{"id":80112,"date":"2022-04-16T16:45:42","date_gmt":"2022-04-16T21:45:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=80112"},"modified":"2022-04-16T16:45:42","modified_gmt":"2022-04-16T21:45:42","slug":"80112","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=80112","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

BLUF:
\nElon Musk will not save free speech online. Even if his intentions really are good ones, the scale of the problem goes beyond one platform. And free speech online is too important to rely on the benevolence of billionaires. But his attempted takeover of Twitter has already done us a great service, in revealing how important censorship now is to America\u2019s permanently hysterical elites. <\/strong>(Just call them what they are: wanna-be tyrants)<\/p>\n

WHY ELON MUSK HAS RATTLED THEM<\/a><\/p>\n

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We stand here on the edge of tyranny\u2026 Elon Musk wants to buy Twitter. That, roughly speaking, has been the commentariat reaction in recent days as the world\u2019s richest man has launched a\u00a0takeover attempt<\/a>\u00a0of the social-media giant, citing his concerns about its censorious policies as his main motivation.<\/p>\n

Musk revealed last week that he had become Twitter\u2019s largest shareholder, with a 9.2 per cent stake. Now he\u2019s offered to buy the whole company for a cool $43 billion, a nice premium on its current worth. As it stands, Twitter\u2019s board is resisting and America\u2019s great and good have gone berserk.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>\u2019s Max Boot was swift out of the blocks. \u2018I am frightened by the impact on society and politics if Elon Musk acquires Twitter\u2019, Boot\u00a0tweeted<\/a>. \u2018He seems to believe that on social media anything goes. For democracy to survive, we need more content moderation, not less.\u2019<\/p>\n

On an even more demented note,\u00a0Robert Reich<\/a>, veteran of the Clinton and Obama administrations, essentially argued that Musk buying Twitter would put us on a fast track to fascism; that Musk\u2019s vision for an \u2018uncontrolled\u2019 internet was \u2018\u200b\u200bthe dream of every dictator, strongman, demagogue and modern-day robber baron\u2019.<\/p>\n

Reich wasn\u2019t the only one gripped by this interesting idea that dictators love free speech and that more of it online will bring the Third Reich back. New York University journalism professor \u200b\u200bJeff Jarvis had this\u00a0poetic response<\/a>\u00a0to Musk\u2019s bid: \u2018Today on Twitter feels like the last evening in a Berlin nightclub at the twilight of Weimar Germany.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

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Of course there are plenty of good reasons to be opposed to the world\u2019s richest man owning a portion of the modern public square. As Batya Ungar-Sargon\u00a0argued on\u00a0spiked<\/em><\/a>\u00a0last week, even genuine liberals should be uncomfortable with the fate of free speech online resting solely on which billionaire is in charge. There is also reason to believe Musk isn\u2019t the \u2018free speech absolutist\u2019 he claims to be.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not what Musk\u2019s critics are worried about. They\u2019re terrified that he is the real deal \u2013 that this is indeed a kind of ethical venture on his part to free up Twitter from censorship. As Musk put it at a TED conference in Vancouver yesterday: \u2018Twitter has become kind of the de facto town square, so it\u2019s really important that people have both the reality and perception that they are able to speak freely, in the bounds of the law.\u2019 This is what curdles his critics\u2019 blood.<\/p>\n

Amid all the fume and fury we see that censorship has become a core part of liberal-elite ideology. Politicians, think-tankers and commentators have got it into their heads that the threat to democracy comes not from censorship, but from an excess of freedom of speech \u2013 and that the state, Big Tech and corporate media must all do their bit to censor and protect civilisation.<\/p>\n

That this is the precise opposite of what liberal thinkers used to say doesn\u2019t seem to bother them. They use euphemisms like \u2018content moderation\u2019 and \u2018fighting misinformation\u2019 to justify the silencing of their political opponents. So rattled were these people by the Trump revolt \u2013 which they blamed on social-media algorithms and Russian bots \u2013 they now believe that censorship is all that stands between America and fascism.<\/p>\n

This is why supposed liberals and even leftists have become remarkably chilled out in recent years about Big Tech corporates using their unprecedented power to censor \u2013 culminating in the banning of the serving\u00a0American president<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0purging<\/a>\u00a0of thousands of his supporters. Indeed, it\u2019s interesting to note that so many of these people are suddenly terrified about billionaires controlling social media, now that the billionaire in question isn\u2019t quite so clubbable and says he supports free speech.<\/p>\n

The notion that free speech is somehow at odds with democracy is perverse. The two go hand in hand. And the primary threat to democracy today comes not from those fighting for free speech, but from those trying to institutionalise censorship. The\u00a0Hunter Biden laptop scandal<\/a>\u00a0is a prime example. In October 2020, Big Tech suppressed a story that was damaging to the Democrats\u00a0during an election campaign<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 a\u00a0New York Post<\/em>\u00a0scoop that Twitter and Facebook labelled \u2018misinformation\u2019 at the time, but which has since been stood up by other outlets. \u2018Content moderation\u2019 just means Big Tech putting its thumb on the scale.<\/p>\n

Elon Musk will not save free speech online. Even if his intentions really are good ones, the scale of the problem goes beyond one platform. And free speech online is too important to rely on the benevolence of billionaires. But his attempted takeover of Twitter has already done us a great service, in revealing how important censorship now is to America\u2019s permanently hysterical elites.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BLUF: Elon Musk will not save free speech online. Even if his intentions really are good ones, the scale of the problem goes beyond one platform. And free speech online is too important to rely on the benevolence of billionaires. But his attempted takeover of Twitter has already done us a great service, in revealing … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,75,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-enemies-foreign-domestic","category-media","category-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=80112"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80113,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80112\/revisions\/80113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=80112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=80112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=80112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}