A nonprofit organization that researches links between social media, hate and extremism has been threatened with a lawsuit by X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
The “free speech absolutist” strikes again to silence speach he personally doesn’t like.
He’s such a hero! Imagine where we would be without him.
Honestly it would be amazing.
A lot fewer doge investors and a lot fewer people got scammed into buying crypto.
It’s so mortifying that I bought into the Mush hype for a few years. It’s one of those “embarrassing things you did as a kid” levels of self cringe.
When he was just running Tesla and SpaceX, and generally keeping his mouth shut he seemed okay. It was around Hyperloop that he started to show his true self.
“By ‘free speech,’ I simply mean that which matches the law. I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law.”
– Musk Tweeted that after getting criticized for censoring Twitter in Turkey and India. So apparently if North Korea allowed Twitter, he’d happily censor away since that would be the law.
The good ol “Everything I say has super smart and deep meaning that needs to be explained everytime I make seemingly absurd, contradictory and short-sighted comments.” What a deep, mysterious and nuanced fellow.
Well he was right about one thing. Humour is legal again because this is hilarious.
This isn’t even just free speech it’s research. This mother fucker likes to sell himself as a tech-space-science-invovation guy when it’s clear he’s just an anti-intellectual grifter.
In order to win a libel suit it is my understanding they must prove the claims to be false. So if this goes to court they could end up proving in court that it is a matter of fact provable that Twitter has become more toxic since Musk took over. And then they would win. That would be brilliant.
That would require the researchers to be able to afford a lengthy trial, which I’m guessing they can’t. Rich people do this shit to scare people out of going to trial.
Good thing there are plenty of good lawyers that would cream their pants to take up a high profile slam dunk case like this pro bono or on contingency.
The ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center have some, I’m sure they would love to participate.
Can Twitter afford it? They don’t have any accountants anymore and they may be the ones who will go in the shitter against a lengthy trial. Their ad incentive program had like only 5 mil available and Musk became neutered the moment he had to pay 100 million to the disabled guy he was about to fire.
Or alternatively they end in court and Twitter prove that they are factually wrong and that twitter has become less “toxic” (or stayed the same amount of “toxic”).
Elon Musk’s slow transformation into Donald Trump is as disturbing as it is fascinating. Not much good at anything, but incredible at self-promotion so people think he is; obsessed with Twitter and conspiracy theories, then becoming a right-wing demagogue; refusing to pay people he owes and suing anyone who looks sideways at him. Few would have predicted this 10 years ago.
Not much good at anything, but incredible at self-promotion so people think he is
A friend of mine once made what I thought was an absolutely brilliant observation: “Self-promotion is the only skill that is consistently rewarded.”
Donald Trump, whether you love him or hate him, is actually charismatic and you can see why certain people like him. He’s a showman and he knows how to keep a grift going. Musk is not charismatic or likeable. I don’t even love to hate him like I do with Trump.
This is clearly a SLAPP lawsuit. Since civil penalties and fines don’t matter to Musk it seems the only way to enforce good behavior is with criminal ones.
It’s not clearly a slapp lawsuit.
If you make a claim like this you need to be able to defend it, as if it’s false it is libel. By making these claims they’re trying to hurt twitter, so twitter have every right to hold them accountable for their actions.
Okay
But nothing that has been said here implies it’s libel. In fact it’s research.
Are we really going to say researchers should be subject to lawsuits every time they find something? Sure maybe you can argue the research didn’t do any due diligence, but that’s not being implied here.
I think it’s very safe to say it’s a slapp lawsuit.
Defending your company against claims that are specifically made to hurt the company isn’t a SLAPP lawsuit. If they did their research properly and ethically and have all their documentation of how it was done and why etc then they should have no problem defending themselves. If they don’t, however, and went in trying to find evidence for their pre-determined conclusion as many, many, companies do, then they’re going to have problems - and rightfully so.
they should have no problem defending themselves
At great legal expense and/or personal energy expended, relative to the billionaire who can sue on a whim. That’s the point, to make the next person who might consider releasing something critical of Musk think twice.
Free speech absolutism doesn’t look like one would assume. It doesn’t include criticism, evidently.
You’re basically just saying that any lawsuit where one person has more money than the other, especially if one of them is a billionaire, is a SLAPP suit. That’s absurd and wrong on so many levels.
This “research” was made to try and justify a conclusion they’d already decided on, not to see if said conclusion is actually true. Their entire “research” is based around 5 popular accounts essentially. You can’t just say “musk encourages hate speech and hate speech has tripled since he bought twitter!” and release a “research report” and expect to not be taken to court for your claim, especially when the research is so obviously biased and unscientifically done.
Defending your company against claims that are specifically made to hurt the company isn’t a SLAPP lawsuit.
Odd how you automatically assume that the non-profit company is unethically trying to find evidence for a conclusion, but down in your other post you accept Musk’s articles wholeheartedly.
This is a waste of time.
I don’t accept musks articles wholeheartedly. Never said I did.
Odd how you automatically assume that the non-profit company is unethically trying to find evidence for a conclusion
Did you look at the actual “research” findings they released? The entire thing is based on the “fact” that the term “groomer” is classified as “hate speech” - which it isn’t. If one person called an LGBTQ+ person, who was jailed for being a paedophile and had been grooming kids as their teacher for example, a groomer and then 10 other people jumped to the convicted paedophiles defence or agreed, this non-profit company took that as 11 counts of hate speech, by their own admission on page 1 of their results:
Note that this analysis captures the volume of discourse around the ‘groomer’ narrative, which includes tweets defending the LGBTQ+ community as well as those leveling the slurs.
I shouldn’t have to tell you how clearly terrible this research is after you see that. Their conclusion is biased from the start because they have already made the conclusion that the term “groomer” is hate speech, and are then working backwards to try and make it seems like hate speech has grown at least 2x since musk took over based purely on the amount of discussion involving the word groomer, which isn’t even hate speech to begin with.
Did you look at the actual “research” findings they released? The entire thing is based on the “fact” that the term “groomer” is classified as “hate speech” - which it isn’t.
And that’s based entirely on whether or not you can read the word narrative, which does not mean the word groomer is the hate speech, but rather the narrative that LGBTQ+ people are trying to raise children for predatory purposes. That is the hate speech. That is the definition of groomer it means, and even then it means the narrative is the hate speech, not the specific word.
And the fact you posted that again after I already called you out on it says a lot about you.
And in case you didn’t understand, the thing you quoted said Groomer Narrative , which is about the conversation regarding grooming, not one specific word.
And that’s based entirely on whether or not you can read the word narrative, which does not mean the word groomer is the hate speech, but rather the narrative that LGBTQ+ people are trying to raise children for predatory purposes.
They didn’t go that deep though. They looked for any instances of a bunch of LGBT style terms and a bunch of terms to do with grooming.
And the fact you posted that again after I already called you out on it says a lot about you.
Are you talking about your one liner post that just said something vague about “narrative”?
And in case you didn’t understand, the thing you quoted said Groomer Narrative , which is about the conversation regarding grooming, not one specific word.
But again - they’re the ones that are deciding that the “narrative” around the term “groomer” is “hate speech”. They’re not the people that decide this. Their methodology also didn’t only count instances where people where using that narrative.
And anyway - grooming is bad. Calling someone that wants to teach 8 year olds about anal sex and condition them to be ok with grown men walking around them naked in female changing rooms is not ok, and well it kinda fits the definition of “grooming”. “Grooming” isn’t hate speech, nor is pointing out when it’s happening.
Fuck this guy. I’m embarrassed that there was a time that I thought he was alright. I hope he slips and falls on a steaming pile of dogshit.
Once upon a time he did seem to be okay (as far as billionaires can be).
Musk almost seemed philanthropic with his ventures of bringing forward the future with SpaceX and Tesla. Then almost suddenly he started to be vocal about certain politics and various bad practices came to light in how he behaved or treat his workforce.
In fact, it’s only until relatively recently it seems where the ultra wealthy seemed to be quite under the radar. Bezos, for example. Before and during his divorce you never really heard much about him. He seemed pretty likable in many ways. Then suddenly that changed, the media perception shifted and these people started getting lots of publicity and they were clearly unable to curate their image any longer.
He truly fell off the rails since covid.
From experience, he was just as bad before COVID. He just had better people keeping him in the lines.
If the evidence around changes in Twitter content might be harmful to the business model and alarming to advertisers?
If the shoe fits, then what?
In the letter, attorney [for Twitter] Alex Spiro questioned the expertise of the researchers and accused the center of trying to harm X’s reputation. The letter also suggested, without evidence, that the center received funds from some of X’s competitors
Is this enough for a countersuit?
Then Mr Musk said: “my dad can beat up your dad!” and ran away to knock over the bicycle of one of the researchers. Then everyone got ice cream.
If you mean a countersuit for libel, then no. Anything said as part of a court proceeding is immune from libel lawsuits.
Awwwww.
Makes sense but that is such any easy way to get things into the press with legal protections…
True, but remember it’s not libel if everyone assumes you’re lying.
Free speech y’all
Barbra Streisand called, she wants her effect back.
It feels like the Streisand effect is negatively impacting me/everyone else in this instance
I despise the guy, but I’m tired of hearing about every stupid exploit. He’s so fabulously rich that no negative publicity can really cause reprecussions, I feel like it now just keeps him constantly in the public eye a la Trump circa 2016
This would be a reasonable take if it weren’t for the fact that Twitter is, or was effectively the default platform for public discourse for most of the western world. What the Muskrat is doing to it has real, significant, and far-reaching consequences.
That may be true for the biggest and most far-reaching things he does, but we don’t need to know every daily controversy with changing the signage on a San Francisco building. It’s overload.
Every tweet he puts out with an ignorant opinion is probably not newsworthy enough to be disseminated widely; that’s actually exactly what he would want to happen.
Even dropping from 4 major Musk related outrage stories a day to a couple a week would be a much healthier discourse, without stamping out any important information like your concerned about.
Ultimately, it’s a good thing, because it’s making people leave that cesspool and actually go to other websites.
The thing that most stands out to me about Musk and his ilk isn’t their hate - it’s their cowardice.
If they would actually own their hate, I’d have some bare modicum of respect for them. At least then it would be a principled stance. A loathsome one to be sure, but at least principled.
But they’re too cowardly and weak-willed for that. They’re all telling it like it is and going their own way and fuck your feelings right up until someone calls them out on it, then they instantly turn into weepy schoolgirls moaning about how picked on and persecuted they are.
It’s projection. They shout about ‘snowflakes’ and ‘freedom of speech’. Or screech about ‘wokeness’ and all the other nonsense.
It’s only to deflect from the fact that they’re the snowflakes.
Most of them are too stupid to realise that’s what they’re doing. They’re too embarrassed to admit (often to even themselves) that they have no idea what freedom of speech actually is, or indeed any of the things are that they whine incessantly about. Utterly drowning in their cognitive dissonance.
They get whipped up into such a feverous stupour of fear that they can’t take a second to stop and actually think about what they’re being fed by their media rag of choice. They might actually realise that their stance doesn’t actually make any sense.
From Climate Change to Brexit. From Hunter Biden to Electric Vehicles. From ‘15minute cities’ to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Someone level headed will make a comment or raise an issue of ‘hey guys, maybe we should think about doing something about x. If we don’t then it’s probable that it will lead to something bad’. Something even as simple as offering a policy that will actually improve a great deal of people’s quality of life (including their own) with little cost. It’s all met with ruddy faced rage and flying spittle.
It’s absolute insanity.
I read your first paragraph too fast and read “freedom of screech”. Fits as well.
It’s because, truthfully, they have no other stance except those that either make them money or headlines.
They’ll have whatever fuck principles and stances that will give them either more money or more acknowledgement for their egos.
They published those lawyers’ letters, both from Muskiboi and the answer. Pretty entertaining read, actually.
Could you link those? I’d like to read them!
Looking over their concerns, I’m not sure that they have a leg to stand on. The claim they’re making is that they’ve measured an increase in hate-related tweets (I’ll take them at their word on this) and then they associate this with Musk taking over.
They present no evidence for this later claim and do not, as far as I can see, make any attempt to compare against increases in hate among other social media platforms.
Grooming, for example, is one topic they covered. But this is a topic that Republicans have been pushing increasingly as election season spins up. Musk didn’t cause that, and that kind of nonsense can be found on Facebook and reddit as well.
I’m inclined to sympathize with an underdog nonprofit, but in this case I just can’t see why they expected not to get pushback on such poorly grounded claims
Removed by mod
Threaten to sue? Maybe
Remember that in the legal process, discovery uncovers all truths and communications. Depositions are the one sand trap for people like Trump and Musk. If you lie under deposition, you get prison time. That’s why they rarely if ever agree to it.
I’ll bet a lot of money no suit is filed. This is all posturing for crazies to assume X sued them and it must not be true. Threatening to sue is the new spin doctoring.
Pure SLAPPery.
Musk will just sue, lose, appeal, lose, refile, lose and on and on until the non-profit simply run out of money.
I don’t think this non profit is seeking to “drive advertisers away”, Twitter and musk seem to be doing a pretty good job of that on their own!
