Freedom of speech does not mean being free of consequences. Much like you're free to offend, the other side is free to be offended and employment goes both ways. Firing someone because they fundamentally disagree on how the company should be run is not censorship, it's keeping only people who align with the direction you're headed.

> Freedom of speech does not mean being free of consequences.

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".

Found online:

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.

Perhaps in Space-X you can email things like "Down with Vijaya Gadde!" without consequences.

Judging by the downvotes, apparently she has a strong influence here too.

Weird the incestuous circles of tech.

I enjoyed this.

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.

They still have freedom after speech. They can continue to say what they were saying about Musk anywhere they like (including on Twitter).

I don't disagree with some of the principle.

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 actually appreciate your reply being relatively measured. You're right in that my post would be more accurate if I said "what I said above is neither partisan nor conspiratorial", because later on I do take a very partisan stance.

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."

Here's the deciding coin toss: can we both imagine there equally exist books defending current left restrictions on discussions, as there exist books defending mcarthyism? :)

So you have read a chapter of a book debunking Zinn. But have you read any of Zinn’s books?

> What I am saying is neither partisan

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.

Hmmmm. PathOfEclipse replied here with a similar quality comment to that I answered, which I replied to with HN guidelines. Now the comment is gone - confusing. This is off-topic, but I need this sentinel. Topic now removed from front page so I presume I am not creating refuse.

> truth, objectivity, and tolerance for opposing viewpoints

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/

> Because the left of today is against all those things, and they themselves have made that very explicit.

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

Neat, but juvenile. Now Show me the seminal research paper, or influential book, speech, or editorial from the right denouncing tolerance, objectivity or truth. Because I've already done that for the left, and I've provided references, one of which is from someone who is not overtly conservative (Ryan Chapman).

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.

It's not a trick. Fascists hate tolerance. The Klu Klux Klan - a very conservative group did not, in any way, want to tolerate black people. Rightists marched a few years ago chanting "Jews will not replace us". In the 1940s there was an effort by right-wing fascists to exterminate an entire race.

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

The KKK were entirely democrats: https://www.somdnews.com/independent/opinion/letters_to_the_....

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.

> The elite intellectual democrats of the time were also the most racist.

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.

> 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

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".

You're right. I falsely equated "progressive" and "democrat". I wasn't very familiar with KKK politics, but reading up, it looks they definitely had some strong conservative aspects.

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."

I agree with that, and apologize for taking such an antagonistic view towards your original comment. There are certain lines or prases that make my mind jump directly to cliche. It's easy to go all "to arms" after you've wasted too much time on the internet.

I don't care about your US labels regarding Republicans and Democrats. And your assertion that the KKK weren't conservative laughable.

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

>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

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.

That's because the left have so far failed to exert their influence on SpaceX like they have other companies. I can cite plenty of other cases where a tiny minority of leftists pulled a similar stunt on or at a different company and succeeded in their objectives.

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."

This article is proof that non-leftists are firing people. If the goal is to stop people being fired for speech, then we shouldn't be focusing purely on leftists, but on all sides.

1930s consertatives in many places in the world were literally the original fascists. The ones in the US might not have been, but they were probably too busy forming the second Ku Klux Klan and trying to whitewash the Confederacy.

1930's German fascists took a lot of ideas from the US South's Jim Crow laws. I didn't realize this until I saw a display about it at the Dokumentationszentrum in Nuremberg.

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.

the KKK was entirely aligned with democrat party, by the way, as were Jim crow laws created entirely by democrat party politicians: https://www.socialjusticesurvivalguide.com/2018/01/08/the-de...

> the KKK was entirely aligned with democrat party

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.

It's the Democratic party, there is no such thing as the democrat party.

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

right... in 1872...

I never mentioned any political parties, but ideology. The social order was slavery and racism, and people that wanted to conserve it were conservatives.

nit, the Italian Fasci movement started around 1915ish.

Other than your first paragraph, which is reasonable, your name dropping is doing a poor job of hiding your very weak understanding of history, philosophy, and political theory.

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.

are you talking about people being fired from their jobs for saying/doing things the company didn't like?

  > 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.

is that why fox news is the #1 most-watched new channel? how about on youtube? how many views do ben shapiro and tucker carlson get vs insert-any-leftist-here?

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

>actively seeks to suppress and silence opposing views

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?

An example of suppression and silencing is: twitter! https://lidblog.com/twitter-censors-conservatives/. There are, of course, many other examples. Twitter silenced the hunter biden scandal at election time. The story turned out to be true and could have swung the election. Youtube has been restricting, shadowbanning and explicit banning conservatives for a long time as well:

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...

That joke is bs though. The whole point of soviet censorship was always to prevent any unfettered info to come out

I think that’s the point.

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.

Twitter is hardly the only platform you can use to broadcast your opinions. Being fired from your job is just as likely to massively reduce your ability to get your message out to others as is being blocked from posting on a single privately owned messaging service, if not more so. Legally I doubt either could be seen as being in contravention of any free speech laws, but it's fair enough to see Elon's actions as somewhat hypocritical.

"Being fired from your job is just as likely to massively reduce your ability to get your message out to others."

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.

If you're Elon Musk perhaps. But for most people being banned from a single social media site is hardly a great imposition (there's little they can do to stop you signing up for a new account). Whereas losing your job (or even the knowledge you're likely to) could very well leave an average person in a situation that they no longer have the resources or wherewithal to continue broadcasting their message to as wide audience (especially if previously that had been their co-workers in a large firm, as was the case in this situation).

> Twitter is hardly the only platform you can use to broadcast your opinions

Oh yeah? What other platforms are there?

Other than all the other social media tools out there, blogging, mailing lists, various online forums (including this one), letters to the editor, building your own networks with their own distribution channels etc., you're obviously right, before Twitter there was no such thing as free speech.

I didn’t realize HN would have people make the ludicrously stupid “well just build your own Twitter” argument

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

That's not what I meant by "building your own networks" - was referring to the traditional ways of building networks before the internet was even a thing. Arguing that Twitter has some sort of magical status as the ultimate channel for broadcasting your opinions to the world strikes me as absurd. I barely use it, and when I do it's not to read opinions (I only subscribe to institutions/organisations that use it to broadcast important information). Pretty sure most people I know would say the same.

Twitter has a significantly bigger audience than every other channel combined. It’s like saying who cares if you’re banned from tv, radio and telephones, just send carrier pigeons like the old days

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.

Numbers to back that up? Just googled and Twitter seems to have a pretty modest market share compared to FB. And I don't know how you'd compare it to other channels that aren't classified as social media (including non-digital ones).

It does when employees can be treated as commodities and be at the mercy of employers because of the way our economy is structured.

> Freedom of speech does not mean being free of consequences

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.

Free speech laws protect individuals from government prosecution, full stop. It has nothing to do with private employees and employers. There's a potential labor law (retaliation) issue here, but it's not a free speech issue.

“Free speech” is a principle, not a law. I explicitly said “the spirit of free speech”. I was not talking about the law.

Being banned from twitter is just a consequence of free speech then. Twitter is not public space.

Twitter is a public space, because being a public forum for speech is the essence of what Twitter does. It's privately owned, but like a privately owned mall, it is "open to the public" and therefore at least some free speech protections apply.

“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.

> It's privately owned, but like a privately owned mall, it is "open to the public" and therefore at least some free speech protections apply.

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?

> 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.

Twitter isn't a public forum for speech. You need to have an account to use Twitter, for which you agree to abide by Twitter's terms of service, in which Twitter reserves the right to moderate and ban content as they see fit. Marsh v. Alabama applied to physical property and AFAIK hasn't been definitively extended to online "properties" like Twitter.

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...

“Freedom of speech does not mean being free of consequences”

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

Freedom of speech means very specifically being free from consequences/prosecution from the governing body, and makes no claims about speech in the private sector or private houshold.

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.

That's not a definition, it just constrains the universe of possible definitions. Hence you can't come to this conclusion because you still haven't defined it well enough to say who in the world has it and who doesn't.

Then Trump is free to incite an insurrection on Twitter, and Twitter is free to ban him. Which is the opposite of what Elon thinks.

Musk wants attention and money to do whatever he wants. Everything else is negotiable.

I don't believe Elon ever stated Twitter has no right/freedom to ban (he does say a lot of bizarre things, and I don't follow too closely), but correct me if I'm wrong. Disagreeing with the Twitter policies is not the same as believing Twitter is not free to establish such policies.

He has stated that he thinks they should only ban if the law requires them to do so. For example he thinks the Trump ban was clearly problematic.

Twitter is free to ban Trump or others, regardless of whether Elon Musk owns Twitter. Whether to implement a ban is a decision their management can take, or not take.

So you are saying that Musk should be removed. Which I agree with, but also with jail time.

I don't know, what they did according to the article is a little bit more than speech. If someone did that at my workplace the silent majority would be thankful that someone removed that kind of nuisance.

People keep misconstruing his opinion on free speech. His opinion on free speech isn't "freedom to say anything anywhere to anyone and have no repercussions". He specifically believes Twitter should be treated as a virtual town square, i.e. you can say what you like without fear from being removed from the town square, but it has zero bearing on what people say about you on that town square.

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.

This is exactly correct. It absolutely lines up with his stance that everything he does or wants to do is fine and probably good, and that people that are not him should suffer consequences.

But Twitter isn't a town square either. It's a private company. No one is guaranteed an audience.

Twitter the company isn't supposed to be a town square, you are correct. Twitter the product is, though. Whether that's how you see it or not, is a separate question, but those two positions on Twitter aren't mutually exclusive.

This makes as much sense as saying a United Airlines jet is a public forum, and your rights are being trampled on if you can't take a shit in the aisle.

Both are private property.

If you assume that either everything is supposed to be a public forum or nothing is, then yeah. Otherwise, no.

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.

The government is meant to serve the public good. The workings of the government are oft opaque, and may need to be concealed, in the pursuit of that public good.

Thus stands the difference. Capisce?

Yes that's the entire point of contention here. Twitter is a company, its management can choose to treat it more like a town square or more like a closed network with stricter content mediation rules. Elon wants it to be more like a town square.

Arguing that Twitter ought to moderate itself according to free speech principles isn't denying Twitter's right to free speech. I'm not going to stan Musk specifically, but this is a common misunderstanding (the general formulation being something like: "criticizing someone's free speech violates their free speech!", which is patently untrue).

Precisely. Which is why he wants to acquire it and move it in the direction he has in mind.

On the other hand he tries to silence any unfavorable sayings about him or his companies. For a free speech absolutist, he loves himself a good NDA.

NDAs are a private matter and involve contract law which has nothing to do with free speech.

This was beautifully articulated and I'll be using it in the future. Thank you!

Musk isn't your friend, but it's your fantasy so you do you.

"Blanketing thousands of people across the company with repeated unsolicited emails and asking them to sign letters and fill out unsponsored surveys during the work day" is markedly different from posting something on your personal Twitter.

I read Musk's "free speech absolutism" to mean that on platforms dedicated to speech (Twitter etc.) one shouldn't be censored / banned.

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.

This is the crux of the matter right here.

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.

You can be a champion of free speech in public in the sense that you do not have your freedom of speech taken away from you. However SpaceX is not a public forum for your speech. You can't abuse internal email lists to have your speech reach more people than it would normally.

I can't believe I have to say this, but the hypocrisy comes from the fact that Elon, and many others, believe (or in Elon's case, purports to believe) that private entities should not moderate their own products, and instead guarantee an audience for people[0]. They don't. That's not what censorship is.

[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.

> I can't believe I have to say this, but the hypocrisy comes from the fact that Elon, and many others, believe (or in Elon's case, purports to believe) that private entities should not moderate their own products, and instead guarantee an audience for people[0]. They don't. That's not what censorship is.

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.

> I can't believe I have to say this, but the hypocrisy comes from the fact that Elon, and many others, believe (or in Elon's case, purports to believe) that private entities should not moderate their own products

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).

Hard Disagree. Just freedom in all directions. You're free to say what you want, they're free to fire you for it. That's completely consistent.

That's not what freedom of speech is about. You're free to say what you want in any country in the world, once. The first amendment is about protecting you from some of the consequences of that. Not specifically firing, but that's not his issue with Twitter either.

> The first amendment is about protecting you from some of the consequences of that. Not specifically firing

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

If this was a government censoring, banning journalists, stories and the media or even blocking the whole internet and punishing companies that criticize them or to stop the letter being published, that totally violates free speech.

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.

That's not a disagreement. Parent comment is asking for consistency. "If you believe... then..."

But Elon in particular should not be firing anyone if HE believes in free-speech. It is hypocritical.

Some call it "debate team bullshit", others would call it "applying basic logic".

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

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

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.

> 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.

As an Elon fanboy, nothing he did surprised me in the least. He may be one of the most consistent public figures out there.

Should they all have made Twitter posts rather than signing a piece of paper, or would Musk just claim they were bots and not real?

Not that I'm sympathetic to the decision to fire here based on what I know (which is really just this article and what I've read in this thread), but the two issues seem to be somewhat orthogonal, in that I could imagine a consistent moral framework falling either way with different opinions on them. Someone might believe in the importance of minimising consequences for speech on a public forum such as Twitter (whose end purpose is supposedly such speech, and which is one of the main venues in which public political discourse in fact happens), while simultaneously not believing that employees of a company have the right to speak up against the interests of that company (whose purpose is making widgets and money) and be protected from the company terminating the working relationship in return. Conversely, someone might think of unfettered political debate as harmful, and believe in the importance of suppressing certain opinions they find dangerous and harmful from the public sphere, while also believing that letting employees criticise and organise against their employer is important to guarantee the welfare of employees and keep the power of employers in check. In fact, the two combinations seem respectively pretty close to the proclaimed ethos of the US and the Soviet Union respectively a century ago.

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.

This is pure nonsense. Neither Musk or his company owes you a job, and you certainly shouldn't work at his company if you disagree with his vison or politics. Shedding the woke weight has to feel good, for both Musk and for other employees, who no doubt had to endure constant whining.

My question is if this is the best approach. The dissenters may care deeply about the company and they be saying publicly what many others are feeling privately at SpaceX. Would engagement in this setting reap better rewards?

Interesting question.

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.

> 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.

>>>>>>> ....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.

> 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.

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.

Blizzard came to mind from your description, and to my eyes their current workplace is toxic, and getting rid of their CEO is the first step to let them focus on their mission and improve the bottom line of the company.

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.

What about this open letter makes these people "woke cry babies?" The thesis of it is that his behavior online is embarrassing and bringing down the reputation of the company. That seems like pretty valid criticism to me. This guy is supposed to bring our species to another planet, but he spends his free time fighting a losing twitter battle with a satirical video game website? It's not a great look.

Why shouldn't you? Employment is about trading labor for monetary compensation. There isn't a particular need to be aligned with owners and directors unless you are also in a leadership position.

> you certainly shouldn't work at his company if you disagree with his vison or politics.

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.

The company doesn't owe Musk a job either.

he kinda built it with his blood sweat and tears.

That's the Musk Myth.. in reality SpaceX was built by Mike Griffin who (1) funded him through In-Q-Tel and DARPA (2) crafted the commercial crew program for him while he was NASA administrator.

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

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

pretty big stretch to give that much credit to Mike G given what's known about history of spacex

Care to elaborate?

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

Him or others? What about the people he is firing?

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.

> he kinda built it with his blood sweat and tears.

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.)

According to wiki, he has 47.4% equity and 78.3% voting control according to a 2020-dated filing. I would be surprised if either number has changed significantly since.

Free speech doesn't entail an obligation to subsidize people attacking you or your company. Trying to get people employed by other companies fired would be a problem, but firing your own employees for acting against your interests is completely reasonable.

This kind of dialogue could be had internally. Making it a public matter is just looking for a pink slip. Maybe that's what they wanted. Maybe they're just ignorant. Either way the consequences are predictable, regardless of the company.

Isn't the civil dialogue part immediately thrown out the window when the person posts and signs a public letter?

If your ability to stay alive depending on you keeping your job you wouldn't go around signing public letters.

Did he attempt to supress the letter?

Freedom of speech != freedom from action

I don't understand the logic that people without power shouldn't speak up to those with it.

Employees have plenty of power.

They have the power to work someplace else.

"If you don't like it, move."

In the context of employment; yes. Bye. Turn in your badge, too.

If you're really hungry, don't bite the hand that feeds you. If they're evil then plan ahead.

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

Or live somewhere where you get free food.

> It is pretty hypocritical though for Mr. Free Speech to fire people who have concerns rather than address those concerns in a civil dialogue

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.

who knows what it means for Musk. he said (paraphrasing) that whatever is legal should be allowed on Twitter. this doesn't really mean anything with regards to his speech at work views.

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)

Twitter is specifically a medium providing its users (the public) the ability to communicate with each other. It's literally their business. Musk's view that as a public communication medium, Twitter should be permissive, has nothing to do with internal processes at any of Musk's companies. Hell, it has nothing to do with internal processes even at a hypothetical Twitter with a more permissive user ToS since the behavior of Twitter's employees is guided by their employment contracts and guidelines, not by Twitter's user-facing ToS. This would be true even if Musk weren't to ever become a majory shareholder of Twitter.