Musk's attack on free-speech

Friday, Apple canceled it’s $100-million+ advertisement spending on Twitter due to a report from MediaMatters that suggests ads appear next to neo-Nazi tweets. Musk has responded by threatening lawsuits:

The split second court opens on Monday, X Corp will be filing a thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters and ALL those who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company.

As an aside, it’s a briarpatch moment that’ll do Musk/Twitter no good and MediaMatters no harm — other than help MediaMatters funding as outraged donors open their pocketbooks.

But the main issue is one of “free-speech” — Musk is trying to silence MediaMatters.

Musk’s entire (stated) reason for buying Twitter was to defend “free-speech”, to stop the censorship of right-wingers. He imagines this is enough to burnish his bonafides, but it’s not. It’s not clear whether he cared about the principle of “free-speech” so much as cared about “right-wing speech”.

A “principle” is a thing you uphold for others, even when it doesn’t help yourself. Defending the speech of your friends isn’t principled. It’s only principled when you defend the speech of your enemies.

Musk is failing this test here, trying to use the legal system to silence MediaMatters. Whether speech should be free depends upon whether Musk agrees with it.

Of course, Musk doesn’t see things this way. He’ll point to all the critics he hasn’t silenced, all the criticisms against him that he allows on Twitter.

Yes, yes, but none of those criticism have cost him hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue. Principles are easy when there’s no consequence.

Musk goes onto list reasons why MediaMatter’s speech isn’t legitimate, like how they should have done their tests differently.

Yes, but this is just the same problem that every subject of news stories experiences. If the press is doing their job, they’ll never describe a subject how the subject wants to be described. Consider today’s test launch of SpaceX’s “Starship”. The press was all over the map, with some stories calling it a failure (albeit with a few successes), while others describe a stunning success (albeit with a few failures). This diversity of opinion is the entire purpose of free-speech.

Musk goes onto say that it’s MediaMatters who is the one attacking free-speech, by trying to intimidate him into censoring right-wingers on his platform.

This is the same nonsense as people who defend themselves by saying “I have a right to my own opinion!!!”. Calling somebody’s opinion stupid isn’t the same thing as trying to silence them, as stupid people assume. The same is true here. MediaMatters is criticizing, not silencing.

If not the law, what’s Twitter’s/Musk’s redress in this case? Advertisers are fleeing due to MediaMatters reports, and it’s unlikely that any rebuttal on Musk’s part is going to bring them back.

The unfortunate answer is this: succumb to pressure and moderate content.

This gets into the debate of moderation vs. censorship. But at the heart of it, Apple does what’s best for business. And what’s best for their business is not to associate with the sort of toxicity seen on platforms like 4chan. Whatever principles Musk has for wanting an anything-goes platform, it’s just not going to have advertisers. He already recognizes this and already moderates content.

Apple is the most valuable, well developed brand in the world. Apple’s moderation needs become your moderation needs. Apple’s branding needs become your branding needs. Twitter is going to have to suppress Nazis, and Musk’s personal account is going to have to stop boosting them. It’s not politics, it’s just business.

The point of this post is that Musk’s understanding of the free-speech concept is no better than the average ignorant person’s, which aligns free-speech with their own interests. They care about free-speech when speech they like is being silenced. They find excuses and exceptions to silence consequential speech that adversely affects their interests.