I hate that people are doing all these weird gymnastics to reconcile being a champion of free speech and firing people that criticize you.
Yeah, guys, it might be legal (maybe not) but it IS hypocritical. If you want to champion free speech you can't do this shit. Stop with the debate team bullshit and exercise some common sense.
You can be a champion of free speech in public in the sense that you do not have your freedom of speech taken away from you. However SpaceX is not a public forum for your speech. You can't abuse internal email lists to have your speech reach more people than it would normally.
I can't believe I have to say this, but the hypocrisy comes from the fact that Elon, and many others, believe (or in Elon's case, purports to believe) that private entities should not moderate their own products, and instead guarantee an audience for people[0]. They don't. That's not what censorship is.
[0] Now Elon has recently said in that video call to Twitter employees that free speech doesn't mean a right to an audience, but it's hard to square that statement with his previous statements.
> I can't believe I have to say this, but the hypocrisy comes from the fact that Elon, and many others, believe (or in Elon's case, purports to believe) that private entities should not moderate their own products, and instead guarantee an audience for people[0]. They don't. That's not what censorship is.
This is incoherent. Musk can express that he wants Twitter to moderate according to free speech principles--that's not the same thing as asserting that Twitter has a legal responsibility to moderate according to free speech principles.
Moreover, censorship doesn't require the censor to be the State--a private platform can censor content, and they often do.
Per the ACLU:
> Censorship, the suppression of words, images, or ideas that are "offensive," happens whenever some people succeed in imposing their personal political or moral values on others. Censorship can be carried out by the government as well as private pressure groups.
Per Wikipedia:
> Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient".[2][3][4] Censorship can be conducted by governments,[5] private institutions and other controlling bodies.
> I can't believe I have to say this, but the hypocrisy comes from the fact that Elon, and many others, believe (or in Elon's case, purports to believe) that private entities should not moderate their own products
This is untrue. He believes that the Twitter _product_ should be run like a public forum, town square, shopping mall, or whatever you want to call it.
> and instead guarantee an audience for people
Also untrue. Let's use Trump in this example. He doesn't believe everyone should be forced to listen to Trump. He believes everyone should be able to access everything Trump has ever said on the platform (barring illegal things that must be removed).
That's not what freedom of speech is about. You're free to say what you want in any country in the world, once. The first amendment is about protecting you from some of the consequences of that. Not specifically firing, but that's not his issue with Twitter either.
If this was a government censoring, banning journalists, stories and the media or even blocking the whole internet and punishing companies that criticize them or to stop the letter being published, that totally violates free speech.
Generally, It doesn’t apply to ‘privately owned companies’ Just like how these employees are free to criticize their employer it does not mean there are freedom of consequences and employers are just as free to fire their employees.
That is why they stay anonymous and criticize their employer just like what happened with Coinbase.
> I hate that people are doing all these weird gymnastics to reconcile being a champion of free speech and firing people that criticize you.
You're just seeing the psychic ripples of all the Elon fanboys and pseudo-libertarian technofascists wrestling with the cognitive dissonance of their savior turning out to be a pretty vanilla corporate capitalist.
After all the chest-thumping and general toxicity I find their discomfort endlessly amusing.
I hate that people are doing all these weird gymnastics to reconcile being a champion of free speech and firing people that criticize you.
Yeah, guys, it might be legal (maybe not) but it IS hypocritical. If you want to champion free speech you can't do this shit. Stop with the debate team bullshit and exercise some common sense.