> Elon has gone from being the hero of the left to the villain for daring to allow free speech.

I don't know if Elon Musk was ever "the hero of the left", or any tech executive for that matter? He definitely has his fans (among techies mostly), but you would be hard pressed for any hardcore leftist to see a CEO as their hero. The whole pedo thai diver incident turn even many left-leaning (and unaligned, and right-leaning) techies from pro to neutral or even negative.

I can't speak for "the left", but he went from someone I respected for his contributions to... not that, not because of his views on free speech, but because he started publicly acting like an asshole on a regular basis.

Nobody in the comment chain was talking about left-wing vs. right-wing ideology. I get that Musk is a partisan figure now, but this thread isn't going to get any better by turning it into yet another ideological battle.

Yeah, he's out there fighting for your right to say the N word. What a guy.

Freedom of speech is tough, huh? And in the USA it doesn't protect against promoting threats of violence. Seeing as the N word is probably considered the most hateful word in the English language, I can see it being understandably considered violent in many cases.

It is absolutely not literally violence to say or call someone the N word, no matter how repugnant or socially unacceptable it is. It is not illegal in the US to call people horrible names, nor is it illegal to be racist, homophobic, transphobic, etc.

This isn’t to say I advocate for people being any of those things, it’s just somehow become generally accepted that these things are somehow inherently breaking the law or some kind of hate crime. Even on the rare instance someone displays some racist material in public, the news is quick to say police are investigating…investigating what, exactly? “Hate speech” is not a crime in the US.

Do absolutists have gradients?

Is firing people for dunking on their CEO what passes for free speech now? Or do you mean firing people for having different political opinions from the CEO?

> It’s one of the most left leaning tech companies.

Personally I consider it meaningless metric since almost all American tech companies are left-leaning, for various reasons.