The point is that there’s no fundamental difference between “you are free to say what you want, but you might get fired from SpaceX” and “you are free to say what you want, but you might get banned from Twitter”. But people — including Elon! — act as if the former is normal and rational, while the latter is some sort of affront to a free society.

Most people would disagree that there's no fundamental difference between an employee-employer relationship and a user-service provider relationship.

Abstractly, in the sense that "freedom from speech is not freedom from consequences", I don't think they're fundamentally different. If you're a free speech absolutist, then the nature of the relationship shouldn't matter. They're both just private organizations making choices about how they voluntarily associate with others.

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.

Not disagreeing with you, but elaborating on this 'you can say what you want, but you have to live with the consequences' idea.

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.

Everyone already has what you are describing by default, anyone anywhere can say anything at all, the issue is whatever consequences come from that, be it jail time like in Russia for speaking about the war, or losing your job at SpaceX.

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

I don't think anyone would claim that a place where you have free speech, but you might just get murdered by your government for your free speech, is a place where free speech exists

Free speech implies a certain amount of freedom from consequences of that speech.

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

> Free speech implies a certain amount of freedom from consequences of that speech.

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.

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

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.

Words have meaning, but that doesn't mean that:

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.

>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.

Then whatever Twitter is/was does not align with "regular ole free speech", based on the people they've banned from their public square (and yes, public squares can be on private property).

There is no comparison between public debate within the letter of the law and what a private company does with insubordinate employees that are disrupting the business.