Biden and Brazil and other supposedly developed countries are working to limit or shutdown those platforms, Brazil and X for example.
France and the dude they just arrested for vague and unspecific charges that may result in his platform being shutdown.
Musk is working very hard to keep his platform open and available.
The X theory here is a false flag to me. Keep up the good work Elon!!
rich
Agree...Zuckerberg recently admitted to caving to government pressure to suppress information. Like it or not X is the only truly free spech platform right now.
I agree with what you say and understand why you are worried. But I disagree with your solutions.
I think the underlying problem is the reliance on platforms. As long as we rely on big platforms for communication, then we will always be vulnerable. Vulnerable to censorship by the platform and vulnerable to someone shutting off the platform.
On the other hand, there is no way anyone could stop you from hosting your own website and saying whatever you want to say. In that sense there is always free speech and it is impossible to keep you from what you want to say.
What the big platforms do is not enabling free speech (that is possible in many ways as I said) it is amplifying certain forms of speech. And I think this is really the question that people argue about. It is not: what are we allowed to say? But what type of speech should be amplified to billions of people?
Thanks for your comment,
full disclosure, I dont publish anything, just off and on comments re stories of interest on TFP, Daily Wire etc.
I feel you are confused though. To get your "message" out there, on your own website, you must use a platform. I have gmail. IF gmail (google) were pressured by the admin, or other countries governments to limit "misinformation, hate speech, etc", then they can easily turn off those messages. Thus limiting free speech. You can see folks who post on Youtube. Same thing applies, if Youtube is pressured, they can easily reduce ones exposure to the world.
I dont see X doing this , or doing this to any degree. The typical "inciting violence" , or "threatening someones life" on line, exceptions are minimal on X.
I feel Musk has stood his ground on what he is pressured to limit.
I think of Fuckerburg and Meta, who now admits to caving to government pressure and FBI "threats" and actively sensored and limited exposure to election issues, serious covid concerns etc. I feel he did this because he wants to be out in front of the fallout that is coming from all the government sensorship and curtailment of free speech the past 8+ years. Think about it, none of this occurred prior to Trump running for president in 2015-2016. Suddenly, we need to ensure our "democracy is secure", and people only see "fair and balanced news". What a croc of shit.
take care
and "Go Elon"
Rich
The other thing I don't get about X is: X/Twitter exists for about 10 years. So, if X is indeed essential for free speech and democracy, how could society ever evolve before X was invented? How is it that people put so much faith in X, when society has come so far before X was invented?
So what if you just host your own website on your own server?
Then you can just write what you want to write and don't have to bow down to anyone.
What does Norway owe us? Nought. We, or rather the Scots, owe them. De Jure much of the Highlands and Islands are by right Norwegian property. The Scots stiffed them out of the Kingdom of the Isles in the 15th century. Sad. All that oil they like to bang on about doesn't actually belong to them. When we've seen off the Starmtroopers, perhaps we should partition "Scotland" between England and Norway; we take the Eastern Shoulder as far as Edinburgh and they everything North of Loch Ness. The bill's due and we should send in the bailiffs . Wee Krankie and her be-kilted drunk & drug-addled Baubies can go hang. :-)
I appreciated the article on the assault on free speech around the world, and the necessary defense of Elon Musk as he is vilified by authoritarian regimes. Richard Reich's comment , as reported in the article, is shameful, and a foreshadowing of what will happen even here, if the first amendment is dismantled on the specious grounds of "misinformation" and "hate speech". Michael Moynihan's interview with the brave and "intrepid" Matt Taibbi on Honestly today was so important and timely. thanks.
Leave it to centrist Ollie to point out “right-wing” fake news. No fake news on the left. None. The legacy press is all real news. The only fake news comes from the right. You know, the democracy ending right wing political party where freedom is taken away and the US spirals into chaos and blah, blah, blah, etc, etc, etc. God have you nothing else to say?
I’m not sure that phrase is well stated but I did not interpret as you did. I think he highlighted “right-wing fake news” because so much of it turned out to be truth and people with an agenda are often afraid of truth and want it censored.
I could be wrong.
Right thinking people are silent? I don’t watch MSM, but I assume Fox leans right.
https://www.foxnews.com/video/6361355490112
And to Mallory…War Eagle!
“There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech and especially around our democracy.”
This is just appalling. Guarantee you they'll try and prosecute Elon Musk for something if they come to power. And if the get control of the House and Senate, probably anyone who "misgenders" etc.
"What School Didn't Teach Us" - what a great series!
"And in a move to “decolonize the curriculum,” professors at the University of Nottingham in Britain have dropped the term Anglo-Saxon. The course in Viking and Anglo-Saxon Studies will now be titled “Viking and Early Medieval English."
This is complete lunacy!
"Anglo-Saxon" is largely a 19th Century Victorian affection, like "British". We've been the Englisc/Angelcynn since at least the Eighth Century. Among other things it leaves out the Jutes and Frisians, whose contribution to the English Settlement was not inconsiderable, and the Brythonic admixture; probably 40% of the whole and which seems to have happened far earlier than commonly thought. Cerdic, Ceawlin, Cedda and Cædwalla; hallowed founders of Wessex all carry Brythonic, "British" Celtic, names; and the better part of the Heptarchy was established around Romano-British civitates. Yes - I AM reclaiming "Diversity & Inclusion" as Early English invention! :-) Oh!... and mustn't offend our Northumbrian Correspondent by leaving out the considerable Norse contribution to the English Nation c.800-1100 AD. Bastard Normans needn't apply however. ;-)
Anyone else see the irony in the Goldberg-Polin's speech at the DNC and our government letting Hersh and other hostages die?
Our government is absolutely despicable in their treatment of Israel and the hostages in their shameless pursuit of muslim votes.
Any Jew would have to be insane to vote for the impending Kamalacaust.