Hope you don't mind a vigorous response.
Of course not! Especially if I pled for free speech that means to accept and respect different opinions, too.
What I mainly criticized in my post is, that German media don't respect the achievements of Elon Musk. I stick - concerning that - with my opinion that he is pushing forward some really amazing technologies of which I am using one, Starlink, with high satisfaction myself.
That doesn't mean to think his behaviour wouldn't have some critic worthy aspects. As he is somewhat fanatic in achieving his goals he might have no respect and sympathy for the weaker ones and people who were not as lucky as him (I agree that success is a mix of intelligence, skills and having a strong will ... but often also just a portion of big luck, while not every poor person is responsible themselves for their pauverty).
In general I agree with his vision to fight bureaucracy within government, give people maximal freedom (and thus also responsibility for themselves) and lead a company as effective as possible, but you might be right that in some caes he is somewhat exaggerating.
Concerning X I can only say that I personally have much more freedom to write without worrying about getting my comments deleted than in any other big social media platfom which I highly appreciate (and being censored elsewhere doesn't mean at all I would for example insult other people or similar things, no, they just don't allow me to post links - which are for example related to crypto - or express certain opinions).
Thank you a lot to make the effort to read such a long text written in German language and contributing your thoughts and highly appreciated opinion!
I love languages. My graduate studies were in comparative literature with a concentration in German and Spanish language, although my skills are very rusty now in those languages.
Yes! Brilliant. Extraordinary. I'm grateful for what he has done to advance technology and science.
I used to have fun there, when it was Twitter. Then he started creating tiers of users based on money. And then he started punishing people selectively who criticized him. That is his right! He is an entrepreneur. More power to him. But I don't like the new rules, the new hierarchy, the new regulations. So I exercise my right and leave :) I don't know what kind of strictures you have on speech over there, but here I don't find any (as long as I don't break the law), so I don't need X.
Wonderful ideas. As a private individual he is entitled to them and to pursue them. However, nobody elected him to office. He has become the man behind the master. People are starting to call him President Musk. There is something very wrong with that. There has never been anything like it before in U.S. history, where one very powerful, very rich, very smart person has such an outsized influence on the president, on U.S. government. It is worrisome for me, as a U.S. citizen.
I appreciate your long response. Perspectives from around the world...that's what I love about Hive.
That's great and obviously very useful!
That is of course something I wouldn't support in general, even if to really be able to judge these cases I would have to know more details about what exactly happened and why. But right, it is well possible that he simply wasn't able to accept some criticism and thus acted against his own proclained aim to defend the freedom of speech.
Sure, we are free to choose ourselves where we prefer to meet and communicate with other people.
I admit I don't completely understand that sentence. Do you mean HIVE with "here"? To be honest, I have very mixed feelings concerning HIVE. On the one hand I like to be able to save my experiences, ideas and thoughts uncensorable on a blockchain, great, but on the other hand HIVE is by far not as decentralized as some of its fans and 'chillers' pretend. Since the beginning in 2016 more or less the same accounts ('top witnesses') are in power due to early mining mutual support and later also bidbot use.
In my eyes it is a pure myth that the main reason for being successful on HIVE is producing "quality content". The big majority of upvotes are automated (people like you who really still read content are an exception). Due to the seven-day-reward window (with better curation rewards for early voters) most posts are forgotten and never read again very shortly after being published.
The real winners on HIVE are daily short posts producing reward farmers benefitting of vote circles and good connections to some whales which you can find for example here and here, while lesser-known users are punished (partly by automated downvoting of everything they write) for 'petty offenses' like having not enough interaction on their posts (well, as a majority of posts are not read at all - is that their mistake?) etc.
Maybe I am completely wrong and you actually didn't write about HIVE anyway. :-)
Hello @jaki01,
By 'here' I meant the U.S. I have Bluesky, Substack, Medium, and other platforms where I can express controversial opinions freely. I try never to be obnoxious :)
I have no illusions about Hive. I know I can be downvoted out of existence. Also, of course the rewards are not equal. But I grew up in a society where rewards were never equal, never commensurate with value and effort. I got used to that a long time ago. Even as a child I could see the way the world was organized. The trick is to assess the value of a place to me. In this instance, I meet a lot of interesting people on Hive. I have contacts (such as you) that enrich my life, expand my understanding. I look past that other stuff and extract from Hive the value it has for me. Plus, I get to write (I love to write) and read material casually in other languages.
Rewards? When I first started here I was an avid Twitter user. My son told me about another platform, Hive (back then, the other platform that preceded Hive), where I could not only share ideas but also get rewards. So I tried Hive. At first the imbalance was discouraging. 00.00 on posts felt really bad--not for the reward but the lack of engagement and acknowledgement. But I persevered and my husband bought me a few hundred Hive to get me off the ground so I could have more fun.
When this is all over (that is, when I can no longer blog/am no longer here) I will leave the account to my son, who started this whole thing. It would be nice if I left him value, but even if I don't he'll have a decent Hive account to blog with himself.
I moderate two communities--Inkwell and LMAC. Both communities give me a chance to reach out across the world and encourage others. As a quiet, unassuming, rather reclusive elderly woman I feel good about that. No 00.00 posts in my universe, unless they truly have no value :))
Warmest regards for the season to you, your wife and your lovely daughter.
You are a wise man! :)