Also retaliation is very much still illegal, not that it matters.

Wasn't that an old Soviet or similar joke? "In {country_name}, we have freedom of speech. What we don't have is freedom after speech".

Is it true that there is freedom of speech in the Soviet Union, just like in the USA?.

Yes. In the USA you can stand in front of the White House and shout "Down with Reagan!", and you will not be punished. Equally, you can stand in Red Square in Moscow and yell "Down with Reagan!", and you will still not be punished.

Weird the incestuous circles of tech.

I think what's really funny is that North Korea has freedom of speech in their constitution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_North_Korea#:~...

You have a right to speak. You just need to expect a bullet through your head shortly afterward.

I think what you are saying can be perceived (and maybe it inherently is) partisan, in the sense that it focuses on one aspect entirely to prove a larger point - I think we are missing out on many of the things that the right restricted - good ol' Fifties' McArthyism of course comes quickly to mind, but I think through much of the history (but not all!), and certainly throughout the global geography, it was the conservative / establishment voices that had the power to restrict progressive speech. If instead, in your post you made a point that going against the cultural zeitgest of the times is always inherently risky and with consequences, you'd have been far more engaging and accepted rather than focusing on one side and attaching a ranty YouTube about "wokeness". It especially doesn't sound non-conspiratorial and non-partisan once you talk about "evil influences" and "this war will be won" - that means we're not having a discussion, you're preaching a specific point of view.

(FWIW, I don't like either side overzealously restricting what's permissible to discuss - I'm in my own world of no mental or verbal taboos and a marketplace of ideas, which is the rarest side of all it turns out -- neutral simply means all sides can gang up on you :D )

I also didn't mention things like McCarthyism because:

A) I'm not very familiar with it.

B) From what little I've heard, McCarthyism seems to me like an failure in that it didn't go far enough where it should and went too far where it shouldn't.

C) I don't see it as relevant to today's culture war, which is a consequence of the left having successfully gained cultural ascendancy and become an incredible threat to our country.

Edit 2: I remembered faintly reading about McCarthyism once, and it turns out I'm right: I read chapter six of "Debunking Zinn", titled, "Writing the Red Menace out of history." To quote from the chapter:

"Senator Joesph McCarthy -- always an easy mark for the left -- is presented as representative of all anti-Communists. But it's a fact that Soviet expansion was enabled by Americans' lack of due diligence when it came to weeding out Communist spies."

And, to McCarthy's inffectiveness, the book says:

"Christopher Anddrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, among other anti-communists, claim that 'McCarthy ultimately did more for the Soviet cause than any agent of influence the KBG ever had'."

And later: "[McCarthy] was also not careful in making his charges, and he became more reckless as his drinking, some say, got worse."

Edit: "Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds" makes brief mention to this 1954 book defending Joe McCarthy: https://www.amazon.com/McCarthy-His-Enemies-William-Buckley/.... I have not read it, but if I were to learn more about McCarthyism I would probably personally start there.

From one book review:

"However, what I love most about this book is the authors challenge the reader to do his or her own thinking about communism in the 50's and what needed to be done during that time. They ask questions and then provide hypothetical answers which returns over and over again the same verdict. That rooting out communism and subversives in government was an extremely tough job, and it required a tough man to do the job, and he would have to play "hardball" to get the facts. To make the job even more difficult is that McCarthy was up against powerful establishments in all aspects of society."

Your comment is partisan. The implication you are making is the right does not participate in the activities you are pointing out. Regardless of how correct you are, you are making a political comment against the left on a site that tries to avoid political arguments. You are also using partisan trigger words.

I think you are in the right place.

Here’s my opinion: make your own points without regurgitating obvious partisan “positions”; avoid flamebait partisan language such as “woke”; before writing perhaps consider if HN is the right forum for your content and choose the appropriate forum for your points; consider steel-manning your argument rather than right-handed punches to low hanging straw piñatas.

Reading your reply, you are repeating the same mistakes that I was responding to. An inappropriate comment about the “left”. Your response comes across to me as a hidden political dismissal that doesn’t acknowledge or respond to the simple point I made - I think your response is an irrelevant shift of the goalposts.

Meanwhile this thread is off-topic and a tree of responses is not appropriate. Your original comment has triggered divisive and controversial (flaming) responses from others - a strong indication your comment is objective and intolerant. If your comment is worthwhile, other people will defend your comment for you. At least you are checking your threads link.

The HN guidelines are always worth reading again, and again, and again: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: meta: I am engaging with you for two reasons: 1) if your near future comments are too divisive then I would expect this thread to be looked at, and 2) I truly wish to read your future high quality, strong, thoughtful and substantive contributions. I try to analyse how good/bad my own comments are: https://danluu.com/hn-comments/

Actually it's the rightists that are against those things. And this is also not a partisan comment, it's just an objective viewpoint.

Edit: here's a fun college course: https://www.hws.edu/catalogue/pdf/catalogue_16-18.pdf

White Mythologies: Objectivity, Meritocracy, and Other Social Constructions ... Students will explore how systematic logics that position “the West” and “whiteness” as the ideal manifest through such social constructions as objectivity, meritocracy, and race.

Don't need a seminal research paper to know that.

And they were not "conservative" in any sense except trying to "conserve" slavery. The elite intellectual "progressive" democrats of the time were also the most racist. They were the ones, for instance, that pushed eugenics for blacks (Planned Parenthood), and racial superiority based on scientific data:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-liberals-who-lov...

On the other hand, more Republicans voted for the civil rights act as a percentage than Democrats: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1041302509432817073

You're not doing so hot with your example.

Then as now, both parties were big tents and this isn't true, but it is true that the elite intellectual racists were more likely to be Democrats; that weakened in the overlapping pair of political realignments starting with the New Deal, especially the second one triggered by LBJ’s support of the Civil Rights Act.

The first schism between the national Democrats and the racists that went to form the “Dixiecrats” (itself triggered by integration policies supported by national Democrats) fell apart because the Dixiecrats weren't viable as a major party on their own, but the the second schism triggered by LBJ became permanent when the Republicans made attracting the disaffected racists a durable political strategy. That group of proud and open racists migrated from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party between the 1960s and the 1990s, which is why the Confederate-flag waving, openly anti-black, slavery-justifying-and-minimizing, etc., crowd is now consistently behind (or in front leading) the GOP.

Forget it, you're arguing against a bad faith argument.

OP said something along the lines of the "KKK was a conservative groups". GP's response was "ackchully the KKK was Democrats, as if "Democrat" was the opposite of "Conservative".

I also agree that both parties are big tents. But I will continue to argue that the democrats were and are still the more racist party: https://nypost.com/2016/03/21/the-progressive-movements-horr...

"During the heyday of the Progressive movement in the early 20th century, people on the left were in the forefront of those promoting doctrines of innate, genetic inferiority of not only blacks but also of people from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe, as compared to people from Western Europe.

Liberals today tend to either glide over the undeniable racism of Progressive President Woodrow Wilson or else treat it as an anomaly of some sort. But racism on the left at that time was not an anomaly, either for Wilson or for numerous other stalwarts of the Progressive movement."

Your repeated attempts at condescension say much about you and how unfairly you feel life and other people treat you.

This leftist vs non-leftist idea doesn't seem to align with the article. You seem to be saying that if the letter had been more leftist, they wouldn't have been fired from SpaceX. I don't think that's the case.

Here's a fun one: https://winteryknight.com/2020/11/16/target-bans-book-critic...

"An official Target company Twitter account announced Thursday they had removed author Abigail Shrier’s book, “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters” from the retailer’s “assortment” after an unverified Twitter user complained the book questions transgender ideology, especially the concept of irreversible hormonal and surgical experimentation on minors."

The Nuremberg racial laws were particularly influenced by the laws implementing American anti-Black racism once the descendants of Africans abducted into enslavement were nominally free.

If you never want to sleep easy again, tour the section exploring how Germany went from fragile democracy into the state that was, within less than a decade, willing and able to systematically murder millions. Germans aren't special.

You might be interested to look a bit more at the history of the parties and how their conservative/progressive tendencies wax and wane over time. Saying the KKK was aligned with Democrats as not helpful without context of time.

Kevin Kruse (https://mobile.twitter.com/KevinMKruse) writes a lot about this, which is how I learned that in days gone by, I would have despised the state of the Democrats and embraced the Republicans - their policies were almost the total opposite of what you'd expect.

I take it you're not at all familiar with Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy, and it's embrace of the Dixiecrats, or actually quite a lot of relevant American political history

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwa...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

Get off the internet and talk to an actual human who knows what they're talking about.

  > The culture war is really around the fruits of the labor of leftists who have fought extremely hard to shift our tolerance window as far left as possible. If you say something they don't like, they will work to impose every consequence they can to both silence you and scare others into compliance.

  > The culture war will be fought and won once these evil influences are eradicated and people are free to express a non-leftist political opinion without fear of being fired or ostracized from society, and when the left starts prioritizing truth and objectivity over winning.

im not seeing this vast left-wing conspiracy, but maybe you can enlighten me....

What's your best example of either of these?

>while openly lying and distorting truth

Same, best example of either lying or distorting truth.

>The culture war will be fought and won once these evil influences are eradicated

How is a culture war fought? What is the metric for winning? And how are the opponent's influences eradicated, exactly?

>non-leftist political opinion without fear of being fired or ostracized

What is an example of a non-leftist political opinion that is suppressed due to fear of being fired or ostracized?

https://www.prageru.com/petition/youtube

https://summit.news/2022/01/27/youtube-bans-another-prominen...

Open lying is harder to prove. Who admits they openly lied? But we can at least show many, many, examples of leftist media being factually incorrect. Here's one: https://www.city-journal.org/exposing-the-washington-post-on....

Here's another fun one: https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/01/media/washington-post-new-yor....

It's always great when all the falsehoods are attributed to "anonymous sources".

A culture war is fought by winning hearts and minds, one by one, and also taking back influence, institutions, and power.

A non-leftist political opinion would be that the 2020 riots were worse for our country than January 6. an NFL coach recently got fined $100,000 and faced severe backlash for expressing this opinion: https://www.dailywire.com/news/nfl-coach-jack-del-rio-apolog....

At least he didn't lose his job, yet? Others aren't as lucky when they "slip up": https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/22/media/rick-santorum-cnn-depar...

Elon takes the “freedom from consequences” interpretation of free speech when it comes to his complaints about twitter and “cancel culture”, then turns around and effectively cancels these employees for speaking their mind.

Sorry what ? This is objectively incorrect. If you get banned from social media - twitter, facebook/whatsapp, youtube, your messaging reach is utterly destroyed compared to simply getting fired from a job.

Oh yeah? What other platforms are there?

Figured we had a more high brow audience here clearly I was mistaken

This is classic HN “introverted programmers don’t use it so clearly it’s worthless”. The “normies” aren’t on HN or IRC or browsing your obscure forum - they’re on Twitter and that’s it.

I understand the point, but I hate this saying. After all, what more is the government throwing you in jail for speech than a “consequence”?

The spirit of “free speech” does not give you a free pass to impose draconian “consequences” in response to speech you don’t like.

“the more an owner, for his advantage, opens up his property for use by the public in general, the more do his rights become circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who use it.” (Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U.S. 501, 506 (1946).

The Supreme Court has since backtracked on the Marsh opinion somewhat, but some states such as California have ruled that reasonable exercise of speech and of petition rights on privately owned shopping malls are protected activities.

What are the Terms of Service (EULA) of a public shopping mall? What are they for Twitter?

When you click on "I agree" to the terms of software, or a website, what did you agree to? Where do you click "I agree" when visiting a shopping mall?

There is usually an inconspicuously posted sign that indicates 'no loitering, no spitting, no foul language' etc. or they reserve the right to throw you out.

In Manhattan Community Access v. Halleck[0], however, the Court ruled against the premise in regards to a public access television station, and maintained that the station remained a private actor despite being a "public forum."

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Community_Access_Cor...

By that definition, everyone in the world has freedom of speech.

To focus the scope, it means openly criticizing the governing body is protected and not a punishable offense _by the government_ (people can and have been let go for political posts on social media written from their home, if the employer felt it was damaging to the company's reputation).

And no, literally billions of people in the world do not have that right.

SpaceX is not a town square and never will be, nor is any private company. I doubt even Twitter employees will be able to say what they like on Twitter without fear of being fired from Twitter. It's only about removing you from the platform.

There's no hypocrisy, it lines up exactly with his past actions and his past words.

Both are private property.

Both are private property, yes. And you are correct that twitter legally has as much right to do whatever they want with their product and restrict it however they want as United Airlines does. That's not the point being made here at all and has nothing to do with the discussion at hand.

The parent comment I originally replied to was saying "how can twitter even he a public square if it is a private company, that's a contradiction". And I was just saying that there is nothing preventing a private company from having a product that behaves like a public square, hence that isn't a contradiction or an oxymoron.

Thus stands the difference. Capisce?

I'm unclear how that means I should be able to say whatever I want at my job and still keep the job. For example, if I work at Tesla and say I think electric cars are stupid and the ICE are superior, I would imagine I would be fired. I don't think that's a free speech violation, but rather that my opinion is in conflict with the goals of the company.

I hate that people are doing all these weird gymnastics to reconcile being a champion of free speech and firing people that criticize you.

Yeah, guys, it might be legal (maybe not) but it IS hypocritical. If you want to champion free speech you can't do this shit. Stop with the debate team bullshit and exercise some common sense.

[0] Now Elon has recently said in that video call to Twitter employees that free speech doesn't mean a right to an audience, but it's hard to square that statement with his previous statements.

This is incoherent. Musk can express that he wants Twitter to moderate according to free speech principles--that's not the same thing as asserting that Twitter has a legal responsibility to moderate according to free speech principles.

Moreover, censorship doesn't require the censor to be the State--a private platform can censor content, and they often do.

Per the ACLU:

> Censorship, the suppression of words, images, or ideas that are "offensive," happens whenever some people succeed in imposing their personal political or moral values on others. Censorship can be carried out by the government as well as private pressure groups.

Per Wikipedia:

> Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient".[2][3][4] Censorship can be conducted by governments,[5] private institutions and other controlling bodies.

This is untrue. He believes that the Twitter _product_ should be run like a public forum, town square, shopping mall, or whatever you want to call it.

> and instead guarantee an audience for people

Also untrue. Let's use Trump in this example. He doesn't believe everyone should be forced to listen to Trump. He believes everyone should be able to access everything Trump has ever said on the platform (barring illegal things that must be removed).

Free speech protects individuals from government prosecution only. It has nothing to do with employment or labor law.

Generally, It doesn’t apply to ‘privately owned companies’ Just like how these employees are free to criticize their employer it does not mean there are freedom of consequences and employers are just as free to fire their employees.

That is why they stay anonymous and criticize their employer just like what happened with Coinbase.

Why let a pesky little thing like intellectual honesty stand in the way of jumping on a good hate bandwagon?

You're just seeing the psychic ripples of all the Elon fanboys and pseudo-libertarian technofascists wrestling with the cognitive dissonance of their savior turning out to be a pretty vanilla corporate capitalist.

After all the chest-thumping and general toxicity I find their discomfort endlessly amusing.

No doubt it is amusing, but it doesn't compare to the detractors having a meltdown after his every move.

Criticism of Musk's action here may come both from those who in fact are in the "free speech absolutist" camp and want both the Twitter deplorables and the corporate gadflies to be protected from retaliation, and from those who are just in the latter position and want the opposite pattern, but I think only the first group can bring a charge of hypocrisy (still incorrect, as it ignores the orthogonality) without it making themselves guilty of higher-order hypocrisy.

If you look at other companies that give the woke cry bullies and their subjective feelings precedent over the mission, you can see that it creates a toxic workplace, hostile environments, further segmentation of workers into cliques, and other unpleasantries that hurt the mission, and ultimately the bottom line for that company.

If you look at the nuances; they were fired for participating in actions that can not only be considered insubordination, but also abuse of company resources and harassment of employees who just want to do their job and not cater to the worthless feelings of people who have crippling self-esteem issues.

Dumping the woke cry babies is the right decision here. Engagement only serves to embolden work cry bullies who are used to getting their way.

By reacting emotionally and using terms like "work cry babies" you weaken your own ability to think critically and fairly about this. You are also more likely to derail the conversation and prevent debate with people who may disagree with your views but could be open to them. Save these sorts of insults and grandstanding for reddit and twitter and keep them off of hn.

> If you look at other companies that give the woke cry bullies and their subjective feelings precedent over the mission, you can see that it creates a toxic workplace, hostile environments, further segmentation of workers into cliques, and other unpleasantries that hurt the mission, and ultimately the bottom line for that company.

I am willing to explore your argument that engaging with members of a company that are overly critical of that company hurts the company in the long term. Can you cite some examples?

> If you look at the nuances; they were fired for participating in actions that can not only be considered insubordination

The question I have is not if the company did or did not have a legal right to fire them. I'll leave that to the legal professionals. Rather I wonder if engagement with dissenters in this case would be harmful or productive. I tend to favor the notion that systems which attempt to maintain unity by casting out those who offer dissenting public voices tend to become monocultures and echo chambers. I don't discount the value of monocultures and echo chambers, they can be extremely valuable, but I don't see how SpaceX benefits by building one.

Harmful.

First, Any dissent around company product choices is acceptable but comes with a risk depending on the level of expression. Smart companies learn to cultivate this kind of dissent and provided it doesn't detract from the mission itself, its probably the right decision.

Second, the company should fire on the spot any dissent that is not directly work related. It detracts from the mission.

The petition in question violated both precepts of allowable dissent.

For #1 let's say for the sake of argument that the dissent was honest, and strictly trained at the company's tactics in marketing (i fundamentally disagree, see #2) . If the marketing tactics are a failure, that is the board's prerogative to change CEO. However, the petition is violating the allowable levels of expression by usurping power from the Board itself. That is a level of expression many levels above the petitioner's role or level in the org, extremely noisy (affects all employees), and public. The petition literally violated all norms around tolerable dissent, and should be fireable on the spot.

For #2, the petition asked silence CEO speech which is not 100% product related. The hint of this is that the petition is loaded with complaints about "public behavior" and "embarrassment" which are clues into the intent is for this to be a political decision to intervene, not a product one. Words like embarrassment when targeting an individuals are meant to discuss individuals, not products. More importantly, when the petition targets speech which includes a number of opinions that are personal, and not product, this becomes political.

Let's take examples of each:

For #1, would people would get fired on the spot if employees circulated a petition saying they wanted the CPO to be "reined in" for refusing to carry Elise chassis in models subsequent to the Roadster ? The answer is yes.

For #2 This used to be very rare in the past, so it was never tested until recently.. I believe the most high-profile firing has been the firing of the Red Bull - US CEO and US Head of HR by the German board. They were engaged in activism not work related, and both got the boot.

A long time ago when I was a young engineer I worked at a few hundred person startup. Many of the employees of this startup were from cultures spoke bluntly and embraced cynicism and pessimism. Every two weeks the CEO would have an all hands meeting. For any hour he would answer any question from any employee. Many of these questions were, to my American ears, as disrespectful. The question might assume the CEO took a particular action for some sinister reason such as having stolen company funds and getting ready to fire everyone. Or just blunt say to the CEO "I think all the executives are incompetent and should be fired". The hardest questions were questions about "if market changes and we are fucked, here are indicator the market is changed and we are fucked."

The CEO would listen to the question and then respond. The responses were never defensive, never rude but honest and straight forward. As far as I could tell everyone felt better after those meetings and respected the CEO more for openly facing and addressing as best he could the fears that everyone at the company had.

> Second, the company should fire on the spot any dissent that is not directly work related. It detracts from the mission.

I do consider this dissent at SpaceX to be work related. Musk does significant harm the SpaceX's mission with his public actions. If he was an employee he would probably be fired, but the issue is that SpaceX can't really fire Musk. There is no good action the company can take. I assume they have privately asked Musk to take actions which harm the company less and I assume that worked as well as when the SEC had Musk agree to pass all tweets through is legal dept. before posting. How to you foster dissent when the major goal that dissent is something which is not actually achievable and would derail the company. I hope this serves as a wakeup call to Musk and he looks at the problems he is causing by his behavior and decides that making life multi-planetary is more important than say calling a rescue diver a pedo or smoking weed on the Joe Rogan show.

At its core we are discussing are situations that are dire enough that a decent fraction of the company feels their leadership is fucking around and hurting the company. Whatever angle we look at it, the company will already be segmented and toxic: it couldn’t stop its leadership from fucking up for whatever length of time, leadership doesn’t give a shit about employees reaction, and managers can’t properly gauge nor progressively address the internal repercussions.

“Focusing on the mission” is already compromised at that point, and you’ll need to chose between the leader that doesn’t give enough shit, or the employees that stepped up too prominently.

Vision maybe. Politics are irrelevant to work. It is impossible to achieve 100% alignment in an organization of more than one person. And even then I'm not sure it is possible.

He even went with him to Russia before SpaceX was founded,

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin

Mike G also started the Space Development Agency, with a goal of funding govt LEO constellations with specifications matching Starlink.

Regardless, businesses don't care what you did in the past - for that, your reward is your compensation - you are hired for what you do tomorrow.

Irrelevant to being hired or kept on as the president of the company by the owners, of which Musk is only 17% (AFAICT). If more owners of the company do not want him as an employee (president, whatever), then they can fire him.

Whether that would be a good idea or not is something else. (Apple 'fired' Jobs in the 1980s.)

Did he attempt to supress the letter?

Freedom of speech != freedom from action

They have the power to work someplace else.

If you have a full pantry, go ahead and bite.

Or live somewhere where you get free food.

No, not really, since this has very little to do with free speech. Free speech does not mean that you can communicate with your superiors, or in fact any other person you're in some relationship with (spouse, family member, etc.), in arbitrary ways with no consequences.

if we want to somehow generalize the ethos of whatever is legal should be allowed (so basically he thinks Twitter is too strict) then we might conclude that he favors more "open dialogue" and this does feel contrary to firing employees for criticism. (though I haven't seen the letter, it's possible the authors/signers explicitly said something that simply make it clear that they won't continue to work in this or that way, and the company decided that okay, the company won't change so they have to go anyway - see the Gebru ultimatum)

Regardless, will be interesting to see how this plays out. If I were one of those employees, I'd be talking to a lawyer. If I was one of the employees still working at SpaceX, I'd be talking about a union. We recently unionized at my employer, it is great to know we have each other's back.

I do think Musk was within his legal rights to fire these people, but that does not mean it was the right thing to do or that he should be immune from criticism. Especially after he's made such a big fuss about free speech being so important.

I think in the USA insubordination is neither here nor there, because US employers can dismiss people just because they don't like them.

The direct order has to be something important that is part of your job.

Less-serious insubordination should be dealt with by means of formal warnings, and processes to help the employee improve. But if, for example, I'm ordered to attend a customer meeting at 10:00am, and I refuse on the grounds that I'm planning to stay in bed until 11:00am, I can be fired summmarily. The employer would be well-advised to document everything scrupulously.

Ultimately an employer can fire anyone they want; HR processes and procedures can be rigged. In a legal dispute between an employer and a worker, the employer has the upper hand. If a worker wins an employment dispute, they might keep their job; but they now have a hostile employer.

Sure there is, and trivially so- your employer decided to fire you in both cases, in neither did 20000 hyperonline strangers fire you.

* The guy who got fired for cracking his knuckles in a way that looked vaguely like an "OK sign" which is offensive to some extreme left-wing people

* The data scientist who got fired for citing research on the efficacy of nonviolent protest

* The journalist who was pressured to leave his workplace for interviewing a black man whose views didn't match a certain narrative about what black people believe

* The professor who was suspended for saying a Chinese word that sounds vaguely like an English slur

Moreover, cancellation is "pressuring someone's employer to fire them". This is different than an employer taking offense to an employee's speech and firing them as a consequence.

If Musk has said something like "employers shouldn't fire employees on the basis of their speech" (and he may have done, I really don't know), then he's probably being hypocritical, but not on the basis of cancel culture.

> If Musk has said something like "employers shouldn't fire employees on the basis of their speech" (and he may have done, I really don't know), then he's probably being hypocritical, but not on the basis of cancel culture.

My comment was necessarily about Musk himself, but also about his defenders. Thus, it doesn't matter much whether Musk himself is a hypocrite based on any of his own statements, but rather whether his supporters (for lack of a better term) are hypocrites based on positions they have previously staked out.

I was explicitly noting that many cases of cancellation are unjust. Giving examples is appropriate.

> rather whether his supporters (for lack of a better term) are hypocrites based on positions they have previously staked out.

I’m sure some are. Any person with a large following will have many people who are hypocrites. A huge swath of the general population is hypocritical, so I would expect some hypocrites among Musk’s followers.

I don’t know how you could credibly argue that his supporters in general are hypocritical in a way which is independent from whether or not he is.

Since this is a closely held company there are different rules as well.

If some of the comments in this thread is any indicator, people seem to believe it should be a protected class, which is extremely disturbing.

"being insubordinate is not a protected class" does not mean "be subordinate no matter what"

The bit about Musk's behavior gets quoted because it fits with various agendas. But the letter itself is mostly a plea for making SpaceX a more inclusive workplace for people of different races, genders, and so on. To establish clear HR policies rather than current vague rules like "no assholes".

That's pretty far into the protected category of talking about improving workplace conditions.

Publicly address and condemn Elon’s harmful Twitter behavior. SpaceX must swiftly and explicitly separate itself from Elon’s personal brand.

This is the spirit of their demands and they made it personal.

Not a lawyer, but the primary action point being about the twitter behavior seems to significantly cast doubt upon what would've otherwise seemingly been a slam dunk labor law/retaliation violation case.

Someone will get to have their name attached to the decision declaring any government interference in how a business is run unconstitutional.

Unions, 40 hour work week, desegregation, certainly employment discrimination, OSHA, the ADA? I worry people like Musk know they have the money to take it that far and that the supreme court would love to completely deregulate businesses.

Congress has the power to regulate commerce.

[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/commerce_clause

"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;"

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlei#section8

To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;

There is a long road of interpretation from there to telling a manager of a restaurant that he has to hire black waiters. And the important bits of it all came in the last century. It is certain that the Founders never INTENDED for Congress to have its current authority.

It seems unlikely that the Supreme Court wants to create the chaos of overturning all of that to go back to the original definition. But it is within their official authority to do so.

We need to be wary because I, for one, totally believe they would make any regulations illegal given a case that gave them the chance.

Preventing chaos is clearly not something they feel responsibility for, they're making extremely high impact decisions against hard fought civil rights in favor of just about any other interested party.

You can't use "talking about improving workplace conditions" as an excuse for creating a hostile work environment by harassing your coworkers (BTW, sending unsolicited emails can very much be harassment). The NLRB has specifically ruled about this as part of the Google-James Damore case.

> while some parts of Damore’s memo were legally protected by workplace regulations, “the statements regarding biological differences between the sexes were so harmful, discriminatory, and disruptive as to be unprotected.”

They didn't rule he was creating a hostile work environment by "sending unsolicited emails"; they ruled that the memo contained statements that were "discriminatory and constituted sexual harassment." This just doesn't apply here -- Damore's strongest argument was that he was discussing working conditions, but the arguments in his actual memo about "women's heightened neuroticism and men's prevalence at the top of the IQ distribution" were the problem.

In this SpaceX case, they were very clearly discussing working conditions in a substantial part of the memo, and it's quite possible that is in fact protected speech. What muddies it up is adding the parts about also needing to tell Elon to stop being an ass on Twitter; that's probably not protected.

Completely agreed - this reads very much like a protected letter about working conditions, up until the authors made a terrible error by citing the primary action item as addressing Elon's twitter behavior, and putting working conditions as the secondary and tertiary demands. IANAL, but it seems like that will give a lot of ammo to SpaceX's lawyers in what would've otherwise been an open and shut retaliation case.

https://www.wired.com/story/labor-board-rules-google-firing-...

You can't be fired for wanting to make your workplace better. You can be fired for making it worse for others. Often the same behavior can be seen as either or both. And courts exist to adjudicate these disagreements.

That said, I hate the example. However discussing that would be a derail, so I won't.

Two or more employees addressing their employer about improving their pay. Two or more employees discussing work-related issues beyond pay, such as safety concerns, with each other. An employee speaking to an employer on behalf of one or more co-workers about improving workplace conditions."

Would that letter fall under that? I think there is at least a somewhat credible claim it could (and also a credible opposing counterclaim that the form of speech was meant to be defamatory/disparaging, and not a protected activity), but I am not a lawyer.

That said, most places in the US are at-will employment, so you can fire your employees for no reason.

> That's like comparing rocket motors to lettuce.

No, they're clearly not that different. Both involve laboring for others (usually members of the ownership class), under some degree of compulsion. Though the nature of that compulsion can be different (e.g. using the threat of the whip vs. using the threat of starvation).

The benefit of "being able to change jobs" is often significantly overstated and highly contextual. It's not like anyone can just pick any job they like: they have to pick what they're offered. For some people, that can be highly restricted, to the point of being serf-like.

For things to be "not that different" implies they are interchangeable to an extent. I'd certainly be interested to know the result if you surveyed a random sample of 100 employed people and asked if they'd be willing to forego work to enter slavery.

Some leaders, and following that some cultures are receptive of open criticism and disagreement. Others are absolutely not. It's up to each person to read the room.

"As a starting point, we are putting forth the following categories of action items, the specifics of which we would like to discuss in person with the executive team within a month:

Publicly address and condemn Elon’s harmful Twitter behavior. SpaceX must swiftly and explicitly separate itself from Elon’s personal brand."

I don't know why anyone would think that that would go over well.

SpaceX employees are the hand that's feeding Musk. Unless you think he can get to Mars by himself.

SpaceX’s success is at least in part due to a culture of actually doing stuff. It’s difficult to create that culture, and the work to maintain it is done at the top.

Perhaps wokeness is incompatible with a culture of solving hard technical problems to the exclusion of all other concerns?

If SpaceX weren't there, they'd be working for someone else or themselves - he needs them more than they need him.

That's not the reality of the situation though. SpaceX's current staff isn't the last cohort of people who are willing to work for musk, and therefore are hugely responsible for the company and it's output. They're but cogs amongst the machine that Musk has built. Cogs are replaceable. Cogs don't function properly if not properly utilized by the engineer.

Musk is the engineer. He's the only person at SpaceX, or Tesla, who is actually irreplaceable. I know people rant and rave about "people aren't replaceable cogs" but they truly are, and that's good. If this wasn't the case for 99.9% of the world, society wouldn't function that well. I'm a cog, and I know that. It isn't shameful and shouldn't be viewed as such.

Elon Musk is not a god and his billion dollar ideas would be worthless were it not for thousands of people who have worked tirelessly because they believe in a common goal. SpaceX is nothing without the labor of others - they are the hand that feeds him, not the other way around.

I don't think people who are doing literal rocket science at SpaceX would "go back to designing widgets" if SpaceX folded tomorrow. This implies that they would somehow not be doing meaningful work without Musk's money?

Labor means nothing if not done for an intelligent purpose. For S0aceX employees, Elon Musk is the source of that intelligent purpose. Of course labor beyond what one man can supply will be necessary for any worthwhile pursuit. What matters is not the labor, but the source of the intelligent purpose that gives the labor a common goal and guides it towards it.

It's not arrogance to want to work on something you're passionate about without a petulant billionaire figurehead actively devaluing your work.

Then they are free to seek gainful employment at any number of other spaceship companies.

You seem to assume that if you just show up at SpaceX's door with a briefcase and say "I want to work on space travel" that you are somehow entitled to a job there. No.

> without a petulant billionaire

Just admit you hate the guy for personal reasons. That's OK; you're allowed to have an opinion. Most people wouldn't purposely go work at a place that's run by a guy they despise then try to undermine said business. A better grasp of the employer-employee relationship would be helpful.

I never said anything like this. I said it's not arrogant to want to work on something you're passionate about without worrying about that work being devalued.

Yes, I dislike Elon Musk's behavior. Because I take personal issue with his actions does not preclude my ability to discuss SpaceX - in the same way that I discuss politicians whose views I don't agree with.

The letter in question is an exhortation from employees who are concerned that his behavior is undermining the business. Somehow, you've managed to twist this completely around into employees wanting to harm the business.

In fact, certain kinds of persons are prone to stir up these kinds of issues to distract from their own poor performance in their actual job. Which evidently isn’t internal “activism.”

The level of entitlement it takes to expect to be paid to undermine the organization that’s paying one ought to be shocking, but it evidently isn’t.

> The level of entitlement it takes to expect to be paid to undermine the organization that’s paying one ought to be shocking, but it evidently isn’t.

The employees literally wrote a letter saying an individual's actions were undermining the organization. The letter is an exhortation to protect SpaceX (in terms of finance and reputation) from Musk's behavior.

Also, SpaceX definitely has spun itself up as a “this is for the good of all humanity” type company and attracts employees who really are bought-in on the whole Grand Vision. To the writers of this letters, that Grand Vision > Elon the Person.

If Shotwell runs the company then why is Musk getting the heat?

Nice try, but no. Employees don't feed employers.

As a class. Individually they're absolutely powerless and class solidarity is very difficult to achieve, perhaps impossible. There's a reason labor movements tend to involve elements that physically coerce other members of the class (i.e., 'scabs') from crossing picket lines. Capitalists don't need very many specific members of the proletariat, they just need enough. Musk can fire his critics at will for a very long time without any real threat to his business unless his employees and any potential employees were to coalesce and oppose him en masse.

I doubt that they will do this. If I were in Musk's position I'd fire these people and I'd fire similar critics at twitter. Capitalist led enterprises are essentially monarchical. I don't like this but it is reality and it's best if everyone understands it. I prefer mask off to the alternative.

It's a free country. Workers are free to quit, form their own collective and run it as they see fit. It's perfectly legal.

Collaborative organizational forms: on communities, crowds, and new hybrids https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s41469-018-0036-3

Self-organization in Communicating Groups: the emergence of coordination, shared references and collective intelligence http://pcp.vub.ac.be/Papers/Barcelona-LanguageSO.pdf

There's never been much agreement on what marxism means. I believe Marx himself disliked the term and claimed to not be a marxist.

It saves a lot of stress to ask fired-up people what it is they're for (methodologically speaking) and not bothering to argue if they don't have a coherent or actionable answer.

The next right step in technology (that would allow real progress in space exploration while having good environmental impact) is fusion energy. Developing chemical rockets to send a human to Mars seems like a misguided endeavor.

Without focuswe may run out of runway to develop and deploy clean energy technology - https://xkcd.com/1732/

“For all its material advantages, the sedentary life has left us edgy, unfulfilled. Even after 400 generations in villages and cities, we haven’t forgotten. The open road still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood. We invest far-off places with a certain romance. This appeal, I suspect, has been meticulously crafted by natural selection as an essential element in our survival. Long summers, mild winters, rich harvests, plentiful game—none of them lasts forever. It is beyond our powers to predict the future. Catastrophic events have a way of sneaking up on us, of catching us unaware. Your own life, or your band’s, or even your species’ might be owed to a restless few—drawn, by a craving they can hardly articulate or understand, to undiscovered lands and new worlds.

Herman Melville, in Moby Dick, spoke for wanderers in all epochs and meridians: “I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas…”

Maybe it’s a little early. Maybe the time is not quite yet. But those other worlds— promising untold opportunities—beckon.

Then it's just a logistics problem.

Plus whoever founds the successful human civilisation on Mars gets into the history books, fusion is a massive team effort that won't have one specific person remembered.

Making a self-sustaining city on Mars is impossible. And even if not impossible, certainly costs many tens of trillions of dollars, which is as good as.

1 million was estimated, which would cost $100 billion

I think Elon's a tool, and this is a bad move, but to think someone should be protected from consequence of what they express is absurd.

It's his company, he makes the decisions. The market should respond if that's a big enough deal, and I'm 100% sure that's starting to happen (though it's exceedingly slow in the space domain).

I have to assume they knew when they penned the letter that they would find out whether their leader could take criticism and help them make a better company and product together, or react immaturely and let them know that their time would be better spent elsewhere. Seems they got their answer.

In any case, yeah, Musk owns the company and has the right to fire people for criticizing his business decisions. Bold strategy, we'll see how it turns out for him.

I think there's also this game that gets played now where internal dissent tries to whip up external dissenters to get their way within companies. Leaders need to decide if this is happening or not and act accordingly.

This is cringe worthy. They knew exactly what would happen and expected to rally support online. I can't say with certainty what the ultimate goal was.

This is common and has been common for hundreds of years.

Burn the boss, lose your job.

It isn't rocket science.

True. And you're not entitled to the job, either. The employer/employee relationship is a voluntary one, for both parties.

A company of any significant size, on the other hand, will be able to handle the loss of a single employee just fine.

There is a power imbalance between the two parties here and I don't think you can construct a solid argument while ignoring it.

I.e. the idea that employees is powerless is not true by inspection.

People also can always start their own companies, being an employee is hardly the only option. (People who start their own companies also quickly realize that their imagined power over other people is entirely nonexistent.)

(Most welfare systems have plenty of woeful traps, though, and I fall on the side of 'People should not lose their jobs over a disrespectful letter', but I haven't read it.)

In the UK recently the CEO of a ferry firm sacked all its workers in contravention of the law (they were required to give a 90 day consultation before any job losses, required to offer them other roles in the organisation). The CEO was summoned to parliament to explain what happen and said that "we didn't think the employees would go along with it, so we just fired them".

The government and employment tribunals are looking into collecting evidence in order to convict the CEO (criminal vs the usual civil penalty).

We are not slaves, but our bosses are not our parents either.

Businesses that are trying to stay in business don't have time for you.

Seriously, Hacker News is not the site for you to engage in this kind of low-quality culture war. Stop doing it.

some countries have decent labour laws that won't crucify you for disagreeing with your employer

These employees clearly messed up in that regard.

Any bets on whether (CEO == assclown) is a protected class?

> It’s not known which SpaceX employees wrote the letter; the employees who posted the letter in the internal chat system have not responded to requests for comment.

It says it was in contact with people who saw the letter, but nowhere implies it's the authors.

> The letter generated more than a hundred comments in the Teams channel, with many employees agreeing to the spirit of the missive, according to screenshots of the chat shared by two sources who spoke with The Verge and asked to remain anonymous.

[1] https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/our-enforc...

I think a sticking point might be that the letter talked about bad behavior by Elon Musk in public, and a problem with the "no assholes" policy being vague and inconsistently applied -- but there weren't any concrete examples.

Possibly some things Musk has tweeted might reasonably be interpreted as creating a hostile work environment or something like that. But maybe he just shared an opinion the authors of the letter don't agree with. Or they're annoyed at him for smoking weed in his Joe Rogan interview. It's hard to know for sure. (Maybe SpaceX employees already know what all the elephants in the room are and it wasn't necessary to enumerate them, but as an outside observer it's hard to know the full context.)

EDIT: Everyone telling me that company employees are different from Twitter are missing the point. We know that. But he clearly doesn't care about free speech "absolutely" when he throws a fit that his employees are criticizing him.

In the first case you are hoping they will use their free time on your platform.

In the second place you are exchanging money to get them to do what you want them to do instead of what they would otherwise be doing.

If I pay a plumber to fix the toilet and he starts bothering me about ANYTHING BUT FIXING THE TOILET... he's gone.

I for instance am not a free speech absolutist. I think it's okay to deplatform people who are spreading misinformation about a global pandemic, or an election. But Mr. Musk apparently thinks that's bad.

So, we get to find out where he draws the line that he claims he doesn't have.

The real test for whether or not Musk is being a hypocrite is whether or not he censors critics of him on Twitter. That is an apples to apples comparison. I think it's fair to say that continuing to pay people who criticize you is a different matter.

- Publicly attacking a man as a pedophile because he dismissed his submarine as an unworkable solution during the Thai cave rescue efforts.

- Cutting off analysts during a Tesla call, calling them boring and then soliciting fluff questions from the Internet.

Musk, like most free speech absolutists, is a hack. It's an argument used to allow _them_ to say words without repercussions.

I never understand this defense.

There are lessons one can take from successful people, but they not demigods. They're just people and people are often good and bad at the same time. Why do people defend them? If I make a controversial statement in a public forum, I should expect some uncomfortable criticism and they aren't entitled to any better treatment just because they can throw a wad of cash around.

If anything, being ruthless and deceptive are better traits to achieve this. Of course there are some exceptions. But I don’t think Musk is one.

I would expect nothing less from the woke-cancer employees. The productive members of the team must be relieved that the woke weight was shed.

or more simply: by using that word you sound dumb

then again, maybe that's how you want to identify. who am I to say

1. not qualified or diminished in any way; total.

free adjective: free; comparative adjective: freer; superlative adjective: freest

1. not under the control or in the power of another; able to act or be done as one wishes.

hmm I wonder what 'free speech absolutist' means. maybe that one's freedom to speak is not qualified or diminished in any way? their freedom to speak is total?

What's the alternative? Does a free speech absolutist need to never make judgements on what he hears from someone's free speech? If I hear a person say he wants to murder me and my family, do I still need to invite him over for Thanksgiving dinner? Aren't I exerting some form of control of over him if I say you can't come into my home?

I think your view of the term "free speech absolutist" may make sense when analyzing the individual word meanings, but doesn't make sense as a phrase, and doesn't align with how self described free speech absolutists view themselves.

Most people aren't free speech absolutists, though, and I agree that they'd think there's a fundamental difference between employer-employee relationships and user-provider relationships as a whole. But it should be significantly harder for an employer to fire an employee than for a service provider to ban a user.

It's a situation of monopoly. If consequences to speech prohibit one from an entire category of human need (one's life, ability to earn a living, ability to find housing, etc), then those consequences are in fact limiting speech. A 'cancellation' that makes someone unemployable is much more a prohibition on speech than being fired from a single job without affecting one's general ability to get hired. If Musk were to now work to get the signatories of the letter blacklisted from broader employment this becomes an issue.

The problem is that platforms on the internet benefit from network effects and become quasi-monopolistic. If there were platforms with similar reach as Twitter that allowed the speech that Twitter does not allow, whether or not Twitter censors would be kind of a moot point.

Being a free speech absolutist is meaningless if you are going to fire people the moment they say something you don't like.

If you are a free speech absolutist, it would mean believing in no consequences.

Yes. Like not getting banned from the public square for giving your speech, or not getting arrested by the government for your free speech. No one has ever argued that truly free speech means no one can judge you on what you are saying.

> If you are a free speech absolutist, it would mean believing in no consequences.

It would mean either that, or that you are using the phrase in a different manner than other people who use the phrase.

I find this whole exercise silly. I view it as

1) I don't like someone

2) Someone says he is X

3) To me, X means Y

4) Someone is not a Y

5) Therefore, someone is a hypocrite and (1) is justified.

Words have meaning, if they didn't then there would be no such thing as hypocrisy because everyone could just have their own little definition for a term or title they want to adopt but not be burdened to live by.

To Elon rules apply to thee and not me, these firings are text book hypocrisy.

1) The meaning of a phrase is the same as the meaning of stringing together the individual word definitions of the phrase.

2) There is a universally accepted, obvious definition of a phrase

I think you could reasonably call yourself a free speech absolutist, because you will never kick someone out of the public square for saying their peace, but you are still be allowed to not invite that person to your house for dinner.

What you describe is just regular ole free speech.

if there are exceptions then it isn't absolute

Also I am not threatening his career, he is, he is choosing to take a principled stand and should understand the likely consequences and be willing to accept them.

It's a simple fact that SpaceX chose its CEO's public image over its mission statement and reputation. I hope future prospects realize that there is no stability or long-term personal growth to be found there unless they can keep their heads down and kiss ass.

But if they can't work anymore because they got fired from the one employer of their skill the consequences are quite severe. They have to learn a new field! Ideally I'd say people with this specialized skill set form a guild or union. The same thing that makes them vulnerable makes their employer vulnerable--the workers of that industry are highly concentrated, with high investment in skill development. Absent that, it's a tricky issue and I think it would be fair to say that at least a warning would have been in order before dismissal.

I don't know if the people Musk fired are in this category or not. If it were an office manager, for example, seems fine. if it is an engineer on some space ship esoterica, ouch.

Perhaps this isn't a good analogy, but if you yelling insults at the the neighbors makes it harder for him to fix the toilet, and he asks you to stop, would you still fire him for it?

Because you could argue, although with difficulty, that Musk tweeting stupid things makes it more difficult for SpaceX employees to do their work.

In practice, I've found it generally easier and wiser to leave a company with a stupid boss rather than ask the stupid boss to change, but I see why someone could try the latter.

Your point is a good one though, to continue the analogy, the plumber shouldn't want to come back. Erratic and volatile bosses are best avoided. I prefer it when they do this stuff loudly and in public so I can know to avoid them.

About 1/6 of the pay comes from his pocket, since he owns about that much of the company.

> He may be founder & CEO. But he is an employee as much as those five.

His main relationship to Tesla is as it's controlling owner, not an employee, though, yes, he's also an employee. That's pretty different from every other employee.

Sorry, pls explain me this business logic. 1/6th is his ownership which is mostly tied to stocks. The pay comes from liquidity(arising from sales, selling bonds & any additional stock dilution from the organization) Unless I am completely misinformed about how business accounting works. Ownership doesnt pay unless they sell their stocks to pay(which he did through raising funding through stock hypothication in the past)

SpaceX isn't, nor will it ever be, a town square so the rules don't extend there. (Nor do they extend to Twitter the corporation itself.)

Musk's companies are not town squares. They are private entities and employees can be fired for insubordination, harassment, or abuse of company resources.

So... racism, porn, gore, etc are all ok? After all, they are within the letter of the law

This is a misrepresentation of the current "debate" taking place regarding free speech, a debate we have frequently on Hacker News. Nobody is threatened with jail for saying anything in the US, so if that was the primary bone of contention, the debate wouldn't exist. It's more about cancel culture, etc.

The fact Musk wants to turn it into a platform for free speech doesn't imply that he believes twitter has that burden of responsibility, only that he thinks it would be a good thing if they took on that responsibility.

It's also not hypocritical for Musk to say twitter would be a good platform to take on the responsibility of free speech while also saying workplace communication is not a good platform to take on the responsibility of free speech.

Now whether you or I agree with his stance on either of these points is another subject entirely, but it is not hypocrisy as other comments seem to be suggesting.

If you call your friend mean things on twitter and your friend decides to stop talking to you, freedom of speech has not been violated.

A job is little more than a business relationship where a person agrees to do labor in exchange for money. Either side of that relationship has the ability to terminate that relationship as a consequence of speech they might not like.

Either way, to act like this "business relationship" is perfectly reciprocal is either naive or malintentioned.

1. The inevitable inconsistency in application creates hypocrisy, which makes people upset.

2. It attracts political attention if/when the enforcement is politically biased.

3. It costs large sums of money that could be spent on other things.

4. It isn't actually necessary.

5. Public forums in which ideas can duke it out are essential for a healthy democratic society. Someone needs to run them, so if you decide to create an explicitly public forum open to everyone then you have a moral duty to protect and implement free speech policies

etc etc. Not an exhaustive list by any means, just a subset of the arguments that can be mounted.

But note that none of these apply to the case of employees criticizing their employer.

Speech isn't just about the act of saying, but also being able to be heard. Anyone can whisper to themselves in bed, but that is not speech in the political sense. Being able to speak where nobody hears is doesn't mean you have free speech.

No, I don't know that. This is explicit retaliation for what appears to be organizing around working conditions. That's protected.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/17/23172915/elon-musk-spacex...

You cannot compare at-will employment with public speech within the letter of the law.

Simplified:

Woke Cancer Culture != Protected Class

You simply cannot compare the employment relationship and open debate within the letter of the law.

Musk has only ever said he believes people should have absolute freedom of speech; he hasn't said people shouldn't face consequences for what they say.

Edit: Isn't getting kicked off twitter simply a consequence of saying something that's against twitter's TOS? What definition of free speech is Musk using?

Being banned from Twitter is a consequence of your speech, but it's also restricting your freedom to speak. I imagine Musk feels that not restricting people's freedom of speech is more important than the consequence of banning them.

That doesn't mean he thinks there should be no consequences for speaking. Just that the consequences shouldn't limit your freedom to speak.

In this case, people fired from SpaceX are still free to speak out about Musk's brand and its influence on SpaceX. Their speech has not been restricted.

The people banned from Twitter are still free to speak about whatever as well. Frankly I think SpaceX's actions limit speech more than a Twitter ban. Ex-Twitter users just have to find a new platform, at their convenience. Fired employees have just had there livelihood taken away and have to drop everything and find something new before their savings run out.

To be clear I think SpaceX was well within it's rights to fire these people, but as consequences go I see firing as far more consequential than a Twitter ban.

I'd expect them to go on a interview campaign after this actually. I think they'll be quite publicized and amplified.

People who are fired from SpaceX have absolutely no access to the SpaceX communication channels they were fired for exercising the wrong kind of speech on.

Obviously, I am not saying what these employees are saying is equivalent, but cancelling somebody for what they say is not always cancel culture.

Trying to destroy someone's life for a wholly-subjective slight is cancel culture (social cancer)

What limits freedom of speech _are_ the "consequences". It either is "absolute" in which case there are no consequences, or limited, in which case there are consequences (but then by definition it isn't absolute anymore)

If you fire someone for their opinion about their employer, or jail them for their opinion about the president, you can't be for "absolute" freedom of speech.

It's like saying "you're free to murder people, but if you do you'll go to jail".

In a strictly legal sense, you can be allowed to call your neighbor ugly. There will be no legal consequences, because of a law/constitutional amendment protecting free speech.

On a personal level, however, your neighbor might not like being called ugly, and retaliate by avoiding you or insulting you back. This is a consequence, but not a legal one.

I think, Musk view is that expression on Twitter should play a "legal guardian" type role in moderating content on the site, as opposed to say blocking negative content (and you could argue that as a site that makes money selling ads, blocking negative content could be the smart play, similar to the NYT not hiring idiots to write for them), but that the SpaceX employees, when fired by their employer, are facing consequences not on a legal but a personal level.

Of course, there's a very good chance this is just backwards rationalizing the erratic, irrational behavior of a emotionally unstable person.

No, it isn't. Popper's paradox only applies to the speech of parties which use force, rather than speech, to suppress the free speech of others. It was written in the context of Nazi Germany, and warning about the consequences of what is now called "free speech absolutism," when that freedom is co-opted by authoritarians who don't respect it (in other words, people like Elon Musk.)

Trying to suppress speech with more speech is simply how free speech is supposed to work.

I would not be shocked to hear that this results in a lawsuit over protected concerted activity.

Working conditions is things like working hours, your physical environment, your responsibilities [1]. The SpaceX letter was basically "Musk is uncouth, and we don't like that". A fair criticism, but nothing about working conditions.

The text of the letter can be found at [2], if anyone wants to judge for themselves.

[1] https://definitions.uslegal.com/w/working-condition/

[2] https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/16/23170228/spacex-elon-musk...

The following passage is one of many about workplace behavior, which therefore is part of working conditions:

Define and uniformly respond to all forms of unacceptable behavior. Clearly define what exactly is intended by SpaceX’s “no-asshole” and “zero tolerance” policies and enforce them consistently. SpaceX must establish safe avenues for reporting and uphold clear repercussions for all unacceptable behavior, whether from the CEO or an employee starting their first day.

If the letter alleges that Musk directly harassed employees, that would be entirely different. But it doesn't; it merely says that Musks behavior in the public sphere is unpleasant (again, that's fair).

Working Conditions means the conditions under which the work of an employee is performed, including physical or psychological factors.

The things that that letter discusses affects the psychological factors of the work. Committing to making people feel included, defining what toxic behavior will not be accepted, and so on.

Your linked definition includes in working conditions, "...all existing circumstances affecting labor in the workplace." This fits with the definition that I gave - the behaviors that you have to put up with from coworkers affects labor in the workplace.

This is way too reductionist. These aren't just "Musks tweets", they are directives about employee policies that are publicly stated, but not private enforced (because, to the author's criticism, they have no strict definitions). Furthermore they have clear (or at least implied clearly) repercussions: "don't behave they way we want to or you're fired".

> all could be considered about working conditions.

Actually, I think what the author is asking for is clarity about working conditions, not necessarily the working conditions are good/bad - they're just ambiguous.

This is backwards. There are lots of rules out there which I'm sure you dislike. Therefore your dislike of this one is irrelevant.

And I say that despite agreeing with you about how it might be abused. And despite wondering whether the people calling for more diversity and exclusion in this letter may be the kind of people to abuse it that way. Rules are rules, and we should try to apply them fairly, especially when applied to people we dislike.

Maybe those companies shouldn't include statements like this in their corporate filings then:

"The Twitter account @elonmusk is considered an official corporate communication channel."

Especially when Musk is tweeting from it things like changes to remote work policies.

Forcing a trucker to drive 20 hours straight is working conditions. Refusing to install proper lighting in a warehouse is working conditions.

Having a policy saying "don't be an asshole", and then enforcing it in a way that is perceived as unfair, is not working conditions.

If the letter had directly alleged that Musk or other leadership was abusive towards the employees, they would have a case. But just saying "we thing Musk is an asshole, and we have a no-asshole policy" is not protected speech.

Many employment laws just create causes of action for civil litigation. I.e. they define types of harm for which the employee can seek compensation in the courts.

Very specifically for this case, they protect the right of employees to talk to an employer about improving workplace conditions. With or without a union, and with or without any interest in unionization.

This statement is false in the general case. If the contract says 40 hours, I'm leaving after 40 hours, and if you want me to stay longer I better have a large share of the company. Your inefficiencies as a manager are not my problem as an employee, unless I'm also a shareholder.

or deadlines just get moved out

Sure sounds like a discussion about workplace policies and enforcement to me.

You can dislike something and also not think it's illegal.

Is that workplace conditions?

Also, oddly enough, "official company communications" is not workplace conditions. You do not have a legal right to discuss company communications!

There is an increasingly troublesome number of people entering the industry who simply don't enjoy working hard. I think every company would do better to fire them.

I take it you are in a country that doesn't support freedom and basic rights.

I do not take company statements like that at face value, as they have their own interests to protect. However, it does leave the possibility that termination was not related to statements about working conditions.

The former employees may have a case here.

The first thing that comes to mind when reading this is "So what?"

Yes, it's predictable. I don't believe people who wrote the letter haven't thought of this potential consequence and haven't felt any trepidation whatsoever.

So what if it's "predictable"? So what if it's legal? The point is not whether it's currently legal and whether it's predictable. The point is whether it's right.

How does stating that "it's predictable" address the very real and ugly problems in this whole situation?

It might be perceived as right and acceptable to some folks because of their definition of morality and behavior, and it might be a common enough understanding of those morals in 2022. It’s PC. However, its not a good precedent for a company to tolerate because moral attitudes change.

If a bunch of hyper fundamentalist evangelical Christian SpaceX employees wrote a letter saying that their CEOs behavior and values did not line up with their Christian values and behavior expectations, and for the company’s success, the leadership needed to condemn publicly the CEO’s actions? Would that be ok? What if they started actively proselytizing their morality to the other employees? Attempting to stir up dissent to the point where it was detrimental to company productivity?

This latest type of activism is PC, so that is the only reason its even discussed. Other activism like the above example is perhaps not as PC and most folks would not even care…or would be on the other side of the issue.

There are basically three problems the open letter highlights and asks the leadership to address. They're wrapped in polite, corporate-appropriate language, but I'll express them here in plain, blunt, non-PC words:

- SpaceX is supposed to be bigger than just Elon Musk. Elon's shitposting on social media is harming the whole company, and the employees will end up suffering because Elon keeps putting his ego before the company.

- The so-called leadership, as it happens all too often, keeps talking the talk, but they don't walk the walk. They say they care about making SpaceX a great place to work, but that's just bullshit as long as they turn a blind eye to the toxic fuckery at SpaceX.

- The company policies are bullshit. Using words like "asshole" to sound cool and non-PC does not replace having an actual policy. "Zero tolerance" means fuck-all if you selectively tolerate stuff, and "no-asshole policy" is either too vague or isn't enforced.

Basically, it boils down to being sick of the toxic corporate LARPing you see in a certain kind of techbro companies, where suits pretend to be cool and down with the techies by using words like "asshole" to show how they value "straight talk" and therefore you can totally trust them not to fuck you over.

I hope that was non-PC enough to help explain what the letter says, for anyone who hasn't actually read it.

On the off chance that you did read the letter and you really decided that it's no different from "a bunch of hyper fundamentalist evangelical Christian SpaceX employees" demanding that their CEO behave according to their values, then I would like to point out two details you might have overlooked:

1. That would be perfectly understandable if the company itself claimed to hold and represent those values. If the employees of the hypothetical Every-Zygote-Is-Sacred LLC wrote a letter complaining about how their CEO kept tweeting about how much they loved and supported Planned Parenthood, then they would have a point, regardless of whether you or I were pro- or anti-abortion.

2. Regardless of what company policies say about the company values, many companies have a policies about social media, along the lines of "don't tweet anything that would negatively affect the company, not even on your personal account". People can, and do, get fired for breaking that policy. Complaining about how the CEO of the company keeps blatantly breaking that policy and actively harming the company in the process might be naive, but it's certainly understandable.

In conclusion: yeah, I think it's right and acceptable for SpaceX employees to complain about the unprecedented level of toxicity from their CEO.

EDIT: I accidentally a word in the last paragraph.

If you don’t like what Musk who owns the controlling interest in your company is doing, buy him out. If you can’t buy him out, move on and work someplace else. Acting in a disruptive manner because you are butthurt about your CEO/company owner is just ridiculous.

It's not okay for a small group of employees to try to impose their chosen morality, but it's okay for one person to impose his own morality on the whole company, because he owns the controlling interest in it.

More importantly, that same person who owns the controlling interest has no responsibilities or obligations towards the company as a whole.

Did I get that right?

And while we're on the topic of what each of us finds ridiculous, how about the fact that whenever someone suggests that a publicly traded company should do something slightly idealistic, people always bring up fiduciary duty towards the shareholders, but it gets overlooked when we're talking about one billionaire's "right" to drive his company's value into the ground by shitposting on social media, because "he's the owner, he can do what he wants".

Regardless of all that, one point that keeps being overlooked -- and at this stage of discussion, where it has been pointed out repeatedly, it's pretty obvious that it's being overlooked on purpose -- is that they're not trying to impose any morality. They're asking for two things: 1) hold Musk accountable for harming the company, 2) define what "no-asshole" and "zero tolerance" policies actually mean and enforce them.

That's not morality. That's common sense and consistency.

EDIT: Also, what's more likely to bring the company morale go down: seeing its owner sabotage it because of his ego, or an internal letter criticizing him for doing that?

Yes. Like it or not there is a difference between “the person who signs the paychecks” and the person receiving the signed paycheck. C-level employees and folks who own controlling interests don’t always have to play by the same rules, even the rules they themselves set for the other employees.

> one point that keeps being overlooked -- …(shortened for brevity)… -- is that they're not trying to impose any morality.

But they are, though. They are being disruptive to the business because of their morality. If you are unhappy with the bosses behavior outside the organization because of your moral code, but I, a fellow employee, am fine with or frankly don’t care what the boss does outside the organization—and then you spam me on company communication platforms trying to organize dissent based on your moral code you are in essence demanding conformity to your beliefs in a way that is disruptive.

> Also, what's more likely to bring the company morale go down: seeing its owner sabotage it because of his ego, or an internal letter criticizing him for doing that?

In my opinion a small group of employees being intentionally disruptive and causing public drama would be more likely to cause morale issues for me.

It’s not like Musk’s personality and tweeting was unknown. His political leanings shift and all of a sudden he and his behavior is intolerable? Please.

Well, at least you're finally willing to address my points about their letter not being about the morality, instead of hoping those points would go away ;)

When his political leanings "shifted", that's when his behavior started going against the company's own rules and actively damaging the company. Now, you might believe that the former is okay, because he signs their paychecks -- which is just another way of saying "might makes right" -- but I don't know how you justify the latter to yourself. That's another point you keep dodging: Musk's behavior is actively damaging the company.

You can shift the blame to "cancel culture", if you want, but the fact remains that certain behaviors can, and do, affect any company not just in terms of morale, but in terms of its ability to do business. This has been well known for ages and has, in fact, been exploited by one extreme of the political spectrum. It only got labeled "cancel culture" when it got turned against that extreme.

And that's the political aspect of this whole conversation that I was trying to avoid, because discussing politics with strangers is about as pleasant as a root canal, but since you can't let it go, then let's go: yes, regardless of whether the letter itself was about the employees' morality or not, certain "political leanings" are, in fact, intolerable.

When you say "all lives matter", for example, that's where you cross the line into outright racism. It's not like "all lives matter" is a new thing someone invented yesterday and that's why people are being fooled into taking it at face value. It's been around for quite a while, and it's extremely easy to understand that it's only ever brought up as a response to "black lives matter" and why that response is racist.

Racism should be intolerable.

And that's just one of the things Musk did on Twitter. So yes, regardless of whether or not this letter is about morality, his shift in political leaning should be considered intolerable. If you really think that "racism is not okay" is something that is being forced on everyone in SpaceX against their wishes, then you're basically saying the majority of SpaceX employees are racists.

And that is the crux of the controversy. Finally you admit what this is really behind this. Musk’s political leanings are intolerable to you and to these employees and you don’t want to tolerate his behavior. They are creating disruption because of their intolerance by spamming other employees to try and “convert” them.

The lovely thing about “at will” employment is that you don’t have to work at a place that doesn’t fit your values and a company doesn’t have to employ you if you don’t fit their values.

Those are just two examples. There are more.

I disagree with the other assertion that you lose the moral right to destroy it. Does he have the moral right to fire his employees? I hope you'd agree with me that he does. And in this case he'd just be firing all of them.

You asserted that he has a moral right to destroy the company because he built it. He might have built it, but it doesn't matter if he now owns 54% or 90% or 10% of it, it stopped being just his. He can't just say "screw it, I'm bored, let's just burn it down to the ground".

That responsibility is even greater when it comes to the people who depend on you, who put their livelihood in their hands because they believe in your company. Not necessarily in you, but certainly in what you created.

Let me put it this way: if you knew that the person in charge of company X is a volatile, irresponsible person incapable of putting the good of the company before their own ego, someone who doesn't care enough for the company, would you go work for that company?

Musk's behavior is damaging the company. His employees are objecting to that, among other things. They are right to do so.

As for whether he has the moral right to fire his employees indiscriminately solely by virtue of having created the company? No, he doesn't, for the same reasons I described above.

Does he have the right to fire his employees for the right reasons? Of course, but that's not the case here. That's what I was pointing out when you asserted that he certainly has the right to fire them just because he built the company.

So yes, for all intent purposes he is their employer.

[1] https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-SpaceX-does-Elon-Mu...

Wealth will either be given or it will be taken.

Arguably it depends somewhat of the skill of those hired but if that's arbitrary (i.e. their skill isn't related to the firing) one can easily argue that SpaceX's management practices are extremely questionable right now. So from an 3rd party employee's perspective today you have to tell the boss he's fucking shit up if you _really_ want to get to Mars.

In the future it would behoove you to at least familirize yourself with a topic lest you make another ignorant statement.

It is the board that should be holding him accountable, but they aren't. Most boards today are lame ducks to collect a paycheck. No one is challenging him because he is delivering results (although I would argue it's actually Gwynne Shotwell keeping the shipping sailing). So there's that.

Apparently the letter was not about working conditions. It was about Elon tweeting.

Eg Individuals and groups of employees at SpaceX have spent significant effort beyond their technical scope to make the company a more inclusive space via conference recruiting, open forums, feedback to leadership, outreach, and more.

I take that back:

The letter was spammed to all employees using company resources, which means its authors and supporters were creating a hostile work environment. Firing the dead-weight woke cry bullies was the proper move.

FWIW, I think firing the organizers is an overreaction and that it would be in SpaceX's best interest to muzzle Elon, but it's hard to conjure up a legal argument that they can't do it. And you'll notice that the company's statement said nothing about the content of the letter, only that it's inappropriate to organize it with company resources and on company time.

Knowing that people like you with your reasons for not working there are not present and harassing people towards your view point could be a recruitment draw no?

Given you've spammed this misinformation all over this thread, despite being corrected on this point repeatedly, I'm not sure you're acting in good faith.

I'm not redefining anything, the courts have broadly held that workers, when acting as a group and not just airing individual grievances, have protections for their speech. Things like corporate values, retention, recruiting, public sentiment, workplace diversity, etc are all potentially workplace conditions.

Workplace Conditions has a legal definition, but it is interpreted by the courts and those courts have the ability to adjust those definitions or interpret them as appropriate.

I ask because in your many comments all you’re doing is stating a hypothetical complaint that sounds plausible but I, as well as many others evidently, think would not have legs, ultimately. I can think of several examples in my career where employees have been fired for disruptive behavior or being a negative influence on morale - well within an employer’s rights. Those examples seem to line up more closely with this example at SpaceX than actual workplace conditions complaints I’ve seen.

I mean, props to you for going to the mat on this, but it’s past time you provide some evidence of your logic carrying the day in a real world example. Otherwise you’re just proposing wishful thinking as reasoning.

Oh, you were just "credibly accused" of IP theft.

It doesn't matter if we can't prove it.

You should be pre-emptively fired!

Welcome to the woke cancer socialist hell hole.

If a guest in your house started screaming at you, it wouldn't be a paradox of free speech to tell them to get out.

And why doesn't Twitter have the same rights that you outlined in another comment: the right to not have to tolerate a private citizen, the right to prevent someone from saying whatever they want on your private property.

Basically, why doesn't Twitter have the same association and private property rights as Musk?

They do have those rights, which is why they can ban people. The argument is that they've produced a de facto public square, not a legal one, because it's where a massive amount of "public" discourse takes place. Musk is trying to buy them to make their product more consistent with a legal public square.

Personally I think it can't be done without the government getting involved at some point.

If you are a private company absolutist, I guess you could argue that these companies have the same rights to prevent people from saying whatever they want on private property.

Others believe that these platforms are large and powerful enough to warrant a different set of views and regulatory scrutiny.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/16/23170228/spacex-elon-musk...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_letter

Free speech and the first amendment are not the same thing.

0. https://www.liberties.eu/en/stories/free-speech-absolutist/4...

Where the fuck did you grow up?

Elon: "Something something I’m doing it for more free speech…"

Employees: "You can’t say that!"

Employees in letter: "Make Elon stop tweeting"

Elon: "You're all fired"

He's not a hypocrite under my interpretation.

You know the first amendment doesn't apply to people right? It's a restriction on what the government can or can not do. The government can't restrict your free speech. Your employer can. Twitter can too, and that's what Elon is against.

I agree that he could have just ignored them, but he chose to ignore them completely by getting them out of his company. That's his choice.

These folks were unhappy with their working conditions. They're now free to find employ somewhere else that suits them better while others who want to be at SpaceX will replace them.

Markets are great!

Which is what they did.

All indications point to Tesla and SpaceX not being very open to 'change' initiatives that are employee-initiated.

Good job firing the employees that actually try to give a damn. The yes people are quiet and will stay. That's how you kill a company, slowly.

Tell that to James Damore.

Do people still really believe that is what he said? I'm all for calling out hypocrisy, but what he said was empirically true; their are professions that are male dominated, just are there are some that are female denominated--and the latter tends to have less scrutiny.

Male nurses are the exception and it is one of the most highly paid professions in the professional World, and yet NO ONE and I mean NO ONE has been calling for discriminatory hiring practices in the Medical Industry over that. And especially right now when they are having to under go horrible shift requirements due to a lack of staff and applicants.

This is one of the many ugly truths of about these narratives: they actually DO want preferential prejudices, but only in a way that favors those who tend to make the loudest (and often misguided and misinformed) noise with their narratives.

I did most of my undergrad with nurses and dated several, I don't envy their profession and the money while on the surface seems appealing is hardly going to make up for the seemingly hell they go through every week, especially during COVID. I respect them for what they do, and just accept that that level of triage and care-taking tends to be a female dominated domain.

Tech is a cushy, albeit tedious and often brain numbing monotonous career choice by contrast and I have no doubt that anyone who could work doubles during COVID in an ER could master writing basic scripts and using SO like everyone else does if they wanted. But they don't and they'd rather strike in order to reform their profession instead.

Why would time change people's opinions?

Anyone who wanted to read it for themselves had plenty of opportunity almost immediately. Anyone who didn't but instead had sources they trust, knew what those sources' opinions were almost immediately. Anyone who wanted to specifically seek out opinions that didn't match their own, could have done so more easily while it was all still fresh and it would have taken what maybe a couple hours.

It's not like this is an area of ongoing archaeological research where people keep discovering and translating new fragments that change how the fragments we already have seem to fit together.

Because it was pretty clear that after he made his points clear it didn't line up with what the media hitmen who were seeking to create: click bait rage-material.

After his rounds on several podcasts, Rogan being the most prominent, I looked into what was being said and it was absurd that they had derived this conclusion because of what I had listed above. The woke mob is to blame, sure, but it was the deliberate framing and inaction of the tech community as a whole who I think should bear some responsibility. I think the Bay Area 'dating scene' (or the lack thereof) is a direct reflection of the adverse effects of having a a heavy male bias within the tech Industry.

> My initial opinion was formed on what the media said. Then a couple years later that I read it for myself and saw that it did not align with the narrative.

I'd like to believe this retrospective view is a lot more common than it is, so I'm glad you honestly detailed your experience with the matter which I think is more common for those who'd bother to step out of their own echo chambers. But since people seldom these days, it's a total outlier.

You can vote for a new government but in the end what happens in your workplace will have more consequences on your life.

There was a saying in Eastern/Communist Europe (Poland?):

Do not think. If you think, do not write. If you write, do not publish. If you publish, do not sign (your name). If you sign, do not be surprised.

criticism should be seen as an indication of engagement. When your employees don't criticize and don't care then you have a problem...when people start phoning it in and not giving their best at work because apathy has set in.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html