Just to be on the same page, you're advocating Twitter to get out of any country that does this, right? Is there any social network capable of functioning without being banned from the country by outright omit government rulings? fb? Ig? mastodon?
The reality is not all countries have 1A like the US. Unfortunately, any social media, message app, etc... has to comply (to a certain extent) with the government and try as hard at it can not to compromise its values.
He was asked this in a BBC interview and he said they have to comply with local laws (this was about India) and that they have to so their employees there don't go to prison. It's not the gotcha you think it is.
It's not a 'gotcha'. It's what he literally claimed. He claimed to be a free speech absolutist and would do whatever it takes to support free speech. People fell for this, because obviously it's not true and sustainable. And the fact that he's complying with censorship in Turkey because he has businesses and other liabilities there show one of the core problems with him running a social media business.
Paraphrasing Musk's rude response. Twitter has 2 options: a) comply and block the account in question and b) not comply and get banned in Turkey, which would, of course, make the account in question not easily reachable from Turkey. Either choice will restrict free speech.
In case you missed it - the general election in Turkey is happening _today_. Getting banned weeks before and then getting un-banned some time in the future would have had a far more destructive impact on the political opposition.
Twitter is often used to distribute messages from the political opposition and to organize protests. Banning one account means a single voice is silenced before the election. Banning Twitter means it is harder for the opposition to organize an effective protest.
You are not responding to my main point. Nitpicking the number of accounts is not helpful: we don't know how many accounts have been removed so your guess is as good as mine.
There is a time and a place for posturing. Choosing to block access to a popular opposition platform on the eve of a very meaningful election is probably not it.
Meddling is worse. If Twitter is blocked, everyone there knows exactly what's going on. If some people are silenced, it's much easier for that to go unnoticed.
They could just insert a banner saying they blocked certain accounts to appease Erdogan and people would still know. His voters don't mind meddling; they are not free speech absolutists.
Blocking things highlights the problematic behaviour and annoys people, platforms censoring themselves just helps an agenda. They shouldn't get their cake and eat it too.
There are 4 types of 'pressures' a social media platform execs are facing
a) economic
b) legal
c) selective-outrage judicial/law enforcement
d) personal bias (of the execs)
In US, before Musk -- Twitter was succumbing to (c) and (d)
During Musk era, in US -- Twitter is facing (a) (c) (d) . Although it seems that (a) is not that strong/relevant.
In Turkey, today, Twitter is facing ( b ) and ( c ).
--
As users and observers we have to realize these pairs (Country + Pressure type union) and make relevant conclusions about the Country and about Twitter execs.
We cannot just remove the 'type' system out of these, and make conclusions.
Seems like the choice was between “Turkey blocks all of Twitter for all Turkish citizens” and “Twitter blocks certain tweets or accounts for all Turkish citizens”[1], and in addition Twitter will release information on what specifically the Turkish government requested to be blocked[2].
I know Elon has endlessly declared himself a free speech absolutist, but to me this seems like a perfect test case of “free speech maximalist” vs “free speech absolutist” - in general, the maximalist preference is 100% > 99% > 98% > … > 1% > 0%, while the absolutist preference is 100% > 0% > 1-99%. If he thinks his decision here is obviously correct then he’s actually a maximalist, not an absolutist like he so often claimed.
(Personally, I think this is a surprisingly sensible approach. I’ve long thought maximalism to be superior to absolutism, almost everywhere. In the case of free speech on the internet in particular, I take it as axiomatic that “The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it”, and consider it an obvious corollary that minimizing the amount of damage results in the most efficient and rapid re-routing.)
This happened before back in 2014[1] and also involved Twitter blocking access to certain posts or accounts under the threat of a total block. What exactly are their alternatives?
I suppose they could drag their feet a day or two until after the election, but after that, they'd be subject to fines, complete blocks of the site (like what happened to Wikipedia[2] for almost three years), and who knows what else. They could attempt to fight this in Turkish courts, but that might be futile.
I don't think that saying vile and racist things is helping his business. The only motives he seems to be having are those of a 12-year-old craving constant attention.
Tesla just recently entered the highly regulated Turkish market and the Turkish government is a SpaceX customer.
Just to be clear, I don’t think Musk did wrong, I think he is just a businessman who pretends to be an activist as part of his branding. He did a simple business calculation and concluded that the damage to the brand is less than the revenue from the Turkish market.
If you're claiming to be free speech only, but then start censoring without notifying people then you are intentionally creating a system that is telling people "this is everything that is relevant" but only showing one side, then you are doing something that is objectively worse that shutting down in that location.
Meanwhile, Turkey's oldest and most popular social media "Ekşi Sözlük" was blocked again today.
Previously, the original domain eksisozluk.com was blocked and the reason given was "the site has unnaturally large number of critics". Once the appeals to the court failed, they switched to eksisozluk2023.com and it was fine for a while but tonight they blocked that domain too. Now the new domain is eksisozluk42.com
An interesting fact is, the website is run by a legal entity registered in Turkey, with physical offices in central Istanbul. They are known to run the website by the book and removing any content the court demands but the core principle is "anything legal goes". So it's quite a free speech platform, despite some controversies over they years.
It's ridiculous to have them blocked since they are %100 legal. The government literally just said "fuck it, just block it".
After all there is a precedent, when Twitter decided to ban the former US President on its own account without any sort of court ruling mandating that. I don't agree with this move with regards to Turkey, but no one ever reflects on this?
Their ToS are pretty clear there were also under a none free speech absolutist CEO. Your question makes no sense and implies the only thing you wanted to do was incite a flame war.
The courts ruled that a bakery can deny a gay couple a cake. Trump was denied his gay cake. What is the problem?
All that outrage and righteous indignation, and for what? to do a 180 and claim that "Twitter is just a cold-hearted business, free speech or not"? Really? Any reflecting on THAT?
> The courts ruled that a bakery can deny a gay couple a cake. Trump was denied his gay cake. What is the problem?
The problem is that there's so much overlap between the people who think that court decision was wrong and that the bakery should have had to bake the gay cake and the people who support Twitter's ban of Trump. If you think something is unfair/unjust/unconstitutional/whatever and that it should be undone/repealed/overturned, then you shouldn't argue for other things using that thing as precedent. It's dishonest to say both "Y is okay because X is okay and X is basically the same as Y" and "X isn't okay".
I support the right of businesses to make decisions of that kind, but I do not have to agree with them.
As opposed to shrieking "bloody murder, the commies are coming for our tweets, are they going to shoot us next, we are being muzzled." The drama that came with a business decision was just over-the-top.
So if you think is fine, okay, but I don't want to hear an outrage ever again about someone being deplatformed. It's not against the law or the Constitution.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 99.5 ms ] threadROTFL
The previous regime at Twitter actually stood up to Erdogan.
The reality is not all countries have 1A like the US. Unfortunately, any social media, message app, etc... has to comply (to a certain extent) with the government and try as hard at it can not to compromise its values.
Twitter rejected demands from the Turkish government to open offices way back in 2014 because they knew it was a risk.
And also technically doesn't matter, him not being a free speech absolutist still stands true
This situation reminds me of the trolley problem.
like wikipedia? https://www.reuters.com/article/turkey-wikipedia/turkish-cou...
There is a time and a place for posturing. Choosing to block access to a popular opposition platform on the eve of a very meaningful election is probably not it.
Erdogan meddles (with only partial success, hopefully) or Erdogan blocks? What’s worse?
a) economic b) legal c) selective-outrage judicial/law enforcement d) personal bias (of the execs)
In US, before Musk -- Twitter was succumbing to (c) and (d) During Musk era, in US -- Twitter is facing (a) (c) (d) . Although it seems that (a) is not that strong/relevant.
In Turkey, today, Twitter is facing ( b ) and ( c ).
--
As users and observers we have to realize these pairs (Country + Pressure type union) and make relevant conclusions about the Country and about Twitter execs.
We cannot just remove the 'type' system out of these, and make conclusions.
I know Elon has endlessly declared himself a free speech absolutist, but to me this seems like a perfect test case of “free speech maximalist” vs “free speech absolutist” - in general, the maximalist preference is 100% > 99% > 98% > … > 1% > 0%, while the absolutist preference is 100% > 0% > 1-99%. If he thinks his decision here is obviously correct then he’s actually a maximalist, not an absolutist like he so often claimed.
(Personally, I think this is a surprisingly sensible approach. I’ve long thought maximalism to be superior to absolutism, almost everywhere. In the case of free speech on the internet in particular, I take it as axiomatic that “The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it”, and consider it an obvious corollary that minimizing the amount of damage results in the most efficient and rapid re-routing.)
1: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1657422401754259461 2: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1657428707995181058
the term is: hypocrisy
I suppose they could drag their feet a day or two until after the election, but after that, they'd be subject to fines, complete blocks of the site (like what happened to Wikipedia[2] for almost three years), and who knows what else. They could attempt to fight this in Turkish courts, but that might be futile.
1. https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/a/2014/challenging-t... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_of_Wikipedia_in_Turkey
Just to be clear, I don’t think Musk did wrong, I think he is just a businessman who pretends to be an activist as part of his branding. He did a simple business calculation and concluded that the damage to the brand is less than the revenue from the Turkish market.
The statistical likelihood of him not being a white supremacist alt-right crank is … lim -> 0 when looking at his entire corpus of work
Previously, the original domain eksisozluk.com was blocked and the reason given was "the site has unnaturally large number of critics". Once the appeals to the court failed, they switched to eksisozluk2023.com and it was fine for a while but tonight they blocked that domain too. Now the new domain is eksisozluk42.com
An interesting fact is, the website is run by a legal entity registered in Turkey, with physical offices in central Istanbul. They are known to run the website by the book and removing any content the court demands but the core principle is "anything legal goes". So it's quite a free speech platform, despite some controversies over they years.
It's ridiculous to have them blocked since they are %100 legal. The government literally just said "fuck it, just block it".
All that outrage and righteous indignation, and for what? to do a 180 and claim that "Twitter is just a cold-hearted business, free speech or not"? Really? Any reflecting on THAT?
The problem is that there's so much overlap between the people who think that court decision was wrong and that the bakery should have had to bake the gay cake and the people who support Twitter's ban of Trump. If you think something is unfair/unjust/unconstitutional/whatever and that it should be undone/repealed/overturned, then you shouldn't argue for other things using that thing as precedent. It's dishonest to say both "Y is okay because X is okay and X is basically the same as Y" and "X isn't okay".
As opposed to shrieking "bloody murder, the commies are coming for our tweets, are they going to shoot us next, we are being muzzled." The drama that came with a business decision was just over-the-top.
So if you think is fine, okay, but I don't want to hear an outrage ever again about someone being deplatformed. It's not against the law or the Constitution.