Occasional well-thought-out, ambitious, and positive talking points combined with a whole lot of keeping his mouth shut seemed to work pretty well for him.
Oh so it is now "wise" to "keep mouth shut". No wonder the West is so screwed. It has a lot of "wise men". Very few, like Elon, who will put their money where their mouth is. What you consider "wise", in this context at least, is basically to just put your head down, accept the diktats of authority, entertain the crazed loonies in society and it is all sunshine and rainbows!
That’s been true since the dawn of communication. It’s called picking your battles. You don’t badmouth a judge while he’s considering your sentence or insult a robber while they have you tied up with a gun pointed at a loved one.
"while Musk is a proponent of free speech, he believes that moderation on Twitter should ‘hew close to the laws of countries in which Twitter operates"
India has laws on content moderation, so does China, Turkey and other countries listed in the article. What Law in Brazil did X break? Or was it the whims and fancies of the Judge?
Quoting from X post below [1]:
“When we attempted to defend ourselves in court, Judge de Moraes threatened our Brazilian legal representative with imprisonment. Even after she resigned, he froze all of her bank accounts. Our challenges against his manifestly illegal actions were either dismissed or ignored. Judge de Moraes’ colleagues on the Supreme Court are either unwilling or unable to stand up to him.
We are absolutely not insisting that other countries have the same free speech laws as the United States. The fundamental issue at stake here is that Judge de Moraes demands we break Brazil’s own laws. We simply won’t do that.
In the days to come, we will publish all of Judge de Moraes’ illegal demands and all related court filings in the interest of transparency.
Unlike other social media and technology platforms, we will not comply in secret with illegal orders.”
You keep saying “we”. Do you work for X, formerly Twitter? If not, who exactly are you? If you’re in any way related to the case or the companies or governments involved, there’s a major conflict of interest in this conversation and your defences. It’s good form to disclose those so that potential biases can be properly taken into consideration.
If you don’t have anything intelligent to say, yes, nothing is usually best.
> accept the diktats of authority
Is this not what Musk is doing in China? Does he not believe the Chinese have a right to free speech? If he actually cared, he would speak out about it. The fact that he’s choosing Chinese money over human rights, you might say that hurts the West.
> Is this not what Musk is doing in China? Does he not believe the Chinese have a right to free speech? If he actually cared, he would speak out about it. The fact that he’s choosing Chinese money over human rights, you might say that hurts the West.
China has a unilateral ban on all non-Chinese apps. Not just Twitter/X. They have the Great Firewall for a reason. Now for Musk to accept "diktats of authority", X should have been operating in China in the first place. It is not since 2009 at least. Whereas X was operating in Brazil until few days ago.
> If he actually cared, he would speak out about it. The fact that he’s choosing Chinese money over human rights
When he did he got reprimanded by the Chinese CCP. He did not give a fuck [1].
> you might say that hurts the West
The West does more trade with China than with any other country. And yes it does hurt the West considering it is so dependent on China for everything including medicines! And a lot of that has to do with "wise men" in politics who decided it was cool to establish trade relations with a Dictatorship in the 1970s and ensured that the entire World's supply chain relied on said Dictatorship. If not for these "wise men", none of us would have been dependent on China in the first place.
Free speech is a human right. Either Musk believes Chinese should enjoy free speech or he doesn’t. The fact that he seems to be more vocal about his business interests (Brazil) than actual human rights tells me he puts his mouth where his money is, not the other way around.
He has always said he believes everyone (which includes the Chinese too) should enjoy Free Speech (calling himself an absolutist) while at the same time saying that he will abide by Laws of the country. If the Chinese people want Free Speech it is for the Chinese people to revolt against the CCP. It is not Elon's decision as he is not operating X there. In the case of Brazil, the Judge wants X to break Brazilian laws, which X is not going to comply with. Simple as that. Free Speech became an issue only when the Judge banned X. It became an issue because Brazil has Free Speech Laws (or at least had in effect and not just on paper like China). If Brazil wants to go the CCP route then nothing can stop that from happening. Neither Elon, you or me.
