Re: Surprised
@jonathon keith ably demonstrates the truth of his first sentence!
The snag with Mr. Keith's "analysis" is that suing someone for defamation requires a government action (the trial). So while Twitter is perfectly free to restrict speech (as he correctly but irrelevantly states), in this instance they didn't, and therefore the speech (the tweet) as uttered, and the government got involved when the lawsuit was filed.
As a matter of law (as of yesterday) the tweet _was_ protected speech (per the jury, whose votes are the ones that counts). Apparently the crux of the matter is that _in isolation_ nothing Musk wrote could be directly tied to the plaintiff, and therefore it's not possible for a reasonable person to assume that Musk's assertion was a claimed statement of fact (as opposed to opinion) and therefore his tweet was a non-factual opinion not capable of being assessed as "true" or "false", therefore it could not be defamatory.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
