Elon Musk‘s erratic posting on X, formerly Twitter, has come back to haunt him once again as a 22-year-old Jewish man pursues a defamation case over tweets in which the tech mogul baselessly suggested the recent college graduate was an undercover federal agent posing as a neo-Nazi during a street fight between far-right groups. Musk’s excruciating March 27 deposition in the matter, which a judge ordered released to the public over the objections of the CEO’s lawyer, reveals the extent to which he has continually sabotaged both himself and the social media platform he owns.

  • BizzleEnglish
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    X is “the most accurate, timely, and truthful place on the internet, Musk said during his questioning about a false statement he made on the site that has been viewed by over a million users and has yet to be retracted or deleted almost a year later.

    Hilarious.

    • Zimited
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      Truth in this case, comes from the ability to be proven wrong. If they removed it, the truth wouldn’t have a chance to be relevant and challenge the wrong statement. I assume that is what Elon has in mind when he considers his site to be more truthful. Much on the common internet these days gets shut down and removed before even being able to be challenged. Like on Reddit. Which ironically leads to less truth, since less people have their opinions challenged and are instead removed, or the challenge is removed.

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          So you are basically saying to mute the opposition to the agenda of power?

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              If in this case the power allows democracy to function better through clearer and less muted digital freedom of speech, thats a better power than anything else. If thats what it takes to make the averages of society think a more unified, less biased and obscured thought again and regain its control over the real power that is greedy money to the few, then fuck it so be it.

              • Bartsbigbugbag
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                Except he’s been caught many times banning and censoring left wing individuals and organizations while allowing literal nazis carte blanche and himself broadcasting fascist and racist viewpoints on the site.

          • zeppoEnglish
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            No, I don’t accept the proposition. There is plenty of false and unverifiable content on FB, reddit, IG and so on.

      • ReluctantMuskrat
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        Give an example of where it’s led to less truth. When X perpetuates lies, truth and the world’s welfare is harmed. Look at the number of people that died thinking covid was a lie and people that think vaccines are somebkind of conspiracy to harm them.

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          If X perpetuates a lie and doesn’t have the facilitation to allow a variety of perspectives and opinions to hold the lie accountable, that is an echo chamber and I’d agree it would be a huge problem. Elon said every person should be allowed to speak for the most part on X. If that saying holds any merit, I assume X lives up to that eventually. If it doesn’t I’m on you guys’ side about X.

          I feel if Elon Musk said covid was a lie and people took only his word for it, that is on them. Its another story entirely if there was no other trustworthy source of information or data. USA seems to struggle with that these days, so I understand how it went so wrong with Covid in some places. But yeah, a person in this case would win the game of natural selection by not only going off of what one dude/source says (probably in a casual, low effort manner at that).

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            Musk allows extreme right wing to flourish and boosts their falsehoods himself, but has personally censored many left voices. What he claims about “free speech” and what he does are not the same.

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              Do you have sources that show he intentionally censored voices? He would be a huge hypocrite depending on how that was done.

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                There are numerous examples available to anyone who looks for it. Here’s one where he banned a bunch of journalists who had been critical of him, using an excuse about “doxxing”:

                https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/twitter-journalist-suspend-1.6688110

                There’s another where he suspended the account of a prominent Tesla critic:

                https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/15/elon-musk-led-twitter-suspended-plainsite-a-prominent-tesla-critic.html

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                  Thank you for sharing.

                  Hm, in the first link, the journalist seems to have contributed to the incentivization of giving people the power to find and try to harm/kill Elon. I personally feel that directly incentivizing and feeding information for possible murder of an individual is one of the few things I would agree with keeping away from the app myself.

                  As for the second link it reads like a red flag for me. The reasoning to the ban is not there. And any estimates of why fall short with obscurity. At least within’ the article. Generally when something is obscure I assume the worst. But part of me wonders if details were left out from the article. I’d need to do more research. Looks bad for Elon though.

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                    “incentivizing and feeding information for possible murder of an individual” is the dramatic excuse musk used, correct. “Assassination coordinates”. I’m not sure where you got incentivized from though. They were accounts that discussed the elonjet account which republished freely available public flight information. Note that musk reinstated these accounts:

                    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/17/elon-musk-reinstates-twitter-accounts-of-suspended-journalists

                    As the platform owner, there are also other ways he could reduce the reach of accounts, which would be difficult to independently prove.

      • melpomenesclevage
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        No I’m pretty sure truth is just information that maps to material reality.

        Like, it’s more complex than that, and if anyone wanted to have a serious discussion we should probably lay down sonevprimers and talk about thought and models and standardized abstractions like language, but without getting about 5000 pages deep; truth is just that; information that maps to material reality. It remains true if it is not known, and a lie is not made truth if everybody fails to call it bullshit.