Prominent “free-speech absolutist” threatens to sue Jewish anti-hate group because it engaged in free speech he didn’t like.

"Elon Musk has threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League after accusing the civil rights group that campaigns against antisemitism and bigotry of trying to “kill” his X social media platform.

“The owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, said the ADL was trying to shut down his company by ‘falsely accusing it and me of being antisemitic’.”

If your list of enemies includes the ADL, then there’s a more-than-reasonable chance that you’re an anti-semite.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/05/elon-musk-sue-adl-x-twitter

@technology #twitter #musk #ElonMusk

  • @sparklepower@beehaw.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    2810 months ago

    rich person threatens legal action because he is losing income due to his own actions. got it.

    Yaccarino, a highly respected TV advertising executive, was appointed in May with the task of restoring relationships with advertisers a priority. In 2021, advertising accounted for 90% of X’s revenue but that income stream has been hit by companies pausing ad spending over doubts over Musk’s leadership.

    i’m also curious how long Linda Yaccarino is going to last. she’s been around since May, given the job of cleaning up messes after Elon. her pay and benefits are probably very good, but what’s the real cost of this bullshit? is it worth it? is it possible for her mental health to remain in good condition while she deals with this? we’ll see!

    • @PotentiallyAnApricot@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      1910 months ago

      I know little about her and I definitely don’t want to excuse her actions in defending twitter, but this is such a glass cliff situation. (Hiring a woman or other marginalized person to take the heat after basically destroying the company by himself)

    • @curiosityLynx@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      1210 months ago

      I would be surprised if she came into this position without being either a psychopath or a sociopath. As such, all that truth distorting wouldn’t damage her mental health. At worst she might feel overworked.

      • @PotentiallyAnApricot@beehaw.org
        link
        fedilink
        7
        edit-2
        10 months ago

        I think people with psychosis or mental illnesses are actually the least likely to want to fuck over others. But if you mean that she probably wouldn’t have taken the job without already being a giant asshole who doesn’t care about others, I would say you are very likely to be right. Twitter under musk is absolutely not a force for good in the world, and working there is a tacit endorsement of checks notes oh my god so many bad things.

        • PostmodernPythia
          link
          fedilink
          4
          edit-2
          10 months ago

          As someone who has extensive personal experience with severe mental illness, I appreciate very much your desire to defend us (your instinct would usually be right), but psychopathy is a weird one. If the previous commenter had said “mental illness” instead of psychopathy specifically, I’d be pissed. But there is evidence that psychopaths advance in business management. I realize it’s not exactly JAMA, but here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephaniesarkis/2019/10/27/senior-executives-are-more-likely-to-be-psychopaths/?sh=24aa505d47c4

          • Thanks for the context! I was responding more to how loosely diagnosis words are used to describe people we don’t know, in not always accurate ways - word drift I guess? So someone with a clinical diagnosis and someone who seems like they could from the outside are two different things, in the popular imagination, even if in both cases people use the same word. I know people have different experiences and I didn’t mean to seem nitpicky. But, I have to believe there are plenty of diagnosed psychopaths out there who do not make the choice to do evil hypercapitalism, and there are plenty of people without any kind of disorder who do. That’s why I’m a bit reticent about generalized statements, even if there may be grain of truth in some cases.