I'd rather see us fix our enforcement mechanisms to work better before trying to take off the filters on dangerous and violent free speech.
We already have free speech and consequences. Twitter and Musk have nothing to do with free speech issues.
You want absolute freedom of speech but then you want to limit a company and platform in what it says, which it does by allowing or disallowing certain content? And you would prefer a single person, who has a history of devious activity, having totalitarian control over said company and platform? It doesn’t make sense.
No we don't have it on the Internet. On the internet(including YC), the norm is that your speech is removed and/or you are blocked from further speech (as a consequence) if you say the wrong thing where "wrong" is defined by the platform operators.
Musk may choose to make Twitter an absolute free speech platform but he might choose to make it something else. I hope for the former. He might end up to turn it into something horrible or just leave it as is but I don't know why would you spend $50B to do just that.
Stuff that Hitler said are benign within the context of knowing what happened in WW2, his words are merely a historic relic and no one start putting Jews in camps just by reading his words. His words are not a spell that makes people do things when you read them. Back then his words caused harm because they were said within the context of 1930s-1940s Europe.
The context doesn't disappear when you block speech. Let the speech exists and enable fair pushback for the opponents of the said speech is the way to handle it, IMHO.
For example, instead of pretending that racists don't exists by deleting their arguments and accounts, let them say the things they have to say and enable the opponents of it have the same reach.
The "by itself" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Sure, if you post someone's home address with an allegation that they're a paedophile, the instruction to attack them doesn't harm them, it's people following the instruction. And the bombardment of words sent to harassment victims isn't the sole factor in the emotional state of harassment victims, and it's the virus that kills not the antivax sentiment etc etc.
But they harm people rather more directly than Twitter having the freedom to delete those words if its management feels that would be the responsible thing to do does...
That's why I advocate for platforms with structured identity secrecy. Here are some more details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31025271
See the problem here?
Think of this having absolute freedom over how you spend your money. There's no direct mechanism preventing you from buying illegal stuff but you can still get in trouble if you buy illegal stuff. This is not a contradiction.
So what is your view on content ranking algorithms? Should those be illegal, to ensure that the platform is indeed completely indifferent?
and if you disallow content ranking algos on twitter, then how do you search? Who or what gets to determine what is similar and/or relevant?
By that definition the entire world is an absolute free speech paradise already.
You can say anything you want. Sure you might be canceled, jailed, fined, killed, tortured, or anything else -- depending on what you say, who you say it to and where you say it. But you're absolutely free to say it!
On the internet platforms, admins can't do any of that but they can effectively silence you(IRL silencing you is very hard).
That sure stopped Purdue from telling everyone Oxycontin isn't addictive.
I don't advocate that speech shouldn't have consequences. I advocate that speech shouldn't be blocked. Twitter, or any platform, shouldn't be doing the police work. They should be indifferent to the speech like a telephone company is indifferent on what people speak on the phone and those who create problems should be dealt with appropriately through relevant channels.
If J&J claims that their talc powder is good for you, their false claim shouldn't be deleted by Twitter. Instead, the appropriate authority should take care of it and victims should collect damages. Their tweet should stay there as a relic.