this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2025

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489

Musk’s X suspends opposition accounts in Turkey amid civil unrest (www.politico.eu)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

30 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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[–] [email protected] 158 points 2 months ago (3 children)

As long as he keeps saying he's a free speech absolutist, we have to believe him.... Right?

[–] taladar 81 points 2 months ago (2 children)

He seems to be very much in favor of his own speech being completely free of any relation to reality.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Elon should be allowed to say whatever he wants without anyone contradicting or fact checking him. His power to be free to say whatever he wants should be absolute!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago

Everybody knows that you only attain free speech when you control a platform with hundreds of millions of users and can ban anyone you disagree with at any time, for any reason.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Right, and speech free from criticism obviously

[–] Imgonnatrythis 11 points 2 months ago

There's nothing more American than bragging about freedom while your freedom is stripped away from you right in front of your eyes.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago

Free speech abolitionist.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

I mean, he's free to say it, but we're free to call him a liar until he uses his immense resources to shut us up like he always does.

[–] [email protected] 69 points 2 months ago

People need to get off this stupid platform. It was bad before without Elon, now it's just the worse.

[–] [email protected] 62 points 2 months ago

Fash support fash.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Musk will always side with the fascist or the dictator.

[–] Imgonnatrythis 17 points 2 months ago

He will always side with profit. If he doesn't do this Turkey will ban X from the country. Of course these kinds of threats only come from fascists so the correlation is indeed high.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Ah, so Turkey is who gave Twitter $1bn recently.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

They’re also giving us eggs. Hmm

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

turkey moment

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Someone needs to make an inverse-xwitter platform. You're only allowed to tweet if you prove you've been banned on X.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Call it Y

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

People still use Shitter?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

i mean he did it the last time their were elections in turkey too..

[+] [email protected] -12 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I get that it's trendy to bash Elon, but he has always said that X would attempt to follow local laws:

By “free speech”, I simply mean that which matches the law. I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law. If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect. Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.

He has pushed back on countries who attempt to push their censorship dictates on the world -- hence, why many of the account suspensions are only in effect within Turkey:

Some accounts appear to be suspended only in Turkey and not in the rest of the world.

Larger question: Why is Elon/X getting more flak than the authoritarian douchebag -- Erdoğan -- and his cronies in the judiciary who are censoring and jailing political opponents?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

I don't like the either/or, but I think Elon is an easier target in the Anglosphere. But the US government, of which Elon is a part, has been enabling authoritarian douchebags, and even if this act is consistent with the company's pragmatic compliance choices, it also aligns with the US administration's general tendency. And Elon has in other cases shown that his commitment to free speech is pretty weak if it's speech that he doesn't like.

[+] [email protected] -21 points 2 months ago (4 children)

No matter how much I dislike Musk, I don't think he's giving that much choice. Erdogan is a dictator who has the power to block X altogether. A real free speech advocate would not succcumb to the pressure of a repressive government, but the article does imply Musk is not the initiator of these bans: "Musk himself said that "the choice is have Twitter throttled in its entirety or limit access to some tweets." He said X would publicly post the Turkish government's requests."

Not saying we shouldn't put Tesla's on fire tho.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 2 months ago

Yeah so the solution there is to not just bow down to a dictator. If they want to block Twitter altogether, let them. Let's not pretend that Musk isn't willingly going along with that.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago

He only cares about laws when he wants to. He literally controls the internet over their head with Starlink. He could have uncensored Twitter on there and FYIWDWYTM. He isn't powerless. He is, once again, selectively deciding who gets free speech.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago

But when it came to following the orders of the Brazilian Supreme Court to provide information about far-right criminals, he defied the country and had X banned for a few weeks on the whole country.

There is a clear bias when it comes to who X bans, which always favors governments with authoritarian tendencies.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Erdogan is a dictator who has the power to block X altogether.

Does it really make a difference whether it's Erdogan or Musk who silences these people?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

For the people on the streets it doesn't change anything, but it's weird how little blame Erdogan is getting here.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Because he is getting blamed all the time, no one is defending that piece of shit. He has been a thorn in everybodys side for very long.

Musk, on the other hand, is still seen as a genious hero by some people.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Just because most everyone agrees doesn’t mean you should stop. The vast majority of Lemme seems to agree that Musk is a piece of shit, but I’m going to keep point it out anyway.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago

You're not wrong.