My father is convinced Elon is an idealist but I’d like to show him he’s been misled
There’s this website he bought where all the evidence can be found.
Perhaps the part where he says he’s free speech, but then yoinks his content moderation team and starts to delete twitter accounts and tweets he doesn’t agree with.
Even though that moderation is important to keep the platform free :/When he got a warning from the eu for not moderating his platform, he starts complaining about censorship.
Yes I thinks this tells much
The Hyperloop still hasn’t happened in an age where we can grab rockets from the sky.
It was just a great idea to stop development of high-speed rail so cars could still make sense for longer.
Hopefully USA seems to be realising already: https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/22/hyperloop-one-elon-musk-high-speed-rail/
I mean hyperloop is just “train, but bad”. No clue what people ever saw in that “tech”.
I wouldn’t bother. People who arrive at any opinion without using logic can’t be reasoned out of that opinion using logic. It’s an emotional thing.
I doubt you’ll find any proof that he is against free speech. More like, he cares about other things more than he cares about free speech. Such as his bank account.
This man likely wants to be president, but cannot, so he’s riding the Trump train instead. As such, I suspect you can find him bending on free speech and leaning into incitement of more Jan 6 treason quite a bit in regards to that personal motive.
There was the classic case where he said he was such a free speech absolutuonist that he wouldn’t ban the person who was tracking his plane. Guess what happened shortly afterwards
Musk tweeted that the accounts violated Twitter’s “doxxing” rules, meaning they revealed nonpublic personal information.
ban posts on other people’s live locations because of “increased risk of physical harm.”
- Shall we expect he shows consistency in case of troll harassment campaigns, which feminists have been bringing up for a lot of time.
- Also reinstate the API that made feminist anti-harassment apps possible?
- How does this (obviously personally motivated) cater to personal safety generalizes to his free-speech absolutist views about yet other platforms: KiwiFarms for example.
The more useful framing might be someone like Ford.
I’d be hard pressed to argue Musk hasn’t had some sort of a hand in a couple significant technological movements (Tesla, SpaceX) but that doesn’t make his political positions worthy of respect.
Similarly, for all his flaws, Ford revolutionized the factory. That didn’t make his Brazilian city work, his shitty anti semetic views right or his “meh” attitudes on ww2 correct.
Musk’s successes don’t particularly quality him on everything.
In a society that values money above everything else, his status as richest person for lots of people makes his views seem relevant, even if unconsciously so. Then there come the fanboys to idolize him. But let’s consider the obsession with wealth that creates this halo effect even in the “non-fan-boys”. Musk, Trump, Tate, should all be irrelevant, but they’re not, which is in fact a systemic problem.
Meh attitudes to ww2, puts it lightly.
Hitler loved him and afaik Ford was also invited over and got some medal or something
The USA was a fan of Hitler for quite some time. So if course there were people sympathetic with Nazi Germany
So you have a belief about Elon Musk, which you need to convince your father of.
But you don’t have any evidence or proof for this belief.
Does this raise any epistemic alarms in your head at all? Like … how did you form this belief?
Moving to antipolar stance requires way more proofs than moving from a neutral stance. Moreover some people may be more informed than me and they could be useful
I’m saying: how did you get convinced, if not with evidence?
Personally, I don’t memorise facts about people I don’t like. I learn them and forget them but don’t forget that I don’t like that person.
A sea lion gave it to me
proofs
Proof - mass/uncountable noun - information or facts that establish the truth or validity of a claim beyond a reasonable doubt
Proofs - countable noun - highly-structured formal demonstrations showing a theory’s validity based on a set of axioms and methodical challenges
You can’t reason with an irrational opinion. I applaud you for trying, but don’t blame yourself if it doesn’t work.
Assuming your intentions are genuine and this isn’t a trolling attempt, I would suggest you start with a web search for “musk free speech hypocrite”. Plenty of articles out there.
Good luck with your father.
As for your original question: Musk helps oppressive states enforce censorship on his platform .
His passion for free speech is only for white supremacists and conspiracy theorists now running rampant on his platform (there is a John Oliver segment about it).
He opposed an anti-hate-speech law in Ireland, although the law makes clear that it is still allowed to express unfavorable opinions and offend others, but forbids incitement to violence.
This shows he is not interested in defending “unfavorable reasoning” against the “woke” inquisitors, rather than advancing hate-speech and white supremacist causes in particular. This is not only a hypothesis, but a reported outcome of his actions with X/Twitter, which is now a nazi bar.
Don’t forget Russel’s tolerance paradox: If you tolerate nazis in order to defend freedom (of speech, political association, and the like), they will overtake the state apparatus and verbot freedoms for everyone, not only speech, but freedom of life as well.
He is doing exactly that, not only permitting, but promoting white supremacy, and at the same time treating the term “cisgender” for example as a slur.
This shows he is not all in for defending free-speech for all sides, but he is out to “destroy to woke mind virus” because it “stole his son from him”.
Musk is a nazi apologist, a big cry baby, and a media gatekeeper who enforces censorship both as a platform owner and as a service to totalitarian states.
He is a national security risk, according to Wired.
He is a national security risk, according to Wired.
He is a member of the national security state. He and the security state are deeply in bed with each other. Much of his income is from the military-intelligence-industrial complex, coming straight from the federal government. The US is an oligarchy, and he is one of the most powerful & influential oligarchs. He’s literally the richest person on earth at the moment, and already has enormous influence on the state.
Why did he buy Twitter? To control the conversation, to manage public opinion. He bought it to 1) censor it and 2) inject propaganda into it.
I still think Twitter was just a fuck up on his side
Else it would be A+ psyop role playing and looking at all those bright minds, I don’t see a possibility for them acting accordingly to a sinister plan.
I just want to make clear, that I don’t think it’s some kind of dark deep state issue, but much more a systematic issue, caused by Imperial capitalism - not saying you implied it, I just wanted to clarify
“Deep state” is actually a useful lens through which to view bourgeois democracies, it’s just nothing like the far right’s unhinged conceptualizations of it.
Michael Parenti, Dirty Truths
Those who suffer from conspiracy phobia are fond of saying: “Do you actually think there’s a group of people sitting around in a room plotting things?” For some reason that image is assumed to be so patently absurd as to invite only disclaimers. But where else would people of power get together – on park benches or carousels? Indeed, they meet in rooms: corporate boardrooms, Pentagon command rooms, at the Bohemian Grove, in the choice dining rooms at the best restaurants, resorts, hotels, and estates, in the many conference rooms at the White House, the NSA, the CIA, or wherever. And, yes, they consciously plot – though they call it “planning” and “strategizing” – and they do so in great secrecy, often resisting all efforts at public disclosure. No one confabulates and plans more than political and corporate elites and their hired specialists. To make the world safe for those who own it, politically active elements of the owning class have created a national security state that expends billions of dollars and enlists the efforts of vast numbers of people.
Aaron Good, American Exception: Empire and the Deep State
Very good point indeed.
