Elon Musk buys 100% of Twitter

[schmittel]

Always thought Elon Musk was a bit of a loon but maybe I was wrong. His latest wheeze looks interesting. He posted this on Twitter a couple of weeks ago:



And lo and behold he has now bought 10% of the company and has a seat on the board.

What's he up to? He is a self proclaimed defender of free speech, so of course the speculation is he is on a crusade to stop twitter being the self appointed arbiter of what is acceptable opinion.

If he pulls that off, good for him I say.

[Scotty]

And lo and behold he has now bought 10% of the company and has a seat on the board.

He bought the shares on the 14th March, before the above tweets. I think his intention is to lessen the level of moderation on Twitter and allow more 'free speech' which will just turn it into an even bigger cauldron of hatred than it already is.

I was thinking the other day of going to ask a bookies for odds on Elon Musk getting sent to prison sometime in the next 10 years. Wonder what odds I'd get? He's been close to the wire before.

[isha]

I am not fond of Elon Musk. I cannot understand how he is elevated to some kind of saviour figure by so many.
He is a rich kid poser-type who grew up so spoiled that he used to walk around with emeralds in his pockets as a teenager.
He has developed these electric cars which use batteries that consume insanely enormous amounts of rare earth minerals and take years to pay off the cost of their manufacture from a ''green'' or environmental point of view.
He is mad to go to Mars, like so many of his transhumanist wayfarers, people like Peter Thiel et al, who cannot accept human mortality, view us pretty much as meat suits with a consciousness that mirrors computers. These people have no soul.
I cannot dig this weird space ache so many have, the idea of being on another planet where one is dependent upon an exoskeleton or machine-operated dome to be able to breathe seems dystopian and claustrophobic to me.
And yet these heroes invest vast amounts of earth resources in trying to get us off planet in their mighty metal phalluses. It is messianic insanity.
He has just hired a woman to have his recent seventh baby - an anonymous woman whose body and womb were commodified by him so that Elon could replicate his genes all over a planet he seems desperate to have us all leave.

Yeah, I am not fond of him, I tell him regularly as much on his twitter feed, and I don't give a hoot what he does about Twitter.
Fecken attention-seeking transhumanist gobdaw.

[schmittel]

So now Musk is not going to join the board after all.



Watch Twitter share price rocket.

[isha]

[knownunknown]

Twitter was founded as a free speech platform and now its most avid users revel in shutting down discourse and getting others banned and silenced(ala political threads in the other place). Musk has suggested he could bring it back to its roots, that can only be good for humanity.


I wonder how much what happened to the Babylon Bee contributed to Musk’s decision to buy Twitter. They were a parody website that was suspended from Twitter for congratulating a trans woman as ‘man of the year’, an opinion this Bloomberg article shares, or is it as many others are suggesting- a way to make money. Either way if he does implement a fairer free speech code I don’t care if he makes a fortune in the process, fair play to him.

Just to get it in- in advance, that free speech absolutists still have agreed upon restrictions on speech that are already in law. It doesn’t mean than anything goes. Political speech especially shouldn’t be suppressed, as is being done on Twitter.

[isha]

Just to get it in- in advance, that free speech absolutists still have agreed upon restrictions on speech that are already in law. It doesn’t mean than anything goes. Political speech especially shouldn’t be suppressed, as is being done on Twitter.

As I said already I'm really not a fan of Musk, but if he does reverse the censorship of different opinions and opinion havers it will be an overall good. As you say there are already restrictions on free speech in law, that is enough. People have to be allowed say what they want if they keep to the agreed limitations. Righteous wankers pursuing supposedly virtuous ideology and deciding who to nuke is not good.

Personally I would prefer that these platforms were not absolutely infested with porn, but if it is legally consensual etc, and that's what some people want to scroll through all the live long day, I have to tolerate it. The MAPs stuff though, they should take that out of the terms and conditions immediately.

[schmittel]

What is the MAPs stuff?

[isha]

Minor Attracted Persons.

In the terms and conditions of Twitter as per a policy adopted in 2019 discussions about child sexual exploitation or attraction to minors was permitted so long as it did not glorify, normalise or promote child sexual exploitation.

I have just checked and I see "or attraction to minors" has since been removed. There's a screenshot on https://thenextweb.com/news/twitter-let ... argues/amp
of the old phrasing.

It has been changed now since I last looked. So that is good. And good to know!

Still I regularly enough see people posting screenshots of posts by MAPs who they are reporting. As far as I know it is, or at least was until not long ago, a bit of a "thing" on Twitter. IMO it would be important to be hard-line about that kind of thing which I hope they already are. Nonetheless Twitter accounts for half of all child abuse material found online. According to Internet Watch Foundation. And is slower than other platforms to respond to reports.

[knownunknown]

Well, looks like Musk now owns Twitter, it’s official.

[schmittel]

That escalated quickly. Good for him.

I think Babylon Bee will be first back, but all eyes will be on @realDonaldTrump

I predict a circus!

[knownunknown]

Actually just watched an interview Musk did with the Babylon bee about 4 months ago where he called woke a mind virus that had the ability to really hinder humanity. Now I can understand all the hate he’s getting and who he’s getting it from
Of course he’s right.

[Del.Monte]

If I had his money I would use it to take out contracts on a number of World leaders - I'm sure there's plenty of assassins available if the price is right.

[schmittel]

[marhay70]

Free speech and hate speech are not synonymous. Musk could find himself in deep shit if it is perceived that he's allowing the usual suspects to run riot.

[isha]

Anyone with a brain should know that free speech has limitations.
Politics wise, it's far better to learn to exercise ones ability to reason and persuade via debate. Supporting censorship of others opinions weakens ones own sword.
Twitter has mute and block buttons which is better use of reason than demanding censorship. Might as well know what the deplorables say, at least. People will still be well able to build their own echo chambers with these muting/ blocking facilities.

[Fratello]

Shockin waste of money.
I don't have a twitter account so I probably don't grasp the "significance" of it.
He would have been better off giving the 44b to help cover some of the cost of the children's hospital or give it to me.

I wonder will Jim Corr and such intelligentsia return?

[Cyclepath]

I don't think Must is going to magically 'fix' Twitter. It may be turn out to be his biggest headache and an unwelcome distraction. It's a minefield and you can see that just from the comments all over twitter and here.

Most people are in favour of free speech with the exception of these following things [insert your opinion of the things that aren't included in free speech].

The devil is in the detail and gaining agreement on what exactly should and shouldn't be allowed. For example we can probably all agree that nonces shouldn't be allowed push their MAPs agenda right? But what about the common or garden porn that Isha mentioned? Personally I don't give a feck because I don't follow porn accounts and therefore never see it. What about alternative viewpoints on Vaccination? How do you moderate between well formed evidence-based tweets and pure sh1te from conspiracy nutjobs?

Moderation costs huge amounts of money, whether human or AI, and is intrinsically prone to error and policy/ethics corruption. So then, do we just open the floodgates? Clearly not because users would abandon the platform wholesale.

Many snowflakes are already saying they can't possibly share a platform with Donald Trump. My answer to this is that you share a f0cking planet with him so learn about resilience, but fortunately I'm not in charge of user retention at Twitter...

I honestly don't envy anyone trying to sort out this sh1tshow

[knownunknown]

Shockin waste of money.
I don't have a twitter account so I probably don't grasp the "significance" of it.
He would have been better off giving the 44b to help cover some of the cost of the children's hospital or give it to me.

I wonder will Jim Corr and such intelligentsia return?

At least the former owners of Twitter, the really progressive woke ones, have enough money now to solve world hunger. Let’s see what they do with it.

[isha]

Globally in 2021 defense spending was 2113 billion. That's armaments mostly. That's about what Musk spent on Twitter being spent every week on bombs and guns and big planes etc.
So if everyone stopped buying stuff from the military industrial complex for a wet fortnight in September they could probably eliminate a great many serious world problems. Eliminating world hunger for good is said to cost about 300 billion.
But they don't, and they haven't, and they won't, and it's a bit silly to talk about how a specific billionaire spends his baubles compared to such and such and etc etc.
I don't much like the guy but these noughts on a screen are not that big of a deal to people like him.

[schmittel]

I don't think Must is going to magically 'fix' Twitter. It may be turn out to be his biggest headache and an unwelcome distraction. It's a minefield and you can see that just from the comments all over twitter and here.

Most people are in favour of free speech with the exception of these following things [insert your opinion of the things that aren't included in free speech].

The devil is in the detail and gaining agreement on what exactly should and shouldn't be allowed. For example we can probably all agree that nonces shouldn't be allowed push their MAPs agenda right? But what about the common or garden porn that Isha mentioned? Personally I don't give a feck because I don't follow porn accounts and therefore never see it. What about alternative viewpoints on Vaccination? How do you moderate between well formed evidence-based tweets and pure sh1te from conspiracy nutjobs?

Moderation costs huge amounts of money, whether human or AI, and is intrinsically prone to error and policy/ethics corruption. So then, do we just open the floodgates? Clearly not because users would abandon the platform wholesale.

Many snowflakes are already saying they can't possibly share a platform with Donald Trump. My answer to this is that you share a f0cking planet with him so learn about resilience, but fortunately I'm not in charge of user retention at Twitter...

I honestly don't envy anyone trying to sort out this sh1tshow

Given the anecdotes that the banning of Babylon Bee was what spurred him into action, and tweets like the below, I suspect the biggest changes Musk wants to make are nothing to do with MAPs or porn.



He has taken the view that banning established media outlets for posting stories that pass muster in those publications, yet Twitter deem to be misinformation, that is pretty worrying in any circumstances. When it turns out the stories are in fact true that is even more troubling.

At the time of the NY Post ban, and others that got banned for Wuhan lab leak stories, and Trump's campaign team account, and even Trump's personal account etc etc I thought Twitter's actions were pretty shocking, but I accepted the argument that Twitter is a private company, and as long as they are operating within the law, they can do what they want.

But that cuts both ways. Those who made the private company argument to justify the silencing of opinions and voices they disagreed with are looking pretty stupid now complaining that for some reason Musk should not be allowed to buy Twitter and reinstate those opinions and voices.

[knownunknown]

The ‘all hands call’ Twitter had between the board members two days ago has been released by project veritas, another news organisation banned from Twitter for ‘doxing’ (showing up at a facebook exec’s home to interview them).

[schmittel]

The ‘all hands call’ Twitter had between the board members two days ago has been released by project veritas, another news organisation banned from Twitter for ‘doxing’ (showing up at a facebook exec’s home to interview them).

Just listened to that. In fairness to the employees, yes they have concerns about Musk's character and intentions, but it doesn't sound like they're hysterically losing their shit en masse.

[schmittel]

Interesting data if real...

[knownunknown]

Twitter has been accused of shadow banning people for some time now(limiting the scope of conservative accounts, the amount of people they are exposed to). Musk has promised to release the source code so some are speculating that Twitter is preemptively fixing this.

We’ll know soon enough either way whether it was happening for real or not, I suspect it was happening.