Musk wants 100% twitter for himself

[washti]

Does it matter if he gets it? Will twitter mental pendulum turn right-wing? Will establishment leave?

 

[Daddy]

Who uses twitter?

 

[Hadoblado]

200,000,000 daily monetisables in 2021. Enough to matter even if you don't like social media.

I'm not sure how it will go. Elon's pointed out some real issues he'd like to address, such as bot armies. If he does this, then the quality of the medium might improve even if he unbans dishonest actors.

But he's got a history of exploiting his disproportionate voice for personal gain. I don't have any faith that he'll be doing anything beyond advancing his own position.

I'm not sure if Twitter will become right wing. I don't think it will if he's just removing bans. If he starts banning in the other direction? Then probably yeah but I don't think that's on the cards.

 

[Rook]

the joke is few years back all the right wing blogs decried Musk and Tesla fans as left-wing government suck-ups. short term gestalt memory, the crowd is fickle and one day's scapegoat is the next day's idol. i don't care who owns twitter, just as i don't care about whatever circlejerk meta or the ersatz faceplant is. as society evolves, social systems like these will change and may even suffer sudden extinction events.

 

[Cognisant]

Maybe he will use Twitter as a platform to launch his political career, it seemed to work pretty well for Trump, a good time for it too with Russia (SpaceX's main competitor) on everyone's shit list, and I've heard NASA is planning a Moon base...

 

[onesteptwostep]

I have a feeling Elon is going to self-implode in the years to come. Unless he sobers up and takes a more assertive disposition he's going to really crash his companies and his wealth. The recent lawsuits make it seem like his management style is not meant for a longterm corporate culture but more of a meme frat party.

Also beyond that imo he's an embodiment of everything that's wrong with modernity. Mastery of technology yet not having the self-awareness for humanity. A 90s rock star that no one 10 years later will remember.

 

[onesteptwostep]

Headlines like this make me think he's still in high school: Elon Musk says his offer to buy Twitter is about 'the future of civilization,' not making money - CNN

 

[Cognisant]

Mastery of technology yet not having the self-awareness for humanity.

Bwahahahaha

He's educated and not an idiot but he's not a "master of technology" he has engineers and software developers and all other kinds of technical experts working for him, people at his level aren't up late at night designing things in CAD or heat testing components or trying to find the cause of a software bug.

He's a CEO, he wants something done he has a meeting with the division managers who then farm out the specifics to project managers who in turn divide up that work between operating teams.

CEOs don't do things, it's not their job, they make high level decisions and sign off on expenses, that's all they do, well maybe that and some HR stuff like resolving disputes and being involved with the hiring/firing of important people.

He's running a space program and BCI tech on the side and somehow not running out of money, he's a master of something alright, not technology but certainly something.

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

It's a win-win strategy for Musk. His announcement increased the price of shares so either he gets full control over twitter or he sells all his shares with a profit and dumps on them all for rejecting. Depends on how much he paid for the 9% stake, he won't dump his position at a loss so he will look like an idiot if he can't increase the stock value.

He has so much publicity and media power that his troll tweets are earning him billions at this point. He will use his control over twitter to benefit his goals and make even more money.

I'm pretty sure that it's illegal to manipulate public opinion and stock price by making weird announcements and trolling but he's getting away with it and basically ruining the fortunes of all the suckers who crash on his stock fads and trends.

If he isn't careful then he will be cancelled and destroyed by a single PR mistake or secret that gets revealed by the people he fucked over. There will come a time when he falls or fades into irrelevancy.

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

Elon Musk is literally a trending cryptocurrency in human form.

You are either an early adopter and you exit his stocks with a profit, or you are a late adopter and sink with his ship or you are just stuck there transfixed by the phenomenon.

I wonder how much hype around Elon is spinned by the speculative investors, crypto nft schemes but I think it's a significant portion of it. Most of the hype around Elon is just a cyclonic system of storm cells, it keeps sustaining itself by its own inertia and by media selling news on him to get views.

 

[Puffy]

So the forum has just become INTPf’s response to the mainstream media story of the day. Nice

 

[dr froyd]

twitter - a cesspool of idiots and quasi-intellectuals barking 140-character exclamations at each other.

if this is the most important communication platform on earth it shows how truly fucked we are

in terms of business, twitter has never done anything besides losing money since the beginning. If someone has any interest in it as an investment it is certainly not for profit. The way I see it is mostly a tool for commercial PR- and communication interests, and this is also why the range of acceptable opinions has progressively been shrunk over the years - to be associated with controversial opinions is bad for business. So I actually think musk has good intentions, but he will not succeed unless twitter becomes an explicitly non-profit with no commercial or political interests. I.e. this idea will almost certainly fail.

 

[ZenRaiden]

Unfortunately algorithms are double edge sword.
They can help, but also drown out good content.
Youtube I found many interesting things, but generally it depends whether they are useful or not and that really is limited.

Twitter can be and facebook can be really useful provided that you have groups of people who you need to communicate with.

Unfortunately otherwise its just random hodge podge of information.

Realistically that means you can spend a lot of time on these platforms out of curiosity, but get very little.


When it comes to commercials I cannot recall, but few over the 10 years period that I actually would find useful.

These platforms run on premise of large scale mass commerce, not on being useful or interesting for anyone individual.

They want people to pay the information they provide is usually there just to you keep you clicking.

Twitter can be useful for small communities, but larger mass information is useless.

For example you can get information on bombs, fires, emergency situations on twitter real fast.
You can learn pretty specific stuff real fast, provided that the source is trusty and you know they aren't just making shit up.

You can also learn about various deals, and basically forward short and really valuable messages.

All these platforms suffer from same problem and that is the same problem as internet suffers form.

Too much information and very hard to find information.

Other problem is that none of these platforms provide any better service other than what emails do so they are kind of superfluous and doomed in many ways.

Same things goes for whatsup.
Had whats up and used it same way email.

So essentially these platforms are commercial platforms that provide little bit of useful information, no different from internet.

Realistically their usefulness is pretty limited, but the way they function can actually be pretty harmful as well.

But then again that goes for internet as well.

If you look at twitter its basically cyber version of telegraph system with pictures.

Essentially the true value of these services is in expedience and ability to send and reach larger groups of people.

None of which is necessarily bad or good thing. Depends on end users.

I certain think though these services still beat ordinary TV in terms of quality and value of content, but they are even with algorithms pretty lame.

 

[BurnedOut]

CEOs don't do things, it's not their job, they make high level decisions and sign off on expenses, that's all they do, well maybe that and some HR stuff like resolving disputes and being involved with the hiring/firing of important people.

And that is why it is grossly incorrect to hold any CEO on a pedestal. Their contribution becomes nil after the firm is run by professionals other than the founder. If Musk is not even running the company anymore except guiding its direction (which he obviously does under the influence of sycophants), his net contribution to the company is a big 0. This is true for all the rich men in the world who run empires. They believe that they are suddenly important in the world insofar behave like poorly disciplined children just because they have wealth.

What the average joe does not realize is that such persons earn money by breaking the necks and backs of other people. The broken - the corporate slave - should get the power of collective decision making yet us slaves hold rich bastards like Musk on a high pedestal. These fuckers stop working when their self-earned assets start churning positive feedback loops and nearly eliminate the requirement of the said fucker. Has the said fucker right to these assets after the assets turn self-perpetuating? No. Absolutely not. Now when will people realize that all the uber-rich people in the world are no better (and mostly much morally worse) than the average person because all they do is eat, shit, flex and repeat and furthermore believe that they are entitled to be respected.

 

[Rook]

https://moneytransfers.com/news/con...-3-million-years-to-become-the-next-elon-musk

"
India’s wealthiest man Mukesh Ambani is worth some 91B USD. The mean annual wage in India is about 5,000 USD. Therefore, it would take his compatriots earning the mean wage 17 million years to amass Ambani’s kind of fortune.

Similarly, it’d take 15.3M years for a regular Chinese employee to raise the $66B that Zhong Shanshan is worth.

"

 

[Cognisant]

CEOs don't do things, it's not their job, they make high level decisions and sign off on expenses, that's all they do, well maybe that and some HR stuff like resolving disputes and being involved with the hiring/firing of important people.

And that is why it is grossly incorrect to hold any CEO on a pedestal. Their contribution becomes nil after the firm is run by professionals other than the founder. If Musk is not even running the company anymore except guiding its direction (which he obviously does under the influence of sycophants), his net contribution to the company is a big 0. This is true for all the rich men in the world who run empires. They believe that they are suddenly important in the world insofar behave like poorly disciplined children just because they have wealth.

What the average joe does not realize is that such persons earn money by breaking the necks and backs of other people. The broken - the corporate slave - should get the power of collective decision making yet us slaves hold rich bastards like Musk on a high pedestal. These fuckers stop working when their self-earned assets start churning positive feedback loops and nearly eliminate the requirement of the said fucker. Has the said fucker right to these assets after the assets turn self-perpetuating? No. Absolutely not. Now when will people realize that all the uber-rich people in the world are no better (and mostly much morally worse) than the average person because all they do is eat, shit, flex and repeat and furthermore believe that they are entitled to be respected.

Yes, although I have less faith in democracy, rather all I want is the bastards to be taxed fairly, year on year productivity is increasing and standards of living are falling which makes no goddamn sense unless there's an inequality problem and wealth inequality is a massive and ever growing problem.

People should be able to become rich and the value of the dollar has decreased over time, but hundreds of billions of dollars? That's not wealth that's obscene that's one man having the wealth of an average nation and left unchecked this wealth inequality is going to harm EVERYONE.

 

[BurnedOut]

India’s wealthiest man Mukesh Ambani is worth some 91B USD

He is also one of the most hated persons in India. There are even proverbs in his name, so you can imagine the kind of wealth this asshole has amassed. This bastard is responsible for nearly bankrupting the telecom sector in India with his 'Jio 4G' (The antonym of Jio (Live) is Maro (Die). While he wrecked havoc on the telecom sector and continued bastardizing lots of other services, there were no antitrust litigations that worked out against him when there was bountiful evidence to sue his arse, thanks to the PM of India who is hand-in-gloves with this dick. And probably the most disgusting thing is that this piece of shit motherfucker earned massive profits when millions and millions of people got pushed below the poverty line during the lockdown phase and at that moment, I still witnessed eggheads applauding his 'genius'. It is just sad. Terribly sad. Fucking capitalism and the slavery it generates in the populace rather than enforces. People themselves are responsible to a great extent for whores like Ambani to continue squeezing every ounce of blood from the already starving populace.

Rightists love shitting on leftists with the moot of 'Since the money happened to come to me after I flailed my hands, nothing in this world can deny me the causality between my hands flailing and money falling in my lap.' If you ever come across a capitalist who claims that farts can make you moneyed, you should probably believe it. There is no invalid causality in the claims capitalists make. Their 'science' is done via their eyes and not through cogitation. Some capitalists like Ambani even deserve a portion of Earth for themselves because 'tHeY aRe rEspOnsiBLe FoR thEir SucCeSs'.

Your 'hard'-work will always seem 'hard'. That does not mean you are actually doing hardwork. On higher levels of abstractions, most of the 'hard'-work gets delegated. In the capitalist dog-eat-dog world, you are usually left with some puny shit to do which seems monumental simply because your decision that literally takes a meager amount of time in comparison to your plentiful delegates who destroy themselves everyday in contrast to you and whose life you shall decide based completely on their objective performance and your subjective opinions of their objectivity (despite the fact that objectivity demands concrete metric than 'hunches' (in which capitalists dogmatically believe. (Proof? The stock-exchanges are still open))) lest you accidentally end up thinking objectively and not do injustice. That is quite a difficult thing for most capitalists to understand - 'justice'. Unironically research on mental biases has proven that one can become charismatic as a result of their circumstance too. If you place any average person in the place of Musk, chances are, he will do just as well and be regarded just as well as Musk.

What does Ambani and Musk know about poverty? Zilch? No. There are not even human. How can you really be human when your end goal is not to serve people but yourself? That just sounds like cancer metastasizing. These people, by logic, are cancer.

 

[BurnedOut]

Unfortunately algorithms are double edge sword.

How to use science unscientifically? Social Media has proven that well enough. It cannot even fucking distinguish its input from output. How can you ever get a valid scientific metric if your previous output is your next input? In statistics, this is called overfitting your data. Now figure why YouTube has an absolutely terrible Trending section.

By focusing purely on reactions rather than the cognitive processes that cause them, these algorithms are more or less bullshit because they are designed in a manner that makes them naturally convergent and hence 'reliable' in the eyes of the capitalists. The algorithm does nothing but falsely amplifies things out of proportion and hence provides an illusion of predictability.

Anybody here can say, 'but hey! how can shocking content not become popular? Humans pay attention to such things rather enthusiastically'. My refutation to you is this - we are simply losing the mental capacity to differentiate between relevant and irrelevant stimuli - a profound instinct being eroded with such pace. Simply because something is shocking does not mean that it is important or even beneficial to any network. However, algorithms cannot deduce this and they proceed to start a positive feedback loop wherein hype is generated and fed to lots of people who continue doing the same and this infinite loop is the source of the data itself. What a fucking joke.

You should really ask this question - 'What did you learn from social media algorithms that you never knew?' The answer is nothing. Because of its garbled logic of processing data, extremely large sample sizes also fall short of being legitimately useful to get the required metric for measurement. There is really nothing that has emerged from researches of epic proportions done by Facebook and the avaricious ilk which is useful for humanity. The things that did emerge were not at all surprising. What a huge waste of electricity and human resources when it does nothing but contributes to worsening the life of people by attempting to classify and categorize them as 'efficiently' as possible as if they are commodities. What can such classifications and categorizations do that will benefit the people concerned? Nothing. Instead they will be force-fed their own regurgitated morsel of preferences that they had at one point. This will eventually fool the people into thinking that they are the sum total of the preferences that have been measured by social media. These preferences then simply help the capitalists at the expense of the people's overall mental health because now they can drill bullshit into people's heads by claiming causalities that don't exist such as. Suppose one day Zuck calls you up and tells you, 'Hey! You know social media can make you feel less lonely. Try it, you are not the first.' You install FB and are lured by the halo effect due to your friendss and family's usage of it. The halo effect will make you susceptible to advertisement who converge on only a few things that you like but the whole process is surreptitious, a normal person won't even suspect that they were fooled but with consent. Therefore FB enters your life and influences much of your opinion of yourself and the world. Would you really be able to claim that you are 'less susceptible to manipulation?'. Mostly not because they will publish another bullshit research paper on how being online leads to discourses which leads to less cognitive biases. Goodness gracious. If you end up here, you are not only stupid but also retarded.

 

[ZenRaiden]

Yeah like totally.

 

[Hadoblado]

@BurnedOut
While I think we're basically of similar beliefs regarding billionaires, I think you're probably going a bit hard? Billionaires seize opportunities and this takes skill, knowledge, and effort. Unless they're born to the money and never make decisions regarding it, it's likely that they're pretty clever etc.

They are just violently over-rewarded for their level of effort/ability by opportunity. They usually start off wealthy, and if they don't they tend to have opportunities others don't. There are a lot of people out there who had the opportunity to become billionaires but didn't, but it's unfair to believe anyone who grows up poor has the opportunity to be a billionaire. You'd be hard-pressed to find billionaires who are below average intelligence.

I'm mainly saying this because if you want to convince people it's important not to sound like there is zero overlap in understanding. When you say billionaires flail their arms for money, a "temporarily embarrassed" billionaire will assume you don't know what you're talking about.

The reality is that billionaires tend to be capable, focused, hard-working individuals. But there are plenty of people more capable, more focused, and more hard-working who struggle to pay rent. Billionaires aren't the problem, it's the system and context that billionaires can warp to their own ends. There will always be predatory opportunists, you can't fix or address that. But you can limit their options.

I like your line about science being done with the eyes and not cognition, I think I might steal that.

 

[BurnedOut]

Billionaires seize opportunities and this takes skill, knowledge, and effort. Unless they're born to the money and never make decisions regarding it, it's likely that they're pretty clever etc.

Billionaires are outliers if we plot population on the x axis and income on y. If indeed personal traits mattered so greatly, there would have been a definite correlation between personality traits and success. Research is not definite about this. For example, conscientiousness is considered to be good in a working environment but conscientiousness itself does not yield a higher income. Similarly intelligence has a definite correlation with higher incomes but the number is not big enough to validly assert this claim. Properly done research rarely ever yields anything conclusive but are many times statistically significant. What you see about the billionaires and their social media portrayals is not accurate at all because if you try to predict a person's sum total susceptibility to become uber rich, it is close to nil even if you are very intelligent, etc.

Correlation is not causation. Try telling that to Buzzfeed.

 

[BurnedOut]

Billionaires aren't the problem, it's the system and context.

The system that has emerged is because of workers adulating wealth so excessively insofar willingly submitting to people like Musk.

Also most of the billionaires are already wealthy prior to becoming wealthier. The 'rags to riches' stories if analyzed sincerely will prove that they succeeded more by chance than anything else. Startups fail extremely frequently and if there is one that springs to the top, it is likely that it is due to chance than their objective capacity to be productive.

 

[ZenRaiden]

twitter is a social media platform its nothing, but a website.

 

[Hadoblado]

As far as I'm aware conscientiousness has been linked to income, but yeah it certainly wouldn't explain billionaires. I agree they're overhyped, my criticism is of the focus of your rhetoric. If you want to convince people, it's better to talk about the system than the individual IMO. The way you talk sounds too reactive to me, like you've made it personal for no reason.

But it's no biggie. I'm saying it because I think we share the same views and I want that view represented as strongly as possible. If you disagree about what effective rhetoric looks like that's cool. Billionaires do get way too much hype. Elon Musk is not Iron Man or Nicola Tesla. He's not even Edison. His superpower is PR stunts putting him more in the realm of Trump.

 

[Black Rose]

Billionaires do get way too much hype. Elon Musk is not Iron Man or Nicola Tesla. He's not even Edison. His superpower is PR stunts putting him more in the realm of Trump.

They don't really control their own money. They just have access to capital to take risks to pile on the stack. Huge numbers of people work with the capital behind the scenes. They are like the queen ant laying all the eggs. A useless job but by the account of all the work they don't do in the hive. It's all paper pushers. Gaming the system. Maybe they are different from the average joe but are a play-in on capitalism. They need to make money but why think they see the whole picture anyway.

 

[BurnedOut]

The way you talk sounds too reactive to me, like you've made it personal for no reason.

I intended it to be that way because I was actually venting my frustration. That morning I had a foolish debate with mother regarding the same thing and her apathy really roiled me inside. (she's extremely practical and does not bat an eyelid towards such things)

 

[ZenRaiden]

Its like we are twins or something, but you got be more specific, I cannot keep track of all the things
.

 

[Hadoblado]

This is so deeply stupid.

 

[Cognisant]

Why? That seems like a reasonable argument.

He's not advocating for or against censorship, he's saying it's not his job to decide the scope of free speech, he's putting the onus of responsibility back on the world's governments to set guidelines for him to follow.

Twitter was never a legitimate moral authority and should never have tried to be, this is true of all private/religious organizations that try to meddle in public discourse, it's not their responsibility and an overreach of their influence.

 

[scorpiomover]

Mastery of technology yet not having the self-awareness for humanity.

Bwahahahaha

He's educated and not an idiot but he's not a "master of technology" he has engineers and software developers and all other kinds of technical experts working for him, people at his level aren't up late at night designing things in CAD or heat testing components or trying to find the cause of a software bug.

Well, of course?

Think about how many components need to be heat-tested in a single SpaceX launch. If you were the #1 tech expert in the world, how long would it take you to do all of that by yourself?

He's a CEO, he wants something done he has a meeting with the division managers who then farm out the specifics to project managers who in turn divide up that work between operating teams.

He runs big organisations, which employ lots of people, and thus relies on good delegation. His job is to delegate correctly, to identify people's skills and talents, and to hire the right people for the right jobs.

CEOs don't do things, it's not their job, they make high level decisions and sign off on expenses, that's all they do, well maybe that and some HR stuff like resolving disputes and being involved with the hiring/firing of important people.

You sound like you think companies are better off without a CEO. Do you really believe that?

 

[scorpiomover]

As far as I'm aware conscientiousness has been linked to income,

The MBTI J/P dichotomy is linked to income. If you look at charts of income levels by MBTI, 87.5% of the top half are Js, and 87.5% of those in the bottom half, are Ps.

The MBTI J/P dichotomy is also linked to Big Five's Consciensciousness facets, because scoring high in Consciensciousness on online self-administered Big Five tests, is highly correlated with getting "J" on an online self-administered MBTI test.

However, ISTPs come bottom. ISTPs are your classic car mechanics. Car mechanics are where people would demand the most consciensciousness. They drive with their kids in the back. If those cars aren't fixed properly, their brakes might fail, and then their children could die.

I have an alternative explanation.

1) Many people are conscienscious, but are humble about it, and don't claim to be. Many people are not conscienscious, but claim to be.

MBTI and Big Five tests ask you about yourself. So they record if someone claims to be conscienscious.

2) We live in a world very different world from 200 years ago. We live in a world of opportunities.

Today, you can apply for almost any job in almost any part of the world. An African-American can become President, even in a country like the USA.

You can message any woman, anywhere in the world. You can even try to chat up a supermodel.

The world is your oyster, if you are the sort of ambitious person who will grab every opportunity.

We live in a world which rewards opportunistic behaviour and shameless self-promotion.

But it usually doesn't reward hard work, talent and consciensciousness, if it doesn't include opportunistic behaviour and shameless self-promotion. If you don't contact anyone, these days, people will leave you alone to your own devices. Many old people even die in their homes and their bodies are not found for WEEKS.

These days, with the way social media and public image have such a massive effect on people, people who are going to be the most ambitious, and the most opportunistic, are probably also going to claim to be super-intelligent, super-capable, and super-conscienscious, even if they're none of that.

That then explains why the most conscienscious of workers, the car mechanic, is at the bottom of the income level. Car mechanics are not all that ambitious.

but yeah it certainly wouldn't explain billionaires. I agree they're overhyped,

I doubt that most people spend their evenings reading the list of people who are billionaires somewhere in the world. If it wasn't for the hype, most people wouldn't know who any billionaires are.

Some of it is manufactured by the media. The more sensationalist the story, the more people read it, and the more their advertisers will pay them.

Elon Musk is not Iron Man or Nicola Tesla. He's not even Edison.

If Elon wanted, I'm sure he could turn up in a gleaming red suit. He could probably get his tech guys to attach some lasers and smoke jets to make it look cool.

 

[Minuend]

Big platforms like Twitter will never be left alone to 1 dude, no. Elon Musk have a giant ego and enjoy being perceived like this cool guy, but he doesn't have the power to do whatever he wants. Interfering with information flow is a big no no. Maybe there will be some previously banned people who get to tweet so everyone can pretend things changed, but in reality, censorship will still happen and it will follow certain interests. If Musk go against that, well things would get interesting, but I guess he would also just get killed, so. It's not like he legit cares about legit shit.

 

[dr froyd]

EU bureaucrats have already "warned" Musk that they have rules to be followed. Unfortunately, europe doesn't have laws that protect free speech like in US. I don't really see how actual free speech is gonna work as a business model globally.

 

[ZenRaiden]

Both Elisabet Holmes and Musk are generating wealth by claiming huge wealth.
If you look at Space x they are doing something right.
No question about it, not the same as Teranos.
But they have shit load of fake projects under Musk.
I don't even know if Musk is defact to guy or just the face of company.
The problem with billionairs is even if they are rich, the way the money works, is not like they can actually just run around and make these billion dollar decisions alone.
I mean I am pretty sure if a guy like Bill Gates or Buffet keel over or just quit there are no hungry friends or investors.
Unless your net worth is solely based on showing the world that your net worth is big so investing in your company makes you a winner by default.

Space x and Tesla have not invented any new tech.
They are tech companies and they did commercialize the tech.
Which is damn hard to do so big A for effort, but honestly I doubt, they are sustainable companies.
They will probably ride the wave for few years on the market, then slowly simmer down to nothing or stay in back ground and respond to market trends or settle down as companies that do something diverse like IBM or something.

I mean Space X is still in low orbit.
Commercial viability will be seen if they are sending rockets into space in 20 40 years.
Russia is sending rockets into space since 1957 if I am correct.
Russia has very poor economy compared to US, the chances that Elon Musk of all people single handedly came up with cheaper version of space flight is very unlikely.

We also know NASA was much more efficient.
I mean they went from losing to Russia to landing on Moon from Zero to 100 mph.
That is what efficient means.
NASA are the real guys.
They did that whole thing in like 5 seconds figuratively speaking as a major stunt just to show the Russkies they are not better.
They did it with major time compression and to this day people marvel at the level of skill that took, besides the fact that some called is suicide mission.
There are still companies today that cannot hit the moon and people in 1969 landing a fucking module there and had cars ride the moon.

First electric car I think was made somewhere at start of 20 century in france or something and its was fucking fast too.

 

[ZenRaiden]

Twitter is just internet.
Its definitely inflated in value too.
Its a commercial platform no doubt.
That is where its value is at.
Its like being the owner of every billboard in New York city.
Only its internet and contains posters from all of the world.
Its also mighty flexible.
That being said twitter move is MUsks way of diversifying in case his company losses stock market and its inflated value goes down to normal.

 

[Hadoblado]

Why? That seems like a reasonable argument.

He's not advocating for or against censorship, he's saying it's not his job to decide the scope of free speech, he's putting the onus of responsibility back on the world's governments to set guidelines for him to follow.

Twitter was never a legitimate moral authority and should never have tried to be, this is true of all private/religious organizations that try to meddle in public discourse, it's not their responsibility and an overreach of their influence.

It's okay if my Grandma tells me not to swear in her house. If there is something that is important that can only be expressed in curses I can go outside.

Twitter has a right to set its own ToS. Users are free to say what they want elsewhere.

This also implies that if the government issued a law demanding no criticism of the left, Musk would support this because it's the will of the people. But we know he wouldn't (and shouldn't). He's appropriating a buzzword because it's convenient. He's hiding behind the law because it's convenient.

The law is that Twitter can set it's own ToS. Musk is going beyond the law in order to make sure that it doesn't.

You think he's saying it's not his job to decide the scope of free speech, but that's literally his stated reason for taking over twitter: to adjust the scope of free speech on twitter.

I don't see Twitter as a moral authority. I see it as a business maintaining its own interests. Woke corporations are just effective capitalism.

 

[Cognisant]

The law is that Twitter can set it's own ToS. Musk is going beyond the law in order to make sure that it doesn't.

How is it going beyond the law to choose to exercise less stringent terms of service than the law allows? To be "beyond the law" implies being outside of the law, are we actually talking about legality here or is there some other law to which you're referring?

He is certainly breaching the "law" of woke culture if that's what you mean.

This also implies that if the government issued a law demanding no criticism of the left, Musk would support this because it's the will of the people. But we know he wouldn't (and shouldn't). He's appropriating a buzzword because it's convenient. He's hiding behind the law because it's convenient.

Get your story straight is he hiding behind the law or breaking it?

You think he's saying it's not his job to decide the scope of free speech, but that's literally his stated reason for taking over twitter: to adjust the scope of free speech on twitter.

By taking a more hands-off approach.
It's his company, he bought it, he owns it, he's allowed to change the ToS and as the owner it's literally his job to manage such things, do you disagree with any of this?

Because you seem to be trying to argue that he is somehow obligated to enforce stricter ToS and that he shouldn't respect the legally defined limits of free speech, so what are you advocating exactly?

I don't see Twitter as a moral authority. I see it as a business maintaining its own interests. Woke corporations are just effective capitalism.

Go woke, go broke.
The sole obligation of a BUSINESS is to make money, if you're running an exclusive venue that people pay membership to have access to it makes sense to be discerning about which clientèle you allow in. Twitter is not Tattersalls, it's a social media platform, it lives and dies by the size and diversity of its user-base and if some of those users don't like each other all the better, gives them something to talk about.

I've heard speculation that what Elon is doing is actually really clever, by taking over Twitter and loosening the ToS he's creating a platform for robust political discourse, a platform that people who have something to say, something they want to say to many people, something that cannot be said elsewhere, will flock to. Consequently it's expected that despite a short term downturn in the number of users on the platform will increase in size over the long term, in particular becoming known as the go-to venue for public political discourse.

Eventually he will put the company back on the stock exchange, likely just prior to a US federal election and then rake in the money as both sides desperately try to buy control of this pivotal platform.

"Stupid" indeed.

 

[Hadoblado]

I'm using the phrase in the same sense he's using it. "Beyond the law" meaning more stringent than the law. See the original tweet.

I'm not saying the things you think I'm saying. Maybe I didn't do a good job communicating. I'm not arguing he can't at all.

You said "he's saying it's not his job to decide the scope of free speech". But he's investing a lot of money to decide the scope of free speech on twitter. The law is already being followed, and the changes he's making are no more lawful than the way it was.

I'm not at all saying that he can't do this. I'm saying that it's weird he's pretending that he's acting on behalf of the government. He would prefer to adjust the ToS and that's fine.

Go woke, go broke.

I hear this a lot but I don't understand it. A company's job is to make money. Woke marketing makes money, otherwise why do it?

 

[ZenRaiden]

I hear this a lot but I don't understand it. A company's job is to make money. Woke marketing makes money, otherwise why do it?

Everything makes money though.
You could sell sperm on internet to people with tag, superman sperm and make money.
Most of selling is about reaching the right type of customer.
There is always demand even for the dumbest shit.

That is why you can make shit ton of money and still end up without money later, or in debt.

 

[Cognisant]

I'm using the phrase in the same sense he's using it. "Beyond the law" meaning more stringent than the law.

In all honestly I've not been following this too closely but from all the memes and such the story I've been getting is that Elon hasn't been cracking down on Twitter and introducing more censorship/restrictions but rather the opposite, a view which a cursory google search seems to support, if you have evidence to the contrary please by all means elucidate me.

See the original tweet.

That would be the tweet you posted correct?

This is so deeply stupid.

How is this "more stringent than the law."
Do you know what "stringent" means?
Are you saying he's advocating for more stringent laws? I can see how you could interpret it that way, if you were incredibly biased.

I'm not saying the things you think I'm saying. Maybe I didn't do a good job communicating. I'm not arguing he can't at all.

You said "he's saying it's not his job to decide the scope of free speech". But he's investing a lot of money to decide the scope of free speech on twitter. The law is already being followed, and the changes he's making are no more lawful than the way it was.

I'm not at all saying that he can't do this. I'm saying that it's weird he's pretending that he's acting on behalf of the government. He would prefer to adjust the ToS and that's fine.

Indeed Hado there seems to be some breakdown of communication because your position seems simultaneously so vague and narrowly defined that I honestly can't figure out what it is. I suppose you're saying that he's implying that these changes to Twitter's ToS are somehow "on behalf of the government" but how you came to that conclusion I have no idea, there's nothing in the tweet you posted that indicates such, unless again you're being incredibly biased in your interpretation.

As I understand it since Elon's takeover the laws regarding free speech haven't changed, rather it seems to me that Elon has acted entirely upon his own initiative to make Twitter's ToS less restrictive, and I have absolutely no idea why you think that's "stupid".

 

[Cognisant]

I hear this a lot but I don't understand it. A company's job is to make money. Woke marketing makes money, otherwise why do it?

If you want to dive into this I suggest we take it to another thread.

 

[Hadoblado]

Okay, this is frustrating.

Can we take a step back? You can dunk me once you know what I'm saying.

Musk is not reducing people's capacity for free speech. But he is imposing his ideas on censorship preferences (even if that is reducing regulation). He is spending a lot of money to do this. Right?

But Twitter was already acting within the purview of the law. They weren't breaking it.

Therefore the wrong that Elon is righting is not legal in nature. It is based on his preferences.

Elon says he is bringing Twitter's free speech policy in line with the law. He says that he sees Twitter's policy as "beyond the law", meaning more stringent than the censorship that the law requires.

My criticism is that Elon doesn't give a fuck about the law (and neither do I). He doesn't believe that democracy is an accurate representation of the will of the people, and if he did, he wouldn't care. He's using [democracy/the will of the people/the law] as a vehicle for his own preferences. In doing so, he bolsters his own authority in the subject while being able to escape accountability if things go wrong.

"Deeply stupid" was very poor wording. It's strategically sound. The stupid part is that people lap it up as if this is some sort of moral position he's taking. Like he's on your side because he cares about your voice. Implicit in what he said is that if a government wants to curtail your free speech, then he's onboard so long as that government was elected - and that's far worse than ToS on a social media platform (not that I think he believes this).

My major gripe is powerful individuals who say anything to get what they want, and the audience that empowers them. The subject tweet reminds me of Trump holding up a bible.

 

[ZenRaiden]

Agreed though there are no guarantees.
Someone say something on twitter amounts, to claiming I am the right person and whatever.
10 seconds later that person can be doing the opposite of the claim, and none are wiser.

 

[Cognisant]

Elon says he is bringing Twitter's free speech policy in line with the law. He says that he sees Twitter's policy as "beyond the law", meaning more stringent than the censorship that the law requires.

Has it occurred to you that "beyond the law" could be an abbreviation of "beyond the extent required by the law" because it's not an abbreviation of "outside the law" or "beyond the extent of the law" or "in breach of the law". This also fits better within the context of his actions and the other thing he said in the same post, it makes sense that if he reduces Twitter's censorship to only the extent required by the law he would say that he intends to abide by the law as it changes.

He's not being deceptive, you're just having a knee-jerk reaction.

My major gripe is powerful individuals who say anything to get what they want, and the audience that empowers them. The subject tweet reminds me of Trump holding up a bible.

Even going with your knee-jerk reaction what Elon said was just hyperbole, he's an American venture capitalist of course he lives and breathes hyperbole, whereas Trump being the champion of Christianity is as far from the truth as the moon being made of cheese. Even as embittered as I am I would not call Trump a Christian.

--------------------

Serious talk Hado, I think we're both progressives in the sense that what we call "progress" is defined by our ideologies and although we each have a different ideology they mostly align. We both want progress in more-or-less the same direction with only only a slight divergence on the particulars, I think it's what makes our arguments so enjoyable. We get to fuss over the minutia.

Now I like Elon because he's advancing technological development on several fronts, I don't think he's a genius, I don't think he's the fucking messiah. I do think he's a breath of fresh air and dare I say inspiration for hope in these dark times of anti-intellectualism and general inane bullshit. Granted that's all because of my ideology, my definition of "progress" is that of a technological determinism and I understand you don't see things the way I do. Likewise I can agree with the general direction of your civil justice ideology, even though I tend to see it more of a means to an end rather than the end goal in of itself. A happy society is a prosperous society and prosperity means funding for R&D.

I think you don't like Elon in particular regarding his changes to Twitter's ToS because you see that as a threat to your definition of progress, but the thing is I don't think that's actually the case. I think free speech is the basis of robust discourse and robust discourse is the bane of bullshit. Elon isn't taking sides, neutrality isn't taking sides, that's the entire point of neutrality and there is a value to neutrality because it is the common ground, it is where the debate occurs.

I have learned to temper my atheism because being unwilling to accept the position of neutrality as valid is the hallmark of the radical, the extremist, and being such undermines one's credibility and is ultimately self defeating. If I am unwilling to accept the common ground as valid, if I only engage in debate in bad faith in the sense that I see everything as either for or against my ideology then there is no reason to debate with me, and no one who doesn't already agree with me will listen to me.

This is a good thing Hado, you will see.

 

[BurnedOut]

This is so deeply stupid.

It sounds paradoxical

 

[BurnedOut]

How is this "more stringent than the law."
Do you know what "stringent" means?
Are you saying he's advocating for more stringent laws? I can see how you could interpret it that way, if you were incredibly biased.

I think I had Hado's view although he did not mention it. Hado meant that Elon got everybody's hopes high about free speech and ended up posting this which is a lot more ambivalent than the convictions he was putting forth for buying Twitter. Classic politics. Basically it is probable that he tricked the majority of shareholders into believing that something radical will happen and then burst his own proverbial bubble by bringing the 'law' into definition despite the fact that in most free-speech-on-internet argue directly to the point and are generally more reflective about their arguments or quite direct - 'we want more privacy and less data collection', 'we want interoperability to choose our preferred apps.', 'we don't want government propagandas and malicious takedowns.'

 

[Hadoblado]

Has it occurred to you that "beyond the law" could be an abbreviation of "beyond the extent required by the law" because it's not an abbreviation of "outside the law" or "beyond the extent of the law" or "in breach of the law".

Cog this is what I've been trying to say this entire time. This is what I disagree with. "To the extent the law requires" =/= "the will of the people". It's not neutral, it's elon's preference. If it were neutral, Elon would not be willing to put all his money into it. But I think I'm done with that topic, too much miscommunication.

I appreciate the olive branch. I think you perhaps mistake the depth of my convictions. I talk about this stuff a lot here because the perspective (that I do hold) is underrepresented. I'm on the other side of these conversations in meatspace more often than not. Preachiness annoys me, I tend to want to challenge dominant narratives.

I would say I care more about technological steps than I do about progressive causes, similar to you, but they're somewhat interlinked. I see billionaires as in the way in this regard. Our society is structured around what billionaires want, not how best to move forward. We celebrate the billionaire and not the engineer. We are not going to space. Elon is. I want humanity to leave this rock, not just the powerful.

 

[ZenRaiden]

Elon Musk is CEO and face of company. He might not have a real control over twitter even if he owns the company. Just like other companies.
What ever he says on twitter, is irrelevant in terms of free speech or whatever, since these companies are not primarily interested in freespeech or provide it.
They also don't care about truth.
They can boot, block and kick out any user in 5 seconds, even if that user fights this legally he would be outnumbered and swamped with legal stuff.
Youtube is the same. There was a guy with a science channel and had to fight off some slanderous remarks, took him so much effort just prove he is harmless user, but youtube did not care.
These platforms also block stuff automatically according to algorithms, so they may block people before any real human sees the content.
Some good reasons perhaps, but they are commercial platforms.
If Musk tweets something its just salesmanship.
His job is to generate profit in stocks a would be bubble.
Since Spacex is volatile stock, but twitter is still growing he can aim to spread his value over two major companies, so if one goes down in value he can shift his capital to the other etc.
Musk is not scientist, or politician, or truth seeker or tech innovator.
That is the value he presents to up his companies value.
It takes very little understanding to know this.
I bet there are very few billionairs investing into his companies.
I bet there are lot of people who are looking for quick buck investing there.
I assume the rich guys invest into Musk stock only to sell it for profit for the less financially capable people.
Either way its a kind of pyramid scheme with added interest.
Him twitting something vague, makes no sense, since twitter literally has the ability to change its policy from day to day.
So whatever he says on twitter is completely harmless to him, but can generate profit if it hits the right edge of market, like his fan base.
HIs fan base is probably very happy to invest into twitter the same way the invested into his hyperloops and space x or tesla, even if the profit is small or non existent.

Musks job is to keep the capital growing on stock market.
In reality that is the value of his company. Growth.
Unsustainable growth that is.

The big five are predicted to fall and their value, the bubble they created is going to go soon.
Those companies are apple, google, microsoft, facebook, amazon,

These companies need to innovate in order to keep growing and its a race with time.
Everyone knows their actual value is fairly small compared to what is presented on the market.
It could be as little as 1/10th or 1/3 depending on how skeptical you can be, but if they manage to attract more revenue and their stock goes up they can also afford investing more aggressively and grow enough to keep this loop going longer.

Their main quality is global reach through internet and that is how these absurd financial strategies can work.
There is billions of people either working, or consuming value in these companies.

Unfortunately capitalism is zero sum game, when it comes to saturated markets.
That is why developed nations have to outsource or compete globally and that is how we get globalism or global politics.
If you cannot generate wealth inside a nation you have to generate wealth oustide of it.
You can also create dept of nation and use fiscal monetary policies with influencing global markets to off set the dept on others by financial manipulation.

Many people say US is the most indept nation, but that dept is not payed by US citizens, because its impossible to pay for.

So once you have monopoly and stronghold of domestic market you have to outsource, and move the capital by investing and putting foreign nations to work and shifting your debt onto them by creating debt in their nation.

Either way instability of capitalist markets is what creates a precarious thing, where greed and growth are not only good for making profit, but essential for survival.

 

[ZenRaiden]

Main goal of all tech companies from US is monopoly on information.
If you look at youtube or facebook or twitter, one thing they do right is the have a major control over information flow, globally.
Since people are defacto the value for this companies, they can use larger data sets to extract some value from people.
Unfortunately this means a kind of tyranny in and of it self.
Since these companies do not operate under any constitution or have any accountability, nor have any real power over them.
Interesting this same thing happened in US previous with tech companies and industries.
Everything in US grows to monopoly.
Saturated markets don't really have other way of working.
This means that microsoft with windows has no competitive companies against them to push them to improve.
Competition thus is illusion in US, and it used to be cited as one of the most important aspects of innovation and improvement.

However what I noticed in US is that there really is not free market.
If you buy a door knob in Kansas or New York there are huge chances they are made by the same company. Or a hose or pants or anything.
Of course this is not true of all things.
Some domestic companies in US have value, but limited and exist only because they are allowed to exist.

 

[Cognisant]

Cog this is what I've been trying to say this entire time. This is what I disagree with. "To the extent the law requires" =/= "the will of the people". It's not neutral, it's elon's preference. If it were neutral, Elon would not be willing to put all his money into it. But I think I'm done with that topic, too much miscommunication.

@Hadoblado
Took me a while to pick up on this, what he's doing may not strictly be "the will of the people" but it's also not against the will of the people either, because if it was then it would be against the law because in a democratic society (at least in theory) it is the will of the people that decides the extent of the law.

So enforcing only the bare minimum ToS required by the law may not be what the people voted for directly, but they do vote for the extent of the law and by enforcing only what is enforced by law and committing to continue to do so as the law changes Elon has effectively put Twitter's ToS in the hands of the voting public.

That's as close to "the will of the people" as Twitter's ToS could ever possibly be, you know it wouldn't be practical to open the decision to a direct public vote, voting on the internet is how we get shit like "Boaty McBoatface".

I think by "the will of the people" you're referring to your own will and the people who agree with you and well if there's enough of you why not just vote for the changes you want?