The thing is that we've seen this play out over and over again on the internet. Someone comes in talking about unfettered free speech, and even if they're genuine about it (which I do not believe Musk is) the reality of the internet quickly slaps them in the face. Their service gets flooded with trolls, spambots, racists, porn, and all manner of crime. At that point they either stick to their guns, and the site becomes a cesspool from which regular users and advertisers flee, or they start content moderation, which pisses off whichever person is the next person to declare "we need a real free speech site" and the cycle begins anew. One of the founders of Reddit had a pretty good thread addressed to Musk about it, basically saying that Musk had no idea what he was getting himself into, and how running a social network is basically an endless fucking nightmare.
Not only this, but what's stopping him from actively suppressing potential future alternatives to Tesla on the platform as a whole? I'm not saying that current Twitter is any great thing, but at the very least it's not wholly owned by a singular entity that can use it for direct manipulation of whole other lines of business.
yeah I see this getting really ugly really fast. Like it or not, twitter is one of the world's major platforms for communications, and it's now in the hands of someone who, at times, has acted like a petulant child. While I certainly don't think he has bad intentions, I do wonder if he has the maturity to run this properly.
See, I'm not sure that's how it would work out in this case. First, Twitter does not have any direct competitors in terms of its functionality. Facebook, Instagram, or whatever, do not do what Twitter does. Second, Twitter is entrenched. Nobody would move to a Twitter competitor because that would mean losing all the people you follow, or more importantly, the number of people that follow you. If a guy like Trump, a man who has almost a cult-like hold over 20-30% of the US population, can't successfully launch a social network, nobody can. Third, Musk has limitless resources right now. He is literally the wealthiest man on earth. I sincerely doubt it would bother him too much if Twitter lost money, especially at the rate Tesla is printing it. I don't even think it's about Tesla. I think it's having the power to control public discourse. I'm getting into tinfoil hat territory, but I could absolutely see Musk being shitty enough to push his thumb down on the scale when it comes to Twitter's algorithms promoting or more importantly, not promoting certain people or topics that would benefit himself or those connected to him.
Yep. I was listening to something on a radio talk show so I don't remember who the people are but they worked for FB and they talked about the steps taken to allow breastfeeding pics but not nudity. The gist was every time they came up with a logical rule, people would find loopholes and they'd have to tweak the verbiage.
A quick look at his twitter, and I’d say most of his posts are pretty much summing up whatever the topic is.
The really interesting bit to me is the fact that Musk wants to open source the software... to basically lay bare the magical algorithms that promote/demote shit. I firmly believe that Twitter, Facebook, and all the other social media platforms have been taken over by bots and are massive tools for propaganda... so I'm quite interested to see what might come out of that. As to Twitter being owned by him, meh, don't care. People are stupid when it comes to free speech, etc. He's for it, but then they cite him blocking people from his feed... and they don't get how that's not the same thing. I also want to see if Trump comes back...
In other news, today was a very interesting day. I was put in touch today with an ex US Spec Ops intel guy who's running some Ukraine humanitarian aide by buying gear, medical supplies, and running actual missions with a team to extract people out of the country. He was first hired by a few of my current company's leadership (he's my boss' ex-wife's current husband), using their private funds (8 figures), to get some of the people who work for us out of the war zone. The whole "we're not waiting for someone else to help, what can we do right fucking now" kind of thing. Dude is out there putting together convoys with a team to get people out, while providing gear, medical transport, etc. So... turns out that one of his biggest issues they are having is with cash transfers from people outside of Ukraine to there where they can use it locally to buy gas, food, equipment, etc. It's taking 14 days for actual physical goods to make it over there, and it's taking 10+ days for cash transfers to happen, so they want to use crypto to try and get it to "within the hour". All of their suppliers take crypto right now. Basically walked through how they can get set up and handle cash transfers via crypto. They're also working directly with Ukraine's senior government, whom I have a call set up with tomorrow. Never thought I'd be calling a sat phone that was being answered in Ukraine while a dude was getting shot at today, while he was apologizing for the noise.
I roll my eyes at the lack of general understanding of "free speech" and social media. The 1st ammendment protects you from the government. At the end of the day, Facebook, Twitter, etc. are publishing companies. The only difference between them and Random House, Simon and Schuster, etc., or a newspaper/magazine company is they provide a publishing platform to anyone for free instead of seeking out content creators, they pay to produce content. In return, users must adhere to their guidelines.
I think there is a growing distinction of "freedom of speech" and "The 1st Amendment." Much like the definitions of sexual assault, racism, and biological sex have been reshaped in the past decade, and if you don't like it you're a misogynist, racist, transphobe, bigot do better shitlord, our perceptions of freedom of speech has morphed from solely about the government's power(1st Amendment) to include other avenues of power in our society. Been lectured here numerous times about the progression of definitions of words and ideas. Suck it up buttercup, this is the new definition of "freedom of speech" and if you dont like it youre a fascist Nazi cockwasher. It has been fun watching the same idiots who originally defended Twitter's right to govern their business as they chose when they were censoring people they didn't like turn around and shriek about the same thing once the business did what businesses do.
“Free Speech Advocates” for social media platforms are no less pathetic than squatters who bitch about being evicted by landlords for refusing to pay rent. You’re on somebody’s property. Follow their rules.
Interestingly, Jack Dorsey (creator of Twitter) is all for Musk's purchase of Twitter. He thinks it's become owned by the wallstreet propaganda machine, and thinks this will rip it back from their hands.
I bet. Aside from Musk, the top shareholders are Vanguard, Blackrock, State Street and Morgan Stanley. Plus, you know, Dorsey personally made just about $1B on the sale.
Right-wingers are celebrating the Musk purchase by getting Ivermectin trending, now that they have "freedom" (ignoring for a second that the sale of a multi-billion dollar company and attendant policy changes take longer than 12 hours). Ironically immediately proving the critics right, by deliberately shitting up the site solely because they can.
As long as Twitter has threading and trending, it will never be above being a cybernetic prison designed to ruin people’s lives for daring to post WrongThink. Twitter and Facebook have only one rightful place, and that’s down the garbage disposal.
Now it’s just anecdotal but there have been a few left wing celebrities claiming their followers have dropped off in the thousands and right wing claiming similar upticks. Speculation is they were already reigning in bots and unshadowbanning people on the right.