I have thought about it for a while but the US is basically in a cold civil war, with a significant chance of it becoming hot. And it looks very similar to their previous one. Neither side seem to have a charismatic enough leader.

It's easy to look over the pond and think it's none of our problem. But if the US falls to chaos a lot of other countries will follow suit. We can already see this influence in the UK and I'd argue many other EU countries. Russia probably saw this weakness, bet on it worsening much quicker than it did, but lost that bet (so far).

With that said, addressing the US as a whole no longer makes sense. I'm sure plenty, plenty of Americans see what is happening.

It's unfortunate that one of the wealthiest people on this planet has taken the anti-democratic side, but it's not the first or the last time in history a powerful man, rich beyond measure has done so.

Free speech is good and must be protected

I agree, but Twitter has nothing to do with free speech. Period. It's not like the government is going around throwing people in prison for being racist fucks on Twitter. Twitter can moderate content if they want to. If they don't want to moderate content they don't have to as long as the material isn't illegal.

I don't know why people keep thinking this has anything to do with the first amendment at all. Twitter is not public, not even close.

You're partly right. But it's the job of the citizenry to stand up to this stuff, not the state. We can't keep our heads down and hope it goes away on its own. We shouldn't allow the state, with its monopoly on violence, to fight our social battles for us.

I dislike the idea of the state getting to start making decisions on what is "hateful". And I'm disgusted we don't have more people standing up and loudly declaring how wrong the hateful viewpoints are. It is our responsibility and we are failing.

It is a tempting proposition to let the state handle hateful speech, but we don't have to look much further than Florida to see what happens when the shit side is in power and starts redefining what is "hateful".

It's the official name so the news is obliged. Your brain can handle this detail I'm sure.

lmao at the fact that even a company named GILEAD doesn't want anything to do with Musk trying to kickstart a handmaid's tale

Almost explicitly so, free speech for those who want to scream the N-word and (shadow/) bans for pro-union posters and those critical of musk

Not yet. It's the inevitable outcome of tolerating Nazis on your platform but it takes time, especially with a userbase as large as Twitter's.

I’m no expert but I think it’s the same reason ads are full of hot people: association. If you see an ad for a Baconator enough times next to a neo-Nazi spewing hate speech you’re going to start to link the two in your mind.

Why do people assume that brands explicitly endorse everything their ads run next to?

Where by "people", we mean "individuals with so little critical thinking, that they might get influenced by an ad".

Well, that's why. Companies don't want easily influenciable people to associate their brand with something they're likely to view as negative.

It's not just that they don't want their ads next nazi crap, it's that they don't want to put ads on a platform that has nazi crap. You make a platform friendly to nazis, you lose advertising.

People will presure companies not to allow it. "I will not purchase your product because it is helping fund hate speech"

It doesn't matter that the company did not choose to place the ad there. The ad being there gives money to platform that they are recieving because of hate speech.

I believe it’s a matter of being in the same platform as controversial content.

In the end they’re paying Twitter to display their ads, and if Twitter allows questionable content to be in their platform, the companies are indirectly supporting it.

Especially considering we're talking targeted advertisement so the ads are based on who you are and not which corner of twitter you're hanging on.