Twitter is selling itself to billionaire Elon Musk “for an estimated $44 billion.”
Since deals sometimes fall through at the last second, the sale may yet be thwarted. For example, the government could try to foul things up — objecting, perhaps, to the possibility that if Mr. Musk takes over, obnoxious repression of speech would be dealt a grievous blow.
So, fingers crossed. But say Musk now has Twitter. What next?
Well, Elon Musk should stick to his stated free-speech absolutism. He should unfetter speech on Twitter. He is already being pressured to keep banning “misinformation,” i.e., disagreement with people who certainly don’t want their own alleged misinformation to be censored, only their opponents’.
Others want “hurtful” speech — impassioned polemics and invectives by their adversaries — to be squelched.
Musk has said that Twitter should “just be very cautious” about imposing any bans and suspensions. This is vague. Does it not imply the wrong kind of wiggle room for dealing with controversy? Musk must make no attempt to fine-tune Twitter’s speech to appease the censor faction, for this tribe cannot be satisfied until all with whom they disagree are silenced.
Twitter requires massive, sweeping, immediate changes, including restoring the banned or suspended accounts of all users kicked off for “misinformation” and the like.
Ban terrorists and others calling for — or facilitating — criminal actions. That’s it.
Current Twitter employees who try to sabotage the more free-wheeling policies should be unceremoniously shown the door.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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3 replies on “Musk’s Twitter’s Must-Do’s”
I am a supporter of free speech; any fool should be able to get up on a soapbox, or in this case twitter feed, and prove to the world just how foolish he/she/whatever is.
I am not a supporter of anonymous speech. That’s why I always use my name associated with anything I say. My email is not yahoo123@yahoo.com.
My reasoning is that the speaker should be held accountable and responsible for what is said, and especially, what is done by listeners to that speech. If some fool displays a photograph of Paul Jacob or Vic Justes viewed through a rifle sight and some other fool shoots the real person, I believe that both should be held responsible for the act of aggression.
Ban terrorists and others calling for — or facilitating — criminal actions. That’s it.
Here we come to a problem with interpretation. It’s been said that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. People have called for the taking down of dictators. The dictator considers it criminal but many around the world will cheer for the ‘revolutionaries’. There are two sides to every story. Whom should we ban?
Properly, the term “terrorism” and coördinates refer to attacks directed against those who are neither combatants nor state officials. The purpose of terrorism is to injure indirectly those against whom the perpetrator is fighting by direct injury to those who have not injured nor attempted to injure the perpetrator.
Call other actions “terrorism” is dishonest propaganda. Denial that terrorism is such or using terms to distract from the point that some act is terrorism — regardless of what might be the further goals — is also dishonest propaganda.
Even if the ultimate goal of a terrorist is to establish a free society, she or he remains a terrorist. And even if a perpetrator has the very worst motives, attacking soldiers or state officials is not terrorism.
It is seldom difficult to identify terrorism as such. Any freedom fighter who is also a terrorist should be identified as both.