Musk Shows He Does Not Understand COTUS

Elon Musk does not understand how the USA legal system works. Take a look at the basic fundamental error in this quote from him.

Musk suggested earlier this year that companies should align policies with laws like the First Amendment, because he says it’s what users want.

“If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect,” Musk tweeted in April this year. “Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.”

Source: Musk’s one-on-one with Kanye signals naïveté moderating Twitter hate speech | Ars Technica

That’s not how it works Elon. If US citizen’s want less free speech they can ask the congress to write a law and if the president signs it then it’s law, but only temporarily. That’s because of the First Amendment, something he clearly does not grasp at even an elementary school level. A lawsuit would promptly follow the law’s signing, probably from the ACLU or a similar org. If need be it will be appealed all the way to the SCOTUS who will promptly overturn the law based on the First Amendment.

See Elon you’ve got it exactly backwards, the 1st restricts what speech laws can be enforced by government, it doesn’t permit the government to restrict speech (with a miniscule number of exceptions).

The real way this is supposed to work:

If people do not want to listen to speech they find offensive they can NOT get help from the government, PERIOD. Instead they use capitalism to avoid the problem. Since the 1st Amendment only applies to governments in the USA, and a tiny subset of business functions (e.g. telephone wire providers), nearly all businesses and all individuals can restrict speech in any way they want.

Elon, you claim to support free speech but you actually don’t want to allow the inseparable part of free speech, the right not to speak or publish speech you don’t like. No right to do something is valid unless there is the right to not do that thing. Freedom of religion or speech is non-existent if they do not include the right to not have a religion and the right to not speak or promote speech with which you disagree. Businesses have these rights and your wanting to take those rights away makes you anti-First Amendment, you typical rich white authoritarian asshole.