# Musk offers to buy Twitter



## gollum

Musk offers to buy Twitter

He's always entertaining, I highly suspect that he'll do his famous flip-flops and retract the bid.


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## Eric

gollum said:


> Musk offers to buy Twitter
> 
> He's always entertaining, I highly suspect that he'll do his famous flip-flops and retract the bid.



The world's richest troll, going after politicians and social media, we're just lucky he can't run for president.


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## Cmaier

Would be very bad news if he succeeds.


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## SuperMatt

Our economic system is broken. One person having enough personal wealth to just buy Twitter? People like Musk and Bezos are more powerful than many monarchs.


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## cloudflare420

Classic pump and dump once Twitter turns him down


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## Herdfan

cloudflare420 said:


> Classic pump and dump once Twitter turns him down




Not sure Twitter has a choice.  He can simply keep buying up shares on the open market.  Then he still gets control, but is pissed he had to do it that way.

And the shareholder's will be pissed if his offer is rejected because he is offering a premium over the current price.


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## ronntaylor

A more accurate headline: Musk vows to destroy Twitter.


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## Herdfan

Cmaier said:


> Would be very bad news if he succeeds.




Just wondering why you think that?  

Will he let Trump back on?  Maybe. 

Will he stop them from suspending the accounts of legit news organizations who publish things the left doesn't want published (Hunter's laptop anyone?)?  Definitely!


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## Eric

ronntaylor said:


> A more accurate headline: Musk vows to destroy Twitter.



I think it's already destroyed and will eventually go the way of MySpace and FB, I say let Elon go down with the ship.


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## Cmaier

Eric said:


> I think it's already destroyed and will eventually go the way of MySpace and FB, I say let Elon go down with the ship.



Problem is, first thing he’ll do is “free speech”-ize it. He can do a lot of damage to society on the way down.


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## Herdfan

Cmaier said:


> Problem is, first thing he’ll do is “free speech”-ize it. He can do a lot of damage to society on the way down.




There is a difference between misinformation and free speech.


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## DT

Herdfan said:


> There is a difference between misinformation and free speech.




Not in his mind, he wants a totally unfettered, uncontrolled wild west without any curation:  medical misinformation, hate speech, a platform for every disgusting, vile part of humanity to have a platform.


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## Herdfan

DT said:


> Not in his mind, he wants a totally unfettered, uncontrolled wild west without any curation:  medical misinformation, hate speech, a platform for every disgusting, vile part of humanity to have a platform.




Then maybe Twitter should have thought about this when they were suspending legit news organizations.


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## lizkat

Who knows what Musk wants with Twitter.  He's an exemplar of a modern day lost soul half the time.

I wouldn't be upset if more news organizations told their reporters to quit relying on Twitter to provide ideas for their reporting.   The original intent of the papers regarding Twitter   -- in encouraging reporters to create accounts and use them--   was to draw attention to the papers' finished work, not to scout around for ideas for the next edition.

Meanwhile pols all realized their tweets could become a major part of their campaign,  and that traditional media would get suckered into giving their tweets free airtime and column inches, and that is exactly what has happened.   The result?  For those who follow politics,  social media increasingly provides just a platform for airing of conspiracy theories and for cheap shot-taking by pols.

Twitter's perfectly within its rights as a site owner to moderate tweets as it sees fit.   Of course if Musk buys it out completely, and allows even more garbage tweets to persist on the site than is the case now, it will probably hasten the decline of the site in terms of general interest.   I like discussions in there on birdwatching and quilting, but Twitter's not the only venue for like-minded netizens.

If the tools to block out garbage are not robust enough, people who don't enjoy wading through the muck will just leave,  and Twitter ends up being just another garbage echo chamber.   Not even two dogs arguing over an empty bowl.  Just a pack of like minded dogs howling at the moon.  Boring...


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## Eric

Herdfan said:


> There is a difference between misinformation and free speech.



There's also a difference between free speech and hate speech, the latter of which was instrumental for Republicans in the Jan 6 insurrection. Imagine how much more successful the Nazis would've been had they had Twitter back then.


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## SuperMatt

Herdfan said:


> Then maybe Twitter should have thought about this when they were suspending legit news organizations.



What news organization(s) did they suspend, and why?


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## JayMysteri0

What could possibly go wrong?

The man got petty when he wasn't the one to grab the glory saving some miners.

The man spread Covid misinformation.  Who knows how much harm that may have caused.

The man lied about gaining private financing to take his current company private.  The SEC went after him because of the harm it may have caused.

The man did NOT follow the law and announce when he acquired all of his Twitter stock, thus he's now being sued because of the effect it may have had on others.

THIS is the guy who thinks can make Twitter better, and imagines he's a champion of free speech.

The only persons this guy is a champion of, is every asshole & troll who who wants to yell "Fire" in a theatre & avoid the consequences.



> Elon Musk is no free speech messiah
> 
> 
> According to Musk, free speech costs about $3 billion.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.vox.com


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## Chew Toy McCoy

Elon Musk's Twitter takeover is a play to save the trolls
					

Greedy social media networks already let the trolls have too much power — yet Musk thinks it's not enough




					www.salon.com
				





"Even though little has been done to stop Musk's childish antics on the site, he quite clearly feels that, overall, Twitter is not friendly enough to COVID-19 denialists, neo-Nazis, and other assorted scum, even as such communities thrive on Twitter. (Though the company did finally ban Donald Trump.) Unfortunately, Musk has nearly unlimited funds to accomplish his dream of making the already insufferable social media network even more unbearably thick with right-wing trolls."


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## Herdfan

SuperMatt said:


> What news organization(s) did they suspend, and why?




New York Post for the Hunter laptop story.  Twitter locked their account until they removed the story.









						Twitter Still Blocking a NY Post Story Based on Alleged Hunter Biden Emails, Newspaper’s Account Remains Frozen
					

Twitter is keeping itself in front of the political firing line by inconsistently applying policy to a series of unconfirmed reports by the New York Post about Joe Biden’s son Hunter — moves …




					variety.com
				




You know the one that came out in October of 2020 and was dismissed as Russian propaganda by most of the media.  The same one that the NYT finally said it was true and the WaPo called it an "opportunity for a reckoning".

And for some reason they still don't understand why their public trust is so low.


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## Eric

Herdfan said:


> New York Post for the Hunter laptop story.  Twitter locked their account until they removed the story.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Twitter Still Blocking a NY Post Story Based on Alleged Hunter Biden Emails, Newspaper’s Account Remains Frozen
> 
> 
> Twitter is keeping itself in front of the political firing line by inconsistently applying policy to a series of unconfirmed reports by the New York Post about Joe Biden’s son Hunter — moves …
> 
> 
> 
> 
> variety.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> You know the one that came out in October of 2020 and was dismissed as Russian propaganda by most of the media.  The same one that the NYT finally said it was true and the WaPo called it an "opportunity for a reckoning".
> 
> And for some reason they still don't understand why their public trust is so low.



Every time a hyperpartisan rabid Republican brings up the president's son's laptop...


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## Herdfan

Eric said:


> Every time a hyperpartisan rabid Republican brings up the president's son's laptop...




Are you implying there is nothing to the story?


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## Cmaier

Let’s try to keep the Tech Talk part of the forum mostly free of politics and get back on topic if we can.


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## Eric

Herdfan said:


> Are you implying there is nothing to the story?



No, I'm implying it's not THE story that for some reason has Republicans losing their shit more than a war, more than the capital riots and more than an "actual" sitting president who spent his term sowing doubt, racism and mistrust in the entire country.

Sorry but it's just that people can't take it seriously when it's so blatantly hypocritical.


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## Eric

Cmaier said:


> Let’s try to keep the Tech Talk part of the forum mostly free of politics and get back on topic if we can.



Just caught after my post but noted, I'm done on that topic.


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## DT

Cmaier said:


> Let’s try to keep the Tech Talk part of the forum mostly free of politics and get back on topic if we can.




I mean, it is about a laptop ... 


(I'll see myself out)


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## SuperMatt

Herdfan said:


> New York Post for the Hunter laptop story.  Twitter locked their account until they removed the story.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Twitter Still Blocking a NY Post Story Based on Alleged Hunter Biden Emails, Newspaper’s Account Remains Frozen
> 
> 
> Twitter is keeping itself in front of the political firing line by inconsistently applying policy to a series of unconfirmed reports by the New York Post about Joe Biden’s son Hunter — moves …
> 
> 
> 
> 
> variety.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> You know the one that came out in October of 2020 and was dismissed as Russian propaganda by most of the media.  The same one that the NYT finally said it was true and the WaPo called it an "opportunity for a reckoning".
> 
> And for some reason they still don't understand why their public trust is so low.



This is inaccurate... *Twitter did NOT block their account until they removed the story. They unblocked it and left the story up.* If you actually read the article (yes a novel concept):



> Yesterday, CEO Jack Dorsey admitted blocking URLs without context was “wrong,” and the company said it was revising its policies on sharing hacked materials. A Twitter spokesperson said it was allowing the NY Post’s Hunter Biden-Burisma story to be shared “because the information had spread across the internet and could no longer be considered private,” per the New York Times.






> The New York Post’s Twitter account continues to be locked, after the social net froze it Wednesday over violations of the hacked-materials policy. “We do not retroactively change enforcement decisions, so the NY Post’s account will be unlocked as soon as they delete the earlier Tweets which we indicated were violations,” a Twitter spokeswoman told _Variety_. *But Twitter did retroactively change its decision on at least two of the Post’s stories in unblocking them.*




I bolded the most relevant information for those too lazy to read something other than a headline. You ignored all the context in this story: It was based on a “hacked content” policy that likely would have applied to something like the Pentagon papers or Wikileaks too. The intent of the policy is to prevent hackers from stealing private data and use Twitter to distribute it. Twitter changed the policy after this event.



> Under Twitter’s revised hacked-materials policy, it will no longer block or remove such links “unless it is directly shared by hackers or those acting in concert with them” and will instead “label tweets to provide context instead of blocking links from being shared on Twitter.” Currently, Twitter is not appending any such label to tweets linking to the Post’s Hunter Biden/Burisma stories. A company rep said additional details of the new policy “are coming soon.”




This was NOT about blocking right-wing content. But once you get the right-wing grievance machine going, there’s no stopping it. Twitter definitely made a mistake, but they fixed it immediately. Definitely a self-PWN from Twitter, but the fact that right-wingers use this as an excuse to claim Twitter is biased against them is moronic.

And maybe I’m not supposed to discuss politics here (although let’s face it - you can’t discuss big tech without it crossing into politics, which was something the Weaselbots at MacRumors never figured out), but:
 A) I didn’t bring it up and
 B) I do not like allowing people to spread lies without debunking them. We cannot have an honest discussion if people start with lies.

PS - To counter some other false claims in the post I replied to: The information on Hunter Biden’s laptop was, in fact, modified by others after the fact. Because of that, none of the information can be trusted to be authentic.



			https://wapo.st/3EiXQEn
		

(paywall removed)



> “The experts found the data had been repeatedly accessed and copied by people other than Hunter Biden over nearly three years,” our report explained, with those we spoke with being unable to “reach definitive conclusions about the contents as a whole, including whether all of it originated from a single computer or could have been assembled from files from multiple computers and put on the portable drive.”
> For example:
> 
> 
> 
> “[An expert] also found records on the drive that indicated someone may have accessed the drive from a West Coast location in October 2020, little more than a week after the first New York Post stories on Hunter Biden’s laptop appeared.”
> “Over the next few days, *somebody created three additional folders on the drive, titled, ‘Mail,' ‘Salacious Pics Package’ and ‘Big Guy File’* — an apparent reference to Joe Biden.”
Click to expand...


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## Cmaier




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## Eric

Then he'll finally be able to ban the guy who keeps posting his jet locations.


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## DT

Eric said:


> Then he'll finally be able to ban the guy who keeps posting his jet locations.




OMG, hahaha, maybe it's all about that.  Option1, pay the kid $100K to remove this posts, Option 2, spend $43 billion and kick the kid off ...


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## Cmaier

DT said:


> OMG, hahaha, maybe it's all about that.  Option1, pay the kid $100K to remove this posts, Option 2, spend $43 billion and kick the kid off ...




BTW, where’s he getting $43 billion from? He doesn’t have $43 billion.


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## Renzatic

Cmaier said:


> Problem is, first thing he’ll do is “free speech”-ize it. He can do a lot of damage to society on the way down.




It won't do any more damage than what's already been done, but we'll get a good working example of it along the way.


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## Renzatic

Cmaier said:


> BTW, where’s he getting $43 billion from? He doesn’t have $43 billion.




He's currently worth $226 billion. I imagine there's just enough liquid assets available to him to make the purchase.


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## ronntaylor

Cmaier said:


> BTW, where’s he getting $43 billion from? He doesn’t have $43 billion.



It's all a classic Pump 'N Dump scheme for the asshole.


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## Chew Toy McCoy

DT said:


> OMG, hahaha, maybe it's all about that.  Option1, pay the kid $100K to remove this posts, Option 2, spend $43 billion and kick the kid off ...




The upsetting thing about option 2 is if he did drop $43 billion on buying Twitter, within 6 months that $43 billion will somehow be back in his bank account (or stocks, or whatever)….and probably more than that, and probably sooner.

Can somebody please show me what 6 months of hard work worth $43 billion looks like.


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## Renzatic

Chew Toy McCoy said:


> The upsetting thing about option 2 is if he did drop $43 billion on buying Twitter, within 6 months that $43 billion will somehow be back in his bank account (or stocks, or whatever)….and probably more than that, and probably sooner.
> 
> Can somebody please show me what 6 months of hard work worth $43 billion looks like.




Just look up some pictures of hedge fund managers.


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## Cmaier

Renzatic said:


> He's currently worth $226 billion. I imagine there's just enough liquid assets available to him to make the purchase.




But:









						Musk Says He Has the Means to Buy Twitter, but Investors Aren’t So Sure
					

Elon Musk could pledge his Tesla shares, borrow from banks or team up with private equity to raise the funds. Each option comes with caveats.




					www.nytimes.com


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## lizkat

Eric said:


> Every time a hyperpartisan rabid Republican brings up the president's son's laptop...




Yeah.   By the time the rabid end of the GOP gets done beating something to death with all kinds of innuendo about some murky situation  --pick one, any one-- really no one cares any more except the people still waving the stick over the dead horse,  and the beancounters in media still making a buck off the show.

That's a little different to the "public trust" in newspapers being low, and a little difficult to disentangle from the cause of that low trust as well.

Lately the sideshow about Hunter Biden seems to me a distraction, possibly from the fact that the fundamentals of the US  economy are doing quite well in terms of jobs being added and people still spending money into it, despite concerns in the short term about inflation.  I can't get too excited about this level of inflation because the fundamentals are different from inflationary periods we've experienced before.

The Fed will take rates well in hand, and even now states are considering gas tax holidays in order to take some of the pressure off kitchen table budgets.   Now if we could just get that moron in Texas to quit redundantly inspecting veggies coming into the USA...  maybe the tomatoes and avocados wouldn't cost quite the extra penny they are likely to in the very short run.

The other thing about pounding on _Hunter Biden, Hunter Biden, Hunter Biden_ is pretty risky for the GOP, even though I get it that some in the GOP may regard it as a song of praise to Donald Trump.   Trump may enjoy it, too, but it reminds a whole lot of other people that one of Trump's two impeachments was about his having schemed to withhold military aid to Ukraine,  in hopes that Ukraine would"do a favor" to Trump and help dig up dirt to discredit his political opponent, Joe Biden.

This isn't the most politically advantageous time for the GOP to remind us that Trump tried to stick it to Ukraine and its ability to defend itself,  just in hopes of making some personal political gains.  But then the GOP lost all sense of logic along with its ethical compass when it rebooted its core principles to one that boils down to faking participation in the cult worship of Trump that is still exhibited by his base, all in hopes of retaining their loyalty at the polls.   The USA is not on the side of sticking it to Ukraine... and the GOP would do well to keep that in mind.



Cmaier said:


> Let’s try to keep the Tech Talk part of the forum mostly free of politics and get back on topic if we can.




Sorry to have contributed to the digression....


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## Yoused

Herdfan said:


> Cmaier said:
> 
> 
> 
> Would be very bad news if he succeeds.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Just wondering why you think that?
Click to expand...



Perhaps alt.noise.twitter – when was the last time you visited Usenet? Seems like 90% of the country has no idea what it even is. _That_ is what Musk would do to twitter.


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## Eric

Another theory...

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1514816433389068292/


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## diamond.g

Eric said:


> Another theory...
> 
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1514816433389068292/



Isn't pump and dump illegal?


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## Eric

diamond.g said:


> Isn't pump and dump illegal?



He did it in the crypto market with no repercussions, why should he stop now?








						Musk Denies Bitcoin ‘Pump And Dump’—And Says Tesla Will Resume Transactions Once This Mining Goal Is Reached
					

Bitcoin prices jumped nearly 5% after the eccentric Tesla billionaire's tweet.




					www.forbes.com


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## diamond.g

Eric said:


> He did it in the crypto market with no repercussions, why should he stop now?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Musk Denies Bitcoin ‘Pump And Dump’—And Says Tesla Will Resume Transactions Once This Mining Goal Is Reached
> 
> 
> Bitcoin prices jumped nearly 5% after the eccentric Tesla billionaire's tweet.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.forbes.com



Wait the Crypto market has SEC oversight?


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## DT

As long as there’s public disclosure and a proper paper trail, including legitimate offer documentation, it’s legal.


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## Chew Toy McCoy

diamond.g said:


> Wait the Crypto market has SEC oversight?





If we're going to be honest, the SEC pretty much oversees jack shit and essentially issues parking tickets.  They're the meter maids of finance in both ability and respect.


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## Renzatic

diamond.g said:


> Isn't pump and dump illegal?




It is. The question is whether he'll still stand to turn a profit after the fines.


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## JayMysteri0

diamond.g said:


> Isn't pump and dump illegal?



Evidently not when anyone else could see it coming a mile away.

Also, odds are the punishment is a fine.

A fine to a guy who can buy a large portion of Twitter stock and is a known troll.  

It helps to also remember that Musk hates two things in this world a lot.  Twitter & the SEC.  Why?  Because they can call him on his bullshit when no one else seems to be able to.  Since he can't buy the SEC, this probably seemed like an alternative.


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## DT

It’s tricky with Musk, since just his presence as an investor moves the needle so much. Taking specifically before he made the purchase offer - now that is where it really gets into the weeds.


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## JayMysteri0

DT said:


> It’s tricky with Musk, since just his presence as an investor moves the needle so much. Taking specifically before he made the purchase offer - now that is where it really gets into the weeds.



Which is what I was referring to him being investigated and sued.

Since he basically didn't report his purchasing which started earlier in the year.  One Twitter investor sold his stocks just before Musk did finally file, causing the investor to believe he lost out selling too early.

But Musk doesn't care, it worked absolutely out fine for him & 'f' others.  Which is the best case for why he shouldn't be involved with Twitter.


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## SuperMatt

diamond.g said:


> Isn't pump and dump illegal?



Does he care if he gets fined? He hasn’t in the past, and just whines about how mean the SEC is to him.


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## diamond.g

Looks like Twitters board is gonna say no and made a provision to prevent hostile takeover by a single entity/person...





						Twitter Adopts Limited Duration Shareholder Rights Plan, Enabling All Shareholders to Realize Full Value of Company
					

/PRNewswire/ -- Twitter, Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) today announced that its Board of Directors has unanimously adopted a limited duration shareholder rights plan (the...




					www.prnewswire.com


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## Yoused

Hopefully a dump will drive the share price down and he will lose some buttons off his shirt.


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## diamond.g

Yoused said:


> Hopefully a dump will drive the share price down and he will lose some buttons off his shirt.



Well the stock was up 1.5 dollars after hours so it is likely the market will like the current response. Plus it looks like the Saudi's aren't interested in Twitter being bought out or going private.


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## Herdfan

Eric said:


> Another theory...
> 
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1514816433389068292/




And the board with threatening a poison pill are playing right into his hands.


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## Herdfan

SuperMatt said:


> Does he care if he gets fined? He hasn’t in the past, and just whines about how mean the SEC is to him.




Probably not.  And even if he were sued by the investors who sold their stock in the 5 day period where he failed to disclose the purchase, he could simply make them whole.  Probably wouldn't cost him more than a few million.  

Large investors don't fear the SEC.


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## ronntaylor

Herdfan said:


> Large investors don't fear the SEC.



Crooks don't fear the SEC.


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## Yoused

ronntaylor said:


> Crooks don't fear the SEC.



Does that stand for Society of Elite Croupiers?


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## gollum

I read that Musk has about 3 billion in cash - by all appearances, he will need to secure financing.  Much of his stock is also used as collateral for loans as well.  He may be insanely rich but he's not positioned to quickly execute a purchase.

Also the Twitter board just made it very expensive for him, as they adopted a poison pill.

Finally, a couple of the larger shareholders have come out against the offer stating the dollar amount is too low.


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## SuperMatt

gollum said:


> I read that Musk has about 3 billion in cash - by all appearances, he will need to secure financing.  Much of his stock is also used as collateral for loans as well.  He may be insanely rich but he's not positioned to quickly execute a purchase.
> 
> Also the Twitter board just made it very expensive for him, as they adopted a poison pill.
> 
> Finally, a couple of the larger shareholders have come out against the offer stating the dollar amount is too low.



I haven’t heard much talk about the tax aspect. We know the billionaires seldom, if ever, get taxed on their wealth. But if the offer from Musk is “cash” then he will need to sell investments. That means the government gets a slice of those realized gains. Unless perhaps buying the company then counts as a “business expense” that is deductible. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s yet another loophole for the mega-rich.


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## Cmaier

SuperMatt said:


> I haven’t heard much talk about the tax aspect. We know the billionaires seldom, if ever, get taxed on their wealth. But if the offer from Musk is “cash” then he will need to sell investments. That means the government gets a slice of those realized gains. Unless perhaps buying the company then counts as a “business expense” that is deductible. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s yet another loophole for the mega-rich.




No, he wouldn’t sell those investments to get cash. Billionaires put the investments up as collateral to get loans. Then they use the loans to buy things. That way they don’t have to pay taxes on realized gains.


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## Cmaier

By the way, that’s why my tax proposal is that anyone who gets loans over a certain amount using unrealized income as collateral would have to pay taxes on the loans as if they are income.  As they pay the loan back they can deduct the principle.  That way, when they sell the actual assets (which they seldom do now) it would be taxed as capital gains (or losses) as it is now.  I’d not allow the interest to be deducted, in order to discourage multi-generational hoarding; this way you are discouraged from taking a loan and keeping the assets, because it costs you the interest.


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## SuperMatt

Cmaier said:


> By the way, that’s why my tax proposal is that anyone who gets loans over a certain amount using unrealized income as collateral would have to pay taxes on the loans as if they are income.  As they pay the loan back they can deduct the principle.  That way, when they sell the actual assets (which they seldom do now) it would be taxed as capital gains (or losses) as it is now.  I’d not allow the interest to be deducted, in order to discourage multi-generational hoarding; this way you are discouraged from taking a loan and keeping the assets, because it costs you the interest.



I say a wealth tax for anybody that has over a certain amount. Tax them a certain percentage just for having it. If they don’t like it, they can give money away. They earn way more in interest and capital gains each year for it to slow them down much anyway.

Your proposal sounds good too.

Either one would be better than the immoral system now of wealthy people paying nothing and average workers paying a quarter or more of their income. Heck, even when billionaires sell assets, they only pay 20% (long-term capital gains rate) vs the 37% they would normally pay on such large sums.


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## Cmaier

SuperMatt said:


> I say a wealth tax for anybody that has over a certain amount. Tax them a certain percentage just for having it. If they don’t like it, they can give money away. They earn way more in interest and capital gains each year for it to slow them down much anyway.
> 
> Your proposal sounds good too.
> 
> Either one would be better than the immoral system now of wealthy people paying nothing and average workers paying a quarter or more of their income. Heck, even when billionaires sell assets, they only pay 20% (long-term capital gains rate) vs the 37% they would normally pay on such large sums.




The problem with a wealth tax is that it is almost certainly unconstitutional.  My proposal would essentially acknowledge that borrowing against wealth creates income, and tax that income.


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## SuperMatt

Cmaier said:


> The problem with a wealth tax is that it is almost certainly unconstitutional.  My proposal would essentially acknowledge that borrowing against wealth creates income, and tax that income.



Do you have any information on why that is? The government taxes people annually simply for owning real estate. Why would this be different?


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## Cmaier

SuperMatt said:


> Do you have any information on why that is? The government taxes people annually simply for owning real estate. Why would this be different?




the federal government doesn’t tax real estate (unless gains are realized as income). States can tax whatever they want.

The federal government is different because the constitution doesn’t allow unapportioned direct taxes by the federal government. Direct taxes have to be apportioned - that is, the taxes collected directly would have to be proportional to population of each state.  (Constituion: “Capitation, or other direct, Tax[es] shall be…in Proportion to the Census.””). 

Land and property taxes were expressly defined as direct taxes by Madison at the constitutional convention, by the way.  Hamilton said that taxes “on the whole property of individuals” are also direct taxes.  

That brings us to the sixteenth amendment.  This made a carveout for income taxes - it essentially conceded that income taxes are direct taxes, but allowed them to be unapportioned.  But it only allows taxes on income, not any other kind of direct taxation.


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## SuperMatt

Cmaier said:


> the federal government doesn’t tax real estate (unless gains are realized as income). States can tax whatever they want.
> 
> The federal government is different because the constitution doesn’t allow unapportioned direct taxes by the federal government. Direct taxes have to be apportioned - that is, the taxes collected directly would have to be proportional to population of each state.  (Constituion: “Capitation, or other direct, Tax[es] shall be…in Proportion to the Census.””).
> 
> Land and property taxes were expressly defined as direct taxes by Madison at the constitutional convention, by the way.  Hamilton said that taxes “on the whole property of individuals” are also direct taxes.
> 
> That brings us to the sixteenth amendment.  This made a carveout for income taxes - it essentially conceded that income taxes are direct taxes, but allowed them to be unapportioned.  But it only allows taxes on income, not any other kind of direct taxation.



The way this system protects wealthy property owners while allowing income tax on wages... It might make one believe that the Constitution was written by a group of wealthy land owners!


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## Cmaier

SuperMatt said:


> The way this system protects wealthy property owners while allowing income tax on wages... It might make one believe that the Constitution was written by a group of wealthy land owners!




To be fair to the framers, at the time the kind of things we see now weren’t happening. Rich people got rich from income back then. They didn’t just accumulate assets and then live off lines of credit.


----------



## Eric

__
		https://www.reddit.com/r/fakehistoryporn/comments/u4z9m4


----------



## Joelist

I'm agreeing with cmaier in that this is a politics thread not a Tech thread. Twitter is tech itself but the ownership dispute is not. Can we close it or move it?


----------



## Herdfan

Cmaier said:


> The problem with a wealth tax is that it is almost certainly unconstitutional.  My proposal would essentially acknowledge that borrowing against wealth creates income, and tax that income.




I guess my issue is valuation.  For those like Musk, Bezos or Zuckerberg, it is easy.  How much stock they own times its trading price.

But what about someone who owns property.  Find any piece of property and you can find appraisers that will value it differently.


----------



## Eric

Joelist said:


> I'm agreeing with cmaier in that this is a politics thread not a Tech thread. Twitter is tech itself but the ownership dispute is not. Can we close it or move it?



Looks like we already have so I think we're okay. The reality is the attempted buyout is political in nature but I think we can remain it civil and keep the politics out of it.


----------



## SuperMatt

Herdfan said:


> I guess my issue is valuation.  For those like Musk, Bezos or Zuckerberg, it is easy.  How much stock they own times its trading price.
> 
> But what about someone who owns property.  Find any piece of property and you can find appraisers that will value it differently.



States and localities officially appraise property every year for property taxes.


----------



## Cmaier

SuperMatt said:


> States and localities officially appraise property every year for property taxes.



Yes they do. States are allowed to tax however they want. So a state could do a wealth or property tax (if it comports with their own constitution). But the federal government is bound by the US Constitution.  The way it worked out that way is that the states that signed onto the constitution were worried that the federal government would extract taxes in a manner that was disproportionate, so that the people of some states bore a higher individual burden than others.  They wouldn’t have been thrilled by the income tax, either, but the constitution was specifically amended later on to allow it; the problem is that the taxation scheme envisioned by the original text of the constitution isn’t very practical.  As far as direct taxes go, at least, the idea was the federal government would send a bill to each state and say ”you owe $X because you have Y population,” and then the state would have to figure out how to get that money.  But the wealth of a state is not necessarily proportional to its population, so actually collecting taxes that way would cause problems.   On the other hand, collecting based on wealth would not have been acceptable to the wealthier states, and the founders wanted the wealthier states to sign up. 

In any event, we’ve ended up in a system that if you generate money to support your spending using technique 1 (wages) you are screwed, but if you generate money to support your spending using another technique (lines of credit using accumulated wealth as collateral) you get off without paying.  It seems to me that when someone gives you money that you can spend however you want, especially with no real expectation that it will ever get paid back (these loans just get refinanced and form a continuing stream of income to the banks in perpetuity, because the assets keep being worth more and more), that’s income other than in name,

So bringing it back to the topic - Musk would almost certainly put up shares of his companies as collateral to support the twitter purpose, and he’d probably need other money, too, since he’s already done that to pay for other things and there may not be enough unencumbered stock left to support this bid.


----------



## gollum

Cmaier said:


> Musk would almost certainly put up shares of his companies as collateral



Bloomberg


> But even for the wealthiest person in the world, there are limits: The Bloomberg index estimates that he’s already borrowed about $20 billion against his shares, leaving about $35 billion remaining that he could theoretically take out against the two holdings.




Elon Musk takes out five monster mortgage

He appears to have quite a bit of debt. I don't expect banks to deny him, however, this turning into a hostile takeover means that it is no longer a 3.5 billion dollar purchase and will be much more expensive.


----------



## SuperMatt

If the Twitter thing doesn’t work out, Musk has a backup plan.









						Elon Musk Says He Could Make "Catgirl" Sex Robots If He Wanted To
					

During a lengthy and freewheeling conversation with TED's Chris Anderson last week, Musk said that 'catgirls" are "probably inevitable."




					futurism.com


----------



## Eric

SuperMatt said:


> If the Twitter thing doesn’t work out, Musk has a backup plan.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Elon Musk Says He Could Make "Catgirl" Sex Robots If He Wanted To
> 
> 
> During a lengthy and freewheeling conversation with TED's Chris Anderson last week, Musk said that 'catgirls" are "probably inevitable."
> 
> 
> 
> 
> futurism.com



Can I get my own Lucy Liu model?

"My loins ache for you {ERIC} take me now"


----------



## Herdfan

SuperMatt said:


> States and localities officially appraise property every year for property taxes.




For straight property, sure.  But what about privately held businesses that might use that property?  Some are really hard to value.


----------



## JayMysteri0

Some people really need to think their shit thru

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1518376331515510786/
https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1518380411650461696/


----------



## Runs For Fun

Welp








						Twitter is reportedly reconsidering Elon Musk's bid to buy the social media company after the Tesla CEO confirmed $46.5 billion in financing
					

The change of pace comes after Twitter filed for a shareholder rights plan, or "poison pill," last week designed to avoid a hostile takeover by Musk.




					www.businessinsider.com


----------



## Eric

Meeting on a Sunday to discuss? Sounds like they're taking it seriously.


> Sources close to the matter told The Journal that Twitter officials are meeting on Sunday to re-examine Musk's offer, and may be more receptive to negotiating with the billionaire after initially trying to thwart his purchase. Twitter last week fought back against the Tesla CEO using a shareholder rights plan, or "poison pill," designed to avoid a hostile takeover.




The day that maniac takes over I'll be removing my account. It's not just Musk, I'm tired of eccentric billionaire narcissistic assholes taking over everything while screwing all the normal people. We may not have many options but at least we can drop.


----------



## JayMysteri0

It's not that surprising really.  It is a fiduciary board, so it has to act on the best interests of the share holders.  If share holders feel it's a good offer they will press, some won't care about Twitter itself, just in their money.

Granted it may seem short sighted as it becomes a troll haven, but an abandoned wasteland by everyone else.  All because the new guy in charge will be more concerned with himself, than the majority using the service.

I think it's funny how 'r's have to remind you who they are even in this case.  As they have the hypocrisy to demand the preservation of records, when they aren't ( understandably ) if it isn't anything to do with Hilary Clinton.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1517492009790889986/


----------



## Runs For Fun

Nothing good can come from a Musk owned Twitter. He already uses the platform to manipulate stock prices without any repercussions.


----------



## Eric

JayMysteri0 said:


> It's not that surprising really.  It is a fiduciary board, so it has to act on the best interests of the share holders.  If share holders feel it's a good offer they will press, some won't care about Twitter itself, just in their money.
> 
> Granted it may seem short sighted as it becomes a troll haven, but an abandoned wasteland by everyone else.  All because the new guy in charge will be more concerned with himself, than the majority using the service.
> 
> I think it's funny how 'r's have to remind you who they are even in this case.  As they have the hypocrisy to demand the preservation of records, when they aren't ( understandably ) if it isn't anything to do with Hilary Clinton.
> 
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1517492009790889986/



All the Conservatives who have been screaming censorship will be given access back to spew their hate and scream fire in a theatre with no repercussions, Donald Trump will be reinstated and it will descend back into the shithole it used to be.


----------



## JayMysteri0

Eric said:


> All the Conservatives who have been screaming censorship will be given access back to spew their hate and scream fire in a theatre with no repercussions, Donald Trump will be reinstated and it will descend back into the shithole it used to be.




Which is once again understandable, of a sorts.

Musk himself is insulated from the chaos & damage that would result from his ideal version of Twitter.  It would become a place of worship for himself & others, while he & others are allowed to spread any disinformation in the name of "free speech".

It will be interesting to see if these "conservatives" still champion the free market, when users decide they'd rather move to an alternative.  Or if the ever inevitable cries of "cancel culture" ring out again, because no one wants to hear their shit.


----------



## Eric

JayMysteri0 said:


> Which is once again understandable, of a sorts.
> 
> Musk himself is insulated from the chaos & damage that would result from his ideal version of Twitter.  It would become a place of worship for himself & others, while he & others are allowed to spread any disinformation in the name of "free speech".
> 
> It will be interesting to see if these "conservatives" still champion the free market, when users decide they'd rather move to an alternative.  Or if the ever inevitable cries of "cancel culture" ring out again, because no one wants to hear their shit.



It would be nice to see it managed by a governing body rather than a single person with an opinion. Jack Dorsey made the decision to remove Trump, Musk will reinstate him. When a platform is run by an idealist it's going to be divided based on that person's politics no matter what side they're on.


----------



## Herdfan

Twitter shares rise as company announces it approved Musk's $44 billion acquisition bid
					

Musk has argued Twitter needs to be "transformed" into a private company so it can become a forum for free speech.




					www.cnbc.com


----------



## Eric

Herdfan said:


> Twitter shares rise as company announces it approved Musk's $44 billion acquisition bid
> 
> 
> Musk has argued Twitter needs to be "transformed" into a private company so it can become a forum for free speech.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.cnbc.com



Which is about where it was on the 5th of this month, is this really news?


----------



## lizkat

Yeah I'm just not interested in a platform that will permit airing of flat 180º lies and conspiracy theories  -- the latter along lines of the Alex Jones one,  suggesting that the Sandy Hook slaughter of 20 first graders and their teachers and administrators was "a hoax".  

WTF.   It doesn't take more than one rocket scientist to ditch that off a social media platform. 

The question is whether Musk is the "rocket scientist" for the Twitter board to roll with.  Just his whine that Trump was bumped should be enough to keep backbone in Twitter's board members.  It's not like there's any question whether Trump is a world class liar.  Let him post his lies on his own social media platform since he has one struggling to get to cruising altitude.   Musk could buy him some better developers maybe lol.


----------



## Eric

lizkat said:


> Yeah I'm just not interested in a platform that will permit airing of flat 180º lies and conspiracy theories  -- the latter along lines of the Alex Jones one,  suggesting that the Sandy Hook slaughter of 20 first graders and their teachers and administrators was "a hoax".
> 
> WTF.   It doesn't take more than one rocket scientist to ditch that off a social media platform.
> 
> The question is whether Musk is the "rocket scientist" for the Twitter board to roll with.  Just his whine that Trump was bumped should be enough to keep backbone in Twitter's board members.  It's not like there's any question whether Trump is a world class liar.  Let him post his lies on his own social media platform since he has one struggling to get to cruising altitude.   Musk could buy him some better developers maybe lol.



While Twitter has its share of right wing nutjobs you still had an idea that there's some oversight in the way they've put their foot down on some of the more unhinged accounts and it's kept the platform as a whole credible. I think when you pull all of that it will descend into the likes of Parler or Trump's Truth Social and lose all of that.

Aside from this, none of these companies last forever and while Twitter has survived it for longer than many look at MySpace, AOL, and now FB. Ask Rupert Murdoch how well the purchase of MySpace went.


----------



## Runs For Fun

Eric said:


> All the Conservatives who have been screaming censorship will be given access back to spew their hate and scream fire in a theatre with no repercussions, Donald Trump will be reinstated and it will descend back into the shithole it used to be.



This also concerns me from some of the comments he has made. It sounds like all the nutjobs will come back and it will turn into a dumpster fire.


----------



## Cmaier

Runs For Fun said:


> This also concerns me from some of the comments he has made. It sounds like all the nutjobs will come back and it will turn into a dumpster fire.



Nut jobs, magas, Russian trolls, …


----------



## Eric

Runs For Fun said:


> This also concerns me from some of the comments he has made. It sounds like all the nutjobs will come back and it will turn into a dumpster fire.



Gotta wonder if he'll allow the kid who has been posting his plane locations to remain.


----------



## DT

Yep, I gently warned people not to get too comfortable with that original offer not being accepted, that was very informal, when he started putting together his financials, I knew it was coming. The board has a fiduciary responsibility, that offer, current market eval = accept offer.  

Anybody going to try to make some money on this?  I feel like if I could make a couple of grand, that would be my last engagement with Twitter ... *sigh* a member since July 2007 ...



Cmaier said:


> Nut jobs, magas, Russian trolls, …




C.H.U.D., Morlocks ...


----------



## Runs For Fun

Eric said:


> Gotta wonder if he'll allow the kid who has been posting his plane locations to remain.



Ban kid, unban Trump.


----------



## lizkat

Eric said:


> Gotta wonder if he'll allow the kid who has been posting his plane locations to remain.




Hah, yeah.   "Free speech" by others will have its ups and downs for Musk as for anyone else, eh?

In the wake of this attempted Twitter takeover,  I find myself launching into my daily news explorations more from emailed briefs than from my Twitter list of media outlets to which I subscribe.

 If Musk creates a venue tailored to right wing crackpot style "free speech" --  as opposed to having a reasonable moderation of commentary--   I won't ditch my setup but I won't bother checking in very often...  not if it becomes a pain in the neck to minimize garbage showing up in my feed. 

There's a huge difference between "conservative opinion" and the circus antics of extreme pro-Trumpers.  I welcome reading some of the former,  but there's only so much work I'll engage in to clear my table of the latter.   That doesn't mean I want to live i a silo of left-leaning info.  I just have no room to hear the likes of MTG or Cawthorn, Boebert, etc., much less their fans on Twitter.   It's bad enough knowing I have a few actual neighbors who are still pro-Trump...


----------



## DT

lizkat said:


> If Musk creates a venue tailored to right wing crackpot style "free speech" --  as opposed to having a reasonable moderation of commentary--   I won't ditch my setup but I won't bother checking in very often...  not if it becomes a pain in the neck to minimize garbage showing up in my feed.




This is exactly my perspective, if there's enough controls, without an undue amount of management required to not be overwhelmed by stupidity, I'll stick around (though I'd imagine still less than now, which isn't all that much as it is to be honest ...)


----------



## ronntaylor

Twitter reminded me of my Twitter anniversary last week. It's been a steady decline of engagement there over those 13 years. I long ago gave up with all the right wing nonsense. This will just mean increased BS.


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

There are some who believe Trump should be back on Twitter to remind people what an insane idiot he is before they consider putting him back in office.  At this point I can't see Trump winning over any new converts and Trumpism has already grown well beyond the man himself.  This could help prevent some of the "Biden and Democrats haven't done shit for me and maybe Trump really wasn't that bad, I can't recall." votes.


----------



## Eric

All but inked...









						Twitter announces company will be sold to Elon Musk
					

Entrepreneur will pay $54.20 cash per share and deal is expected to close in 2022




					www.independent.co.uk


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

Eric said:


> All but inked...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Twitter announces company will be sold to Elon Musk
> 
> 
> Entrepreneur will pay $54.20 cash per share and deal is expected to close in 2022
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.independent.co.uk




Kind of a bizarre example of how companies put shareholders above all else.  Capitalism has no moral imperative.  Can’t say I really blame them. Elon offered way more than the company is worth and there’s really no realistic revenue growing plan in site. But it also shows that almost nobody in this equation did a damn thing in the realm of “hard work”. It’s all just a money shell game at the highest levels.

I think it’s fair to say most people don’t use Twitter and instead are mostly exposed to it by Twitter users reposting somewhere else. So you have posts that were maybe read by 100 people on Twitter but then get reposted on sites or videos outside Twitter increasing the view to thousands or millions. It’s the definitive “I didn’t sign up for this shit” that you can’t avoid getting exposed to.


----------



## Eric

It's a win for:

Donald Trump
Russian hackers
QAnon Conspiracy Theorists
Fox News
Jan 6th sympathizers
All considered "Free Speech". I'll be dumping my account as soon as he takes over, let them have their right wing shit-hole and wallow in its echo-chamber.


----------



## SuperMatt

We don’t know what, if anything, Musk will change about Twitter. If he follows the path of most private equity purchasers, he will:

Fire lots of workers, 
Transfer his own debt to become the company’s debt,
Pay himself huge amounts of money, 
Try and sell the burnt-out husk for an inflated price 5 years from now, 
Or have the company declare bankruptcy as a way to reduce the debt that he used to buy it. 

Vulture capitalism. See also: Toys R Us.









						Opinion: Private Equity Is The Enemy Of Working People
					

My retail job was destroyed by greedy financial executives. There are millions more like me, and we're fighting back.




					www.buzzfeednews.com


----------



## Herdfan

Eric said:


> It's a win for:
> 
> Donald Trump




He says he is not going back.  I guess we will see.


----------



## fooferdoggie

Herdfan said:


> He says he is not going back.  I guess we will see.



well he also said he is a stable genius and the smartest man in the world.


----------



## lizkat

Musk has now said he will take the company private if the deal goes through.  I might then ditch my setup.


----------



## Cmaier

fooferdoggie said:


> well he also said he is a stable genius and the smartest man in the world.



Yeah, but he also said covfefe, and that was true.


----------



## Alli

lizkat said:


> Musk has now said he will take the company private if the deal goes through.  I might then ditch my setup.



I wonder what he even means by that.


----------



## Eric

Alli said:


> I wonder what he even means by that.



I take it to mean he'll use it for his own megalomaniacal billionaire platform, I suppose the same argument can be made for Zuckerberg or Dorsey, in the end it's their show. Whether or not we participate is entirely up to us though, I will be opting out.


----------



## Alli

Eric said:


> I take it to mean he'll use it for his own megalomaniacal billionaire platform, I suppose the same argument can be made for Zuckerberg or Dorsey, in the end it's their show. Whether or not we participate is entirely up to us though, I will be opting out.



I’ll stay until I have more information. Meanwhile, time to recruit more users here.


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

Alli said:


> I wonder what he even means by that.




It means Twitter will pivot to a 24/7 live stream of Elon and Joe Rogan smoking weed.


----------



## Nycturne

Eric said:


> All the Conservatives who have been screaming censorship will be given access back to spew their hate and scream fire in a theatre with no repercussions, Donald Trump will be reinstated and it will descend back into the shithole it used to be.




Used to be? I'd argue it still very much is. It's just it's minorities facing the brunt of it, with LGBT folks a particularly soft target right now. The number of folks I've been following that have been suspended due to gaming the automatic report system, or just facing constant harassment to the point of leaving has really left my social network in tatters, even after Trump left office and was indefinitely suspended.


----------



## Renzatic

Herdfan said:


> He says he is not going back.  I guess we will see.




As long as Truth has lower user numbers than Twitter, you can guarantee he'll be there.


----------



## Eric

Looks like their policy is you can deactivate for 30 days, and if you don't log in during that entire time your account will be permanently deleted. I like their approach here, you'll have to think about it but it's a permanent out.



> Deactivating your Twitter account​Deactivation begins the process to permanently delete your Twitter account. This step initiates a 30-day window that gives you space to decide if you’d like to reactivate your account.
> Deactivating your Twitter account means your username (or “handle”) and public profile will not be viewable on twitter.com, Twitter for iOS or Twitter for Android.
> 
> 
> Deleting your Twitter account​After your 30-day deactivation window, your Twitter account is permanently deleted. When you don’t log into your account during the 30-day window, it lets us know you want to permanently delete your Twitter account. Once your account is deleted, your account is no longer available in our systems. You won’t be able to reactivate your previous account and you won’t have access to any old Tweets.
> Once your account is deleted after the 30-day deactivation window, your username will be available for registration by other Twitter accounts.
> 
> 
> 
> Top things to know before deactivating your account​Here are a few things to keep in mind if you’ve decided to deactivate or delete your Twitter account:
> 
> Deleting your Twitter account won’t delete your information from search engines like Google or Bing because Twitter doesn’t control those sites. There are steps you can take if you contact the search engine.
> When you deactivate your Twitter account, mentions of your account’s username in other’s Tweets will still exist. However it will no longer link to your profile as your profile will no longer be available. If you would like the content to be reviewed under the Twitter Rules, you may file a ticket here.
> You don’t have to delete your account to change the username or email associated with your Twitter account. Go to *Account information* to update that anytime.
> Logging into your account within the 30-day deactivation window easily restores your account.
> If you want to download your Twitter data, you’ll need to request it before you deactivate your account. Deactivating your account does not remove data from Twitter systems.
> Twitter may retain some information on your deactivated account to ensure the safety and security of its platform and people using Twitter. More information can be found here.


----------



## JayMysteri0

Eric said:


> It's a win for:
> 
> Donald Trump
> Russian hackers
> QAnon Conspiracy Theorists
> Fox News
> Jan 6th sympathizers
> All considered "Free Speech". I'll be dumping my account as soon as he takes over, let them have their right wing shit-hole and wallow in its echo-chamber.



You left out the shareholders.  They are going to get profit, and they don’t have to worry about how Twitter will make a profit in the future.   

What will be interesting to see, is if Musk’s presence doesn’t overshadow Twitter.  Because things may continue to run as usual, or it becomes the new MySpace.  It will also be interesting to see if something tries to step up and take Twitter’s place, the way things like Parker hoped to.


----------



## Renzatic

The funniest thing about all this is watching all the Trump fanatics scream about how TRIGGERED THE LIBTARDS are over this!

Fact is, most people don't seem to care one way or another. The only people that really seem to have an emotional investment in it are the same people who so fervently want to believe that Musk buying Twitter actually makes people mad.


----------



## Eric

Renzatic said:


> The funniest thing about all this is watching all the Trump fanatics scream about how TRIGGERED THE LIBTARDS are over this!
> 
> Fact is, most people don't seem to care one way or another. The only people that really seem to have an emotional investment in it are the same people who so fervently want to believe that Musk buying Twitter actually makes people mad.



It bothers me because the guy is a troll with unlimited funding, look at how he went at Bernie Sanders and some others. It's not just that, it's also that many of these billionaires treat the general population as their subordinates and want to own what they say and how they say it. I have always liked what he's done with Tesla but he's made me hate him with this bullshit, no different than Trump.


----------



## SuperMatt

Renzatic said:


> The funniest thing about all this is watching all the Trump fanatics scream about how TRIGGERED THE LIBTARDS are over this!
> 
> Fact is, most people don't seem to care one way or another. The only people that really seem to have an emotional investment in it are the same people who so fervently want to believe that Musk buying Twitter actually makes people mad.



Wait until they find out that Musk isn’t going to turn Twitter into a right-wing heaven.


----------



## Yoused

If the end result is that news stories become primarily journalism rather than three inches of text followed by eleven inches of tweets, I might not object too strenuously to him murdering it.


----------



## Eric

Jim Cramer, the gift that just keeps on giving. Best quote since he told everyone to buy Netflix just before they tanked.


----------



## lizkat

Alli said:


> I wonder what he even means by that.




Wall Street also wondering, probably...   in conjunction with asserting that he'll need ads to keep the thing afloat, despite his own assertion that "the economics" don't particularly matter to him.

I swear he's been obsessed about acquiring it mostly because someone said "uh, no" to him and he's been hell-bent ever since to make the point that money's no object when he wants to buy something.

I had my way of using Twitter pretty fine-tuned with their tools,  so that it suited my purposes there.   If it doesn't stay that amenable to preference-tweaking then I'll bail out.  I might miss it for awhile but not much.  I don't tweet much, just follow some accounts and do a few searches now and then.


----------



## Yoused

lizkat said:


> Wall Street also wondering, probably... in conjunction with asserting that he'll need ads to keep the thing afloat, despite his own assertion that "the economics" don't particularly matter to him.



Twitter does have ads – that is their primary revenue generator. They are just more subtle than the ads on other sites, mostly consisting of tweets that have been promoted to a prominent position, for a fee. They are less obvious than the paid content that appears on other sites.


----------



## Deleted member 215

Haha I'm off the rails in the MR thread on this topic. This may be what finally gets me banned. 









						Elon Musk Is Officially Purchasing Twitter for $44 Billion
					

That does not qualify as "packing the Supreme Court," which is defined as expanding the number of justices, which would change the rules and norms we've had in place for a century and a half. The Supreme Court has had nine justices since 1869.  All this means is that Trump and Mitch McConnell...




					forums.macrumors.com


----------



## Cmaier

TBL said:


> Haha I'm off the rails in the MR thread on this topic. This may be what finally gets me banned.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Elon Musk Is Officially Purchasing Twitter for $44 Billion
> 
> 
> That does not qualify as "packing the Supreme Court," which is defined as expanding the number of justices, which would change the rules and norms we've had in place for a century and a half. The Supreme Court has had nine justices since 1869.  All this means is that Trump and Mitch McConnell...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> forums.macrumors.com



Yeah that oughta do it.


----------



## lizkat

Yoused said:


> Twitter does have ads – that is their primary revenue generator. They are just more subtle than the ads on other sites, mostly consisting of tweets that have been promoted to a prominent position, for a fee. They are less obvious than the paid content that appears on other sites.




I think the financial analysts' remarks about how Twitter will still need ads going forward are strictly about Musk having been so petulantly dismissive about the economics of running the thing.  And that what Elon Musk says today about anything doesn't necessarily line up with what he'll say later or do tomorrow.  Also, losing a large number of erstwhile Twitter users --for whatever reason, e.g. banned or unhappy-- could mean that it would become harder to retain current or round up new advertisers.  

Heh I'm surprised I haven't got timed out for ticking the "I don't like this ad" box that Twitter offers related to the"promoted" inserts in one's feed.   I have used that pretty often.   Of course they find some other stuff to pop in there instead.  Haven't figured out yet whether using that box means the ads get even more obnoxious or maybe more subtle, i.e. hoping you click on something because not realizing it's an ad.


----------



## lizkat

TBL said:


> Haha I'm off the rails in the MR thread on this topic. This may be what finally gets me banned.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Elon Musk Is Officially Purchasing Twitter for $44 Billion
> 
> 
> That does not qualify as "packing the Supreme Court," which is defined as expanding the number of justices, which would change the rules and norms we've had in place for a century and a half. The Supreme Court has had nine justices since 1869.  All this means is that Trump and Mitch McConnell...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> forums.macrumors.com






Cmaier said:


> Yeah that oughta do it.




Does look like an exit visa application...   nice try anyway!


----------



## Pumbaa

TBL said:


> Haha I'm off the rails in the MR thread on this topic. This may be what finally gets me banned.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Elon Musk Is Officially Purchasing Twitter for $44 Billion
> 
> 
> That does not qualify as "packing the Supreme Court," which is defined as expanding the number of justices, which would change the rules and norms we've had in place for a century and a half. The Supreme Court has had nine justices since 1869.  All this means is that Trump and Mitch McConnell...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> forums.macrumors.com



Why did I follow the link? PRSI flashbacks!


----------



## Deleted member 215

The fact that thread is even allowed to stay up when any news thread that mentions the word "women" in it will automatically be closed to comments is just nuts.


----------



## gollum

Wow, what a dumpster fire. LOL

I don't understand how easily threads turn so caustic over there.  It's like watching a train wreck.  You don't want to see it, but you can't take your eyes off of it


----------



## Colstan

I understand that emotions are running high over Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter, which I am a bit more ambivalent about, than others here. However, I do understand its importance to society, and how it is very much politics-adjacent, so tech enthusiasts are going to be passionate about something that intersects two topics which we care about.

I'm not a Twitter shareholder, don't use the platform, but understand that it is an important part of global communications and dialogue. Cursing Musk on a tech forum may be cathartic, particularly if you find MacRumors to be a silly place, but it's not going to change the situation. Regardless of where one stands on the topic, I think everyone agrees that Twitter needs fundamental improvement. Whether Elon Musk is the individual to implement that change is another matter entirely.

What I can say is that I have a great deal of respect for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. They have repeatedly held to their principles, including calling out Apple during the company's ham-fisted, self-inflicted wound with the CSAM debacle, and have been champions of true freedom of speech and individual privacy, not as a slogan used by politicians, corporations, and famous personalities.

If Elon Musk really wants to move Twitter in a positive direction, then it would behoove him to listen to the EFF, as the privacy organization points out, Twitter Has a New Owner. Here’s What He Should Do.


----------



## gollum

Colstan said:


> high over Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter,



I'm a Twitter user, more of a Twitter lurker, and perhaps it is my feed but I do see a left-leaning bias.  At least Trump has said that he'll not be rejoining Twitter, though that promise is worth the paper it's written on.


----------



## DT

TBL said:


> Haha I'm off the rails in the MR thread on this topic. This may be what finally gets me banned.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Elon Musk Is Officially Purchasing Twitter for $44 Billion
> 
> 
> That does not qualify as "packing the Supreme Court," which is defined as expanding the number of justices, which would change the rules and norms we've had in place for a century and a half. The Supreme Court has had nine justices since 1869.  All this means is that Trump and Mitch McConnell...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> forums.macrumors.com




Ummm ...


----------



## Eric

TBL said:


> Haha I'm off the rails in the MR thread on this topic. This may be what finally gets me banned.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Elon Musk Is Officially Purchasing Twitter for $44 Billion
> 
> 
> That does not qualify as "packing the Supreme Court," which is defined as expanding the number of justices, which would change the rules and norms we've had in place for a century and a half. The Supreme Court has had nine justices since 1869.  All this means is that Trump and Mitch McConnell...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> forums.macrumors.com



Looks like that post is gone so we have no real idea what you said here, you gotta screenshot them because we know how they excise what people say all the time. Assuming it's just what's in the quote here though? Sorry you got suspended, I'm frankly surprised they even allowed the topic TBH.


----------



## Eric

Interesting stat here from Statista, who knew that Twitter was at the bottom of the list.
Most popular social networks worldwide as of January 2022, ranked by number of monthly active users (in millions)​


----------



## DT

Eric said:


> Interesting stat here from Statista, who knew that Twitter was at the bottom of the list.
> Most popular social networks worldwide as of January 2022, ranked by number of monthly active users (in millions)​




That surprises me too, but I didn't even stop to think about how huge WhatsApp and TicTok are, even IG for that matter - though in my head, that's where I would've placed Twitter, like around IG levels of activity, which is clearly wrong.


----------



## Eric

DT said:


> That surprises me too, but I didn't even stop to think about how huge WhatsApp and TicTok are, even IG for that matter - though in my head, that's where I would've placed Twitter, like around IG levels of activity, which is clearly wrong.



I personally love IG, it's really all about photos for me and I also follow a lot of celebs that I've always liked. It's more personalized and never political but getting followers takes a lot of time. I just broke 2K after being on for a few years, conversely on Twitter I have over 8K but over the last two years the activity has all but completely died, it's definitely nothing like it once was. IMO (regardless of politics or personal opinion) Musk may as well have flushed that money down the toilet, there's no saving it.


----------



## Runs For Fun

Eric said:


> Looks like that post is gone so we have no real idea what you said here, you gotta screenshot them because we know how they excise what people say all the time. Assuming it's just what's in the quote here though? Sorry you got suspended, I'm frankly surprised they even allowed the topic TBH.



I meant to take a screenshot but got sidetracked. This is what it said though


> Lmao. You're all such ****ing clowns.   You're trying to be moralizing but then turn it into a rant about "leftist brainwashing". Do you idiots hear yourselves?


----------



## Runs For Fun

DT said:


> That surprises me too, but I didn't even stop to think about how huge WhatsApp and TicTok are, even IG for that matter - though in my head, that's where I would've placed Twitter, like around IG levels of activity, which is clearly wrong.



Same! But I also wouldn't consider several of these as social networks like WhatsApp. They're just messaging platforms.


----------



## Eric

Runs For Fun said:


> I meant to take a screenshot but got sidetracked. This is what it said though



Okay, it was fully captured in the quote here then (even though removed from their site), just wasn't sure if there was anything more to it. I'm guessing the mods are having a field day in that thread.


----------



## Scepticalscribe

TBL said:


> Haha I'm off the rails in the MR thread on this topic. This may be what finally gets me banned.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Elon Musk Is Officially Purchasing Twitter for $44 Billion
> 
> 
> That does not qualify as "packing the Supreme Court," which is defined as expanding the number of justices, which would change the rules and norms we've had in place for a century and a half. The Supreme Court has had nine justices since 1869.  All this means is that Trump and Mitch McConnell...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> forums.macrumors.com



Yes, I confess that I succumbed to temptation and paid a - an ill-advised - visit to that thread.

Unfortunately, the post apppears to have vanished into the ether.

Have you been informed of how long they intend the suspension to run?

Wow, the sheer spleen, uniluted rage, and pure bile on show in that thread is quite simply extraordinary.


----------



## Deleted member 215

Two days. I guess they don’t want to permanently ban me yet, though others have been banned for less. They deleted every comment about why that thread is allowed to stay up as “off-topic” yet they’re allowing people to simply bash any political side like that’s somehow relevant to the conversation  They just can’t stand anyone pointing out the hypocrisy and inconsistency of the moderation. You close every thread about LGBT because it might "get political", yet you have a "Political News" section and let a thread like this stay up. Sorry, but that's hypocritical and inconsistent.


----------



## SuperMatt

The moderation policy there is braindead, and killing PRSI just took the stupidity to a new level. They could have put that thread into PRSI, but instead they shut down reasonable discussion of a major news event. Sure, a lot of the comments were stupid, but people are stupid.

The only thing Arn wants on the MR forums is vapid shit like “which color iPhone did you order?” Anything else can get you banned.


----------



## Cmaier

SuperMatt said:


> The moderation policy there is braindead, and killing PRSI just took the stupidity to a new level. They could have put that thread into PRSI, but instead they shut down reasonable discussion of a major news event. Sure, a lot of the comments were stupid, but people are stupid.
> 
> The only thing Arn wants on the MR forums is vapid shit like “which color iPhone did you order?” Anything else can get you banned.




Don’t talk about color.


----------



## Deleted member 215

But they do allow this because the dominant voice there is right-wing, yet any mention of LGBT or race and we’re not allowed to talk about it.


----------



## Alli

lizkat said:


> Heh I'm surprised I haven't got timed out for ticking the "I don't like this ad" box that Twitter offers related to the"promoted" inserts in one's feed. I have used that pretty often. Of course they find some other stuff to pop in there instead. Haven't figured out yet whether using that box means the ads get even more obnoxious or maybe more subtle, i.e. hoping you click on something because not realizing it's an ad.



When I see those, I just mute the account. I don’t see many promoted tweets anymore. LOL!


----------



## Scepticalscribe

TBL said:


> Two days. I guess they don’t want to permanently ban me yet, though others have been banned for less. They deleted every comment about why that thread is allowed to stay up as “off-topic” yet they’re allowing people to simply bash any political side like that’s somehow relevant to the conversation  They just can’t stand anyone pointing the hypocrisy and inconsistency of the moderation






SuperMatt said:


> The moderation policy there is braindead, and killing PRSI just took the stupidity to a new level. They could have put that thread into PRSI, but instead they shut down reasonable discussion of a major news event. Sure, a lot of the comments were stupid, but people are stupid.
> 
> The only thing Arn wants on the MR forums is vapid shit like “which color iPhone did you order?” Anything else can get you banned.



With respect, I beg to differ.

Not that the moderation policy isn't what you argue (I agree, this has been the case for years, now, and is only becoming even - and ever - more pronounced), but in what the aim (behind the moderation on the site) is.

For, it is not "braindead".

Rather, it is all about maximising "clicks", "views", "likes", "reactions", in other words, encouraging engagement (and yes, emotion), and generating and promoting traffic, and hence, income.


TBL said:


> But they do allow this because the dominant voice there is right-wing, yet any mention of LGBT or race and we’re not allowed to talk about it.



Well, yes.

However, unfortunately, that is nothing new.


----------



## Eric

I hate billionaires. from
      ABoringDystopia


----------



## Runs For Fun

Eric said:


> __
> https://www.reddit.com/r/ABoringDystopia/comments/ucbl0y


----------



## SuperMatt

Scepticalscribe said:


> With respect, I beg to differ.
> 
> Not that the moderation policy isn't what you argue (I agree, this has been the case for years, now, and is ony becoming ever more pronounced), but in what the aim is.
> 
> For, it is not "braindead"; rather, it is all about maximising "clicks", "views", "likes", in other words, promoting engagement and generating traffic, and hence, income.
> 
> Well, yes.
> 
> However, unfortunately, that is nothing new.



Good point. Arn is not braindead. But he is encouraging the most braindead people to post the most. And like you said, (and Fox News proves), aiming for the lowest common denominator can be quite profitable.


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

Eric said:


> Interesting stat here from Statista, who knew that Twitter was at the bottom of the list.
> Most popular social networks worldwide as of January 2022, ranked by number of monthly active users (in millions)​View attachment 13551





Like I said, most people don't use Twitter.  Instead Tweets get amplified outside Twitter which gives off the impression more people are using it than there actually are.  Most Trump tweets were probably read by people who aren't even on Twitter but were posted elsewhere.


----------



## Alli

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1518711457935986690/


----------



## Runs For Fun

Alli said:


> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1518711457935986690/



Well that was fast


----------



## Eric

Runs For Fun said:


> Well that was fast



A splinter group where the same members will join the new platform and post the same content at both places while bitching about how the previous one has wronged them.


----------



## SuperMatt

Twitter always seems to get lumped in with Facebook, but the platforms are drastically different.


----------



## Deleted member 215

Eric said:


> A splinter group where the same members will join the new platform and post the same content at both places while bitching about how the previous one has wronged them.




Well, I _never _


----------



## Cmaier

Eric said:


> A splinter group where the same members will join the new platform and post the same content at both places while bitching about how the previous one has wronged them.




And then the splinter group splinters.


----------



## lizkat

Eric said:


> Interesting stat here from Statista, who knew that Twitter was at the bottom of the list.
> Most popular social networks worldwide as of January 2022, ranked by number of monthly active users (in millions)​View attachment 13551





Heh, never can tell what's "elite" or what's "shunned" or what's annoying because of ads or website design or whatever.   I have a Pinterest setup that I have wanted to make more use of but its design has always struck me as a royal PITA to work with, and sometimes even to lurk in.

Part of Twitter's being down towards the bottom of that list is that there IS some pretty effective moderation of garbage on Twitter.    The company HAS been trying to moving towards effective adoption of the Santa Clara Principles.  It's hard to do at scale, and mistakes do get made.

Still, anyone who has used the platform over the past five years may have noticed results of those efforts --voluntarily or otherwise-- especially with respect to transparency and clarity of asserted rights to moderate content.  It's been made more clear what's permitted and what's not, easier to report perceived abuses and so forth.

If a Twitter user doesn't like the ongoing efforts to run a site that permits commentary without permitting peddling of egregious falsehoods and conspiracy theories.  there is the option to leave ahead of getting banned.  

The combination of the rules and enforcement of them may have helped suppress total usage of the platform.   People who appreciate the results though may be (if somewhat grudgingly) grateful.

The biggest problem, though, and one that no set of principles can resolve,  is behavior by countries whose governments don't want a venue like the current Twitter to be accessible to its citizens. And I think that's now a concern in the minds of some who realize that Musk stepping in to try to get a handle on Twitter is not all that different to a sovereign and autocratic government saying *OK if you're going to have a social media platform then I alone am who will control access and moderate it, full stop, stay tuned.*

See that is not at all the direction that Twitter --before Elon Musk's acquisition--  had chosen, whatever we may think of how the platform's moderation has been evolving.

Contrary to how Musk sees the platform,  plenty of free speech has been taking place on Twitter even after the effects of moderation.  Which is precisely what has bothered some autocratic sovereigns enough to suppress access to the platform.

But in the USA?  Now we have Musk saying he will define more generously what free speech on Twitter means.   Heh, the platform's already filling up with tweets noting with some hilarity that Musk has blocked them...


----------



## SuperMatt

lizkat said:


> Heh, never can tell what's "elite" or what's "shunned" or what's annoying because of ads or website design or whatever.   I have a Pinterest setup that I have wanted to make more use of but its design has always struck me as a royal PITA to work with, and sometimes even to lurk in.
> 
> Part of Twitter's being down towards the bottom of that list is that there IS some pretty effective moderation of garbage on Twitter.    The company HAS been trying to moving towards effective adoption of the Santa Clara Principles.  It's hard to do at scale, and mistakes do get made.
> 
> Still, anyone who has used the platform over the past five years may have noticed results of those efforts --voluntarily or otherwise-- especially with respect to transparency and clarity of asserted rights to moderate content.  It's been made more clear what's permitted and what's not, easier to report perceived abuses and so forth.
> 
> If a Twitter user doesn't like the ongoing efforts to run a site that permits commentary without permitting peddling of egregious falsehoods and conspiracy theories.  there is the option to leave ahead of getting banned.
> 
> The combination of the rules and enforcement of them may have helped suppress total usage of the platform.   People who appreciate the results though may be (if somewhat grudgingly) grateful.
> 
> The biggest problem, though, and one that no set of principles can resolve,  is behavior by countries whose governments don't want a venue like the current Twitter to be accessible to its citizens. And I think that's now a concern in the minds of some who realize that Musk stepping in to try to get a handle on Twitter is not all that different to a sovereign and autocratic government saying *OK if you're going to have a social media platform then I alone am who will control access and moderate it, full stop, stay tuned.*
> 
> See that is not at all the direction that Twitter --before Elon Musk's acquisition--  had chosen, whatever we may think of how the platform's moderation has been evolving.
> 
> Contrary to how Musk sees the platform,  plenty of free speech has been taking place on Twitter even after the effects of moderation.  Which is precisely what has bothered some autocratic sovereigns enough to suppress access to the platform.
> 
> But in the USA?  Now we have Musk saying he will define more generously what free speech on Twitter means.   Heh, the platform's already filling up with tweets noting with some hilarity that Musk has blocked them...



The “better” Twitter will be just like the “$35,000” Tesla model 3. That disappeared immediately. The “cheap” model 3 starts at $47K. 

Or like the Boring company. 

Or like his magical mini-sub cave rescue, that ended with him doing nothing except calling others pedophiles.


----------



## Joe

Musk is a genius. 

He already knows he has the tree huggers with Tesla. Now he has the capitol rioters/trumpers with Twitter. He will convince them to buy Teslas


----------



## lizkat

Cmaier said:


> And then the splinter group splinters.




Yep.  Hah, even now someone's writing their doctoral dissertation on the Balkanization of social media. 

It's more or less like AA, where in theory,  all it takes to form a new group is a coffee pot and a resentment.  Of course there are the more practical matters like how to keep a roof overhead and the lights on in the new hangout.  But that always comes later.

What interests me though in the cyberspace equivalent of our attempts to make silos (despite saying that's not what we're about)  is that beneath all the public squabbling *ON* social media _*ABOUT*_ who controls our access to and use of those platforms,  there are equally or even more consequential wars: the ones among chief providers of physical cloud facilities, infrastructure as service, software as service.

Lately those providers' focus is on integrating features to make it harder for entities or people to move their stuff at will.  Meanwhile at least in the USA, Congress drones on about whether Facebook needs to be reined in, even as party leaders get their legislation-tracking apps tweaked. 

All that stuff runs on "platforms" operated by a $180 billion industry with only a few key players in charge of maintaining access to and integrity of all the fricken data on the planet including who's got which weapons deployed this hour in Ukraine or Russia's staging areas for its land grab there.









						Top cloud providers: AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, hybrid, SaaS players
					

Cloud computing in 2021 became the de facto choice of IT due to digital transformation shifts accelerated by remote work and the COVID-19 pandemic. Here's a look at how the cloud leaders stack up, the hybrid market, and the key SaaS players.




					www.zdnet.com
				




Take all that and one can dig this week's New Yorker cover as a possible clue to where we're headed  while we amuse ourselves to death on social media.


​


----------



## Eric

"Self-made"


----------



## lizkat

I had thought the Twitter board would care much more about the idea of Twitter as an evolving place to have discussions, find new sources of information, discover more about the world,   than to cave so readily to Musk, even granted the perils that trying to fend off a hostile takeover could present.

The more I think about it, the more I think we should feel quite disappointed, actually. I mean QUITE disappointed.


----------



## Nycturne

Eric said:


> "Self-made"
> 
> View attachment 13572




Every time I see folks talk about "self-made" rich people, I keep thinking about Arnold Schwarzenegger's speech at a university commencement where he states he doesn't believe in the self-made man, talking about how much help he got, and how important it is to give back to the community that helped make success possible.

I may not see eye-to-eye with him on politics, but he's not wrong here. I just don't think we can assume those with wealth are going to be thinking in those terms, and will "play nice" with the rest of society. Musk being a prime example.


----------



## Eric

Nycturne said:


> Every time I see folks talk about "self-made" rich people, I keep thinking about Arnold Schwarzenegger's speech at a university commencement where he states he doesn't believe in the self-made man, talking about how much help he got, and how important it is to give back to the community that helped make success possible.
> 
> I may not see eye-to-eye with him on politics, but he's not wrong here. I just don't think we can assume those with wealth are going to be thinking in those terms, and will "play nice" with the rest of society. Musk being a prime example.



He's always been as genuine as they come IMO, even when he was serving I had a ton of respect for him.


----------



## Hrafn

Cmaier said:


> And then the splinter group splinters.



I thought we were the People's Front of Judea?


----------



## lizkat

Hrafn said:


> I thought we were the People's Front of Judea?




Isn't that next week?


----------



## Hrafn

lizkat said:


> Isn't that next week?



No, next week we're the "Popular Front of Judea". The People's front are all splitters.


----------



## Runs For Fun

This was an interesting read








						It’s the Billionaires’ Internet, and We’re Just Posting on It
					

You won’t find liberation on a platform owned by this or that billionaire.




					www.vice.com


----------



## lizkat

Hrafn said:


> No, next week we're the "Popular Front of Judea". The People's front are all splitters.




It's getting more complicated than an MLB team's list of bullpen options week to week.


----------



## lizkat

Runs For Fun said:


> This was an interesting read
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It’s the Billionaires’ Internet, and We’re Just Posting on It
> 
> 
> You won’t find liberation on a platform owned by this or that billionaire.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.vice.com




The thing is, most of the platforms can be tweaked far more to one's liking by just making use of provided tools.   So to me the problem seems less user preference per se than the need  --still hotly debated in some quarters, apparently-- to moderate content and ditch dangerous lies, conspiracy theories, harassment or abusive suggestions etc.

I mean there are people who won't bother with the tools, or who congregate at a site that permits exactly the kind of trash most people would rather not encounter.   Those are who are complaining about Twitter right now. 

Not sure why anyone worth having a conversation with would object to removal of stuff like that.  And not sure why Musk wants to encourage its return. From a few official statements,  I think the European Union also wonders, and has suggested Musk cannot just do whatever he likes and expect the results to be tolerated in Europe. 

So yes, there still are some norms,  and they're not far removed from common sense mixed with a little empathy for other people's humanity.   Musk won't be able to just revert Twitter back to the very bad old days when its initial permissiveness pretty much (and pretty quickly) produced usage that demonstrated a need for content moderation. 

Really I think the right's objections lately to Twitter as "censorious" reflects on the fact that Twitter has been growing all along into a more attractive place for people to swap ideas and information without being harassed or abused while so doing.  And that is thanks to the newer moderation principles and better tools for users to shape their feeds as they wish. 

People who want to barge in and disrupt that flow of ideas with garbage and endless trolling are having more trouble doing it on Twitter, and it annoys them because the ideas-traders include a lot of powerful politicians as well as mass media, niche interests experts, journalists and bloggers.   And so what?  If outliers and extremists want to trade ideas with movers and shakers and topic specialists, then how about bringing something to the table besides regurgitated memes and insults?

It's no wonder some of the Twitter staff were crying at the news Musk's offer had been accepted.  They really had transformed that place for the better from how it was even four or five years ago.


----------



## lizkat

The Financial Times is reporting that Musk can walk away from his deal to acquire Twitter by paying only a  $1 billion fee.    Likewise, Twitter may back out for same penalty.   This is only around 2.27 percent of the deal value.  Usual penalties run around 6% of deal value... 

Meanwhile Tesla stock took a grand slide of around 12% (more than $125 billion) on Tuesday as investors homed in on concerns about how Musk was going to wrap deal financing,  and realized it might involve Musk dumping a bunch of his own Tesla stock to raise funds.   Musks' paper loss on today's Tesla lurch will have been around ten billion bucks.

Maybe the glitter is already falling off the toy in the buyer's eyes, who knows.


----------



## JayMysteri0

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1519080666629033984/


----------



## Colstan

TBL said:


> But they do allow this because the dominant voice there is right-wing, yet any mention of LGBT or race and we’re not allowed to talk about it.



Having visited MacRumors for years now, the only obvious bias I have found is a diametric opposition to logic or common sense. That may include the things you mention, but a whole host of other issues, as well. Just like many other Apple users, I was excited when the M1 Pro/Max were announced. I was looking forward to @Cmaier's insightful commentary. We were forever robbed of that because the MR forum moderators decided to suspend him, and they did not deign to allow him back until much of the buzz was over. I said at the time that suspending @Cmaier from MacRumors was like banning the Pope from the Vatican.

As has been pointed out by others, MR's primary motivation is traffic; not news, not reviews, not engaging dialogue. That requires them to drive clicks and engagement as much as possible. That also means that they give everyone a voice. In theory, that sounds great, the problem arrises when everyone then believes that what they have to say is important and they need others to know it. This philosophy also works under the assumption that everyone is posting in good faith. If you spend any time there, you will know the opposite happens. As was the case with @Cmaier, he doesn't suffer trolls and malcontents. Those who pretend to be asking an honest question, repeatedly divert attention away from answers that don't fit their pet agenda, and then continue to beg the question. When called out on their antics, the moderators are alerted, and the fool wins while hiding behind forum rules.

MR has its uses, volume helps in some ways. I needed a specific type of cable for my LG UltraFine, and scouring that forum allowed me to find it. However, the benefits are outweighed by a vitriolic environment. This forum has become a refuge for those of us who want a civil debate, with sensible rules and moderation, without having to worry about pointless tribal warfare, particularly when a pernicious troll decides to come out from under its bridge and promote their false narrative.

There are also simple structural issues with the MR forums. The chief moderator is a Windows user, prefers Microsoft products, and doesn't own a Mac. I have yet to figure out the logic in giving such a person a perch of authority. Also, there's simply no kind way to say this, but trying to drive traffic as high as possible lends to individuals from the bottom-half of the IQ scale to make their opinion known. I've gotten into a number of roundabout circular debates, only to realize it was pointless, because I was arguing with someone who doesn't have the mental capacity to be holding an argument about highly technical topics. I know my own limitations, which is why I appreciate the thoughts of folks here who are more knowledgeable than I am. Sometimes wisdom is knowing when to say nothing.

I realize this isn't directly related to Twitter, but it is related to the quality of open debate. In that, I am thankful to be a member here.


----------



## gollum

lizkat said:


> The Financial Times is reporting that Musk can walk away from his deal to acquire Twitter by paying only a $1 billion fee. Likewise, Twitter may back out for same penalty. This is only around 2.27 percent of the deal value. Usual penalties run around 6% of deal value...



I can see Musk backing out, but not the board.  If the board does, then Must could continue with his take over, it will just be a hostile one at that point.  

With the EU communicating to Musk, that he must abide by their terms of free speech
Twitter takeover: EU and UK warn Elon Musk must comply or face sanctions

I wouldn't be surprised if the quick acceptance of his terms took Musk by surprise.  For the major shareholders they're about to make a lot of money and the board I'm sure will receive a very nice golden parachute.  Its a win for everyone but Musk.


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

lizkat said:


> I had thought the Twitter board would care much more about the idea of Twitter as an evolving place to have discussions, find new sources of information, discover more about the world,   than to cave so readily to Musk, even granted the perils that trying to fend off a hostile takeover could present.
> 
> The more I think about it, the more I think we should feel quite disappointed, actually. I mean QUITE disappointed.




Twitter was founded 16 years ago.  It’s not on the cusp of anything other than becoming more of a shit show that has to be moderated under a failing revenue model. I have no idea what Musk plans to do but it’s days of being a pleasant place to learn about the world are long gone.  It probably also inspired the mentality of all you need to know is the headline and don’t bother reading the article. 

I do think taking it private is a good move but in a general sense, that general sense being Wall St has way too much say in how companies are run now and their only goal is making themselves richer in the short term. I think it’s extremely ironic though that Musk is doing it as he has used Twitter, possibly more than anybody else, to increase his stock wealth with his regular musings.  

But this is also reminding me of the early "Who knows.  Maybe it won’t be so bad." Trump skeptics and we all know how that turned out.


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

gollum said:


> I can see Musk backing out, but not the board.  If the board does, then Must could continue with his take over, it will just be a hostile one at that point.
> 
> With the EU communicating to Musk, that he must abide by their terms of free speech
> Twitter takeover: EU and UK warn Elon Musk must comply or face sanctions
> 
> I wouldn't be surprised if the quick acceptance of his terms took Musk by surprise.  For the major shareholders they're about to make a lot of money and the board I'm sure will receive a very nice golden parachute.  Its a win for everyone but Musk.





I think we’ve lost the concept of how much $1 billion is. Musk could knock his wealth down to that and still be doing fine and inexplicably have that back up to $50 billion within a year. He’s also not part of the billionaires who like to one up their billionaire friends with high end assets. Instead he likes to use his wealth to control industries. So losing 10s of billions means nothing to him. He accomplishes as much by Tweeting regularly. “Nice yacht but I control public opinion.”


----------



## lizkat

Chew Toy McCoy said:


> days of being a pleasant place to learn about the world are long gone




But Twitter is where Hans the photographer of lichens and mosses hangs out, and even with all my news junkie hoard of online subscriptions, the odds of my ever having bumped into his art in those venues are close to nil.  

By that I mean to point out improvement of tools for users to create a more pleasant Twitter ambience by their own lights.   I don't expect a social media site to be a ready-made silo for anyone's interests alone, but I appreciate the extent to which Twitter in recent years has made it much easier for individuals to shape their view of the platform, while still allowing for exploration of the platform's vast offerings of skill and talent in thousands of general interest categories down to very niche specialties.

No one knows yet how much or even if Musk would mess with those tailoring options, never mind what he'll do about moderation guidelines.  It's clear that with respect to the latter, Twitter has reduced opportunities for malevolent characters to threaten or harass other users,  whether or not those users engage with the toolsets available to them.  I'd hope Musk would retain those limits on user provided content.

The platform's reach is global (where access is not suppressed) and some of the "free speech" yearnings (or demands?) on this side of the Atlantic are not matched in guidelines established within the European Union. 

That Twitter found it necessary to enable user tools to mute or block commentary on the site suggests that even in a global ambience currently taking account of EU constraints, there's enough "free speech" opportunity to make it quite clear the venue's not as restrictive as some users (or banned users?) have long been suggesting.

Musk's own or relayed complaints about lack of "free speech" on Twitter are ludicrous even in the context of American corporate operations, and well he knows it. As the site's new owner, if the deal goes through,  he or his designated executives will decide what content to host on the site,  just as Twitter's current management does. Just as Trump's Truth Social platform can do.   But, this stuff may not be something Musk bothered thinking about in detail, which shouldn't surprise anyone.



Chew Toy McCoy said:


> I do think taking it private is a good move but in a general sense, that general sense being Wall St has way too much say in how companies are run now and their only goal is making themselves richer in the short term. I think it’s extremely ironic though that Musk is doing it as he has used Twitter, possibly more than anybody else, to increase his stock wealth with his regular musings.



Yep.   Some of his "musings" will probably land him in hot water with the SEC even if he does go on with the deal and so come to regard the site as his private playground.  It's public-facing and there are consequences for public speech.



Chew Toy McCoy said:


> But this is also reminding me of the early "Who knows. Maybe it won’t be so bad." Trump skeptics and we all know how that turned out.




No kidding.


----------



## Herdfan

Chew Toy McCoy said:


> I think we’ve lost the concept of how much $1 billion is.




Here is a refresher.

1 million seconds is just over 11.5 days.

1 billion seconds is 31.7 years.


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

Herdfan said:


> Here is a refresher.
> 
> 1 million seconds is just over 11.5 days.
> 
> 1 billion seconds is 31.7 years.




This reminds me of somebody who said how long it would take the average earner to make $1 billion.  I don't remember what it was but I believe it was in the multi-thousands of years.


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

lizkat said:


> But Twitter is where Hans the photographer of lichens and mosses hangs out, and even with all my news junkie hoard of online subscriptions, the odds of my ever having bumped into his art in those venues are close to nil.
> 
> By that I mean to point out improvement of tools for users to create a more pleasant Twitter ambience by their own lights.   I don't expect a social media site to be a ready-made silo for anyone's interests alone, but I appreciate the extent to which Twitter in recent years has made it much easier for individuals to shape their view of the platform, while still allowing for exploration of the platform's vast offerings of skill and talent in thousands of general interest categories down to very niche specialties.
> 
> No one knows yet how much or even if Musk would mess with those tailoring options, never mind what he'll do about moderation guidelines.  It's clear that with respect to the latter, Twitter has reduced opportunities for malevolent characters to threaten or harass other users,  whether or not those users engage with the toolsets available to them.  I'd hope Musk would retain those limits on user provided content.
> 
> The platform's reach is global (where access is not suppressed) and some of the "free speech" yearnings (or demands?) on this side of the Atlantic are not matched in guidelines established within the European Union.
> 
> That Twitter found it necessary to enable user tools to mute or block commentary on the site suggests that even in a global ambience currently taking account of EU constraints, there's enough "free speech" opportunity to make it quite clear the venue's not as restrictive as some users (or banned users?) have long been suggesting.
> 
> Musk's own or relayed complaints about lack of "free speech" on Twitter are ludicrous even in the context of American corporate operations, and well he knows it. As the site's new owner, if the deal goes through,  he or his designated executives will decide what content to host on the site,  just as Twitter's current management does. Just as Trump's Truth Social platform can do.   But, this stuff may not be something Musk bothered thinking about in detail, which shouldn't surprise anyone.
> 
> 
> Yep.   Some of his "musings" will probably land him in hot water with the SEC even if he does go on with the deal and so come to regard the site as his private playground.  It's public-facing and there are consequences for public speech.
> 
> 
> 
> No kidding.





Wouldn’t Hans’ photos be better served on Instagram? One of major social media’s strangleholds is users being too lazy to try other services no matter how bad it gets. “It’s like 98% bullshit now, but I still come for the 2% that isn’t.” People are far too reliant on one-stop shops. I remember back in the day when I liked an artist I would go to their site and as a bonus I wasn’t exposed to articles on the fall of modern civilization and as a result I didn’t leave the site depressed about life when all I wanted to do was get tour dates.

This is a laziness of both content creators and viewers. Just about every podcast I listen to the hosts have said something like “The only reason I go on [insert social media here] is to post information about our show. If it wasn’t for that I’d kill the account.” usually followed by a story about how the last personal experience or opinion they posted got relentlessly attacked by trolls. Its like everybody decided the shittiest neighborhood in town is the only place to do business.


----------



## lizkat

Chew Toy McCoy said:


> Wouldn’t Hans’ photos be better served on Instagram? One of major social media’s strangleholds is users being too lazy to try other services no matter how bad it gets. “It’s like 98% bullshit now, but I still come for the 2% that isn’t.” People are far too reliant on one-stop shops. I remember back in the day when I liked an artist I would go to their site and as a bonus I wasn’t exposed to articles on the fall of modern civilization and as a result I didn’t leave the site depressed about life when all I wanted to do was get tour dates.
> 
> This is a laziness of both content creators and viewers. Just about every podcast I listen to the hosts have said something like “The only reason I go on [insert social media here] is to post information about our show. If it wasn’t for that I’d kill the account.” usually followed by a story about how the last personal experience or opinion they posted got relentlessly attacked by trolls. Its like everybody decided the shittiest neighborhood in town is the only place to do business.




Hans could decide that for himself, and maybe he does have an IG setup...   I'd not see that because (obviously, to readers of this forum by now)  I have preferred Twitter, viewing it as a launchpad for exploration of other sites I learn about on that platform.   There's a difference between a launchpad and one-stop shopping... 

I just bumped into an opinion piece in today's NYT that expresses a lot of what I have come to know about Twitter, and says it far better than I could do.   I suppose the piece is paywalled but here are the link and excerpts.









						Opinion | Let’s Be Clear About What It’s Like to Be Harassed on Twitter
					

Free speech absolutism might backfire when it comes to increasing the company’s user base and profits.




					www.nytimes.com
				






> A couple of weeks ago, a former colleague of Mr. Musk’s at PayPal, Keith Rabois, called me dumb on Twitter after I suggested that eliminating moderation policies would be bad for Twitter’s business. This is not a particularly sophisticated criticism, but neither is it harassment.
> 
> However, I’ve also received rape threats, anonymous letters to my home address, threatening comments about my family and all manner of misogynistic pejoratives that are not printable in this newspaper for my stated positions on everything from abortion to hiring practices at start-ups to who the next James Bond should be. I don’t even have to write anything particularly provocative for this to happen; I once got a violent threat for a column I wrote about why I disagree with the way the Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates the Consumer Price Index.






> These are not uncommon experiences for women and minorities who speak in public, on Twitter and beyond, and I’ve suffered far less harassment than others. It happens all the time. *Twitter’s current moderation policies can’t completely prevent it, but they are designed to mitigate it. Twitter requires its users to comply with a terms of service agreement that bans certain types of speech — harassment, in particular.  It also has moderation policies in place to combat disinformation. *The value of these measures isn’t always apparent to powerful people such as Mr. Musk because if you’re a white man on the internet, you’re far less likely to get a rape threat, and you’re also heavily insulated from the possibility of real-world violence.






> All of this is a moral and ethical case for keeping moderation policies in place, but what’s more baffling about Mr. Musk’s crusade is it’s hard to see how eliminating them would be good for the business. Right now, Twitter’s demographics skew male. If Twitter wants to further scale up its business and increase profitability, which is ostensibly its goal, it needs to expand its reach. Making the platform a hostile environment for women and minorities isn’t conducive to expansion, unless you believe your most valuable audience is white men who skew conservative and that they exist in ever larger numbers — and demographic trends indicate that they do not.






> When people feel entitled to harm others because hateful rhetoric is normalized online, it increases the ease with which conspiracy theories metastasize into acts of violence. A platform that spreads that kind of rhetoric and takes a laissez-faire approach to disinformation doesn’t just create an unpleasant experience for users; it can get someone killed.






> The company’s revenue is currently very advertising-dependent, and in my experience as a former media entrepreneur and newspaper editor in chief, advertisers generally don’t like to promote their brands alongside provocative content; even everyday political news is sometimes too much. *If Mr. Musk allows Twitter to become a cesspool of hate speech and disinformation, he’ll test the risk adversity of the platform’s advertisers*, and it’s likely that he’ll find himself with fewer brands that are willing to take the risk of appearing in people’s polluted feeds.






> Sophisticated moderation policies are difficult to develop and enforce, and Twitter has already spent years tinkering and trying to come up with something that works. The current terms of service are not perfect, but if Mr. Musk chooses to partly or fully dismantle them, he may experience Twitter in a new way himself: The aspects of the platform that are weaponized against women and minorities may not be so friendly to him, either. And if the company can’t expand its user base, his worst critics may be the only growth area of Twitter.


----------



## Joe

Eric said:


> "Self-made"
> 
> View attachment 13572




It always cracks me up when I see everyday people defending these guys...because they somehow have been convinced they can be as rich as them. But they fail to realize how much help they got to get where they are. They were already from well off families and had the connections. The every day person isn't going to have that. Sure, they can get there...but they're going to have to work a hell of a lot harder than any of those dudes.


----------



## Deleted member 215

Joe said:


> It always cracks me up when I see everyday people defending these guys...because they somehow have been convinced they can be as rich as them. But they fail to realize how much help they got to get where they are. They were already from well off families and had the connections. The every day person isn't going to have that. Sure, they can get there...but they're going to have to work a hell of a lot harder than any of those dudes.




People who make $30,000 a year defending billionaires is more American than apple pie.


----------



## Eric

TBL said:


> People who make $30,000 a year defending billionaires is more American than apple pie.



At least that makes some sense, what is baffling are those making less than $30K defending them.


----------



## Joe

I looked up Elon Musk and once I saw his dad was the owner of an emerald mine I was like ok, that explains it lol


----------



## Herdfan

Joe said:


> I looked up Elon Musk and once I saw his dad was the owner of an emerald mine I was like ok, that explains it lol




And his mom is a model.  Maye Musk.


----------



## Nycturne

gollum said:


> I wouldn't be surprised if the quick acceptance of his terms took Musk by surprise. For the major shareholders they're about to make a lot of money and the board I'm sure will receive a very nice golden parachute. Its a win for everyone but Musk.




I would not be surprised if that's why they jumped at it. As much a middle finger to Musk's attitude as it is a way to cash out in way that they likely wouldn't ever get from Twitter improving revenue.


----------



## JayMysteri0

Nycturne said:


> I would not be surprised if that's why they jumped at it. As much a middle finger to Musk's attitude as it is a way to cash out in way that they likely wouldn't ever get from Twitter improving revenue.





gollum said:


> I can see Musk backing out, but not the board.  If the board does, then Must could continue with his take over, it will just be a hostile one at that point.
> 
> With the EU communicating to Musk, that he must abide by their terms of free speech
> Twitter takeover: EU and UK warn Elon Musk must comply or face sanctions
> 
> I wouldn't be surprised if the quick acceptance of his terms took Musk by surprise.  For the major shareholders they're about to make a lot of money and the board I'm sure will receive a very nice golden parachute.  Its a win for everyone but Musk.



If you read up on the “poison pill” the board put in place initially, you’ll find the board put themselves in a way in the position that made taking Musk’s offer.  Basically in their attempt to curb Musk, the placed themselves in a questionable legal position.  So acting in the shareholders best interests, became their best interest.

Also this was also done quickly enough in time before Twitter announces it’s latest earnings.  Great timing if the earnings aren’t great and got the most money they possibly could.

Bonus, read up on how much Musk is paying extra because of a stupid joke involving the price he offered. Hint:  a 420 joke is costing him extra millions he didn’t need to throw in.


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

Eric said:


> At least that makes some sense, what is baffling are those making less than $30K defending them.





There's nothing more American than having an overinflated opinion of your value and abilities.  For some people that motivates them, but for most it just causes them to righteously whine and recently we've established a party cult they can join.


----------



## lizkat

Well from my humble point of view it would be simpler for Musk to pay someone to build his own free speech site instead of "buying a free app" as some people hilariously describe his purchase offer, and then having to pay someone to try to make it into whatever he thinks it is he wants.    

Really I suspect he's just tired of blocking accounts on Twitter that have criticized him, because those tweets have been posted with all due attention to Twitter's guidelines and so are not being removed.

Musk is not necessarily trying to get those accounts banned,  and he does say he wants his worst critics to remain, but obviously he doesn't want them able to follow him and read and then reply to or quote-retweet his own tweets.

 So like any other user he deploys the Twitter tools at hand.   That's fine by me, actually, that's an optioni when you don't enjoy someone else's "free speech" on the platform -- but it's a kind of dead giveaway when you see someone blocking an account like Public Citizen.  I mean it's not like that crew goes around trolling other Twitter users or harassing or threatening them. 


​


----------



## Eric

lizkat said:


> Well from my humble point of view it would be simpler for Musk to pay someone to build his own free speech site instead of "buying a free app" as some people hilariously describe his purchase offer, and then having to pay someone to try to make it into whatever he thinks it is he wants.
> 
> Really I suspect he's just tired of blocking accounts on Twitter that have criticized him, because those tweets have been posted with all due attention to Twitter's guidelines and so are not being removed.
> 
> Musk is not necessarily trying to get those accounts banned,  and he does say he wants his worst critics to remain, but obviously he doesn't want them able to follow him and read and then reply to or quote-retweet his own tweets.
> 
> So like any other user he deploys the Twitter tools at hand.   That's fine by me, actually, that's an optioni when you don't enjoy someone else's "free speech" on the platform -- but it's a kind of dead giveaway when you see someone blocking an account like Public Citizen.  I mean it's not like that crew goes around trolling other Twitter users or harassing or threatening them.
> 
> View attachment 13586​



Guess he didn't like their free speech, funny that.


----------



## lizkat

Putting the Musk purchase in perspective, continued:

​


----------



## JayMysteri0

lizkat said:


> Well from my humble point of view it would be simpler for Musk to pay someone to build his own free speech site instead of "buying a free app" as some people hilariously describe his purchase offer, and then having to pay someone to try to make it into whatever he thinks it is he wants.
> 
> Really I suspect he's just tired of blocking accounts on Twitter that have criticized him, because those tweets have been posted with all due attention to Twitter's guidelines and so are not being removed.
> 
> Musk is not necessarily trying to get those accounts banned,  and he does say he wants his worst critics to remain, but obviously he doesn't want them able to follow him and read and then reply to or quote-retweet his own tweets.
> 
> So like any other user he deploys the Twitter tools at hand.   That's fine by me, actually, that's an optioni when you don't enjoy someone else's "free speech" on the platform -- but it's a kind of dead giveaway when you see someone blocking an account like Public Citizen.  I mean it's not like that crew goes around trolling other Twitter users or harassing or threatening them.
> 
> View attachment 13586​



I point out to people there are 2 things Musk has grown to considerably hate.  The SEC & Twitter.  Why?  Because those are 2 sources who’ve had the ability somewhat to call him on his shit.  Musk can’t buy the SEC outright, but he could work out a strat to get Twitter.  Thus why he wouldn’t want to make his own platform.

I’ve said don’t trust a rich person talking about freedoms.  Because they often have more than anyone else, so they must want something else. 

Musk got called on his false hoods before, called someone a pedophile out of pettiness, misrepresented ( I am being kind ) his intentions with Tesla, messed around with the values of Doge, and been caught being flat out wrong ( COVID AMA anyone? ) a time or two. Yeah, the point was to get Twitter, and remove one source of calling him out.


----------



## Runs For Fun

Then there's this








						Conservative Twitter accounts got boost in followers after Musk acquisition, data shows
					

Data shows hundreds of thousands of followers joining the political right.




					www.theverge.com


----------



## JayMysteri0

From one rich guy to another

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1519431887135158273/


----------



## lizkat

Runs For Fun said:


> Then there's this
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Conservative Twitter accounts got boost in followers after Musk acquisition, data shows
> 
> 
> Data shows hundreds of thousands of followers joining the political right.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.theverge.com




Not sure Roger Stone actually counts as "conservative" but it appears he not only established a new account on Twitter but promptly ended up suspended.   Hah!   Guess he's not up on the fine print that it's not Elon Musk who is running Twitter at this moment, so existing guidelines still apply to new tweets.









						Roger Stone’s Twitter account suspended
					

Roger Stone’s Twitter account has been suspended.The suspension appeared to come after the former adviser to President Trump’s election campaign went on a tirade on the social medi…




					thehill.com
				




Bonus points for noticing the addendum at the bottom of that piece in the Hill:



> _The Hill has removed its comment section, as there are many other forums for readers to participate in the conversation. We invite you to join the discussion on Facebook and Twitter._




LOLOLOLROFL.


----------



## Joe

JayMysteri0 said:


> From one rich guy to another
> 
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1519431887135158273/




I hated Mark Cuban back in the day when the Spurs and Mavs had a hardcore rivalry. I like him a lot more now lol


----------



## Eric

Joe said:


> I hated Mark Cuban back in the day when the Spurs and Mavs had a hardcore rivalry. I like him a lot more now lol



While Musk was trolling Bernie Sanders and toking out with Joe Rogan, Mark Cuban was donating time and money to help the poor.


----------



## JayMysteri0

This is NOT an encouraging read



> Musk’s Brilliant Idea to ‘Unlock’ Twitter’s Potential: Charge for Embedded Tweets
> 
> 
> Reuters reports the billionaire convinced banks to lend him money to buy Twitter with few details and a handful of ideas that aren't exactly groundbreaking.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> gizmodo.com




Seems promises, firings, influencers, new charges, and paying employees less is what will make the secret sauce that makes Twitter finally profitable.

If you're a Twitter board member who was always worried at every earnings report that showed you still don't make a profit, you're probably doing this with Musk supposedly taking on that task now


----------



## Eric

Then there's this... ugh

Elon Musk suggested firing workers and working with influencers to boost Twitter's bottom line​








						Elon Musk suggested firing workers and working with influencers to boost Twitter's bottom line: reports
					

Elon Musk pitched some ideas to lift Twitter's bottom line when he spoke to bankers, but ultimately didn't go into details in his pitch, reports say.




					finance.yahoo.com
				






> In conversations with bankers, Elon Musk pitched ideas to lift Twitter's bottom line, reports say.
> But he didn't share details, and banks financed his Twitter buyout deal because he had other assets.
> Musk's private pitch to bankers contradicts his position that he doesn't care about Twitter's profitability.


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

We’ve really become spoiled. If a social network charged a $1 a month subscription for access half the users would find that insulting and the other half would just leave. Meanwhile we’ll complain endlessly about the interface, experience, propaganda, and ads that we spent exactly $0 on.


----------



## Eric

Chew Toy McCoy said:


> We’ve really become spoiled. If a social network charged a $1 a month subscription for access half the users would find that insulting and the other half would just leave. Meanwhile we’ll complain endlessly about the interface, experience, propaganda, and ads that we spent exactly $0 on.



User acquisition will always trump a subscription model on this type of platform, advertising is where it's at for them. They're not "giving" us anything, they're feeding off of our data like vampires and in return we get to watch a bunch of angry people bitch all day. The only one's making out are shareholders and they're laughing all the way to the bank.


----------



## SuperMatt

Eric said:


> Then there's this... ugh
> 
> Elon Musk suggested firing workers and working with influencers to boost Twitter's bottom line​
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Elon Musk suggested firing workers and working with influencers to boost Twitter's bottom line: reports
> 
> 
> Elon Musk pitched some ideas to lift Twitter's bottom line when he spoke to bankers, but ultimately didn't go into details in his pitch, reports say.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> finance.yahoo.com



Who possibly could have foreseen that? Hmm...



SuperMatt said:


> We don’t know what, if anything, Musk will change about Twitter. If he follows the path of most private equity purchasers, he will:
> 
> *Fire lots of workers,*
> Transfer his own debt to become the company’s debt,
> Pay himself huge amounts of money,
> Try and sell the burnt-out husk for an inflated price 5 years from now,
> Or have the company declare bankruptcy as a way to reduce the debt that he used to buy it.
> 
> Vulture capitalism. See also: Toys R Us.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Opinion: Private Equity Is The Enemy Of Working People
> 
> 
> My retail job was destroyed by greedy financial executives. There are millions more like me, and we're fighting back.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.buzzfeednews.com



We’ll wait and see how far down the list he goes.


----------



## JayMysteri0

SuperMatt said:


> Who possibly could have foreseen that? Hmm...
> 
> 
> We’ll wait and see how far down the list he goes.



I'm very curious about the transfer of debt aspect.  Since he possibly used the last of his shares of Tesla that he's allowed to sell, he's sort of locked himself in.  Does he find a way to buy back shares of Tesla, using Twitter in the future?


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

Eric said:


> User acquisition will always trump a subscription model on this type of platform, advertising is where it's at for them. They're not "giving" us anything, they're feeding off of our data like vampires and in return we get to watch a bunch of angry people bitch all day. The only one's making out are shareholders and they're laughing all the way to the bank.




I understand the business model, but I think people get an outsized sense of their importance with their data as an active user thinking they get to call the shots. The biggest (and possibly) only tool you really have in your arsenal is to just leave the service. Enough people do that and there may be changes, may. Complaining while continuing to be an active member isn’t going to get too far. You can say the same thing about voting. There’s no incentive to change as long as parties can comfortably rely on your vote no matter what they do.


----------



## Eric

Chew Toy McCoy said:


> I understand the business model, but I think people get an outsized sense of their importance with their data as an active user thinking they get to call the shots. *The biggest (and possibly) only tool you really have in your arsenal is to just leave the service. *Enough people do that and there may be changes, may. Complaining while continuing to be an active member isn’t going to get too far. You can say the same thing about voting. There’s no incentive to change as long as parties can comfortably rely on your vote no matter what they do.



This is what I will be doing, with over 8000 followers no less, but it's been going downhill for a long time anyway so it won't be any real loss. We should also consider that Musk is attempting something that has never been successful, saving a social media company as the ship is going down. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out but by any stretch of precedent, this has never successfully worked before.


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

Eric said:


> This is what I will be doing, with over 8000 followers no less, but it's been going downhill for a long time anyway so it won't be any real loss. We should also consider that Musk is attempting something that has never been successful, saving a social media company as the ship is going down. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out but by any stretch of precedent, this has never successfully worked before.




I heard somebody say recently that Twitter is the social media of the elites, and in a way I agree.  I know that's become an insulting term, but for the most part it's where the people at the top (celebrities, politicians, business leaders, experts in their field) go to communicate and then people respond or troll.  I know there are far more people on there who aren't in that group, but I'm saying people who are in that group tend to use Twitter as their main social network interaction with the peasantry.  I don't know if that can be replicated by another service, but also maybe it's time that people just get offline and go live their lives....or at least spend a lot more time offline.


----------



## JayMysteri0

Chew Toy McCoy said:


> I heard somebody say recently that Twitter is the social media of the elites, and in a way I agree.  I know that's become an insulting term, but for the most part it's where the people at the top (celebrities, politicians, business leaders, experts in their field) go to communicate and then people respond or troll.  I know there are far more people on there who aren't in that group, but I'm saying people who are in that group tend to use Twitter as their main social network interaction with the peasantry.  I don't know if that can be replicated by another service, but also maybe it's time that people just get offline and go live their lives....or at least spend a lot more time offline.



I believe you're both right.  The aspect of it being for elites though is also what makes it something they hate.  Because "the elite" can communicate with everyone else easily, it also opens them up to being "cancelled" just as quickly.  Which is the very thing Musk doesn't care for.  Social media may tilt towards the biggest presences, but it also can tear them down should they offend enough.  With Musk owning Twitter and a bizarre belief that it should offend all parties.  You better believe someone if calls Musk out, he's depending on his drones to defend him.  If those drones have to collectively make up that the persons who called out Musk are pedophiles with no proof, in Musk's eyes that is their right.

There's a new variant of Covid?  It's be gone by the next quarter & drinking horse piss laced with ivermectin will get rid of it.  Prove me wrong.  It's my right to make that claim that now 250K idiots believe and are stalking confused horses.

As a private entity Twitter would truly become "the social media of elites".


----------



## lizkat

Chew Toy McCoy said:


> We’ve really become spoiled. If a social network charged a $1 a month subscription for access half the users would find that insulting and the other half would just leave. Meanwhile we’ll complain endlessly about the interface, experience, propaganda, and ads that we spent exactly $0 on.




Too true.  It's part of the reason (ok, and only a small part, since there was a lot of corporate politics also involved) that CNN+ was ditched about ten seconds after its launch.   Not enough people signed up for a pretty dirt cheap offer:  half off for life and so currently like 3 bucks out of pocket per month.

Some of the platform's new live content was mocked immediately but not many reviewers homed in on highlighting for the public the back catalog and on demand stuff that the offer had put on tap for subscribers.

All the media critics were talking about was how much the corporation had shellled out to lure the talent and launch the thing.  And why was that?  *Because the media critics work for beancounters too.*

For us, price-driven public consumers of infonet content, it's still always about "infomation wants to be free"  -- but for the beancounters monitoring launch of the new platform it was *hey no one's doing to be watching the ads.*

  And the honchos at Warner Bros.Discovery know this too, which is why mailboxes are now flooded with offers to the former subscribers to CNN+ to avail themselves of either or both of of two separate free 14-day trials,  one for Discovery+ *with ads*,  and one for HBO Max *with ads*.

Yeah.  *With ads.*  And, only if you would be a new subscriber to those platforms...




Eric said:


> User acquisition will always trump a subscription model on this type of platform, advertising is where it's at for them. They're not "giving" us anything, they're feeding off of our data like vampires and in return we get to watch a bunch of angry people bitch all day. The only one's making out are shareholders and they're laughing all the way to the bank.



You have rested the case.


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

lizkat said:


> Too true.  It's part of the reason (ok, and only a small part, since there was a lot of corporate politics also involved) that CNN+ was ditched about ten seconds after its launch.   Not enough people signed up for a pretty dirt cheap offer:  half off for life and so currently like 3 bucks out of pocket per month.
> 
> Some of the platform's new live content was mocked immediately but not many reviewers homed in on highlighting for the public the back catalog and on demand stuff that the offer had put on tap for subscribers.
> 
> All the media critics were talking about was how much the corporation had shellled out to lure the talent and launch the thing.  And why was that?  *Because the media critics work for beancounters too.*
> 
> For us, price-driven public consumers of infonet content, it's still always about "infomation wants to be free"  -- but for the beancounters monitoring launch of the new platform it was *hey no one's doing to be watching the ads.*
> 
> And the honchos at Warner Bros.Discovery know this too, which is why mailboxes are now flooded with offers to the former subscribers to CNN+ to avail themselves of either or both of of two separate free 14-day trials,  one for Discovery+ *with ads*,  and one for HBO Max *with ads*.
> 
> Yeah.  *With ads.*  And, only if you would be a new subscriber to those platforms...
> 
> 
> 
> You have rested the case.





I have another hot take on the embarrassing failure of CNN+ that proves that social media has a corporate news favoritism bias. For quite a while the independent news sources I follow have complained that their content gets demonetized, buried, or removed. Basically anything that isn’t towing the corporate news line. In some cases they even agree with the corporate news line but because they used certain keywords in their support, bye bye it goes. “There’s isn’t enough evidence to show covid was created in a lab”. Uh, oh. You said “created in a lab”. Bye bye.


So this caused CNN posts to rise in the searches and recommendations. The suits went “Wow, look at those numbers. We sure get a lot of views. We should start our own thing.” Wrong. WRONG. It appears you rigging the system gave you completely inaccurate data about your popularity. Now your competing service is getting demonetized and removed at quite a hefty loss.  Try to salvage staying in your lane.


----------



## Eric

Perfectly said…


----------



## lizkat

Chew Toy McCoy said:


> I have another hot take on the embarrassing failure of CNN+ that proves that social media has a corporate news favoritism bias. For quite a while the independent news sources I follow have complained that their content gets demonetized, buried, or removed. Basically anything that isn’t towing the corporate news line. In some cases they even agree with the corporate news line but because they used certain keywords in their support, bye bye it goes. “There’s isn’t enough evidence to show covid was created in a lab”. Uh, oh. You said “created in a lab”. Bye bye.
> 
> 
> So this caused CNN posts to rise in the searches and recommendations. The suits went “Wow, look at those numbers. We sure get a lot of views. We should start our own thing.” Wrong. WRONG. It appears you rigging the system gave you completely inaccurate data about your popularity. Now your competing service is getting demonetized and removed at quite a hefty loss.  Try to salvage staying in your lane.




Personally I think the abrasive, aggressive politics in the news division management at Warner Media, plus the chaos and uncertainty involved during the runup to the merger with Discovery proved a huge distraction to management of the rollout of CNN+.    

Anytime Warner pops up in M&A talks, Wall Street rightly wonders

_wtf,  yet again they figure* oh, synergy, let's do it!*_​
This one won't prove to be as bad as the AOL-Time Warner one, nothing could top that, probably, but only because Steve Case was busy planting new GMO varieties of something or other on his piece of Hawaii?


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

lizkat said:


> Personally I think the abrasive, aggressive politics in the news division management at Warner Media, plus the chaos and uncertainty involved during the runup to the merger with Discovery proved a huge distraction to management of the rollout of CNN+.
> 
> Anytime Warner pops up in M&A talks, Wall Street rightly wonders
> 
> _wtf,  yet again they figure* oh, synergy, let's do it!*_​
> This one won't prove to be as bad as the AOL-Time Warner one, nothing could top that, probably, but only because Steve Case was busy planting new GMO varieties of something or other on his piece of Hawaii?




I did hear new management hated how CNN was being run with an extra dollop of distain for CNN+ before it even launched.  But that internal shakeup doesn’t explain the extremely low subscription rate. It was an epic miscalculation in demand. But I also wouldn’t expect any better if another major TV news network attempted something similar. They are effectively crowded out by independent journalists in the streaming frontier and TV news networks mostly appeal to older people who are often tech challenged or “I just like things the way they are.”


----------



## lizkat

Chew Toy McCoy said:


> I did hear new management hated how CNN was being run with an extra dollop of distain for CNN+ before it even launched.  But that internal shakeup doesn’t explain the extremely low subscription rate. It was an epic miscalculation in demand. But I also wouldn’t expect any better if another major TV news network attempted something similar. They are effectively crowded out by independent journalists in the streaming frontier and TV news networks mostly appeal to older people who are often tech challenged or “I just like things the way they are.”





Sure.  Probably can't find any execs who believe that CNN+ was anything but a placeholder move, and one that to begin with was really late to the plate in terms of a crowded streaming environment,  and then on top of that offering specialties that the current viewing public may figure have already been served "forever" by OTA news and then "documentary" category of platforms like Netflix et al.

Tastes can change, and it's possible over time that more young people will become interested in the idea of a news-oriented platform with a back catalog of also news or history oriented offerings.  But right now the combo of a likely slog to significant viewership and the pressures of a corporate merger must have spelled doomsday to more than a few involved in the CNN+ platform construction when news of ATT's proposed spinoff of a WarnerMedia merger with Discovery went public.

The only real winner in the merger aside from golden parachute holders may end up being ATT's corporate image,  which now maybe kinda sorta gets to offload its deserved embarrassment over lack of having done anything great early on with the aforementioned "synergy" it supposedly acquired after its deal with WarnerMedia.

This time around,  in doing the merger with Discovery and spinoff of the combined media unit,  the ATT shareholders kept their same number of ATT shares, and at point of the deal closing also got some WBD shares that they can do whatever they want with in future.

That's ATT's way of hoping to wash its hands of any negative general-public association with whatever happens next with the actual media operations,  even though ATT will hold 7 of 13 of the board seats of Warner Bros. Discovery.  And even though, as various pre-merger pieces speculated,  there are a lot of complications to sort out in the aftermath of the merger.









						Warner Bros. Discovery: Reality TV Execs Move Front & Center As Post-Merger Leadership Structure Emerges
					

As Discovery and WarnerMedia are set to close their $43B merger later this week, the attention has been focused mainly on the deal’s ramifications for WarnerMedia’s movie and scripted television businesses. There’s been much industry chatter about the importance of Casey Bloys’ scripted...




					currently.att.yahoo.com
				






> ...it is unscripted television where the two merging companies have the biggest overlap and where combining the assets will require consolidation.
> 
> It has gone largely under the radar how Discovery, ostensibly a company led entirely by reality television and unscripted execs, will bring together the numerous nonscripted divisions and cable networks, fed largely by that non-fiction pipeline, across the two groups.




And then because bottom line it's about money, the aim of this reorganizing of deck chairs is like all the rest of them, not to be caught without some plausible "chair over there",  e.g.  the next possible set of M&A moves,  plus a decent parachute in case that doesn't turn up on time.    That sort of thing was speculated upon last year, even in an era when anti-trust reviews are more serious and even when this deal was still being finalized.









						The WarnerMedia-Discovery deal was structured to make a future sale easier
					

John Malone was willing to give up super-voting shares in Discovery to make a future sale easier, according to a person with knowledge of the deal.




					www.cnbc.com


----------



## Herdfan

Chew Toy McCoy said:


> I did hear new management hated how CNN was being run with an extra dollop of distain for CNN+ before it even launched.  But that internal shakeup doesn’t explain the extremely low subscription rate. It was an epic miscalculation in demand.




Why do you or anyone subscribe to Netflix or Amazon Prime or Hulu?  To get content you can't get elsewhere.  People can get news from a variety of sources without paying for it.  None of it was surprising except for just how fast it crashed.


----------



## lizkat

Herdfan said:


> Why do you or anyone subscribe to Netflix or Amazon Prime or Hulu?  To get content you can't get elsewhere.  People can get news from a variety of sources without paying for it.  None of it was surprising except for just how fast it crashed.




It crashed before people could even assess what they were getting from the platform, regardless of what they were shelling out for it.  

It wasn't just "news" and it wasn't going to be CNN-light for non-cable viewers either.  It was aiming for a different take on news-oriented television.  I remain disappointed that the new management effectively said _hey that's a huge cost per thousand for five subscribers, you're done, _and especially given that some incalculable portion of that disdain for the effort was openly about corporate politics, not about content, reception of it or even a smidgen of respect for the massive effort that had gone into readying the launch.

Oh well.  Gonna play with the big dogs,  gotta get off the porch.  Sometimes the yard out there isn't as big as it may have looked from the porch.   But that assessment, if it was actually even made, was extremely premature. 

As far as I can tell, the new management squashed the launch marketing pretty well.  They really just didn't want to do it,  and apparently didn't give a damn that they'd be writing off nearly a billion bucks in the process.  Remains to be see whether that decision has consequences later on.


----------



## SuperMatt

lizkat said:


> It crashed before people could even assess what they were getting from the platform, regardless of what they were shelling out for it.
> 
> It wasn't just "news" and it wasn't going to be CNN-light for non-cable viewers either.  It was aiming for a different take on news-oriented television.  I remain disappointed that the new management effectively said _hey that's a huge cost per thousand for five subscribers, you're done, _and especially given that some incalculable portion of that disdain for the effort was openly about corporate politics, not about content, reception of it or even a smidgen of respect for the massive effort that had gone into readying the launch.
> 
> Oh well.  Gonna play with the big dogs,  gotta get off the porch.  Sometimes the yard out there isn't as big as it may have looked from the porch.   But that assessment, if it was actually even made, was extremely premature.
> 
> As far as I can tell, the new management squashed the launch marketing pretty well.  They really just didn't want to do it,  and apparently didn't give a damn that they'd be writing off nearly a billion bucks in the process.  Remains to be see whether that decision has consequences later on.



I believe they intentionally “tanked” this. I never even heard of the service until it was already shut down. Corporate politics all the way.


----------



## JayMysteri0

Something to bear in mind when you hear Musk talking 

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1519735033950470144/
https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1519739990389010433/

 A reminder as well, that I posted earlier from AOC
https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1520108070151536641/


Along with,
https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1520100158515695623/

That earned the expected response from Musk, covered happily by whom to help illustrate things
https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1520206318916837380/


Stolen from another tweet, as a reminder why those who don't like being called out prefer calling for "neutrality"
"We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."​


----------



## JayMysteri0

What also maybe what is to come


----------



## lizkat

JayMysteri0 said:


> Something to bear in mind when you hear Musk talking




Yeah, Musk and a bunch of other people who don't like free speech unless it's from their own silos.   More of them are showing up on Twitter now every day, possibly in anticipation that soon enough it will be fine to once again to abuse other members on the platform.

I'm not sure Musk would go that far with his notion of expanding free speech, but who knows.  Possibly  he just wants to have a venue where he can manipulate stocks, and imagines the SEC can't hassle him if he owns the social media site from which he posts.  If so, he needs better lawyers for sure.

Meanwhile one can almost feel sorry for the pro-Trumpers and trolls thinking Twitter will instantly become a haven for trash.  Why is it people keep thinking to re-try experiments with "absolute free speech" on social media platforms anyway?  They have all ended up making trash of the platforms and so required development and application of new guidelines.   Why Musk figures to fix what Twitter has been trying to repair (and managing to improve the place) is beyond me.

Some of the trolls showing up early have already been banned behind erroneous conclusions about changes in moderation.  They seem to assume that since Musk made a purchase offer, the deal is implemented and so are any new rules the guy might have in mind.   But old rules persist until further notice, fortunately

And now back to figuring out which movie to escape to or which new jazz to listen to on a Friday night.   Later for any more doomscrolling.  Weekends are still sacred ground for refreshing the mind and soul for another tilt at the world's windmills on Monday.  Or that's how I see it anyway.


----------



## Runs For Fun

The hell?










						Elon Musk slammed with backlash for saying the antidepressant Wellbutrin is 'way worse than Adderall' and 'should be taken off the market'
					

"Please consult a license Doctor before you stop your meds," one user tweeted in response. "Elon Musk isn't a doctor."




					www.businessinsider.com


----------



## Joe

Our country is fucked because rich people have successfully convinced everyone that poor people are the reason we can't have nice things. 

The amount of basic bros that I see defending Musk as they work low wage jobs is hilarious lol

In the end, we will get what we deserve as a country. The US is turning into a 3rd world country with a Gucci belt.


----------



## Roller

It's simultaneously laughable, sad, and alarming how some people are looking to Musk as the savior of "free speech." This woman, who was taken off a flight for allegedly shouting homophobic slurs at other passengers, praises Musk and threatens to sue, presumably the person who complained. These sub-morons have no idea what the first amendment says or means.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1521150270939578374/


----------



## DT

I think I'd free speech these f***ers up and down the concourse a few times ...


----------



## Edd

Roller said:


> It's simultaneously laughable, sad, and alarming how some people are looking to Musk as the savior of "free speech." This woman, who was taken off a flight for allegedly shouting homophobic slurs at other passengers, praises Musk and threatens to sue, presumably the person who complained. These sub-morons have no idea what the first amendment says or means.
> 
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1521150270939578374/



I wonder if they were going on a vacation.  Even if they were returning from one, getting kicked off a flight still blows I imagine, giant inconvenience.  I can't fathom fucking up your own day like this, fucking up everyone else's flight, people may have missed connections.  They must have an awful life.


----------



## Cmaier

DT said:


> I think I'd free speech these f***ers up and down the concourse a few times ...




Ich glaube, wir sind uns alle einig, dass Meinungsfreiheit gut ist, aber nur auf Deutsch.


----------



## DT

Edd said:


> I wonder if they were going on a vacation.  Even if they were returning from one, getting kicked off a flight still blows I imagine, giant inconvenience.  I can't fathom fucking up your own day like this, fucking up everyone else's flight, people may have missed connections.  They must have an awful life.




This is a great take.  Can you imagine, that your hatred, your hope to become a right-wing-fucknut-15-minute-celebrity completely overrides having a nice life?

It's sad and pathetic.


----------



## Nycturne

DT said:


> This is a great take.  Can you imagine, that your hatred, your hope to become a right-wing-fucknut-15-minute-celebrity completely overrides having a nice life?
> 
> It's sad and pathetic.




So much this. I've swallowed my tongue to keep the peace and avoid getting into political topics in our neighborhood, so that I can still cooperate with my neighbor to get a shared fence replaced, etc. Thankfully, I haven't been pushed too hard on this, because there are limits to how quiet I'll be in the face of a neighbor I have to deal with on the regular. On plane you aren't likely to see them ever again, so the principle of keeping the peace to keep things moving is wholly appropriate.

That said, I suspect some folks look to take advantage of that knowing that _others_ will attempt to keep the peace instead of clapping back.


----------



## JayMysteri0

Trending on Twitter

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1522723199993233408/

The Elon bots are coming for the poster.  Those defenders of free speech hard @ work


----------



## JayMysteri0

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1523507543791652864/


----------



## Eric

Interesting turn of events...

Elon Musk Is No Longer Twitter’s Largest Shareholder​








						Elon Musk Is No Longer Twitter’s Largest Shareholder
					

While Elon Musk is trying to buy Twitter Inc., he’s no longer the company’s largest shareholder. Funds held by Vanguard Group recently upped their stake in the social-media platform, making the asset manager Twitter’s largest shareholder and bumping Mr. Musk out of the top spot.  Vanguard disclosed




					www.wsj.com


----------



## JayMysteri0

Really?  



> Elon Musk Pauses Twitter Deal Over Fake Accounts and Spam Bots
> 
> 
> Musk said the deal was on hold while he reviewed the number of spam and fake accounts on Twitter, later adding that he was "still committed" to the acquisition.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> gizmodo.com





> Early on Friday, Musk tweeted that his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter was “temporarily on hold” because he was waiting for confirmation that the amount of spam and fake accounts on the platform did indeed represent less than 5% of users.
> 
> “Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users,” Musk tweeted.
> 
> He included a link to a May 2 Reuters article that reported on Twitter’s estimated fake and spam accounts in the first quarter of the year, which it reported to be 5% of its monetizable daily active users. According to Reuters, the blue bird social media network had a total of 229 million users who were served ads in the first quarter.
> 
> While taking a moment to investigate whether the platform you’re buying indeed has enough users to make it worth your while is no doubt sensible, it seems a bit off that Musk is bringing this up _now_, or more than two weeks after he announced his intention to buy the company. Plus, it’s not as if Twitter were _hiding_ this information. It reported the numbers in filings on May 2.
> 
> Furthermore, it’s not as if Musk wasn’t aware of the spam accounts on the platform. He has frequently rallied against them and made “defeating the spam bots” one of his priorities in the very press release announcing his deal on April 25.
> 
> Considering cryptocurrency’s recent nosedive—Musk is a big crypto fan and owns crypto, though how much isn’t publicly known—and Tesla losing 20% of its value since its CEO announced that he was going to buy his favorite digital toy, Musk’s pause is not surprising from a financial standpoint. It is ironic from his personal standpoint though, since he’s said he “doesn’t care about the economics at all” when it comes to buying Twitter.








> Elon Musk Sows Doubt Over His $44 Billion Twitter Takeover
> 
> 
> Elon Musk sowed new chaos into the market over his takeover bid for Twitter Inc. on Friday, first claiming his offer was “temporarily on hold” and then maintaining he is “still committed” to the deal, sending the social media giant into a tailspin.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.bloomberg.com




GTFA


----------



## Cmaier

He realized buying it isn’t necessary. He already gets his MAGA cred by threatening to buy it and saying he’d put trump back. Now he gets more credit by saying the users are all fake.


----------



## SuperMatt

Cmaier said:


> He realized buying it isn’t necessary. He already gets his MAGA cred by threatening to buy it and saying he’d put trump back. Now he gets more credit by saying the users are all fake.



With the recent stock market plunge, he is WAY overpaying for it too, so he is probably looking for an escape hatch.


----------



## Cmaier

SuperMatt said:


> With the recent stock market plunge, he is WAY overpaying for it too, so he is probably looking for an escape hatch.



yep. He realized you can’t rake in money from a product that’s free, in a world where apple and governments are crushing loopholes that allow third parties to invade privacy, so what is he paying for?

Not to mention that his financing may be falling through.


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

JayMysteri0 said:


> Really?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> GTFA




BREAKING NEWS: Republicans declare spam bots citizens with full voting and representative rights. In response Democrat leadership rolled their eyes and labeled it an ultra MAGA Putin tax. No further action is expected from Democrats.

In related news, 1.5 million pro life spam bot citizens discovered in Atlanta area home basement. Republicans plan sweep of all major US cities in hopes of discovering more. 10 products found on Amazon users swear they can’t live without.


----------



## SuperMatt

Cmaier said:


> yep. He realized you can’t rake in money from a product that’s free, in a world where apple and governments are crushing loopholes that allow third parties to invade privacy, so what is he paying for?
> 
> Not to mention that his financing may be falling through.



Yeah, funny how he’s bragging about being so rich, but somehow needs financing to buy this. He just doesn’t want to pay taxes; that’s the long and short of it. If he liquidates his assets to get the cash he needs to buy Twitter, he’d have to actually pay some capital gains tax.

I never thought about this, but is there sales tax if you buy a company?


----------



## Cmaier

SuperMatt said:


> Yeah, funny how he’s bragging about being so rich, but somehow needs financing to buy this. He just doesn’t want to pay taxes; that’s the long and short of it. If he liquidates his assets to get the cash he needs to buy Twitter, he’d have to actually pay some capital gains tax.
> 
> I never thought about this, but is there sales tax if you buy a company?



No. It’s not a good or service.


----------



## SuperMatt

Some executives are being shown the door at Twitter:









						Top Twitter execs, including heads of revenue and consumer products, are out following Musk deal – TechCrunch
					

Twitter GM of Consumer, Keyvon Beykpour, announced today he will be leaving the company after seven years. Beykpour first joined the social media platform by way of its acquisition of Periscope, which he founded. He said in a tweet he was asked to leave by current CEO Parag Agrawal, who wants to ta…




					techcrunch.com


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

So if this deal falls through will it diminish his reputation among his followers as an expert on everything?

“Hey Chandler, should we still continue to make major life and investment decisions based on Musk Tweets?”

He's the new 80's Donald Trump.


----------



## JayMysteri0

Chew Toy McCoy said:


> So if this deal falls through will it diminish his reputation among his followers as an expert on everything?
> 
> “Hey Chandler, should we still continue to make major life and investment decisions based on Musk Tweets?”
> 
> He's the new 80's Donald Trump.



Will it diminish his rep?

I don't think so, because at the same time we are having the free fall crypto now.  All those crypto bros who worship Musk, will need a new guiding light.  Someone who is also a crypto bro, but won't lose their shirts like many are now.  When this free fall stops, you know the bros will need someone to blame, and it won't be themselves.  They will need that guiding light that shine that light on them, but want it for themselves.

A digression thread of speculation:
https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1524940435659038732/
https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1524941587180036105/


----------



## JayMysteri0

The Musk / Twitter deal explained "from the hood" via "Black Twitter"

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1525244872357289984/


----------



## SuperMatt

JayMysteri0 said:


> The Musk / Twitter deal explained "from the hood" via "Black Twitter"
> 
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1525244872357289984/



Snoop getting in on the game:

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1525143525834121217/

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1525145701407084544/


----------



## gollum

So Musk is now saying that the deal cannot move forward until Twitter addresses the bot issue








						Elon Musk says Twitter deal ‘cannot move forward’ until it proves bot numbers
					

Twitter thinks 5 percent maximum, Musk thinks 20 percent minimum.




					www.theverge.com
				




Which is more direct than his early comment where he stated that the acquisition is being paused.

The article has speculated that he's using this as a tactic to lower the purchase price, but that doesn't make sense to me.  If Twitter was actively trying to sell itself and Musk was really the only suitor then yes, they were not looking to be bought out so in my mind it's a take or leave it offer.  If Musk walks, he's on the hook to pay twitter 1 billion in break fees.


----------



## SuperMatt

gollum said:


> So Musk is now saying that the deal cannot move forward until Twitter addresses the bot issue
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Elon Musk says Twitter deal ‘cannot move forward’ until it proves bot numbers
> 
> 
> Twitter thinks 5 percent maximum, Musk thinks 20 percent minimum.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.theverge.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Which is more direct than his early comment where he stated that the acquisition is being paused.
> 
> The article has speculated that he's using this as a tactic to lower the purchase price, but that doesn't make sense to me.  If Twitter was actively trying to sell itself and Musk was really the only suitor then yes, they were not looking to be bought out so in my mind it's a take or leave it offer.  If Musk walks, he's on the hook to pay twitter 1 billion in break fees.



As if he couldn’t address the bot issue after buying it? I think he no longer wants to buy it (if he ever did).


----------



## Eric

I'm no expert on this stuff but...


> Elon Musk has reiterated his claim that fake and spam accounts could make up more than 20 percent of Twitter’s users, saying the deal to acquire the social media company “*cannot move forward*” until Twitter proves the accuracy of its much lower estimate of less than 5 percent.




All they have to do is say "oh yeah, we can't prove that, sorry then" and end the deal right there without all the haggling of a poison pill?


----------



## Joe

He’s such a troll. I can’t believe people actually worship this dude.


----------



## Cmaier

Eric said:


> I'm no expert on this stuff but...
> 
> 
> All they have to do is say "oh yeah, we can't prove that, sorry then" and end the deal right there without all the haggling of a poison pill?




(1) they want the deal
(2) if they can’t get the deal, they want the blame to be on Musk, so that Musk will have to pay $1B penalty
(3) they may actually sue to force Musk to go through with the deal, thanks to a specific performance clause in the agreement


----------



## Citysnaps

Joe said:


> He’s such a troll. I can’t believe people actually worship this dude.




He craves the attention. When that subsides a bit, he tosses another bucket of chum in the water to get things stirred up, resulting in more crave-worthy attention. And on and on.


----------



## Eric

citypix said:


> He craves the attention. When that subsides a bit, he tosses another bucket of chum in the water to get things stirred up, resulting in more crave-worthy attention. And on and on.



Just like Trump in so many ways, you get why his supporters love the guy. Billionaire troll scum.


----------



## Citysnaps

Eric said:


> Just like Trump in so many ways, you get why his supporters love the guy. Billionaire troll scum.




The good news is Musk was born in South Africa. And thus not eligible to run for President in the US.

However... I'm reminded by Sen. Orrin Hatch who way back in 2003 proposed an amendment to the US Constitution relaxing the natural born citizen clause regarding eligibility to become a US President. This was when Arnold Schwarzenegger (born in Austria) was Governor of California.  Thankfully that proposal never went anywhere.


----------



## Citysnaps

I will give Musk a ton of credit for drastically lowering the cost of putting commercial and government/national security satellites into space, along with supply missions and astronauts to the ISS.


----------



## Joe

Every time he tweets he's just stirring the pot. Like did he not get enough attention as a child? Maybe his nanny's raised him lol


----------



## JayMysteri0

How can the man NOT want to buy Twitter, with all the information you can learn from it?

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1527274424235397120/
https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1527659851312144391/

I went with this for the laughs, because the other reasons for Musk trending were drifting into the disgusting territory of a former president.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1527440683082010624/


----------



## ouimetnick

Joe said:


> He’s such a troll. I can’t believe people actually worship this dude.



Some people are weird af. One of my friends went from bowing down and worshipping Trump to worshipping Ron DeSantis & Elon Musk. Probably some sort of insecurity or jealousness. I admired the positive qualities about Steve Jobs, but I didn't worship him. For all of his admirable traits, he sure had a lot of faults (POS father to his first child, hard and abusive to employees, etc)


----------



## Eric

ouimetnick said:


> Some people are weird af. One of my friends went from bowing down and worshipping Trump to worshipping Ron DeSantis & Elon Musk. Probably some sort of insecurity or jealousness. I admired the positive qualities about Steve Jobs, but I didn't worship him. For all of his admirable traits, he sure had a lot of faults (POS father to his first child, hard and abusive to employees, etc)



At first I questioned whether or not he was _real_ Republican material but when we got the news of him paying off a woman for a sexual misconduct allegation it all made sense.


----------



## JayMysteri0

I still get a kick out of this old meme about the worship Musk gets from his devoted followers.


----------



## Runs For Fun

I have to wonder if he ever actually intended on buying Twitter. It seems like he's been trying to weasel his way out of it or trying to greatly reduce the price by saying the platform is mostly bots. Tesla stock has tanked and even more after sexual misconduct claims.


----------



## Eric

Runs For Fun said:


> I have to wonder if he ever actually intended on buying Twitter. It seems like he's been trying to weasel his way out of it or trying to greatly reduce the price by saying the platform is mostly bots. Tesla stock has tanked and even more after sexual misconduct claims.



Yeah he's playing everyone.

Musk calls Twitter’s explanation of its bot numbers ‘very suspicious’ as he suggests slashing the value of his takeover bid​








						Musk says Twitter's bot numbers are 'very suspicious'
					

The Tesla CEO has publicly doubted Twitter's claim that only 5% of its users are bots.



					fortune.com
				






> Elon Musk is still angling—at least publicly—for a lower price tag for Twitter.
> 
> On Saturday, Musk agreed with a suggestion from conservative writer Ian Miles Cheong that the Tesla CEO should lower his price for Twitter by the proportion of bots on the platform, or, for example, asking for a 25% discount if 25% of Twitter users were fake.


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

Eric said:


> At first I questioned whether or not he was _real_ Republican material but when we got the news of him paying off a woman for a sexual misconduct allegation it all made sense.




The events of the last week show how Trumpian he really is, thin skinned attention whore who sees anyone calling him on his shit as purely a political hitjob, the actual shit he gets called on has zero relevance to him. Several sources I follow predicted that his Tweet about Democrats being the party of hate was posted to get ahead of some scandal that was going to come out and then, BAM!, that’s exactly what happened. It's so transparent and pathetic.

Here’s an idea. You don’t have to align with either side, but these “strongmen” have such a fragile ego that they need to hijack a side/party so they can get their blindly loyal cheerleaders, as if they give one shit about any of them. I guess all the wealth and power isn’t enough. Get some goddamn therapy, you can certainly afford it.


----------



## Edd

Runs For Fun said:


> I have to wonder if he ever actually intended on buying Twitter. It seems like he's been trying to weasel his way out of it or trying to greatly reduce the price by saying the platform is mostly bots. Tesla stock has tanked and even more after sexual misconduct claims.



Extremely Trumpy with how dodgy and self-contradictory he is.


----------



## JayMysteri0

This whole Twitter show is getting expensive as it shines a light on Musk, which draws all kinds of attention.  

Of the wrong kind



> Elon Musk's Sexual Harassment Settlement Cost Him $10 Billion
> 
> 
> The Tesla CEO saw $10 billion of his personal wealth evaporate following a report alleging he exposed his erect penis to a SpaceX flight attendant.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> gizmodo.com





> Tech’s most chaotic CEO saw about $10.6 billion of his personal wealth evaporate last Friday following a report on a settlement over alleged sexual misconduct, according to estimates from the Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. Musk’s drop in wealth, spotted by Insider, was mainly due to the tanking of Tesla shares in the market. Though the world’s richest man seems to evade consequences for most of his actions, even he succumbs to some financial consequences of scandal.
> 
> On Friday, shares in the electric carmaker lost as much as 10.8% of their value at one point. By the close of the market, they were down 6.4%, roughly $10 billion. Tesla’s share price recovered slightly on Monday by about 1%, as of 2 p.m. ET.
> 
> The report of the $250,000 settlement, published Thursday, revealed that a SpaceX flight attendant alleged that in 2016 Musk exposed his erect penis to her after she gave him a massage, propositioned her for sex by saying “do more,” and said he would buy her a horse if she did. Musk has denied the report’s claims and even joked about them, christening the scandal “Elongate.”
> 
> All in all, Tesla had a pretty rough week, having been plagued not only by its CEO’s erratic and trash-talking tweets, but also by outside forces. Shares in Tesla had been on the decline as investors worried that Musk’s attention, already divided between multiple enormous companies, would be diverted as he manages a rapidly spiraling $44 billion takeover of Twitter. In recent days, Musk called the S&P 500’s environmental, social, and government rating, known as ESG, “a scam,” after Tesla lost its top spot and announced he would now vote for Republicans. In addition, Musk said Tesla was creating a “hardcore litigation department” reporting directly to him.
> 
> “Looking for hardcore streetfighters, not white-shoe lawyers like Perkins or Cooley who thrive on corruption,” Musk tweeted on Friday. “There will be blood.”






> So far this year, Musk has lost more than $69 billion from his personal treasure chest, according to the Billionaires Index. In fact, he’s lost $49 billion since he announced his bid to buy Twitter, which no one is quite sure he wants anymore.
> 
> Despite this roller coaster ride, Musk still remains the richest man on Earth, worth an estimated $201 billion net worth.


----------



## Runs For Fun

Twitter shareholder sues Elon Musk for tanking the company’s stock
					

Twitter stock continues to trade well below the buyout price.




					www.theverge.com


----------



## Cmaier

He was never going to buy Twitter. 









						Musk says Twitter has committed a “material breach” of merger deal by not providing bot data
					

Musk says Twitter must provide him more data.




					www.theverge.com
				




Will be a nice windfall for Twitter when they eventually sue him, I imagine.


----------



## Eric

Cmaier said:


> He was never going to buy Twitter.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Musk says Twitter has committed a “material breach” of merger deal by not providing bot data
> 
> 
> Musk says Twitter must provide him more data.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.theverge.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> *Will be a nice windfall for Twitter when they eventually sue him, I imagine.*



When someone this rich trolls it moves markets, it's about time someone made an example of him.


----------



## SuperMatt

Eric said:


> When someone this rich trolls it moves markets, it's about time someone made an example of him.



What can the SEC do? I know they can make him pay back anybody that lost money due to illegal actions of his. They can also fine him. Not sure what else they could do.


----------



## Cmaier

SuperMatt said:


> What can the SEC do? I know they can make him pay back anybody that lost money due to illegal actions of his. They can also fine him. Not sure what else they could do.



They have lots of enforcement powers. They can ban him from being an officer or director of a public company, for example.


----------



## JayMysteri0

This is going to be interesting & stupid at the same time.

It's going to be interesting because it will demonstrate that perhaps Musk the smart business guy does NOT do his "due diligence" before making a multi billion dollar offer on a company *before* it's earnings release where he could have made a lower offer.  You mean really, the bot thing is an issue now?  Now?

Stupid, because Twitter has been making the "bot" claim in previous ( I thought I heard 3 ) filing / reports.  It didn't just show up out of the blue.  Yes, Twitter got busted earlier for fudging their numbers, which I believe is what Musk & attorneys are riding on.  Musk had plenty of time to question this beforehand.  I imagine if Twitter shuts up & let's Musk demand information that they would only have to offer because of the deal & it lowers the price that can be seen as harmful.  Musk would be damaging Twitter's financials as means to buy lower, or if he doesn't buy at all a form of sabotage.  That seems like an opening for a suit from Twitter.

The man was so full of himself, he agreed to the Billion dollar fee if he didn't "consummate" the deal.  He needs to put his money where his mouth is one way or another.  Otherwise he's going to show the world who he truly is now, one way or another.


----------



## Runs For Fun

Surprise surprise








						Elon Musk asserts his "right to terminate" Twitter deal
					

This is Musk's first formal, legal suggestion that his agreement to buy Twitter is anything other than legally watertight.




					www.axios.com
				




There’s no way he ever intended on buying Twitter. Just a bored billionaire throwing some “pocket change” around for some kind of market manipulation play probably.


----------



## SuperMatt

Runs For Fun said:


> Surprise surprise
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Elon Musk asserts his "right to terminate" Twitter deal
> 
> 
> This is Musk's first formal, legal suggestion that his agreement to buy Twitter is anything other than legally watertight.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.axios.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> There’s no way he ever intended on buying Twitter. Just a bored billionaire throwing some “pocket change” around for some kind of market manipulation play probably.



So much for him owning the libs… The far-right nuts must be crying today. Musk was supposed to make Twitter a hate-speech paradise but now they have to slither back to the empty streets of Truth Social…


----------



## JayMysteri0

Hey, he's rich right?

He can afford to blow a billion bucks.

Oh, he does NOT want to pay on what he agreed upon?

Why does that sound familiar?


----------



## Eric

Look who has Musk's back.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1533897734645862403/


----------



## JayMysteri0

Eric said:


> Look who has Musk's back.
> 
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1533897734645862403/



Ya gotta appease the base to distract from the fact one's been under indictment for more than half a decade.



> __
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Loading…
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.usnews.com




I guess it's tit for tat



> Twitter’s lawsuit against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton tossed by federal judge
> 
> 
> Twitter sued the attorney general Ken Paxton following his launch of an investigation into the social media platform after it suspended President Donald Trump’s account.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.texastribune.org




I got to wonder if the concern for "Texas consumers" over bots isn't considerable laughable.


----------



## Eric

Regardless of how this has all played out I'll be relieved that he's not buying them out and glad I've stuck it out until the ink dried. He's the worst possible person next to Trump to own a social network.


----------



## turbineseaplane

Very happy to see this might be collapsing

Don't want Musk anywhere near this
Exhausted with everything about him


----------



## Eric

How to be a good billionaire...


__
		https://www.reddit.com/r/MadeMeSmile/comments/v6fvdl


----------



## mr_roboto

JayMysteri0 said:


> It's going to be interesting because it will demonstrate that perhaps Musk the smart business guy does NOT do his "due diligence" before making a multi billion dollar offer on a company *before* it's earnings release where he could have made a lower offer.  You mean really, the bot thing is an issue now?  Now?
> 
> Stupid, because Twitter has been making the "bot" claim in previous ( I thought I heard 3 ) filing / reports.  It didn't just show up out of the blue.



Oh, it's even stupider than that.

You know the binding agreement Musk signed to buy Twitter?  In it, _he waived his right to due diligence._ His complaints about bots are pure bullshit, probably just intended to win the court of public opinion and/or maneuver to make it more costly to sue him to uphold his end of the deal.

So whenever you see him say something, just remind yourself that Musk was dumb enough to sign a contract to buy Twitter at a specific price without due diligence, and that same contract gives him no out other than the $1e9 penalty.

As far as anyone can tell, the real reason he doesn't want to go through with the deal is that Tesla stock dropped precipitously after the ink was dry and now he'd be even more absurdly overleveraged and he doesn't want to be forced to sell a lot of Tesla/SpaceX to make the deal work now.  Or something to that effect.


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

Eric said:


> Look who has Musk's back.
> 
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1533897734645862403/




Its not like there is anything else in Texas’ recent history that should be investigated.  This was pretty much it.


----------



## SuperMatt

Chew Toy McCoy said:


> Its not like there is anything else in Texas’ recent history that should be investigated.  This was pretty much it.



Just like there was nothing to investigate about Jan 6 (according to Paxton at least)…


----------



## JayMysteri0

Just clearing up AGAIN, where this guy leans

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1537076096172101632/
https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1537051416459714560/
https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1536977798211854336/


----------



## Eric

JayMysteri0 said:


> Just clearing up AGAIN, where this guy leans
> 
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1537076096172101632/
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1537051416459714560/
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1536977798211854336/



I think we're lucky he can't run himself.


----------



## SuperMatt

JayMysteri0 said:


> Just clearing up AGAIN, where this guy leans
> 
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1537076096172101632/
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1537051416459714560/
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1536977798211854336/



Well, we’re into TF Guy territory now, but since this started in this thread, I guess we will continue it here. DeSantis was saving up a racist joke for quite a while, and this endorsement from Musk was the perfect opportunity to let it fly!

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1537102038378631168/

TF GUY!!!!!


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

JayMysteri0 said:


> Just clearing up AGAIN, where this guy leans
> 
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1537076096172101632/
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1537051416459714560/
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1536977798211854336/




We can't consider this a complete story until the totally stable genius weighs in.  One thing is clear.  At least one, if not two, is going to need a world-class diaper change after the exchange is over.


----------



## Eric

Just another filthy rich dirtbag looking to cash in by scamming others.









						Musk, Tesla, SpaceX Are Sued for Alleged Dogecoin Pyramid Scheme
					

Elon Musk, SpaceX and Tesla Inc. were sued for $258 billion over claims they are part of a racketeering scheme to back the cryptocurrency Dogecoin.




					www.bloomberg.com
				






> Elon Musk, SpaceX and Tesla Inc. were sued for $258 billion over claims they are part of a racketeering scheme to back the cryptocurrency Dogecoin.
> 
> Keith Johnson, “an American citizen who was defrauded out of money by defendants’ Dogecoin Crypto Pyramid Scheme,” sued Musk and his companies, claiming they constitute an illegal racketeering enterprise to inflate Dogecoin’s price.
> 
> “Defendants falsely and deceptively claim that Dogecoin is a legitimate investment when it has no value at all,” Johnson said in his complaint, filed Thursday in federal court in Manhattan.


----------



## Yoused

I read somewhere that musk said he would vote for desantis for president – desantis responded that he appreciated the African-American support.


----------



## Eric

SpaceX employees draft open letter to company executives denouncing Elon Musk’s behavior
					

The letter calls on ways for SpaceX to fix its reputation and culture.




					www.theverge.com


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

Leaked transcript: Inside Elon Musk’s first meeting with Twitter employees
					

The conversation provides the most detail yet about Musk’s plans to change the social media company.




					www.vox.com


----------



## Eric

Chew Toy McCoy said:


> Leaked transcript: Inside Elon Musk’s first meeting with Twitter employees
> 
> 
> The conversation provides the most detail yet about Musk’s plans to change the social media company.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.vox.com



He could very well end up not buying Twitter and look at all the controversy around it he has caused, he does the same with global markets. He's provocative and likes to gaslight people, it's just who he is.


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

Eric said:


> He could very well end up not buying Twitter and look at all the controversy around it he has caused, he does the same with global markets. He's provocative and likes to gaslight people, it's just who he is.





I didn't read the whole thing, and there was a lot of meandering about, but if I was a Twitter employee it mostly sounded like "I'll just go ahead and validate all your fears and concerns as justified".

His work from home policy is basically there is no doing it just because you can.  You first need to be indispensable super employee who would quit if not allowed to work from home.  Short of that, you're showing up to the office.


----------



## Eric

Chew Toy McCoy said:


> I didn't read the whole thing, and there was a lot of meandering about, but if I was a Twitter employee it mostly sounded like "I'll just go ahead and validate all your fears and concerns as justified".



The dude's father owned diamond mines and slave labor, Elon has already chastised American workers/practices and is pretty much a grade A asshole to work for if we're to believe those who have already spoken out about it. 

I think if you're an employee of Twitter and want to maintain the ability to work from home and have any real work/home life balance you're better off leaving if he takes over. Right now there's tons of work for this type of skillset.


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

Eric said:


> The dude's father owned diamond mines and slave labor, Elon has already chastised American workers/practices and is pretty much a grade A asshole to work for if we're to believe those who have already spoken out about it.
> 
> I think if you're an employee of Twitter and want to maintain the ability to work from home and have any real work/home life balance you're better off leaving if he takes over. Right now there's tons of work for this type of skillset.





I don’t work at a big tech company, and nor have I despite living in the area my entire life, but if you work at Twitter I’d imagine you should be easily employable at one of the plethora of other big tech companies in the area.

I’d actually like to hear from somebody in the area who has bounced between the big tech companies and what their observations and complaints are. Other than long hours and asshole bosses (which isn’t unique to tech), I’d imagine a lot of their comparative complaints would be first world problems of the highest order.


----------



## DT

Chew Toy McCoy said:


> [...] I’d imagine a lot of their comparative complaints would be first world problems of the highest order.




Yeah, not enough fucking Harmless Harvest coconut water!  WTF MAN!


----------



## DT

I did a couple of gigs in the Silicon Valley area, but as a consultant/contractor, I was way more invincible since it was not my primary job.  Made it super fun because I could more or less tell various management folks to fuck off as needed.

Hahaha, this one time my partner was kind of getting a little bit of a talking to, it was pretty mild, mostly just concerns over timelines/deliverables, the PM type dude was like, "Go get DT, he needs to hear this!", and my partner was like, "No, you do not want to get in his face unless you want to get tossed in the canal ..."


----------



## JayMysteri0

Eric said:


> SpaceX employees draft open letter to company executives denouncing Elon Musk’s behavior
> 
> 
> The letter calls on ways for SpaceX to fix its reputation and culture.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.theverge.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> View attachment 15009



And... the followup...



> SpaceX Fires Employees Who Dared Question Musk's Tweets
> 
> 
> Staff members circled an internal letter asking their company to adhere to its own “zero tolerance” policy with the company's CEO.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> gizmodo.com





> SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has shown he does not take criticism very well. So when employees of his rocket company called their boss’ behavior a “distraction and embarrassment”… well you can see where this is going.
> 
> The New York Times first reported that SpaceX fired several employees who helped write an open letter that took Musk to task for his off-the-wall behavior online and in public. The firings apparently happened Thursday afternoon after The Verge first broke the story about the employee’s letter that same day.
> 
> In an internal email obtained by the Times, Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president and COO, wrote that the company had “terminated a number of employees involved” with staff’s critique of their CEO. She further said that the workers’ letter “made employees feel uncomfortable, intimidated, and bullied, and/or angry” since it apparently pressured them to sign something “that did not reflect their views.”
> 
> It isn’t clear how many were fired, but Reuters reported there were at least five. Three employees spoke to the Times but did not reveal their names or positions. They said staff rarely stand up to the CEO. Another anonymous employee who helped write the letter called bull on Shotwell’s reasoning, telling The Verge they spent a month of hard work putting together the letter by soliciting feedback from fellow employees.
> 
> We reached out to SpaceX for comment, but the company rarely—if ever—responds to any press inquiries.





> The company has a lot of work to do, and can’t afford “this kind of overreaching activism,” according to Shotwell’s email. SpaceX wants to get its first orbital launch ready for takeoff next month, following extended delays. “This is how we will get to Mars,” Shotwell wrote in her email.
> 
> The employees’ letter says that, since Musk is the company’s CEO and prime spokesperson, “every Tweet that Elon sends is a de facto public statement by the company.” So when Musk posts something like “the [Federal Aviation Administration] is fundamentally broken,” calls a British cave explorer “pedo guy,” or repeatedly downplayed the severity of covid early on in the pandemic, the employees say it reflects back on them and the company they work for.
> 
> The letter writers further advocated the company adhere to its “no-asshole” and “zero tolerance” policy by making sure there’s ways for employees to report bad behavior and punish those responsible for a bad working environment, “whether from the CEO or an employee starting their first day.”




It really does show this has become more the 'era of the asshole' that's celebrated, revered, and now promoted cult like status by other envious assholes who want to live vicariously thru another.



> Shotwell has gone to bat for Musk before. After news broke that the SpaceX CEO allegedly sexually harassed a SpaceX flight attendant and then hushed her with a non-disclosure agreement and a $250,000 settlement, the company president told staff that the allegations were false. Shotwell further claimed that doing something like that was out of character for Musk. The COO did not precisely deny the settlement, however.
> 
> The SpaceX CEO denied the allegations, but apparently being accused of exposing your penis to an employee is funny enough to later use it in another one of his infamous tweets.
> 
> Musk does not want employees straying out of line. Documents have shown that Musk’s other company Tesla monitored workers’ social media activity to stave off any dreaded union push. He has mandated that the vast majority of staff must work in the office 40 hours a week despite the push for work-from-home policies across the tech world.


----------



## Eric

JayMysteri0 said:


> And... the followup...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It really does show this has become more the 'era of the asshole' that's celebrated, revered, and now promoted cult like status by other envious assholes who want to live vicariously thru another.



Wait, what?

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1507259709224632344/


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

JayMysteri0 said:


> And... the followup...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It really does show this has become more the 'era of the asshole' that's celebrated, revered, and now promoted cult like status by other envious assholes who want to live vicariously thru another.




I've come to the conclusion that the main reason Musk wants to buy Twitter is to ensure that he can never be banned from it.  If he had a gambling addiction his therapy would involve buying Vegas.


----------



## SuperMatt

JayMysteri0 said:


> And... the followup...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It really does show this has become more the 'era of the asshole' that's celebrated, revered, and now promoted cult like status by other envious assholes who want to live vicariously thru another.



It is the billionaires who support the “right to work“ laws and vociferously oppose unions. You see the result here. A piece of crap born with a silver spoon in his mouth can fire any worker any time simply for daring to question his authority! Welcome back to feudalism.



Chew Toy McCoy said:


> I've come to the conclusion that the main reason Musk wants to buy Twitter is to ensure that he can never be banned from it. If he had a gambling addiction his therapy would involve buying Vegas.



There is no doubt about it.


----------



## JayMysteri0

Eric said:


> Wait, what?
> 
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1507259709224632344/



My bad, "the era of the *hypocritical* asshole".

That's better.


----------



## Renzatic

DT said:


> Yeah, not enough fucking Harmless Harvest coconut water!  WTF MAN!




That's no joke, bro. Don't even.


----------



## JayMysteri0

Chew Toy McCoy said:


> I've come to the conclusion that the main reason Musk wants to buy Twitter is to ensure that he can never be banned from it.  If he had a gambling addiction his therapy would involve buying Vegas.




His admission to want to encourage & let in more "provocative" conversation in the name of profit has got to be one of the biggest red flags I've ever seen waved in modern history.  If it does lead to driving more people away, and pulling in only like minded assholes, who's fault will it be it still doesn't turn a profit?   The thing about assholes, is that... they're assholes!  Only other assholes like hanging around them, while others leave, then assholes want to run over where everyone else is now.

If I'm someone looking to invest, I'm doing some heavy research into new potential alternate social media platforms IF Musk stops trolling and puts his money where his mouth opening is.  Musk will create a massive opportunity for others should he acquire Twitter.


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

As far as that employee letter, and no offense intended to any Tesla owners here, but most car manufacturers are now quickly moving into EVs and Teslas are going to be more associated with ascribing to Musk’s politics (because he can’t keep his damn mouth shut) than a status symbol or environmental awareness. Even already I’m sure most people can’t see a Telsa without instantly thinking Musk Tweets. Where I live probably 1 out of every 20 cars I see on the road is a Tesla. They aren’t rare and most people don’t need all the other fancy features, not to mention other manufacturers will also include their own fancy features. Teslas are going to become like Hummers.

If anything, that letter probably would have been better served coming from Tesla employees.  Space exploration is so far out of reach for 99.999999% of the population that I don't see how his social media insanity is going to impact the work at SpaceX.


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

JayMysteri0 said:


> His admission to want to encourage & let in more "provocative" conversation in the name of profit has got to be one of the biggest red flags I've ever seen waved in modern history.  If it does lead to driving more people away, and pulling in only like minded assholes, who's fault will it be it still doesn't turn a profit?   The thing about assholes, is that... they're assholes!  Only other assholes like hanging around them, while others leave, then assholes want to run over where everyone else is now.
> 
> If I'm someone looking to invest, I'm doing some heavy research into new potential alternate social media platforms IF Musk stops trolling and puts his money where his mouth opening is.  Musk will create a massive opportunity for others should he acquire Twitter.




Much like Trump he's bored with money.  Now he just wants to be the world's biggest center of attention with the most social media followers.  That means there should be no roadblocks put in front of the rubes likely to join his flock.  The only reason he cares about growth is because that means more people potentially following him.


----------



## Yoused

AAUI, Henry Ford was a racist asshole.


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

Yoused said:


> AAUI, Henry Ford was a racist asshole.




Henry Ford on Twitter would have been a real hoot.  I wish there was an old-timey Twitter to review full of problematic, not aging well, and near Shakespear level confusion on vernacular.


----------



## DT

Chew Toy McCoy said:


> As far as that employee letter, and no offense intended to any Tesla owners here, but most car manufacturers are now quickly moving into EVs and Teslas are going to be more associated with ascribing to Musk’s politics (because he can’t keep his damn mouth shut) than a status symbol or environmental awareness.




No offense taken at all, it's a car, I don't care about the CEO, just like if Satya Nadella came out as involved in sick shit with children (to be clear there's ZERO talk of this completely fabricated example), I'd continue to use Microsoft products.

Bottom line is my Model 3 Performance is spectacular: fast, safe, roomy, quiet, enviro-friendly with the best charging network in the US by a large margin, plus it'll be a year old this Sunday, with no service issues.   There's literally nothing to replace it in the model segment, with the exception of the BMW I4 M50, and I won't buy something with that much ICE cruft.  Seriously, if I had one tiny issue with any of this, the car, etc., I'd return it tomorrow.


----------



## Cmaier

DT said:


> No offense taken at all, it's a car, I don't care about the CEO, just like if Satya Nadella came out as involved in sick shit with children (to be clear there's ZERO talk of this completely fabricated example), I'd continue to use Microsoft products.



That’s where you and I part ways. I don’t want to put any more money in Musk’s pocket, and although I love my model S, I’ll settle for something not as good, next time, if that’s what I need to do.  It wouldn’t bother me as much if I didn’t get the feeling that he is using the money he makes at Tesla to try and screw up our democracy some more and to stick it to minorities, LGBT folks,  women, etc.

Of course, unlike you, I’ve had numerous service issues with my Model S, and I’m also fed up with not having CarPlay, so at least I can console myself that while I may be losing some things (charging network - which I’ve used fewer than a dozen times, range, performance, etc), I can probably gain other things.  I would like to think that I would abandon his companies in any case, but who knows.


----------



## DT

Cmaier said:


> That’s where you and I part ways. I don’t want to put any more money in Musk’s pocket, and although I love my model S, I’ll settle for something not as good, next time, if that’s what I need to do.  It wouldn’t bother me as much if I didn’t get the feeling that he is using the money he makes at Tesla to try and screw up our democracy some more and to stick it to minorities, LGBT folks,  women, etc.
> 
> Of course, unlike you, I’ve had numerous service issues with my Model S, and I’m also fed up with not having CarPlay, so at least I can console myself that while I may be losing some things (charging network - which I’ve used fewer than a dozen times, range, performance, etc), I can probably gain other things.  I would like to think that I would abandon his companies in any case, but who knows.




Car is already purchased, I didn't say I'd buy another one, I'm just not - at the moment - going to bail on a vehicle that's been pretty fantastic when there's no replacement and a global supply chain issue so I might be sitting around without a car for a year.

I'm hoping a few companies, especially the aforementioned BMW get their dedicated EV platforms sorted out, offer some sport sedans without any leftover ICE design, and the charging network in the US opens up.

So let me frame this a little better:

If I was buying today, and there was no concern over delivery times and charging networks, and in addition to Tesla, there were at least 1 or 2 other companies providing something comparable / in the same market segment - then, yes, I would favor something that's not a Tesla 

If I had your service history, I'd definitely not buy again (I would've already had some legal gears churning )


----------



## Yoused

Cmaier said:


> while I may be losing some things (charging network - which I’ve used fewer than a dozen times, range, performance, etc), I can probably gain other things. I would like to think that I would abandon his companies in any case




You were talking about moving back to the small place, where thing A is not _always_ 38 miles away from thing B and having a car that cannot do 200 miles between plugins may not matter all that much. Hell, you barely need a car at all in the city.


----------



## Cmaier

DT said:


> Car is already purchased, I didn't say I'd buy another one, I'm just not - at the moment - going to bail on a vehicle that's been pretty fantastic when there's no replacement and a global supply chain issue so I might be sitting around without a car for a year.
> 
> I'm hoping a few companies, especially the aforementioned BMW get their dedicated EV platforms sorted out, offer some sport sedans without any leftover ICE design, and the charging network in the US opens up.
> 
> So let me frame this a little better:
> 
> If I was buying today, and there was no concern over delivery times and charging networks, and in addition to Tesla, there were at least 1 or 2 other companies providing something comparable / in the same market segment - then, yes, I would favor something that's not a Tesla




Ah, I see. Yeah, i wouldn’t get rid of the car just because of Musk - doing so would be purely performative anyway.  Just don’t see the point in buying one in the future.  Hopefully he’ll get bored of tesla, anyway, and go be a racist/sexist/homophobic MAGA twit someplace else.


----------



## Cmaier

Yoused said:


> You were talking about moving back to the small place, where thing A is not _always_ 38 miles away from thing B and having a car that cannot do 200 miles between plugins may not matter all that much. Hell, you barely need a car at all in the city.



True, my hope is to never have to buy another car.  But I’m nearing the point where the battery may spontaneously die, and it will be at least 5 years before I can move to the city,.


----------



## DT

Cmaier said:


> Ah, I see. Yeah, i wouldn’t get rid of the car just because of Musk - doing so would be purely performative anyway.  Just don’t see the point in buying one in the future.  Hopefully he’ll get bored of tesla, anyway, and go be a racist/sexist/homophobic MAGA twit someplace else.




Right, exactly!  Heck, if anything else favored getting rid of it, I'd seriously consider it, but right now, the only downside, is the CEO is a fuckwit  

And admittedly, even as good as ours has been, I've still had that discussion with Wife, with "myself" (so to speak).  Yeah, I'm kind of hoping Tesla moves way out of his interest and become essentially Musk-free


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

In a couple years time there should be more competition and that’s when Musk’s politics will weigh heavy on Tesla.  Tesla may still be top of the pack on technology then but a lot of people don’t need top of the pack.


----------



## DT

Chew Toy McCoy said:


> In a couple years time there should be more competition and that’s when Musk’s politics will weigh heavy on Tesla.  Tesla may still be top of the pack on technology then but a lot of people don’t need top of the pack.




Oh yeah, there's going to be a HUGE number of options, from all the major players, 2nd and 3rd generation EV platforms, much better battery tech, big expansions in the DCFC (non-Telsa) networks, and if Tesla follows what they're doing in Europe, those thousands of Superchargers will be available to all cars.

We'll be ready for something new in '24, and unless a lot changes, it will likely not be a Tesla.  Right now (and certainly a year ago), Tesla does the EV stuff so well, but as other companies who do the car thing better start ramping up, the marketspace is going to very different in 2 years.


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

DT said:


> Oh yeah, there's going to be a HUGE number of options, from all the major players, 2nd and 3rd generation EV platforms, much better battery tech, big expansions in the DCFC (non-Telsa) networks, and if Tesla follows what they're doing in Europe, those thousands of Superchargers will be available to all cars.
> 
> We'll be ready for something new in '24, and unless a lot changes, it will likely not be a Tesla.  Right now (and certainly a year ago), Tesla does the EV stuff so well, but as other companies who do the car thing better start ramping up, the marketspace is going to very different in 2 years.




Tesla will probably still be doing the tech incredibly well but if Musk continues down the same road it will be like buying a Lamborghini with a giant MAGA logo on the hood and “Fuck the workers!” on the rear that can’t be removed or covered. You could still get one….or maybe see what they have going on at the Ferrari lot.


----------



## JayMysteri0

As I said before, all of this trolling probably isn't worth it.  It just brings more eyeballs than necessary, just to have the guy turn around & whine about it & go 'r'.  But he did it...  So SEC is looking into him again, and he's getting sued again.



> Elon Musk Faces $258 Billion Lawsuit Over Alleged Dogecoin Pyramid Scheme
> 
> 
> The billionaire is being sued over his alleged involvement with a scheme to inflate the crypto coin’s price
> 
> 
> 
> 
> kotaku.com




But I'm here just to point out, "Happy Juneteenth"

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1538604035141341184/


----------



## diamond.g

Cmaier said:


> True, my hope is to never have to buy another car.  But I’m nearing the point where the battery may spontaneously die, and it will be at least 5 years before I can move to the city,.



I hear Lucid Airs are pretty nice…


----------



## Cmaier

diamond.g said:


> I hear Lucid Airs are pretty nice…



Call me when they cost ⅓ the price.


----------



## Yoused

Elon Musk's child seeks name change to sever ties with father
					

Elon Musk's transgender daughter has filed a request to change her name in accordance with her new gender identity and because "I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form."




					www.reuters.com


----------



## diamond.g

Cmaier said:


> Call me when they cost ⅓ the price.



Eh. What about the Kia EV6? It even has car play. 


Yoused said:


> Elon Musk's child seeks name change to sever ties with father
> 
> 
> Elon Musk's transgender daughter has filed a request to change her name in accordance with her new gender identity and because "I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form."
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.reuters.com



Good for her.


----------



## DT

Cmaier said:


> Call me when they cost ⅓ the price.




Yeah, they're a bit expensive, the new pricing for the entry level model is close to $90K (though they still qualify for the $7500 fed tax credit), and that model is kind of blah.

To be honest, I'm wary of any of these boutique type EV companies:  Lucid, Rivian, etc., I think Tesla has shown the EV (and even tech side) can be done, but it's the car side (so to speak), building at scale, getting spare parts, having a service channel, that are the things that are hard.

I think today, if were in the market, didn't want to spend Model Y or BMW money, was good with a CUV/SUV platform, and the charging network wasn't as much of a concern, I'd get a VW ID.4 Pro S.   $45K, a couple of grand of tweaks, $7500 tax credit, putting it right about $41-42K OTD.


----------



## diamond.g

DT said:


> Yeah, they're a bit expensive, the new pricing for the entry level model is close to $90K (though they still qualify for the $7500 fed tax credit), and that model is kind of blah.
> 
> To be honest, I'm wary of any of these boutique type EV companies:  Lucid, Rivian, etc., I think Tesla has shown the EV (and even tech side) can be done, but it's the car side (so to speak), building at scale, getting spare parts, having a service channel, that are the things that are hard.
> 
> I think today, if were in the market, didn't want to spend Model Y or BMW money, was good with a CUV/SUV platform, and the charging network wasn't as much of a concern, I'd get a VW ID.4 Pro S.   $45K, a couple of grand of tweaks, $7500 tax credit, putting it right about $41-42K OTD.



Why not the Kia/Hyundai? They charge faster than pretty much all other EVs.


----------



## Eric

diamond.g said:


> Why not the Kia/Hyundai? They charge faster than pretty much all other EVs.



While I have not tested with these cars I can tell you that when the Tesla preconditions (as you drive to the charger) it is extremely fast, I went from 15% to 60% in under 10 minutes. When pulling into a gas station and going through the motions I would call it comparable.


----------



## Cmaier

Eric said:


> While I have not tested with these cars I can tell you that when the Tesla preconditions (as you drive to the charger) it is extremely fast, I went from 15% to 60% in under 10 minutes. When pulling into a gas station and going through the motions I would call it comparable.




My garage door tension spring broke yesterday, so i drove to the supercharger in Cupertino to power up for the next couple of days.  Took 45 minutes to add 100 miles of range (taking it to around 85% charged).  I wasn’t thrilled about it, but given how infrequently I have to power up that way it was fine.


----------



## Eric

Cmaier said:


> My garage door tension spring broke yesterday, so i drove to the supercharger in Cupertino to power up for the next couple of days.  Took 45 minutes to add 100 miles of range (taking it to around 85% charged).  I wasn’t thrilled about it, but given how infrequently I have to power up that way it was fine.



Did you precondition? Mine does it automatically when I put in a supercharger for the destination, the difference between that and a cold charge is like night and day.


----------



## Cmaier

Eric said:


> Did you precondition? Mine does it automatically when I put in a supercharger for the destination, the difference between that and a cold charge is like night and day.




There is no manual preconditioning control in my car. I did have a supercharger as a destination, but no idea if it preconditions or not.


----------



## DT

diamond.g said:


> Why not the Kia/Hyundai? They charge faster than pretty much all other EVs.




Oh yeah, also solid options in the same price range, for no specific reason other than the general vibe I get from the VW   I do like the Ioniq quite a bit, though I'm not sure if the super quirky styling would wear thin quickly.




Cmaier said:


> My garage door tension spring broke yesterday, so i drove to the supercharger in Cupertino to power up for the next couple of days.  Took 45 minutes to add 100 miles of range (taking it to around 85% charged).  I wasn’t thrilled about it, but given how infrequently I have to power up that way it was fine.




Yeah, your shit is busted  

I can do 10-80% in ~30 minutes and that's adding roughly 200 miles of range for my use rate (which is a bit higher than some ...)


----------



## Eric

Cmaier said:


> There is no manual preconditioning control in my car. I did have a supercharger as a destination, but no idea if it preconditions or not.



Yeah, wonder if it's do to the model or age of the car. It tells you onscreen that it's preconditioning and you can hear it spinning up the entire time, even after you plug it in but it sure is fast.


----------



## Cmaier

Eric said:


> Yeah, wonder if it's do to the model or age of the car. It tells you onscreen that it's preconditioning and you can hear it spinning up the entire time, even after you plug it in but it sure is fast.




Yeah, then it wasn’t preconditioning. I heard it spin up about 15 minutes into the actual charging, but by that point it had cut the current by quite a bit. Back in my day we had to pay extra for a second on-board charger if we wanted to supercharge at “full speed” (which I think is still less than modern Tesla’s can charge at). 

On the other hand, I charge for free, don’t pay for connectivity, and live in a house where the garage door can’t be opened. So there are pluses and minuses.


----------



## DT

Cmaier said:


> [...] live in a house where the garage door can’t be opened.




That is a bitch if the spring breaks.  Opener issues?  No sweat, pull the release, open it manually. Lifting a 200 lb door without any assistance?  Yikes.

And that's not even an easy DIY, garage door springs can murder you if you don't know what you're doing.


----------



## Cmaier

DT said:


> That is a bitch if the spring breaks.  Opener issues?  No sweat, pull the release, open it manually. Lifting a 200 lb door without any assistance?  Yikes.
> 
> And that's not even an easy DIY, garage door springs can murder you if you don't know what you're doing.



yeah, and my wife tried tugging on the release (she doesn't know what happens when the spring breaks  ), and the release broke, too. 

Got a guy coming tomorrow. I'm not going to screw around with the murder-spring.


----------



## Herdfan

Cmaier said:


> yeah, and my wife tried tugging on the release (she doesn't know what happens when the spring breaks  ), and the release broke, too.
> 
> Got a guy coming tomorrow. I'm not going to screw around with the murder-spring.




Are they the round ones that are on the rod between the doors or extension springs with one of each side of the door?


----------



## Runs For Fun

Elon Musk terminates $44 bln Twitter deal
					

Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said on Friday he was terminating his $44 billion deal for Twitter Inc , citing material breach of multiple provisions of the agreement.




					www.reuters.com
				




Surprise to almost no one at this point. This was all just a game for him. Maybe the SEC will do something.


----------



## Cmaier

Twitter says it's going to sue Elon Musk for trying to back out of the deal
					

It’s going to get messier from here.




					www.theverge.com
				




I don’t think this will go well for Elon, but it’ll take a long time and, like most cases, will probably settle before any court has its say.


----------



## Runs For Fun

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1545526087089696768/


----------



## Herdfan

I see it going 2 possible ways.

Musk claims that more than 5% of users are bots.  Twitter will have to counter his claims.  If they can, then he may go ahead with the purchase.

But if they can't prove it, then he should be able to walk away.  The risk for Twitter here is if they can't prove that less than 5% of users are bots, it will hurt their advertising revenue.


----------



## Cmaier

Herdfan said:


> I see it going 2 possible ways.
> 
> Musk claims that more than 5% of users are bots.  Twitter will have to counter his claims.  If they can, then he may go ahead with the purchase.
> 
> But if they can't prove it, then he should be able to walk away.  The risk for Twitter here is if they can't prove that less than 5% of users are bots, it will hurt their advertising revenue.




Except that’s not how it works now that the courts will be involved. He is repudiating the contract. If he wants to argue that he had good cause, the burden is on him to prove that more than 5% are bots (and that any such difference matters). Twitter doesn’t have to prove anything.


----------



## SuperMatt

Cmaier said:


> Except that’s not how it works now that the courts will be involved. He is repudiating the contract. If he wants to argue that he had good cause, the burden is on him to prove that more than 5% are bots (and that any such difference matters). Twitter doesn’t have to prove anything.



Exactly. Twitter doesn’t have the burden of proof here. I hope he ends up paying the $1 billion fine because it’s beyond obvious that he is not going through with the purchase.


----------



## Herdfan

Cmaier said:


> Except that’s not how it works now that the courts will be involved. He is repudiating the contract. If he wants to argue that he had good cause, the burden is on him to prove that more than 5% are bots (and that any such difference matters). Twitter doesn’t have to prove anything.




True, but he should be able to subpoena the records he needs to prove his case.

Either way, advertisers may have questions.

Do you think the shareholders will have a suit against the board if they were not able to prove they didn't have over 5% bots?


----------



## Eric

SuperMatt said:


> Exactly. Twitter doesn’t have the burden of proof here. I hope he ends up paying the $1 billion fine because it’s beyond obvious that he is not going through with the purchase.



Chump change for the biggest troll of the year.


----------



## Cmaier

Eric said:


> Chump change for the biggest troll of the year.




A billion dollars is a lot even for him.  That’s like 50 less children he’ll be able to afford siring.


----------



## Runs For Fun

Cmaier said:


> A billion dollars is a lot even for him.  That’s like 50 less children he’ll be able to afford siring.


----------



## Nycturne

Herdfan said:


> True, but he should be able to subpoena the records he needs to prove his case.
> 
> Either way, advertisers may have questions.
> 
> Do you think the shareholders will have a suit against the board if they were not able to prove they didn't have over 5% bots?




I don't think discovery would turn up what he expects. The thing that jumped out to me right at the start is that Musk is stomping his feet while committing a classification error. Twitter reports "monetizable users", Musk's claims are for "all users". These are not the same category. And as an advertiser, I'm more interested in the monetizable users (i.e. my reach) and the numbers of those which are bots (accounts that will see an ad but never click on it), hence why Twitter reports that.

But Musk is essentially claiming that Twitter is reporting "all users", which is not the case. And it does confuse the issue, going by the questions you've posed so far. 

The hilarious thing is, had he not waived due diligence, he'd likely have the answers he wants. At the end of the day, the issue is going to be reliant on the question: Is Twitter executing the contract in good faith or not? Musk is claiming they are not. And the issue is ultimately not about the bots, but the contract. Musk's position isn't terribly strong on that front.


----------



## Cmaier

Herdfan said:


> True, but he should be able to subpoena the records he needs to prove his case.
> 
> Either way, advertisers may have questions.
> 
> Do you think the shareholders will have a suit against the board if they were not able to prove they didn't have over 5% bots?




In a derivative suit (a suit by the shareholders) they would have to allege that there were affirmative misrepresentations - again, the burden is on the shareholders. Whoever sues has the burden.

As for subpoenaing records, you presume (1) they exist and (2) he doesn’t already have access to everything.  From what we’ve heard so far, he has firehose access, which means he can look at everything already.  

His arguments are looking very pretextual given the circumstances: he rushed into a purchase agreement on a whim, he didn’t do due diligence, the stock fell so his offer became very overpriced, he actually *waived* due diligence, he complained that he was not given firehose access, so he was given firehose access, then he waves his hands and says “well, it’s not good enough.”. 

If I got to pick a client in this case, I’d take twitter’s case in a heartbeat.


----------



## Cmaier

Nycturne said:


> I don't think discovery would turn up what he expects. The thing that jumped out to me right at the start is that Musk is stomping his feet while committing a classification error. Twitter reports "monetizable users", Musk's claims are for "all users". These are not the same category. And as an advertiser, I'm more interested in the monetizable users (i.e. my reach) and the numbers of those which are bots (accounts that will see an ad but never click on it), hence why Twitter reports that.
> 
> But Musk is essentially claiming that Twitter is reporting "all users", which is not the case. And it does confuse the issue, going by the questions you've posed so far.
> 
> The hilarious thing is, had he not waived due diligence, he'd likely have the answers he wants. At the end of the day, the issue is going to be reliant on the question: Is Twitter executing the contract in good faith or not? Musk is claiming they are not. And the issue is ultimately not about the bots, but the contract. Musk's position isn't terribly strong on that front.




I’m not even clear what provisions Musk alleges were violated by Twitter. Does anyone actually have a link to whatever filing Musk made where he lays out his argument?


----------



## Cmaier

Cmaier said:


> I’m not even clear what provisions Musk alleges were violated by Twitter. Does anyone actually have a link to whatever filing Musk made where he lays out his argument?




Ah. 



			https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/000110465922078413/tm2220599d1_ex99-p.htm


----------



## ronntaylor

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1545590417403559937/


----------



## JayMysteri0

Wait.

Won't someone think of the those REALLY affected?

What about all those "freedom of expression with no consequences on a PRIVATE platform" types who saw this as the social media "rapture"?

Won't anyone think about their feelings?

What are they called again?








> Elon Musk quits Twitter deal, roiling Trump world
> 
> 
> Twitter said it will sue Musk to complete the merger.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.politico.com





> Elon Musk officially terminated a $44 billion deal to buy Twitter on Friday, a move that would appear to dash the hopes of former President Donald Trump and his supporters that the social media platform would loosen content restrictions that have frustrated conservatives.
> 
> The move spurred fresh attacks on Twitter’s existing management, including from Donald Trump Jr., who said it showed that censorship is going to be alive and well.




If only someeveryone could have warned them that their fascination for trolls, would disappoint them.


----------



## Eric

All I can say is Amen to this, I was prepared to dump my account the day he took over and now I won't have to. Love his cars but he should keep his trap shut about politics and stop trolling world markets, he's basically just an asshole who does no good in this world with his ungodly fortunate other than fuck with people.


----------



## Herdfan

Looks like the market thinks something will be worked out.

Price dropped $3 to $34.04 in after hours when the announcement was made, but rebounded to $35.04 at 8pm.

I have to think it would have dropped much farther if the markets thought the deal was actually done.

All speculation of course.


----------



## Nycturne

On the other hand, if the market thought the deal was likely to go through, the stock price wouldn’t be in the mid 30s. Leaving nearly 20$/share on the table is not generally what the market does when the selling price is known.


----------



## JayMysteri0

ZING!

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1545527495503527945/
_In reference to the latest revelation concerning a guy who's worried about birth rates._


----------



## JayMysteri0

Bonus zing

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1545625381272576002/


----------



## SuperMatt

Cmaier said:


> I’m not even clear what provisions Musk alleges were violated by Twitter. Does anyone actually have a link to whatever filing Musk made where he lays out his argument?



Matt Levine has a twitter thread explaining why Musk is in a terrible position if he is trying to get out of the deal. In essence, the “bots” issue or even “due diligence” is inconsequential because he already signed a purchase agreement.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1545152302142689281/


----------



## SuperMatt

Uh oh… what will Trump and Musk lovers do?









						Trump Tears Into ‘Bullshit Artist’ Elon Musk at Anchorage Rally
					

The former president used the opportunity to plug his own social media platform.



					www.thedailybeast.com
				




Continue to worship “The Donald” or stick with their newfound love Elon?



> “Elon. Elon is not going to buy Twitter. Where did you hear that before? From me,” Trump said. “You know, he said the other day, Oh, I’ ve never voted for a Republican. I said: ‘I didn’t know that.’ He told me he voted for me. So he’s another bullshit artist.” Trump concluded by calling Musk’s contract with Twitter to buy out the company “rotten.” “Sign up for Truth [Social]!” he said.


----------



## Cmaier

SuperMatt said:


> Matt Levine has a twitter thread explaining why Musk is in a terrible position if he is trying to get out of the deal. In essence, the “bots” issue or even “due diligence” is inconsequential because he already signed a purchase agreement.
> 
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1545152302142689281/



I posted a similar explanation here and then deleted it because I didn’t want to leave the false impression that I was providing legal advice to anyone.


----------



## Eric

JayMysteri0 said:


> Bonus zing
> 
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1545625381272576002/



Hilarious tweets coming out of this!


----------



## Eric

SuperMatt said:


> Uh oh… what will Trump and Musk lovers do?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Trump Tears Into ‘Bullshit Artist’ Elon Musk at Anchorage Rally
> 
> 
> The former president used the opportunity to plug his own social media platform.
> 
> 
> 
> www.thedailybeast.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Continue to worship “The Donald” or stick with their newfound love Elon?



Another con artist just like himself, nobody can project like Donald Trump. Next thing you know he'll be calling out other men who say "grab 'em by the pussy".


----------



## Herdfan

Cmaier said:


> I posted a similar explanation here and then deleted it because I didn’t want to leave the false impression that I was providing legal advice to anyone.




Anyone who take legal advice from an internet message board...............


----------



## ronntaylor

Cmaier said:


> I posted a similar explanation here and then deleted it because I didn’t want to leave the false impression that I was providing legal advice to anyone.



It would've been fine. These takes were already out there months ago when Mollusk first started his BS whining about bots. Matt Levine is a former M & A lawyer, investment banker and circuit court clerk. I trust his take on this. Especially since he immediately called BS.

*edited for clarity: switched would've for wouldn't have*


----------



## GermanSuplex

Well, Musk's honeymoon as an honorary member of the MAGA cult has come to an end, it seems. The MAGA cult was so excited.

Trump is right about one thing; Musk is a BS artist. He's more successful and insanely smarter than Trump... but like Trump, he's an asshole and a bullshit artist.

The irony of course, is that the cult will follow Trump's lead, but are for whatever reason blind to the fact that Trump is a much bigger liar and a much bigger bullshit artist.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1546663293909180418/









						Elon Musk just went for Donald Trump
					

‘I don’t hate the man, but it’s time for Trump to hang up his hat & sail into the sunset’




					www.independent.co.uk


----------



## SuperMatt

GermanSuplex said:


> Well, Musk's honeymoon as an honorary member of the MAGA cult has come to an end, it seems. The MAGA cult was so excited.
> 
> Trump is right about one thing; Musk is a BS artist. He's more successful and insanely smarter than Trump... but like Trump, he's an asshole and a bullshit artist.
> 
> The irony of course, is that the cult will follow Trump's lead, but are for whatever reason blind to the fact that Trump is a much bigger liar and a much bigger bullshit artist.
> 
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1546663293909180418/
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Elon Musk just went for Donald Trump
> 
> 
> ‘I don’t hate the man, but it’s time for Trump to hang up his hat & sail into the sunset’
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.independent.co.uk



They should put them on Celebrity Deathmatch...


----------



## Runs For Fun

GermanSuplex said:


> Trump is right about one thing; Musk is a BS artist.



A broken clock is right twice a day.

But also, pot calling the kettle black.


----------



## SuperMatt

Matt Levine of Bloomberg gets into the weeds on the deal.









						Elon’s Out
					

Musk lost interest in pretending to buy Twitter.




					www.bloomberg.com


----------



## SuperMatt

Breaking: Twitter is now suing to force Musk to go through with the purchase.


----------



## Deleted member 215

If this is the thing that finally tanks Twitter, I can't say I'll miss it.


----------



## Joe

I'll actually miss Twitter. I use it 100% for sports. It comes in handy during football season when people are tweeting play by play and scores for local high school football games.


----------



## Runs For Fun

SuperMatt said:


> Breaking: Twitter is now suing to force Musk to go through with the purchase.



I feel like this is a double edged sword. Good that they're trying to make him go through with the deal and not letting him get away with whatever game he is playing. On the other side Twitter would be owned by this fopdoodle and will likely become a dumpsterfire.


----------



## Eric

Ummm...   

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1547662389134233601/


----------



## Cmaier

Eric said:


> Ummm...
> 
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1547662389134233601/



Wait what?


----------



## Hrafn

Eric said:


> Ummm...
> 
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1547662389134233601/



Are they in a race to see who's the creepiest?


----------



## SuperMatt

Eric said:


> Ummm...
> 
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1547662389134233601/



Who does he think he is, Woody Allen?


----------



## JayMysteri0

Still not sure if the guy is full of it?



> Elon Musk wants Twitter trial to wait until February 2023
> 
> 
> Twitter’s lawyers say they’re ready to start in September.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.theverge.com






> Elon Musk’s legal team has responded to Twitter’s lawsuit against him, saying that the company is demanding an unreasonably fast trial. In response, Musk’s team asks that the case not be heard until next year, according to _Bloomberg_.
> 
> Twitter has pushed for the trial to take place in mid-September, justifying the request to expedite things given that Musk and Twitter’s merger agreement has an October 24th “presumptive drop-dead date.” However, Musk’s team is asking that the trial not be held until February 13th, 2023 trial at the earliest, _Bloomberg_ reports.
> 
> Twitter declined to comment on the matter, and pointed to its initial complaint filed Tuesday.
> 
> Twitter sued Musk earlier this week after he officially tried to bail on his $44 billion agreement to buy the company. Nearly immediately after he said he intended to pull the plug, Twitter board chairman Bret Taylor said the company would be taking Musk to court, and the company filed its lawsuit on Tuesday. Musk hadn’t responded via the court until Friday, though on Tuesday, he did tweet.
> 
> Musk’s primary assertion for wanting to terminate the merger is that Twitter has not given him the data to “‘make an independent assessment of the prevalence of fake or spam accounts on Twitter’s platform,” his legal team wrote last week. His team again invoked the bots issue in Friday’s filing. According to _The Wall Street Journal_, they said that “the core dispute over false and spam accounts is fundamental to Twitter’s value. It is also extremely fact and expert intensive, requiring substantial time for discovery.”
> 
> There will be a 90-minute hearing next week on July 19th at 11AM ET to decide when the trial will take place, according to _Bloomberg _and _Reuters_.




Wasn't he in a hurry to purchase Twitter originally?


----------



## SuperMatt

JayMysteri0 said:


> Still not sure if the guy is full of it?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Wasn't he in a hurry to purchase Twitter originally?


----------



## Cmaier

Litigation off to an inauspicious start for Musk.  Trial date set for October…









						Twitter’s Lawyers Flame Elon Over His 'Buyers Remorse' in Court
					

Musk wanted the trial date to be stretched to early 2023, but the judge landed on October of this year.




					gizmodo.com


----------



## Cmaier

Twitter’s response to Musk is brutal:









						Twitter Obliterates Elon Musk's Excuses for Killing Buyout Deal
					

Twitter called Musk's claims "factually inaccurate, legally insufficient, and commercially irrelevant."




					gizmodo.com


----------



## Cmaier

Dude really is a first class troll.









						Elon Musk challenges Twitter CEO to a ‘public debate’ on fake accounts | Engadget
					

Elon Musk has challenged Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal to a public debate about the percentage of bots on its platform..




					www.engadget.com


----------



## Nycturne

Clearly. Wow.


----------



## mr_roboto

His own lawyers must hate him so, so much.


----------



## trillux

mr_roboto said:


> His own lawyers must hate him so, so much.



They hate him for a few $1000/hr.


----------



## Cmaier

trillux said:


> They hate him for a few $1000/hr.



Even I charge only 1000 an hour, and I’m the best.


----------



## trillux

Cmaier said:


> Even I charge only 1000 an hour, and I’m the best.



You're way to cheap!


----------



## Cmaier

trillux said:


> You're way to cheap!




I’ll tell my bosses you said so and that I should be billed out at a higher rate.


----------



## Scepticalscribe

Cmaier said:


> Dude really is a first class troll.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Elon Musk challenges Twitter CEO to a ‘public debate’ on fake accounts | Engadget
> 
> 
> Elon Musk has challenged Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal to a public debate about the percentage of bots on its platform..
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.engadget.com



He needs to be denied the oxygen of publicity, for he needs attention and revels in being noticed and talked about.

Shunning, surrounded by silence - old, but very effective and, yes, quite cruel - remedies, may prove quite effective with this individual.


----------



## Cmaier

Scepticalscribe said:


> He needs to be denied the oxygen of publicity, for he needs attention and revels in being noticed and talked about.
> 
> Shunning, surrounded by silence - old, but very effective and, yes, quite cruel - remedies, may prove quite effective with this individual.




Unfortunately he’s impossible to shun because he’s tapping into our polarized society to become a hero of 20% of us.  The only way to affect this guy is his pocketbook. Buy your electric cars and solar panels from someone else.


----------



## Scepticalscribe

Cmaier said:


> Unfortunately he’s impossible to shun because he’s tapping into our polarized society to become a hero of 20% of us.  The only way to affect this guy is his pocketbook. Buy your electric cars and solar panels from someone else.



I find myself in gloomy agreement with that sentiment.

In fact, Musk is the gretest single reason why I would never contemplate the purchse of a Tesla, much though I approve of the concept of electric motor-cars.


----------



## trillux

Cmaier said:


> Buy your electric cars and solar panels from someone else.



And adjust your Twitter use according to the outcome of this trial.


----------



## Renzatic

Cmaier said:


> Even I charge only 1000 an hour, and I’m the best.




So with just three hours of work, you could easily buy me a nice, new computer.

You're really selfish.


----------



## Cmaier

Renzatic said:


> So with just three hours of work, you could easily buy me a nice, new computer.
> 
> You're really selfish.




Common misperception: just because my firm charges a client $1100 for an hour of my time doesn’t mean that the firm pays me $1100 or anywhere close to that     Someone has to pay for the rent and the partners’ vacation homes, after all.


----------



## Eric

Cmaier said:


> Common misperception: just because my firm charges a client $1100 for an hour of my time doesn’t mean that the firm pays me $1100 or anywhere close to that     Someone has to pay for the rent and the partners’ vacation homes, after all.



Yep, only in the triple digits here but the company takes a pretty huge chunk of it and I simply get a salary. Contracting is the way to go if you want the lion's share and don't mind handling all your own taxes.


----------



## Renzatic

Cmaier said:


> Common misperception: just because my firm charges a client $1100 for an hour of my time doesn’t mean that the firm pays me $1100 or anywhere close to that     Someone has to pay for the rent and the partners’ vacation homes, after all.




Well, I still want a new computer.


----------



## Cmaier

Renzatic said:


> Well, I still want a new computer.




Me too.


----------



## Yoused

Cmaier said:


> Me too.



You freakin' _*have*_ a new computer. A 16"MBP Max. How much newer do you need?


----------



## Cmaier

Yoused said:


> You freakin' _*have*_ a new computer. A 16"MBP Max. How much newer do you need?



Need? I don’t. But if someone wants to slip me one of the m2 max mbps that are floating around Cupertino I wouldn’t say no.


----------



## fischersd

Cmaier said:


> Common misperception: just because my firm charges a client $1100 for an hour of my time doesn’t mean that the firm pays me $1100 or anywhere close to that     Someone has to pay for the rent and the partners’ vacation homes, after all.



Back in the early 90's, IBM was charging executives $245 (CDN) an hour to have one of the PC Helpdesk agents come to their homes to resolve any technical issues.  The starting wage for the techs was $14/hr.  (as an example of corporate greed / markup)


----------



## diamond.g

Cmaier said:


> Unfortunately he’s impossible to shun because he’s tapping into our polarized society to become a hero of 20% of us.  The only way to affect this guy is his pocketbook. Buy your electric cars and solar panels from someone else.



Kick him off Twitter.


----------



## Cmaier

The judge isn’t happy with Musk.









						Judge slams Musk for withholding text messages, cites “glaring” omissions
					

Judge also chides Musk for wasting time, says there's no time for "just kiddings."




					arstechnica.com


----------



## lizkat

Cmaier said:


> The judge isn’t happy with Musk.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Judge slams Musk for withholding text messages, cites “glaring” omissions
> 
> 
> Judge also chides Musk for wasting time, says there's no time for "just kiddings."
> 
> 
> 
> 
> arstechnica.com




Yeah Musk may have been thinking his issues were before some podunk court with a justice of the peace presiding.   Guess he now understands that Delaware's Chancery Court is a whole other kind of ballpark.   Outfield fences looking farther away today.


----------



## Cmaier

So Musk sent a letter to twitter apparently offering to proceed with the deal on the original terms? 

I wonder what the catch is.


----------



## Pumbaa

Cmaier said:


> So Musk sent a letter to twitter apparently offering to proceed with the deal on the original terms?
> 
> I wonder what the catch is.



Maybe the reactions towards his “solutions” for Ukraine really got to him and he wants more control of free speech.

_I’m accepting the deal. Pray that I don’t accept it any further._


----------



## leman

Cmaier said:


> So Musk sent a letter to twitter apparently offering to proceed with the deal on the original terms?
> 
> I wonder what the catch is.




Based on yesterday the catch will probably be that everyone voting “no” on one of his pols will be declared a bot and banned. Now he wants to control public opinion.


----------



## Eric

The day he takes over without a second thought.


----------



## lizkat

Eric said:


> The day he takes over without a second thought.




Yeah a lot of people will probably leave knowing they'd end up banned anyhow.

I'd miss all the birdwatchers I follow, who post from all around the globe!   With any luck most of them don't post political tweets and so will fly under Musk's radar?  I can hope so anyway.


----------



## Eric

lizkat said:


> Yeah a lot of people will probably leave knowing they'd end up banned anyhow.
> 
> I'd miss all the birdwatchers I follow, who post from all around the globe!   With any luck most of them don't post political tweets and so will fly under Musk's radar?  I can hope so anyway.



My impression is that he'll turn it into a Truth Social free for all where Conservatives can scream fire in a theater all day long without any repercussions. Of course, one could argue that Twitter is already a cesspool full of them anyway.


----------



## lizkat

Eric said:


> My impression is that he'll turn it into a Truth Social free for all where Conservatives can scream fire in a theater all day long without any repercussions. Of course, one could argue that Twitter is already a cesspool full of them anyway.




There is a fascinating piece about the ins and outs, ups and downs of the Musk-Twitter deal (and about some people who have wanted in on it, and their reasons) in the Columbia Journalism Review.   Especially for anyone really interested in the evolution of the deal in Musk's head --and the bizarre timing in his case of some of the usual elements of a dealmaking process--  the piece cites a number of texts and also some pieces in other media outlets



> The apparent eagerness among Musk’s contacts to involve themselves in his vision for Twitter, while not exactly surprising, nevertheless suggests “something deeper about the brokenness of this investment ecosystem and the ways that it is driven more by vibes and grievances than due diligence,” Warzel writes [in a piece in _The Atlantic_, cited in the article.] It’s not just Musk’s inner circle that apparently haven’t spent much time thinking about the acquisition—Musk’s own texts sometimes give that impression as well. In an exchange with Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s CEO, Musk moved rapidly from “I’m not joining the board. This is a waste of time” to “Will make an offer to take Twitter private.” A month after he first announced his bid to acquire Twitter, Musk texted with Michael Grimes of Morgan Stanley about doing due diligence, something people typically do _before_ making a bid.












						Elon Musk, Twitter, and questions of diligence
					

<p>In July, Twitter sued Elon Musk for his failure to complete his $44 billion acquisition of the company, a process he formally initiated in April. Musk subsequently filed a countersuit in which he alleged that Twitter was not telling the truth about some aspects of its business, including the...




					www.cjr.org


----------



## ronntaylor

This is more BS from Musty. I think he's trying to stall. The only question is whether or not Twitter is dumb enough to drop the suit (as called for in the letter) without any guarantees and possibly some compensation. After all, the deal was originally scheduled to close this month.

If...*IF* twitter falls into Musty's grimy-ass hands, I'll take a wait & see attitude. I don't post much on twitter, just repost and occasionally respond to mostly non-political tweets. At best I'll block a great deal of assholes or check in just a few times a week.


----------



## lizkat

ronntaylor said:


> This is more BS from Musty. I think he's trying to stall. The only question is whether or not Twitter is dumb enough to drop the suit (as called for in the letter) without any guarantees and possibly some compensation. After all, the deal was originally scheduled to close this month.
> 
> If...*IF* twitter falls into Musty's grimy-ass hands, I'll take a wait & see attitude. I don't post much on twitter, just repost and occasionally respond to mostly non-political tweets. At best I'll block a great deal of assholes or check in just a few times a week.




Well the pressure's pretty much on now since if there's no deal soon there's a court date October 17. 

So --typically, right?-- Musk figures to buy what little time is left to think it all over again, so...

_ok ok let's make a deal the first deal is fine no prob just let's deal._​
Meanwhile what's left of his brain-wheels spin trying to figure how he can unload it without taking a bath or getting a massive headache bc he doesn't really want it now despite all his BS.   

He could land in real trouble having got all up in Twitter's books if he decides to start up a competing social media platform.  Wonder if he has thought about THAT enough yet.


----------



## Eric

Looking pretty final. Now Elon can hold his head up high with the same pride Murdoch did after purchasing MySpace.



			https://twitter.com/i/events/1577379178185269248


----------



## Eric

Poof. Just like that I'm gone, I had over 8000 followers. It's gone down hill over the years and I've all but stopped posting anyway but at least I'm leaving on my own terms. I've come to absolutely loathe Elon Musk, to the point that I even regret owning one of his cars now (which I love), I don't want to participate in giving that egomaniacal asshole one more cent from my pocket. Hopefully with the flood of new EVs I'll be able to find something comparable when it's time to buy again.


----------



## Cmaier

Eric said:


> Poof. Just like that I'm gone, I had over 8000 followers. It's gone down hill over the years and I've all but stopped posting anyway but at least I'm leaving on my own terms. I've come to absolutely loathe Elon Musk, to the point that I even regret owning one of his cars now (which I love), I don't want to participate in giving that egomaniacal asshole one more cent from my pocket. Hopefully with the flood of new EVs I'll be able to find something comparable when it's time to buy again.




we’ll both be better off - now the cheapskate is removing the ultrasonic parking sensors.


----------



## lizkat

Eric said:


> Poof. Just like that I'm gone, I had over 8000 followers. It's gone down hill over the years and I've all but stopped posting anyway but at least I'm leaving on my own terms. I've come to absolutely loathe Elon Musk, to the point that I even regret owning one of his cars now (which I love), I don't want to participate in giving that egomaniacal asshole one more cent from my pocket. Hopefully with the flood of new EVs I'll be able to find something comparable when it's time to buy again.




Well if Musk starts trying to weed out lefties from Twitter by looking at post histories and not just interactions from time of his takeover,  I won't have to quit, I'll just be banned!


----------



## lizkat

What the heck does this mean I wonder..   from an AP piece quoting a recent Musk tweet:

Musk remained mum about the turn of events on Twitter until late Tuesday afternoon, when he tweeted that “*Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app*” without further explanation.​​This guy sometimes just sounds bipolar to me and flirts with ditching his meds.


----------



## DT

lizkat said:


> What the heck does this mean I wonder..   from an AP piece quoting a recent Musk tweet:
> 
> Musk remained mum about the turn of events on Twitter until late Tuesday afternoon, when he tweeted that “*Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app*” without further explanation.​​This guy sometimes just sounds bipolar to me and flirts with ditching his meds.





It's nonsense-speak.

I've worked with/around people/companies that use the same style:  be vague, assertive and assume you have enough audience that will just nod their head so as not to appear "dumb".

I literally got an email today, and one of the earlier CCs had a guy, who I am not a fan of, saying this:

_What we are working on is transformational , "it just makes sense"._

Yet the "it" is not scoped, hell, it's not even vaguely outlined, so no effort is known, yet they want commitment to some fixed T&E.  This guy has said worse things that are totally in the same vein as that Musk quote.


----------



## Deleted member 215

I tried Twitter for about five minutes a couple years ago. I hated it instantly and never looked back. I don't think Musk's ownership is going to make much of a difference, but there is part of me that wants to see Twitter fail.


----------



## lizkat

TBL said:


> I tried Twitter for about five minutes a couple years ago. I hated it instantly and never looked back. I don't think Musk's ownership is going to make much of a difference, but there is part of me that wants to see Twitter fail.




Waahhhh...  I would have to switch to Instagram or else scout around and find out where other fans of global birdwatching --at least those who have left Facebook already-- plan to go (TikTok??). 

But who knows if the current filtering options will be maintained.  Right now with those, the problems one can encounter still seem manageable with a little effort to cull out the herd now and then:



















Musk's targets for cost-cutting will not likely align with what a lot of Twitter members might suggest and I know I'm not going back to Facebook, I left that in the dust in 2010 and don't feel like starting all over with exploration of how to filter most of it out and avoid becoming even more of a "product for sale" than one still is on any social media platform today.

Just sorta hope Twitter birdwatchers and others with particular interests or expertise can merely continue to interact under the radar of obnoxious political posters and trolls in general.


----------



## DT

Yeah, I'm pretty passive on Twitter, I mostly use it to follow a few things, where I want a little more up to the minute info, but I don't engage very much.   To be honest, even the people who I have alignment with from a political perspective are kind of on my last nerve, you can only post "Hands up, who thinks trump is an idiot!" so many times a day before you're just generating noise ...


FWIW, I joined Twitter in July 2007, riding the Metro into DC from National


----------



## lizkat

DT said:


> Yeah, I'm pretty passive on Twitter, I mostly use it to follow a few things, where I want a little more up to the minute info, but I don't engage very much.   To be honest, even the people who I have alignment with from a political perspective are kind of on my last nerve, you can only post "Hands up, who thinks trump is an idiot!" so many times a day before you're just generating noise ...
> 
> 
> FWIW, I joined Twitter in July 2007, riding the Metro into DC from National




Well I for one would certainly miss random hits like this that pop into my feed now and then.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1577328516969947138/


----------



## Eric

lizkat said:


> What the heck does this mean I wonder..   from an AP piece quoting a recent Musk tweet:
> 
> Musk remained mum about the turn of events on Twitter until late Tuesday afternoon, when he tweeted that “*Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app*” without further explanation.​​This guy sometimes just sounds bipolar to me and flirts with ditching his meds.



The moment he came up with the idea for the app and decided to tweet it, basically.


----------



## KingOfPain

Eric said:


> The day he takes over without a second thought.




For some reason I at first interpreted this as Elon Musk accidentally deleting the whole of Twitter.
Given his erratic behaviour that wouldn't be out of the realm of possibilities.


----------



## Runs For Fun

This sucks because I've recently been really getting into Twitter. I know people like to bash it because it can be toxic, but it's not bad if you watch where you step. I guess I mostly follow stuff that tends to not attract the shitposters. I'll wait to see what happens when this prick takes over before I decide to jump ship, but I don't have high hopes he won't turn it into a dumpster fire.


----------



## Edd

I may have posted this here before but what I like about Instagram is it’s very easy to dodge politics there. With Twitter, it feels impossible. At one point I deleted my account to wipe all my follows and made a new one. I was very picky about who I followed but the algorithm just dumps piles of shit into your feed.

And asking it to stop showing you posts from certain accounts it’ll say “we’ll show this less often” which seems to mean “fuck you, we’ll show you whatever we want”. It defies curation.


----------



## Eric

Runs For Fun said:


> This sucks because I've recently been really getting into Twitter. I know people like to bash it because it can be toxic, but it's not bad if you watch where you step. I guess I mostly follow stuff that tends to not attract the shitposters. I'll wait to see what happens when this prick takes over before I decide to jump ship, but I don't have high hopes he won't turn it into a dumpster fire.



For me the entire thing has turned into a total dumpster fire with shitposting every other tweet, to the point it just wasn't pleasant anymore. So removing my account wasn't hard.. I think they only go downhill from here anyway, Musk is buying a dying platform that's going the way of MySpace.



Edd said:


> I may have posted this here before but what I like about Instagram is it’s very easy to dodge politics there. With Twitter, it feels impossible. At one point I deleted my account to wipe all my follows and made a new one. I was very picky about who I followed but the algorithm just dumps piles of shit into your feed.
> 
> And asking it to stop showing you posts from certain accounts it’ll say “we’ll show this less often” which seems to mean “fuck you, we’ll show you whatever we want”. It defies curation.



Instagram is the one platform I baby with care for my photography, growing a genuine audience is not easy and takes time but once you're in and both the algorithms and users accept you it actually becomes a really pleasant experience. I never (ever) dabble in politics there, in fact I'm trying to avoid that on all platforms anyway.


----------



## Pumbaa

Edd said:


> I may have posted this here before but what I like about Instagram is it’s very easy to dodge politics there. With Twitter, it feels impossible. At one point I deleted my account to wipe all my follows and made a new one. I was very picky about who I followed but the algorithm just dumps piles of shit into your feed.
> 
> And asking it to stop showing you posts from certain accounts it’ll say “we’ll show this less often” which seems to mean “fuck you, we’ll show you whatever we want”. It defies curation.



That’s been my experience too. I had to actually block Kevin Sorbo for Twitter to stop recommending me his turds. Still get lots of other US far-right extremist tweets recommended. No idea why.


----------



## Nycturne

Pumbaa said:


> That’s been my experience too. I had to actually block Kevin Sorbo for Twitter to stop recommending me his turds. Still get lots of other US far-right extremist tweets recommended. No idea why.



Engagement!


----------



## Pumbaa

Nycturne said:


> Engagement!



Not sure clicking “see less often” is the kind of engagement they’re after.


----------



## Eric

Pumbaa said:


> Not sure clicking “see less often” is the kind of engagement they’re after.



This happened to me all the time, even with users I've never engaged in any way, think their algorithms believe you want to see them and could not be more wrong. Regardless the "see less tweets" or whatever never worked so you're forced to block them.


----------



## Nycturne

That was meant to be a bit tounge in cheek, but the algorithm does reward engagement by bubbling those tweets up to others. It’s not looking for positive engagement, just engagement. So people screaming at each other is just as valid as people fawning over some piece of artwork that got shared. And this does seem to create a noticeable right-wing bias in results as well as amplification of political content in general. 









						Examining algorithmic amplification of political content on Twitter
					

As we shared earlier this year, we believe it’s critical to study the effects of machine learning (ML) on the public conversation and share our findings publicly.




					blog.twitter.com


----------



## lizkat

Sometimes Twitter offers to unclutter your feed a little.  You  to have to poke around and see what works.  I've managed a few times to ditch posts relayed via "Jody follows" or "Jody liked"   just by indicating on the relayed post that I'm "not interested in this tweet" and then it puts up some options about it to refine what your concern was  At that point and at least once,  I then got an offer along lines of "show fewer tweets from people Jody follows".  

It would be SO much simpler if these platforms would 1) just go ahead sticking promo tweets in, we all know there's no free lunch...   and 2) otherwise make everything  opt-in except whatever you already follow past accounts (like topics, or categories etc). 

They could still let you opt to follow more stuff.   Great if they would just not apply a ton of algos to try to _*derive*_ what to stick ya with,  if you happen not to be following anything but individual accounts.

Business-wise:   When I run into enough stuff in a short time that I did not opt to have in my feed, I just bail.  I'm not talking about promos / ads.   I don't care about those, but I don't hang out on the net on a coffee break just to be aggravated by other tweets not the result of my own curation.   How does annoying me enough to ditch a session in 3 minutes help Twitter monetize what we do see?


----------



## Alli

And now Musk’s backers don’t want to back him anymore to buy Twitter. So the whole thing could be off again by the end of the day, and Twitter’s lawsuit will continue, leaving Elon very poor. I’m good with that.


----------



## lizkat

Eric said:


> The moment he came up with the idea for the app and decided to tweet it, basically.
> 
> View attachment 18220







Alli said:


> And now Musk’s backers don’t want to back him anymore to buy Twitter. So the whole thing could be off again by the end of the day, and Twitter’s lawsuit will continue, leaving Elon very poor. I’m good with that.




Yep.  So much has been revealed about the flighty approach Musk took even coming up to "deciding" to make an offer..   and then all his "maybe-maybeNot" process, and meanwhile the Fed has jacked up rates like three times,  and the seven big banks who wanted in on it are like uh, uh....   and some hedge funds already stopped talking with Musk.









						Elon Musk’s Revived Twitter Deal Could Saddle Banks With Big Losses
					

Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter would be paid for in part with $13 billion of debt seven banks including Morgan Stanley and Barclays agreed to provide. They could now face $500 million in losses if they tried to unload all the debt.




					www.wsj.com
				




The banks that signed up to provide a ton of the financing are still flush with all those capital reserves the post recession regulations made them stack up.  But that doesn't mean they signed up meaning to lose money.  They meant to unload the debt, not hold it, but the market for that is bad now:  they would lose hundreds of millions if they had to sell it, and it's still unclear what Musk even means to do with the platform. 

It's not simple to develop the equivalent of an "everything" app like China has in WeChat,  off a platform like Twitter with a much smaller base and only a social media aspect at present.     Also, some of the other financing for the Twitter deal involves a few billion in unsecured bonds, and the appetite for those is fading fast in the current environment.

This thing could still land in court and the judge seems to realize that.  And you know there's still Musk having to sell down Tesla to make the bulk of the financing, what does that say about prospects for his having to unload other stuff.   Markets down on other issues too.  This guy, gee, would you even want to be in any part of his org chart?!


----------



## Alli

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1578109375637602306/

 Just gets better and better.


----------



## Runs For Fun

12ft |
					






					12ft.io


----------



## lizkat

Runs For Fun said:


> 12ft |
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 12ft.io




Welp...  he's got more time than a week.  The judge just said until Oct 28th, and if he doesn't have a deal wrapped up by then the trial will be sometime in November...









						Judge delays Twitter trial, gives Musk time to seal buyout
					

A judge has delayed a looming trial between Twitter and Elon Musk, giving the Tesla CEO  more time to close his $44 billion deal to buy the company after months spent fighting to get out of it.




					apnews.com


----------



## Eric

Runs For Fun said:


> 12ft |
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 12ft.io



I think it's partially right that it will turn into a Conservative cesspool but I don't think it will hand Trump a win. Nothing Twitter can do to move those the middle and that's what it will take for Trump to win again, nobody outside of his nutjob base is going to vote for him again, especially now.


----------



## Runs For Fun

Eric said:


> I think it's partially right that it will turn into a Conservative cesspool but I don't think it will hand Trump a win. Nothing Twitter can do to move those the middle and that's what it will take for Trump to win again, nobody outside of his nutjob base is going to vote for him again, especially now.



Yeah I don't think it's going to give Trump a win. Sounds a bit hyperbolic to me. But I could definitely see it turning into a RW cesspool.


----------



## Pumbaa

Runs For Fun said:


> Yeah I don't think it's going to give Trump a win. Sounds a bit hyperbolic to me. But I could definitely see it turning into a RW cesspool.




My notifications in the app today…


----------



## Eric

Pumbaa said:


> My notifications in the app today…
> 
> View attachment 18269



Total dumpster fire, they can have it.


----------



## Pumbaa

Eric said:


> Total dumpster fire, they can have it.



Yeah. For multiple reasons…

On my home screen (or whatever they call it), I checked the 20 first posts.

12 completely unsolicited tweets
4 ads
4 tweets posted or liked by people I follow

I’m not even seeing most of the tweets by the few people I actually follow. Whats the frigging point?!


----------



## Yoused

Pumbaa said:


> Whats the frigging point?



if the service is free _you are the product_


----------



## lizkat

I work off a browser when using Twitter so when I log in, I then head straight to a list that is nothing but the Twitter accounts for home page of each of the online newspapers to which I subscribe.  From there I launch into the websites of the papers themselves depending on tweets about stories I might find compelling.

The Twitter tab sits there patiently waiting for me to remember that I also follow some birdwatchers and so to return and check out my Home feed.  

Sometimes I can delay getting annoyed by twitter-algo crap in my own feed for awhile by clicking on the owner of a bird photo tweet by someone I follow, and scrolling through that person's tweets and retweets for awhile.

But yeah, it doesn't take long before I run into one of Twitters blasted algo-inserted  tweets

_by someone who liked a tweet posted by someone who follows a WSJ reporter..._​​and the first time I see one of those humdingers,  I'm outta there and Twitter is lucky if I don't go back and find that reporter and unfollow him or her...


----------



## Eric

This sleazebag needs to keep his bipolar ass out of politics.









						Elon Musk Spoke to Putin Before Tweeting Ukraine Peace Plan: Report
					

The world’s richest man spoke directly with Vladimir Putin, Eurasia Group’s Ian Bremmer reported. Musk denied the report in a tweet.




					www.vice.com
				




Elon Musk Spoke to Putin Before Tweeting Ukraine Peace Plan: Report​
https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1576969255031296000/


----------



## Herdfan

Eric said:


> This sleazebag needs to keep his bipolar ass out of politics.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Elon Musk Spoke to Putin Before Tweeting Ukraine Peace Plan: Report
> 
> 
> The world’s richest man spoke directly with Vladimir Putin, Eurasia Group’s Ian Bremmer reported. Musk denied the report in a tweet.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.vice.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Elon Musk Spoke to Putin Before Tweeting Ukraine Peace Plan: Report​
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1576969255031296000/




Musk denies it.









						Elon Musk denies report that he talked to Putin recently about Ukraine war
					

Ian Bremmer reported that the Tesla CEO had spoken to the Russian leader before tweeting about the war in Ukraine, but Musk denied it.




					www.cnbc.com


----------



## Yoused

Herdfan said:


> Musk denies it.




_It was some damn good weed, man._


----------



## Eric

Yoused said:


> _It was some damn good weed, man._



I'm going with the guy not bonging out on podcasts from nutjobs.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1579941475613229056/


----------



## Cmaier

Herdfan said:


> Musk denies it.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Elon Musk denies report that he talked to Putin recently about Ukraine war
> 
> 
> Ian Bremmer reported that the Tesla CEO had spoken to the Russian leader before tweeting about the war in Ukraine, but Musk denied it.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.cnbc.com




Is he lying now or did he lie to Bremer?


----------



## lizkat

Cmaier said:


> Is he lying now or did he lie to Bremer?




Yeah exactly.   See I will believe Bremer,  but one must consider Bremer's source.

This f'g guy Musk. How about wrap up the Twitter deal before deciding to help Putin wrap up Ukraine.   Did he try to pitch a Tesla dealership in Moscow?  _For you Vlad a special price too. _

Wonder what the odds are now for a November trial in Delaware Chancery Court. 

Meanwhile Gizmodo previews some of the worst accounts could be reinstated on Twitter. Hope blocking is still in the Twitter toolbox if Musk decides to unleash Trump and some other dreadful characters on that platform again.









						The Worst People Who Could Get Their Accounts Back if Elon Musk Buys Twitter
					

Musk and other free speech warriors, including the state of Texas, could restore Twitter to its previous cesspool status.




					gizmodo.com


----------



## Eric

Well said.


Elon Musk needs to stfu from
      WhitePeopleTwitter


----------



## Cmaier

Eric said:


> Well said.






Eric said:


> __
> https://www.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/y230e6




any of my silicon valley peeps up for annexing part of tesla headquarters tonight over by arastradero road?  I held a referendum of the squirrels and dear, and they all voted to become part of the Maier Federation.


----------



## Yoused

What a troll









						Elon Musk says he’s sold 10,000 of ‘Burnt Hair’ perfume
					

Elon Musk said he sold 10,000 bottles of “Burnt Hair” perfume through his business The Boring Company, earning more than $1 million in sales from the product. The billionaire announced …




					thehill.com
				




Described as "_The Essence of Burning Desire_" which, according to the article, "saves you the trouble of leaning over a candle."

Of course a guy named Musk is going to market perfume. How could he not?


----------



## Eric

And now this, looks like I bailed at the right time.

Elon Musk reportedly wants to fire most of Twitter’s employees​








						Elon Musk reportedly wants to fire most of Twitter’s employees
					

The acquisition seems to be going forward




					www.theverge.com
				






> About 7,500 people currently work at Twitter — and 75 percent of them can expect to be shown the door, _The Washington Post _reports. Elon Musk, who is acquiring the company, has been telling prospective investors that he plans drastic firings to bring down costs.
> 
> Musk has a deadline to close the purchase of Twitter by October 28th. In a sign the deal is proceeding, Twitter froze its employees’ equity awards, _Bloomberg_ reported. Anonymous sources tell _The Post_ that the deal is moving forward in good faith.
> 
> Job cuts were planned anyway. Before Musk’s bid, Twitter management planned to slice almost a quarter of the workforce, chopping $800 million from payroll. Musk’s planned cuts, which are larger, are “unimaginable,” the former head of Twitter’s spam and health metrics told _The Post_. Users would likely notice immediately — as Twitter is likely to experience more hacks, for instance. Musk plans to implement stack ranking, the practice famously ended at Microsoft in 2013 because it contributed to a bad culture, to shrink headcount.


----------



## KingOfPain

The US government might stop the deal because they consider it as a national security risk:









						US might bail Musk out by blocking Twitter deal over national security
					

Musk's Twitter and Starlink deals could warrant national security reviews.




					arstechnica.com


----------



## fischersd

KingOfPain said:


> The US government might stop the deal because they consider it as a national security risk:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> US might bail Musk out by blocking Twitter deal over national security
> 
> 
> Musk's Twitter and Starlink deals could warrant national security reviews.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> arstechnica.com



So, the US will keep bat-shit crazy, colluding with Russia citizens from acquiring social media companies, but not keep them out of the highest office in the country.

Gotcha.


----------



## KingOfPain

fischersd said:


> So, the US will keep bat-shit crazy, colluding with Russia citizens from acquiring social media companies, but not keep them out of the highest office in the country.




It makes sense that everyone in the administration -- except the president, of course -- needs a security screening, doesn't it?


----------



## AG_PhamD

KingOfPain said:


> The US government might stop the deal because they consider it as a national security risk:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> US might bail Musk out by blocking Twitter deal over national security
> 
> 
> Musk's Twitter and Starlink deals could warrant national security reviews.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> arstechnica.com




Let me preface this first by saying I have never been much of a fan of Elon Musk… well before it was cool. I can appreciate his efforts to bring EVs to the mass market (despite the many flaws of Tesla) and how SpaceX has revolutionized how we access space. 



> According to Bloomberg’s interviews with “people familiar with the matter,” US officials were not comfortable with Musk's tweets that threatened to stop funding Starlink service in Ukraine…



I discussed this earlier, but it appears the US and foreign government bought the Starlink ground terminals, though I’m not sure at what price. The typical consumer price for these are sold at a loss. Reportedly these governments also funded 30% of the service costs. It’s also worth noting the DoD has paid Starlink many millions ($150m in one contract alone. 

No company should have to loose money selling their product/service (similarly govts shouldn’t overpay for products/service as is all too often the case). I’m sure Ratheon isn’t selling Javelins at a 70% loss.  

Clearly Starlink is a vital resource and Musk should not shutoff service. Airing his grievances on Twitter should not be the way to resolve such issues… but of course that’s Elon Musk for you. As is the fact he put his company in a situation where he was partially donating services apparently without a formal contract. 



> …and discussed solutions to the war that would be favorable to Russian President Vladimir Putin.



The notion that Elon Musk is supporting Russia is just ridiculous. He wouldn’t have donated 10’s of millions in satellite services to Ukraine.  I read his Twitter poll as well meaning but profoundly naive. At the beginning of the war much of Eastern Ukraine was pro-Russian. There was a fair argument to cede the land and prevent hundreds of thousands of people dying, millions of refugees fleeing, billions in destruction, etc. Unfortunately the Russians have committed such heinous war crimes I’m not sure there’s many people left in Ukraine who see this as a reasonable option. Not to mention most of the civilians of the occupied regions have either fled, been murdered, or forcefully relocated to rural Russia. I think Musk sincerely wants peace, but is totally misinformed. That doesn’t mean he’s aligned with Putin. 

There is also an argument to be made that if no peace deal is made (which would have to include an off-ramp for Putin, which would have to include ceding territory ie Crimea), there is a serious risk Russia could escalate to WMD’s as they lose more and more territory. That could mean further death and destruction (if not permanent destruction) for Ukraine, risk involving NATO, and causing WWIII.

So I don’t think striving for peace is anti-Ukrainian or Pro-Russian. Musks idea is certainly a poor one, but at some point concessions may have to made. In the meantime, Ukraine is devoted to regaining its territory and NATO has a profound interest in weakening Russias military as much as possible. 

And believe me when I say I am very much pro-Ukraine. I actually feel like America has provided basically as little resources as possible to keep the war going as long as possible, in the interest of bleeding out Russia for as long as possible. In the interest of Ukrainian lives, I don’t believe that’s the right way of doing things. 

Frankly what’s more concerning to me is Musk’s business deals in China regarding Tesla. He has been known to show deference to the CCP just so he can continue manufacturing and selling his cars there. Is there a way China could manipulate Twitter via Musk and Tesla, I wouldn’t be surprised. Musk is known to do very stupid things to keep his companies afloat. 



> Concerns about Musk drawing Twitter finances from foreign investors reportedly began escalating within the Biden administration, which is trying to avoid national security threats surrounding Musk deals.



I think this is a fair argument, however it’s not consistent at all. The current administration doesn’t seem to care very much TikTok is owned by a Chinese firm. TikTok is perhaps one of the most, if not the most, influential social media sites for those under 24. And I don’t really buy the crap the American operators try to sell Congress about the security of users from China. They are far from convincing. 

It’s not like social media companies don’t cow tow to foreign governments anyways, at least in their markets. 

I have to imagine there is foreign investment in our media. As it is your have things like RT which is blatantly straight Russian propaganda, Al Jazeera is funded by the Qatari government and isn’t exactly unbiased, etc. 

Hell, look at how much our government is influenced by corporate lobbyists and special interest groups. 

So I have little sympathy for Musk. He made his bed, let him lay in it. If he destroys the platform (hard to believe it could be any worse than it is), then so be it. Let him and his investors eat the cost. And for those concerned about a billionaire running the platform, that’s very much the norm for large social media sites. As well as news media (ie Murdoch, Bezos, Sulzberger).


----------



## Pumbaa

AG_PhamD said:


> At the beginning of the war much of Eastern Ukraine was pro-Russian. There was a fair argument to cede the land and prevent hundreds of thousands of people dying, millions of refugees fleeing, billions in destruction, etc.



What does “much of Eastern Ukraine was pro-Russian” mean? How big share of the population was it that made ceding the land a fair argument? And what is “the land” and “Eastern Ukraine” here?


----------



## dada_dave

Hi this is crazy_dave from "the other place" I guess it's called here.  Haven't posted much recently thought I'd come over here.



AG_PhamD said:


> Let me preface this first by saying I have never been much of a fan of Elon Musk… well before it was cool. I can appreciate his efforts to bring EVs to the mass market (despite the many flaws of Tesla) and how SpaceX has revolutionized how we access space.
> 
> 
> I discussed this earlier, but it appears the US and foreign government bought the Starlink ground terminals, though I’m not sure at what price. The typical consumer price for these are sold at a loss. Reportedly these governments also funded 30% of the service costs. It’s also worth noting the DoD has paid Starlink many millions ($150m in one contract alone.
> 
> No company should have to loose money selling their product/service (similarly govts shouldn’t overpay for products/service as is all too often the case). I’m sure Ratheon isn’t selling Javelins at a 70% loss.
> 
> Clearly Starlink is a vital resource and Musk should not shutoff service. Airing his grievances on Twitter should not be the way to resolve such issues… but of course that’s Elon Musk for you. As is the fact he put his company in a situation where he was partially donating services apparently without a formal contract.
> 
> 
> The notion that Elon Musk is supporting Russia is just ridiculous. He wouldn’t have donated 10’s of millions in satellite services to Ukraine.  I read his Twitter poll as well meaning but profoundly naive. At the beginning of the war much of Eastern Ukraine was pro-Russian. There was a fair argument to cede the land and prevent hundreds of thousands of people dying, millions of refugees fleeing, billions in destruction, etc. Unfortunately the Russians have committed such heinous war crimes I’m not sure there’s many people left in Ukraine who see this as a reasonable option. Not to mention most of the civilians of the occupied regions have either fled, been murdered, or forcefully relocated to rural Russia. I think Musk sincerely wants peace, but is totally misinformed. That doesn’t mean he’s aligned with Putin.
> 
> There is also an argument to be made that if no peace deal is made (which would have to include an off-ramp for Putin, which would have to include ceding territory ie Crimea), there is a serious risk Russia could escalate to WMD’s as they lose more and more territory. That could mean further death and destruction (if not permanent destruction) for Ukraine, risk involving NATO, and causing WWIII.
> 
> So I don’t think striving for peace is anti-Ukrainian or Pro-Russian. Musks idea is certainly a poor one, but at some point concessions may have to made. In the meantime, Ukraine is devoted to regaining its territory and NATO has a profound interest in weakening Russias military as much as possible.
> 
> And believe me when I say I am very much pro-Ukraine. I actually feel like America has provided basically as little resources as possible to keep the war going as long as possible, in the interest of bleeding out Russia for as long as possible. In the interest of Ukrainian lives, I don’t believe that’s the right way of doing things.
> 
> Frankly what’s more concerning to me is Musk’s business deals in China regarding Tesla. He has been known to show deference to the CCP just so he can continue manufacturing and selling his cars there. Is there a way China could manipulate Twitter via Musk and Tesla, I wouldn’t be surprised. Musk is known to do very stupid things to keep his companies afloat.
> 
> 
> I think this is a fair argument, however it’s not consistent at all. The current administration doesn’t seem to care very much TikTok is owned by a Chinese firm. TikTok is perhaps one of the most, if not the most, influential social media sites for those under 24. And I don’t really buy the crap the American operators try to sell Congress about the security of users from China. They are far from convincing.
> 
> It’s not like social media companies don’t cow tow to foreign governments anyways, at least in their markets.
> 
> I have to imagine there is foreign investment in our media. As it is your have things like RT which is blatantly straight Russian propaganda, Al Jazeera is funded by the Qatari government and isn’t exactly unbiased, etc.
> 
> Hell, look at how much our government is influenced by corporate lobbyists and special interest groups.
> 
> So I have little sympathy for Musk. He made his bed, let him lay in it. If he destroys the platform (hard to believe it could be any worse than it is), then so be it. Let him and his investors eat the cost. And for those concerned about a billionaire running the platform, that’s very much the norm for large social media sites. As well as news media (ie Murdoch, Bezos, Sulzberger).






Pumbaa said:


> What does “much of Eastern Ukraine was pro-Russian” mean? How big share of the population was it that made ceding the land a fair argument? And what is “the land” and “Eastern Ukraine” here?




So there is little to no evidence that the majority of people in any substantial part of Ukraine wanted to rejoin Russia. Long involved history lesson: The political parties in Ukraine have almost always been centered on charismatic/wealthy individuals and split along pro-Russian and pro-European policies which means to which region/countries the parties advocate for closer ties and have been this way almost since the inception of the modern independent country 30 years ago. And the reason the independent country exists is because of a referendum in which not a single region of Ukraine wanted to stay as part of a union with Russia. Most regions were at 80-90+%, even the Donbass was over 80% and the Crimea was over 50%. Despite this pro Russian parties and politicians tended to dominate (though not completely) Ukraine's politics until the 2000s. The first pro-European president, Yuschenko, was made possible by the Orange revolution after Yanukovich - yes him - was caught trying to rig the election - with the help of you know who - and a second runoff that was deemed fair. Yanukovich would later win fairly in 2010 but was ousted after the Maidan revolution.

However, it should be noted that the casus belli for the Maidan revolution was *trade*. Simply wanting closer ties to Russia was about trade deal, even pro-Russian politicians rarely if ever talked about rejoining Russia and many voted in favor of policies to also at least curry favor with US and western leaders. Yanukovich bowed to pressure from Moscow and scrapped a EU trade deal that was favored by just about everyone and tried to ram a Russian trade deal instead. He was then so inept that he caused a constitutional crisis over this and and then so cowardly that he fled the country when the resulting popular uprising proved resistant to his unnecessarily violent repressions. So again, wanting to be part of Russia and being a "pro-Russian" politician are two separate things. Admittedly there is some overlap and some pro-Russian politicians have become collaborators, but many fewer than the Russians assumed there would be and some are even currently in the Ukrainian army fighting the Russian invasion.

The problem with Elon Musk in this particular issue (beyond his general pathologies already discussed at length here) is that he seems to be paying attention and still parroting a lot of Russian propaganda that you only get if you go deep into the woods on this issue as opposed to being merely naive. This is similar to other members of his circle of tech bros like Sacks and Thiel. So this doesn't seem to be an accident.

As for Starlink ... truthfully it's not exactly clear what's going on. Starlink did donate large numbers of terminals, but no where near what they claimed to, most have been purchased by the US, Polish, and other governments and even private Ukrainian citizens. That Starlink is losing millions upon millions of dollars comes from Starlink with little to no accounting to back it up. It's possibly true, but not guaranteed to be so. Given their behavior I would verify before trusting. When this story first broke as a result of Musks' whinging US government officials were furious because according to them this was not originally something they had planned on giving to Ukraine in the first place. Starlink donated the initial batch of terminals through US Aid (though it's possible that even then some of these were then purchased by the US government as there were reports that the US government helped harden them software/hardware against EW and cyber attack before handing them over - that is a bit more on the rumor/speculation side as I'm not sure I saw that confirmed). Now that the Ukrainians are so reliant on the system this appears to be more of a shakedown - pay up or we turn the system you now rely on but didn't ask for off. At the very least it puts their initial largess into doubt: we'll get you hooked so you'll pay up later while we reap the PR benefits of being so seemingly generous and get Starlink in the news.

Finally, having read about Elon Musk's companies ... it would appear that they function best when he isn't actually paying attention to them which happens quite often. While I'm sure a big venture like the Starlink-Ukraine deal would've probably required his attention that's also some thing to keep in mind.

Do I actually think he's full pro-Russian? No ... but he's a self-centered mercenary troll and overall isn't much bothered about authoritarianism, human rights, labor rights, or even the environment (he'll use it as a prop, but his comments on that recently have been similarly trollish) and fits right in with other self styled right-wing "masters of the universe". He kept the mask on for a long time for a lot of people to buy the "genius savior of mankind act", but to me Elon the troll is who he really is and his behavior is just another symptom of that.


----------



## AG_PhamD

dada_dave said:


> Hi this is crazy_dave from "the other place" I guess it's called here.  Haven't posted much recently thought I'd come over here.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> So there is little to no evidence that the majority of people in any substantial part of Ukraine wanted to rejoin Russia. Long involved history lesson: The political parties in Ukraine have almost always been centered on charismatic/wealthy individuals and split along pro-Russian and pro-European policies which means to which region/countries the parties advocate for closer ties and have been this way almost since the inception of the modern independent country 30 years ago. And the reason the independent country exists is because of a referendum in which not a single region of Ukraine wanted to stay as part of a union with Russia. Most regions were at 80-90+%, even the Donbass was over 80% and the Crimea was over 50%. Despite this pro Russian parties and politicians tended to dominate (though not completely) Ukraine's politics until the 2000s. The first pro-European president, Yuschenko, was made possible by the Orange revolution after Yanukovich - yes him - was caught trying to rig the election - with the help of you know who - and a second runoff that was deemed fair. Yanukovich would later win fairly in 2010 but was ousted after the Maidan revolution.
> 
> However, it should be noted that the casus belli for the Maidan revolution was *trade*. Simply wanting closer ties to Russia was about trade deal, even pro-Russian politicians rarely if ever talked about rejoining Russia and many voted in favor of policies to also at least curry favor with US and western leaders. Yanukovich bowed to pressure from Moscow and scrapped a EU trade deal that was favored by just about everyone and tried to ram a Russian trade deal instead. He was then so inept that he caused a constitutional crisis over this and and then so cowardly that he fled the country when the resulting popular uprising proved resistant to his unnecessarily violent repressions. So again, wanting to be part of Russia and being a "pro-Russian" politician are two separate things. Admittedly there is some overlap and some pro-Russian politicians have become collaborators, but many fewer than the Russians assumed there would be and some are even currently in the Ukrainian army fighting the Russian invasion.
> 
> The problem with Elon Musk in this particular issue (beyond his general pathologies already discussed at length here) is that he seems to be paying attention and still parroting a lot of Russian propaganda that you only get if you go deep into the woods on this issue as opposed to being merely naive. This is similar to other members of his circle of tech bros like Sacks and Thiel. So this doesn't seem to be an accident.
> 
> As for Starlink ... truthfully it's not exactly clear what's going on. Starlink did donate large numbers of terminals, but no where near what they claimed to, most have been purchased by the US, Polish, and other governments and even private Ukrainian citizens. That Starlink is losing millions upon millions of dollars comes from Starlink with little to no accounting to back it up. It's possibly true, but not guaranteed to be so. Given their behavior I would verify before trusting. When this story first broke as a result of Musks' whinging US government officials were furious because according to them this was not originally something they had planned on giving to Ukraine in the first place. Starlink donated the initial batch of terminals through US Aid (though it's possible that even then some of these were then purchased by the US government as there were reports that the US government helped harden them software/hardware against EW and cyber attack before handing them over - that is a bit more on the rumor/speculation side as I'm not sure I saw that confirmed). Now that the Ukrainians are so reliant on the system this appears to be more of a shakedown - pay up or we turn the system you now rely on but didn't ask for off. At the very least it puts their initial largess into doubt: we'll get you hooked so you'll pay up later while we reap the PR benefits of being so seemingly generous and get Starlink in the news.
> 
> Finally, having read about Elon Musk's companies ... it would appear that they function best when he isn't actually paying attention to them which happens quite often. While I'm sure a big venture like the Starlink-Ukraine deal would've probably required his attention that's also some thing to keep in mind.
> 
> Do I actually think he's full pro-Russian? No ... but he's a self-centered mercenary troll and overall isn't much bothered about authoritarianism, human rights, labor rights, or even the environment (he'll use it as a prop, but his comments on that recently have been similarly trollish) and fits right in with other self styled right-wing "masters of the universe". He kept the mask on for a long time for a lot of people to buy the "genius savior of mankind act", but to me Elon the troll is who he really is and his behavior is just another symptom of that.




I think part of the problem is A. How these surveys are conducted and B. Who is conducting them. As this WaPo article states, Ukraine says only 16% of those in the Donbas want to join Russia while according to Russia 70% of want to. As you might imagine, independent polling from the WaPo yields much more convoluted results. 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...kraine-donbas-donetsk-luhansk-public-opinion/

Note: This WaPo study was conducted prior to invasion in 2022 but is consistent with 2020 results. 

I think it’s fair to say, regardless of these past results, if you were to poll these same people or the results might very different due to the brutality of the Russian military and their scorched earth campaign. 

And the true flaw with Musk’s plan is that many/most of the people in the currently occupied region are either refugees, dead, or relocated to Russia. So holding any sort of referendum, even with international oversight, is rather meaningless at this point. 

But is it really surprising Musk says and does things without thinking about the details and consequences. Not at all. Just like buying Twitter. Just like all his promises to investors on product timelines. Just like 420 funding secured. Just like supplying Starlink evidently without a formal contract in place as to who will fund the cost after a certain point.


----------



## Alli

dada_dave said:


> Hi this is crazy_dave from "the other place" I guess it's called here.  Haven't posted much recently thought I'd come over here.



Nice to have you jump in!


----------



## dada_dave

AG_PhamD said:


> I think part of the problem is A. How these surveys are conducted and B. Who is conducting them. As this WaPo article states, Ukraine says only 16% of those in the Donbas want to join Russia while according to Russia 70% of want to. As you might imagine, independent polling from the WaPo yields much more convoluted results.
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...kraine-donbas-donetsk-luhansk-public-opinion/
> 
> Note: This WaPo study was conducted prior to invasion in 2022 but is consistent with 2020 results.
> 
> I think it’s fair to say, regardless of these past results, if you were to poll these same people or the results might very different due to the brutality of the Russian military and their scorched earth campaign.




What I was quoting was not a survey or poll but the independence referendum from the 1990s - which was the last time to my knowledge that the question was put to the voters and was deemed fair and accepted by all parties. I don't know of any poll or survey that asked that question before 2014 - the initial the Russian invasion, which as you and the article pointed out makes any later polling almost impossible but once again (as your article pointed out as well) there is little reason to believe that a fair vote in any of these regions would have led to the breaking away of these regions much less joining Russia.

Another example of this? Almost all the initial leaders of the so-called "people's republics", Girkin et al., were Russian military/intelligence officers. Few if any were Ukrainian and those that were had previously been political obscurities or even convicts. Some turned into war criminal maniacs that the Russians themselves had to deal with (at least in 2014 they cared a little about the optics as they wanted to present themselves as saving the people of the Donbass rather than invaders). So it's not like they had support from prominent members of the communities they were supposedly representing. In fact when one of those Russian leaders stepped down (who is now a member of the Russian Duma and again ex-intelligence/army who helped create the exact same kind of breakaway province of Transnistria in the 1990s - I mean seriously same exact playbook) he even stated it was because it looked bad that all the leaders were Russian. And largely their attempts to take the East on their own failed, which given the sorry state of the Ukrainian army in 2014 is quite a testament to how weak the separatist forces were. In fact, it would've been completely rolled back except that the regular Russian army got involved and propped them up. Interestingly, and this is a side note, while the Crimean invasion of 2014 was clearly planned and executed at the highest levels, there is debate over whether in the Donbass Girkin et al tried to go full "Man who would be king", or they had the backing of the FSB but not the Kremlin/MOD, or this was a fully sanctioned operation by Putin. That's less clear and getting answers to this is one of the (minor) reasons why Ukraine (never mind the Dutch for MH17) want Girkin captured alive so badly now that he's back in the fight (sort of, in uniform again, but still on Russian soil as far as his last geo-locatable photo).

Yes, the brutality of the Russians has further eroded whatever support they might've had, but given the above, the problem with Musk and others equating voting for pro-Russian parties with being fine with joining Russia should be much more clear even if Russia weren't being so brutal.



AG_PhamD said:


> And the true flaw with Musk’s plan is that many/most of the people in the currently occupied region are either refugees, dead, or relocated to Russia. So holding any sort of referendum, even with international oversight, is rather meaningless at this point.




It's even worse than that. The Russians would use that time to regroup and consolidate their holdings (read - commit more crimes against humanity and dig in further). It would make the war go on longer and harder since the Russians wouldn't respect any vote even if it could be held including the refugees (which as you point out is a near impossibility already), wouldn't care if it was deemed fair by international observers, and wouldn't care about the results one way or the other. Democratic rights and values are not why they're there. The Russians and the Assad regime used cease fires and the promise peace in Syria to do this all the time: recoup, commit more crimes, and launch new offensives. And I think Musk knows this. He just doesn't care. As I said, he's paying attention and as I mentioned in the last post about what happens when he starts paying attention and actually meddling things generally get worse.



AG_PhamD said:


> But is it really surprising Musk says and does things without thinking about the details and consequences. Not at all. Just like buying Twitter. Just like all his promises to investors on product timelines. Just like 420 funding secured. Just like supplying Starlink evidently without a formal contract in place as to who will fund the cost after a certain point.




I feel it is much darker than that and connecting to the overall thesis of this forum topic. Yes, he's impulsive and no where near as smart as he thinks he is, but his actions cannot be ascribed to just that alone. Basically he's an asshole and viewed through that lens, buying Twitter to appeal to right-wing culture warrior trolls, the Starlink brouhaha, and his trolling of just about everyone in this conflict (he also trolls the Russians) all make a lot more sense. Not in the sense that it is rational, but he's an asshole and these are things that an asshole would do. Hell he even suggested just letting China have Taiwan and not even bothering to try to couch in popular opinion of the Taiwanese for that one (because you really can't) which shows democratic rights and values aren't high on his priority list either. And these views are not unique to him, but shared widely by his coterie of fellow tech-bro assholes. So this is not just him. He's just the most prominent and sadly influential and set to become even more so if the acquisition of Twitter goes through.

EDIT: I don't think you and I are very far off from each other, but I wanted to provide additional context to show that his comments are even more disingenuous and trollish than him simply not thinking things through. That would be bad enough, but I feel that his actions and statements are indicative of far more and worse flaws than mere impulsiveness and unreliability, which would be bad enough in someone of his stature.


----------



## AG_PhamD

dada_dave said:


> What I was quoting was not a survey or poll but the independence referendum from the 1990s - which was the last time to my knowledge that the question was put to the voters and was deemed fair and accepted by all parties. I don't know of any poll or survey that asked that question before 2014 - the initial the Russian invasion, which as you and the article pointed out makes any later polling almost impossible but once again (as your article pointed out as well) there is little reason to believe that a fair vote in any of these regions would have led to the breaking away of these regions much less joining Russia.
> 
> Another example of this? Almost all the initial leaders of the so-called "people's republics", Girkin et al., were Russian military/intelligence officers. Few if any were Ukrainian and those that were had previously been political obscurities or even convicts. Some turned into war criminal maniacs that the Russians themselves had to deal with (at least in 2014 they cared a little about the optics as they wanted to present themselves as saving the people of the Donbass rather than invaders). So it's not like they had support from prominent members of the communities they were supposedly representing. In fact when one of those Russian leaders stepped down (who is now a member of the Russian Duma and again ex-intelligence/army who helped create the exact same kind of breakaway province of Transnistria in the 1990s - I mean seriously same exact playbook) he even stated it was because it looked bad that all the leaders were Russian. And largely their attempts to take the East on their own failed, which given the sorry state of the Ukrainian army in 2014 is quite a testament to how weak the separatist forces were. In fact, it would've been completely rolled back except that the regular Russian army got involved and propped them up. Interestingly, and this is a side note, while the Crimean invasion of 2014 was clearly planned and executed at the highest levels, there is debate over whether in the Donbass Girkin et al tried to go full "Man who would be king", or they had the backing of the FSB but not the Kremlin/MOD, or this was a fully sanctioned operation by Putin. That's less clear and getting answers to this is one of the (minor) reasons why Ukraine (never mind the Dutch for MH17) want Girkin captured alive so badly now that he's back in the fight (sort of, in uniform again, but still on Russian soil as far as his last geo-locatable photo).
> 
> Yes, the brutality of the Russians has further eroded whatever support they might've had, but given the above, the problem with Musk and others equating voting for pro-Russian parties with being fine with joining Russia should be much more clear even if Russia weren't being so brutal.
> 
> 
> 
> It's even worse than that. The Russians would use that time to regroup and consolidate their holdings (read - commit more crimes against humanity and dig in further). It would make the war go on longer and harder since the Russians wouldn't respect any vote even if it could be held including the refugees (which as you point out is a near impossibility already), wouldn't care if it was deemed fair by international observers, and wouldn't care about the results one way or the other. Democratic rights and values are not why they're there. The Russians and the Assad regime used cease fires and the promise peace in Syria to do this all the time: recoup, commit more crimes, and launch new offensives. And I think Musk knows this. He just doesn't care. As I said, he's paying attention and as I mentioned in the last post about what happens when he starts paying attention and actually meddling things generally get worse.
> 
> 
> 
> I feel it is much darker than that and connecting to the overall thesis of this forum topic. Yes, he's impulsive and no where near as smart as he thinks he is, but his actions cannot be ascribed to just that alone. Basically he's an asshole and viewed through that lens, buying Twitter to appeal to right-wing culture warrior trolls, the Starlink brouhaha, and his trolling of just about everyone in this conflict (he also trolls the Russians) all make a lot more sense. Not in the sense that it is rational, but he's an asshole and these are things that an asshole would do. Hell he even suggested just letting China have Taiwan and not even bothering to try to couch in popular opinion of the Taiwanese for that one (because you really can't) which shows democratic rights and values aren't high on his priority list either. And these views are not unique to him, but shared widely by his coterie of fellow tech-bro assholes. So this is not just him. He's just the most prominent and sadly influential and set to become even more so if the acquisition of Twitter goes through.
> 
> EDIT: I don't think you and I are very far off from each other, but I wanted to provide additional context to show that his comments are even more disingenuous and trollish than him simply not thinking things through. That would be bad enough, but I feel that his actions and statements are indicative of far more and worse flaws than mere impulsiveness and unreliability, which would be bad enough in someone of his stature.




Yes, I think we’re essentially in agreement. Thank you for the detailed history. My main point was I think it’s silly when people say or imply to propose a peace deal that happens to align with some of Russia’s interests automatically makes that person a Putin puppet. I think wanting to put an end to the death and destruction occurring in Ukraine is a well intentioned argument… it just the proposed resolution has no basis in reality. Similarly, I find it rather patronizing when people say that the US/NATO should be pushing for peace rather than more war- when clearly its the Ukrainians decision whether they want to fight or not, and clearly they do. When Russia invaded there was no guarantee the West would provide aid or at least to the degree that we currently are. I imagine if we ceased providing arms Ukraine would continue fighting, finding clever solutions to their problems just as they’ve had to do this entire time.

Similarly I think it’s ridiculous Rand Paul was criticized for his concerns over the accountability of where our weapons are ending up. European governments had concerns about weapons ending up within their own countries. That said it’s a war, things are clearly going to be a mess, particularly in the beginning. but having an inspector general doesn’t sound unreasonable.

Then you have the 30 democrats who were lambasted for writing a letter encouraging the Biden administration to have dialogue with Russia to create a ceasefire- so much so they had to retract the letter. To my knowledge they said nothing about ceding territory or stopping weapons shipments. I think it’s naive to think Putin’s words can be trusted in the slightest, he has proved himself untrustworthy time after time after time. And frankly I’m not confident there is anything that can even be negotiated at the moment- Russia has very little to even offer and no exit ramp. But I don’t think it’s fake to criticize people as Putin supporters who strive for a peaceful resolution, despite their impractical views.

I think Musk is given a lot more credit than he deserves. He didn’t found Tesla, he bought it. He didn’t invent their batteries. He didn’t design the engines in SpaceX rockets. People make it sound like he is the only engineer at these companies. Tunnel boring is nothing new. The “hyperloop” idea is 100+ years old and consistency found to be entirely infeasible. Etc. And for the guy who claims he knows more about manufacturing cars, his belief in over-automation nearly ran Tesla into the ground- something every other car company has known for decades. And if I’m not mistaken they’re still building their cars of mediocre quality under tents. If Musk is a genius I think it’s in his ability to be a visionary and perhaps his ability to attract talent and funding while extracting the maximum value out of his employees to achieve that vision.

When you have someone with the social skill deficits as Musk, it’s not really surprising his thoughts on foreign policy would be completely impractical. Supposedly he is on the autism spectrum, which wouldn’t surprise me. It explains why he thinks he can take a deeply complicated, emotionally and politically charged situation, and process the situation to a logical solution like a robot devoid of the human aspect and practical real word issues that can’t just be disregarded, even if he does so in his mind.

It’s also worth noting regarding the WaPo survey results, we have no idea how strongly people felt about those opinions. It’s possible that the majority of people voting for separation from Ukraine were rather ambivalent about it in the first place. Or we’re under the impression the grass is greener on the other side, until they realize it’s not.


----------



## dada_dave

AG_PhamD said:


> Yes, I think we’re essentially in agreement. Thank you for the detailed history. My main point was I think it’s silly when people say or imply to propose a peace deal that happens to align with some of Russia’s interests automatically makes that person a Putin puppet. I think wanting to put an end to the death and destruction occurring in Ukraine is a well intentioned argument… it just the proposed resolution has no basis in reality. Similarly, I find it rather patronizing when people say that the US/NATO should be pushing for peace rather than more war- when clearly its the Ukrainians decision whether they want to fight or not, and clearly they do. When Russia invaded there was no guarantee the West would provide aid or at least to the degree that we currently are. I imagine if we ceased providing arms Ukraine would continue fighting, finding clever solutions to their problems just as they’ve had to do this entire time.
> 
> Similarly I think it’s ridiculous Rand Paul was criticized for his concerns over the accountability of where our weapons are ending up. European governments had concerns about weapons ending up within their own countries. That said it’s a war, things are clearly going to be a mess, particularly in the beginning. but having an inspector general doesn’t sound unreasonable.
> 
> Then you have the 30 democrats who were lambasted for writing a letter encouraging the Biden administration to have dialogue with Russia to create a ceasefire- so much so they had to retract the letter. To my knowledge they said nothing about ceding territory or stopping weapons shipments. I think it’s naive to think Putin’s words can be trusted in the slightest, he has proved himself untrustworthy time after time after time. And frankly I’m not confident there is anything that can even be negotiated at the moment- Russia has very little to even offer and no exit ramp. But I don’t think it’s fake to criticize people as Putin supporters who strive for a peaceful resolution, despite their impractical views.
> 
> I think Musk is given a lot more credit than he deserves. He didn’t found Tesla, he bought it. He didn’t invent their batteries. He didn’t design the engines in SpaceX rockets. People make it sound like he is the only engineer at these companies. Tunnel boring is nothing new. The “hyperloop” idea is 100+ years old and consistency found to be entirely infeasible. Etc. And for the guy who claims he knows more about manufacturing cars, his belief in over-automation nearly ran Tesla into the ground- something every other car company has known for decades. And if I’m not mistaken they’re still building their cars of mediocre quality under tents. If Musk is a genius I think it’s in his ability to be a visionary and perhaps his ability to attract talent and funding while extracting the maximum value out of his employees to achieve that vision.
> 
> When you have someone with the social skill deficits as Musk, it’s not really surprising his thoughts on foreign policy would be completely impractical. Supposedly he is on the autism spectrum, which wouldn’t surprise me. It explains why he thinks he can take a deeply complicated, emotionally and politically charged situation, and process the situation to a logical solution like a robot devoid of the human aspect and practical real word issues that can’t just be disregarded, even if he does so in his mind.




A couple points of disagreement:

1) Rand Paul is a **** and his concerns are almost always disingenuous. Frankly if he said the clear sky was blue I'd poke my head out to check. But also when all was said and done nobody has actually found anything untoward about the western weapon shipments to Ukraine - a lot of the big headlines when you actually read the stories was mere speculation on the order of: Ukraine has corruption (which it does and they know it) and in other conflicts weapons have been trafficked, so therefore it must be happening here without anything substantial beyond that. And yes the Russians did try to push that line to try to limit weapon shipments (thankfully, like most of their recent propaganda attempts, they were very, very lazy when doing it). They do now have an inspector general and you're right it isn't inappropriate to have such a thing even if nothing bad is actually happening with Western weapon shipments. This is not to say that Ukraine's military or especially their intelligence agencies are completely corruption free, they ain't (and news agencies, Ukrainian ones, have detailed when there have been actual problems there, not speculative ones), but according to everyone who has actually looked, western weapons aren't actually going missing, never have, and frankly couldn't be on any significant scale because the Ukrainians wouldn't have been able to do what they've done if they were given the initial disparities in equipment between the two armies.

2) Most of the push back on the letter was not that the 30 representatives in question are secret Putin supporters - yeah some people on the internet will respond that way to just about everything, but most of it was just how blindingly naive and even harmful it was. You already mentioned the naivety. But it's worse than that. The letter explicitly said "sure the notion that we shouldn't negotiate about Ukraine without Ukraine is nice but we should explore doing that anyway" which is just mind bogglingly colonialist of them (something Raskin who signed the letter alluded to in his own retraction) and "oh the Russian manipulations of the world economy and US gas prices is totally working and a good reason to force a cease fire". As one wit put it: TIL that the progressive option is being neo-colonialists to get lower gas prices. Basically it's something that gives the Russian hope that their strategy to reduce Western support by disrupting the world economy will work if they keep it up as ceasefires benefit them, not the Ukrainians as I mentioned in my last post. Freezing the conflict is very much in their interests. And as congresspeople it is their ****ing job to be aware of that. So I was pretty pissed when I read that letter even if some of them try to defend it as having been written and signed months earlier - frankly it was bad then too. The fact that it was released right before the midterms undercutting the message of their own party and administration was just an extra chef's kiss incompetence. And then they blamed the release and lack of vetting on the staff. To be clear: there names of people I otherwise like on that letter (most of the ones I really like haven't tried to defend it or their names being on it and agreed it was a mistake). In the long run it probably won't matter very much, but the people who wrote and signed the letter very much deserved the scorching they got - both from the public and reportedly from their own democratic colleagues/the administration who understood the significance of such a letter apparently better than those who signed it did.



AG_PhamD said:


> It’s also worth noting regarding the WaPo survey results, we have no idea how strongly people felt about those opinions. It’s possible that the majority of people voting for separation from Ukraine were rather ambivalent about it in the first place. Or we’re under the impression the grass is greener on the other side, until they realize it’s not.




Sure and I should add that both in Crimea and the Donbass there would still be sizable fractions of people who may indeed have wanted to join Russia - after all ~40% and 20% of people in the 1990s didn't want to leave in the first place and maybe more changed their mind in each later. It's just important to note that the only time an actual vote was held, not a single part of modern Ukraine wanted to stay attached to Russia and my earlier counterpoints were that you can't equate voting for pro-Russian politicians with wanting or even being okay with joining Russia as Musk did (I recognize that you didn't and don't). That's almost the equivalent of saying Canadians really want to be annexed by the US because they voted for politicians in favor of NAFTA. I'm exaggerating only slightly.


----------



## AG_PhamD

dada_dave said:


> A couple points of disagreement:
> 
> 1) Rand Paul is a **** and his concerns are almost always disingenuous. Frankly if he said the clear sky was blue I'd poke my head out to check. But also when all was said and done nobody has actually found anything untoward about the western weapon shipments to Ukraine - a lot of the big headlines when you actually read the stories was mere speculation on the order of: Ukraine has corruption (which it does and they know it) and in other conflicts weapons have been trafficked, so therefore it must be happening here without anything substantial beyond that. And yes the Russians did try to push that line to try to limit weapon shipments (thankfully, like most of their recent propaganda attempts, they were very, very lazy when doing it). They do now have an inspector general and you're right it isn't inappropriate to have such a thing even if nothing bad is actually happening with Western weapon shipments. This is not to say that Ukraine's military or especially their intelligence agencies are completely corruption free, they ain't (and news agencies, Ukrainian ones, have detailed when there have been actual problems there, not speculative ones), but according to everyone who has actually looked, western weapons aren't actually going missing, never have, and frankly couldn't be on any significant scale because the Ukrainians wouldn't have been able to do what they've done if they were given the initial disparities in equipment between the two armies.
> 
> 2) Most of the push back on the letter was not that the 30 representatives in question are secret Putin supporters - yeah some people on the internet will respond that way to just about everything, but most of it was just how blindingly naive and even harmful it was. You already mentioned the naivety. But it's worse than that. The letter explicitly said "sure the notion that we shouldn't negotiate about Ukraine without Ukraine is nice but we should explore doing that anyway" which is just mind bogglingly colonialist of them (something Raskin who signed the letter alluded to in his own retraction) and "oh the Russian manipulations of the world economy and US gas prices is totally working and a good reason to force a cease fire". As one wit put it: TIL that the progressive option is being neo-colonialists to get lower gas prices. Basically it's something that gives the Russian hope that their strategy to reduce Western support by disrupting the world economy will work if they keep it up as ceasefires benefit them, not the Ukrainians as I mentioned in my last post. Freezing the conflict is very much in their interests. And as congresspeople it is their ****ing job to be aware of that. So I was pretty pissed when I read that letter even if some of them try to defend it as having been written and signed months earlier - frankly it was bad then too. The fact that it was released right before the midterms undercutting the message of their own party and administration was just an extra chef's kiss incompetence. And then they blamed the release and lack of vetting on the staff. To be clear: there names of people I otherwise like on that letter (most of the ones I really like haven't tried to defend it or their names being on it and agreed it was a mistake). In the long run it probably won't matter very much, but the people who wrote and signed the letter very much deserved the scorching they got - both from the public and reportedly from their own democratic colleagues/the administration who understood the significance of such a letter apparently better than those who signed it did.
> 
> 
> 
> Sure and I should add that both in Crimea and the Donbass there would still be sizable fractions of people who may indeed have wanted to join Russia - after all ~40% and 20% of people in the 1990s didn't want to leave in the first place and maybe more changed their mind in each later. It's just important to note that the only time an actual vote was held, not a single part of modern Ukraine wanted to stay attached to Russia and my earlier counterpoints were that you can't equate voting for pro-Russian politicians with wanting or even being okay with joining Russia as Musk did (I recognize that you didn't and don't). That's almost the equivalent of saying Canadians really want to be annexed by the US because they voted for politicians in favor of NAFTA. I'm exaggerating only slightly.




I’m not at all a Rand Paul fan, but I prefer to give the benefit of the doubt when it comes to motive unless it’s blatantly obvious. I’ve never seen anything that makes him appear he is or on the side of Ukraine or did not support aid, rather he was against aid without accountability. I would say he consistently the stingiest politician in US government, as consistent as a politician can be. Given what happened in Afghanistan I don’t think it’s unreasonable. 

As a result, Ukraine put Rand Paul on the “Putin Propagandist” blacklist, which is really just insane to me. As much as I’m not a fan of his, he represents his constituents (presumably) and he has every right to put what he sees as the interests of the US above all else. Just because someone’s interests by consequence benefit Russia does not make them a Putin ally. 

It’s the same story with Israel. Clearly they condemn Russia’s actions, they have publicly numerous times and have supported Ukraine by means other than directly supplying weapons. Israel is afraid to cross Russia and consequently lose Russia’s interest in keeping Iran under relative control against Ukraine, not to mention their influence in nuclear talks. That doesn’t mean they support Russia’s heinous actions. It means they’re in the unenviable position of having to put their own existential anxieties with Iran (which is very much real) above that of Ukraine’s terrible situation. Otherwise they could find themselves in similar situation, except with Iran. 

There was a lot of speculation on the part of the media as to whether or not the weapons were reaching their destination. I would assume the overwhelming majority did considering the Ukrainian resolve. 

Europool however did report intelligence of Ukrainian arms dealers colluding with European criminal organizations. Who knows if these were Ukrainian or Western weapons, if these deals even happened, or if they were intercepted. While it’s entirely possible some corrupt element within the Ukrainian military or government diverted or planned to divert weapons, I would think the more likely scenario is when the Ukrainian government gives a bunch of arms out to civilians (not always keeping records by their own admission), you have civilians with no idea what to do with the gun, meanwhile their lives and livelihoods are falling apart. It wouldn’t be so shocking for people sell or trade these guns to some criminal in order to better support themselves, their uncertain future, or their ability to get to safety if required. I would think a fair amount of people would take the money over guns if they were under the impression the Russians were going to roll in in matter of days and take over (in the early days of the war). This is especially true if you don’t have a lot of resources, as is the case with many Ukrainians. 

That’s not to speak poorly of Ukrainians, I’m merely pointing out human nature… or more accurately animal nature- the flight or flight response and the calculations all of us would make if in the same circumstances. 

I will be the first to say surveys are not the most reliable source of data. But drawing conclusions from a referendum held in 1994(?), coming of the tail of the collapse of the Soviet Union, shouldn’t inherently be considered a representation of pre-February 2022 opinion ~28 years later. 

Regardless, we clearly both agree whatever the opinions were before they’re irrelevant now. And that there’s no feasible way get a legitimate referendum on that. And that by no means means Russia has a right to annex the territory. 

Even if for example the Donbas or Crimea held the most legitimate referendum voting overwhelmingly to join Russia , I would imagine under Ukrainian law this would mean nothing. I would imagine there’s a lot more involved if it’s even allowed at all. It’s not like Texas hold a referendum to declare itself part of Mexico again and US government would wave them off with well wishes in their new endeavor.


----------



## shadow puppet

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1585790845265002500/


----------



## Cmaier

shadow puppet said:


> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1585790845265002500/




So, are we all leaving? And where are we going?


----------



## Eric

Cmaier said:


> So, are we all leaving? And where are we going?



I'm thinking it's time to move on from the whole aspect of social media, TBH I haven't missed it since bailing. It's been going downhill for years anyway and from what I can see it's going down the path of Truth Social and only caters to radicals.


----------



## Cmaier

Eric said:


> I'm thinking it's time to move on from the whole aspect of social media, TBH I haven't missed it since bailing. It's been going downhill for years anyway and from what I can see it's going down the path of Truth Social and only caters to radicals.



I mostly follow app developers and friends, so it would be nice to have some way to do that without benefiting Musk.


----------



## DT

Eric said:


> I'm thinking it's time to move on from the whole aspect of social media, TBH I haven't missed it since bailing. It's been going downhill for years anyway and from what I can see it's going down the path of Truth Social and only caters to radicals.




Right?  It's all a bit of a dumpster fire anyway, either you:

Attempt to curate what you see (which over the last few years hasn't worked that great with Twitter) and stay in your sandbox as much as possible
Lean into the flames and mix it up
Just say fuck it and move on

(I executed the last option with FB about 5 years ago)


----------



## Edd

Cmaier said:


> So, are we all leaving? And where are we going?



I’d be fine with leaving. Seems like an opportunity for someone to make a true Twitter alternative. All the cool kids would go there and Twitter would fail, or live on as a white supremacy zombie version of itself. 

How great would it be if Musk buying Twitter ultimately caused its demise?


----------



## Cmaier

Edd said:


> I’d be fine with leaving. Seems like an opportunity for someone to make a true Twitter alternative. All the cool kids would go there and Twitter would fail, or live on as a white supremacy zombie version of itself.
> 
> How great would it be if Musk buying Twitter ultimately caused its demise?



I think the only viable alternative is mastodon At the moment?


----------



## lizkat

I dunno.   I  haven't ditched my setup but I've pared the follows down to a few dozen, so my usage of the account now is more or less just like a set of bookmarks.   I'll hang out there for awhile and see what happens.   Can still click into the timelines of people that follow me,  when I get to missing their birdwatching photos or quilting references etc.

Was kinda hoping Musk would just leave it alone for awhile.  He seems eager to reassure advertisers and the banks from which he has borrowed that it won't turn into "a hellscape"  --  but his idea of whatever that is might not be what either advertisers or current users could even imagine.


----------



## Runs For Fun

Cmaier said:


> I mostly follow app developers and friends, so it would be nice to have some way to do that without benefiting Musk.



Same here. There's a pretty big Apple community on Twitter. I wonder what will happen


----------



## Cmaier

Runs For Fun said:


> Same here. There's a pretty big Apple community on Twitter. I wonder what will happen



Once he let’s the orange freak back on, we’ll probably see a big reaction.


----------



## lizkat

The Financial Times is reporting that besides firing both the former CFO and CEO of Twitter,  Musk has also already fired Vijaya Gadde, who was Twitter’s head of legal, policy and safety, and general counsel Sean Edgett.

And then tweeted that "the bird is freed."   Oy.


----------



## Eric

lizkat said:


> The Financial Times is reporting that besides firing both the former CFO and CEO of Twitter,  Musk has also already fired Vijaya Gadde, who was Twitter’s head of legal, policy and safety, and general counsel Sean Edgett.
> 
> And then tweeted that "the bird is freed."   Oy.



He is just an awful human being in every way.


----------



## lizkat

Eric said:


> He is just an awful human being in every way.




It's pretty common to ditch the c-suite personnel when it's a merger, but this was a acquisition and taking private, and in that case it's not so usual to sweep out like that in the early days after deal closing.

However, in this case there were some "disagreeable disagreements" over company data and so forth during the negotiations and pauses on this deal, so....     but to me the dismissal of Vijaya Gadde is not a good sign even if one might have expected it.  I might just ditch my account after all,  the more I think about it.    But not until after the World Series is over!


----------



## dada_dave

Cmaier said:


> Once he let’s the orange freak back on, we’ll probably see a big reaction.



Don't worry he's running it for the good of humanity! /s

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1585634380935929857/

Basically advertisers told him no he can't turn Twitter into his own private cesspool and according to one report specifically mentioned Trump (as in not letting him back on). So given that he probably wishes to avoid losing any more money on the deal, he's got his "savior of humanity" hat back on ... for now ... .

Having said that, several people have noted that, given the amount of debt accrued by the takeover, a financial death spiral may be hard to avoid anyway. Sucks for the employees, not all of the ones who are going to get sacked even before such a spiral are getting stock windfalls or golden parachutes. In fact, my understanding is that most won't.

Still maybe such ex-employees/C-suites can form an alternative that new users can migrate and otherwise flock too.  If not, join an existing competitor. We'll have to see how things shake out. Obviously an opportunity.


----------



## Herdfan

lizkat said:


> It's pretty common to ditch the c-suite personnel when it's a merger, but this was a acquisition and taking private, and in that case it's not so usual to sweep out like that in the early days after deal closing.




The reason I read for their departure was that they weren't honest with him in the pre-merger talks, so he figured he couldn't trust them.


----------



## Eric

Herdfan said:


> The reason I read for their departure was that they weren't honest with him in the pre-merger talks, so he figured he couldn't trust them.



Nice spin, sounds like Fox News has his back.

This whole thing is like the backstory of a comic book villain.


----------



## fischersd

Ok, that's it.  "doesn't want it to become a free for all where anything can be said". Umm.  Free speech?!  Seriously?!

Nuked my Twitter account.  A little sad.  Had some conversations on there with some friends that had passed, but I won't be supporting this fascist jackass in any way, shape or form.

And, yes, part of that is telling the wife "no, you can't have a Tesla".  He's just THAT much of a dick.  (and, no, not a band-wagon-jumper...I've been saying his cheese is off his cracker for years).


----------



## Edd

Eric said:


> Nice spin, sounds like Fox News has his back.
> 
> This whole thing is like the backstory of a comic book villain.



It’s always the same shit. “We want Twitter to be fair”, “We want these elections to be fair”, which boils down to “Fair means we get exactly what we want or it’s unfair”.


----------



## Eric

They are already hemorrhaging users according to Reuters and FB (Meta) losing $700 billion is probably a wakeup call. It will be a haven for rightwing extremists but they've been on the decline for a while with everyone else, we could even see a mass exodus once Musk finalizes it.


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

Eric said:


> I'm thinking it's time to move on from the whole aspect of social media, TBH I haven't missed it since bailing. It's been going downhill for years anyway and from what I can see it's going down the path of Truth Social and only caters to radicals.





This site is my social media.  I haven't felt like I've missed anything in years and am often more informed than people I know who are actively on social media.


----------



## Alli

I really don’t understand why the fuss. It’s not like we the users are paying to use the service. If that happens, I’ll leave. So just by using Twitter, you’re not directly benefiting Musk.

Did you follow Musk before? No? Then don’t start just because he bought it. Will he let TFG back on? Of course. Did you follow TFG before? No? Then don’t start now. 

Your timeline will not change (other than all the people complaining about the big changes). You will still follow the same people you like. Your followers will still follow you.

Don’t borrow trouble.


----------



## Deleted member 215

Twitter is already trash and it has no direction to go but up. I don't get the argument that Musk is going to turn Twitter into another Gab/Parler/Truth Social. Don't we already have three of those right-wing circle jerk sites? And aren't they all floundering financially? What would be the point of doing the same to Twitter?


----------



## Eric

Chew Toy McCoy said:


> This site is my social media.  I haven't felt like I've missed anything in years and am often more informed than people I know who are actively on social media.



I see sites where rapid fire one off posts to the world as social media, forums are a different beast and were around long before FB or Twitter. It's the difference between a drunken bender and a nice glass of wine to me.


----------



## Citysnaps

Eric said:


> I see sites where rapid fire one off posts to the world as social media, forums are a different beast and were around long before FB or Twitter. It's the difference between a drunken bender and a nice glass of wine to me.




My buddy Elon just messaged me. He wants to know what your price is, Eric.


----------



## lizkat

Chew Toy McCoy said:


> This site is my social media.  I haven't felt like I've missed anything in years and am often more informed than people I know who are actively on social media.






Eric said:


> I see sites where rapid fire one off posts to the world as social media, forums are a different beast and were around long before FB or Twitter. It's the difference between a drunken bender and a nice glass of wine to me.




User experience does depend at least in part how one uses whatever tools a site provides to manage information flow according to preferences.   I'll be watching for any reduction in ability on Twitter to tweak ad preferences, mute accounts etc. 

In the meantime because I follow certain mainstream news sites,  Twitter's existing algorithms occasionally pop tweeted news from other mainstream sources into my timeline.  Otherwise I'd not have been aware --for instance-- that some NBC journos had traced the newish "tailgate parties" and armed "watchers" near drop boxes back to massive encouragement by TruthSocial influencers to create those situations.

Now while  I found that interesting indeed,  if I start seeing all sorts of "news" from TruthSocial members themselves popping up on Twitter because they've had their Twitter accounts reinstated, that could be a different thing, and problematic if I have to spend time tweaking my timeline using more keywords and mutes etc.


----------



## Eric

Citysnaps said:


> My buddy Elon just messaged me. He wants to know what your price is, Eric.



Every man has his price.


----------



## lizkat

TBL said:


> Twitter is already trash and it has no direction to go but up. I don't get the argument that Musk is going to turn Twitter into another Gab/Parler/Truth Social. Don't we already have three of those right-wing circle jerk sites? And aren't they all floundering financially? What would be the point of doing the same to Twitter?




It's probably why Musk has already tried to clarify that Twitter will not be an unmoderated site, i.e. he does know that the site needs to follow the law and also not lose advertisers, at least not while Twitter still relies on ads for its revenue stream.

Musk's intent to expand the platform into an "everything app" will take some time even to get onto a drawing board,  never mind into revenue-producing status.  That is,  unless he intends instead to buy and bolt on some existing services.  One should not forget that the guy co-founded PayPal.  And that he also managed to borrow billions of bucks from some major banks in order to buy Twitter.

At the moment the state of the global economy is such that the lending banks will likely be carrying that debt on their balance sheets,  rather than securitizing it and selling it on,  which was almost certainly their original intent.  Right there is some indirect but substantial leverage that Musk might use to entice one of banks to cooperate in helping him add banking services to his newly acquired Twitter platform.


----------



## shadow puppet

I'm not bailing yet.  I have too many folks I follow and enjoy, all conveniently in one place.  But I have been adding those that also have an IG account to who I follow on Instagram just in case.  If Twitter gets weird or out of control, then yes, I'll leave.  Just hoping that doesn't happen or a better alternate venue presents itself.  At least for the sane accounts.


----------



## Nycturne

lizkat said:


> It's probably why Musk has already tried to clarify that Twitter will not be an unmoderated site, i.e. he does know that the site needs to follow the law and also not lose advertisers, at least not while Twitter still relies on ads for its revenue stream.




I’ll believe it when I see it after Musk has spent so much time on Twitter complaining about free speech, “woke culture” and other things that come from the same mindset as those who founded places like Gab and Parler. The clarification is a walk-back of his previous promises for the site.

It’s already clear that there’s going to be large changes to current policy around moderation, with undoing lifetime bans, and ousting the current executive overseeing the current policy for moderation: https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/elon-musk-reverse-lifetime-bans-121209360.html

With as much trouble as this guy has generated lately with the SEC, etc, I don’t really trust him to be able to walk that line successfully with advertisers. Especially if the end goal is to reduce reliance on advertising and monetize via other services. He may be willing to burn bridges sooner and try to ride some debt on the way to that goal. 

Now, one potential side effect here is that minorities won’t be seeing harassment from users _and_ _the reporting system itself_, but since it also means more users will be around to harass, I’m not sure that’s a net positive. 



lizkat said:


> Musk's intent to expand the platform into an "everything app" will take some time even to get onto a drawing board,  never mind into revenue-producing status.  That is,  unless he intends instead to buy and bolt on some existing services.  One should not forget that the guy co-founded PayPal.  And that he also managed to borrow billions of bucks from some major banks in order to buy Twitter.




Which isn’t great news for Twitter if Musk erodes trust in the platform in the mean time.


----------



## Eric

shadow puppet said:


> I'm not bailing yet.  I have too many folks I follow and enjoy, all conveniently in one place.  But I have been adding those that also have an IG account to who I follow on Instagram just in case.  If Twitter gets weird or out of control, then yes, I'll leave.  Just hoping that doesn't happen or a better alternate venue presents itself.  At least for the sane accounts.



It wasn't a decision I took lightly, it took a long time to get that many followers and I also had those I really enjoyed following. I spend most of my time on IG now as well, I find it to be a bit more genuine without all the bitching and complaining. I also have several celebrities who follow me there, they're much more genuine on that platform for some reason.


----------



## Cmaier

Looks like Kanye was just allowed back on twitter? So the toxic hellscape is well on its way…


----------



## Edd

Cmaier said:


> Looks like Kanye was just allowed back on twitter? So the toxic hellscape is well on its way…



Bad sign, West has never been so toxic.


----------



## Arkitect

Ah well…
I will definitely not be missed on there, but I just hit the delete button on Twitter.

Recently I have been "off" social media as much as possible — Twitter was certainly the easiest call to make.

Instagram is the last holdout for me as it is unfortunately the most visible channel for an artist nowadays.

_O tempora, o mores…_


----------



## Arkitect

Cmaier said:


> Looks like Kanye was just allowed back on twitter? So the toxic hellscape is well on its way…



The celebrations over at MR is stomach turning…


----------



## Cmaier

Arkitect said:


> The celebrations over at MR is stomach turning…




I’m not over there anymore, but adding anti-semitism to their toxic hellstew seems about right.


----------



## lizkat

Arkitect said:


> The celebrations over at MR is stomach turning…




Speaking of toxic...


----------



## lizkat

Welp, Musk should have read this Verge piece before letting West back on.  It was addressed to him directly....









						Welcome to hell, Elon
					

Owning Twitter means owning a host of impossible political problems. Is Elon ready?




					www.theverge.com
				






> Here are some examples: you can write as many polite letters to advertisers as you want, but you cannot reasonably expect to collect any meaningful advertising revenue if you do not promise those advertisers “brand safety.” That means you have to ban racism, sexism, transphobia, and all kinds of other speech that is totally legal in the United States but reveals people to be total assholes. So you can make all the promises about “free speech” you want, but the dull reality is that you still have to ban a bunch of legal speech if you want to make money. And when you start doing that, your creepy new right-wing fanboys are going to viciously turn on you, just like they turn on every other social network that realizes the same essential truth.


----------



## Nycturne

The hilarious thing is, you don’t even have to successfully ban it, just enough of an effort to keep the advertisers happy.


----------



## lizkat

Nycturne said:


> The hilarious thing is, you don’t even have to successfully ban it, just enough of an effort to keep the advertisers happy.




Well I do think they're gonna have to ditch Ye Olde (or, newe) Kanye West.  He is clearly a bridge too far for brand name advertisers.    

I read somewhere that Twitter's engineering division has put a hold on all changes or releases of new modules for "at least over the weekend".    If that's true then some newly revived accounts may promptly get shut down again,  depending on which exceptions to that announcement were put in before it was made.


----------



## shadow puppet

lizkat said:


> Welp, Musk should have read this Verge piece before letting West back on.  It was addressed to him directly....
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Welcome to hell, Elon
> 
> 
> Owning Twitter means owning a host of impossible political problems. Is Elon ready?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.theverge.com



It's somewhat amusing reading the comments on this article at Verge's site vs the comments about this article on their FB page.
Thanks @lizkat.  I always enjoy a salty read.


----------



## Eric

Cmaier said:


> Looks like Kanye was just allowed back on twitter? So the toxic hellscape is well on its way…



Is this for real?? Glad I've got other things to do with my life in retirement these days, if I don't see it on here I'm none the wiser.


----------



## Nycturne

lizkat said:


> Well I do think they're gonna have to ditch Ye Olde (or, newe) Kanye West.  He is clearly a bridge too far for brand name advertisers.
> 
> I read somewhere that Twitter's engineering division has put a hold on all changes or releases of new modules for "at least over the weekend".    If that's true then some newly revived accounts may promptly get shut down again,  depending on which exceptions to that announcement were put in before it was made.




Oh yeah, high profile peddlers of this stuff are the main concern for advertisers for sure.

And yes, I realize I’m being a bit jaded here. But as I have trans folks in my extended family, and trans folks in my twitter circle (who I follow for their other content), I am burned out to some extent. There’s only so many times you can see folks leaving due to harassment that goes unmoderated, or seeing someone engage with transphobic statements thinking they are safe if they keep their response calm and rational, only to get banned for “hate speech” instead of the person posting the original statements.


----------



## lizkat

shadow puppet said:


> It's somewhat amusing reading the comments on this article at Verge's site vs the comments about this article on their FB page.




There has apparently been some organizing going on over at pro-Trump sites in the meantime, i.e. intent to bolster Musk's idea of "free speech" on Twitter as soon as the deal closed.   I did notice some increase in non-obscene, non-racist non-sexist but quite hostile replies to mainstream news-oriented tweets yesterday, stuff that suggested to me that the countdown to "freedom" on Twitter had already begun.  

Washington Post ran a related piece (paywall removed), noting that racist tweets picked up, but also reporting that one reinstated account of prior notoriety was rather quickly suspended again.  So there are limits and fans of TruthSocial's idea of free speech might not all fly long on the "new" Twitter.

*Racist tweets quickly surfaced after Musk closed Twitter deal*



> Racial slurs were posted rampantly overnight. One single-word tweet, showing a single racial slur in all capital letters, was retweeted more than 500 times and liked more than 4,000 times. It was tweeted at 9 p.m. Thursday night and remained online nearly 12 hours later.




And of course not just racism...  all the other garbage seemed to be piling up at the dam ready to roll as soon as it looked like Musk was giving the all clear.



> Some of the Twitter influx was organized on other platforms, including the pro-Trump forum TheDonald, where its top posts Friday morning showed tweets celebrating lies about Trump’s 2020 election loss and memes criticizing transgender people under the headline “When you can’t get banned on Twitter anymore.”
> 
> “Cold Meme War, Twatter Defenses Down, Fire Away,” another poster said, attaching an image of a soldier with a rifle and a “Make America Great Again” hat.
> 
> Musk’s acquisition and almost-instant firing of its top executives was also widely celebrated in Telegram groups devoted to QAnon, the jumble of pro-Trump conspiracy theories. “Sometimes it takes a while, but the good guys win,” one QAnon influencer wrote.




Yeah well, the good guys at Twitter are still nominally the ADVERTISERS if you are sitting in Elon Musk's "Chief Twit" chair today. 

So there may be some disappointment ahead for those champing at the bit to drag Twitter deeper into cesspool turf again,


----------



## lizkat

Oh great.  Musk is reported having Tesla engineers inspect Twitter code...  he's gonna get himself in a bind with stuff like that.  Employees of a publicly listed company working on operations of a privately owned acquisition,  with possible material effect on the finances of either or both businesses?



			Musk is using his Tesla tech chiefs to help him inspect Twitter — and that could be misappropriating corporate assets
		


The SEC may not be amused depending on what happens next.   Heh, Bloomberg might have to update its latest take on Tesla's revolving door general counsel slot yet again in a single year...









						Tesla Cycles Through Top Lawyers While Musk Spars With SEC (1)
					

Tesla Inc. named its third new legal chief in two years, as the company promoted David Searle to be acting head of legal and corporate secretary.




					news.bloomberglaw.com


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

lizkat said:


> User experience does depend at least in part how one uses whatever tools a site provides to manage information flow according to preferences.   I'll be watching for any reduction in ability on Twitter to tweak ad preferences, mute accounts etc.
> 
> In the meantime because I follow certain mainstream news sites,  Twitter's existing algorithms occasionally pop tweeted news from other mainstream sources into my timeline.  Otherwise I'd not have been aware --for instance-- that some NBC journos had traced the newish "tailgate parties" and armed "watchers" near drop boxes back to massive encouragement by TruthSocial influencers to create those situations.
> 
> Now while  I found that interesting indeed,  if I start seeing all sorts of "news" from TruthSocial members themselves popping up on Twitter because they've had their Twitter accounts reinstated, that could be a different thing, and problematic if I have to spend time tweaking my timeline using more keywords and mutes etc.




For news I use Flipboard and some direct off the mainstream sites, some borderline mainstream.  Just sayin there are some alternative methods other than Twitter that don’t take a Herculean effort. 

Personally I think social media has reached the peak of “nothing is really free” and the actual price is becoming too high for many.  Right now it’s going through the opposite of gentrification.


----------



## Yoused

Cmaier said:


> I’m not over there anymore, but adding anti-semitism to their toxic hellstew seems about right.





Spoiler: how can that be?









​


----------



## lizkat

Chew Toy McCoy said:


> Personally I think social media has reached the peak of “nothing is really free” and the actual price is becoming too high for many. Right now it’s going through the opposite of gentrification.




Yeah Elon Musk may soon discover that the price of expanding what he calls "free speech" might be way too high for his fledgling version of Twitter.

Thierry Breton has weighed in.  He is the current Commissioner for Internal Market of the European Union. He responded to Musk's tweet that "the bird is free" by quote-tweeting it thus:





That hashtag #DSA he used refers to the Digital Services Act that was signed into EU law on October 19th.   It is meant "to keep the digital space safe from illegal goods, content and services, and to protect fundamental rights online."


----------



## Herdfan

Alli said:


> I really don’t understand why the fuss. It’s not like we the users are paying to use the service. If that happens, I’ll leave. So just by using Twitter, you’re not directly benefiting Musk.
> 
> Did you follow Musk before? No? Then don’t start just because he bought it. Will he let TFG back on? Of course. Did you follow TFG before? No? Then don’t start now.
> 
> Your timeline will not change (other than all the people complaining about the big changes). You will still follow the same people you like. Your followers will still follow you.
> 
> Don’t borrow trouble.




 

I agree.  All these people threatening to leave are the same as all the celebs that threaten to leave the US if "X" person is elected.  Yet sadly they never do.

Sure some people will leave and make a big deal about it.  Then they will notice all their friends, colleagues, family, groups, etc are still on and the FOMO will kick in and they will be back.


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

Twitter would probably tank (or be reduced to Truth Social numbers) if only members could see what is being posted on there.  I bet 90% (or more) of what is being said on Twitter is being read by people who aren't even members.  It's just reposted through a link or screenshot on some other site.


----------



## shadow puppet

Seems many of the right wingers are enjoying their childish selves seeing how many times they can post n-word posts over there now.  But hey - we can't say anything or we'll be branded as making a fuss.   

Nothing comes easily in this country anymore except hate.


----------



## lizkat

Chew Toy McCoy said:


> Twitter would probably tank (or be reduced to Truth Social numbers) if only members could see what is being posted on there.  I bet 90% (or more) of what is being said on Twitter is being read by people who aren't even members.  It's just reposted through a link or screenshot on some other site.




I'm quite often surprised when I see some of the horror-show material from Twitter that is relayed by other media outlets.    That's because it's pretty easy to focus one's timeline on matters of personal interest,  and also pretty simple to set up a few filters if unwanted material shows up now and then.

Maybe more people would enjoy Twitter if they used the toolbox options.   Of course I'm referring to the toolset that has been available up until now.  Who knows what it will be like going forward.

What I do know is I wouldn't mind if media outlets were more thoughtful about what they relay from any social media platforms really.    Since a lot of what pops up from Twitter sources when I read online newspapers is pretty controversial, it's hard not to think that the intent in relaying such material was about getting clickbait revenue.

So far on Twitter just now,  the usual crew whose tweets I tend to see (or seek out)  are still members and still apparently choosing to remain members for now. But see I don't follow and am not followed by celebrities or politicians who have become either notorious or celebrated for this that or the other statement.  So I am spared some of the garbage-spewing that occurs as some controversial (or worse) tweet goes viral.  It doesn't take long to get the gist of what happened and then just move on, or if necessary, add a few keyword blocks temporarily.

 LIfe is short,  the to-do list is long...  I'm not the favorite of Twitter advertisers, I suspect.   There are days I spend less than 30 seconds on the platform, launching into the website of a media outlet's tweet and just never coming back.  

Edit:  typos.


----------



## lizkat

When Musk takes Twitter public again, as I assume he will eventually do,  I think he should consider doing something like what Meta did with Facebook,  take a (general) step back from direct moderation by funding an independent oversight board.

FB retains the last word on policy changes --for instance, on how to treat types of content put up by globally well known individuals and political leaders--   but abides by decisions of the board when users appeal their content-related suspensions. 









						Meta provides another $150 million in funding for its Oversight Board
					

The group's power has been challenged at times by the company's unwillingness to outsource some of its decisions.




					www.axios.com


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

lizkat said:


> What I do know is I wouldn't mind if media outlets were more thoughtful about what they relay from any social media platforms really.    Since a lot of what pops up from Twitter sources when I read online newspapers is pretty controversial, it's hard not to think that the intent in relaying such material was about getting clickbait revenue.




I’ve said this before, but news media really loves to post Tweets by nobodies with few followers and likes and advertise it like half the country agrees with them.


----------



## shadow puppet

Arkitect said:


> The celebrations over at MR is stomach turning…



Holy cow, you weren't kidding.  They've lost their shit over there in that thread.


----------



## Cmaier

Eric said:


> Is this for real?? Glad I've got other things to do with my life in retirement these days, if I don't see it on here I'm none the wiser.




Apparently I was misinformed by the news media:

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1586061232997511168/


----------



## Citysnaps

I have a really bad feeling about Musk running twitter with trump (and others) being allowed back on, and trump likely running for prez. That's not a coincidence.

Hold onto your seats. It's going to get very ugly.


----------



## Alli

So far, my Twitter experience has not changed. And I spend a LOT of time on there.


----------



## Cmaier

Alli said:


> So far, my Twitter experience has not changed. And I spend a LOT of time on there.




Nothing yet, but i use a tweetbot so I don’t see ”trends” or an algorithmic feed.  Just in case things go to shit, I set up @cmaier@mastodon.social. 

Depending on what goes on, I may drop twitter even if my experience there doesn’t change.  For example, if Musk provides safe harbor to nazis, I don’t want to support the product even if I don’t have to deal with the nazis myself.


----------



## Citysnaps

I've had twitter on my phone since the beginning, but stopped using twitter around eight years ago. It just didn't interest me, as I had other social media apps. But I still kept the app on my phone. Yesterday I got an App Store notification there was a new twitter update. Eh, decided to just delete the app.  There's no way I'll have anything to do with twitter now - even having a dormant app on my phone.

Regarding their "content moderation  council"... Will be interesting seeing who will be on it.  Perhaps stephen miller is looking for a job.


----------



## Edd

My wife sent me this. I was unaware of Bluesky as a project. Is this a viable alternative?









						Everything we know so far about Jack Dorsey’s brand new app
					

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey's Bluesky Social app is now accepting users for beta testing, and says it will launch soon.




					uk.finance.yahoo.com


----------



## DT

JFC, hahaha WORDSWORDSWORDS ...



> The development team described the app as a “*protocol for large-scale distributed social applications that will allow for account portability, algorithmic choice, interoperability and performance*".




But I guess what's your metric for a " viable alternative"?  By that, I mean, for me, unless it had feeds for the handful of accounts I follow (on Twitter), it doesn't matter about the tech, transparency, lack of GQP nutbags.

That's why I'm a holding pattern, if there's too much fracture, a source goes here, a source goes there, I'll just call it quits with this form of social media.  I don't care about Twitter other than what it does for me, if it continues to satisfy that, I'll stick around - if there's too much chaos, negative vibe, I'll leave, but won't go anywhere else.

I'll take up woodworking or something


----------



## DT

Citysnaps said:


> Regarding their "content moderation  council"... Will be interesting seeing who will be on it.  Perhaps stephen miller is looking for a job.


----------



## Alli

Edd said:


> My wife sent me this. I was unaware of Bluesky as a project. Is this a viable alternative?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Everything we know so far about Jack Dorsey’s brand new app
> 
> 
> Twitter founder Jack Dorsey's Bluesky Social app is now accepting users for beta testing, and says it will launch soon.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> uk.finance.yahoo.com



We won’t know until it’s up and at least in beta.


----------



## Yoused

Edd said:


> My wife sent me this. I was unaware of Bluesky as a project. Is this a viable alternative?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Everything we know so far about Jack Dorsey’s brand new app
> 
> 
> Twitter founder Jack Dorsey's Bluesky Social app is now accepting users for beta testing, and says it will launch soon.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> uk.finance.yahoo.com




My feeling, from the sound of it, is that it will lie somewhere between a thing like Disqus and Usenet.



Alli said:


> We won’t know until it’s up and at least in beta.




Or maybe in betta


----------



## lizkat

Talk about strange bedfellows.  Saudi Arabia has invested $1.89 billion from prior ownership of publicly traded Twitter into Musk's new private venture.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1585975226567110656/​


----------



## lizkat

This should end well.









						Elon Musk has pulled more than 50 Tesla employees into his Twitter takeover
					

Tesla employees who Musk enlisted to help with his Twitter takeover include dozens of Autopilot engineers, but also security information and other lieutenants.




					www.cnbc.com
				






> Several Twitter employees told CNBC over the weekend that Tesla employees now at Twitter have been involved in code review at the social network, even though their skills from working on Autopilot and other Tesla software and hardware do not directly overlap with the languages and systems used to build and maintain the social network. These employees asked not to be named because they’re not authorized to talk to the press about internal matters, and feared retaliation.
> 
> For example, most engineers in automotive companies, even the tech-forward Tesla, do not have experience designing and operating search engines and platforms that are broadly accessible to the public.
> 
> Twitter has multiple code bases with millions of lines of code in each, and myriad 10- or even 100-query per second (QPS) systems underpinning it. At Tesla, Python is one of the preferred scripting languages, and at Twitter programmers have used Scala extensively.


----------



## fooferdoggie

so he spends billions so he can post conspiracy theories?


----------



## shadow puppet

lizkat said:


> This should end well.



That plus possibly charging $20 month for blue check mark verified users who want to remain verified.  Among other pay options.   









						Twitter is planning to start charging soon for verification
					

“The whole verification process is being revamped right now,” Musk tweeted.




					www.theverge.com
				




_Chief Twit Elon Musk has given employees their first ultimatum: Meet his deadline to introduce paid verification on Twitter or pack up and leave."_


----------



## lizkat

shadow puppet said:


> That plus possibly charging $20 month for blue check mark verified users who want to remain verified.  Among other pay options.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Twitter is planning to start charging soon for verification
> 
> 
> “The whole verification process is being revamped right now,” Musk tweeted.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.theverge.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _Chief Twit Elon Musk has given employees their first ultimatum: Meet his deadline to introduce paid verification on Twitter or pack up and leave."_




Great.   Tick off essential help and the high-value customers at the same time, which of course leaves the advertisers with yet more wonderment about whether to depart the platform.

Wonder how the banks that lent him 13 billion dollars feel about all this so far.    They're probably cold-calling everyone they ever met in Las Vegas during the subprime mortgage boom,  asking if they'd like to buy some really classy debt before someone else snaps it up...   and meanwhile these banks are all stuck with it on their balance sheets and it ain't no AAA rated stuff either.   Not right now anyway.


----------



## dada_dave

fooferdoggie said:


> so he spends billions so he can post conspiracy theories?




Yup ... well and this:

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1587274263077171200/

He's a charmer


----------



## lizkat

dada_dave said:


> He's a charmer




Oh indeed.  A bearer of many gifts.

​


----------



## lizkat

Hah, sometimes on Twitter *the best parts are in the comments.*  Some great replies to a remark about an FT piece noting that the big banks are now stuck for awhile just holding the debt on their $13 billion loan to Musk, which loan of course they made without having a clue how Musk's business plan (as such, if any, after Musk was dragged kicking and screaming into finalizing the deal to begin with) might ever play out.  And yeah, some of the replies are from people figuring it's bank customers will foot the offset..  with higher fees related to their own dealings with those banks.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1587453231529353219/​


----------



## Andropov

This exchange was hilarious.
https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1587312517679878144/


----------



## Eric

Andropov said:


> This exchange was hilarious.
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1587312517679878144/



There's something very American about a man worth $209 billion asking average people for $8 a month.


----------



## Eric

Ouch, he's probably smoking doobies while fucking with people's accounts.


__
		https://www.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/yl4ii8


----------



## Andropov

Eric said:


> Ouch, he's probably smoking doobies while fucking with people's accounts.



I'm not sure about that one. Seems like an unprecedentedly dumb thing to do, even for Musk. Maybe it's just a bug. It wouldn't be so surprising to see things breaking down, seeing how Musk seems fixated on firing most of his new employees.


----------



## ronntaylor

Andropov said:


> I'm not sure about that one. *Seems like an unprecedentedly dumb thing to do, even for Musk. *Maybe it's just a bug. It wouldn't be so surprising to see things breaking down, seeing how Musk seems fixated on firing most of his new employees.



Like calling a critic a pedo?


----------



## Eric

This is what happens when you're raised by a diamond mine owner.

'The Expectation Is Literally To Work 24/7': Elon Musk Orders Twitter Staff To Work 84-Hour Weeks As 75% Of Employees Face Being Fired​


			'The Expectation Is Literally To Work 24/7': Elon Musk Orders Twitter Staff To Work 84-Hour Weeks As 75% Of Employees Face Being Fired


----------



## Edd

I can see getting beyond these elections to utilize Twitter’s value but seriously, fuck Twitter. If all the left-wingers leave it is a smoldering husk of shit. It loses all value. The left wing has Musk by the balls, Squeeze hard and put Twitter out of its misery.


----------



## Deleted member 215

^Basically how I feel. If the left-wingers leave, Twitter will be another Parler/Truth Social, which ultimately is not what many right-wingers want. They want left-wingers there so they can “own” them. A circle-jerk loses its appeal quickly.


----------



## Andropov

ronntaylor said:


> Like calling a critic a pedo?



I should have been clearer. The diver he called a pedo had no power over Musk. Musk faced some social backslash but that's about it. Arbitrarily silencing or messing with politician accounts he doesn't like, though... it's asking to be regulated.


----------



## dada_dave

But, but he's a free speech absolutist! ...

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1588330014340452352/


----------



## ronntaylor

Andropov said:


> I should have been clearer. The diver he called a pedo had no power over Musk. Musk faced some social backslash but that's about it. Arbitrarily silencing or messing with politician accounts he doesn't like, though... it's asking to be regulated.



True. I was just so pissed when he did that. I would have punched his lights out.


----------



## Andropov

In another episode of Musk's megalomaniac frenzy, he's going to fire a significant portion of Twitter's employees over the weekend and push the others to quit (forbidding remote work, creating impossible deadlines...). I'm no manager, but I know most well-functioning software companies rely on a backbone of some irreplaceable people/developers, which can't always be easily identified by management (certainly not over the weekend). 
Fire enough of them in a short enough time span, and he might find himself unable to operate his own product: the remaining people will likely know how to perform the regular maintenance the project needs, but knowledge about some workflows that are required to do from time to time may be entirely lost. You can often replace these people, slowly and one by one, but having too many of them fired/quit at once can easily become catastrophic.


----------



## fischersd

Andropov said:


> In another episode of Musk's megalomaniac frenzy, he's going to fire a significant portion of Twitter's employees over the weekend and push the others to quit (forbidding remote work, creating impossible deadlines...). I'm no manager, but I know most well-functioning software companies rely on a backbone of some irreplaceable people/developers, which can't always be easily identified by management (certainly not over the weekend).
> Fire enough of them in a short enough time span, and he might find himself unable to operate his own product: the remaining people will likely know how to perform the regular maintenance the project needs, but knowledge about some workflows that are required to do from time to time may be entirely lost. You can often replace these people, slowly and one by one, but having too many of them fired/quit at once can easily become catastrophic.



Yep - these guys surround themselves with yes men and think that everything that they touches turns to gold - they can do no wrong.  

That was actually what killed BlackBerry - Mike and Jim (but mostly Mike as R&D was his) lived in their own echo chambers.  People that disagreed with them too passionately were shown the door, so eventually all they had were bobble heads.  You couldn't get these guys to perceive reality anymore.


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

Pretty brutal takedown of Musk and his worshippers









						Elon Musk's "blue check" debacle: Whiny incels broke his brain!
					

For Twitter's angry nerds, the blue check is like a girlfriend — it's infuriating because you can't buy it




					www.salon.com
				




"His ideas on how to run the company seem to be borrowed directly from the worst people on the internet, dudes who spend most of their time toggling between spewing racial slurs into "Call of Duty" and griping on Reddit about how woke bitches won't have sex with them."


----------



## Eric

fischersd said:


> Yep - these guys surround themselves with yes men and think that everything that they touches turns to gold - they can do no wrong.
> 
> That was actually what killed BlackBerry - Mike and Jim (but mostly Mike as R&D was his) lived in their own echo chambers.  People that disagreed with them too passionately were shown the door, so eventually all they had were bobble heads.  You couldn't get these guys to perceive reality anymore.



Taking advice from those who disagree is smart IMO as long as they're rational because it gives you a feel for the entire situation. Obama used to call in Republicans from time to time and do the same. People like Musk and Trump are just too narcissistic to ever consider anyone else's view.


----------



## Andropov

This is going faster than I expected: https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1588538640401018880/


----------



## Eric

Andropov said:


> This is going faster than I expected: https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1588538640401018880/



"we did everything we could to appease the activists." So then allowing hate speech and the spread conspiracy theories and lies did NOT save them from losing sponsors? I refuse to believe it, Elon really gave it his all.


----------



## Renzatic

Eric said:


> There's something very American about a man worth $209 billion asking average people for $8 a month.




I wouldn't call Stephen King an average person. The guy has langoliers.


----------



## Cmaier

Eric said:


> "we did everything we could to appease the activists." So then allowing hate speech and the spread conspiracy theories and lies did NOT save them from losing sponsors? I refuse to believe it, Elon really gave it his all.



The first thing the dude did is literally post lies about pelosi’s husband. He’s surprised about what kind of message the ad market has received about his intentions?


----------



## shadow puppet

I don't know how long this post will remain up.  The entire thread is an interesting read.  AOC is reporting the same law in NY.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1588359669843513344/

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1588360876125405185/

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1588587423302586370/


----------



## Eric

shadow puppet said:


> I don't know how long this post will remain up.  The entire thread is an interesting read.  AOC is reporting the same law in NY.
> 
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1588359669843513344/
> 
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1588360876125405185/
> 
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1588587423302586370/



Yeah, there's a good chance he'll nuke them. I would grab screenshots of anything you really want to keep just in case.


----------



## shadow puppet

Eric said:


> Yeah, there's a good chance he'll nuke them. I would grab screenshots of anything you really want to keep just in case.



Already did even though I don't work for Twitter.  But I hope Twitter employees get wind of this law and not sign anything before speaking to an attorney first. Buried in the fine print may be a waiver of their rights under CA/NY and federal law.


----------



## Eric

Let's all shed a tear for Elon, all he wanted to do was allow hate free speech.


----------



## Eric

Welp...


----------



## lizkat

Musk complains of losing $3M a day, says oh I know, cut back on servers and cloud services, save some dough.  Right, so he's already made advertisers really risk-averse, now tack in unreliable site performance...  that should help.  









						Musk to gut Twitter infrastructure, cut costs by $1B annually
					

Reducing servers and cloud services risks outages during peak traffic times.




					arstechnica.com
				






> With Twitter losing $3 million per day, Elon Musk has ordered whatever Twitter staff he has left to start making up the difference by cutting Twitter infrastructure costs by $1.5 to $3 million per day. Musk is hoping to save $1 billion in annual costs in what Reuters reported has been dubbed Twitter’s “Deep Cuts Plan,” part of Musk’s ongoing scramble to turn Twitter profits around, seemingly even if it risks platform outages during high-traffic times.


----------



## Andropov

Eric said:


> Welp...
> 
> View attachment 18864



I also read yesterday that out of about a hundred people in the content moderation team, only 14 still had access to the content moderation tools (delete tweets and suspending accounts basically). Take it with a grain of salt, obviously, but maybe this is Musks super-smart plan: avoid changing content moderation policies, but cripple the team responsible for it so nothing gets moderated in practice.


----------



## lizkat

Andropov said:


> I also read yesterday that out of about a hundred people in the content moderation team, only 14 still had access to the content moderation tools (delete tweets and suspending accounts basically). Take it with a grain of salt, obviously, but maybe this is Musks super-smart plan: avoid changing content moderation policies, but cripple the team responsible for it *so nothing gets moderated in practice.*




Well he can't fly that one in EU countries...


----------



## Nycturne

lizkat said:


> Musk complains of losing $3M a day, says oh I know, cut back on servers and cloud services, save some dough.  Right, so he's already made advertisers really risk-averse, now tack in unreliable site performance...  that should help.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Musk to gut Twitter infrastructure, cut costs by $1B annually
> 
> 
> Reducing servers and cloud services risks outages during peak traffic times.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> arstechnica.com




How much of that 3M a day is servicing the debt Musk is directly responsible for adding to the books as part of the buyout? Since that number is suspiciously close to the 1 billion a year that it's estimated to cost to service the new debt.

This makes me think of vulture capitalism, but instead of going after a distressed asset, Musk is creating a distressed asset.

EDIT: Nevermind, I should read the article first before commenting. But since the operating expenses were 1.5B in Q2 2022, how do you cut 1B from that without tanking the service?


----------



## lizkat

Nycturne said:


> EDIT: Nevermind, I should read the article first before commenting.




Heh, regardless of the article content,  you have likely pegged another "reason" for Elon's infrastructure-cutting move.  I mean the guy is just thrashing, and has been thrashing since he made the offer and THEN started doing a little of what passes for due diligence in his mind.

They say the saddest words in the English language are "if only."    Well in Musk's case it's more like "Oh I know...  "  --  and his legal counsel must flinch every time they hear him launch into another brainstormed solution to a problem he has created.

 And that's another thing, he keeps replacing his counsel.  Or is it having to replace his counsel...


----------



## Eric

Just now hearing on Twitter that anyone can pay $8 and get the blue check, so you can setup an account as Donald J Trump and buy the checkmark for it, it sounds like people have already been doing it with Elon's name and they're having to combat it.

This will be the end of celebrity verification as we know it, totally devaluing its validity.


----------



## shadow puppet

Eric said:


> Just now hearing on Twitter that anyone can pay $8 and get the blue check, so you can setup an account as Donald J Trump and buy the checkmark for it, it sounds like people have already been doing it with Elon's name and they're having to combat it.
> 
> This will be the end of celebrity verification as we know it, totally devaluing its validity.



Yeah, this has been all over Twitter the past several days.  Many of the well knowns I follow (not celebs as much as well known commentators) are basically telling Elon to stuff it re: paying a monthly fee.  I don't blame them.


----------



## Cmaier

Eric said:


> Just now hearing on Twitter that anyone can pay $8 and get the blue check, so you can setup an account as Donald J Trump and buy the checkmark for it, it sounds like people have already been doing it with Elon's name and they're having to combat it.
> 
> This will be the end of celebrity verification as we know it, totally devaluing its validity.




Worse, think about people spoofing politicians, law enforcement agencies, election officials, etc.


----------



## lizkat

Eric said:


> Just now hearing on Twitter that anyone can pay $8 and get the blue check, so you can setup an account as Donald J Trump and buy the checkmark for it, it sounds like people have already been doing it with Elon's name and they're having to combat it.
> 
> This will be the end of celebrity verification as we know it, totally devaluing its validity.




So I could become Ron DeSantis and give Florida the shock of its life?

Why is Musk doing all this stuff?    He overpaid for his toy anyway and now he's trying to drive it into the ground?   Guy's writing a new chapter in vulture capitalism?    Else there's some tax angle to having the thing approach ground zero in value.


----------



## Eric

shadow puppet said:


> Yeah, this has been all over Twitter the past several days.  Many of the well knowns I follow (not celebs as much as well known commentators) are basically telling Elon to stuff it re: paying a monthly fee.  I don't blame them.



Right, I guess I didn't realize it meant anyone could just buy it, even the news reporters I saw today were surprised by it.


----------



## shadow puppet

Wow.  This is going to be a mess.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1588680583479439361/


----------



## Eric

shadow puppet said:


> Wow.  This is going to be a mess.
> 
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1588680583479439361/



It's almost as if he's asking himself how to completely ruin the trust of anyone who uses his platform. It will be interesting to see how this plays out but you can see those who are currently verified dumping them.


----------



## Eric

From a conversation Musk had with an advertiser.


----------



## dada_dave

And the starlink issues are back too

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1588651285708144640/


----------



## dada_dave

And he just keeps digging 

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1588676939463946241/


----------



## Cmaier

dada_dave said:


> And he just keeps digging
> 
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1588676939463946241/




Nothing says “do business with my company“ like “and if you ever stop, I’ll tell the world to boycott you.”


----------



## dada_dave

Cmaier said:


> Nothing says “do business with my company“ like “and if you ever stop, I’ll tell the world to boycott you.”



Yup. This is going to be studied for a long time at business schools … and comedy clubs.

Sucks for the people who used to work there though. I get the CEO did his shareholders a huge favor but he screwed everyone else, especially his workers. I mean a lot of them are happy to get out now with severance, but there are people on work visas and not everyone who is getting fired is going to be financially okay even with severance.


----------



## Cmaier

dada_dave said:


> Yup. This is going to be studied for a long time at business schools … and comedy clubs.
> 
> Sucks for the people who used to work there though. I get the CEO did his shareholders a huge favor but he screwed everyone else, especially his workers. I mean a lot of them are happy to get out now with severance, but there are people on work visas and not everyone who is getting fired is going to be financially okay even with severance.




i’ve been laid off (startup went out of business) and it’s not fun, even if you can afford it.  Hopefully there are enough job slots open at other good companies to absorb folks.


----------



## dada_dave

Cmaier said:


> i’ve been laid off (startup went out of business) and it’s not fun, even if you can afford it.  Hopefully there are enough job slots open at other good companies to absorb folks.




Yeah me too. There are reports that the workplace has gotten so bad most of them want to get out with severance, but it must be hard especially if had previously liked working there. There are also reports of people trying to be the ones laid off so their colleagues on work visas don't get extra shafted. That's the thing, it's easy to mock the billionaire setting his money on fire (and I'll confess to not being above schadenfreude for people like him) but in the end he isn't going to be as badly hurt as the employees. And as bad as Twitter could be sometimes, for Academia and some other communities it could actually be a net positive - it even effectively started some cool communities. So this is pretty sad. As you say maybe someone can absorb these folks and maybe a competitor can mostly replicate what was lost (people seem to be talking about something called Mastadon?) but still ...  what a jerk he is.


----------



## Andropov

Eric said:


> From a conversation Musk had with an advertiser.



Musk blocked him after that thread 
https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1588622182066057216/


----------



## fischersd

Cmaier said:


> Worse, think about people spoofing politicians, law enforcement agencies, election officials, etc.



Pretty sure that was part of what Musk was planning.  Make Twitter a weapon for the GOP.  Lots of deep fakes.


----------



## Eric

One has to wonder if literally threatening your advertisers is a good strategy. I'll admit that it's sort of fun to watch them implode though, it's hard to imagine how he was ever so successful with Tesla considering what a clueless tool he has proven to be,.









						Elon Musk's Twitter takeover is a disaster. How much longer will the platform hold?
					

Musk is on his way to creating the Twitter hellscape he claims to want to stop. I've put my account on hiatus




					www.salon.com


----------



## Andropov

Apparently he has also fired most SREs (Site Reliability Engineers) too. Can't find the direct source now (I saw a few tweets from directly involved people this morning) but Hector Martin has been talking about this as well:
https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1588772122125815808/

Several people are also claiming that the layoffs were decided by ranking all of Twitter's engineers by number of lines of code written the last year and firing the bottom half. I think that's actually *worse* than firing 50% at random. I write far less code now than I did when I started learning to code, and I think it's a common trend. And people who spend more time fixing bugs than developing new features will have orders of magnitude less lines of code written.


----------



## Eric

Andropov said:


> Apparently he has also fired most SREs (Site Reliability Engineers) too. Can't find the direct source now (I saw a few tweets from directly involved people this morning) but Hector Martin has been talking about this as well:
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1588772122125815808/
> 
> *Several people are also claiming that the layoffs were decided by ranking all of Twitter's engineers by number of lines of code written the last year* and firing the bottom half. I think that's actually *worse* than firing 50% at random. I write far less code now than I did when I started learning to code, and I think it's a common trend. And people who spend more time fixing bugs than developing new features will have orders of magnitude less lines of code written.



I used to work with a guy who was a really good coder, me not so much. I would write 30 lines of code to perform the same functions he could do in 4 or 5 with better logic.

Another thing people are noticing is how even though Musk is the biggest talk on the internet right now, his name is nowhere or limited in the trends anymore.


----------



## Nycturne

Cmaier said:


> i’ve been laid off (startup went out of business) and it’s not fun, even if you can afford it.  Hopefully there are enough job slots open at other good companies to absorb folks.



Hopefully, but a number of the established tech companies have been in “batten down the hatches” mode expecting a recession, and one or two have done a round of layoffs. So I suspect it will take longer than normal to get these folks situated. 

So not only is Musk basically gutting the company’s resources to do work at the start of a possible recession, likely to service the new debt, he’s doing it right before the holidays. May as well start calling him Scrooge at this point.


----------



## Eric

About those blue check marks  


It’s pure entertainment at this point. from
      WhitePeopleTwitter


----------



## shadow puppet

I'm enjoying the fact that Musk Face is now being sued in a class action suit in Northern California for the short notice mass layoffs.
I wonder how many more advertisers will bail.

Still think your knee jerk offer to buy Twitter was a good idea?









						Twitter sued in class action lawsuit over mass layoffs without proper legal notice
					

Former Twitter employees have filed a class action lawsuit against Twitter for failing to notify them of a mass layoff.




					techcrunch.com


----------



## lizkat

shadow puppet said:


> I'm enjoying the fact that Musk Face is now being sued in class action suit in Northern California for the short notice mass layoffs.
> I wonder how many more advertisers will bail.
> 
> Still think your knee jerk offer to buy Twitter was a good idea?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Twitter sued in class action lawsuit over mass layoffs without proper legal notice
> 
> 
> Former Twitter employees have filed a class action lawsuit against Twitter for failing to notify them of a mass layoff.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> techcrunch.com




Yah, a veritable field day for lawyers is what Musk's Twitter acquisition has been, so far...   and one can wonder if the SEC even has enough investigators to cover all the potential violation investigations.  Just because it's a private company doesn't mean it's above applicable laws regarding investment, labor rights, defamation, section 230 of Title 47, EU data privacy etc.  Between the vortices of legal chaos spun off by Musk and Trump,  the planet could amazingly enough end up short of lawyers.

Can't decide whether to batten down the hatches and just not log into Twitter for awhile,  or log in every day to see what's newly broken.

Part of me hopes some hedge fund will offer to buy Musk out for say 11% of what he paid for it plus whatever the banks demand to erase their $13B loan.   And let the co-investors figure out if they like to stick around (or have they already departed and we just don't know about that yet?).  So far they don't seem to have said much about post-acquisition developments, but there were a bunch of them had pledged to kick in a lot of dough to help Musk reduce his own 'margin call' to make good on the deal.









						Elon Musk secures $7.14B from Larry Ellison, others to buy Twitter
					

Elon Musk has secured $7.14 billion in funding from a coterie of investors including Oracle’s co-founder Larry Ellison to fund his $44 billion purchase of Twitter. Musk, the world’s ric…




					nypost.com


----------



## shadow puppet

I hate reading this.  I really don't want to leave Twitter.  I have a wonderful mixed group from politics to dogs and everything in between, all conveniently in one place.  But I don't agree with this paying $8/month BS.  I'll give it awhile longer before I make a decision but it's bullshit like this that is absolutely going to ruin Twitter.  At least for me.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1588876465915166721/


----------



## fooferdoggie

So he is taxing or discriminating against poor while racists? Someone should sue him for that.


----------



## Andropov

Apparently the new verified feature has been rolled out but it doesn’t work. Shocking.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1588958839101337602/


----------



## Eric

Andropov said:


> Apparently the new verified feature has been rolled out but it doesn’t work. Shocking.
> 
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1588958839101337602/



They've just devalued every single authentic/verified person on Twitter, what a shame.


----------



## shadow puppet

shadow puppet said:


> I hate reading this.  I really don't want to leave Twitter.  I have a wonderful mixed group from politics to dogs and everything in between, all conveniently in one place.  But I don't agree with this paying $8/month BS.  I'll give it awhile longer before I make a decision but it's bullshit like this that is absolutely going to ruin Twitter.  At least for me.
> 
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1588876465915166721/



When I posted this tweet in a convo at Twitter, I received this response:



> If you search for your own Twitter handle and add "filter:verified" to the search terms you'll get an idea of the conversations you won't be able to have in the future. Politicians won't hear from their constituents. Nor artists from unverified fans.




I tried it and the result is not good.  Sigh.


----------



## Andropov

Eric said:


> They've just devalued every single authentic/verified person on Twitter, what a shame.



Devaluing verification is a feature, apparently. The change log says this:




It’s obvious Musk himself had a part writing this. What a dumb and obvious ploy. _Hey! Buy this $8 status symbol! All the celebrities have it! 

_


----------



## shadow puppet

You must be kidding.  Sadly, I don't think they are.









						Twitter Employees Forced to Sign Affidavit Swearing They Think Elon Musk Is Cool
					

The document also indicates that Musk’s arrival at Twitter headquarters while carrying a sink was “not only very cool but also super funny.”




					www.newyorker.com
				




If you can't get past the paywall, it's fairly short:

_Twitter Employees Forced to Sign Affidavit Swearing They Think Elon Musk Is Cool_​_SAN FRANCISCO (The Borowitz Report)—"Under threat of imminent termination, Twitter employees are being required to sign an affidavit asserting that they think Elon Musk is cool.

The affidavit, which specifies that Musk is “a cool individual” and “extremely fun,” must be signed, notarized, and returned to Twitter headquarters by the end of business on Friday.

In addition to stating that the new Twitter boss is cool, the affidavit specifies several examples of “extremely cool things” that Musk has done.

For example, the document indicates that Musk’s arrival at Twitter headquarters while carrying a sink was “not only very cool but also super funny.”

Finally, the affidavit requires Twitter employees to agree with the statement “If I was having a barbecue and Elon Musk showed up uninvited, I would be totally psyched, owing to him being a cool guy whom everyone likes.”_


----------



## fischersd

Damn...Elon's Donald's mini-me!


----------



## Pumbaa

shadow puppet said:


> You must be kidding.  Sadly, I don't think they are.




“Satire from The Borowitz Report”, so kidding. For now.


----------



## lizkat

Take it with a grain of salt and put your eight bucks where it can count....  Here's Stephen Colbert's solution.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1588677512879800325/


----------



## shadow puppet

Pumbaa said:


> “Satire from The Borowitz Report”, so kidding. For now.



Thanks for straightening that out.  I'm not familiar with The Borowitz Report.

Now folks are saying at least Musk Rat isn't charging users to block people.  Not _yet_.  I hope it doesn't go that far.


----------



## Eric

I'm sure they've done the math on their side but you have to wonder how many users they would need to purchase this to offset the loss of revenue for advertisers.


----------



## Renzatic

Eric said:


> I'm sure they've done the math on their side but you have to wonder how many users they would need to purchase this to offset the loss of revenue for advertisers.




All he needs is 200 million people to sign up for their blue checks, then it's easy street for him.


----------



## Pumbaa

shadow puppet said:


> Thanks for straightening that out. I'm not familiar with The Borowitz Report.



Me neither. But hopefully satire still means satire.

Says a lot about Musk’s Twitter when one has to dig deeper to verify whether something is satire or real.


----------



## Eric

Gonna be a lot of ads for My Pillow on Twitter soon from
      WhitePeopleTwitter


----------



## lizkat

Eric said:


> Gonna be a lot of ads for My Pillow on Twitter soon from
> WhitePeopleTwitter




Right...


----------



## shadow puppet

lizkat said:


> Right...
> 
> View attachment 18920​


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

Eric said:


> Let's all shed a tear for Elon, all he wanted to do was allow hate free speech.




As Jon put it, he bought a toilet and turned it into a cesspool and is wondering what the issue is.  

Also saying activists and advertisers are trying to kill free speech is extremely ironic.   He clearly doesn’t know what free speech is.  

I think FREE STUFF social media is coming to an end and in the final analysis there was absolutely nothing special about its founders and they mostly have luck to thank. There’s nothing groundbreaking in there other then having the bandwidth to pull it off globally.


----------



## lizkat

Twitter seems not that different right now,  as long as I don't start looking at replies to tweets by media outlets, journalists, lawyers, high profile pols and so forth.   But among replies now to any tweet that is even vaguely political,  there are a lot more garbage troll posts than before Musk took over. 

So far I don't see more random spam posts stuck into replies to tweets by ordinary members not discussing politics.

There are a lot of what i'd call off-brand ads, and they are repeated and more often than major brand ads were before Musk.

Because I don't tend to just scroll through my timeline, I'm not sure how algos are different.  I tend to home in on particular follows and jump from there to a website, or go through part of my follows and check in on their time lines.


----------



## Alli

I don’t believe this will change anything for most of us. You know, the peons of Twitter. I doubt the politicians I’ve Tweeted to have ever read my comments. Of course, I don’t believe they read my emails or letters either. We will still be able to carry on conversations with our mutual follows. We can still use Twitter to vent our spleens, and the people who follow us will still see our Tweets and be able to like or Retweet them. 

In the meanwhile, as people threaten to leave Twitter I recommend they try an old fashioned forum, and invite them here.


----------



## Andropov

Yesterday I said that I though Twitter would have to re-hire some of the people they had just fired (I was talking about SREs, though) but I didn’t think it would happen this early 

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1589075543420325888/


----------



## fischersd

They should have made it a red check to be more on the nose.


----------



## fooferdoggie




----------



## Cmaier

Andropov said:


> Yesterday I said that I though Twitter would have to re-hire some of the people they had just fired (I was talking about SREs, though) but I didn’t think it would happen this early
> 
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1589075543420325888/




Hopefully at twice the salary, guarantees of continuing remote work privileges, and a delicious pie.


----------



## lizkat

Cmaier said:


> Hopefully at twice the salary, guarantees of continuing remote work privileges, and a delicious pie.




Right to say no after 72 hours of work a week.


----------



## shadow puppet

Alli said:


> In the meanwhile, as people threaten to leave Twitter I recommend they try an old fashioned forum, and invite them here.



I'm already on five forums.  I don't want another one.  The reason I've enjoyed Twitter's format is the feed combined with my personally chosen mix of politics, dogs, art, local & international news, you name it.  If the above change I shared does happen and I have to search for each account separately due to the potential algorithm, that is going to be a royal PITA.  I guess we'll find out next week.  But I'm definitely not happy.

In the meantime, I am enjoying the various folks who have created verified checkmark Elon Musk accounts who are now posting things I doubt the Musk Rat would ever post himself.  The comments are quite hilarious and laughter is definitely much needed right now.


----------



## Eric

Alli said:


> I don’t believe this will change anything for most of us. You know, the peons of Twitter. I doubt the politicians I’ve Tweeted to have ever read my comments. Of course, I don’t believe they read my emails or letters either. We will still be able to carry on conversations with our mutual follows. We can still use Twitter to vent our spleens, and the people who follow us will still see our Tweets and be able to like or Retweet them.
> 
> In the meanwhile, as people threaten to leave Twitter I recommend they try an old fashioned forum, and invite them here.



I think this is pretty accurate TBH, the only real issue for me as one of those little people is that you'll never know who is actually who they say they are anymore. For better or worse they had that system really nailed down and if they had the blue check they you knew they were 100% legit, Elon has essentially upended it.


----------



## Eric

Pretty much says it all, the most egregious change he's made is delegitimizing those who were actually genuine.









						If everyone is verified, no one is verified
					

Twitter has been good to me. It’s a direct line to readers, a shared workspace for writers and creators, an audience that gets my snark – it’s also part of my professional origin story. But the bird is hurting, and that hurts to see. I can explain. TL;DR I like this place. Can we please […]




					9to5mac.com


----------



## Cmaier

Eric said:


> Pretty much says it all, the most egregious change he's made is delegitimizing those who were actually genuine.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> If everyone is verified, no one is verified
> 
> 
> Twitter has been good to me. It’s a direct line to readers, a shared workspace for writers and creators, an audience that gets my snark – it’s also part of my professional origin story. But the bird is hurting, and that hurts to see. I can explain. TL;DR I like this place. Can we please […]
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 9to5mac.com




And now they’ve delayed this until after the election because of the obvious potential for hijinks. But no explanation as to how they’ll solve this going forward.


----------



## fooferdoggie

Cmaier said:


> And now they’ve delayed this until after the election because of the obvious potential for hijinks. But no explanation as to how they’ll solve this going forward.



you would almost think twitter is run by someone that does not know anything about running such a platform.


----------



## Pumbaa

fooferdoggie said:


> you would almost think twitter is run by someone that does not know anything about running such a platform.



But he has the blue mark! He must be doing something right!


----------



## ronntaylor

Alli said:


> We will still be able to carry on conversations with our mutual follows. We can still use Twitter to vent our spleens, and the people who follow us will still see our Tweets and be able to like or Retweet them.



The verification process will mess up our timelines though. It'll be harder to see tweets from your followers and those you're following. Musty hinted at that days ago.

I'm taking a wait & see attitude. I mostly just retweet and like tweets. But so many are leaving and depending on what happens after Tuesday, there's no telling if many/most will follow suit.


----------



## Eric

Pumbaa said:


> But he has the blue mark! He must be doing something right!



Hey, I didn't authorize that!


----------



## Pumbaa

Eric said:


> Hey, I didn't authorize that!



I don’t think he listens to you, especially not without the blue mark. 

On a related note, the forum post lists here look quite interesting nowadays.


----------



## Eric

Pumbaa said:


> I don’t think he listens to you, especially not without the blue mark.
> 
> On a related note, the forum post lists here look quite interesting nowadays.
> 
> View attachment 18967



Well done, I definitely had to do a double take here lol.


----------



## Pumbaa

Eric said:


> Well done, I definitely had to do a double take here lol.



Confused the hell out of me at first. Okay, it still does.

Hakuna matata.


----------



## Cmaier

But… but.. what happened to free speech?

And what about COMEDY? 






So you can only be comedic if you tell people you are being comedic? 

The Onion had something to say about that recently: https://www.supremecourt.gov/Docket....10.03 - Novak-Parma - Onion Amicus Brief.pdf


----------



## Eric

Cmaier said:


> View attachment 18970
> 
> But… but.. what happened to free speech?
> 
> And what about COMEDY?
> 
> View attachment 18972
> 
> 
> So you can only be comedic if you tell people you are being comedic?
> 
> The Onion had something to say about that recently: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242292/20221003125252896_35295545_1-22.10.03 - Novak-Parma - Onion Amicus Brief.pdf



Who's going to delete them? He literally fired the entire team that handles that.


----------



## Cmaier

Eric said:


> Who's going to delete them? He literally fired the entire team that handles that.




It sounds like what he’s primarily relying on is that if you change your screen name at all it will automatically de-blue-check you. (Fun!)  As for the rest, I’m guessing some Tesla engineer is busy writing a perl script that searches for screen names that match “Elon Musk“ and ”Donald J. Trump” and deletes those accounts unless they have the correct matching twitter handle.


----------



## fooferdoggie

Eric said:


> Who's going to delete them? He literally fired the entire team that handles that.



thats  his job now.


----------



## Alli

ronntaylor said:


> The verification process will mess up our timelines though. It'll be harder to see tweets from your followers and those you're following. Musty hinted at that days ago.
> 
> I'm taking a wait & see attitude. I mostly just retweet and like tweets. But so many are leaving and depending on what happens after Tuesday, there's no telling if many/most will follow suit.



So we stop following anyone with a blue check that isn’t following us? Don’t follow anyone with a blue check at all?


----------



## shadow puppet

#FreeKathy is now trending.  Elon won't care but I find it hilarious.


----------



## Cmaier

shadow puppet said:


> #FreeKathy is now trending.  Elon won't care but I find it hilarious.



I don’t get it. What is freekathy about?


----------



## shadow puppet

Cmaier said:


> I don’t get it. What is freekathy about?



The post you shared from Musk threatening suspension for anyone presenting themselves as someone else without saying it's a parody, came about after comedienne Kathy Griffin impersonated Musk.  People think it's ridiculous that he banned her without at least a warning.  Especially after he posted "comedy is now legal".


----------



## Cmaier

shadow puppet said:


> The post you shared from Musk threatening suspension for anyone presenting themselves as someone else without saying it's a parody, came about after comedienne Kathy Griffin impersonated Musk.  People think it's ridiculous that he banned her without at least a warning.  Especially after he posted "comedy is now legal".



Oh, i didn;t know Kathy griffin was one of the impersonators.  There have been a bunch


----------



## shadow puppet

Cmaier said:


> Oh, i didn;t know Kathy griffin was one of the impersonators.  *There have been a bunch*



True.  For some reason, this one put him over the edge.


----------



## lizkat

Alli said:


> So we stop following anyone with a blue check that isn’t following us? Don’t follow anyone with a blue check at all?




People have been impersonating a number of widely followed accounts.   For example I saw someone had at least briefly impersonated an account @muellershewrote with name "Mueller, She Wrote" which is owned by Allison Gill,  along with the website muellershewrote.com and it is a Twitter account followed by about half a million accounts. 

The impersonator used @mueiiershewrote but then also used the name "Mueller, She Wrote" so it was easy at first not to notice the actual Twitter account name was wrong.  The post I saw seemed a bit off from usual fare from the real account...  and then I noticed the account only had 50 followers...  Hmm I thought.   Then I finally saw the Twitter account was not right.   As of a couple hours ago the fake account was still up but the legit owner of the real account has reported it and had urged others to do so.


----------



## shadow puppet

lizkat said:


> People have been impersonating a number of widely followed accounts.   For example I saw someone had at least briefly impersonated an account @muellershewrote with name "Mueller, She Wrote" which is owned by Allison Gill,  along with the website muellershewrote.com and it is a Twitter account followed by about half a million accounts.



Yeah, she was the first I read having problems with impersonators.  This is why it's important to now check the date they joined and the amount of followers to help detect if it's an impersonator or not.


----------



## ronntaylor

Alli said:


> So we stop following anyone with a blue check that isn’t following us? Don’t follow anyone with a blue check at all?



Musty basically said that blue checks will be prioritized. So if those you follow don't have blue checks they'll be pushed down the timeline. He actually tried to use that as a selling point with advertisers.


----------



## Cmaier

ronntaylor said:


> Musty basically said that blue checks will be prioritized. So if those you follow don't have blue checks they'll be pushed down the timeline. He actually tried to use that as a selling point with advertisers.



Yeah, but to be fair, he says lots of things. Some of them end up being true.


----------



## Eric

lizkat said:


> People have been impersonating a number of widely followed accounts.   For example I saw someone had at least briefly impersonated an account @muellershewrote with name "Mueller, She Wrote" which is owned by Allison Gill,  along with the website muellershewrote.com and it is a Twitter account followed by about half a million accounts.
> 
> The impersonator used @mueiiershewrote but then also used the name "Mueller, She Wrote" so it was easy at first not to notice the actual Twitter account name was wrong.  The post I saw seemed a bit off from usual fare from the real account...  and then I noticed the account only had 50 followers...  Hmm I thought.   Then I finally saw the Twitter account was not right.   As of a couple hours ago the fake account was still up but the legit owner of the real account has reported it and had urged others to do so.
> 
> View attachment 18974​



He's taken years of refinement in dealing with accounts and turned them into a total shit show in less than a week.


----------



## lizkat

Someone who has a FB account mailed me this, must be floating around over there.   Can Zuckerberg draw?

​
​


----------



## Andropov

A week into the 'free speech' version Twitter and Musk is already suspending accounts that use his name to make unhinged parody posts


----------



## Alli

ronntaylor said:


> Musty basically said that blue checks will be prioritized. So if those you follow don't have blue checks they'll be pushed down the timeline. He actually tried to use that as a selling point with advertisers.



Checks will be prioritized, but if you follow 300, and only 12 of those have checks…you’re right back where you are now.


----------



## Eric

This Didn’t Age Well from
      clevercomebacks


----------



## lizkat

Eric said:


> This Didn’t Age Well from
> clevercomebacks




Most popular "app" on the planet is probably the common screen grab, ever since Musk started tinkering w/ Twitter.

He may micromanage his new toy but the internet is forever no matter what he deletes or whom he bans.


----------



## Eric

lizkat said:


> Most popular "app" on the planet is probably the common screen grab, ever since Musk started tinkering w/ Twitter.
> 
> He may micromanage his new toy but the internet is forever no matter what he deletes or whom he bans.



I think he lived in his little bubble of Conservatism without any real sense of the real world going on around him, this is common with those on the right. Now he's getting smacked with a dose of reality, undoing a system overnight (while not perfect) that took years to refine.


----------



## lizkat

Eric said:


> I think he lived in his little bubble of Conservatism without any real sense of the real world going on around him, this is common with those on the right. Now he's getting smacked with a dose of reality, undoing a system overnight (while not perfect) that took years to refine.




It's remarkable too that in the space of a week he managed to collide with or otherwise dismay advertisers, his customer base, the hired help,  labor law, the SEC, the EU, the banks that lent him $13B and god knows which of his co-investors.    Good job Elon! 

This guy gives a whole new dimension to the concept of key-man risk.  Usually it's a consideration of possible material loss to the company in event of loss of services from a key employee.  In the case of Twitter as it stands at the moment, you'd think the key man insurance premium might actually decrease if Musk were to end up sidelined.


----------



## Renzatic

Eric said:


> I think he lived in his little bubble of Conservatism without any real sense of the real world going on around him, this is common with those on the right. Now he's getting smacked with a dose of reality, undoing a system overnight (while not perfect) that took years to refine.




I wouldn't call it conservatism exactly, but Musk is currently the living end result of what happens when you do nothing but surround yourself with yes men and sycophants. He's fallen for the myth of his own infallibility.


----------



## Eric




----------



## dada_dave

He’s now openly advocating for the republicans on the platform he bought.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1589639376186724354/

Oh these gems from earlier:

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1433474893316722691/

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1519415674111672325/

Which was already bullshit both in the general sentiment and the specifics to him. I guess I’d rather him be open. It makes thing easier.


----------



## tomO2013

Of course he is advocating for a republican congress,  it’s the best way to maintain the status quo…
- distract the general population with a scapegoat for their troubles.
- keep both politics sides arguing so that nothing gets done, nothing gets passed in congress - maintain the status quo.

Imagine a republican congress and republican presidency who had a majority and could get legislation passed…. Or a democrat congress and democrat presidency who could get legislation passed on the key issues affecting American society. 
That would be disastrous for those organizations/individuals in the top 1% who rely on nothing politically changing in order to maintain the status quo. 

It would also be disastrous for politicians who would not have an excuse to the popular vote as to why they not voting against their lobby interest groups and sponsors.

As long as both sides have an excuse to blame the other for blocking, nothing will get done, companies will continue to make astounding levels of profit, the top 1% will continue to acquire wealth etc… homeless problem, healthcare for the disadvantaged, gun control, big tech influence on politics… will all be talking points with no meaningful action.


----------



## leman

dada_dave said:


> He’s now openly advocating for the republicans on the platform he bought.
> 
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1589639376186724354/
> 
> Oh these gems from earlier:
> 
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1433474893316722691/
> 
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1519415674111672325/
> 
> Which was already bullshit both in the general sentiment and the specifics to him. I guess I’d rather him be open. It makes thing easier.




What a disgusting individual. Texas denies women access to reproductive health and has literally implemented voter suppression. It's hard to imagine more sinister ways of governmental regulation.


----------



## dada_dave

tomO2013 said:


> Of course he is advocating for a republican congress,  it’s the best way to maintain the status quo…
> - distract the general population with a scapegoat for their troubles.
> - keep both politics sides arguing so that nothing gets done, nothing gets passed in congress - maintain the status quo.
> 
> Imagine a republican congress and republican presidency who had a majority and could get legislation passed…. Or a democrat congress and democrat presidency who could get legislation passed on the key issues affecting American society.
> That would be disastrous for those organizations/individuals in the top 1% who rely on nothing politically changing in order to maintain the status quo.
> 
> It would also be disastrous for politicians who would not have an excuse to the popular vote as to why they not voting against their lobby interest groups and sponsors.
> 
> As long as both sides have an excuse to blame the other for blocking, nothing will get done, companies will continue to make astounding levels of profit, the top 1% will continue to acquire wealth etc… homeless problem, healthcare for the disadvantaged, gun control, big tech influence on politics… will all be talking points with no meaningful action.




As much as the Republicans live to play the media victim card, it’s worse than that: usually when that happens the democrats get the blame in the media. The question is always are the Democrats doing enough to win over Republicans even when the Republican position is to douse the capitol in kerosene and light a match. Maybe it’ll be different this time but I doubt it. It doesn’t help that the Democrats are often politically stupid


----------



## dada_dave

leman said:


> What a disgusting individual. Texas denies women access to reproductive health and has literally implemented voter suppression. It's hard to imagine more sinister ways of governmental regulation.




Yes but he as a straight white male had less regulation … you know to abuse his employees more.


----------



## Andropov

Free speech! 

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1589660079548403712/


----------



## fooferdoggie

Andropov said:


> Free speech!
> 
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1589660079548403712/



Every day he looks more like a spolied child who's parents neglected him and he wanted to be a bully but was too wimpy till he got money.


----------



## Pumbaa

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1589459148428541953/


----------



## tomO2013

dada_dave said:


> As much as the Republicans live to play the media victim card, it’s worse than that: usually when that happens the democrats get the blame in the media. The question is always are the Democrats doing enough to win over Republicans even when the Republican position is to douse the capitol in kerosene and light a match. Maybe it’ll be different this time but I doubt it. It doesn’t help that the Democrats are often politically stupid



Honestly, as an outside observer looking in with no horse in the race, I truly believe that they are as bad as each other. There are a few beacons of light in politics who I think genuinely want to correct a very corrupt system, but vast majority are a-okay to keep the system as it is. Bickering allows both sides to keep the status quo without meaningfully improving the lives of their constituents. Especially when voting for their constituents involves voting against that special lobby interest group that contributed over $400,000 to their campaign.
I know I sound cynical - honestly that is not my intent. But I do think that if we want to see real meaningful change for the every day US Joe and Mary, then we need to curb special interest and lobby groups in politics.


----------



## dada_dave

tomO2013 said:


> Honestly, as an outside observer looking in with no horse in the race, I truly believe that they are as bad as each other. There are a few beacons of light in politics who I think genuinely want to correct a very corrupt system, but vast majority are a-okay to keep the system as it is. Bickering allows both sides to keep the status quo without meaningfully improving the lives of their constituents. Especially when voting for their constituents involves voting against that special lobby interest group that contributed over $400,000 to their campaign.
> I know I sound cynical - honestly that is not my intent. But I do think that if we want to see real meaningful change for the every day US Joe and Mary, then we need to curb special interest and lobby groups in politics.



Sorry if this comes off as acerbic but rather than being cynical I find it naive. Democrats are flawed but the “they’re just as bad as each other” is a lazy excuse and just baffling considering what’s happening.


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

tomO2013 said:


> Honestly, as an outside observer looking in with no horse in the race, I truly believe that they are as bad as each other. There are a few beacons of light in politics who I think genuinely want to correct a very corrupt system, but vast majority are a-okay to keep the system as it is. Bickering allows both sides to keep the status quo without meaningfully improving the lives of their constituents. Especially when voting for their constituents involves voting against that special lobby interest group that contributed over $400,000 to their campaign.
> I know I sound cynical - honestly that is not my intent. But I do think that if we want to see real meaningful change for the every day US Joe and Mary, then we need to curb special interest and lobby groups in politics.




That’s a major part of the problem. Right now we have the Democrats screaming “You must fight to preserve the system that has failed most of you for decades!” And this coming from a party that doesn’t have a recent track record of fighting for just about anything. At best they’ll either fold or get something passed that’s 1/10th of what was originally wanted or offered just to please those who would never vote for them anyway.


----------



## tomO2013

dada_dave said:


> orry if this comes off as acerbic but rather than being cynical I find it naive. Democrats are flawed but the “they’re just as bad as each other” is a lazy excuse and just baffling considering what’s happening.




No problem - perhaps I am naive  

However I’m not prone to making remarks or statements without some degree of research…  if you can share data from a non-biased source to the contrary, I’d gratefully love to read/learn more. The only antidote to naivety is (truthful) information 

So, against THAT backdrop, I made that statement about democrats and republicans being as bad as each other against the backdrop of some quick Google searches into political donations, which parties received the most donations, and how did they vote (or did the recipient evade voting when it came to picking the interests of his/her/their constituents over the group that bankrolled their political campaign).
This is what I found…
Top recipients of lobby groups in 2022:








						Top Recipients of Contributions from Lobbyists, 2022 Cycle
					

These are the members who received the most from lobbyists who are also calling on congressional offices to influence policy.




					www.opensecrets.org
				




Lobbying by sector :








						Ranked Sectors
					

Health topped the list of economic sectors lobbied in 2022, with $545,672,755 total spent. See all economic sector totals.




					www.opensecrets.org
				



No surprises there to see health, finance and realestate in the top 1 and 2 positions — probably the biggest areas affecting peole in areas such as homelessness, access to health care etc…

What I found is that apparently both parties accept huge numbers of donations from lobby interest groups and both parties have representatives that have avoided voting against lobby groups who have provided large donations…

I listed opensecrets because preliminary research into whether they were biased left or right, came back with a suggestion that they are very much Center weighted… something that I hope would act as a bridging ground for discussion









						OpenSecrets.org Media Bias Rating
					

Learn the AllSides Media Bias Rating of OpenSecrets.org. AllSides rates the media bias of hundreds of news outlets, media sources and writers.




					www.allsides.com
				




@dada_dave : help me be less naive   I’m 100% open to being edu-macated (in a friendly way).


----------



## dada_dave

tomO2013 said:


> No problem - perhaps I am naive
> 
> However I’m not prone to making remarks or statements without some degree of research…  if you can share data from a non-biased source to the contrary, I’d gratefully love to read/learn more. The only antidote to naivety is (truthful) information
> 
> So, against THAT backdrop, I made that statement about democrats and republicans being as bad as each other against the backdrop of some quick Google searches into political donations, which parties received the most donations, and how did they vote (or did the recipient evade voting when it came to picking the interests of his/her/their constituents over the group that bankrolled their political campaign).
> This is what I found…
> Top recipients of lobby groups in 2022:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Top Recipients of Contributions from Lobbyists, 2022 Cycle
> 
> 
> These are the members who received the most from lobbyists who are also calling on congressional offices to influence policy.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.opensecrets.org
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Lobbying by sector :
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Ranked Sectors
> 
> 
> Health topped the list of economic sectors lobbied in 2022, with $545,672,755 total spent. See all economic sector totals.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.opensecrets.org
> 
> 
> 
> 
> No surprises there to see health, finance and realestate in the top 1 and 2 positions — probably the biggest areas affecting peole in areas such as homelessness, access to health care etc…
> 
> What I found is that apparently both parties accept huge numbers of donations from lobby interest groups and both parties have representatives that have avoided voting against lobby groups who have provided large donations…
> 
> I listed opensecrets because preliminary research into whether they were biased left or right, came back with a suggestion that they are very much Center weighted… something that I hope would act as a bridging ground for discussion
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> OpenSecrets.org Media Bias Rating
> 
> 
> Learn the AllSides Media Bias Rating of OpenSecrets.org. AllSides rates the media bias of hundreds of news outlets, media sources and writers.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.allsides.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> @dada_dave : help me be less naive   I’m 100% open to being edu-macated (in a friendly way).



Yeah I’m sorry I’m posting sick so I’m a bit less charitable than I normally would be. By naive what I mean is that there is a comforting naivety in believing that both sides are bad so it doesn’t matter.

So first off, is the Democratic Party flawed and overly reliant on big donations? Yup! No disagreement. Such Democrats managed to buck their party and stop quite a few reforms over the years or as @Chew Toy McCoy wrote in negotiations with themselves weakening such reforms before even trying to negotiate with Republicans - a major no no in politics and business. Or on the left, trying to fight the good fight without a strategic clue of how to do it or a recognition of the practicalities of governance. So I regularly get pissed with just about every faction of the party. But the party platform as a whole is to try to reform the system - lobbying, campaign finance, and voter protection are key planks of the democratic platform. In contrast, blocking those are key planks of the Republican platform or would be if the Republicans still had one. Last presidential election they threw it out and declared the party platform to simply support Donald Trump.

So whatever flaws the Democrats may have and I’ll be happy to list more, they pale in comparison to the Republicans. If you want to research and read on why this is, read authors on how fascism takes over nations. How we let it happen. But truthfully you barely need to as this is happening right out in the open. To me what you’re doing is writing about something that is indeed a problem, but ignoring the much bigger elephant in the room, figuratively literally . Basically the Republicans are appealing to a further and further extreme that is frankly untethered to reality and often deliberately or cynically so. And they are even very upfront about it, often boasting even. “I could shoot someone on 5th avenue and not lose any votes” was largely true within the party - in fact probably would’ve gotten him more. They then tried to implement that and stop the peaceful transition of power and are continuing to lay the groundwork for doing so in the future with increased effectiveness. And again they are very upfront about it. If foreign fascism is too far afield, study the southern rhetoric and political strategies in the run up to the US Civil War. The similarities with the modern Republicans are becoming uncomfortable (ironic). And if you want to talk about corruption, boy was the politics in those days waaaaay more corrupt and controlled than today. But I still wouldn’t have said well both sides are equally bad when faced with that choice. It can happen here, truthfully it already did, and we’re in danger of it a second time.

This has been trending within the Republican Party for a very long time and started with people decades ago who might’ve been horrified by the end results of their actions (some of them) but nonetheless furthered it. Make no mistake we are in a very dangerous time for our democracy, which as imperfect as it is, is the only way or nation can heal its myriad imperfections.

That’s what I mean by a cynical naivety - reframing the issues as to ignore the fundamental while embracing the incidental (that’s a slight exaggeration I know) so as to appear worldly but not be. Now I gotta admit you are unique in that most of the time someone writes what you have the conclusions are made in the language of apathy or let them fight + the mixing of neutrality with objectivity as Elon tried to do (despite the fact that I doubt very much he would actually support Democrats in the same manner reversed - that’s what I meant by he’s wrong in the general sense also I think he’s lying). I’ll fully admit you didn’t write any of that, which I do find interesting, but can’t you see how easily the logic of your posts lends itself to any/all of those political philosophies?


----------



## AG_PhamD

I have no interest in Twitter. From my distant observations Twitter was a clusterfuck under previous management and evidently continues to be under Musk. And despite all the outrage about layoffs, it’s no shock when you have a company that’s so unprofitable. 

As I said before, I think people have to wait and see what happens. I think there’s potentially some good ideas floating around to improve the platform. But Musks execution is atrocious. 

I actually appreciate Twitter fact checking the president, but I can’t help but feel this is somewhat targeted. But perhaps this is what we should expect of all politicians. 

As for the bans due to Elon Musk impersonation, it seems awfully petty to permanently ban someone over this. Especially on a free speech platform. That said I understand the concern. 

I don’t actually think anyone becoming a verified user is a bad idea. But $7.99 needs to provide some level of value for the average user. It seems they should also have badges for things like politicians, journalists, artists, academics, etc at extra cost (except maybe academics). There’s so much talk about advertisers when in my mind the real advertisers are the high profile people who use this to disseminate whatever their “product” is. 

This whole chaotic rollout of Musk’s new Twitter is pretty on brand for him. For example, he had a grand plan of basically fully automating car manufacturing and having robots build the robots that build the car. Every other manufacturer figured out decades ago you cannot automate everything. 

Trial and error might work for the development of rocket ships but not for consumer products. There’s only so much experimentation you can do with customers before they get fed up. 



dada_dave said:


> Basically the Republicans are appealing to a further and further extreme that is frankly untethered to reality and often deliberately or cynically so




I would definitely agree their is a faction of radical republicans- particularly the election denial grifters- I assume most of them are smart enough to realize what they’re doing. Particularly the ones who have been in government for more than 5 minutes. 

The problem is the democrats are appealing to an increasingly small demographic. 

For the record, I’m a moderate independent and a bit of a centrist- you need to balance the two opposing forces in the country and the crazy ideas on either side hopefully balance each other out. 

My biggest concern about the republicans taking over the house and senate is they will spend the next 2+ years laser focused on Hunter Biden while preventing any meaningful legislation from happening. It’s not like  I think they have any solutions to many of the current issues.


----------



## SuperMatt

AG_PhamD said:


> The problem is the democrats are appealing to an increasingly small demographic.



?


----------



## Eric




----------



## shadow puppet

Gerard Cohen is one of the Twitter employees who was let go by Musk.  Kudos to him for taking the time to show praise to his coworkers and the people with him on the journey.  

The is worth taking the time to read.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1588584461398347777/


----------



## Eric

shadow puppet said:


> Gerard Cohen is one of the Twitter employees who was let go by Musk.  Kudos to him for taking the time to show praise to his coworkers and the people with him on the journey.
> 
> The is worth taking the time to read.
> 
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1588584461398347777/



Class act all the way, the type of manager you love to work for. Thanks for sharing this.


----------



## Cmaier

shadow puppet said:


> Gerard Cohen is one of the Twitter employees who was let go by Musk.  Kudos to him for taking the time to show praise to his coworkers and the people with him on the journey.
> 
> The is worth taking the time to read.
> 
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1588584461398347777/



The replies are incredibly toxic


----------



## shadow puppet

Cmaier said:


> The replies are incredibly toxic



I'm sorry that's what you took from it.  I saw him honoring his fellow workers, taking the time to single out many and recommend them for hiring.  Sure, there were some asshats replying but many replies seemed supportive. But my point was more about Gerard taking the time to do this in recognition of his team.


----------



## Eric

Cmaier said:


> The replies are incredibly toxic



And that is Twitter in a nutshell, toxicity and sensationalism are what people are after, not common decency. I don't mind following this stuff in posts or whatever but I'm glad to be off of that shitty platform.


----------



## Pumbaa

Cmaier said:


> The replies are incredibly toxic



Yikes, the amount of posts thinking the accessibility department were responsible for cutting off access to Twitter is … just wow.


----------



## Renzatic

Pumbaa said:


> Yikes, the amount of posts thinking the accessibility department were responsible for cutting off access to Twitter is … just wow.




I used to think that whenever some edgelord would declare the teeming masses stupid, it was nothing more than a lame attempt to preen themselves in front of an audience, putting their own overindulged ego on display for everyone to see. While I believed that most people weren't what you'd call rocket scientists, they had enough common sense and decency to at least refrain from doing the wrong thing, even if they didn't have the necessary bravery to always do the right thing.

Needless to say, I'm much more cynical these days.


----------



## diamond.g

Eric said:


> And that is Twitter in a nutshell, toxicity and sensationalism are what people are after, not common decency. I don't mind following this stuff in posts or whatever but I'm glad to be off of that shitty platform.



Really that is social media in general. Folks are more engaged with negative content than positive so that is what you get shown, in a vicious cycle...


----------



## fooferdoggie

the whole system pushes negativity because it keeps people engaged. the logner you stay on the more profit is made.


----------



## AG_PhamD

SuperMatt said:


> ?




40 year high inflation. Soaring interest rates. Bleak economic output. The majority of voters have this as a top concern. 

The Democrats have largely focused on 1/6 and abortion, at least at a national level. Very few people cared to watch the 1/6 commission (including myself) and the result was like a +1% in change of opinion on the matter, most people already have their minds made up (including myself, Trump should have been impeached for his extreme recklessness and dereliction of duty). 

The related “future of democracy” platform that’s been pushed recently in most polls ranks quite low. There’s a certain irony having a message “if you don’t vote for us, you’re putting democracy is at stake”. That said, I don’t disagree there are some deeply concerning characters on the right. 

Abortion is an interesting thing, ranking as a high concern for both republicans and democrats. The thing is, majority blue states already have access to abortion. The cohort of women (and men I suppose) affected by access to abortion is limited, the number of women planning on abortion even lower. So although people are passionate, I’m not convinced it’s the motivating factor some assume it to be. 

I think it’s pretty clear the Democrats have downplayed and ignored issues like the economy and cost of living- obviously there’s no magic overnight solution but the apparent lack of legitimate concern is off putting. Crime and immigration as well- but at these specifically should be addressable in the near term. And those are concerns most affecting a lot of people. 

It’s not just me saying this. It’s not just those on the right saying this. These thoughts are mirrored by many in the mainstream left and progressive left. The Dems are in a tough spot in many cases not fully due to their actions, some not at all, but if you don’t legitimately identify the concerns of voters, I wouldn’t expect great results. 

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, I don’t think Republicans have any answers to the economy and inflation in the near term or many other issues. They of course have the luxury of being the minority and blaming dems for everything.


----------



## Eric

Twitter Placed NJ Lottery Ad for Powerball Jackpot in Feed with Antisemitic Memes​After the I-Team notified the NJ Lottery about its promotional content appearing alongside hate speech, the agency confirmed it had suspended its business relationship with Twitter just hours before









						Twitter Placed NJ Lottery Ad for Powerball Jackpot in Feed with Antisemitic Memes
					

The New Jersey Lottery has publicly announced the suspension of all advertising on Twitter after the I-Team revealed an advertisement for Powerball was placed in a Twitter feed featuring antisemitic cartoons.




					www.nbcnewyork.com
				




One of the reporters covering the story said we haven't seen such an onslaught of antisemitism since the 1930s. We're living in scary times.


----------



## Renzatic

Eric said:


> One of the reporters covering the story said we haven't seen such an onslaught of antisemitism since the 1930s. We're living in scary times.




The sad fact is, it's nothing new. The only difference is that it's no longer something people speak about amongst themselves.


----------



## shadow puppet

AG_PhamD said:


> Abortion is an interesting thing, ranking as a high concern for both republicans and democrats. The thing is, majority blue states already have access to abortion. The cohort of women (and men I suppose) affected by access to abortion is limited, the number of women planning on abortion even lower. So although people are passionate, I’m not convinced it’s the motivating factor some assume it to be.



Which is truly sad.  It's fine some states still make it legal but it's the return in so many states to the 1950's lack of women's rights I take issue with.


AG_PhamD said:


> I don’t think Republicans have any answers to the economy and inflation in the near term or many other issues. They of course have the luxury of being the minority and *blaming dems for everything*.



It's what the GOP does best.  I don't hold out hope for much positive moving forward.  At least not for the foreseeable future.


----------



## Cmaier

Hilarious.

So, a blue checkmark means you are “verified.”

But a gray checkmark will now mean you are “verified verified.”

What a dumpster fire.









						Elon Musk kills Twitter's 'Official' badge and gray checkmark just hours after launch
					

November 9, 2022 Update #2: Just a few hours later, Elon Musk says he has “killed” the idea of an “Official” badge with a gray checkmark. Instead, he says “blue check will be the great leveler” and that “Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months.” The company will “keep what works and […]




					9to5mac.com


----------



## Cmaier

Ok. I think I’ve got it.

So, “gray checkmark” means the account is really from whoever it claims to be.

And “blue checkmark“ means “I am dumb and gave twitter $8 for some reason.”


----------



## Eric

Cmaier said:


> Hilarious.
> 
> So, a blue checkmark means you are “verified.”
> 
> But a gray checkmark will now mean you are “verified verified.”
> 
> What a dumpster fire.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Elon Musk kills Twitter's 'Official' badge and gray checkmark just hours after launch
> 
> 
> November 9, 2022 Update #2: Just a few hours later, Elon Musk says he has “killed” the idea of an “Official” badge with a gray checkmark. Instead, he says “blue check will be the great leveler” and that “Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months.” The company will “keep what works and […]
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 9to5mac.com



WT actual F? That has to be the biggest scam from Twitter ever. Basically, you may as well flush your $8 down the toilet every month, it's zero difference. No different than our "Site Donor" badge here on this site, all it means is you've given money to them.


----------



## Cmaier

Oh, wait. It’s even more confusing. Only a subset of previously-verified people get the gray checkmark. 

So, um, yeah.


----------



## DT

Blue = Paid Verification

Gray = Paid and Validated as the legit source

Red = Paid Bot account, sure, it's a bot, but $8 is $8 ...

Yellow = Verified by Jesus who appeared in my oatmeal

Green = Paid Super Twit, $50/month, say whatever you'd like, LOL, WORTH IT


----------



## Renzatic

DT said:


> Green = Paid Super Twit, $50/month, say whatever you'd like, LOL, WORTH IT




HILLARY CLINTON DID 9/11!

...HOLY SHIT! BEST $50 I'VE EVER SPENT!


----------



## SuperMatt

AG_PhamD said:


> 40 year high inflation. Soaring interest rates. Bleak economic output. The majority of voters have this as a top concern.
> 
> The Democrats have largely focused on 1/6 and abortion, at least at a national level. Very few people cared to watch the 1/6 commission (including myself) and the result was like a +1% in change of opinion on the matter, most people already have their minds made up (including myself, Trump should have been impeached for his extreme recklessness and dereliction of duty).
> 
> The related “future of democracy” platform that’s been pushed recently in most polls ranks quite low. There’s a certain irony having a message “if you don’t vote for us, you’re putting democracy is at stake”. That said, I don’t disagree there are some deeply concerning characters on the right.
> 
> Abortion is an interesting thing, ranking as a high concern for both republicans and democrats. The thing is, majority blue states already have access to abortion. The cohort of women (and men I suppose) affected by access to abortion is limited, the number of women planning on abortion even lower. So although people are passionate, I’m not convinced it’s the motivating factor some assume it to be.
> 
> I think it’s pretty clear the Democrats have downplayed and ignored issues like the economy and cost of living- obviously there’s no magic overnight solution but the apparent lack of legitimate concern is off putting. Crime and immigration as well- but at these specifically should be addressable in the near term. And those are concerns most affecting a lot of people.
> 
> It’s not just me saying this. It’s not just those on the right saying this. These thoughts are mirrored by many in the mainstream left and progressive left. The Dems are in a tough spot in many cases not fully due to their actions, some not at all, but if you don’t legitimately identify the concerns of voters, I wouldn’t expect great results.
> 
> I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, I don’t think Republicans have any answers to the economy and inflation in the near term or many other issues. They of course have the luxury of being the minority and blaming dems for everything.



What does any of this have to do with demographics?


----------



## lizkat

DT said:


> Blue = Paid Verification
> 
> Gray = Paid and Validated as the legit source
> 
> Red = Paid Bot account, sure, it's a bot, but $8 is $8 ...
> 
> Yellow = Verified by Jesus who appeared in my oatmeal
> 
> Green = Paid Super Twit, $50/month, say whatever you'd like, LOL, WORTH IT






Renzatic said:


> HILLARY CLINTON DID 9/11!
> 
> ...HOLY SHIT! BEST $50 I'VE EVER SPENT!




Imagine being a venture capital outfit and having thrown $25-50M into Musk's acquisition pot for the merry hell of it and because why not, the other stuff he owns has some potential.    The money is petty cash for a VC, but I seriously doubt they thought they were buying a beat-down of a significant social media platform.  If Musk is about a course correction and quick monetization of his already busted toy, he's doin' it ALL wrong.


----------



## Yoused

AG_PhamD said:


> Abortion is an interesting thing, ranking as a high concern for both republicans and democrats. The thing is, majority blue states already have access to abortion. The cohort of women (and men I suppose) affected by access to abortion is limited, the number of women planning on abortion even lower. So although people are passionate, I’m not convinced it’s the motivating factor some assume it to be.




I think what is evident is that the pro-life anti-choice movement has shown us is that they are deeply misogynistic. Passing laws prohibiting a medication because _it could_ be used for pregnancy-temination  or, heaven forfend, contraception, but if it has other uses, fuck it, it still has to be outlawed because girls might possibly use it in ways we disapprove of.

They have not telegraphed how they want to subjugate women, they have painted the town with their 15th century attitude. The pro-choice side has become not "let's allow abortion" it is now "let's not treat women like cattle." There are not a few women in the US that do not want to treat other women like livestock, much less be treated that way themselves, and there are probably close to that many men who feel that way as well.

Abortion rights is simply no longer about abortion (it never really was, but of late it is now blindingly obvious).



AG_PhamD said:


> I think it’s pretty clear the Democrats have downplayed and ignored issues like the economy and cost of living- obviously there’s no magic overnight solution but the apparent lack of legitimate concern is off putting. Crime and immigration as well- but at these specifically should be addressable in the near term. And those are concerns most affecting a lot of people.




Do you truly believe that the economy would be better under Republicans? I mean, I am not at all pleased with D economic policy, but R policy is worse. Criminal, really, because it visits misery on the poorest of Americans, which promotes more crime. In other words, the Rs are worse on crime because they are actively fomenting it, aside from the criminal behavior that most of them take part in.

I truly have a hard time discerning what the Rs (in government) are even any good for. Nothing they promote is helpful to the health of the country. The Ds at least make a believable  effort to address our problems, even if it amounts to not much at all. That is still much better than the America-hating Rs, who are just out to smash the country and grab as much of the candy that falls out as they can.


----------



## dada_dave

AG_PhamD said:


> I would definitely agree their is a faction of radical republicans- particularly the election denial grifters- I assume most of them are smart enough to realize what they’re doing. Particularly the ones who have been in government for more than 5 minutes.
> 
> The problem is the democrats are appealing to an increasingly small demographic.
> 
> For the record, I’m a moderate independent and a bit of a centrist- you need to balance the two opposing forces in the country and the crazy ideas on either side hopefully balance each other out.
> 
> My biggest concern about the republicans taking over the house and senate is they will spend the next 2+ years laser focused on Hunter Biden while preventing any meaningful legislation from happening. It’s not like  I think they have any solutions to many of the current issues.






AG_PhamD said:


> 40 year high inflation. Soaring interest rates. Bleak economic output. The majority of voters have this as a top concern.
> 
> The Democrats have largely focused on 1/6 and abortion, at least at a national level. Very few people cared to watch the 1/6 commission (including myself) and the result was like a +1% in change of opinion on the matter, most people already have their minds made up (including myself, Trump should have been impeached for his extreme recklessness and dereliction of duty).
> 
> The related “future of democracy” platform that’s been pushed recently in most polls ranks quite low. There’s a certain irony having a message “if you don’t vote for us, you’re putting democracy is at stake”. That said, I don’t disagree there are some deeply concerning characters on the right.
> 
> Abortion is an interesting thing, ranking as a high concern for both republicans and democrats. The thing is, majority blue states already have access to abortion. The cohort of women (and men I suppose) affected by access to abortion is limited, the number of women planning on abortion even lower. So although people are passionate, I’m not convinced it’s the motivating factor some assume it to be.
> 
> I think it’s pretty clear the Democrats have downplayed and ignored issues like the economy and cost of living- obviously there’s no magic overnight solution but the apparent lack of legitimate concern is off putting. Crime and immigration as well- but at these specifically should be addressable in the near term. And those are concerns most affecting a lot of people.
> 
> It’s not just me saying this. It’s not just those on the right saying this. These thoughts are mirrored by many in the mainstream left and progressive left. The Dems are in a tough spot in many cases not fully due to their actions, some not at all, but if you don’t legitimately identify the concerns of voters, I wouldn’t expect great results.
> 
> I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, I don’t think Republicans have any answers to the economy and inflation in the near term or many other issues. They of course have the luxury of being the minority and blaming dems for everything.




I don't even know where to begin with all of this. I'm trying to keep my blood pressure down.



> There’s a certain irony having a message “if you don’t vote for us, you’re putting democracy is at stake”.




It's not ironic if it's true ...


> That said, I don’t disagree there are some deeply concerning characters on the right.




The few Republicans who *aren't* deeply concerning are being tossed out of the party because the party openly wants to become more deeply concerning. Again, do people just not pay attention to what the Republicans actually say? They are pretty open about it.

It's like we live in parallel universes. "Sure the Republican party tried to end democracy as we know it and that's not good, but is that really important? And by focusing on it aren't Democrats appealing to just as an extreme as people who delusionally or cynically push election lies and want to continue to undermine elections which now make up the majority of Republican voters and especially the political class that represents them?"

I mean yeah the republicans are poised to do well in the midterms - usually the party out of power in the WH does - one would've liked to think that supporting the end of democracy would change that dynamic rather than simply suppressing it as it seems to have done at the time of writing. The fact that it didn't, the fact that you write what you write is actually what's deeply concerning. I mean I know history isn't taught very well in the US, but surely we all studied the rise of fascism in Europe, what happened, how it came about, or hell even as I wrote before the lead up to the US civil war. Selective amnesia? or what?

@Yoused covered the abortion angle already extremely well so I'll do the economic: the economic outlook isn't even that ****ing bleak nor are actual crime rates or any of the other **** you said as to why democrats are losing. Also as for 40 year high inflation, the entire world is undergoing inflationary pressures and while there may be variation country to country if the US is doing more so (which we aren't, we're about average) ... you do remember that during the Trump administration people kept saying his out of control spending could overheat the economy and cause inflation? or no? More selective amnesia? Again even I wouldn't put the blame on him (as much as I would love to) because overall it's a global phenomenon. You can blame the pandemic, the war, supply chain breakdowns due to both, etc ... or just the fact that we went through 30 years of historically low inflation and that had to end at some point. Similarly, crime rates are high locally, but they are still extremely low historically. The idea that this is BLM or radical democrats fault other such is just amazing. But hey we gotta block that democratic extremism like protecting voting rights and civil rights for minorities! That's just too far ...

Well I got through that without swearing or doing anything to earn a ban.

Edit: nope I did swear, twice, I’ll self censor, not sure about forum rules

Edit 2:


> I mean yeah the republicans are poised to do well in the midterms - usually the party out of power in the WH does - one would've liked to think that supporting the end of democracy would change that dynamic rather than simply suppressing it as it seems to have done at the time of writing.




So basically this, a little better than this actually, Democrats managed to not lose as badly as history would've predicted that they should have, Republicans projected to have a slight, maybe single, vote majority in the house only, but still you would've liked to think that trying to end democracy would've caused the nation to rebuke the Republicans entirely, but alas we are what we are as depressing as that is. Just not as depressing as it could've been! And I guess that's something to not be depressed about.


----------



## DT

@dada_dave 

Swear as much as you’d fucking like. __


----------



## Pumbaa

DT said:


> @dada_dave
> 
> Swear as much as you’d fucking like. __



Fuck yeah, please do (and remember the swear jar)


----------



## Weaselbot

DT said:


> @dada_dave
> 
> Swear as much as you’d fucking like. __



You are not allowed to use naughty language as if it is part of normal every day conversation in reality, you have been warned.


----------



## Weaselbot

Pumbaa said:


> Fuck yeah, please do (and remember the swear jar)



If you can't say it out loud in church during Bible study then you cannot say it here.


----------



## Cmaier

Weaselbot said:


> If you can't say it out loud in church during Bible study then you cannot say it here.




 what’s a “church?”


----------



## Renzatic

Cmaier said:


> what’s a “church?”




It's a place people go to when they want to get angry at democrats.


----------



## Yoused

Cmaier said:


> what’s a “church?”


----------



## Cmaier

Holy crap.









						Elon Musk kills Twitter's 'Official' badge and gray checkmark just hours after launch
					

November 9, 2022 Update #2: Just a few hours later, Elon Musk says he has “killed” the idea of an “Official” badge with a gray checkmark. Instead, he says “blue check will be the great leveler” and that “Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months.” The company will “keep what works and […]




					9to5mac.com


----------



## shadow puppet

Cmaier said:


> Holy crap.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Elon Musk kills Twitter's 'Official' badge and gray checkmark just hours after launch
> 
> 
> November 9, 2022 Update #2: Just a few hours later, Elon Musk says he has “killed” the idea of an “Official” badge with a gray checkmark. Instead, he says “blue check will be the great leveler” and that “Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months.” The company will “keep what works and […]
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 9to5mac.com



Blessed be the fruit loop.


----------



## dada_dave

Cmaier said:


> Holy crap.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Elon Musk kills Twitter's 'Official' badge and gray checkmark just hours after launch
> 
> 
> November 9, 2022 Update #2: Just a few hours later, Elon Musk says he has “killed” the idea of an “Official” badge with a gray checkmark. Instead, he says “blue check will be the great leveler” and that “Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months.” The company will “keep what works and […]
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 9to5mac.com



Chaos


----------



## Pumbaa

dada_dave said:


> Chaos



Rage! Engagement!


----------



## Renzatic

IT MUH FRAE SPEEK!


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

Yoused said:


> I truly have a hard time discerning what the Rs (in government) are even any good for. Nothing they promote is helpful to the health of the country. The Ds at least make a believable  effort to address our problems, even if it amounts to not much at all. That is still much better than the America-hating Rs, who are just out to smash the country and grab as much of the candy that falls out as they can.




The Republican party is like having a company where an entire department is paid to make the company fail. If they can’t kill a product up front they’ll severely understaff the departments in charge while loudly complaining they aren’t getting anything done.


----------



## leman

AG_PhamD said:


> Abortion is an interesting thing, ranking as a high concern for both republicans and democrats. The thing is, majority blue states already have access to abortion. The cohort of women (and men I suppose) affected by access to abortion is limited, the number of women planning on abortion even lower. So although people are passionate, I’m not convinced it’s the motivating factor some assume it to be.




Abortion is a big thing since attacking abortion means attacking freedom on a very fundamental level. It's not something you can look at from purely utilitarian perspective. This is literally about "I have agency over my life and can make my choices in a difficult situation". I rank it at the same level as the right to education, right to choose your profession and right to free movement. These are all cornerstones of free society. But unfortunately not many people realise this, dismissing it as some minor social issue that only affects a small proportion of population that nobody really cares about. That's exactly the attitude of carelessness that destroys democracy and free societies. 

But if I understand you correctly, you are commenting on campaign rhetorics choices rather than abortion in itself. And I don't disagree that overly focusing on this question will probably miss a good portion of reachable voter potential.


----------



## Pumbaa

Weaselbot said:


> If you can't say it out loud in church during Bible study then you cannot say it here.



I love you too!

What are the implications of “bless those who curse you” when it comes to cursing during Bible study? Shortcut to getting blessed?

*Matthew 5:44*


----------



## lizkat

Weaselbot said:


> You are not allowed to use naughty language as if it is part of normal every day conversation in reality, you have been warned.




Cue "oh no, not you again..."


----------



## lizkat

dada_dave said:


> Chaos




Yeah I'm starting to think Steve Bannon is on the chief twit's private board of directors.


----------



## Renzatic

Pumbaa said:


> What are the implications of “bless those who curse you” when it comes to cursing during Bible study? Shortcut to getting blessed?




I think it depends on if you're baptized already or not. Also, it's important to note whether you get the crackers and grape juice afterwards.


----------



## Cmaier

Ha ha ha.


----------



## Nycturne

Cmaier said:


> Holy crap.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Elon Musk kills Twitter's 'Official' badge and gray checkmark just hours after launch
> 
> 
> November 9, 2022 Update #2: Just a few hours later, Elon Musk says he has “killed” the idea of an “Official” badge with a gray checkmark. Instead, he says “blue check will be the great leveler” and that “Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months.” The company will “keep what works and […]
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 9to5mac.com




It's been said that time is a flat circle, but Musk seems to have the LP playing at 72 RPM. Have I mixed my metaphors badly enough yet?


----------



## lizkat

Cmaier said:


> Ha ha ha.
> 
> View attachment 19045





So begins construction of the TwitVersion of China's WeChat, the "everything app" ??

One figured he'd eventually buy up and bolt on some new functions --banking, shopping--  but perhaps not that he'd try to launch a banking function right after making it clear he can't even decide how or whether to verify identities on the platform. 

That clinking sound we hear might be his erstwhile touted dogecoin frenemy exiting stage right.


----------



## Cmaier

lizkat said:


> So begins construction of the TwitVersion of China's WeChat, the "everything app" ??
> 
> One figured he'd eventually buy up and bolt on some new functions --banking, shopping--  but perhaps not that he'd try to launch a banking function right after making it clear he can't even decide how or whether to verify identities on the platform.
> 
> That clinking sound we hear might be his erstwhile touted dogecoin frenemy exiting stage right.



“I just fired all of our security engineers. Please provide your banking information and social security number and let us keep your money safe for you!”


----------



## lizkat

The guy is shaping up like just another narcissist who plain loses it when he can't have his own way.

He probably really thought he could just say "Yeah look I changed my mind, I'm walking from this deal" and someone, likely his third previous general counsel, pointed out that there was a breakup penalty in the paperwork he had signed.

So it was either buy Twitter with the agreed upon financing from banks and co-investors or else pick up the breakup fee ALL BY HIMSELF. 

And right there started the whole "Really?  WELL EFF THE EFFING PLANET, I'LL BUY IT ALL RIGHT AND THEN SHOW YOU!!!!"

He's still showing us, still just warming up to showing us.  Wait until the SEC or EU start up with him.


----------



## Cmaier

Mario flipped off Twitter for nearly two hours with the blessing of Musk’s “verification”
					

Also impersonated: Jesus Christ, Trump, LeBron, and Valve




					www.theverge.com


----------



## Cmaier

wait - so if people can tell you paid for the check mark, then how is it the “great leveler” that Musk proclaims it to be?









						Everyone will know you paid for Twitter Blue
					

There's no hiding you paid for Elon's new product.




					www.imore.com


----------



## Yoused

Are we still talking about Twitcher? I thought the autopsy had been filed.


----------



## KingOfPain

I think it turned directly into a George Romero flick.


----------



## Andropov

In another brilliant move of Elon Musk's personal quest to fire as many of his best engineers as possible, work from home has been forbidden at Twitter, just two years after announcing 'Work from home forever'.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1590619676467683334/

Apparently, the change was to take effect the next day in the US —it was sent at midnight—or hours *before* the email was sent in Europe (workday had already started here).

Also note that AFAIK forbidding work from home for people who joined the company under a work from home contract is not legal in most of Europe. It's considered a significant change of the work conditions and you're not required to comply with the change. People who refuse can get fired, but will receive full severance pay.


----------



## Cmaier

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1590724257608134657/


----------



## Andropov

Cmaier said:


> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1590724257608134657/



Okay, I must admit that's one of the best I've read so far. Up there with firing the SREs, maybe even better. This would be hilarious if I used any other social network.


----------



## Cmaier

If I was an engineer at Twitter, no way I would certify anything.

——

“Elon has shown that he cares only about recouping the losses he’s incurring as a result of failing to get out of his binding obligation to buy Twitter,” the employee wrote. The changes to Twitter’s F.T.C. reviews could result in heavy fines and put people working for the company at risk, the person warned.
“This will put huge amount of personal, professional and legal risk onto engineers: I anticipate that all of you will de pressured by management into pushing out changes that will likely lead to major incidents,” they wrote.


----------



## Nycturne

Andropov said:


> In another brilliant move of Elon Musk's personal quest to fire as many of his best engineers as possible, work from home has been forbidden at Twitter, just two years after announcing 'Work from home forever'.
> 
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1590619676467683334/
> 
> Apparently, the change was to take effect the next day in the US —it was sent at midnight—or hours *before* the email was sent in Europe (workday had already started here).
> 
> Also note that AFAIK forbidding work from home for people who joined the company under a work from home contract is not legal in most of Europe. It's considered a significant change of the work conditions and you're not required to comply with the change. People who refuse can get fired, but will receive full severance pay.




I’ll be honest, this makes me glad I work where I do for the time being. Right now, we’ve still got a lot of flexibility, and people can work from home full time, they just won’t have a dedicated space when they do need to come into the office. 

That said, it also means that when our lease is up here soon, we’re going to be 100% work from home for a while until a new office space is found. So instead we’re going to have the opposite problem (nobody can come into the office) for a bit, sadly.


----------



## Herdfan

shadow puppet said:


> I'm already on five forums.  I don't want another one.  The reason I've enjoyed Twitter's format is the feed combined with my personally chosen mix of politics, dogs, art, local & international news, you name it.




People don't want more forums for sure.  I am a member of the RZR forums and they are great.  But also a member of a RZR FB page and it is a mess.  People ask the same questions over and over and the members that can easily answer have stopped because it is constant.  The "how big of tires can I run" question is asked almost daily.  But in the forum, there is a whole area for tire discussions so people can easily find an answer.  People either don't want to search the FB page or don't know they can.


----------



## Cmaier

White supremacy gets you verified as “notable,” now, apparently.


----------



## lizkat

Cmaier said:


> White supremacy gets you verified as “notable,” now, apparently.
> 
> 
> View attachment 19065




Heh.  There's stlll hope.   The account heretostay1488 has been suspended.

One begins to wonder though if Musk has retained enough people in their moderation group.  Otherwise they're going to be having to auto-ban accounts if they actually mean not to let hate speech abound in there, starting even with user profile declarations, gee.


----------



## Citysnaps

Whoa!  100% American Cracker.  Haven't heard that one before.

Seems that could also be branding for a new clothing line.


----------



## shadow puppet

I don't even know where to start.
ETA:  Yoel Roth was Twitter's Head of Trust and Safety


----------



## lizkat

shadow puppet said:


> I don't even know where to start.
> ETA:  Yoel Roth was Twitter's Head of Trust and Safety




Cue Joan Armatrading...    Down to Zero





​Oh, the feeling when you're reeling​You step lightly, thinking you're number one​Down to zero with a word, leaving for another one​Now you walk with your feet back on the ground​Down to the ground, down to the ground​Down to the ground, down to the ground​


----------



## Cmaier




----------



## Andropov

I've been on Twitter since 2011 and I had never witnessed so many people in my TL planning for the end of the platform. I don't know if all the doom talking will turn out to be true, but the feeling is there.


----------



## lizkat

The Eli Lilly spoof and far worse was bound to happen.  I'd not be surprised if they take Twitter down for a couple days or stop taking new accounts until they figure out if they can keep a platform running.    I don't mean when you click on your bookmark you get a 404 but rather some kind of page that says "Yeah we havin' some problems, back soon with updates."


----------



## Cmaier

Andropov said:


> I've been on Twitter since 2011 and I had never witnessed so many people in my TL planning for the end of the platform. I don't know if all the doom talking will turn out to be true, but the feeling is there.



These kinds of things can be self-fulfilling.


----------



## lizkat

Cmaier said:


> These kinds of things can be self-fulfilling.




Here's Elon in upbeat mode, I guess...

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1590810660887461888/


----------



## tomO2013

You really gotta wonder if heads of the major banks and investment firms who leant money to Musk in this ego-driven exercise will lose their heads.
Quite literally he has obliterated billions of dollars of investors money and IMHO very unlikely to get it back.
If you’re Jack Dorsey you’re laughing all the way to the bank… in effect he has been funded to build a competitor to Twitter in Blue Sky AND he has the benefit of all these folks departing twitter owing to the douche-baggery of Musk!
You couldn’t make a fictional film that would sound as far fetched!


----------



## fooferdoggie

tomO2013 said:


> You really gotta wonder if heads of the major banks and investment firms who leant money to Musk in this ego-driven exercise will lose their heads.
> Quite literally he has obliterated billions of dollars of investors money and IMHO very unlikely to get it back.
> If you’re Jack Dorsey you’re laughing all the way to the bank… in effect he has been funded to build a competitor to Twitter in Blue Sky AND he has the benefit of all these folks departing twitter owing to the douche-baggery of Musk!
> You couldn’t make a fictional film that would sound as far fetched!



well that Arab guy who had the journalist killed can afford it. its like couch change to him.


----------



## lizkat

fooferdoggie said:


> well that Arab guy who had the journalist killed can afford it. its like couch change to him.




Uh, just to be clear:   the Saudi who co-invested his own and his company's former Twitter stakes in Musk's private Twitter is not Crown Prince MBS but rather his cousin, Prince Al Waleed.   Their grandfather was founder and first monarch of Saudi Arabia.

And yeah it could be just couch change to Al Waleed...   although it's not clear to westerners how exactly his wealth may have been downsized by the crown prince.  Al Waleed was one of the princes that MBS installed in the Ritz Hotel under "house arrest" for awhile during a so-called anti-corruption drive.  He spent three months there and exited after making some kind of settlement.  He's no longer on the list of the world's billionaires because no one is sure how much of his $40B or so is still under his control.


----------



## lizkat

Ugh, if one has found Twitter useful in the past, this report on what to expect now is not very heartening.









						Here’s how a Twitter engineer says it will break in the coming weeks
					

One insider says the company’s current staffing isn’t able to sustain the platform.




					www.technologyreview.com


----------



## Eric

And now this.









						Elon Musk tells Twitter staff that bankruptcy isn’t out of the question: report
					

Twitter owner Elon Musk told employees on Thursday that he is not sure how much run rate the company has and that bankruptcy is not out of the question, the Managing Editor of tech newsletter Platf…




					nypost.com
				




Twitter owner Elon Musk told employees on Thursday that he is not sure how much run rate the company has and that bankruptcy is not out of the question, the Managing Editor of tech newsletter Platformer tweeted.

Musk is participating in an all-hands meeting with Twitter employees, a source told Reuters.

Twitter did not immediately reply to an emailed request for comment from Reuters.


----------



## Cmaier

Eric said:


> And now this.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Elon Musk tells Twitter staff that bankruptcy isn’t out of the question: report
> 
> 
> Twitter owner Elon Musk told employees on Thursday that he is not sure how much run rate the company has and that bankruptcy is not out of the question, the Managing Editor of tech newsletter Platf…
> 
> 
> 
> 
> nypost.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Twitter owner Elon Musk told employees on Thursday that he is not sure how much run rate the company has and that bankruptcy is not out of the question, the Managing Editor of tech newsletter Platformer tweeted.
> 
> Musk is participating in an all-hands meeting with Twitter employees, a source told Reuters.
> 
> Twitter did not immediately reply to an emailed request for comment from Reuters.



Well, they already achieved *moral* bankruptcy, so …


----------



## Citysnaps

Seems like Musk should be managing trump's campaign.


----------



## lizkat

Cmaier said:


> Well, they already achieved *moral* bankruptcy, so …




Still,  Musk is in it for whatever his 9.6% of publicly traded Twitter was worth at point of the deal consummation,  plus around 15 billion or so out of his Tesla holdings, why does he set fire to all that and the co-investors' money and leave the banks looking to get $13B out of the ashes if it goes into bankruptcy. 

There must be some angle I don't get or else he's just connecting to the fact that he messed up and sorta shrugging it off.

The senior leadership has fled the place -- they have no risk or compliance managers-- and the FTC wants to know what the heck is gong on,  the engineers are predicting dire cumulative impact on functionality of the platform due to departed knowledge bank and senior coders...

Sure, "no one is indispensable" but if your whole kitchen staff walks out,  your restaurant has to put up a "CLOSED" sign for awhile because you have no product.  This is the case even if it's also true that the place was about to be ding'd by the health department, seized by the IRS or handed over to some court-appointed receiver.


----------



## fooferdoggie

Eric said:


> And now this.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Elon Musk tells Twitter staff that bankruptcy isn’t out of the question: report
> 
> 
> Twitter owner Elon Musk told employees on Thursday that he is not sure how much run rate the company has and that bankruptcy is not out of the question, the Managing Editor of tech newsletter Platf…
> 
> 
> 
> 
> nypost.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Twitter owner Elon Musk told employees on Thursday that he is not sure how much run rate the company has and that bankruptcy is not out of the question, the Managing Editor of tech newsletter Platformer tweeted.
> 
> Musk is participating in an all-hands meeting with Twitter employees, a source told Reuters.
> 
> Twitter did not immediately reply to an emailed request for comment from Reuters.



man He took twitter down faster then trump took his Casino down.


----------



## Citysnaps

I'm wondering what sort of collateral Musk had to put up for his loans?  Anybody know?  A deed of trust with the Tesla factory as security?

Or did he have the cash?


----------



## Edd

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1590870005968621568/


----------



## lizkat

Citysnaps said:


> I'm wondering what sort of collateral Musk had to put up for his loans?  Anybody know?  A deed of trust with the Tesla factory as security?
> 
> Or did he have the cash?




He had a 9.6% stake in Twitter so he would have rolled that in, and he sold Tesla to make up the rest.  I think I read he had a total of around 27 billion of his own money in it.

EDIT:  oh i misread your post.    For the $12.5B loans, I dunno what the deal on collateral was.   The banks were going to sell the debt on but in the blink of an eye they ended up stuck with it on balance sheets.

EDIT:  ok here's what CNBC had to say awhile back.  So he's really in pretty deep if the thing just goes south.









						Elon Musk will be the most indebted CEO in America if the Twitter deal goes through
					

Because Musk's wealth is largely tied up in Tesla stock, he will have to sell millions of his shares and pledge millions more to raise the necessary cash.




					www.cnbc.com
				






> According to his SEC filings, Musk’s financing plan includes $13 billion in bank loans and $21 billion in cash, likely from selling Tesla shares. It also includes a $12.5 billion margin loan, using his Tesla stock as collateral. Because banks require more of a cushion for high-beta stocks like Tesla, Musk will need to pledge about $65 billion in Tesla shares, or about a quarter of his current total, for the loan, according to the documents.


----------



## Cmaier

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1590913586477793280/


----------



## Cmaier

You can’t make this stuff up.










						Twitter ‘Official’ gray check mark returns, now that ‘Verified’ is meaningless
					

Things are going just great and nothing is on fire.




					www.theverge.com


----------



## lizkat

Poignant line in a New York Times piece (paywall removed) on the status of Twitter:

"Twitter, whose communication department has been laid off, did not respond to a request for comment."


‘Economic Picture Ahead Is Dire,’ Elon Musk Tells Twitter Employees


----------



## shadow puppet

Will Twitter even still be online by next week if this keeps up?    

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1590907098346696704/


----------



## lizkat

shadow puppet said:


> Will Twitter even still be online by next week if this keeps up?




Wow, that thread is...  alarming.   Sorry but had trouble quashing laughter at the Chiquita one.

Musk said he's losing $4 million a day now.  And sold more Tesla to keep things going.

Assuming they don't just go into bankruptcy and go dark for a specified period of time (is there a comeback though if an online platform does that??!) then Twitter may at least end up taking the platform down for a little while to weed all that fake stuff out. 

Or maybe just get radical and delete every account added since Musk tweeted that "the bird is free".    Keep it really simple.  Then go back and look for accounts with name changes after that date.

Then the question is do they even have the staff or the legal ability to operate any more?   They are technically no longer in compliance at FTC and doubtless the EU since have no compliance or risk officers on board any more etc etc. 

Woot!   Everybody would get at least a little vacation from Twitter...   I would dearly miss the bird photos i start out looking at every morning.   The rest, well...   some accounts would end up at Instagram, others at FB or Mastodon etc.    Damn.  I hope against hope they can keep Twitter from just vaporizing.  But obviously how it's working right now doesn't cut it and won't be tolerated by regulators much longer.


----------



## lizkat

Well the guys who know bankruptcy from a hole in the ground are starting to write threads about it,.,  it sounds like Musk may already have been given notice by lenders or other investors that some agreements have been broken.   He's gonna have to make good on it or file for bankruptcy and he can't get the employees back that he needs to make a fit company re regulators.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1590842230864216065/


----------



## lizkat

Memes coming out now that people have done the math and figured Twitter's worth like 8B instead of 44.


----------



## lizkat

This guy's tweet and replies provide some explaining on the Twitter revaluation:

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1590801975339540480/


----------



## fischersd

Heh...gotta be making Mike and Jim (the guys that fucked up BB) feel better about themselves...seeing what a narcissist dumpster fire Elon's turned into.

$44B to zero in 3...2....


----------



## Cmaier

Now Twitter Blue appears to be disabled?


----------



## fischersd

Cmaier said:


> Now Twitter Blue appears to be disabled?



Well, his comment of how he "just killed it" - it likely took awhile for him to hire the engineers back, so he could disable it (and then fire them again).  Because, you know, sustainability is for the uncool platforms.


----------



## lizkat

fischersd said:


> Well, his comment of how he "just killed it" - it likely took awhile for him to hire the engineers back, so he could disable it (and then fire them again).  Because, you know, sustainability is for the uncool platforms.





At some point have to ask if there came a time when he figured driving it into bankruptcy had more upside than down... for him anyway....  protection from creditors during reorganization...  and then the question would be when that thought occurred to him.


----------



## lizkat

Cmaier said:


> Now Twitter Blue appears to be disabled?




Memes on memes, baby.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1590878798664589312/​​​And it was past my bedtime but last night was pretty entertaining, one gathers,


----------



## rdrr

Really who didn't see this coming?   Well before he set the record straight on which way he leans politically.   He just seemed like a prima donna with too much money and way too big of an ego to require two seats in first class (one for him and the other for the ego).

I knew he would come in and think that he knew the best way to run this company, which would be the opposite of the correct way to stir it back on track.   Not that I will miss the cesspool that is twitter, but I shudder to think what will fill the void that will happen.   Will the demise of twitter save truthsocial?


----------



## Renzatic

rdrr said:


> Will the demise of twitter save truthsocial?




Assuming the management of Truth is competent enough to handle the sudden influx of millions of users looking for an alternative?

...no, it won't.


----------



## shadow puppet

Wow.  Just wow re: all the latest Twitter news shared here & what I'm seeing over my morning cup of Joe.
So many folks now sharing their sparkling new Mastodon accounts should Twitter go down.

Aside from memes, a funny browser extension made its appearance yesterday.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1590746596115111936/

If you want to save your history:

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1591078441243537410/

Then various commentary:

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1590903448039755778/

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1591106602803007489/

Poor Musk Rat.  His world is falling apart and he knows it.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1591124091599474690/


----------



## shadow puppet

This should go over well.  /sarcasm

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1591133819918114816/


----------



## Eric

For all of the issues I've had with Twitter over the years you never had any idea of how much of a well oiled machine they were until Musk took over.


----------



## rdrr

Eric said:


> For all of the issues I've had with Twitter over the years you never had any idea of how much of a well oiled machine they were until Musk took over.




Yeah I kinda feel bad for trashing the previous regime, apparently its not easy running a sewage treatment company.


----------



## Renzatic




----------



## Eric

It's almost as if it was designed to prevent that to begin with.









						Twitter quietly drops $8 paid verification; “tricking people not OK,” Musk says
					

Twitter usage is up, Musk says, as fake accounts wreak havoc.




					arstechnica.com
				




When a wave of imposter accounts began using the verified checkmarks from Twitter's Blue paid subscription service to post misleading tweets while pretending to be some of the world’s biggest brands, it created so much chaos that Elon Musk seemingly had no choice but to revoke the paid checkmarks entirely.

“Basically, tricking people is not OK,” Musk tweeted, as some users began reporting that the option to pay $7.99 for a Twitter Blue subscription had disappeared, while others who had been verified previously found that their "Official" blue checkmarks had been reinstated.


----------



## lizkat

Email problems lol.  Seriously if you're going to fire everyone, probably do HR clerks and lawyers pretty close to last.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1591152301817102336/


----------



## lizkat

Yeah I'd love working for a company where house counsel reassures me I (probably?) won't go to jail for just showing up to work.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1591147571996921856/


----------



## Eric

Bernie nails them, beautiful. 


__
		https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/ysq2sr


----------



## Edd

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1591139317367574528/


----------



## fischersd

Edd said:


> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1591139317367574528/



Yikes.  That's actually scary.  I'm thinking Putin likely already has his hackers lining up a campaign that will tank everyone's 401k's.


----------



## Edd

fischersd said:


> Yikes.  That's actually scary.  I'm thinking Putin likely already has his hackers lining up a campaign that will tank everyone's 401k's.



I agree and, starting to sound like a broken record here, Twitter has an outsized level of importance that should not exist. It’d be best if it died a fast death IMO. Let‘s move on from it ASAP.


----------



## DT

lizkat said:


> Email problems lol.  Seriously if you're going to fire everyone, probably do HR clerks and lawyers pretty close to last.




"Wait! Don't click send!"

"Oh shit."



The level of incompetence across the whole organization is, well, maybe it's not all that surprising.


----------



## Eric

I knew it!


__
		https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/yt0du9


----------



## DT

Edd said:


> I agree and, starting to sound like a broken record here, Twitter has an outsized level of importance that should not exist. It’d be best if it died a fast death IMO. Let‘s move on from it ASAP.




And there's so much noise, it's the equivalent of who can "out loud" someone in an argument.

Even people who I completely agree with, people like Jeff Tiedrich and  Jo I unfollowed, they're just screaming, there's only so much "HEY! FUCKITY FUCK FUCK TRUMP SUCKS WHO AGREES!?" and Ks of meme responses I can take from the Jeff's of Twitter.

The political discourse here is way more thoughtful and enlightening.


----------



## lizkat

DT said:


> And there's so much noise, it's the equivalent of who can "out loud" someone in an argument.
> 
> Even people who I completely agree with, people like Jeff Tiedrich and  Jo I unfollowed, they're just screaming, there's only so much "HEY! FUCKITY FUCK FUCK TRUMP SUCKS WHO AGREES!?" and Ks of meme responses I can take from the Jeff's of Twitter.
> 
> The political discourse here is way more thoughtful and enlightening.




I've noticed in the past couple weeks I too have unfollowed a few people whose opinions I tend to share but yeah they have raised their voices past conversation-level or started to respond less thoughtfully.  Heh, of course others I follow also follow them so I end up seeing some of their tweets anyway and have even re-followed a few. 

Did that yesterday and then told myself to log out and get a little more late fall yardwork done before Indian Summer finally caves in around here and brings snow.   Anyway yes the noise level has got worse even with filters and silo-building.   I guess I will revert to using bookmarks in a browser to launch into my news subscriptions for awhile, see what happens with Twitter from afar.


----------



## Nycturne

fischersd said:


> Yikes.  That's actually scary.  I'm thinking Putin likely already has his hackers lining up a campaign that will tank everyone's 401k's.




Oh, my 401k is already tanking because of everything else going on.



Edd said:


> I agree and, starting to sound like a broken record here, Twitter has an outsized level of importance that should not exist. It’d be best if it died a fast death IMO. Let‘s move on from it ASAP.




To be honest, I don’t think this trick works well over the long term. It’s a bit like the boy who cried wolf. It will get folks the first few times, but if Twitter becomes known for this sort of stuff, people stop putting stock in what is said on the platform.

Which, ironically, is how you tank a platform like Twitter in the first place.


----------



## mac_in_tosh

Something is very wrong with the country when one person, because he is wealthy, can wreak havoc on the lives of thousands of people. And can we finally put to rest the notion that if someone is very rich they must be very smart, as if Donald Trump hadn't already disproved it.


----------



## Eric

Nycturne said:


> Oh, my 401k is already tanking because of everything else going on.
> 
> 
> 
> To be honest, I don’t think this trick works well over the long term. It’s a bit like the boy who cried wolf. It will get folks the first few times, but if Twitter becomes known for this sort of stuff, people stop putting stock in what is said on the platform.
> 
> Which, ironically, is how you tank a platform like Twitter in the first place.



It thin it's just a matter of time before it loses all credibility, you can be sure that any authentically verified corporation or celebrity is rethinking the platform entirely now. It has the power to move markets in a big way as we've seen, it has to be freaking them all out right now.

Anyone who ever wanted to know what sort of influence the richest right-wing troll on the internet has to totally fuck a bunch of fortune 500 companies has now has an answer.


----------



## shadow puppet

DT said:


> Even people who I completely agree with, people like Jeff Tiedrich and  Jo I unfollowed, they're just screaming, there's only so much "HEY! FUCKITY FUCK FUCK TRUMP SUCKS WHO AGREES!?" and Ks of meme responses I can take from the Jeff's of Twitter.



I still follow them both.  I just don't necessarily read their tweets all the time.  But I have been enjoying them both amidst all this midterm aftermath.  Especially as we were told to expect a huge red wave that didn't happen.  Sure Jeff has a foul mouth but I know that going in.  I love that he calls it like it is and to this day, one of my all time favorite tweets is his current pinned one:


----------



## lizkat

Eric said:


> I knew it!
> 
> 
> __
> https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/yt0du9




Yeah, and I didn't realize this had happened either...   way to go Elon.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1591413332820754432/​


----------



## Yoused

_it was just sitting there and it burst into flames_​


----------



## Yoused

Now he wants to turn twitter into paypal, because, that is what he knows.


----------



## rdrr

Yoused said:


> Now he wants to turn twitter into paypal, because, that is what he knows.



Oh yeah, I will entrust my paycheck to a "bank" that can't verify peoples identities.


----------



## Citysnaps

More bank. Less ruptcy.  A sound plan.


----------



## lizkat

Citysnaps said:


> More bank. Less ruptcy.  A sound plan.




Heh, yeah.  The real banks are about ready to slit their own throats over this guy by now....


----------



## Andropov

This appears to be a real interaction between two official accounts, though it’s hard to tell anymore. I don’t have any context as to whom the senator is, but it’s a rather odd way of trying to reassure advertisers that official accounts won’t be impersonated. 

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1591813228119855104/


----------



## fischersd

lizkat said:


> Yeah, and I didn't realize this had happened either...   way to go Elon.
> 
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1591413332820754432/​



SO glad they're using "buddy Jesus" from Dogma.  Need to watch that flick again.


----------



## DT

Without taking a long time to sit down and write an actual business plan, a real model for moving forward, informed by existing analytics, SMEs, client discussions, here's my own shitty $0.02 on how I would've approached this:

Don't buy Twitter
Don't pay $44B

OK, so clearly, we're past that ...  

Do a company wide audit to determine costs, from infrastructure to the snack bar (side note: the grocery by the SF Twitter offices is amazing ...), get a baseline for costs vs. revenue (this is usually done during DD), but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, tech companies are people companies (See below)

Identify the talent, what's needed, who's filling those roles, is there staff imbalance, too many low end coders vs. QA for example, if someone is good, and their skills are portable (or easily retrained), don't let them go, good products are developed under good situations, this whole idea of 80 hours in an "I could lose my job anytime" environment, is bullshit

Determine exactly what the product is, get vertical, focus on perfecting that vs. trying to be a social network, a town square, an ad platform, a transaction system

Communicate with the clients, the people who pay the bills, the advertisers, give them assurances that their money is being well spent, find new opportunities and create client retention  by servicing them better

The "product" for clients are the users, us, the people, focus on retention, a positive user experience by way of people seeing what they want, not seeing what they don't, i.e., f***ing curation and control of the content, people leave, there's no product for the client, no clients means no revenue

Holy hell, it's business 101 ... it's not rocket science.


----------



## Cmaier

Andropov said:


> This appears to be a real interaction between two official accounts, though it’s hard to tell anymore. I don’t have any context as to whom the senator is, but it’s a rather odd way of trying to reassure advertisers that official accounts won’t be impersonated.
> 
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1591813228119855104/


----------



## Renzatic

lizkat said:


> Yeah I'd love working for a company where house counsel reassures me I (probably?) won't go to jail for just showing up to work.




To be fair, that is something that's nice to know ahead of time.


----------



## Cmaier

Renzatic said:


> To be fair, that is something that's nice to know ahead of time.



Everyone should always remember that when your company’s lawyer gives you advice, the lawyer isn’t representing you. She’s representing the company.


----------



## lizkat

Andropov said:


> This appears to be a real interaction between two official accounts, though it’s hard to tell anymore. I don’t have any context as to whom the senator is, but it’s a rather odd way of trying to reassure advertisers that official accounts won’t be impersonated.




Yah... Senator Markey is on a bunch of committees or subcommittees that do have oversight on aspects of Musk's companies.   It was probably not brilliant of Musk to have just tweeted back what he did to Markey,  if both Twitter accounts (at time of that exchange anyway) were genuine.









						Ed Markey - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org


----------



## Edd

fischersd said:


> SO glad they're using "buddy Jesus" from Dogma.  Need to watch that flick again.



Um, it’s Buddy Christ, thank you.


----------



## Eric

Smacked by his own platform from
      MurderedByWords


----------



## Cmaier

Eric said:


> Smacked by his own platform from
> MurderedByWords




Between this and FSD, it seems Elon doesn’t know what “drive” means.


----------



## Cmaier




----------



## Citysnaps

A real shame Musk didn't buy out Fox News instead.  He'd still have billions left over. And Fox would cease to exist. 






						Fox Net Worth 2018-2022 | FOX
					

Interactive chart of historical net worth (market cap) for Fox (FOX) over the last 10 years.  How much a company is worth is typically represented by its market capitalization, or the current stock price multiplied by the number of shares outstanding.  Fox net worth as of December 22, 2022 is...




					www.macrotrends.net


----------



## lizkat

Citysnaps said:


> A real shame Musk didn't buy out Fox News instead.  He'd still have billions left over. And Fox would cease to exist.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Fox Net Worth 2018-2022 | FOX
> 
> 
> Interactive chart of historical net worth (market cap) for Fox (FOX) over the last 10 years.  How much a company is worth is typically represented by its market capitalization, or the current stock price multiplied by the number of shares outstanding.  Fox net worth as of December 22, 2022 is...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.macrotrends.net




Ha ha, yeah!

And to think that once he could have walked away for what now seems like a paltry $1 billion breakup fee, but which at the time he wanted to dodge somehow.  And "somehow" turned into this debacle.

There must be some angle to it all that I still don't get unless the guy is just nuts.

I mean to address Senator Markey as Musk has now done (again assuming those tweets and documents were genuine, which i think is the case),  the Chief Twit signals he doesn't gaf about oversight or risk management or data laws compliance or any other niceties of regulation under the telecoms acts, FTC, EC or EU,  so he will be legally unable to run the thing and will have to step back...  and probably file for bankruptcy.

He and the banks and we all had better hope that it's Chapter 11 and not 7, because the latter means liquidation, not reorganization...   and what is got from liquidating some server leases and a pile of code pray tell?   Pretty sure the bankers would press for chapter 11 filing. 

Wonder who will end up running Twitter during a reorg?


----------



## Citysnaps

lizkat said:


> There must be some angle to it all that I still don't get unless the guy is just nuts.



 Yeah, I don't get that either. The guy isn't stupid getting Tesla and SpaceX off the ground.


----------



## lizkat

For those who followed news of the now former Prime Minister Liz Truss and some rude comparisons as to which could last longer, Ms Liz in office or a head of lettuce...   now looms a parallel comparison for Twitter under Musk.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1591935214280126465/

Musk has essentially tweeted to a US Senator on oversight committees that he doesn't GAF about stuff like risk management, compliance iwth data security laws and so forth.   Twitter will shortly be unable to operate legally and so may be taken down at least until something like a Chapter 11 filing can facilitate reorganization and new leadership if not a sale.

​


----------



## Andropov

Ex-Twitter employees have been contradicting some of Elon's statements after he claimed that the app is slow in some countries "because it's sending 1000 RPCs just to load the timeline", and he has personally replied to some of them.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1591875679377031169/

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1591937998551130117/

The immaturity here is astonishing. This kind of "comebacks" like "what have you done to fix that?" to a random Twitter for Android engineer may have sounded cool in his head but... man I don't even know where to start. Is this just his way of coping with the enormous screw up he created himself?


----------



## Andropov

Some insight supporting what many people are saying regarding how Twitter could catastrophically fail if all the servers go down:

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1591939282947952640/

On one hand, maybe after narrowly avoiding the problem in 2021 Twitter spent resources to put a plan/protocol in place in case the platform had to be cold-booted. On the other hand, it’s highly likely that Musk fired all the people that knew about that plan and had the knowledge to carry it out. So, who knows what might happen.


----------



## DT

lizkat said:


> There must be some angle to it all that I still don't get unless the guy is just nuts.




_I've puzzled and puzzled 'till my puzzler was sore ..._

I've certainly never operated anywhere near the scale of Twitter, or Musk, but I have a reasonable understanding of how these things work, and I just can't figure this out - but I'm approaching it as someone who doesn't have the wealth that allows me to circumvent the law, ignore responsibility, and just generally just fuck up and face zero consequences.

I think Musk legitimately doesn't have much self-awareness, he's so removed from normal human concerns, that he just doesn't think there's any repercussions, that somehow, it will work out for him, that he can just spew nonsense, make with the LOLs, ignore protocols, do things that have severe consequences for everyone around him, but not him.

In his mind, the $1B was admitting to his mistake, it wasn't the money, it was saving face.  He'd much rather run the risk of way more loss if it gives him the opportunity to pump up his ego and show off for his followers.

He reminds me a lot of a former biz partner of mine, no question a  very smart guy and very talented,  but never satisfied, he wanted desperately to be another Jobs or Brin, he wanted to be center of attention, make people laugh, he wanted to be a tech billionaire, a DJ, a life coach, a gangster - and like Musk, his engagement with people never seemed very organic.  He also did the same thing Musk is doing, take charge of a company and talk technical nonsense, like he was smart enough to understand many of the concepts, but he tried to talk like he knew really low level technical details (that's a "cred" thing with the Tech Bros ...)


----------



## Eric

DT said:


> _I've puzzled and puzzled 'till my puzzler was sore ..._
> 
> I've certainly never operated anywhere near the scale of Twitter, or Musk, but I have a reasonable understanding of how these things work, and I just can't figure this out - but I'm approaching it as someone who doesn't have the wealth that allows me to circumvent the law, ignore responsibility, and just generally just fuck up and face zero consequences.
> 
> I think Musk legitimately doesn't have much self-awareness, he's so removed from normal human concerns, that he just doesn't think there's any repercussions, that somehow, it will work out for him, that he can just spew nonsense, make with the LOLs, ignore protocols, do things that have severe consequences for everyone around him, but not him.
> 
> In his mind, the $1B was admitting to his mistake, it wasn't the money, it was saving face.  He'd much rather run the risk of way more loss if it gives him the opportunity to pump up his ego and show off for his followers.
> 
> He reminds me a lot of a former biz partner of mine, no question a  very smart guy and very talented,  but never satisfied, he wanted desperately to be another Jobs or Brin, he wanted to be center of attention, make people laugh, he wanted to be a tech billionaire, a DJ, a life coach, a gangster - and like Musk, his engagement with people never seemed very organic.  He also did the same thing Musk is doing, take charge of a company and talk technical nonsense, like he was smart enough to understand many of the concepts, but he tried to talk like he knew really low level technical details (that's a "cred" thing with the Tech Bros ...)



Well said, this really nails him down IMO. He's the type who can raise capital and has grandiose ideas about things without any clue of what actually happens behind the scenes at a developer level, only seeing the bigger picture.

I think FSD (Full Self Driving) is a perfect example of this, never ready for prime time, always in beta and constantly plagued with problems. At its core it's an awesome, innovative and groundbreaking but it can't be released to the general public. He oversold it, talked a good game but anyone who pays extra for it is a dupe.

I can only guess at Tesla he has really smart people constantly trying (and maybe with some success) reeling him in, not to mention investors to answer to. What we're seeing at Twitter is a free for all with him untethered and it's not pretty.


----------



## lizkat

DT said:


> In his mind, the $1B was admitting to his mistake, it wasn't the money, it was saving face. He'd much rather run the risk of way more loss if it gives him the opportunity to pump up his ego and show off for his followers.




Yeah, not wanting to have been perceived as having made a mistake...  bingo.

Reminds me of Trump after Charlottesville,  and after the only actually acceptable speech he was talked into making  (roped, hogtied into making) --reluctantly-- by the then WH chief of staff, staff secretary,  some cabinet heads and advisers.

 It was the speech that was well received.  But,  after making it,  he switched on the TV and there was somebody on Fox saying something along line of "and now we have the first time in this still young presidency where _*we see the president having made a course correction...*_"  

Trump then became livid, went completely ballistic, started screaming about he never should have made that speech, it made him look weak, and on and on...  and it was after that he really messed up and made some more walking-back "both sides" remarks,  ugly enough that white supremacist David Duke tweeted congratulations to Trump. 

The fallout from that timeframe was incredibly chaotic with heads of US military forces having to tweet out rebukes of the president,  CEOs resigning from the manufacturing and tech councils until Trump disbanded them to stop the embarrassment... and the global stage ending up with Gary Cohn giving an interview to the Financial Times to express his dissenting view from that of Trump regarding Charlottesville, possibly as a condition of his sticking around long enough to finish working on the tax cut legislation.  The stock markets teetered for awhile after that interview, since it was not entirely clear Cohn would actually find himself able to continue working with Trump.  After all, someone had drawn a swastika on the door of Cohn's daughter's dormitory room at college in the wake of the Charlottesville incident.

All that over Trump's fury that a TV commentator remarked that Trump had "made a course correction."


----------



## DT

Musk is a good product designer, where there's very specific problem to solve / a fixed engineering scope and a marketspace vacuum.

There's a significant consumer marketspace ready for electric cars
These cars need batteries and motors and need to meet other vehicle specific design requirements
There will need to be a large charging network

Those are attainable, design/engineering requirements.  I'd say, even though I hesitate to use the "L-word", there was a good bit of luck involved at least in terms of timing.

However, his feasibility meter is busted, so when the problem is vastly more complicated, he severely underestimates the time involved, and fails to understand that you can't just throw money and resources and make it work.  Then add in a giant, frail ego, and you've got someone who will make commitments that can't possibly be satisfied.

Hell, we can all be "visionaries" when we don't have to actually execute.  I worked at a startup, the core product was pretty neat, had possibility, one of those too early/too late cases, but anyway, the CEO brought in a guy, who was introduced as a "visionary", and sure, his ideas were crazy fun, but just nowhere near viable with the existing tech, and certainly not doable within the ticking clock of investment money being consumed.

I certainly wouldn't suggest stifling thinking out of the box, having vision, "Skating to where the pucks going to be ...", but there are problems, especially those involving people (i.e., Twitter), that aren't overnight solves.


----------



## Alli

For the purposes of transparency and honesty, I feel I must disclose that I made an offer to Musk to purchase Twitter, no questions asked, for five bucks. Since he hasn’t refused the deal, I can only assume he’s still thinking about it.


----------



## DT

Looking for a partner?  We could double the offer ...


----------



## Nycturne

Andropov said:


> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1591937998551130117/
> 
> The immaturity here is astonishing. This kind of "comebacks" like "what have you done to fix that?" to a random Twitter for Android engineer may have sounded cool in his head but... man I don't even know where to start. Is this just his way of coping with the enormous screw up he created himself?




If I was a recently fired Twitter Android engineer, I believe my response to this little snarky query would be simply: “I no longer have an obligation to the company as an employee. If you want further engineering time from me, it won’t be free, or cheap.”


----------



## Andropov

Nycturne said:


> If I was a recently fired Twitter Android engineer, I believe my response to this little snarky query would be simply: “I no longer have an obligation to the company as an employee. If you want further engineering time from me, it won’t be free, or cheap.”



Apparently that engineer is *still* working at Twitter. Optimizing the Android app for performance, specifically. The snarky reply from Musk makes even less sense now.


----------



## Nycturne

Andropov said:


> Apparently that engineer is *still* working at Twitter. Optimizing the Android app for performance, specifically. The snarky reply from Musk makes even less sense now.



I think I got confused thinking the two threads were related. 

This is partly why I don’t talk about current work in public. It doesn’t look great for the company (or me to be honest) getting into public spats with other employees or management. But Elon doesn’t seem to think getting into it on social media like this would undermine trust in the platform? Jebus. 

I mean, this sort of stuff isn’t exactly abnormal if problems exist. With a large shipping product, problems will exist. Usually this nonsense is kept to private meetings with the teams in question, for very good reason.


----------



## Yoused

DT said:


> Musk is a good product designer, where there's very specific problem to solve / a fixed engineering scope and a marketspace vacuum.




I have my doubts. Musk started with x.com->PayPal, which gave him the funds/leverage to get into Tesla and stuff. It is not clear how much technical ability he has, though. He seems to be more of an "I have an idea, let's do this" guy, who has smart people do the work for him. He aspires to lofty goals, but barely understands the the technical things. And, worse yet, money makes a person stupid, and he has a lot of money. Had, at least.


----------



## Eric

Yoused said:


> I have my doubts. Musk started with x.com->PayPal, which gave him the funds/leverage to get into Tesla and stuff. It is not clear how much technical ability he has, though. He seems to be more of an "I have an idea, let's do this" guy, who has smart people do the work for him. He aspires to lofty goals, but barely understands the the technical things. And, worse yet, money makes a person stupid, and he has a lot of money. Had, at least.



Exactly, he's probably a really savvy businessman but has little knowledge of how things actually operate. I mean I don't see how anyone looks at the way he's handled Twitter and considers it good management, it's been a cluster fuck of epic porportions.


----------



## DT

Yoused said:


> I have my doubts. Musk started with x.com->PayPal, which gave him the funds/leverage to get into Tesla and stuff. It is not clear how much technical ability he has, though. He seems to be more of an "I have an idea, let's do this" guy, who has smart people do the work for him. He aspires to lofty goals, but barely understands the the technical things. And, worse yet, money makes a person stupid, and he has a lot of money. Had, at least.




Note that I said product designer, the later part about engineering assumed that was someone else doing the heavy lifting.  I've worked with product designers who weren't directly involved in the implementation details, they had enough understanding to know what was feasible, usually as a result building prototypes, planning and analysis with SMEs (all of which was usually part of a budget and timeline discussion as well).

That last past is where Musk doesn't have the willingness to admit to what he doesn't know and/or just disregards costs (and assume everyone else will someone magically compress the timeline).  Like he knows there's computer vision tech, there's AI systems, but using those for fully autonomous vehicle operation, especially in the original timeframe he suggests years ago, was lunacy.


----------



## Andropov

Nycturne said:


> I think I got confused thinking the two threads were related.
> 
> This is partly why I don’t talk about current work in public. It doesn’t look great for the company (or me to be honest) getting into public spats with other employees or management. But Elon doesn’t seem to think getting into it on social media like this would undermine trust in the platform? Jebus.
> 
> I mean, this sort of stuff isn’t exactly abnormal if problems exist. With a large shipping product, problems will exist. Usually this nonsense is kept to private meetings with the teams in question, for very good reason.



No worries! Fun recap of what happened. After that interaction, the engineer corrected him on Twitter here:
https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1591968343229366272/

And also here:
https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1592194789801222144/

Elon fired him few minutes ago, apparently.
https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1592186302379982849/

Way to go! Apologising for Twitter on Android being slow while firing the engineers in charge of making Twitter for Android faster. Smart guy.

I used to work on the architectural team of an iOS app for a big fast-fashion brand (~8M daily users for the iOS app, IIRC). Obviously still far from Twitter's size. And yet, everything that Android guy said applies for that iOS app I worked for. Every. Single. Thing. The app was bloated with dumb features no one used. All those features were shipped under tight timelines, with tech debt quickly accumulating. The app was noticeably slow because of this. And the app spent an absurd amount of time waiting for network responses rather than using smart cache policies. Which was really just a consequence of tech debt accumulating.

Elon is just pouring gasoline on the fire. He's been promising a ton of new features for Twitter NEXT WEEK, while firing most of the engineer who could possibly work on them. Tech debt must be accumulating now faster than at any other point in Twitter's history. And not the regular type of tech debt. Nah. Usually tech debt accumulates over time and doesn't break things immediately. But with most engineers out of Twitter, and the few that are left working outside their areas of expertise, someone is going to push a breaking change sometime soon in some obscure part of the codebase they hadn't really worked at before, and there will be no one with context to review that PR and detect the error. Those kind of bugs in not-often-reached branches of the code, which will lurk there for a while like little time bombs until something sets them off.


----------



## Andropov

Apparently he plans to solve the bloating/tech debt problem... *checks notes*... today.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1592177471654604800/


----------



## Cmaier

Andropov said:


> No worries! Fun recap of what happened. After that interaction, the engineer corrected him on Twitter here:
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1591968343229366272/
> 
> And also here:
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1592194789801222144/
> 
> Elon fired him few minutes ago, apparently.
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1592186302379982849/
> 
> Way to go! Apologising for Twitter on Android being slow while firing the engineers in charge of making Twitter for Android faster. Smart guy.
> 
> I used to work on the architectural team of an iOS app for a big fast-fashion brand (~8M daily users for the iOS app, IIRC). Obviously still far from Twitter's size. And yet, everything that Android guy said applies for that iOS app I worked for. Every. Single. Thing. The app was bloated with dumb features no one used. All those features were shipped under tight timelines, with tech debt quickly accumulating. The app was noticeably slow because of this. And the app spent an absurd amount of time waiting for network responses rather than using smart cache policies. Which was really just a consequence of tech debt accumulating.
> 
> Elon is just pouring gasoline on the fire. He's been promising a ton of new features for Twitter NEXT WEEK, while firing most of the engineer who could possibly work on them. Tech debt must be accumulating now faster than at any other point in Twitter's history. And not the regular type of tech debt. Nah. Usually tech debt accumulates over time and doesn't break things immediately. But with most engineers out of Twitter, and the few that are left working outside their areas of expertise, someone is going to push a breaking change sometime soon in some obscure part of the codebase they hadn't really worked at before, and there will be no one with context to review that PR and detect the error. Those kind of bugs in not-often-reached branches of the code, which will lurk there for a while like little time bombs until something sets them off.




The great thing about Elon is he makes a lot of work for my friends who are employment lawyers.


----------



## shadow puppet

In case this goes down and if anyone wants to download their Twitter archive (under settings in your profile).  According to the message I received, it can take 24 hours to get your zipped archive.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1592188128944705537/


----------



## Nycturne

Andropov said:


> I used to work on the architectural team of an iOS app for a big fast-fashion brand (~8M daily users for the iOS app, IIRC). Obviously still far from Twitter's size. And yet, everything that Android guy said applies for that iOS app I worked for. Every. Single. Thing. The app was bloated with dumb features no one used. All those features were shipped under tight timelines, with tech debt quickly accumulating. The app was noticeably slow because of this. And the app spent an absurd amount of time waiting for network responses rather than using smart cache policies. Which was really just a consequence of tech debt accumulating.




I've worked on projects in the same situation. I've also worked on a couple rather notable projects where this wasn't the problem, and I do miss those teams. I've seen a good engineering system in practice at this scale. It doesn't mean you'll make a product people want, but at least the engineers won't be running for the exits. A lot of the folks I worked with on that specific project went down swinging doing what they could to try to make it work. I'd much rather work for that sort of failure than what Twitter is likely to end up. 



Andropov said:


> Elon is just pouring gasoline on the fire. He's been promising a ton of new features for Twitter NEXT WEEK, while firing most of the engineer who could possibly work on them. Tech debt must be accumulating now faster than at any other point in Twitter's history. And not the regular type of tech debt. Nah. Usually tech debt accumulates over time and doesn't break things immediately. But with most engineers out of Twitter, and the few that are left working outside their areas of expertise, someone is going to push a breaking change sometime soon in some obscure part of the codebase they hadn't really worked at before, and there will be no one with context to review that PR and detect the error. Those kind of bugs in not-often-reached branches of the code, which will lurk there for a while like little time bombs until something sets them off.




Yeup.


----------



## rdrr

The technology industry is expansive and each area has a lot of nuances in it.  I have worked and met many brilliant people in their respective subject area's, and I have witness that a few of them think that their intelligence will just carry over to the every area of tech.   Elon should have stayed in his lane.   One social media platform is not the same or easier than another social media platform, and definitely not the same as any tech company.  As the the saying goes that the one who desires to be a "jack of all trades" ends up being the master of none.

Also Elon's second big mistake, was trying to change Twitter's culture.   Culture eats strategy for breakfast, and it is the hardest thing to change about a company.


----------



## Alli

I also read on Twitter today that one of the services he turned off was the 2-factor security, which left people in an endless loop if they had it enabled and then logged out of Twitter. Cause the code was never sent.


----------



## DT

Oh my  ...


----------



## mr_roboto

lizkat said:


> Ha ha, yeah!
> 
> And to think that once he could have walked away for what now seems like a paltry $1 billion breakup fee, but which at the time he wanted to dodge somehow.  And "somehow" turned into this debacle.
> 
> There must be some angle to it all that I still don't get unless the guy is just nuts.



There's no angle.  The $1B breakup fee clause wasn't something he could choose to use to get out of the deal, it was only there to cover the contingency of Musk's finances (personal and loans) completely falling apart to the point that he was unable to pay.

Because the contract was so simple and airtight, the court case was probably going to end with the judge ordering specific performance.  That would've been an even more embarrassing disaster than what's unfolding now, so once things were obviously not going to go his way, he gave up.

He has nobody but himself to blame for signing such a one-sided contract.  When Twitter resisted his initial trollish hostile takeover talk, he decided it would be fun to make an offer they couldn't possibly refuse.  Twitter accurately assessed him as a guy who would back out if he possibly could (he has a long history of pretending to want to acquire random companies, and messing with them as he does so), so they offered him a purchase contract with no real outs.  He was dumb enough to sign it.  All the wriggling ever since has been him refusing to accept the consequences of his own actions.


----------



## Eric

Alli said:


> I also read on Twitter today that one of the services he turned off was the 2-factor security, which left people in an endless loop if they had it enabled and then logged out of Twitter. Cause the code was never sent.



As a result a ton of people still can no longer log in, apparently. This guys is an absolute fuck up in every way. How he ever had success with any company is a mystery.


----------



## DT

@mr_roboto

Outstanding, thanks for that clarification, I didn't even realize what a simple, and problematic (for Musk) contract was executed.  That makes sense, it was almost meant at a deterrent, hahaha, I'd imagine most people would've reviewed it, had a moment of introspection about their real intent and walked away.


----------



## Yoused

Eric said:


> As a result a ton of people still can no longer log in, apparently. This guys is an absolute fuck up in every way. How he ever had success with any company is a mystery.



AIUI, SpaceX is the only company he himself actually started. If you want to succeed in that arena, you have to follow fairly narrow lines. If you tell your engineers, "I want SuperThing" and they tell you, "We can make you ReallyGoodThing", you are going to have to settle for ReallyGoodThing.

To succeed in space, there is 0.00000000000001 margin for error, and you find out really fast that you goddamwellbetter listen to your boffins and not fuck around or you will be history. Also, the corner-cost-cutting dynamic is different from consumer-type industries, and bullshitting with stuff like the FSD fiasco is going to end you big time.

IOW, SpaceX appears to have the right people to make it work, and they seem to know how to keep Musk from going off the res. Just about everything else he has been involved in could probably be done better by someone who has good thinky-parts, because his seem to be not so good to begin with, and extreme wealth has corroded them as badly as quart-of-whiskey-every-day alcoholism.


----------



## DT

I realize in the grand scheme this is trivial, but I do think it speaks to the far and wide impact this nonsense has resulted in ...









						After nine years of dutiful tweeting, SimpsonsQOTD has pulled the plug
					

The creator of SimpsonsQOTD, a Simpsons fan account started in 2013, has decided to stop tweeting




					www.avclub.com
				




Avatar <> Article Synergy


----------



## mr_roboto

DT said:


> @mr_roboto
> 
> Outstanding, thanks for that clarification, I didn't even realize what a simple, and problematic (for Musk) contract was executed.  That makes sense, it was almost meant at a deterrent, hahaha, I'd imagine most people would've reviewed it, had a moment of introspection about their real intent and walked away.



Or at least negotiated for better terms!  He truly did make a Godfather offer, so far above market value that Twitter's board likely would've faced a shareholder lawsuit for turning it down. He had the leverage to insist on revising the contract to provide standard outs for a buyer. For example, it's normal for such contracts to allow due diligence investigations before truly committing to buy, but the contract he signed explicitly waived diligence.

Nobody should come away from this thinking Musk plays 5-D chess; it's more like 1-D checkers.  Remember all that noise from him about how he should be able to get out of the contract because of Twitter's bot problem?  Before he changed his mind about buying Twitter, he puffed himself up as Twitter's savior on the basis that _he was going to swoop in and magically solve Twitter's bot problem_.  So, even if he hadn't signed away due diligence, Twitter's lawyers had a decent chance of prevailing on that point.  He obviously knew about the bot problem before he signed the contract!

I feel sorry for whomever has to represent Musk in court.  He's got to be one of the worst clients on the planet.


----------



## bwinter88

Schadenfreude aside, I wonder how much this is pulling him away from his duties at SpaceX. They have had a lot of success and if he’s responsible for any of it I hope Musk getting too big for his britches with Twitter doesn’t impact our ability to accomplish things in space.


----------



## Andropov

Lots of still-at-Twitter engineers started quoting Elon’s tweets after he fired the Twitter for Android engineer yesterday for doing exactly that. Those people are also getting fired now.

This is just one example, but I’ve seen quite a few in my timeline:
https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1592456205511053312/

Critically, this person was also from the infrastructure team, as were many of the other engineers fired.


----------



## Eric

The memes just keep giving and giving.


----------



## Andropov

He’s been firing people over Slack comments too.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1592525923475390464/


----------



## Eric

Andropov said:


> He’s been firing people over Slack comments too.
> 
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1592525923475390464/



What people say about you in private or any other platform should be strictly off limits, that is their business. If I litigated every person who bad mouthed me outside of this site we wouldn't have any members left lol.


----------



## Andropov

More SREs have been fired (and reportedly there were not many left), at a time when some services are already down (it seems 2FA is not working, people who log out are locked outside their accounts, 2FA code is never received).

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1592537483002404864/


----------



## Eric

Andropov said:


> More SREs have been fired (and reportedly there were not many left), at a time when some services are already down (it seems 2FA is not working, people who log out are locked outside their accounts, 2FA code is never received).
> 
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1592537483002404864/



Sad for all these really experienced people, hopefully they're able to find other work.


----------



## rdrr

Eric said:


> Sad for all these really experienced people, hopefully they're able to find other work.



You know what boggles my mind?  Are people from the right (MAGA crowd) that are cheering this.   Weren't they just a few years ago, talking about protecting American jobs?

Oh and if you had to ban people for talking crap about you on other platforms... I can't speak for anyone else, but I would be here liking your posts.


----------



## Andropov

Eric said:


> Sad for all these really experienced people, hopefully they're able to find other work.



I think it won’t be long…

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1592535480234835968/



rdrr said:


> You know what boggles my mind?  Are people from the right (MAGA crowd) that are cheering this.   Weren't they just a few years ago, talking about protecting American jobs?



No but this is clearly different because Twitter employees are “entitled” or something like that so they deserve it  /s


----------



## Cmaier




----------



## Nycturne




----------



## lizkat

^^^ Imagine the actual infrastructure of Twitter now a day at a time,  heading towards one or another interesting scenario where the next instruction is to eat the next instruction.   "Anyway,,,,"  indeed.


----------



## DT

The whole 2.0 thing is so 10 years ago, and this notion of being "hardcore", I'm surprised he didn't say something about needing "rockstars".   He doesn't need to run people into the ground, and he's 51, this isn't some kind of startup full of 18-19 year olds, there's a way a seasoned CEO goes about this, and what I'm seeing ain't it.


----------



## shadow puppet

Wow.

"Elon Musk and his team are terrified employees are going to sabotage the company. Also, they're still trying to figure out which Twitter workers they need to cut access for."


----------



## Cmaier

shadow puppet said:


> Wow.
> 
> "Elon Musk and his team are terrified employees are going to sabotage the company. Also, they're still trying to figure out which Twitter workers they need to cut access for."




Come to work! But stand outside!


----------



## Cmaier

Supposedly 900 employees remain.

Let’s see if it spirals into the sun this weekend.


----------



## fooferdoggie

Cmaier said:


> Supposedly 900 employees remain.
> 
> Let’s see if it spirals into the sun this weekend.



thats a lot of people staring out in the parking lot.


----------



## Eric

Sounds like maybe they lost more employees over the power hungry prick's ultimatum than they thought they would.


----------



## Cmaier

I’ve told the story before (poor @Colstan has probably read it many times), but this reminds me so much of the time when morale was low at AMD, and Dirk (then in charge of the Austin design team) flew up to California to tell us that if we didn’t like everything the way it was, we should quit.  And most of them did.


----------



## Eric

Cmaier said:


> I’ve told the story before (poor @Colstan has probably read it many times), but this reminds me so much of the time when morale was low at AMD, and Dirk (then in charge of the Austin design team) flew up to California to tell us that if we didn’t like everything the way it was, we should quit.  And most of them did.



What TF did he actually think would happen, on one hand get treated like a dog and overworked... or take 3 months pay and walk.

Bye, Elon.


----------



## Cmaier

Eric said:


> What TF did he actually think would happen, on one hand get treated like a dog and overworked... or take 3 months pay and walk.
> 
> Bye, Elon.




Telling people they need to work nights and weekends, constantly be in the office, etc., when you’re not a startup and not handing out giant piles of shares, is not a great formula for success in tech.


----------



## Hrafn

Cmaier said:


> I’ve told the story before (poor @Colstan has probably read it many times), but this reminds me so much of the time when morale was low at AMD, and Dirk (then in charge of the Austin design team) flew up to California to tell us that if we didn’t like everything the way it was, we should quit.  And most of them did.



I was on a team already using computers to push data from one location to another.  We were acquired by a "new, innovative" company rapidly blowing through $$ millions in venture capital, and the CEO came out and told us that in reality he didn't care if their add-on consisted of "people running around with printed copies of the data as long as it appeared to work..."


----------



## DT

Looks like there's a lot of talk about Herbert Diess, former CEO of VW, stepping in as the new CEO of Tesla.  That's nothing but good, focus on QA, production, delivery, improving the existing vehicle offerings and maybe slow down on the Musk-isms and let him splash around in the Twitter kiddie pool - assuming there’s any water left after this weekend


----------



## Yoused

Now someone is projecting scrolling insults on the side of Twitter HQ, including the (soon to be) classic, "space Karen".


----------



## Cmaier

I assume this is not real.


----------



## Cmaier

I assume this is also not real.


----------



## lizkat

Whole thing is just ridiculous. 

Whatever some people thought about Twitter's prospects as a publicly traded company,  few likely thought it could get THIS bad after going private, not even if purchased by Elon Musk.  I just never heard of an acquisition where so many potentially fatal internal changes were made in less than a month.

That's without considering the extremely unconventional treatment of advertisers and users alike, never mind the  ousters in areas like compliance, security, risk management... moves that have drawn scrutiny from regulators in multiple countries.


----------



## Eric

Yoused said:


> Now someone is projecting scrolling insults on the side of Twitter HQ, including the (soon to be) classic, "space Karen".



Here's the video



Cmaier said:


> View attachment 19412
> 
> I assume this is also not real.



But believable under the circumstances.


----------



## Andropov

Andropov said:


> I've been on Twitter since 2011 and I had never witnessed so many people in my TL planning for the end of the platform. I don't know if all the doom talking will turn out to be true, but the feeling is there.



It become waaaay worse today. When I wrote this it was still mostly IT people, but now I'm reading plans from people far from the engineering field also plan for the fall of Twitter (artists, for example, and non-tech content creators). It sucks because many of those people had in Twitter one of their main sources of income. And it's clear by now there's no other platform to run to. So far I've seen backup links to about a dozen different platforms (not a single one to Mastodon from non-tech people, btw).


----------



## mac_in_tosh

But Musk is a billionaire so he must be a genius. Just like Trump is a brilliant businessman.


----------



## Citysnaps

mac_in_tosh said:


> But Musk is a billionaire so he must be a genius. Just like Trump is a brilliant businessman.




Still feeling grateful Musk is not a US-born citizen.  Did anyone ever check trump's birth status?


----------



## Andropov

mac_in_tosh said:


> But Musk is a billionaire so he must be a genius. Just like Trump is a brilliant businessman.



One of the most surprising things of the last few years has been the number of people that, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, claim that *insert powerful/rich person here* must be secretly very intelligent or they wouldn't be powerful/rich. Every dumb decision has to be a secret plan, every stupid tweet must be part of some carefully crafted strategy we just can't see.


----------



## Nycturne

lizkat said:


> Whole thing is just ridiculous.
> 
> Whatever some people thought about Twitter's prospects as a publicly traded company,  few likely thought it could get THIS bad after going private, not even if purchased by Elon Musk.  I just never heard of an acquisition where so many potentially fatal internal changes were made in less than a month.
> 
> That's without considering the extremely unconventional treatment of advertisers and users alike, never mind the  ousters in areas like compliance, security, risk management... moves that have drawn scrutiny from regulators in multiple countries.




A lot of us were expecting a slow decline under the weight of the debt and Elon’s management style. We weren’t expecting Musk to come in and immediately go for the back-breaker with a baseball bat a week into ownership. 

I’m even wondering what my next move is, since there are people I follow that I don’t want to lose access to their insight. But odds are things are coasting along at the moment, and I don’t think anyone truly knows when it will collapse under the load anymore. And even if it doesn’t, people have the impression it will. So we’re in the phase where people are making their evacuation plans, which may doom Twitter if Musk somehow doesn’t. 



Andropov said:


> It become waaaay worse today. When I wrote this it was still mostly IT people, but now I'm reading plans from people far from the engineering field also plan for the fall of Twitter (artists, for example, and non-tech content creators). It sucks because many of those people had in Twitter one of their main sources of income. And it's clear by now there's no other platform to run to. So far I've seen backup links to about a dozen different platforms (not a single one to Mastodon from non-tech people, btw).




Agreed. It’s that shift from expecting a lot of weird, or expecting time to see how things play out under Musk, to realizing that Musk seems to have gutted the entire company in terms of talent.


----------



## Eric

I think it's time to start questioning his real motives here, nobody with two successful companies like Space X and Tesla could ever be THIS stupid intentionally. The only way this makes sense is if his goal is to deliberately drive it into the ground and cut his losses.


----------



## Alli

I guess I’ll just go back to reading newspapers and follow a few folks on substacks. And there’s always here.


----------



## Eric

Alli said:


> I guess I’ll just go back to reading newspapers and follow a few folks on substacks. And there’s always here.



I've gone back to Google News, it's nice because you really only get the headlines you need without all the zany headlines Twitter has anyway.


----------



## shadow puppet

I'm kind of surprised Twitter is still up.  I fully expected to wake up and see it gone.
I know many of you hate Twitter but my family of accounts I follow sure helped get me through Covid lockdown and some tough days.
There doesn't seem to be a good option to move to right now and I find that sad.


----------



## lizkat

Nycturne said:


> A lot of us were expecting a slow decline under the weight of the debt and Elon’s management style. We weren’t expecting Musk to come in and immediately go for the back-breaker with a baseball bat a week into ownership.
> 
> I’m even wondering what my next move is, since there are people I follow that I don’t want to lose access to their insight. But odds are things are coasting along at the moment, and I don’t think anyone truly knows when it will collapse under the load anymore. And even if it doesn’t, people have the impression it will. So we’re in the phase where people are making their evacuation plans, which may doom Twitter if Musk somehow doesn’t.






Andropov said:


> It become waaaay worse today. When I wrote this it was still mostly IT people, but now I'm reading plans from people far from the engineering field also plan for the fall of Twitter (artists, for example, and non-tech content creators). It sucks because many of those people had in Twitter one of their main sources of income. And it's clear by now there's no other platform to run to. So far I've seen backup links to about a dozen different platforms (not a single one to Mastodon from non-tech people, btw).




Yah it's not a simple app download and a set of clicks to set up housekeeping on Mastodon...  so that's not going to be a post-Twitter choice for most people and not for agencies of governments either.   the latter might go back to or establish for the first time either FB or IG accounts.   Individuals who came to prefer Twitter to FB  not so much --  people like photographers, textile artists and other craftsmen.

 Some of them seem to be looking around at or trying venues like Pinterest or Instagram now, but not liking idea of having to leave a familiar setup and also knowing they'll lose track of communities they were part of or had followed on Twitter. 

I do see more and more accounts putting up pinned tweets of their alternate social media setups and urging people to download or otherwise preserve info on their own Twitter lists and etc data.



Nycturne said:


> Agreed. It’s that shift from expecting a lot of weird, or expecting time to see how things play out under Musk, to realizing that Musk seems to have gutted the entire company in terms of talent.




My concern is that people will have walked away who are the knowledge base of unusual situations and how to deal with them (or how NOT to try to deal with them).   That's a  hidden cost of the sort of wholesale housecleaning that Musk has been doing:  the ability of the company to be resilient in the face of unexpected operational stresses has been undermined,  but for now the weaknesses are not all evident.

Of course people who have been around long enough to become walking repositories of Twitter's foundational strengths may also be people who figure they are indispensable.  As as result, some may have developed an expectation of flex time or assorted other perks that a guy like Musk has not been not inclined to give.

No one's indispensable,  but the cost of an abrupt disappearance of a knowledgeable employee can certainly carry an inconvenient hit to a company's functionality now and then.

The problem there is Musk hasn't been around long enough to know who those people are, and he may very well have triggered some of them into a "who gives a F" decision to go ahead and take 3 months severance rather than put up with any more crap from the Chief Cost Cutter. 

Other layoffs in the tech industry right now might be what's actually holding Twitter together...


----------



## Cmaier

This is really the Hanukah story all over again, isn’t it?  Enough employees to keep Twitter functioning for one night, but miraculously Twitter holds on for eight?


----------



## Eric

Nobody messes with the Space Karen from
      FuckYouKaren


----------



## Andropov

Nycturne said:


> A lot of us were expecting a slow decline under the weight of the debt and Elon’s management style. We weren’t expecting Musk to come in and immediately go for the back-breaker with a baseball bat a week into ownership.



Yep, I was expecting the same thing. More right-wing accounts running unmolested causing people to leave or things like that. Certainly not this trainwreck on the first week.



Eric said:


> I think it's time to start questioning his real motives here, nobody with two successful companies like Space X and Tesla could ever be THIS stupid intentionally. The only way this makes sense is if his goal is to deliberately drive it into the ground and cut his losses.



I'm not sure about that. I've seen former competent people enter a bubble of believing in being much smarter than everyone else and screwing very simple tasks due to not listening to anyone's warnings.



lizkat said:


> Yah it's not a simple app download and a set of clicks to set up housekeeping on Mastodon...  so that's not going to be a post-Twitter choice for most people and not for agencies of governments either.   the latter might go back to or establish for the first time either FB or IG accounts.   Individuals who came to prefer Twitter to FB  not so much --  people like photographers, textile artists and other craftsmen.
> 
> Some of them seem to be looking around at or trying venues like Pinterest or Instagram now, but not liking idea of having to leave a familiar setup and also knowing they'll lose track of communities they were part of or had followed on Twitter.
> 
> I do see more and more accounts putting up pinned tweets of their alternate social media setups and urging people to download or otherwise preserve info on their own Twitter lists and etc data.



I follow upwards of a thousand people in Twitter so trying to find alternate platforms to follow them on is not viable. I downloaded a copy of the people I follow and, if things go down, I'll try to search for their usernames in other platforms, hoping they're using the same one.

People creating adult content seem to be the ones with less options. All other major platforms (Instagram, TikTok, Twitch... ban those contents). I expect those people to remain even if the platform starts having frequent outages. It could very well be the thing that keeps Twitter alive after major outages. Tumblr learned the hard way that it drives a lot of traffic.


----------



## lizkat

Cmaier said:


> This is really the Hanukah story all over again, isn’t it?  Enough employees to keep Twitter functioning for one night, but miraculously Twitter holds on for eight?




There's talk that Twitterati attention to FIFA World Cup championship matches will put paid to all that in the coming days...  starts November 20 and runs to December 18th.   If Twitter stays up through that it will be amazing.


----------



## shadow puppet

Andropov said:


> I follow upwards of a thousand people in Twitter so trying to find alternate platforms to follow them on is not viable. I downloaded a copy of the people I follow and, if things go down, I'll try to search for their usernames in other platforms, hoping they're using the same one.



I spent quite a bit of time last night paring down my 1000+ follow list.  Now looking for a way to download my follow list since my Twitter archive request (placed 4 days ago), never came through.  What method did you use to DL your follow list?  I'm seeing Twitodon can DL a CSV file for import into Mastodon.


----------



## Andropov

shadow puppet said:


> I spent quite a bit of time last night paring down my 1000+ follow list.  Now looking for a way to download my follow list since my Twitter archive request (placed 4 days ago), never came through.  What method did you use to DL your follow list?  I'm seeing Twitodon can DL a CSV file for import into Mastodon.



I used listfollowers.com. Allows downloads via JSON or CSV, and you can either download your followers, the people you follow, or your mutuals. And it worked with all 1200+ people I follow.


----------



## Nycturne

Andropov said:


> I'm not sure about that. I've seen former competent people enter a bubble of believing in being much smarter than everyone else and screwing very simple tasks due to not listening to anyone's warnings.



Yeah, and as I'm sure someone probably already pointed out, Twitter is the first company Elon has taken over that was well established. It had a culture, rhythm, and a business plan that they were executing on. And now he wants to reshape it in his image. Something he's never actually _done_ before. 

SpaceX was started from scratch, so Elon got to define the culture. Government funding helped it go through that early rough phase, and now they are seemingly firing on all cylinders when it comes to the Falcon 9. You can see some the seams though, whenever Musk talks up work yet to be done as it churns and iterates. While this is somewhat normal for a company, it's generally not done in public, but the public has a short memory when it comes to the sort of shifts SpaceX has done over the last decade. That short memory, and being able to deliver cheaper rockets to the market than "old space" has really helped SpaceX be a bit of a darling despite Musk's eccentric behavior.

Elon was involved with Tesla rather early, but he was more involved with the Roadster from an engineering perspective at first, and took on larger ownership roles as time goes on. So again, he's there as the culture was defining itself, and Elon was aligned with what would become Tesla's long term goals and business model. Here, you see some of Musk's eccentric vision thinking at play here too. The almost scattershot upcoming product portfolio now that the core vision has been delivered (the S3XY lineup), churn and issues with FSD, etc. 

Being listed as the wealthiest person in the world certainly would inflate one's ego, especially if they consider Ayn Rand a must-read.


----------



## Cmaier

@cmaier@mastodon.social


----------



## bunnspecial

When my nephews were younger, any new toy they got was really just a challenge to see how long it would take them to break it, and then of course they were done with it. 

How long until this petulant man-child decides he's broken his new toy enough that he can toss it into the corner?


----------



## lizkat

Andropov said:


> I used listfollowers.com. Allows downloads via JSON or CSV, and you can either download your followers, the people you follow, or your mutuals. And it worked with all 1200+ people I follow.




That's what I did for now, and just the accounts I follow.  Haven't decided whether to set up over at mastodon but probably that's where I'd land if Twitter falls apart.  Still hoping some of the dire "missing key people for recovery situations" stories that one hears are not the case or anyway not the end operationally.   There are some pretty alarming assertions floating around.

What gets me is that Twitter is clearly not in compliance with assorted regulations so how is it even staying up?   Musk might be counting on "shrug power" for now, i.e.,  a wait-and-see attitude from regulators figuring if the bird tumbles down and can't get back up in the trees again, well...   "problem solved."   ?!


----------



## fooferdoggie

lizkat said:


> What gets me is that Twitter is clearly not in compliance with assorted regulations so how is it even staying up?   Musk might be counting on "shrug power" for now, i.e.,  a wait-and-see attitude from regulators figuring if the bird tumbles down and can't get back up in the trees again, well...   "problem solved."   ?!



well things are happening so fast no way any regulations can keep up. that may be the idea too.


----------



## lizkat

fooferdoggie said:


> well things are happening so fast no way any regulations can keep up. that may be the idea too.




Not the regulations Musk has been working around --  could be some SEC issues by now...  certainly the data privacy laws,  risk management, moderation rules and lack of compliance officers...  all that stuff is in flux from day to day.   He could be importing warm bodies to fill those slots but sooner or later he'll get called on it if he doesn't step back and get a proper c-suite and staffing of those functions.


----------



## Cmaier

This is also unconfirmed. Seems too crazy.


----------



## shadow puppet

Quite a read.  Long but very interesting.
1/2


----------



## shadow puppet

2/2


----------



## rdrr

shadow puppet said:


> Quite a read.  Long but very interesting.
> 1/2
> 
> View attachment 19426
> 
> View attachment 19427
> 
> View attachment 19428
> 
> View attachment 19429



Personally being in IT for 25+ years (infrastructure services mostly), I can say this for sure...   The disasters you plan for is not the one that actually happens.   Complex systems break in complex ways.

Lots of rumors and conspiracy theories starting around why Twitter is seemingly failing so quickly.   One I gather is mostly conspiracy.   Twitter good or bad, does have it checks on folks like Trump, other high profile personalities, and governments.  Most of the big scandals of late were exposed on Twitter and other major social media platforms.   Twitter although costly could have been the easiest to pick off by Trump and his foreign backers, Russia... Saudis...


----------



## Herdfan

At least he hired back Ligma and Johnson.


----------



## Eric

rdrr said:


> Personally being in IT for 25+ years (infrastructure services mostly), I can say this for sure...   The disasters you plan for is not the one that actually happens.   Complex systems break in complex ways.
> 
> *Lots of rumors and conspiracy theories starting around why Twitter is seemingly failing so quickly.*   One I gather is mostly conspiracy.   Twitter good or bad, does have it checks on folks like Trump, other high profile personalities, and governments.  Most of the big scandals of late were exposed on Twitter and other major social media platforms.   Twitter although costly could have been the easiest to pick off by Trump and his foreign backers, Russia... Saudis...



We're watching it before our very eyes, the most disorganized high-profile takeover we've ever witnessed by a man who purports to be a genius yet thinks the person who writes a routine in 50 lines of code is smarter than the one who writes it in 20.

It's gotten to be comical at this point and he's so shrouded by yes men and his little right-wing bubble that he doesn't realize he's mocked at nearly every turn in the real word.


----------



## Andropov

This is not gonna fly in Europe


----------



## Cmaier

Andropov said:


> This is not gonna fly in Europe




He’s saying that he will leave up hate speech.  I’m out.


----------



## Eric

Andropov said:


> This is not gonna fly in Europe



Sounds like something he came up with over the last hour and spontaneously tweeted about it after talking to one of the remaining yes man engineers on the 10th floor who "thinks" he can pull of the algorithm.


----------



## Eric

Cmaier said:


> He’s saying that he will leave up hate speech.  I’m out.



I would argue that it never really stopped, it's just gained ground x500% since he took over.


----------



## Cmaier

Eric said:


> I would argue that it never really stopped, it's just gained ground x500% since he took over.



Twitter was trying. Now their official policy is that they won’t.  That’s a big enough difference to matter to me.


----------



## Pumbaa

Herdfan said:


> At least he hired back Ligma and Johnson.



Saw a tweet about that and initially thought it was one of those jokes.


----------



## Herdfan

Pumbaa said:


> Saw a tweet about that and initially thought it was one of those jokes.




It is.  A couple of reporters fell for it.

Initially these 2 guys came walking out of Twitter HQ carrying boxes and reporters came up to them asking what was happening and they said they were fired from Twitter and their names were Ligma and Johnson.  Without verifying anything, the reporters ran with the story.  Of course, they put it on Twitter.

Then Musk, who loves to troll, posed with them and said they were hired back.  And more reporters fell for it.

Guess they never saw this:


----------



## Eric

Herdfan said:


> *It is.  A couple of reporters fell for it.*
> 
> Initially these 2 guys came walking out of Twitter HQ carrying boxes and reporters came up to them asking what was happening and they said they were fired from Twitter and their names were Ligma and Johnson.  Without verifying anything, the reporters ran with the story.  Of course, they put it on Twitter.
> 
> Then Musk, who loves to troll, posed with them and said they were hired back.  And more reporters fell for it.
> 
> Guess they never saw this:



To be fair, had Musk not delegitimized literally every credible account it would have never been an issue. At this point no account is safe or trustworthy, it took them years to establish what Musk tore down in a matter of weeks.


----------



## lizkat

Does Musk think that saying "Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter" means *anything *to either users or regulators?   Guy is nuts.

So his idea was what...  to run a gigantic unmoderated database and make money how exactly?

 The longer Musk goes on with his chaotic rollout of "new Twitter,"  the less I believe he had really thought through any sort of actual business plan, or even a comprehensive vision for how the platform should be changed for users and advertisers.

He just ended up having to go through with a transaction that he bumbled into (and didn't really want to consummate) after running his mouth about buying it and throwing some dough into a significant and pointedly hostile stake after initial responses were like "go away."

That had set his teeth on edge, and he dug in with an offer too good to refuse, but without sense of what he'd do if and when he finally dragged the prize into his den.   Now it's backing him into all kinds of corners.

He's like Trump, can't stand changing tack after he's declared a course setting.  But he's having to do it anyway --and so that has become a set of chaotic, reactive experiments--  and the one thing he should do (step back entirely from mangement) is too humiliating,  but maybe also now too late.


----------



## Eric

And now this...

So this is happening on Twitter right now from
      insanepeoplefacebook


----------



## Andropov

This is going to be fun.


----------



## Eric

You have to wonder how long it can sustain with such a huge loss like this.









						Elon Musk’s Twitter Teeters on the Edge After Another 1,200 Leave
					

Mr. Musk sent emails on Friday asking to learn about Twitter’s underlying technology as key infrastructure teams have been decimated.




					www.nytimes.com
				




Elon Musk’s Twitter Teeters on the Edge After Another 1,200 Leave​Mr. Musk sent emails on Friday asking to learn about Twitter’s underlying technology as key infrastructure teams have been decimated.


----------



## Cmaier

Wait until apple bans Twitter from the App Store. “We aren’t going to take down hate speech - we will just demonetize it” isn’t going to fly with apple.


----------



## Eric

Cmaier said:


> Wait until apple bans Twitter from the App Store. “We aren’t going to take down hate speech - we will just demonetize it” isn’t going to fly with apple.



Aren't they allowing the download of Truth Social though? It would be nice to see Apple and Android banning this sort of hate speech.


----------



## Alli

Cmaier said:


> Wait until apple bans Twitter from the App Store. “We aren’t going to take down hate speech - we will just demonetize it” isn’t going to fly with apple.



Do you ever see (first-hand) any hate speech? The only time I see it is when someone I follow quotes it, either from Twitter, TS, or a newspaper. I’m not likely to ever see it first-hand as I don’t follow those people. I’ve even stopped following people who insist on posting articles about the traitor tots, Roger Stone, and Steve Bannon.


----------



## Cmaier

Eric said:


> Aren't they allowing the download of Truth Social though? It would be nice to see Apple and Android banning this sort of hate speech.




yeah, but they monitor truth social’s moderation policies, and there may be one of these situations where certain stuff doesn’t show up in the app that does show up on the website (there was some other network that worked that way).  I think truth social is mostly conspiracy theories and stupidity, and not so much hate speech, but since I don’t hang out there I’m not sure.


----------



## rdrr

Eric said:


> And now this...
> 
> 
> __
> https://www.reddit.com/r/insanepeoplefacebook/comments/yz09yf



Didn't know where my line was until I saw that.  If yes means a TFG reinstatement, I am out!


----------



## lizkat

Eric said:


> And now this...
> 
> 
> __
> https://www.reddit.com/r/insanepeoplefacebook/comments/yz09yf




Musk reminds me more and more of accounts one can see anywhere on Twitter,  the real or self-proclaimed celebrities seeking attention hourly or daily with banal or provocative tweets and requests to "RT if you agree!" 

Trump can't afford to get reinstated on Twitter.  His Truth Social platform would be decimated.  Over there he has a concentration of followers and potential donors (along with a smattering of people managing to lurk or blend in and so far not get banned lol).

Musk should have walked away from the acquisition.  He'd be richer today and his other companies would be less endangered.    And Twitter would still be trying to stay functional during the World Cup matches in Qatar, but with less anxiety:   the company would still have all its engineers instead of gaping vulnerabilities plus a pile of regulators waiting to pull the plug as soon as those matches are over or when Twitter collapses, whichever comes first.


----------



## mac_in_tosh

Sheesh. When I first saw the Reinstate Trump poll here I thought it meant 60% of respondents wanted him reinstated as president but it's only about reinstating him in Twitter (which would be bad enough).


----------



## Macky-Mac

lizkat said:


> ...Trump can't afford to get reinstated on Twitter.  His Truth Social platform would be decimated....




the way things are going, Trump might be able to buy Twitter at a fire sale price and incorporate it into Truth Social


----------



## lizkat

Macky-Mac said:


> the way things are going, Trump might be able to buy Twitter at a fire sale price and incorporate it into Truth Social




Musk has tweeted that he will reinstate Trump's account.  So far Trump sounds like not rejoining.


----------



## Macky-Mac

lizkat said:


> Musk has tweeted that he will reinstate Trump's account.  So far Trump sounds like not rejoining.




he wouldn't need to rejoin.....Twitter, what's left of it anyway, would be merged into Truth Social and vanish as an independent brand........(parody!.....where's my blue check?)


----------



## lizkat

Macky-Mac said:


> he wouldn't need to rejoin.....Twitter, what's left of it anyway, would be merged into Truth Social and vanish as an independent brand........(parody!.....where's my blue check?)




Trump won't have the money to buy Twitter once he gets done shelling out for lawyers.  Not even if Twitter ends up bankrupt and the receiver looking to sell it for what to at least pay off the banks at maybe 40c on the dollar.


----------



## Roller

lizkat said:


> Trump won't have the money to buy Twitter once he gets done shelling out for lawyers.  Not even if Twitter ends up bankrupt and the receiver looking to sell it for what to at least pay off the banks at maybe 40c on the dollar.



Since when has Trump actually shelled out for his lawyers (or anyone else, for that matter)?


----------



## Macky-Mac

lizkat said:


> Trump won't have the money to buy Twitter once he gets done shelling out for lawyers.  Not even if Twitter ends up bankrupt and the receiver looking to sell it for what to at least pay off the banks at maybe 40c on the dollar.




Maybe Musk will just sign it over to Trump as a gift  in order to get himself away from the Twitter mess he's made .....(parody!)


----------



## fooferdoggie

Macky-Mac said:


> Maybe Musk will just sign it over to Trump as a gift  in order to get himself away from the Twitter mess he's made .....(parody!)



well trump is a expert at bankrupting companies.


----------



## Eric

lizkat said:


> Musk has tweeted that he will reinstate Trump's account.  So far Trump sounds like not rejoining.



Musk is desperate for any sort of boost he can get and since anyone with any credibility is jumping ship he's grasping at anything, letting Trump back is rock bottom and any of the few remaining advertisers who were on the fence likely just jumped off.

If nothing else all of this at least explains why Teslas are so full of problems off the line due to a lack of any real QA, he drives his people into the ground to where they can no longer perform at a functional level. It makes sense that he comes from a father who used slave labor in a diamond mine.


----------



## leman

Didn’t Musk earlier promise that there will be a council of respected people of some sort that decides whom to unban? Another lie then?

At any rate Twitter is done.


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

Now I’m really disappointed in Musk.  I thought we’d get at least another month of creative daily Twitter fuckups before he’d reach for letting Trump back on.  At the festival of dipshits you don’t bring on the headliner while the opening band is still kicking themselves in the balls.


----------



## lizkat

Chew Toy McCoy said:


> Now I’m really disappointed in Musk.  I thought we’d get at least another month of creative daily Twitter fuckups before he’d reach for letting Trump back on.  At the festival of dipshits you don’t bring on the headliner while the opening band is still kicking themselves in the balls.




Well he has at least very likely messed up the playlist for this concert by asking engineers who've just resigned to provide some details of how Twitter works ON THEIR WAY OUT THE DOOR.


----------



## Eric

Well, someone is a bit touchy this morning.
_Edit: Turns out this is fake._


Challenge accepted from
      WhitePeopleTwitter


----------



## Citysnaps

"_I know you won't because you're a bunch of babies addicted to the drama"_

Right. And who is the person creating this drama?


----------



## Huntn

Eric said:


> Well, someone is a bit touchy this morning.
> _Edit: Turns out this is fake._
> 
> 
> __
> https://www.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/z03zau



 I heard Trump was reinstated, so it is established that Twitter accepts or does not give a shit about the spreading of disinformation. I was never active on Twitter, actually I hated the name, so I wish the platform all my worst. My impression is that Musk is an anti-democratic egomaniac. If incorrect, am willing to adjust my position.


----------



## Eric

Huntn said:


> I heard Trump was reinstated, so it is established that Twitter accepts or does not give a shit about the spreading of disinformation. I was never active on Twitter, actually I hated the name, so I wish the platform all my worst. My impression is that Musk is an anti-democratic egomaniac. If incorrect, am willing to adjust my position.



He's turned it down, when you can't even get Trump back you know you're fucked.


----------



## mac_in_tosh

So tired of all these wannabe oligarchs damaging the country with their narcissism, ego and stupidity.


----------



## Cmaier

That’s what I’m talking about.









						Apple Executive Phil Schiller Deactivates Twitter Account
					

Apple's Phil Schiller, responsible for Apple events and the App Store, has deactivated his Twitter account following recent developments on the...




					www.macrumors.com
				




I’m on mastodon now, and will deactivate my Twitter account when I get back from vacation (I want to download my data first).


----------



## Eric

Cmaier said:


> That’s what I’m talking about.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Apple Executive Phil Schiller Deactivates Twitter Account
> 
> 
> Apple's Phil Schiller, responsible for Apple events and the App Store, has deactivated his Twitter account following recent developments on the...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.macrumors.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I’m on mastodon now, and will deactivate my Twitter account when I get back from vacation (I want to download my data first).




Dominoes are starting to fall.









						CBS News suspends Twitter posting ‘in light of the uncertainty’ about Musk-owned social platform
					

CBS News’ decision to step back from Twitter comes a little more than three weeks into Musk’s ownership of the company — over which time Twitter’s employee base has shrunk to about 33% its former size.




					www.nbcnews.com
				



CBS News’ decision to step back from Twitter comes a little more than three weeks into Musk’s ownership of the company — over which time Twitter’s employee base has shrunk to about 33% its former size.


----------



## Cmaier

Eric said:


> Dominoes are starting to fall.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> CBS News suspends Twitter posting ‘in light of the uncertainty’ about Musk-owned social platform
> 
> 
> CBS News’ decision to step back from Twitter comes a little more than three weeks into Musk’s ownership of the company — over which time Twitter’s employee base has shrunk to about 33% its former size.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.nbcnews.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> CBS News’ decision to step back from Twitter comes a little more than three weeks into Musk’s ownership of the company — over which time Twitter’s employee base has shrunk to about 33% its former size.



A lot of “ios developer twitter” (which is mostly who I interact with) is now on mastodon.  It will be interesting to see if/when various cohorts move and where they move to.


----------



## Renzatic

Cmaier said:


> I’m on mastodon now, and will deactivate my Twitter account when I get back from vacation (I want to download my data first).




I've toyed with the idea of setting up a Mastodon account, but the whole notion that you pick a home server, and this server can randomly choose to federate or defederate with any of the hundreds of other Mastodon servers doesn't strike me as being very efficient.


----------



## Cmaier

Renzatic said:


> I've toyed with the idea of setting up a Mastodon account, but the whole notion that you pick a home server, and this server can randomly choose to federate or defederate with any of the hundreds of other Mastodon servers doesn't strike me as being very efficient.



If a server gets defederated, there’s a pretty good chance that there’s a good reason for it (like when a server full of nazis gets defederated).

If you stick to one of the bigger servers, chances are good that you’ll always be connected to the vast majority of non-garbage servers).


----------



## DT

Renzatic said:


> I've toyed with the idea of setting up a Mastodon account, but the whole notion that you pick a home server, and this server can randomly choose to federate or defederate with any of the hundreds of other Mastodon servers doesn't strike me as being very efficient.




And you can't even register at the main server at the moment (it was open when I looked a couple of months ago):





Just going to leave my Twitter accounts alone, and ignore them


----------



## Cmaier

DT said:


> And you can't even register at the main server at the moment (it was open when I looked a couple of months ago):
> 
> View attachment 19487
> 
> Just going to leave my Twitter accounts alone, and ignore them



I signed up on mastodon.social a week or so ago, so maybe it’s a temporary issue.


----------



## DT

Cmaier said:


> I signed up on mastodon.social a week or so ago, so maybe it’s a temporary issue.




I wonder if they're trying to distribute registrations across more servers vs. overloading their primary server[?]

Side note:  if I was going to register it would probably be this server, because of this account 









						George Takei :verified: 🏳️‍🌈🖖🏽 (@georgetakei@universeodon.com)
					

26 Posts, 31 Following, 143K Followers · I boldly went to this new site. Follow for more recipes and tips.




					universeodon.com


----------



## Cmaier

Elon Musk is reportedly considering cutting more of Twitter’s workforce | Engadget
					

Twitter may cut more of its shrinking workforce as early as Monday..




					www.engadget.com


----------



## Citysnaps

Seems musk would be an ideal candidate for court-ordered conservatorship.

A couple months ago.


----------



## DT

Hahahaha  

"Umm, Mr. Musk, you're firing 1000 employees, and we only have 500 left ..."

"Yes, it's genius, a negative employee creates revenue.  We fire 10,000 more that's $1M a week!  BWAHAHA LOLZ!!!"


----------



## Citysnaps

DT said:


> Hahahaha
> 
> "Umm, Mr. Musk, you're firing 1000 employees, and we only have 500 left ..."
> 
> "Yes, it's genius, a negative employee creates revenue.  We fire 10,000 more that's $1M a week!  BWAHAHA LOLZ!!!"




That would be -10,000j employees.


----------



## DT

Hahaha, nice.


----------



## Citysnaps

DT said:


> Hahaha, nice.




Finally, a relatable everyday use for imaginary numbers.

Thanks Elon!


----------



## Renzatic

I went ahead and deleted my account. Not out of some showing of political or social solidarity, but because Twitter's engineering and security divisions have been gutted, so the chances of seeing a massive info leak out of the platform is almost guaranteed by this point.


----------



## Eric

Renzatic said:


> I went ahead and deleted my account. Not out of some showing of political or social solidarity, but because Twitter's engineering and security divisions have been gutted, so the chances of seeing a massive info leak out of the platform is almost guaranteed by this point.



I felt liberated when I nuked mine, I also deleted the app from my phone and outside of citing another source from a news link somewhere don't go anywhere near the platform. 

Something will need to fill the void, this new thing you guys are talking about sounds a lot like Discord but I'm just going to wait things out for a bit and see what ends up sticking.


----------



## Renzatic

Eric said:


> Something will need to fill the void, this new thing you guys are talking about sounds a lot like Discord but I'm just going to wait things out for a bit and see what ends up sticking.




Mastodon is a decentralized Twitter. I haven't had a chance to use it myself yet, but scrolling through the news and comments feeds, it's almost a carbon copy clone.

Course I never used Twitter all that much anyway, so, you know, whatever.


----------



## Cmaier

Eric said:


> I felt liberated when I nuked mine, I also deleted the app from my phone and outside of citing another source from a news link somewhere don't go anywhere near the platform.
> 
> Something will need to fill the void, this new thing you guys are talking about sounds a lot like Discord but I'm just going to wait things out for a bit and see what ends up sticking.




In use, mastodon feels more or less like twitter. There are some differences  - no “quote” tweets unless your client offers that, if you mention someone with @ in a DM, then they get dragged into the DM ( causing awkward situations for those who don’t realize it), and timelines is always chronological.   The “federation” thing just means that anybody can set up a server (just like an email server), and as long as the servers are willing to talk to each other it makes no difference to the users. You can see toots from other servers, etc.  You can also move your account from server to server as you wish. 

Mostly it feels just like twitter to users, except a little jankier (servers are struggling under the influx of new users, and having to figure out what server to sign up for can cause confusion to new users).


----------



## thekev

Andropov said:


> Lots of still-at-Twitter engineers started quoting Elon’s tweets after he fired the Twitter for Android engineer yesterday for doing exactly that. Those people are also getting fired now.
> 
> This is just one example, but I’ve seen quite a few in my timeline:
> 
> Critically, this person was also from the infrastructure team, as were many of the other engineers fired.




Musk sounds like a complete jackass. He had a bunch of quips regarding rpcs (remote procedure calls), which made it sound like he never examined what he was complaining about.



Citysnaps said:


> That would be -10,000j employees.




Hopefully they don't multiply. That would be difficult to explain to accounting..

I actually wanted to make a joke here about it driving twitter further into the red fast, but if you're multiplying purely imaginary negative quantities, you'll end up with a real negative value .


----------



## DT

I did not realize posts on Mastodon were called ... Toots.     I suspect this will drive some rapid improvement of the platform, this is pretty amazing:





It is interesting that anyone can stand up a server, and if you follow proper protocols, you can become a linked server offering in the central catalog, here's the more-than-reasonable rules:









						Mastodon Server Covenant for joinmastodon.org
					






					joinmastodon.org


----------



## Eric

Cmaier said:


> In use, mastodon feels more or less like twitter. There are some differences  - no “quote” tweets unless your client offers that, if you mention someone with @ in a DM, then they get dragged into the DM ( causing awkward situations for those who don’t realize it), and timelines is always chronological.   The “federation” thing just means that anybody can set up a server (just like an email server), and as long as the servers are willing to talk to each other it makes no difference to the users. You can see toots from other servers, etc.  You can also move your account from server to server as you wish.
> 
> Mostly it feels just like twitter to users, except a little jankier (servers are struggling under the influx of new users, and having to figure out what server to sign up for can cause confusion to new users).



Okay, so you need to join (create an account) one of these existing servers that has topics you're interested in? That's what it appears but it's not really clear.


----------



## DT

Eric said:


> Okay, so you need to join (create an account) one of these existing servers that has topics you're interested in? That's what it appears but it's not really clear.




Yeah, they're all connected, but your "home" server can be a little more specific to your interests, have specific rules for things like NSFW content, etc.

I haven't actually setup an account, so I'm not sure how the filtering works, i.e., do I really care what server I register on if I can simply ignore the "local" content[?]


----------



## Cmaier

Eric said:


> Okay, so you need to join (create an account) one of these existing servers that has topics you're interested in? That's what it appears but it's not really clear.



There are general servers and ones that are more focused on topics. Each can have different moderation rules, membership rules, etc.  if you join one of the more general ones, it ends up being more like Twitter.


----------



## Renzatic

DT said:


> I haven't actually setup an account, so I'm not sure how the filtering works, i.e., do I really care what server I register on if I can simply ignore the "local" content[?]




This is a good question, cuz I want to sign up to glasgow.social, despite not living anywhere near Glasgow.

edit: I changed my mind. Toot.wales sounds even funnier.


----------



## Alli

Cmaier said:


> That’s what I’m talking about.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Apple Executive Phil Schiller Deactivates Twitter Account
> 
> 
> Apple's Phil Schiller, responsible for Apple events and the App Store, has deactivated his Twitter account following recent developments on the...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.macrumors.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I’m on mastodon now, and will deactivate my Twitter account when I get back from vacation (I want to download my data first).



Who are you there? I can follow you as easily there as on Twitter.


DT said:


> I did not realize posts on Mastodon were called ... Toots.  I suspect this will drive some rapid improvement of the platform, this is pretty amazing:



After a few minutes on Mastodon I realized I would need another degree just to get all the new terminology unique to Mastodon. Yikes!

I was pleased when I discovered there are already Mastodon apps, and that actually made signing up easier. I went with mastodon.world. Pleased there was room on it. I’m already enjoying the hell out of it.


----------



## Cmaier

Alli said:


> Who are you there? I can follow you as easily there as on Twitter.



@cmaier@mastodon.social


----------



## Renzatic

Alli said:


> I went with mastodon.world.




Ditto. I can now toot.


----------



## Alli

Renzatic said:


> Ditto. I can now toot.



Toot me, baby!


----------



## Renzatic

Alli said:


> Toot me, baby!




...how do I add toot people with which to toot?

Nevermind. I figured it out.


----------



## Renzatic

@Renzatic@Mastodon.Social

@Renzatic@Mastodon.World

That's me. It is my name.


----------



## Eric

Nice all, there's more tooting going on there than a taco bell!


----------



## Eric

There's an addon for this board but it only supports https://mastodon.social 

Let's try this one from Alli









						Dr. Flowers (@alliflowers@mastodon.world)
					

Dude! We can start with an already intact community here, @ericgtr .




					mastodon.world


----------



## Renzatic

Join the bandwagon! Become one of us!


----------



## Pumbaa

Gooble gobble one of us!


----------



## DT

Renzatic said:


> @Renzatic@Mastodon.Social
> 
> That's me. It is my name.




So when you registered at Mastodon.World, did you get an  @Mastodon.Social ID?


----------



## Renzatic

DT said:


> So when you registered at Mastodon.World, did you get an  @Mastodon.Social ID?




You know what? I'm an idiot.

I'm @Renzatic@Mastodon.World.


----------



## DT

Oh, OK, thanks for the clarification, I didn't know if there was some kind of central ID services available (like everyone gets .social).

It really is both a completely standalone service, and a networked service with the other 6K servers.  Cool.

I guess if you're on a server with a specific <username>@Mastodon.Something, if that admin/owner, flips out, starts posting racist crap, they get booted from the Mastodon network and you get booted right along with them.


----------



## Eric

Renzatic said:


> You know what? I'm an idiot.
> 
> I'm @Renzatic@Mastodon.World.



@ericgtr@mastodon.world here


----------



## Eric

Ooh, you can edit, too.


----------



## Cmaier

DT said:


> Oh, OK, thanks for the clarification, I didn't know if there was some kind of central ID services available (like everyone gets .social).
> 
> It really is both a completely standalone service, and a networked service with the other 6K servers.  Cool.
> 
> I guess if you're on a server with a specific <username>@Mastodon.Something, if that admin/owner, flips out, starts posting racist crap, they get booted from the Mastodon network and you get booted right along with them.



Then you just move your account to another server.


----------



## DT

Cmaier said:


> Then you just move your account to another server.




Oh yeah, I'm sure there's some kind of migration service, I was just thinking (out loud) at all the caveats.  Like what if the .World guy just blows up his servers, everything is gone. Is your profile, etc., replicated somewhere else?  Or do you start from scratch?


----------



## diamond.g

DT said:


> Oh yeah, I'm sure there's some kind of migration service, I was just thinking (out loud) at all the caveats.  Like what if the .World guy just blows up his servers, everything is gone. Is your profile, etc., replicated somewhere else?  Or do you start from scratch?






Looks like the old server has to still be accessible to migrate your followers (they didn’t mention toots going as well).


----------



## Alli

DT said:


> Oh yeah, I'm sure there's some kind of migration service, I was just thinking (out loud) at all the caveats.  Like what if the .World guy just blows up his servers, everything is gone. Is your profile, etc., replicated somewhere else?  Or do you start from scratch?



You can always create your own Mastodon server.


----------



## Cmaier

DT said:


> Oh yeah, I'm sure there's some kind of migration service, I was just thinking (out loud) at all the caveats.  Like what if the .World guy just blows up his servers, everything is gone. Is your profile, etc., replicated somewhere else?  Or do you start from scratch?



well, twitter might implode, too.  The advantage of mastodon is that if this is something you really worry about, you can create your own server.


----------



## Eric

Alli said:


> You can always create your own Mastodon server.



I looked into that a bit and it doesn't seem like Discord, it appears to require an actual server, hosting and all 





						Running your own server - Mastodon documentation
					






					docs.joinmastodon.org


----------



## DT

I was also thinking about it terms of choosing a server, you know, go with something a little more established.  The one @Alli and @Renzatic selected seems like a really good choice (assuming mastodon.social isn't offering registrations).


----------



## DT

Eric said:


> I looked into that a bit and it doesn't seem like Discord, it appears to require an actual server, hosting and all
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Running your own server - Mastodon documentation
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> docs.joinmastodon.org




DigitalOcean (and I imagine more in the near future, like AWS) has a Mastodon image, a "one-click" deployment:









						Mastodon | DigitalOcean Marketplace 1-Click App
					

A decentralized social network -- follow your friends and discover new ones!




					marketplace.digitalocean.com
				




I've used a few of those, pretty nice, I've used them to get a development instance of something up and running super quick.


----------



## Pumbaa

DT said:


> I was also thinking about it terms of choosing a server, you know, go with something a little more established.  The one @Alli and @Renzatic selected seems like a really good choice (assuming mastodon.social isn't offering registrations).



Pretty much my thoughts. Guess who snagged @pumbaa@mastodon.world ? 

And no, no mastodon.social registration for now.


----------



## Eric

DT said:


> DigitalOcean (and I imagine more in the near future, like AWS) has a Mastodon image, a "one-click" deployment:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Mastodon | DigitalOcean Marketplace 1-Click App
> 
> 
> A decentralized social network -- follow your friends and discover new ones!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> marketplace.digitalocean.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I've used a few of those, pretty nice, I've used them to get a development instance of something up and running super quick.



I've asked my host about it, we're on a VPS but if they don't have a package I would have to set it all up manually. Would be nice to have our own dedicated server for TalkedAbout.


----------



## Eric

This one nailed it.


----------



## Pumbaa

Eric said:


> This one nailed it.
> 
> View attachment 19500



Not sure if that‘s Elon Musk or a fresh Mastodon user…


----------



## Yoused

perhaps outdated


----------



## lizkat

Seen on the net while cruising around some mastodon servers



> Report: Twitter's content control systems are not functioning, users uploading full movies and more: There are currently numerous anecdotal reports that users are now uploading full movies and other forms of prohibited content to Twitter with apparent impunity. If true, this will go south very quickly.


----------



## Yoused

lizkat said:


> Seen on the net while cruising around some mastodon servers
> 
> 
> 
> … users are now uploading full movies and other forms of prohibited content to Twitter with apparent impunity …
Click to expand...


Business Insider via yahoo link


----------



## lizkat

Yoused said:


> Business Insider via yahoo link




Tell you what...  the movie studios gonna sue over that kinda thing.


----------



## Yoused

lizkat said:


> Tell you what...  the movie studios gonna sue over that kinda thing.




On one site I frequent, they have a firm rule about quoting text. If you go over a couple paragraphs, they will come in and abridge your post because they want no whiff of copyright actions. Movies are going to eat Musk alive.


----------



## Eric

Yoused said:


> On one site I frequent, they have a firm rule about quoting text. If you go over a couple paragraphs, they will come in and abridge your post because they want no whiff of copyright actions. Movies are going to eat Musk alive.



CC: ALL
"Anyone left who can code anti-copyright infringement meet me on the 10th floor immediately."


----------



## lizkat

Eric said:


> CC: ALL
> "Anyone left who can code anti-copyright infringement meet me on the 10th floor immediately."




It's clear Musk is not in compliance on some aspects of content that are subject to regulation.  Not sure why regulators are not already swooping in... unless they are co-investors?!


----------



## Macky-Mac

lizkat said:


> It's clear Musk is not in compliance on some aspects of content that are subject to regulation.  Not sure why regulators are not already swooping in... unless they are co-investors?!




IIRC, enforcement of copyright is initiated by the copyright owner......and even then, these films are third party content so Twitter has a fair bit of legal protection, although I think they're expected to remove the material upon a copyright owner request


----------



## lizkat

Macky-Mac said:


> IIRC, enforcement of copyright is initiated by the copyright owner......and even then, these films are third party content so Twitter has a fair bit of legal protection, although I think they're expected to remove the material upon a copyright owner request




So we can expect to bump into not only illegally uploaded regular movies bur probably all manner of stuff that is NSFW and even if that were reported there'd likely be a backlog of reports and probably not many content moderators left working at Twitter by now.   Ugh.  Uglier and uglier!


----------



## Yoused

A minimally regulated site will be ok if the users are comfortable. I suspect a bunch of these people are uploading stuff that they should not be either just because they can or because they are reacting to the idiotic behavior of the owner – some of this improper activity may be happening entirely for the sake of attacking Musk.


----------



## lizkat

Yoused said:


> A minimally regulated site will be ok if the users are comfortable. I suspect a bunch of these people are uploading stuff that they should not be either just because they can or because they are reacting to the idiotic behavior of the owner – some of this improper activity may be happening entirely for the sake of attacking Musk.




Well Musk has re-enabled Project Veritas account.  That's an attack on people who like facts...


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

Not sure how true this is, but a friend said he read that one of the main reasons Musk followed through with the purchase is because if it went through with the lawsuit there were a lot of emails that would be made public that reveal Musk really isn’t that bright. It’s like Trump and his taxes. There’s just some things that can shatter your public image and possibly that image was largely cultivated by yourself.  

Obviously you can say his behavior since the purchase also reveals he’s not that bright but he probably feels or felt he could be more proactively control that as opposed to defending behavior and things said in the past. He’s gone all in on his own mythology thinking that could save him.  The purchase is his "special military operation".  

There seems to be a glut of rich people trying to mirror the worst actors in history and apparently they didn’t read the last chapter where it didn’t end well for them.  Doesn’t help that they mostly just hang out with each other trying to both gain favor and manipulate each other for top position. It’s like having a great weekend with friends and dread going back to work after it, but for them the dread is commingling with or attempting to control 99% of the population. Just a big bummer that’s part of life.


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

Eric said:


> He's turned it down, when you can't even get Trump back you know you're fucked.




I think the main reason Trump has no interest in going back is because they haven’t implemented the one rule they have on Truth Social (yet).  Don’t say means things to or about Trump,


----------



## Herdfan

CBS left Twitter Friday.

They made it less than 48 hours before they were back.


----------



## DT

Herdfan said:


> CBS left Twitter Friday.
> 
> They made it less than 48 hours before they were back.




I think you're reading way too much into this, i.e., you're implying some sort of musk (and by way of musk, trump ...) "win" by a news organization taking a pause over the weekend, reviewing the security/content/management concerns, and coming back to a service.


----------



## Eric

DT said:


> I think you're reading way too much into this, i.e., you're implying some sort of musk (and by way of musk, trump ...) "win" by a news organization taking a pause over the weekend, reviewing the security/content/management concerns, and coming back to a service.



They made that clear from the gate but I'm sure Fox News is making it into something it isn't and their followers are spouting their given talking points.

The actual story:








						CBS News resumes Twitter use after "uncertainty" following Musk takeover
					

It was the first major U.S. news organization to suspend use of the platform since Musk's chaotic takeover.




					www.axios.com
				




CBS News said Sunday it's resuming its use of Twitter after around a 40-hour pause because of its "security concerns" with the platform.

*The big picture:* It was the first major U.S. news organization to suspend use the social media platform since Elon Musk's chaotic takeover, which has been riddled with layoffs, conspiracy theories, and has raised questions about content moderation.

The media company did not say what its security concerns were or whether they were resolved.
*What they're saying:* "After pausing for much of the weekend to assess the security concerns, CBS News and Stations is resuming its activity on Twitter as we continue to monitor the situation," the new organization's communications team tweeted Sunday.


----------



## lizkat

Herdfan said:


> CBS left Twitter Friday.
> 
> They made it less than 48 hours before they were back.




Yeah the big corporations (and governmental agencies from the national weather service on down to county sheriffs) don't really know what to do.   There are issues beyond potential loss of followers now, with Musk having slashed staff while also letting more bad actors in (not just re-opening accounts but raising risks of security breaches).
​[ To me sounds like CBS c-suite did one of those "yeah security matters until it gets in the way of conducting business, and so will the risk compliance officer please now leave the room for a few minutes." ]​
It's like they're all figuring sooner or later some adults will show up and Twitter will "settle down" or something.  They don't get the fundamental instability that the platform itself is now enduring and the drip-drip-drip effect of inadequate maintenance.

As for recovery options,  Musk has stripped the place of people who only _*might *_be able to cope with a total collapse of a huge distributed system making so many transactions per second anyway.   Platforms like that aren't meant to shut down totally.  Who the heck knows how long it could take to recover...  weeks, months, still w/ data losses.

Yet all these big brands, agencies, politicians, influencers...   figure "well let's see what happens" because it really is a big step to just move off a platform when you have millions of followers.

It's like watching a freight train slowly approach a river crossing where the bridge has collapsed.   Everybody figures well it will stop, right?   Twitter's users are driving the train and they're not going to stop because hey it's just the internet and surely someone will fix it if it breaks.


----------



## Colstan

This probably won't make y'all feel any better, but Alex Jones won't be back on Twitter.


----------



## Eric

Colstan said:


> This probably won't make y'all feel any better, but Alex Jones won't be back on Twitter.
> 
> View attachment 19505



Even a broken clock is right twice a day. 

All of this aside, and regardless of my feeling on Musk, the fact that a single person has the total say over a platform this influential is almost criminal. I didn't like it with Jack Dorsey either but at least he wasn't a maniacal Bond villain. There should be checks, balances and oversight when it comes to something this big. A panel and a system of defined policies should be in place.


----------



## Macky-Mac

lizkat said:


> So we can expect to bump into not only illegally uploaded regular movies bur probably all manner of stuff that is NSFW and even if that were reported there'd likely be a backlog of reports and probably not many content moderators left working at Twitter by now.   Ugh.  Uglier and uglier!




perhaps Musk will find a way to monetize posting such stuff


----------



## Colstan

Eric said:


> All of this aside, and regardless of my feeling on Musk, the fact that a single person has the total say over a platform this influential is almost criminal. I didn't like it with Jack Dorsey either but at least he wasn't a maniacal Bond villain. There should be checks, balances and oversight when it comes to something this big. A panel and a system of defined policies should be in place.



I've self-banned myself from the politics section, and this is right along the edge of that, but I'll toss in a few thoughts.

I personally don't care about Elon Musk, Twitter, or social media in general. Talked About is all I need, unless I'm feeling masochistic, and visit the other place to get yelled at about the next Mac Pro.

That being said, this all new to us. Not on the scale of a human lifetime, we're here in a blink of an eye, then gone. Life is hard, short, and painful. We should strive to find what enjoyment we can while we're here. Part of that is observing the social experiment that we are witnessing unfold right in front of us. Every time there is a new mass-communication method introduced, it results in substantial societal upheaval. That happened with the radio, telegraph, moving pictures, television, telephone and printing press. Now, we're in the internet era, and connected more than ever.

Evolutionary biologists have done studies on human relationships, and generally speaking, we've evolved to form bonds with roughly 150 individuals. (Some studies say up to 300, but that's still a relatively small number.) That's about the right size for a hunting tribe, which is the proper number to hunt down a mastodon (unrelated to the website mentioned above). That's the way we lived for about 98% of human history. Our brains are adaptable, but not designed to form a gigantic global community of 8 billion people.

We're right at the dawn of this new communication era, barely in its infancy, so we're still learning to crawl. Most likely, none of the current social media platforms we currently use will survive, not in their current form, at least. We're testing the limits of free speech, what's acceptable in the online "public square" and what is verboten. I don't have the answers, and I'm not particularly worried about it, either. This will all calm down, we'll work it out, eventually. It's going to be messy, chaotic, and at times ugly, as it tends to be whenever humans are involved in any endeavor. Still, we find ways to advance, regardless.

So, my suggestion is to not fret the details of Mr. Musk or anyone else in that sphere. It's all ephemeral, as are most things online. I don't know what will come of this, but he is shaking up the current order of things, and testing our limits. If he fails, then he fails, and we'll have learned a bit more about humanity along the way. At least I'd like to thinks so.

That's my personal thoughts on the matter, anyroad.


----------



## Renzatic

Colstan said:


> I don't know what will come of this, but he is shaking up the current order of things, and testing our limits. If he fails, then he fails, and we'll have learned a bit more about humanity along the way. At least I'd like to thinks so.




That's assuming everything he's doing is due to some preconceived plan. At a casual glance, this looks very much like a publicity stunt/public ego masturbation attempt gone horribly awry.


----------



## Herdfan

Colstan said:


> Evolutionary biologists have done studies on human relationships, and generally speaking, we've evolved to form bonds with roughly 150 individuals. (Some studies say up to 300, but that's still a relatively small number.) That's about the right size for a hunting tribe, which is the proper number to hunt down a mastodon (unrelated to the website mentioned above). That's the way we lived for about 98% of human history. Our brains are adaptable, but not designed to form a gigantic global community of 8 billion people.




So that's why I hate crowds.


----------



## Colstan

Renzatic said:


> That's assuming everything he's doing is due to some preconceived plan. At a casual glance, this looks very much like a publicity stunt/public ego masturbation attempt gone horribly awry.



I don't assume he had a plan all along. My instinct tells me that this is very much improvised, not necessarily by design, and probably why I don't mind it. If this were a standard corporate acquisition then I wouldn't have given it any attention. It's a disruptive influence in a brand-new field; a completely different level of human interaction. That could work for the better, or worse, but it's different, which makes it interesting.

I get it, people here don't much like Mr. Musk. That's fine. I'm indifferent to him, I don't have much interest in Twitter or his fancy cars. I like his rocket ships and wish he would spend more time on those so that we can get to Mars, and some day, Titan. Remember when most everyone liked him (or at least didn't mind him) because of tech advances? I don't think he's a saint, but I don't see him as the devil, either. He's human, therefore imperfect, as we all are.


Herdfan said:


> So that's why I hate crowds.



That makes two of us.


----------



## Eric

One regret I have about deleting my account was not plugging this site to my followers beforehand, really should've done that.


----------



## SuperMatt

Some Twitter users are saying that when Trump’s account was revived, they were automatically added as followers even though they didn’t follow him before. They had to manually unfollow. Others who had blocked him found he was unblocked.


----------



## lizkat

More Twitter users with substantial followings have actually bailed now and gone over to Mastodon.  Jelani Cobb is one of them, wow.  He is a one of The New Yorker's writers, and also the dean of Columbia Journalism School.  His account is still up at Twitter, although inactive,  and he posted an alt address at one of the journalism-oriented Mastodon instances.   The guy has like 400k followers.  This was put up by a Mastodon member.

​


----------



## DT

OK, fine ...   






@MaskedRacerX@mastodon.world


----------



## DT

Side convo:

I think there's an even larger discussion, that there's social media site, that at the very least has people concerned about the future of our country.   I guess part of the wake up call from recent events is that this could happen, that there's a (debatable ) valuable  global communication system that was a public company, that could just be bought, made private and put under the control of one person.

I suppose that's a different discussion, that there's wealth that allows for this.  Heck, it could've just as easily been Bezos, better/worse, he does have a Cock Rocket.


----------



## Eric

I've built a mastodon server, it's definitely a thing to get it all built and there are still some bugs, I don't remember the last time I used a VI editor lol. I'm going to break for a while and work on it some more but I'll keep you guys posted. 

BTW the https://joinmastodon.org/ site has been hit and miss all day, I'm guessing they're getting hammered.


----------



## lizkat

DT said:


> Side convo:
> 
> I think there's an even larger discussion, that there's social media site, that at the very least has people concerned about the future of our country. I guess part of the wake up call from recent events is that this could happen, that there's a (debatable ) valuable  global communication system that was a public company, that could just be bought, made private and put under the control of one person.
> 
> I suppose that's a different discussion, that there's wealth that allows for this.  Heck, it could've just as easily been Bezos, better/worse, he does have a Cock Rocket.




Another part of the conversation is that it's the *concentration* of pols, influencers, governments,  celebrities, scammers and the more than occasional gone-viral crazy that makes an outfit like Twitter even matter.

Most of the world is not "on" Twitter.  Yet mainstream media hang out there all day and relay tweets they find interesting (read: controversial) into the pages of their own papers, websites, blogs, podcasts and TV shows.

So the question becomes this:   what does it really mean if Twitter kicks the bucket?   Maybe it's all for the better that journos would have to hunt around for awhile to find *their favorite sources of clickbait...*  and pols would have to scout up *free media placement* on their own.

I don't necessarily agree that the demise of Twitter is a trivial or beneficial thing,  since there are a lot of public service outlets and thousands of niche communities on that platform that are useful or fun to be in and enlightening as well, not just traders of stuff that generates clicks or revenue for the monetizers.  They will not necessarily all be easy to rebuild elsewhere.

Still, it's interesting to realize that it's *the mix of certain types* of Twitter members  --*the gawkers and the peacocks, plus mass media* forever hanging out in there waiting to be fed--   that has managed to make the Twitter bubble seem bigger (and louder) than it really is or ever could be to most of the rest of us.

Bottom line, Twitter's very symbiotic existence --and the fact that it has become a kind of one-stop-shop for mass media-- are a part of why pols and political activists and journalists alike can all end up way off the mark in their comprehension of "what's happening" and what potential electorates think about it all.


----------



## Colstan

The most newsworthy thing in this thread is that @DT is a hot rodder. Careful there, chief, we don't want to lose one of our most prolific members to the ugly side of a brick wall.


----------



## Hrafn

Colstan said:


> View attachment 19518
> The most newsworthy thing in this thread is that @DT is a hot rodder. Careful there, chief, we don't want to lose one of our most prolific members to the ugly side of a brick wall.



My youthful co-workers have driven me at 100+ mph in a 55 zone.  Unfortunately, I’ve seen cars wrapped around poles on that stretch of road.  I’ll be offering to drive from here on out.  FTR, I take that road at 60-65, so I’m not yet “grandpa”, and I always yield the right of way to someone faster…


----------



## DT

@lizkat Just terrific analysis.


----------



## lizkat

DT said:


> @lizkat Just terrific analysis.




Thanks..  but I confess to being royally pissed off at Musk,  because I have really enjoyed Twitter  --  at least the Twitter I was once able to shape to my own assorted purposes.    Sure I'm not alone.   I won't mind migrating to a Mastodon venue really --as opposed to landing on IG or Pinterest or etc platforms--   but I'll miss the old familiar hangout and ways of scouting up what I wanted from Twitter.


----------



## DT

Colstan said:


> View attachment 19518
> The most newsworthy thing in this thread is that @DT is a hot rodder. Careful there, chief, we don't want to lose one of our most prolific members to the ugly side of a brick wall.




Hahaha, I'd clarify that my "racing" has - well, mostly - been done in sanctioned events, not on the street, take it to the track, there's plenty of opportunities to drive in a controlled environment, that doesn't endanger other people.



 



Both of these from Roebling Road in Savannah, GA.


----------



## DT

lizkat said:


> Thanks..  but I confess to being royally pissed off at Musk,  because I have really enjoyed Twitter  --  at least the Twitter I was once able to shape to my own assorted purposes.    Sure I'm not alone.   I won't mind migrating to a Mastodon venue really --as opposed to landing on IG or Pinterest or etc platforms--   but I'll miss the old familiar hangout and ways of scouting up what I wanted from Twitter.




Yeah, and I didn't mean to be dismissive in post #992 of the people who would/will miss Twitter for more "personal" use.  Connecting with like minded people to discuss, oh I don't know,  Picard vs. Kirk, the latest hidden iOS feature,  the best microbrewery in New Smyrna Beach, you know, things are that aren't civilization altering, but just brough a lot of folks enjoyment.  Feels like those things are sort of lost in the noise of extreme opinion, memes, everything seems to loud and bombastic, and that's a musk-ism that's really invading the platform.


----------



## Colstan

DT said:


> Hahaha, I'd clarify that my "racing" has - well, mostly - been done in sanctioned events, not on the street, take it to the track, there's plenty of opportunities to drive in a controlled environment, that doesn't endanger other people.



I just realized that we have no idea what the "DT" in @DT actually stands for. In fact, it makes me wonder if some day I'll be reading the failing New York Times and see a story about a suspiciously orange fellow who recently won a race, all thanks to the calculations he did on his new Windows laptop.


----------



## Andropov

Apparently Phil Schiller deleted his Twitter account


----------



## Herdfan

DT said:


> Hahaha, I'd clarify that my "racing" has - well, mostly - been done in sanctioned events, not on the street, take it to the track, there's plenty of opportunities to drive in a controlled environment, that doesn't endanger other people.
> 
> View attachment 19520 View attachment 19521
> 
> Both of these from Roebling Road in Savannah, GA.




Wow.  You ever make it up to Mid-Ohio?  My neighbor races up there.  He has a Dodge Viper that he probably has more in than his house.


----------



## DT

Colstan said:


> I just realized that we have no idea what the "DT" in @DT actually stands for. In fact, it makes me wonder if some day I'll be reading the failing New York Times and see a story about a suspiciously orange fellow who recently won a race, all thanks to the calculations he did on his new Windows laptop.




Yeah, having gone by DT for some time,  it's occasionally awkward, I'm not saying, but we might even share another initial ...

It's actually pretty funny, a former boss, when I was working at a computer store, would leave me a note that my Mom had called:

"DT, phone home"



(This was right when the movie was released)


----------



## DT

Herdfan said:


> Wow.  You ever make it up to Mid-Ohio?  My neighbor races up there.  He has a Dodge Viper that he probably has more in than his house.




Never run it, but know a few folks that have, the furthest away I've done a track even was in Summit Point, West Virginia (track of the same name).

Off topic, but that's my middle name, or maybe not (see above ), tracks I've run:

Summit Point
VIR
CMP
Sebring
Roebling Road
Road Atlanta
Moroso (now PBIR)

Sebring and RR several times each, both pretty close, 180-200 miles away).


----------



## shadow puppet

What the blazes happened overnight?  I peruse Twitter over my morning cup of Joe only to see "BoycottTampax" trending.  Next thing I see are the following and suddenly I'm living in the Upside Down.


----------



## DT

DT said:


> It's actually pretty funny, a former boss, when I was working at a computer store, would leave me a note that my Mom had called:
> 
> "DT, phone home"
> 
> (This was right when the movie was released)




I have this recurring, Matrix situation where I have some bizarre "coincidence", so here it is for today ...

The above post, I haven't told that story in months/years[?], with the reference to ET.  I hadn't been on AVC recently, decided to hit them up today - this is on the homepage:






ET?  Seriously?


----------



## Herdfan

DT said:


> Never run it, but know a few folks that have, the furthest away I've done a track even was in Summit Point, West Virginia (track of the same name).
> 
> Off topic, but that's my middle name, or maybe not (see above ), tracks I've run:
> 
> Summit Point
> *VIR*
> CMP
> Sebring
> Roebling Road
> Road Atlanta
> Moroso (now PBIR)
> 
> Sebring and RR several times each, both pretty close, 180-200 miles away).




I have a friend who runs VIR on his Ducati.  Crazy bastard dragging his knee at 120+.  I ran my share of motocross and hare scrambles (last 2 Blackwater 100's) in my day, but that is just nuts.


----------



## Pumbaa

Right…


Umm…


Seriously?


----------



## Pumbaa

Can’t believe this is real and not a blue check comedian or something…



The same person posting quality content like this is the same person who blames “a large coalition of political/social activist groups” for other companies not entrusting his company with their advertising?

I’m laughing too hard to sleep anytime soon


----------



## Eric

Pumbaa said:


> Can’t believe this is real and not a blue check comedian or something…
> 
> View attachment 19585
> 
> The same person posting quality content like this is the same person who blames “a large coalition of political/social activist groups” for other companies not entrusting his company with their advertising?
> 
> I’m laughing too hard to sleep anytime soon



WTF, are you sure that's real?


----------



## Pumbaa

Eric said:


> WTF, are you sure that's real?



Grabbed them myself from Twitter.


----------



## Macky-Mac

Musk desperately trying to get Trump back on Twitter


----------



## Eric

I think he's succeeding giving Truth Social a run for their money, he's basically alienating and slamming everyone who isn't a crazy right-winger. The real question he has to face is how he'll generate revenue from it, so far everything he's tried has only flushed them further down the toilet.


----------



## lizkat

Macky-Mac said:


> Musk desperately trying to get Trump back on Twitter




Exactly.   Trump and then all his TruthSocial hangers-on.

Remember the meme of Musk poking the dead twitter-bird with a stick and saying "C'mon, make money..."



Well now there's one floating around with that same meme, except he's poking a screenshot of Trump's twitter profile and he's saying  "C'mon, tweet something."



(Edit:  and yeah, that November 20th tweet is in Musk's account although there's no blue checkmark any more...  thing has a lot of replies, probably a mixed bag since there are pro and anti Trumpers galore still on the platform).

Edit:  tack in the memes I had referenced.


----------



## fooferdoggie

Eric said:


> I think he's succeeding giving Truth Social a run for their money, he's basically alienating and slamming everyone who isn't a crazy right-winger. The real question he has to face is how he'll generate revenue from it, so far everything he's tried has only flushed them further down the toilet.



you can only haver so many patriot companies advertising.


----------



## Macky-Mac

lizkat said:


> Exactly.   Trump and then all his TruthSocial hangers-on.
> 
> Remember the meme of Musk poking the dead twitter-bird with a stick and saying " C'mon, make money..."
> 
> Well now there's one floating around with that same meme, except he's poking a screenshot of Trump's twitter profile and he's saying  "C'mon, tweet something."
> 
> (Edit:  and yeah, that November 20th tweet is in Musk's account although there's no blue checkmark any more...  thing has a lot of replies, probably a mixed bag since there are pro and anti Trumpers galore still on the platform).




I suspect Trump is much amused at Musk's problems


----------



## leman

What I am really angry about is that many hundreds talented engineers spent years building a robust, resilient system, and this manchild with daddy issues drags it all though shit and fires everyone. I know, capitalism yada yada but this is exploitation at its worst and extremely disrespectful to all the incredible work that has been done. The fact that twitter is still operating is the testament to the skills of these people.  

Positive point — I've gained a very effective litmus personality test. If a developer approves of Musk and wants to work for him, from now on I classify them as an asshole.


----------



## Nycturne

Not sure how true this is, but might explain a few things: https://www.tumblr.com/numberonecatwinner/701567544684855296/elon-wyd?source=share


----------



## DT

Nycturne said:


> Not sure how true this is, but might explain a few things: https://www.tumblr.com/numberonecatwinner/701567544684855296/elon-wyd?source=share




Hahaha, that is definitely worth a read, if for nothing else than the tale of the birthday cake ...


----------



## lizkat

Macky-Mac said:


> I suspect Trump is much amused at Musk's problems




Maybe, but that's likely quite temporary.

 Right about now I figure Jack Smith's wife is who's not at all amused.  Wonder if she insisted that Smith carve out time for Thanksgiving dinner.... before he starts carving up that other turkey that just landed on his plate thanks to AG Garland.


----------



## Macky-Mac

lizkat said:


> Maybe, but that's likely quite temporary.
> 
> Right about now I figure Jack Smith's wife is who's not at all amused.  Wonder if she insisted that Smith carve out time for Thanksgiving dinner.... before he starts carving up that other turkey that just landed on his plate thanks to AG Garland.




yup, Musk isn't the only billionaire with a lot of worry on his plate this Thanksgiving


----------



## Huntn

Cmaier said:


> If a server gets defederated, there’s a pretty good chance that there’s a good reason for it (like when a server full of nazis gets defederated).
> 
> If you stick to one of the bigger servers, chances are good that you’ll always be connected to the vast majority of non-garbage servers).



But who is overseeing this if anyone?


----------



## lizkat

Huntn said:


> But who is overseeing this if anyone?



The admin of each server gets to defederate other servers as he sees fit.  Each instance has guidelines and rules...    and users tend to report stuff that doesn't fit their expectations when they joined up.    So if the admin notices (or sees reports of)  a lot of stuff that would be violations of his rules, coming from some other particular instance,  he may just deny that server access.


----------



## Cmaier

Huntn said:


> But who is overseeing this if anyone?



Whoever runs a particular server gets to decide on its own membership, moderation, and incoming federation rules.  So you can have one server that contains all nazis and allows only hate speech, and another server that bans all hate speech and won’t allow nazis, and each can decide whether to federate with the other.


----------



## Huntn

Cmaier said:


> Whoever runs a particular server gets to decide on its own membership, moderation, and incoming federation rules.  So you can have one server that contains all nazis and allows only hate speech, and another server that bans all hate speech and won’t allow nazis, and each can decide whether to federate with the other.



Hmm so misinfo is allowed to flourish where the Nazis takeover. This does not sound appealing to me.


----------



## Cmaier

Huntn said:


> Hmm so misinfo is allowed to flourish where the Nazis takeover. This does not sound appealing to me.



But you would have no exposure to it. Your posts wouldn’t appear there. Their posts wouldn’t appear to anyone on whatever server you are on.  Each server is it’s its own service.


----------



## Eric

Cmaier said:


> But you would have no exposure to it. Your posts wouldn’t appear there. Their posts wouldn’t appear to anyone on whatever server you are on.  Each server is it’s its own service.



This is how I see it as well, it's not truly a unified (federated) network that way. Each server is it's own platform running the same software, just like a bunch of owners run Xenforo (this board software), we each require our own server, hardware, etc. The only difference is users can follow each other across platforms which is still wonky and a bit confusing. 

IMO this is not nearly as ready for prime time or as streamlined as Twitter is but it is the current fad/alternative.


----------



## lizkat

Eric said:


> IMO this is not nearly as ready for prime time or as streamlined as Twitter is but it is the current fad/alternative.



It starts to get funky if you follow (and interact with)  a number of accounts on even a few different instances.  You only see the first few replies to a post by someone not local, and then you have to click into that site to pursue the rest of it if interested.  In short order you can end up with a bunch of tabs open for that reason, which is annoying.

 And where your own posts get seen is also kinda flaky.  They explain it in an umbrella guide about Mastodon and even have a graphical layout, but in practice it does feel sorta hit-or-miss.    At least they made it so you can follow hashtags, not just individual accounts,  although I don't know if you can add a hashtag to your follows from a phone. possibly only when you're using a browser on a desktop/laptop where there's a columnar layout.   i didn't see a way to do it from the Metatext app. 

It's a novelty but not very efficient so far,  and kinda makes me wish someone would take Twitter off Musk's hands, although that platform must be damaged goods by now with all those staff cuts.


----------



## dada_dave

Some are saying Post might be an alternative, but it’s still in beta and the devs appear to be scrambling to get it up to scratch. In their own words, they thought had more time but things moved faster than they anticipated.


----------



## Cmaier

dada_dave said:


> Some are saying Post might be an alternative, but it’s still in beta and the devs appear to be scrambling to get it up to scratch. In their own words, they thought had more time but things moved faster than they anticipated.




I set up my post account today. Played around with it for a bit, but there isn’t really anyone I’m interested in following yet.


----------



## Eric

So, exactly the same as it was only with different colors?


New plan. Let's see how this plays out from
      WhitePeopleTwitter

It's only painful because it's unnecessarily self inflicted.


----------



## lizkat

dada_dave said:


> Some are saying Post might be an alternative, but it’s still in beta and the devs appear to be scrambling to get it up to scratch. In their own words, they thought had more time but things moved faster than they anticipated.




There must be a couple thousand software engineers at liberty to lend a hand to Post if asked....


----------



## fischersd

lizkat said:


> There must be a couple thousand software engineers at liberty to lend a hand to Post if asked....



Yeah, and I'm pretty sure they're all saying "fuck my non-compete and NDA that I signed at Twitter". . There will be companies in the Bay Area that benefit greatly from Musk's recklessness.


----------



## lizkat

As for the bird site,  only verification I'd care about now is that the chief homewrecker just up and left.



Eric said:


> So, exactly the same as it was only with different colors?
> 
> 
> New plan. Let's see how this plays out from
> WhitePeopleTwitter
> 
> *It's only painful because it's unnecessarily self inflicted.*




*Yeah and because there's nothing to keep proud extremists from gettin' their blue check...*

Is the new verification system going to be how Musk monetizes the platform?  Good luck w that.  Not sure the average extremist feels like shelling out for the privilege of slinging stuff on new Twitter that he could sling on Trump's platform for free as long as can put up with the deluge of solicitations to donate.

More brand advertisers have left Twitter.   More corporations would leave if they could figure out where to land.  Elon knows that so figures he can take his sweet time experimenting with what might bring in some dough if he doesn't mind shelling out meanwhile to keep the lights on, but he _does_ mind that...   


So he'll keep trying to jam something together that looks to corporations like they could live with it (an erroneous decision for so many reasons). 

I could still be surprised if he doesn't get shut down pretty soon by regulators over data privacy and illegal content (not "decency" or copyright infringement) issues, unless he's smart enough to beef up security and moderation, or at least put in some chiefs of those functions and a communications office.


----------



## SuperMatt

lizkat said:


> Is the new verification system going to be how Musk monetizes the platform? Good luck w that. Not sure the average extremist feels like shelling out for the privilege of slinging stuff on new Twitter that he could sling on Trump's platform for free as long as can put up with the deluge of solicitations to donate.



I read an analysis on this. The ~150,000 users who bought blue checkmarks were some of the top 1% of users. The company was making about $40-$50 a month on ads per user targeted at these users. So $8 is a big step down, as we see advertisers are fleeing the platform. Even if advertisers stayed, Musk said he’d cut your ads in half if you buy the checkmark. So he’d throw away $25 a month to make $8 a month.

He’s not a genius. He inherited mega-bucks and has been “managed” away from danger by the real experts in the companies he bought. In this case, he’s told all the experts to F off, and the result is a $44 billion dumpster fire.


----------



## SuperMatt

fischersd said:


> Yeah, and I'm pretty sure they're all saying "fuck my non-compete and NDA that I signed at Twitter". . There will be companies in the Bay Area that benefit greatly from Musk's recklessness.



Does Twitter still have a legal team? I’m guessing they might not have the resources to pursue thousands of non-compete clauses.


----------



## Huntn

Is Musky in over his head?


----------



## lizkat

Huntn said:


> Is Musky in over his head?



Really he should just flip Twitter ASAP to some idiotic vulture capital outfiti and move on unless there's some advantage (I can't really see it) to going chapter 11 and ending up not managing it personally in receivership anyway.

He puts Tesla shareholders at increased risk by how he has behaved with Twitter, and given that some of his own Tesla shares are pledged as collateral for his loans to buy Twitter.  And... he has had to sell off some more to keep Twitter running. Tesla has had to note this risk in its own SEC filings. If the banks make a margin call then Musk is in big trouble, although he's often used Tesla holdings as collateral in the past and got by with it all right.

The WaPo ran a piece back in the spring about some of his machinations and plans at the time on how to use Tesla holdings to underwrite his eventual Twitter buy.  Worth the read even now just for the reactions of some bankers and investment firms.

Elon Musk is worth $270 billion. He’d buy Twitter with an IOU. (paywall removed)



> At times, half of Musk’s Tesla stake has been collateral for his loans. His Twitter bid would add to the percentage.






> Musk first revealed he had purchased a more than 9 percent stake in Twitter earlier this month. He flirted with the idea of a board seat before launching a hostile takeover bid a week ago.
> 
> “This is all so unorthodox,” said Benjamin Black, the New York-based co-head of Internet research at Deutsche Bank. “It fits the character — we just don’t know what to make of it.”
> 
> “*If there’s one thing that Elon doesn’t want to do it’s sort of mess up investor confidence in Tesla, which is the crown jewel of all of his holdings,*” he added.




This Twitter purchase though --as finally consummated-- is not working out for the bank lenders as they thought it would, and who knows what's in the loan covenants regarding their expectations or Musk's obligations. All the lenders see is that they can't get the debt off their balance sheets yet,  and they would have hoped to have securitized it and sold it off by now.  But hey, it's only around 13 billion dollars...

How any of the lending banks with consumer arms will deal with their own Musk-related risk is probably jack up interest rates on mortgages and consumer credit cards past what's needed to keep up with Fed rate hikes.  Pretty soon Joe Sixpack can borrow money on the street at a less usurious rate as long as he has sturdy kneecaps or some connected friends.

Edit:  to provide more context via link to a WaPo piece back in the spring.


----------



## Pumbaa

Can’t imagine why advertisers are dropping Twitter or why Tesla shareholders are worrying. Not at all.


Tweet link


Tweet link


----------



## Cmaier

fischersd said:


> Yeah, and I'm pretty sure they're all saying "fuck my non-compete and NDA that I signed at Twitter". . There will be companies in the Bay Area that benefit greatly from Musk's recklessness.



Non-competes are generally not enforceable in California.


----------



## Eric

Pumbaa said:


> Can’t imagine why advertisers are dropping Twitter or why Tesla shareholders are worrying. Not at all.
> 
> View attachment 19654
> Tweet link
> 
> View attachment 19655
> Tweet link



"A single ideology dominates and silences the rest" No single quote best describes Elon Musk since taking over the company. The hypocrisy here is simply amazing.

Let's see:

Fired every worker who disagreed
Regularly bans users who disagree
Has an extremist right wing view, even when he denies it in the same breath
Demotes tweets he disagrees with on a whim
Has a single narrative


----------



## lizkat

Pumbaa said:


> Can’t imagine why advertisers are dropping Twitter or why Tesla shareholders are worrying. Not at all.




Yeah this should help too:   Elon will resurrect banned accounts en masse next week.  Seriously he can only mean to drive this thing into the ground.   Someone help me out here with the premises of his financial logic... ?!

*‘Opening the gates of hell’: Musk says he will revive banned accounts* (paywall removed)



> The Twitter chief says he will reinstate accounts suspended for threats, harassment and misinformation beginning next week






> Elon Musk plans to reinstate nearly all previously banned Twitter accounts — to the alarm of activists and online trust and safety experts.
> 
> After posting a Twitter poll asking, “Should Twitter offer a general amnesty to suspended accounts, provided that they have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam?” in which 72.4 percent of the respondents voted yes, Musk declared, “Amnesty begins next week.”






> “Apple and Google need to seriously start exploring booting Twitter off the app store,” said Alejandra Caraballo, clinical instructor at Harvard Law’s cyberlaw clinic. “What Musk is doing is existentially dangerous for various marginalized communities. It’s like opening the gates of hell in terms of the havoc it will cause. People who engaged in direct targeted harassment can come back and engage in doxing, targeted harassment, vicious bullying, calls for violence, celebration of violence. I can’t even begin to state how dangerous this will be.”






> Whether Musk can do what the Twitter poll seeks is a matter of debate. He has laid off leaders of the trust and safety team, which would normally handle the logistics of reactivating the accounts. And separating out those who “broke the law” is entirely dependent on whether Twitter has detailed documentation for each suspension. Without such a legal filter, which would be dependent on state and local laws for each tweet, every account would require a thorough review, given how laws vary widely by country and region.


----------



## Eric

He's such a loathsome person, no wonder he resonates so well with MAGA.


__
		https://www.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/z4egwe


----------



## Colstan

Eric said:


> He's such a loathsome person, no wonder he resonates so well with MAGA.



I know I'm not going to win any popularity contests with what I'm about to say, but I'll play the part of captain contrarian. Hold tight and prepare for liftoff, because I'm about to humanize the devil.

Human memory is a very malleable thing. It's soft, pliant, plastic. The things that we remember aren't necessarily what actually happened. One of my favorite sayings is "history isn't the past", one just needs to read Herodotus to know that. Our memories are particularly bad during a traumatic event. The survivors of the Titanic have entirely different accounts of what actually happened. Allegedly, some witnessed a suicide of a deck officer, something depicted in the James Cameron movie, but nobody agrees on the details. Also, it never happened. 50% of survivors remember the ship breaking into two, the other half have no recollection of that event. Part of that may be due to weather conditions, still it's difficult to miss a gigantic ship torn asunder, but most folks were in survival mode.

Losing a new born child I think qualifies as a traumatic incident. It's entirely possible that Elon and his ex-wife have completely different memories of what transpired, neither is lying, they simply remember it differently. I'm sure they both held him during his final moments, the details are likely foggy. Sure, one of them could by lying, but that's not certain, and I tend to think they both see it as one of the worst, if not the worst, moments of their lives.

Also, they both have motive to portray themselves in a better light. My own parents had an ugly divorce, said horrible things about each other that weren't factually true, and our family never really recovered. Justine and Elon are probably not on the best of terms.

I have a hard time relating to Elon Musk. He thinks differently than most people; he's mercurial, impulsive, very rich, and extremely successful (recent Twitter escapades aside). I've heard a lot of negative things about him recently, but I don't think most of his detractors think that he is unintelligent. You can't be responsible for building fancy electric automobiles or fabulous rocket ships if you aren't smart. My point isn't to make him into some super genius. As I've said previously, I really don't have strong feelings about him, I just don't think that he is a super villain, either.

Now, I'm about to bring up somebody else who is probably not popular around these parts, Joe Rogan. No, I'm not attempting to make excuses for this fellow. I used to casually listen to Rogan before he went off into moonbat territory. He seemed to be making progress, before COVID denial and the the New York Times article on the UAP (UFO) phenomenon. Level-headed folks like Neil deGrasse Tyson were molding him into a more reasonable person. Then he started having Travis Walton and Bob Lazar on, and he went back into conspiracy land. I don't listen to Joe Rogan anymore, for obvious reasons.

Anyway, I just wanted to clarify my stance on Rogan. Honestly, I think he's far more damaging than Musk, but that's a different topic entirely. The thing about Joe Rogan is that I don't think he lies about his beliefs, fanciful and childlike as they are, and he has no reason to lie about his interaction with Elon Musk. I'm sure most of us are aware of the interview that he did with Musk, it's become a meme with Elon toking on some suspicious plant material. Like a lot of folks, I watched it back in the day, just out of curiosity. (The only thing I remember was Musk summarily dismissing Rogan's UFO nonsense, which I appreciated.)

After the interview, Joe Rogan was asked about Musk behind the scenes. According to Rogan, Musk's demeanor shifted once the interview started. He was friendly and personable, but once the camera and microphone were on, he became guarded and distant. This doesn't surprise me, many people act different in a highly public interview. Other than Rogan making comments about how happy Musk seemed while showing him the flamethrower that he brought with him backstage, I don't recall much else.

However, the one time I found Elon Musk to be relatable, as a living, breathing, human being, was when Joe Rogan recounted an interaction after a simple question. When the cameras were off, and he was alone with Musk, he simply asked him if he enjoyed his life, his money, his success, his talent, his fame, was Elon happy? Musk's response was simple, when he flatly responded with "you wouldn't want to be me".

It's a documented fact that mental illness affects people that are higher on the IQ scale than the average person. This includes depression, anxiety, bi-polar disorder, ADHD, and schizophrenia, among many others. Just as an example, here's a partial except from the journal Intelligence:

"The results showed that highly intelligent people are 20% more likely to be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), 80% more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD, 83% more likely to be diagnosed with anxiety, and 182% more likely to develop at least one mood disorder."

I wouldn't be surprised if Musk suffers from one or more such maladies. I'm not a mental health professional, and not diagnosing him via Joe Rogan's words. I'm just pointing out that you really don't know what is inside someone's head at any given moment. Unless Elon is one of Rogan's little green men in disguise, chances are he's more like the rest of us on the inside than we might like to admit.

Whether you believe Joe Rogan's account of Elon Musk's opinion of his life is up to you. I'm not making excuses for any real or perceived behavior. I've already made my thoughts on their public personas clear. What I do know is that when Musk apparently said "you wouldn't want to be me", I can relate to him, which I haven't been able to do, otherwise.


----------



## tomO2013

Senior Irish Twitter exec secures High Court injunction
					

An Irish-based senior executive with Twitter has secured a temporary High Court injunction preventing the social networking giant from terminating her employment.




					www.rte.ie
				




I’m proud of my country today. 
I really hope that EU and Irish law goes for the jugular on this one with twitter. 
Staff were illegally treated. 
In any other organization the CEO’s head would roll.


----------



## dada_dave

Cmaier said:


> I set up my post account today. Played around with it for a bit, but there isn’t really anyone I’m interested in following yet.



It seems a lot of newsies/political people going to post while more technical people are going to mastodon but a lot to both sites - just my anecdotal observation so far. I’m still waiting to see how things shake out in terms of where people move.



lizkat said:


> There must be a couple thousand software engineers at liberty to lend a hand to Post if asked....




Aye.



Pumbaa said:


> Can’t imagine why advertisers are dropping Twitter or why Tesla shareholders are worrying. Not at all.
> 
> View attachment 19654
> Tweet link
> 
> View attachment 19655
> Tweet link




Yup he’s been quoting and approve-replying to some of the worst accounts on Twitter - real white nationalist/fascist personalities.


----------



## dada_dave

Colstan said:


> I know I'm not going to win any popularity contests with what I'm about to say, but I'll play the part of captain contrarian. Hold tight and prepare for liftoff, because I'm about to humanize the devil.
> 
> Human memory is a very malleable thing. It's soft, pliant, plastic. The things that we remember aren't necessarily what actually happened. One of my favorite sayings is "history isn't the past", one just needs to read Herodotus to know that. Our memories are particularly bad during a traumatic event. The survivors of the Titanic have entirely different accounts of what actually happened. Allegedly, some witnessed a suicide of a deck officer, something depicted in the James Cameron movie, but nobody agrees on the details. Also, it never happened. 50% of survivors remember the ship breaking into two, the other half have no recollection of that event. Part of that may be due to weather conditions, still it's difficult to miss a gigantic ship torn asunder, but most folks were in survival mode.
> 
> Losing a new born child I think qualifies as a traumatic incident. It's entirely possible that Elon and his ex-wife have completely different memories of what transpired, neither is lying, they simply remember it differently. I'm sure they both held him during his final moments, the details are likely foggy. Sure, one of them could by lying, but that's not certain, and I tend to think they both see it as one of the worst, if not the worst, moments of their lives.
> 
> Also, they both have motive to portray themselves in a better light. My own parents had an ugly divorce, said horrible things about each other that weren't factually true, and our family never really recovered. Justine and Elon are probably not on the best of terms.
> 
> I have a hard time relating to Elon Musk. He thinks differently than most people; he's mercurial, impulsive, very rich, and extremely successful (recent Twitter escapades aside). I've heard a lot of negative things about him recently, but I don't think most of his detractors think that he is unintelligent. You can't be responsible for building fancy electric automobiles or fabulous rocket ships if you aren't smart. My point isn't to make him into some super genius. As I've said previously, I really don't have strong feelings about him, I just don't think that he is a super villain, either.
> 
> Now, I'm about to bring up somebody else who is probably not popular around these parts, Joe Rogan. No, I'm not attempting to make excuses for this fellow. I used to casually listen to Rogan before he went off into moonbat territory. He seemed to be making progress, before COVID denial and the the New York Times article on the UAP (UFO) phenomenon. Level-headed folks like Neil deGrasse Tyson were molding him into a more reasonable person. Then he started having Travis Walton and Bob Lazar on, and he went back into conspiracy land. I don't listen to Joe Rogan anymore, for obvious reasons.
> 
> Anyway, I just wanted to clarify my stance on Rogan. Honestly, I think he's far more damaging than Musk, but that's a different topic entirely. The thing about Joe Rogan is that I don't think he lies about his beliefs, fanciful and childlike as they are, and he has no reason to lie about his interaction with Elon Musk. I'm sure most of us are aware of the interview that he did with Musk, it's become a meme with Elon toking on some suspicious plant material. Like a lot of folks, I watched it back in the day, just out of curiosity. (The only thing I remember was Musk summarily dismissing Rogan's UFO nonsense, which I appreciated.)
> 
> After the interview, Joe Rogan was asked about Musk behind the scenes. According to Rogan, Musk's demeanor shifted once the interview started. He was friendly and personable, but once the camera and microphone were on, he became guarded and distant. This doesn't surprise me, many people act different in a highly public interview. Other than Rogan making comments about how happy Musk seemed while showing him the flamethrower that he brought with him backstage, I don't recall much else.
> 
> However, the one time I found Elon Musk to be relatable, as a living, breathing, human being, was when Joe Rogan recounted an interaction after a simple question. When the cameras were off, and he was alone with Musk, he simply asked him if he enjoyed his life, his money, his success, his talent, his fame, was Elon happy? Musk's response was simple, when he flatly responded with "you wouldn't want to be me".
> 
> It's a documented fact that mental illness affects people that are higher on the IQ scale than the average person. This includes depression, anxiety, bi-polar disorder, ADHD, and schizophrenia, among many others. Just as an example, here's a partial except from the journal Intelligence:
> 
> "The results showed that highly intelligent people are 20% more likely to be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), 80% more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD, 83% more likely to be diagnosed with anxiety, and 182% more likely to develop at least one mood disorder."
> 
> I wouldn't be surprised if Musk suffers from one or more such maladies. I'm not a mental health professional, and not diagnosing him via Joe Rogan's words. I'm just pointing out that you really don't know what is inside someone's head at any given moment. Unless Elon is one of Rogan's little green men in disguise, chances are he's more like the rest of us on the inside than we might like to admit.
> 
> Whether you believe Joe Rogan's account of Elon Musk's opinion of his life is up to you. I'm not making excuses for any real or perceived behavior. I've already made my thoughts on their public personas clear. What I do know is that when Musk apparently said "you wouldn't want to be me", I can relate to him, which I haven't been able to do, otherwise.




I’m sorry but no. He’s cruel, vindictive, and petty. He may issues beyond that, but a malignant narcissist with money and power who seeks the adoration of the worst people and punches down at the most marginalized is not a trait of autism and many who are on the spectrum have been rather vocal about not linking autism with this kind of behavior.

Edit: Oh and I think it's better than even odds that he's not all that bright. Maybe he is, maybe he isn't, but regardless, he's a twat.


----------



## fooferdoggie

dada_dave said:


> I’m sorry but no. He’s cruel, vindictive, and petty. He may issues beyond that, but a malignant narcissist with money and power who seeks the adoration of the worst people and punches down at the most marginalized is not a trait of autism and many who are on the spectrum have been rather vocal about not linking autism with this kind of behavior.
> 
> Edit: Oh and I think it's better than even odds that he's not all that bright. Maybe he is, maybe he isn't, but regardless, he's a twat.



man its like him and trump are related.


----------



## lizkat

fooferdoggie said:


> man its like him and trump are related.




Well they are both extremely narcissistic and the one thing narcissists don't do well with is being perceived as weak or mistaken or somehow unworthy...   those are the things they compartmentalize within themselves to keep from having to acknowledge internally.

When something starts chipping away at that, they can implode suddenly and just lose it entirely. Trump has all these legal issues now, and Musk isn't far behind him on that score,  plus he is running (or ruining) some businesses outside of the one he's actively wrecking because he's angry he bought the thing.

Usually though, and for a long time in the case of powerful narcissists, their frequent rage at people around them helps keeps them from turning in on themselves.  They can remain semi-functional for a long time not least because his subordinates fear him and cover up for or manage to deter his f-ups.   The outward-directed rage also acts like a steam vent in a compartment to keep the walls from collapsing.   Ask anyone who worked for either Trump or Musk.    These guys don't get headaches, they give them.


----------



## MEJHarrison

Colstan said:


> I know I'm not going to win any popularity contests with what I'm about to say, but I'll play the part of captain contrarian. Hold tight and prepare for liftoff, because I'm about to humanize the devil.
> 
> ...
> 
> "The results showed that highly intelligent people are 20% more likely to be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), 80% more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD, 83% more likely to be diagnosed with anxiety, and 182% more likely to develop at least one mood disorder."




You brought up some good points.  But this is about more than horrible tragedies in his life.  His craziness extends far past that.

Also, in my line of work I'm come across lots of people with ASD and some of the other things mentioned there.  I even had good reason to believe I'm on the spectrum myself.  One trait we all have in common is _*not*_ being egotistical assholes.  Some of his wild and crazy behaviors might easily be written off under the umbrella of autism.  But that's leave plenty of other things that can only be explained by him being a massive tool.  I'm a developer myself.  So some of his recent actions have hit too close to home to retain any of my respect.

It wasn't one bad thing that made him the devil. It's ongoing bad behavior at quite frequent intervals with no end in site that makes him the devil.


----------



## Macky-Mac

Colstan said:


> ...Joe Rogan. No, I'm not attempting to make excuses for this fellow. ....




LOL... I always remember him from the TV show FEAR FACTOR.....he usually seemed saner than the contestants, but he has indeed jumped into the deep end of the conspiracy pedaling pool.

I'm guessing that Twitter may survive as part of that same pool, greatly reduced in size of course........keep in mind that MYSPACE still survives somehow, so anything is possible.


----------



## Cmaier

Good luck with that, Elmo. 









						Elon Musk may produce iPhone & Android competitor if Twitter is booted from App Store
					

Rumors of a Tesla phone have persisted for some time – but that’s all these have been. However, for the first time, Musk admitted on Twitter that he would consider creating a competitor to Apple and Android devices if the companies take action against his newly acquired social media platform...




					9to5mac.com


----------



## fooferdoggie

Cmaier said:


> Good luck with that, Elmo.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Elon Musk may produce iPhone & Android competitor if Twitter is booted from App Store
> 
> 
> Rumors of a Tesla phone have persisted for some time – but that’s all these have been. However, for the first time, Musk admitted on Twitter that he would consider creating a competitor to Apple and Android devices if the companies take action against his newly acquired social media platform...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 9to5mac.com



maybe it will self twitter post too.


----------



## Eric

Cmaier said:


> Good luck with that, Elmo.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Elon Musk may produce iPhone & Android competitor if Twitter is booted from App Store
> 
> 
> Rumors of a Tesla phone have persisted for some time – but that’s all these have been. However, for the first time, Musk admitted on Twitter that he would consider creating a competitor to Apple and Android devices if the companies take action against his newly acquired social media platform...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 9to5mac.com



As it is I can't stand the fact that they won't add Apple Carplay. I'm left with few reasons to keep this car TBH, the competitors have caught up and don't dick around their buyers. I want out from under anything this tyrant has his filthy hands in.


----------



## Citysnaps

Cmaier said:


> Good luck with that, Elmo.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Elon Musk may produce iPhone & Android competitor if Twitter is booted from App Store
> 
> 
> Rumors of a Tesla phone have persisted for some time – but that’s all these have been. However, for the first time, Musk admitted on Twitter that he would consider creating a competitor to Apple and Android devices if the companies take action against his newly acquired social media platform...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 9to5mac.com




Well that was a real knee-slapper!


----------



## Nycturne

Cmaier said:


> Good luck with that, Elmo.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Elon Musk may produce iPhone & Android competitor if Twitter is booted from App Store
> 
> 
> Rumors of a Tesla phone have persisted for some time – but that’s all these have been. However, for the first time, Musk admitted on Twitter that he would consider creating a competitor to Apple and Android devices if the companies take action against his newly acquired social media platform...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 9to5mac.com



“One does not simply walk into Mordor the Mobile Phone market.”

Yeah, knowing what I know, I don’t see this being something you “just do”. Impossible? No. Very difficult and likely to fail? Yes.


----------



## Edd

Eric said:


> As it is I can't stand the fact that they won't add Apple Carplay. I'm left with few reasons to keep this car TBH, the competitors have caught up and don't dick around their buyers. I want out from under anything this tyrant has his filthy hands in.



Teslas don’t have CarPlay?


----------



## MEJHarrison

lizkat said:


> Yeah this should help too:   Elon will resurrect banned accounts en masse next week.  Seriously he can only mean to drive this thing into the ground.   Someone help me out here with the premises of his financial logic... ?!
> 
> *‘Opening the gates of hell’: Musk says he will revive banned accounts* (paywall removed)




I presume the people he banned won't be part of this great resurrection?  Something tells me the amnesty won't extend that far.


----------



## Eric

Edd said:


> Teslas don’t have CarPlay?



It's the one thing I really miss about the BMW, once you've had it and it gets taken away it sucks. The system in the Tesla is really crappy and hard to use so I end up just putting the car in auto on the freeway so I can reach up and trigger the voice and speaker controls manually on the phone to use voice to text. Most Tesla drivers have iPhones, this is a huge miss for both companies.


----------



## Andropov

Cmaier said:


> Good luck with that, Elmo.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Elon Musk may produce iPhone & Android competitor if Twitter is booted from App Store
> 
> 
> Rumors of a Tesla phone have persisted for some time – but that’s all these have been. However, for the first time, Musk admitted on Twitter that he would consider creating a competitor to Apple and Android devices if the companies take action against his newly acquired social media platform...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 9to5mac.com



I read this yesterday. Totally delusional. Had to re-check it was truly him. Microsoft + Nokia couldn't do it, how does he think Twitter (actually, 10% of Twitter's engineers) could do it?


----------



## Eric

Andropov said:


> I read this yesterday. Totally delusional. Had to re-check it was truly him. Microsoft + Nokia couldn't do it, how does he think Twitter (actually, 10% of Twitter's engineers) could do it?



He's got the money to burn and we now know he couldn't care less about losing billions on a new business venture as long as he can troll those who disagree with it.


----------



## Pumbaa

Andropov said:


> I read this yesterday. Totally delusional. Had to re-check it was truly him.



Totally delusional sounds totally on-brand. But I get it. Like with Trump, the real thing is indistinguishable from satire (or even crazier).



Andropov said:


> Microsoft + Nokia couldn't do it, how does he think Twitter (actually, 10% of Twitter's engineers) could do it?



He’ll probably try to buy Freedom Phone or rebrand a cheap chinese Android phone or something. It will at best work out about as well as his takeover of Twitter.


----------



## Citysnaps

What's really amusing is him believing it'll be easy attracting engineering talent well-versed with a *demonstrated* background in various aspects of modern communications theory, cellular telephony systems engineering (starting with it being a fine art simply interpreting air-interface standards specifications to one's favor), and  IC/ASIC design assuming they ultimately want to go home-grown and do it right.   

And ultimately being ok dealing with Musk and his management style.


----------



## Eric

Citysnaps said:


> What's really amusing is him believing it'll be easy attracting engineering talent well-versed with a *demonstrated* background in various aspects of modern communications theory, cellular telephony systems engineering (starting with it being a fine art simply interpreting air-interface standards specifications to one's favor), and  IC/ASIC design assuming they ultimately want to go home-grown and do it right.
> 
> And ultimately being ok dealing with Musk and his management style.



Very much like Trump, yes men who do nothing but kiss the ring and bend over. No job or salary (which as I understand it are shit anyway) are worth that. Keep your dignity and get a job where you'll be appreciated for your skills, there is still a lot of work out there in the tech sector and I'm sure those he's canned are being heavily courted by recruiters for companies that care about your work/life balance.


----------



## Huntn

Colstan said:


> I know I'm not going to win any popularity contests with what I'm about to say, but I'll play the part of captain contrarian. Hold tight and prepare for liftoff, because I'm about to humanize the devil.
> 
> Human memory is a very malleable thing. It's soft, pliant, plastic. The things that we remember aren't necessarily what actually happened. One of my favorite sayings is "history isn't the past", one just needs to read Herodotus to know that. Our memories are particularly bad during a traumatic event. The survivors of the Titanic have entirely different accounts of what actually happened. Allegedly, some witnessed a suicide of a deck officer, something depicted in the James Cameron movie, but nobody agrees on the details. Also, it never happened. 50% of survivors remember the ship breaking into two, the other half have no recollection of that event. Part of that may be due to weather conditions, still it's difficult to miss a gigantic ship torn asunder, but most folks were in survival mode.
> 
> Losing a new born child I think qualifies as a traumatic incident. It's entirely possible that Elon and his ex-wife have completely different memories of what transpired, neither is lying, they simply remember it differently. I'm sure they both held him during his final moments, the details are likely foggy. Sure, one of them could by lying, but that's not certain, and I tend to think they both see it as one of the worst, if not the worst, moments of their lives.
> 
> Also, they both have motive to portray themselves in a better light. My own parents had an ugly divorce, said horrible things about each other that weren't factually true, and our family never really recovered. Justine and Elon are probably not on the best of terms.
> 
> I have a hard time relating to Elon Musk. He thinks differently than most people; he's mercurial, impulsive, very rich, and extremely successful (recent Twitter escapades aside). I've heard a lot of negative things about him recently, but I don't think most of his detractors think that he is unintelligent. You can't be responsible for building fancy electric automobiles or fabulous rocket ships if you aren't smart. My point isn't to make him into some super genius. As I've said previously, I really don't have strong feelings about him, I just don't think that he is a super villain, either.
> 
> Now, I'm about to bring up somebody else who is probably not popular around these parts, Joe Rogan. No, I'm not attempting to make excuses for this fellow. I used to casually listen to Rogan before he went off into moonbat territory. He seemed to be making progress, before COVID denial and the the New York Times article on the UAP (UFO) phenomenon. Level-headed folks like Neil deGrasse Tyson were molding him into a more reasonable person. Then he started having Travis Walton and Bob Lazar on, and he went back into conspiracy land. I don't listen to Joe Rogan anymore, for obvious reasons.
> 
> Anyway, I just wanted to clarify my stance on Rogan. Honestly, I think he's far more damaging than Musk, but that's a different topic entirely. The thing about Joe Rogan is that I don't think he lies about his beliefs, fanciful and childlike as they are, and he has no reason to lie about his interaction with Elon Musk. I'm sure most of us are aware of the interview that he did with Musk, it's become a meme with Elon toking on some suspicious plant material. Like a lot of folks, I watched it back in the day, just out of curiosity. (The only thing I remember was Musk summarily dismissing Rogan's UFO nonsense, which I appreciated.)
> 
> After the interview, Joe Rogan was asked about Musk behind the scenes. According to Rogan, Musk's demeanor shifted once the interview started. He was friendly and personable, but once the camera and microphone were on, he became guarded and distant. This doesn't surprise me, many people act different in a highly public interview. Other than Rogan making comments about how happy Musk seemed while showing him the flamethrower that he brought with him backstage, I don't recall much else.
> 
> However, the one time I found Elon Musk to be relatable, as a living, breathing, human being, was when Joe Rogan recounted an interaction after a simple question. When the cameras were off, and he was alone with Musk, he simply asked him if he enjoyed his life, his money, his success, his talent, his fame, was Elon happy? Musk's response was simple, when he flatly responded with "you wouldn't want to be me".
> 
> It's a documented fact that mental illness affects people that are higher on the IQ scale than the average person. This includes depression, anxiety, bi-polar disorder, ADHD, and schizophrenia, among many others. Just as an example, here's a partial except from the journal Intelligence:
> 
> "The results showed that highly intelligent people are 20% more likely to be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), 80% more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD, 83% more likely to be diagnosed with anxiety, and 182% more likely to develop at least one mood disorder."
> 
> I wouldn't be surprised if Musk suffers from one or more such maladies. I'm not a mental health professional, and not diagnosing him via Joe Rogan's words. I'm just pointing out that you really don't know what is inside someone's head at any given moment. Unless Elon is one of Rogan's little green men in disguise, chances are he's more like the rest of us on the inside than we might like to admit.
> 
> Whether you believe Joe Rogan's account of Elon Musk's opinion of his life is up to you. I'm not making excuses for any real or perceived behavior. I've already made my thoughts on their public personas clear. What I do know is that when Musk apparently said "you wouldn't want to be me", I can relate to him, which I haven't been able to do, otherwise.



How about you summarize what you mean to say about Musk? In a few words what do you think is good vs bad about him?

IMO, there  is NOTHING good about Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. Before he stuck me as a somewhat eccentric billionaire who must have a genius business sense by virtue of being a billionaire. Now he strikes me as an unmitigated disaster and danger to the well being of the country, a one way, _my way or the highway_, billionaire hypocrite who has the financial muscle to turn the USA on it’s head so he can get his way, whether it be his business, Govt oversight of his business, or a calculation that aligning with fascist nationalist forces (MAGA) is to his advantage.

What has happened at Twitter is by all accounts except for being a boon for Trump forces is a disaster for democracy as Musk steps out of his closet, puts on his black cape and declares the World according to  Musk. At Twitter, he has reinstated Shit Heads, the head Shit Head, Proud Boys are reported to be flooding back onto Twitter, while MR _Everyone Deserves A Voice_ (HAH!) bans a group that protects LBGQT Events.

Ask yourself why he supports the spreaders of dis-information. Without an in-depth psychological profile, one can only assume he is either blind to the danger inherent in mass media or he has become a willing and active Right Wing provocateur, who  thinks only in terms of possible advantages for himyself, his financial empire, and possibly he has crawled right up Trump’s ass and finds it warm and cozy there for his bloated Ego.

There is little doubt the corruption of Twitter  is a turn of events in the Dark Side‘s favor. If you care about Democracy in America, IMO you have plenty of grounds to be worried Musk’s actions.









						Days after deadly shooting at LGBTQ club, Twitter bans group that protects LGBTQ events
					

The week in extremism, from USA TODAY.




					news.yahoo.com


----------



## Citysnaps

This clearly isn't a well-formed thought, but occasionally I wonder if Musk's hoping trump will be the R nominee, and will thus use twitter for stirring up his base bigly, returning the platform to "free speech" nutjob glory along with MTG, Kanye, and other supporting actors.  Or something like that.


----------



## Eric

Citysnaps said:


> This clearly isn't a well-formed thought, but occasionally I wonder if Musk's hoping trump will be the R nominee, and will thus use twitter for stirring up his base bigly, returning the platform to "free speech" nutjob glory along with MTG, Kanye, and other supporting actors.  Or something like that.



I'll be surprised if Trump doesn't get a full throated endorsement from Musk but at this point how much weight would that carry with anyone outside of the existing base. MAGA loves the guy, but they're already MAGA.


----------



## thekev

fischersd said:


> Yeah, and I'm pretty sure they're all saying "fuck my non-compete and NDA that I signed at Twitter". . There will be companies in the Bay Area that benefit greatly from Musk's recklessness.



Not sure Twitter used either of those. Someone asking for a non-compete in California (it has happened to me) signals to me that they're idiots. 



Huntn said:


> How about you summarize what you mean to say about Musk? In a few words what do you think is good vs bad about him?




I don't think there is a summary. I think he's cosplaying a chatbot.


----------



## Eric

But the Nazis need a voice too...


It does seem that way from
      RealTwitterAccounts


----------



## Cmaier

Eric said:


> But the Nazis need a voice too...
> 
> 
> It does seem that way from
> RealTwitterAccounts



Wouldn’t know who to punch in the face otherwise.


----------



## Yoused

Eric said:


> But the Nazis need a voice too...
> 
> 
> __
> https://www.reddit.com/r/RealTwitterAccounts/comments/z5a23w




Why does *@FakeJoeBiden* not have a blue checkmark? How can we be sure that that is the real FakeJoeBiden?


----------



## lizkat

Gotta love Tumblr poking fun at Musk with their offer to sell blue checkmarks 2 for $7.99 awhile back









						Tumblr trolls Elon Musk's blue checkmark fiasco by selling two blue checkmarks for $7.99
					

Tumblr's staff announced users can buy two "Important Blue Internet Checkmarks" at a "steal" of $7.99, in a dig at Twitter, because "nothing matters."




					news.yahoo.com


----------



## Eric

Just what did he expect?


Elon's speedrun! from
      WhitePeopleTwitter


----------



## bwinter88

An otherwise smart engineer friend of mine likes to insist to me that Elon Musk has the Midas touch; every company he touches turns to gold (SpaceX, Tesla) so how could Twitter be any different? He did great things for Paypal, SpaceX, Tesla, why should we have any reason to doubt that his plans for Twitter will similarly work out well?

Tell me the thing I need to say to him to set him straight.


----------



## Renzatic

bwinter88 said:


> Tell me the thing I need to say to him to set him straight.




He managed Paypal, SpaceX, and Tesla before going insane, and falling in love with himself. We're talking about Musk post-Thailand children's submarine rescue incident here.


----------



## Eric

bwinter88 said:


> An otherwise smart engineer friend of mine likes to insist to me that Elon Musk has the Midas touch; every company he touches turns to gold (SpaceX, Tesla) so how could Twitter be any different? He did great things for Paypal, SpaceX, Tesla, why should we have any reason to doubt that his plans for Twitter will similarly work out well?
> 
> Tell me the thing I need to say to him to set him straight.



IMO he's great at fundraising, a gifted salesman with the right drive and big ideas which has paid off for companies like Tesla or SpaceX. Twitter is something completely different though, the ability to build next-level rockets is completely different than running a social media company. He's completely out of his lane here and it shows on every front, he can't mold "people" into his vision of a car or rocket.


----------



## Nycturne

bwinter88 said:


> Tell me the thing I need to say to him to set him straight.



I wish I knew. When NFTs and “the Metaverse” were getting hyped up, there was suddenly a lot of talk about it on my team. I was the only one suggesting it might not all be butterflies and rainbows, and I honestly started feeling like I was out of touch.

The tech industry, in all honesty, is filled with folks that are looking for solutions to problems that don’t exist because it’s a new application of technology, or trying to find the next disruptive idea that they can hitch onto to try to make it big. There’s fewer folks thinking about the ethical implications of what they are building than even I would have thought. And hey, I was well aware of the predatory behavior of today’s video games.

If anything Musk is the poster child for this sort of thinking.



Renzatic said:


> He managed Paypal, SpaceX, and Tesla before going insane, and falling in love with himself. We're talking about Musk post-Thailand children's submarine rescue incident here.



While persuasive, probably not accurate. It seems that SpaceX and Tesla manage Musk more than the other way around.


----------



## lizkat

bwinter88 said:


> An otherwise smart engineer friend of mine likes to insist to me that Elon Musk has the Midas touch; every company he touches turns to gold (SpaceX, Tesla) so how could Twitter be any different? He did great things for Paypal, SpaceX, Tesla, why should we have any reason to doubt that his plans for Twitter will similarly work out well?
> 
> Tell me the thing I need to say to him to set him straight.




Tell your friend this:   someone finally told Elon Musk NO, and he's been flashing the colors of an unhinged narcissist ever since then.  *He's gonna show the world you don't say NO to him.*  No sir.  He'll burn that blue bird to the ground after being forced to buy it against his will (instead of going to court and losing and having to buy it plus paying court costs) and now in his rage, rage, rage,  there ain't nobody capable of stopping him from burning up the whole $44bn,  not all of which is even his to burn. 

Gotta love the bankers standing around thinking this can end well for them somehow.   They never even got to securitize the debt and now they're going to end up eating it if they can't find a mark to take it off their balance sheets "as is"...



Spoiler: The Vultures



A couple of vultures board an airplane, dragging some mangled roadkill between them with their beaks. The flight attendant eyeballs the stuff after getting a whiff of the stench and says "Ugh, I think that needed to go in checked luggage in a very special container,  so let me try to arrange for that."

And the vultures say “No thanks, we're good.  It's carrion, we'll have it for lunch."


----------



## Scepticalscribe

dada_dave said:


> It seems a lot of newsies/political people going to post while more technical people are going to mastodon but a lot to both sites - just my anecdotal observation so far. I’m still waiting to see how things shake out in terms of where people move.
> 
> 
> 
> Aye.
> 
> 
> 
> Yup he’s been quoting and approve-replying to some of the worst accounts on Twitter - real white nationalist/fascist personalities.



And misogynists.

Elon's attitudes to women also leave an awful lot to be desired.


----------



## Cmaier

Elon Musk implies Apple hates free speech after 'mostly stopped' advertising on Twitter
					

In the latest development at Twitter, Elon Musk has taken to his social platform to share that Apple has “mostly stopped advertising.” Along with the announcement, he implied in his short tweet that the decision makes the iPhone maker an opponent of free speech. Musk’s tweet today reads “Apple...




					9to5mac.com
				




Apple stopped advertising on twitter, and Elon is cranky about it.


----------



## Pumbaa

Cranky indeed. Multiple Apple-related tweets. And another attempt at “Vox Populi, Vox Dei”.


Tweet link


----------



## dada_dave

Cmaier said:


> Elon Musk implies Apple hates free speech after 'mostly stopped' advertising on Twitter
> 
> 
> In the latest development at Twitter, Elon Musk has taken to his social platform to share that Apple has “mostly stopped advertising.” Along with the announcement, he implied in his short tweet that the decision makes the iPhone maker an opponent of free speech. Musk’s tweet today reads “Apple...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 9to5mac.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Apple stopped advertising on twitter, and Elon is cranky about it.



The whole crazy right wing Twitter ecosystem is cranky about it.


----------



## Pumbaa

Elon just found out about Apple’s 30% App Store cut.


----------



## Eric

dada_dave said:


> The whole crazy right wing Twitter ecosystem is cranky about it.



That's his echo chamber, he's alienated all the free thinkers and they're the only one's left. That's how he likes it and it's also why his polls (on his own platform) will always favor his goal. Meanwhile, the rest of the world are wiping their hands of him.


----------



## dada_dave

Scepticalscribe said:


> And misogynists.
> 
> Elon's attitudes to women also leave an awful lot to be desired.




And a dash of antisemitism in his own tweets now too - accusing Vindman of being a puppet and puppeteer because he joined a chain message describing musk of being erratic. This of course was met with glee by the hard core antisemites since Vindman is Jewish so the whole puppet/puppeteer is red meat to them.


----------



## dada_dave

bwinter88 said:


> An otherwise smart engineer friend of mine likes to insist to me that Elon Musk has the Midas touch; every company he touches turns to gold (SpaceX, Tesla) so how could Twitter be any different? He did great things for Paypal, SpaceX, Tesla, why should we have any reason to doubt that his plans for Twitter will similarly work out well?
> 
> Tell me the thing I need to say to him to set him straight.



Well if your friend wants to watch a 20 minute rant on the subject on Musk, Zuck, and SBF … here you go:






Truthfully he’s even a little kind to Musk in describing him as a founder of PayPal as it’s a little more complicated than that and there’s a lot of stuff he didn’t he even talk about which he could’ve.

Basically assholes are sometimes successful in spite of themselves. Don’t glorify them.

Although the ending remark in the video that you the viewer are smarter than them is also kind of bunk. The reality is none of us are as smart as we like to think we are, we all have egos, and thinking we are not susceptible to influence is a good way to make ourselves blind to when we are being hoodwinked. I don’t want to go too far the other way either … eventually we all have to put our trust in ground truths just to live our lives and make progress.

I’m getting preachy here and to be fair just a little earlier in the video he makes the same point: can you really blame people when our culture, our institutions, our information sources glorify these assholes? At the same time if you tear down trust in institutions, in common sources of information, in culture you end up with even more cranks and con men elevated. It’s a horrible balancing act we all have to walk.

Edit: the YouTube link doesn’t seem to be working for me anymore, gets stuck on some sort of captcha. Search “Adam conover musk idiot” should get you there.


----------



## Edd

Pumbaa said:


> Cranky indeed. Multiple Apple-related tweets. And another attempt at “Vox Populi, Vox Dei”.
> 
> View attachment 19691
> Tweet link



That’s so fucking weak and desperate; he really is acting like Trump here.


----------



## turbineseaplane

I kind of hope he tries to make a phone too

I sort of want this guy to burn out at this point

He's gone crazy


----------



## Cmaier

Now he’s threatening to go to war with apple over Apple’s cut of subscriptions.  That worked out real well for Epic.


----------



## lizkat

Cmaier said:


> Apple stopped advertising on twitter, and Elon is cranky about it.






Eric said:


> That's his echo chamber, he's alienated all the free thinkers and they're the only one's left. That's how he likes it and it's also why his polls (on his own platform) will always favor his goal. Meanwhile, the rest of the world are wiping their hands of him.




Some of the rest of the world is doing more than that.  The main "thing" that's coming down the road to perturb Elon Musk's vision of Twitter:  the EU's rules on data protection.

Meta is in the barrel on that right now, on a number of cases with more in the pipeline.  Wait until they get around to Elon's new hellscape, which he has proposed to run on a quarter of the staff it had when he bought it.  It's not like he left compliance and security offices for last.  They were among the first to get decimated.









						Ireland fines Meta €265M for ‘data scraping’ leak
					

The penalty is for a 2021 data breach, where more than half a million records of people’s personal information surfaced on a public forum.




					www.politico.eu
				




Aside from Ireland's actions v Meta,   Twitter was already fined around half a million dollars in 2020 by Ireland's  Data Protection Commissioner,  after a bug in the Android version of the app had made public some protected tweets in 2018,  and after a two-year investigation with all due consideration of any mitigating circumstances.

In the fine print of that 188-page decision (pdf) by the Irish commissioner, she highlighted for attention a particular section of the EU's GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).  That section may in future have augmenting effects on fines imposed for whatever violations Musk created for himself with respect to decimating the management and staffing of Twitter groups responsible for data protection.



> Finally, as decision-maker for the Commission, I consider it important to strongly discourage the activity involved in these infringements. In this regard, I suggest that TIC [Twitter International Company] take particular note of Article 83(2)(e) GDPR (*where past infringements can be taken into account in relation to any future exercise of corrective powers that may arise)* going forward.




Of course Musk's counsel could argue that Dorsey and not Musk caused the prior situation.  But to me it sounds like that might get him about a dollar and a half off whatever humongous fines could be imposed.   Somewhere in the EU rules it lays out fines which can run to €30m or 4% of global turnover, whichever is HIGHER, so it won't help Musk that he's not making money off his broken toy.  And those are just administrative fines.   For noncompliance with the orders after such incidents there can be other and larger fines...


----------



## dada_dave

Cmaier said:


> I set up my post account today. Played around with it for a bit, but there isn’t really anyone I’m interested in following yet.




Someone said there's some sort of weird gamification/crytpo-adjacent point system on Post? Have you seen anything like that?


----------



## dada_dave

lizkat said:


> Some of the rest of the world is doing more than that.  The main "thing" that's coming down the road to perturb Elon Musk's vision of Twitter:  the EU's rules on data protection.
> 
> Meta is in the barrel on that right now, on a number of cases with more in the pipeline.  Wait until they get around to Elon's new hellscape, which he has proposed to run on a quarter of the staff it had when he bought it.  It's not like he left compliance and security offices for last.  They were among the first to get decimated.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Ireland fines Meta €265M for ‘data scraping’ leak
> 
> 
> The penalty is for a 2021 data breach, where more than half a million records of people’s personal information surfaced on a public forum.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.politico.eu
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Aside from Ireland's actions v Meta,   Twitter was already fined around half a million dollars in 2020 by Ireland's  Data Protection Commissioner,  after a bug in the Android version of the app had made public some protected tweets in 2018,  and after a two-year investigation with all due consideration of any mitigating circumstances.
> 
> In the fine print of that 188-page decision (pdf) by the Irish commissioner, she highlighted for attention a particular section of the EU's GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).  That section may in future have augmenting effects on fines imposed for whatever violations Musk created for himself with respect to decimating the management and staffing of Twitter groups responsible for data protection.
> 
> 
> 
> Of course Musk's counsel could argue that Dorsey and not Musk caused the prior situation.  But to me it sounds like that might get him about a dollar and a half off whatever humongous fines could be imposed.   Somewhere in the EU rules it lays out fines which can run to €30m or 4% of global turnover, whichever is HIGHER...   so it won't help Musk that he's not making money off his broken toy.




The FTC was also already on their case as well I believe.


----------



## lizkat

dada_dave said:


> The FTC was also already on their case as well I believe.




Correct.  For using members' phone numbers for advertising purposes w/o prior consent.  $150m fine.  So of course now looking to see what else Twitter is doing under Musk...









						FTC says it's tracking developments at Twitter with 'deep concern' after key security departures
					

The statement comes after several key security and privacy executives resigned or were dismissed from the company, after Elon Musk acquired Twitter.




					www.cnbc.com


----------



## Cmaier

dada_dave said:


> Someone said there's some sort of weird gamification/crytpo-adjacent point system on Post? Have you seen anything like that?



The only gamification i saw was that you move up the invite list if you get others to put their names on the list. But i haven’t really done anything with Post yet. Just logged in and stared at the prepopulated feed.


----------



## dada_dave

Also the talk about legal difficulties brings up another great point: Elon Musk claims he wants twitter to be a "townhall where all opinions can be shared as long as they aren't illegal or spam" - I'm paraphrasing from memory but that's pretty close. Well even we believed his sincerity and integrity (ha!) - that's basically impossible for an international communications company where the legal frameworks in different countries around speech can be difficult to navigate if not down right contradictory. So it's something that sounds good but is basically impossible to pull off if you actually mean it. 

If on the other hand you mean "anything covered by the first amendment goes" which is the implication he's doubtlessly going for talking like that, you'll quickly find yourself swamped in pretty hateful conduct as the first amendment is deliberately permissive since it describe what the *government* can and cannot restrict legally (and yes I know there are fights over that as well, but it turns out a lot of what people think violates free speech like "yelling fire in a crowded theatre" or "hate speech" doesn't). So that's just a recipe for disaster for a private corporation trying to build a community. The only hope for Twitter is that Twitter users are already so numerous that they can block/mute their way out of all that to encapsulate themselves, but that can grow tiresome over time and Twitter risks in the end being left with nothing but the worst people. Which isn't financially stable even beyond advertisers pulling out because of Musk's erratic behavior. Even Parler/Truth social realized that their "first amendment only" regulations weren't going to work and had to instill a bit more moderation than that. And of course as many others have pointed out, even with that extra moderation part of the reason those social networks have still largely failed to gain much traction is because the "normies", "liberals", "elite media", etc... aren't there to be yelled at so even for the right wing nut job trolls, where's the fun?


----------



## Cmaier

NY Times has picked up on the Apple angle.  Paywall removed:









						Elon Musk Takes On Apple’s Power, Setting Up a Clash
					

In a series of tweets on Monday, Mr. Musk accused Apple of threatening to pull Twitter from its App Store and of trying to censor.




					www.nytimes.com


----------



## dada_dave

turbineseaplane said:


> I kind of hope he tries to make a phone too
> 
> I sort of want this guy to burn out at this point
> 
> He's gone crazy




Freedom phone II the revenge?


----------



## ronntaylor

Musty is the crazy drunk uncle that everyone remembers as pissy and slightly frazzled. He's invited everyone to Thanksgiving Dinner, taken a dump in the middle of the parlor and doesn't understand why everyone is going elsewhere. They simply want him to clean up, tone down the crazy talk, and maybe they'll be back after the place airs out.


----------



## turbineseaplane

dada_dave said:


> Someone said there's some sort of weird gamification/crytpo-adjacent point system on Post? Have you seen anything like that?




Yeah, the whole "funding from a16z" thing is going to keep me from even bothering with Post


----------



## Eric

Free market or free speech, these guys need to get their core priorities worked out. And someone get Elon some cheese to go with all that whine. 


__
		https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalComebacks/comments/z75tnb


----------



## turbineseaplane

It makes me think that Elon doesn't want "free speech" or anything like that at all

He just seems to want to be in control and "get whatever he wants"


----------



## dada_dave

turbineseaplane said:


> It makes me think that Elon doesn't want "free speech" or anything like that at all
> 
> He just seems to want to be in control and "get whatever he wants"




It's what a lot of people who whine about the lack of free speech or cancel culture or political correctness or wokeness (not saying there can't be legitimate criticism on a case by case basis, I'm talking about the whiners) are actually about. They want to say/do whatever they want and they want no one to criticize them for it or god forbid show them out the door of any online/IRL community for being an asshole.


----------



## fooferdoggie

turbineseaplane said:


> It makes me think that Elon doesn't want "free speech" or anything like that at all
> 
> He just seems to want to be in control and "get whatever he wants"



or a place he can epress his outrage at anything and everything without getting kicked off. so is twitter is rich kid toy?


----------



## turbineseaplane

Every time people like Musk bring up how they want to create an "ultimate unlimited free-speech zone" they seem to forget that plenty of sites with that setup already exist (parler, gab, truth social), it's just that normal people don't usually want to hang out on them because they can be pretty unpleasant


----------



## dada_dave

turbineseaplane said:


> Every time people like Musk bring up how they want to create an "ultimate unlimited free-speech zone" they seem to forget that plenty of sites with that setup already exist (parler, gab, truth social), it's just that normal people don't usually want to hang out on them because they can be pretty unpleasant



Yup and to make matters worse as I wrote in a post above if the trolls have no one to troll even the echo chamber gets boring for them. Often times they *want* the normies and media and whoever else it is to be there too. Social media is funded on engagement.


----------



## turbineseaplane

dada_dave said:


> Yup and to make matters worse as I wrote in a post above if the trolls have no one to troll even the echo chamber gets boring for them. Often times they *want* the normies and media and whoever else it is to be there too. Social media is funded on engagement.




Exactly right.

They want to be "awful" to people in any way they want ... and want the targeted folks to "have to tolerate it"

They want punching bags.
What a shock that a majority of the mainstream, as well as advertisers, want no part of it.


----------



## lizkat

dada_dave said:


> The only hope for Twitter is that Twitter users are already so numerous that they can block/mute their way out of all that to encapsulate themselves, but that can grow tiresome over time and Twitter risks in the end being left with nothing but the worst people.




Right...  and I have no problem seeing dissenting opinions but won't put up with bot-like trolling or dumbed-down and often vile memes or slogans.

It's true that I made Twitter a venue I enjoyed by ample use of their tools, including putting blocks on keywords I just didn't want in my timeline for awhile when some idiocy had gone viral.

When conventional media stopped breathlessly reporting on whatever some viral brouhaha was all about, I took that as a heads-up to ditch those particular keyword block(s) in my setup. 

But it would become very tiresome to be doing all that fine-tuning of my feed more frequently.  That I didn't have to do so much tweaking over time any more  was one of the ways that I could see Twitter was working hard on refining their moderation... before Musk bought the company.

I'm disappointed that Musk thought to resuscitate on a wholesale basis accounts previously banned.


----------



## turbineseaplane

lizkat said:


> I'm disappointed that Musk thought to resuscitate on a wholesale basis accounts previously banned.




That was such a huge mistake.  If even thinking of going down that route, you sure don't do it with "polls" that ask his skewed follower base what they think.

This is like Caeser putting out the thumb for "up or down" on gladiator lives..

It's not lost on me that Elon would like to basically be the "Caesar" here..


----------



## lizkat

turbineseaplane said:


> It's not lost on me that Elon would like to basically be the "Caesar" here..




Well he's sure acting like Caesar doesn't have to take a back seat to any regulators, although he seems to have been backing down now and then on a few of his more absolutist ideas, so he must be getting some elbows in the ribs from his legal counsel or else he might have had to quit operating at least in Europe.

It's not lost on me that if he can keep stirring pots with his "look at me I am Crayyyyy-Zeeeee!"  and drawing eyeballs from people who now have one foot in Twitter and one somewhere else,  he may get back some of those advertisers.   

I mean c'mon, we see the track record of corporations who after the 1/6 insurrection vowed to quit giving money to the GOP.  So they did that.  For one quarter, maybe two.  Got lots of favorable press, along with some jabs about impending hypocrisy.   And sure enough, before year end, back in the game.


----------



## turbineseaplane

lizkat said:


> Well he's sure acting like Caesar doesn't have to take a back seat to any regulators, although he seems to have been backing down now and then on a few of his more absolutist ideas, so he must be getting some elbows in the ribs from his legal counsel or else he might have had to quit operating at least in Europe.
> 
> It's not lost on me that if he can keep stirring pots with his "look at me I am Crayyyyy-Zeeeee!"  and drawing eyeballs from people who now have one foot in Twitter and one somewhere else,  he may get back some of those advertisers.
> 
> I mean c'mon, we see the track record of corporations who after the 1/6 insurrection vowed to quit giving money to the GOP.  So they did that.  For one quarter, maybe two.  Got lots of favorable press, along with some jabs about impending hypocrisy.   And sure enough, before year end, back in the game.




For sure he might get some advertisers back, but the metrics will dictate less spend for them if it keeps going this way.

I saw the Apple social AD spend person commenting how much they'd cut back due to reduced engagement and bot engagement.

Twitter is really something that needs to have mass appeal to be what it was.
It simply won't work with folks running amok and being jerks and harassing, etc

Elon is going to spend a lot of time and money to re-learn lessons Twitter already learned over the course of time.


----------



## lizkat

turbineseaplane said:


> For sure he might get some advertisers back, but the metrics will dictate less spend for them if it keeps going this way.
> 
> I saw the Apple social AD spend person commenting how much they'd cut back due to reduced engagement and bot engagement.
> 
> Twitter is really something that needs to have mass appeal to be what it was.
> It simply won't work with folks running amok and being jerks and harassing, etc
> 
> Elon is going to spend a lot of time and money to re-learn lessons Twitter already learned over the course of time.




I wish he'd just get tired of the hassles (and distraction from his other businesses, and risk to Tesla of ending up with a margin call on his collateral, duh!)...  and flip the thing to a co-investor with deep enough pockets to not only take it off Elon's hands but then plow some money back in to pull it out of its nosedive.


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

turbineseaplane said:


> Every time people like Musk bring up how they want to create an "ultimate unlimited free-speech zone" they seem to forget that plenty of sites with that setup already exist (parler, gab, truth social), it's just that normal people don't usually want to hang out on them because they can be pretty unpleasant





This reminds me of a study that concluded that right-wing men are open to dating left-wing women but left-wing women aren't really open to dating right-wing men.  Of course to right-wing men this serves as proof that left-wing women are elitist which completely ignores the fact that right-wing men tend to be misogynist assholes, or at the very least they have to prove that they aren't on an individual basis.  Left-wing women don't really want to date people who have a preloaded long list of things or people they hate or are against.


----------



## turbineseaplane

@Chew Toy McCoy

A great post and a very accurate one.

In my friend group, we have one guy who's a bit like this -- perpetually single and doesn't get the "why".
Turns off women, actively, out at bars and events by very quickly showing his cards.

_(we're all friends for decades and keep it all going by working "around" the differences -- it's tough -- Trump era set this all ablaze in a way it never was before)_


----------



## dada_dave

Eric said:


> Just what did he expect?
> 
> 
> Elon's speedrun! from
> WhitePeopleTwitter




An interesting blog post by a (now former) advertiser on Twitter:









						I told my team to pause our $750K/month Twitter ads budget last week
					

I’ve seen a lot of technical and ideological takes on Elon Twitter but wanted to share the marketing perspective. For background I’m a director at a medium sized b2b tech company (not in finserv anymore) running a team that deploys about $80M in ad s...




					www.teamblind.com
				




Main points:



> - Performance fell significantly. CPMs didn’t drop but our engagement went way down. Maybe it’s a shift in users on the platform, maybe it’s ad serving related.
> - Serious brand safety issues. Our organic social and CS teams got dozens of screenshots of our ads next to awful content. Replies to our posts with hardcore antisemitism and adult spam remained up for days even when flagged.
> - Our entire account team turned over multiple times in 2 weeks. We had multiple people (AE, AM, analyst, creative specialist) supporting our account and they all vanished without so much as an email. We finally got an email with a name for an AM last week but they quit and we don’t have a new one yet.
> - Ads UI is very buggy and login with SSO and 2FA broken. One of my campaign managers logged in last week and found all our paused creatives from the past 6 years had been reactivated. Campaign changes don’t save. These things cost us real money.




Basically even beyond the sudden lack of content moderation causing brand safety problems, there are technical issues, a lack of communication from Twitter (because of everyone has been fired), and even less engagement on ads based on the metrics they care about.


----------



## Eric

dada_dave said:


> An interesting blog post by a (now former) advertiser on Twitter:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I told my team to pause our $750K/month Twitter ads budget last week
> 
> 
> I’ve seen a lot of technical and ideological takes on Elon Twitter but wanted to share the marketing perspective. For background I’m a director at a medium sized b2b tech company (not in finserv anymore) running a team that deploys about $80M in ad s...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.teamblind.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Main points:
> 
> 
> 
> Basically even beyond the sudden lack of content moderation causing brand safety problems, there are technical issues, a lack of communication from Twitter (because of everyone has been fired), and even less engagement on ads based on the metrics they care about.



He wanted all that free (hate) speech and then fired everyone involved on moderation, now wonders why advertisers don't want their ads next to unchecked hate-filled anti semitic content?

BTW I applaud Tim Cook for taking the high road here by not responding to this idiot's tweet, no need to get into the gutter with the trolls.


----------



## turbineseaplane

Paused AD campaigns suddenly "reactivated"?

Very very fishy (and unacceptable)


----------



## Pumbaa

turbineseaplane said:


> Paused AD campaigns suddenly "reactivated"?
> 
> Very very fishy (and unacceptable)



Is that still going on?

More than fishy in that case.


----------



## Nycturne

Eric said:


> He wanted all that free (hate) speech and then fired everyone involved on moderation, now wonders why advertisers don't want their ads next to unchecked hate-filled anti semitic content?



It is also hard to keep/court larger advertising accounts if you don't have account managers anymore to work with those advertising accounts. Having a team of account managers to work with high-profile, high-spend clients seems rather important when your business model is built around B2B. I'd have expected he'd have picked this part up from SpaceX.

So, what the heck?


----------



## Eric

Nycturne said:


> It is also hard to keep/court larger advertising accounts if you don't have account managers anymore to work with those advertising accounts. Having a team of account managers to work with high-profile, high-spend clients seems rather important when your business model is built around B2B. I'd have expected he'd have picked this part up from SpaceX.
> 
> So, what the heck?



He probably fired them, too. You get the feeling this is going turn into an out of the pocket venture so it's probably a good thing he's one of the richest people on the planet. In the end losing tens of billions just so you can turn against such a huge swath of the existing Twitter user base is the best possible is priceless. Couldn't be happening to a nicer guy.


----------



## Nycturne

Eric said:


> He probably fired them, too.




But this is also why I'm confused, this is a case where he _should_ know better than to fire the account managers overseeing your primary revenue stream. It'd be like if SpaceX suddenly fired everyone managing their NASA and DOD accounts.


----------



## lizkat

Nycturne said:


> But this is also why I'm confused, this is a case where he _should_ know better than to fire the account managers overseeing your primary revenue stream. It'd be like if SpaceX suddenly fired everyone managing their NASA and DOD accounts.




Yeah he made mistakes up front and is having to back up but not having to advertise it.  One reason not to have a PR department is when you're in that boat.   "No comment" not as safe as no department!

There are almost certainly some behind-scenes communications going on with regulators, advertisers and corporate or government-type Twitter accounts with very large followings.

This despite whatever nonsense Musk is tweeting publicly as red meat for his newly reacquired fans of absolute free speech.    He has to keep traffic up,  no matter that he's not making money off it at the moment, and yet he has to be able to prove he's in compliance with regulations. The assurances (with some kind of proof) that he needs to supply privately include these:

moderation of illegal content is occurring,​security against breaches is in place,​engineering staff has ability to minimize failures and prevent catastrophic ones,​and... he's working on turning over operations to a guy in the biz..,.​
Everybody wants to make money.   But past that,  the big institutions and corporations, media outlets, government agencies, influencers DO NOT HAVE AN ALTERNATE LANDING PLACE arranged yet.

So they feel like they're over a barrel and they don't like it.   So they in addition to the advertisers are seeking assurances from Twitter that the thing has some guardrails around it, enough to let them hang in there watchfully for now and "see how it goes."

They all want what they have had on Twitter,  which is a nice concentrated one-stop shop for picking up news they can use, for public service announcements, for media exposure and spinoffs through those outlets to "everywhere"...

Elon Musk does know this.  Or he's realizing it now from pressure by not only advertisers but those other organizations and influential setups with millions and millions of followers. 

So Elon is finally in lightbulb-on phase...  realizing he has to keep all those highly followed accounts on board or he'll NEVER get the big name advertisers back.  They're interdependent, and individual accounts in turn all follow or are exposed to a bunch of those outlets and so provide ad revenue potential every time they pick up their devices.

So what should he do now?   Keep tweeting nonsense to those desirous of "absolute free speech" and meanwhile rustle up proof of having some fences around and a floor under Twitter.   Shovel that info into the anxious email accounts of all those important Twitter account holders who together spell a reason for advertisers to resume putting up ads on Twitter.

 "Tell them all whatever they want to hear.."   -- with just enough pony in that pile of manure.


----------



## Nycturne

All this makes sense assuming Elon's being rational about it, or at least can be. The more I see though, the less I'm inclined to believe he's being rational. If that's just him trolling, still not sure how that's good news.

But yes, there's going to need to be some drastic changes to undo the damage to the company's current revenue stream. To be honest, I figured the company would limp along, getting squeezed by the extra debt that it can't afford without doubling revenue. I didn't expect Elon to put pennies on the tracks and get surprised at the derailment that results.


----------



## turbineseaplane

From Casey Newton

_Twitter is reinstating roughly 62,000 accounts that were suspended, each with more than 10,000 followers. One of the accounts has 5 million followers. 75 have more than 1 million. Internally, employees are calling it the Big Bang_
..
_For executives who have been looking for an excuse to stop pretending that they care about diversity issues, then, Musk seems to be providing huge inspiration._









						Why some tech CEOs are rooting for Musk
					

They're skeptical of their workers, too. PLUS: New details on Musk's 'general amnesty' for banned Twitter users




					www.platformer.news
				






All Elon is going to do is fully pivot this thing over to the unsavory side
You can't let back on all the suspended grossness and expect it to just "work out" or be attractive still


----------



## Eric

turbineseaplane said:


> From Casey Newton
> 
> _Twitter is reinstating roughly 62,000 accounts that were suspended, each with more than 10,000 followers. One of the accounts has 5 million followers. 75 have more than 1 million. Internally, employees are calling it the Big Bang_
> ..
> _For executives who have been looking for an excuse to stop pretending that they care about diversity issues, then, Musk seems to be providing huge inspiration._
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Why some tech CEOs are rooting for Musk
> 
> 
> They're skeptical of their workers, too. PLUS: New details on Musk's 'general amnesty' for banned Twitter users
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.platformer.news
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> All Elon is going to do is fully pivot this thing over to the unsavory side
> You can't let back on all the suspended grossness and expect it to just "work out" or be attractive still



You just get the feeling that he must be on something, regardless of my feelings on the guy it's hard to see how any sane and rational person with such a great reputation can crash something like this so hard. I mean if it were Trump, you get it because that guy fucked every company he's ever touched, but I'm with @Nycturne here, it just doesn't make sense.


----------



## turbineseaplane

Eric said:


> You just get the feeling that he must be on something, regardless of my feelings on the guy it's hard to see how any sane and rational person with such a great reputation can crash something like this so hard. I mean if it were Trump, you get it because that guy fucked every company he's ever touched, but I'm with @Nycturne here, it just doesn't make sense.




I do have to wonder what sort of feedback echo chambers he's mixed in with
He may be fully bought into the mostly all made up or exaggerated/distored aggrieved mindset

His tweet about the Apple 30% cut was bizarre.





That HAS to be roiling up his crowd and trying to get outrage firing at Apple.  There's no way, at all, that he doesn't know about Apple and their App Store and their rules.
That has been a topic of controversy (the cut, who they take it from, how much, when and why) for literally years.

He's way too plugged in to not know that -- so tweeting about it like he did today had to be just to stir up the followers

He's just gone full "troll mode"
Really disheartening and disappointing to see from someone in his position


----------



## turbineseaplane

This has nothing to do with free speech in the way he's positioning it.
I guarantee you "civilization" will be fine if we have toxic people/behavior moderated off of Twitter

Guy has gone bananas.


----------



## dada_dave

turbineseaplane said:


> I do have to wonder what sort of feedback echo chambers he's mixed in with
> He may be fully bought into the mostly all made up or exaggerated/distored aggrieved mindset
> 
> His tweet about the Apple 30% cut was bizarre.
> 
> View attachment 19702
> 
> That HAS to be roiling up his crowd and trying to get outrage firing at Apple.  There's no way, at all, that he doesn't know about Apple and their App Store and their rules.
> That has been a topic of controversy (the cut, who they take it from, how much, when and why) for literally years.
> 
> He's way too plugged in to not know that -- so tweeting about it like he did today had to be just to stir up the followers
> 
> He's just gone full "troll mode"
> Really disheartening and disappointing to see from someone in his position




There was a post on Twitter I’ll see if I can dig it up, basically saying most people don’t realize what kind of bubble/echo chamber most VCs/wealthy tech bros live in and how radicalizing it has been especially in recent years. He stressed that not all were like that but more than enough were.

Edit: here it is


----------



## turbineseaplane

@dada_dave

Great find!

On that note, it should be noted that Post _(a place that some are fleeing twitter for) _is partially backed by Andreesens a16z

If one is paying attention here, the billionaires are trying to monopolize everything everywhere you look.
They'd love to have control over Twitter as well as anything that looks like it or "competes" with it.

Full information control so they can further tip the scales and shape all the information as they see fit.
It's a very cynical ploy to claim Twitter was "censoring everyone" ...and then be trying to actually own Twitter and anything like it

Billionaires are not our friends and no friends of anyone who likes anything resembling democracy


----------



## turbineseaplane

Credit to CNN here..
Outrageous troll behavior from Elon

Flat out making stuff up and putting it out there/endorsing it/retweeting it, etc

But he's said this?


----------



## dada_dave

turbineseaplane said:


> @dada_dave
> 
> Great find!
> 
> On that note, it should be noted that Post _(a place that some are fleeing twitter for) _is partially backed by Andreesens a16z
> 
> If one is paying attention here, the billionaires are trying to monopolize everything everywhere you look.
> They'd love to have control over Twitter as well as anything that looks like it or "competes" with it.
> 
> Full information control so they can further tip the scales and shape all the information as they see fit.
> It's a very cynical ploy to claim Twitter was "censoring everyone" ...and then be trying to actually own Twitter and anything like it
> 
> Billionaires are not our friends and no friends of anyone who likes anything resembling democracy



Yeah I can’t independently vouch for this guy’s knowledge of VC culture but given what we’re seeing, it certainly seems to fit and be more than just Musk.


----------



## Runs For Fun

turbineseaplane said:


> I do have to wonder what sort of feedback echo chambers he's mixed in with
> He may be fully bought into the mostly all made up or exaggerated/distored aggrieved mindset
> 
> His tweet about the Apple 30% cut was bizarre.
> 
> View attachment 19702
> 
> That HAS to be roiling up his crowd and trying to get outrage firing at Apple.  There's no way, at all, that he doesn't know about Apple and their App Store and their rules.
> That has been a topic of controversy (the cut, who they take it from, how much, when and why) for literally years.
> 
> He's way too plugged in to not know that -- so tweeting about it like he did today had to be just to stir up the followers
> 
> He's just gone full "troll mode"
> Really disheartening and disappointing to see from someone in his position



He’s definitely trolling. How can you not know about Apple taking 30%? I’m kind of hoping Apple actually pull Twitter from the App Store. It might give Mastodon a nice boost.


----------



## dada_dave

turbineseaplane said:


> View attachment 19708
> 
> Credit to CNN here..
> Outrageous troll behavior from Elon
> 
> Flat out making stuff up and putting it out there/endorsing it/retweeting it, etc
> 
> But he's said this?



It’s even more outrageous as most news agencies adopted as sympathetic a framing to his attacks on Apple as possible in their headlines/ledes (including CNN).

Thread:


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

turbineseaplane said:


> This has nothing to do with free speech in the way he's positioning it.
> I guarantee you "civilization" will be fine if we have toxic people/behavior moderated off of Twitter
> 
> Guy has gone bananas.
> 
> 
> View attachment 19704
> 
> View attachment 19706




People in his wealth class are obsessed with thinking they can solve/control all the world’s problems simply because they’ve accumulated so much wealth.  Doesn’t help that, at least in the the US, a big percentage of the population seems to think that too along with a system that hands them the keys to everything…free of charge in a lot of cases.


----------



## dada_dave

turbineseaplane said:


> From Casey Newton
> 
> _Twitter is reinstating roughly 62,000 accounts that were suspended, each with more than 10,000 followers. One of the accounts has 5 million followers. 75 have more than 1 million. Internally, employees are calling it the Big Bang_
> ..
> _For executives who have been looking for an excuse to stop pretending that they care about diversity issues, then, Musk seems to be providing huge inspiration._
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Why some tech CEOs are rooting for Musk
> 
> 
> They're skeptical of their workers, too. PLUS: New details on Musk's 'general amnesty' for banned Twitter users
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.platformer.news
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> All Elon is going to do is fully pivot this thing over to the unsavory side
> You can't let back on all the suspended grossness and expect it to just "work out" or be attractive still




This is a side note but it’s amazing that, even when sometimes I think they have a point, how universally those in the anti-Apple dev/tech coalition seem to be just the _worst _from Basecamp to Facebook and beyond.

Edit: I am of course referring to the executives, or perhaps an even better description: _tech personalities_, at these companies, not everyone. And of course Musk joining them just adds to that.


----------



## KingOfPain

Chew Toy McCoy said:


> This reminds me of a study that concluded that right-wing men are open to dating left-wing women but left-wing women aren't really open to dating right-wing men.




And this reminds me of Fox News' reaction to polling data showing that a majority of unmarried women vote Democrat.
Their reaction wasn't: Hey, the Republicans have to make sure that their politics don't oppress unmarried women, like creating sensible abortion laws.
No, their reaction was: We have to get these women married!
Like that is going to change their political opionion! Shows how chauvinistic their thinking is!

As for Elon Musk brining up Apple's _secret_ 30% tax...
First of all, it isn't secret.
Secondly, if he missed Epic complaining about those 30% for months, he must have been living under a rock!

Finally, as for Elon Musk posting made up stuff.
In Latin there is a saying that fits perfectly here: _Quod licet Iovi non licet bovi_.
(Disclamer: My Latin was bad back in school and is almost non existent now, but a few things stuck, like this one.)
It basically means:
What Jupiter (i.e. the highest god) is allowed to do, the oxen are not allowed to do.
To put it another way: He thinks the rules don't apply to him.


----------



## Colstan

dada_dave said:


> I’m sorry but no. He’s cruel, vindictive, and petty. He may issues beyond that, but a malignant narcissist with money and power who seeks the adoration of the worst people and punches down at the most marginalized is not a trait of autism and many who are on the spectrum have been rather vocal about not linking autism with this kind of behavior.



I didn't expect my thoughts on Elon Musk to be popular, but fellow poster and good chap @Yoused has encouraged me to share my contrarian opinions in the past, and I did so in my small way here. As I said, I don't have strong opinions on Mr. Musk, as a human being. I certainly don't worship him, as some apparently do, but I don't hate him, either. I'll save my ire for real dictators. (Which, after an extraordinarily unpleasant experience concerning that subject, I have banned myself from the politics forums.)


MEJHarrison said:


> Also, in my line of work I'm come across lots of people with ASD and some of the other things mentioned there.  I even had good reason to believe I'm on the spectrum myself.  One trait we all have in common is _*not*_ being egotistical assholes.  Some of his wild and crazy behaviors might easily be written off under the umbrella of autism.  But that's leave plenty of other things that can only be explained by him being a massive tool.  I'm a developer myself.  So some of his recent actions have hit too close to home to retain any of my respect.



As I said, I'm not diagnosing Mr. Musk, just speculating on what may inform us on some his behavior. After I made my post, I found that Musk claims to have Asperger's, a now defunct term to describe those on the spectrum. Also, I never claimed that a mental health diagnosis can explain his publicly known persona, just that a mental health component could be involved, and not necessarily ASD. I listed many disorders, and wasn't aware of Mr. Musk's diagnosis before I made that post; I was speaking in generalities.

Regardless, I appreciate your responses and critiques.


Huntn said:


> How about you summarize what you mean to say about Musk? In a few words what do you think is good vs bad about him?



Okay, well, since you asked, I shall do my best to reply, despite my strong inclination to remain silent. I would first ask my left-leaning friends here to keep in mind that I am very much outnumbered here, on this specific issue, and I am not trying to start a one-man war on my favorite forum. This is simply me stating my personal opinion, I know everyone else here will disagree, which I am perfectly fine with.

I shall start out with the bad about Mr. Musk. I think he spreads himself too thin, makes impulse decisions, and doesn't understand the wisdom of silence. He has his hands in too many pies, can't focus on any one thing, and his mercurial nature has lead to a poorly planned acquisition of Twitter, from a business perspective. I think he hurt his newly purchased company by not thinking through staffing decisions. He should have already had a game plan long before the acquisition was completed, and now he and his remaining employees are suffering from that lack of foresight.

On the good side, I see SpaceX. I consider this to be Mr. Musk's greatest achievement and what will define his legacy. While his social media shenanigans feel important in the moment, his other companies like Tesla, the Boring Company, and yes, Twitter, don't really matter, not in the long-term. If humanity wishes to ensure its ultimate survival, we must become a space faring species. That means Mars colonies, that means an outpost on Europa, that means landing on Titan, that means venturing to Proxima-Centauri.

None of these things will happen in my lifetime, but they will eventually happen, as long as we continue to invest in enterprises like SpaceX. I value his drive to push humanity outward, over any of the other endeavors of Mr. Musk, and would prefer that he spend all of his time working on his rocket ships. We need to think big, need people who are willing to push forward, and I think SpaceX is at the forefront of much of that, along with Blue Origin and such. I think private enterprises in concert with organizations such as NASA and the ESA, along with contractors like Northrup Grumman, are vital to the future of our species.

Regarding the ongoing Twitter saga, daily matters are always in the forefront of our minds, it's the immediacy of the news cycle. Right now we are still in a global pandemic, undergoing an energy crisis, sustained economic recession, a brutal war in Europe, many are facing risk of famine, and Elon Musk has purchased Twitter. One of these things is not like the others, so I'm going to prioritize what I consider to be the most important of those issues. I just can't get myself worked up over a social media platform. However, I can understand why other folks here do, because it's at the intersection of both technology and politics, which is of great interest and concern to most of the people who visit Talked About.

Now, in regards to Twitter itself...

Firstly, I shall state the obvious. In the United States, First Amendment protections only apply to prosecution from the government, except in rare cases. Being a U.S. citizen, I'm going to approach it from that stance. I realize that other countries have different laws concerning speech, but Twitter is a U.S. company. I know that private entities, such as social media, can police their own business, and who posts on their sites, as they please. I don't think the government should dictate what should be said on social media, whether that be the owners, or the posters. That also goes for advertisers and users, who can spend their dollars and time elsewhere, of course, if they are dissatisfied with the platform.

While I think Mr. Musk has been quite ham-fisted in the way he has handled the acquisition, I am far more inclined to agree with his "free speech absolutist" mentality, than the restrictions that had been in place. I very much believe that the more voices, the better. I don't think the public should be infantilized by censoring things that make us uncomfortable, we should all have the right to be offended, not be coddled by the whims of corporate policy.

Unless somebody is literally breaking the law, I think they should be able to say what they want on Twitter. You can't yell "fire" in a crowded theater. You can't make terrorist threats or threaten to assassinate a politician. You can be taken to court for slander or libel. Twitter has become the online "town square", in many respects, and I think it should be treated just as a physical town square.

I may find someone's words to be disagreeable, I may find them repugnant, they may make me angry, but I'm not going to stand in the way while they say them. Mr. Musk's thinking on the issue is similar to my own.

As I said, my thoughts on this issue are going to be extraordinary unpopular around these parts. I like all the folks here, please don't associate your anger with Mr. Musk with my personal opinion on the issue. I'm not Elon, I think he has handled the transition poorly, I simply agree with his general philosophy regarding free speech on Twitter.

"When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say."
- George R.R. Martin


----------



## Cmaier

Colstan said:


> I didn't expect my thoughts on Elon Musk to be popular, but fellow poster and good chap @Yoused has encouraged me to share my contrarian opinions in the past, and I did so in my small way here. As I said, I don't have strong opinions on Mr. Musk, as a human being. I certainly don't worship him, as some apparently do, but I don't hate him, either. I'll save my ire for real dictators. (Which, after an extraordinarily unpleasant experience concerning that subject, I have banned myself from the politics forums.)
> 
> As I said, I'm not diagnosing Mr. Musk, just speculating on what may inform us on some his behavior. After I made my post, I found that Musk claims to have Asperger's, a now defunct term to describe those on the spectrum. Also, I never claimed that a mental health diagnosis can explain his publicly known persona, just that a mental health component could be involved, and not necessarily ASD. I listed many disorders, and wasn't aware of Mr. Musk's diagnosis before I made that post; I was speaking in generalities.
> 
> Regardless, I appreciate your responses and critiques.
> 
> Okay, well, since you asked, I shall do my best to reply, despite my strong inclination to remain silent. I would first ask my left-leaning friends here to keep in mind that I am very much outnumbered here, on this specific issue, and I am not trying to start a one-man war on my favorite forum. This is simply me stating my personal opinion, I know everyone else here will disagree, which I am perfectly fine with.
> 
> I shall start out with the bad about Mr. Musk. I think he spreads himself too thin, makes impulse decisions, and doesn't understand the wisdom of silence. He has his hands in too many pies, can't focus on any one thing, and his mercurial nature has lead to a poorly planned acquisition of Twitter, from a business perspective. I think he hurt his newly purchased company by not thinking through staffing decisions. He should have already had a game plan long before the acquisition was completed, and now he and his remaining employees are suffering from that lack of foresight.
> 
> On the good side, I see SpaceX. I consider this to be Mr. Musk's greatest achievement and what will define his legacy. While his social media shenanigans feel important in the moment, his other companies like Tesla, the Boring Company, and yes, Twitter, don't really matter, not in the long-term. If humanity wishes to ensure its ultimate survival, we must become a space faring species. That means Mars colonies, that means an outpost on Europa, that means landing on Titan, that means venturing to Proxima-Centauri.
> 
> None of these things will happen in my lifetime, but they will eventually happen, as long as we continue to invest in enterprises like SpaceX. I value his drive to push humanity outward, over any of the other endeavors of Mr. Musk, and would prefer that he spend all of his time working on his rocket ships. We need to think big, need people who are willing to push forward, and I think SpaceX is at the forefront of much of that, along with Blue Origin and such. I think private enterprises in concert with organizations such as NASA and the ESA, along with contractors like Northrup Grumman, are vital to the future of our species.
> 
> Regarding the ongoing Twitter saga, daily matters are always in the forefront of our minds, it's the immediacy of the news cycle. Right now we are still in a global pandemic, undergoing an energy crisis, sustained economic recession, a brutal war in Europe, many are facing risk of famine, and Elon Musk has purchased Twitter. One of these things is not like the others, so I'm going to prioritize what I consider to be the most important of those issues. I just can't get myself worked up over a social media platform. However, I can understand why other folks here do, because it's at the intersection of both technology and politics, which is of great interest and concern to most of the people who visit Talked About.
> 
> Now, in regards to Twitter itself...
> 
> Firstly, I shall state the obvious. In the United States, First Amendment protections only apply to prosecution from the government, except in rare cases. Being a U.S. citizen, I'm going to approach it from that stance. I realize that other countries have different laws concerning speech, but Twitter is a U.S. company. I know that private entities, such as social media, can police their own business, and who posts on their sites, as they please. I don't think the government should dictate what should be said on social media, whether that be the owners, or the posters. That also goes for advertisers and users, who can spend their dollars and time elsewhere, of course, if they are dissatisfied with the platform.
> 
> While I think Mr. Musk has been quite ham-fisted in the way he has handled the acquisition, I am far more inclined to agree with his "free speech absolutist" mentality, than the restrictions that had been in place. I very much believe that the more voices, the better. I don't think the public should be infantilized by censoring things that make us uncomfortable, we should all have the right to be offended, not be coddled by the whims of corporate policy.
> 
> Unless somebody is literally breaking the law, I think they should be able to say what they want on Twitter. You can't yell "fire" in a crowded theater. You can't make terrorist threats or threaten to assassinate a politician. You can be taken to court for slander or libel. Twitter has become the online "town square", in many respects, and I think it should be treated just as a physical town square.
> 
> I may find someone's words to be disagreeable, I may find them repugnant, they may make me angry, but I'm not going to stand in the way while they say them. Mr. Musk's thinking on the issue is similar to my own.
> 
> As I said, my thoughts on this issue are going to be extraordinary unpopular around these parts. I like all the folks here, please don't associate your anger with Mr. Musk with my personal opinion on the issue. I'm not Elon, I think he has handled the transition poorly, I simply agree with his general philosophy regarding free speech on Twitter.
> 
> "When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say."
> - George R.R. Martin




Sure. Musk has free speech rights too, and if he wants to turn Twitter into a qanon antiwoke all lives matter own the libs just asking questions cesspool, that’s his right. 

But users and advertisers also have the right not to participate or pay for that.  

The problem is he thinks “free speech” means “speech free of consequences.”  It does not.


----------



## turbineseaplane

(deleted)


----------



## leman

Colstan said:


> While I think Mr. Musk has been quite ham-fisted in the way he has handled the acquisition, I am far more inclined to agree with his "free speech absolutist" mentality, than the restrictions that had been in place. I very much believe that the more voices, the better. I don't think the public should be infantilized by censoring things that make us uncomfortable, we should all have the right to be offended, not be coddled by the whims of corporate policy.
> 
> Unless somebody is literally breaking the law, I think they should be able to say what they want on Twitter. You can't yell "fire" in a crowded theater. You can't make terrorist threats or threaten to assassinate a politician. You can be taken to court for slander or libel. Twitter has become the online "town square", in many respects, and I think it should be treated just as a physical town square.
> 
> I may find someone's words to be disagreeable, I may find them repugnant, they may make me angry, but I'm not going to stand in the way while they say them. Mr. Musk's thinking on the issue is similar to my own.
> 
> As I said, my thoughts on this issue are going to be extraordinary unpopular around these parts. I like all the folks here, please don't associate your anger with Mr. Musk with my personal opinion on the issue. I'm not Elon, I think he has handled the transition poorly, I simply agree with his general philosophy regarding free speech on Twitter.




While understand your point, I believe there is a substantial conflict between theory and practice in these matters. Some laws and principles were put in place because of very valid reasons but changing circumstances may have twisted them beyond the original noble idea. Two party setup was a great idea for ensuring political stability, not so much  when people vote because of family tradition instead of critical political discourse and preferences. Indirect presidential election system was a great idea to organise election on a vast, scarcely populated territory, not so much if the population density has changed so tremendously that small population areas of low economical importance hold substantially more political power than major economic hubs. Unrestricted gun ownership was a great idea in the time where people lived in constant danger and had to do their own policing and justice enforcing, not so much when the weapons got so destructive that you risk getting preventively shot by law enforcement during a routine check. Free economy and freedom of business was a great idea for ensuring economic growth and technological development, not so much if strong market players can collude in oder to manipulate the situation to their favour. Universally protected freedom of speech is a great idea for promotion of pluralism and healthy exchange of opinions and ideas, not so much when small radicalized groups can hide unpunished behind modern technology and free speech to aggressively oppress and infringe on the freedom of others.

In the end, there is an important distinction between freedom as in "freedom to express yourself and to make your choices" and freedom as in "freedom to do whatever you want, including opressing and abusing others". I do not believe that justice is possible without preventive regulation. Modern connected world is facing extreme challenges, simply because the connectedness makes it easy for a bad player to misuse and manipulate the social structures. Just look how Russia or Trump are successful with their strategy of blatant, obvious lies. The potential for societal harm is tremendous. I for one am not willing to give up on the principles of freedom and egality and let a small group of idiots rule the world with demagoguery and manipulation.




Cmaier said:


> The problem is he thinks “free speech” means “speech free of consequences.”  It does not.




Yeah, this is one very important bit. Musk's stance on this is highly dishonest and manipulative. He depicts himself as a paragon of freedom and defender of choice while aggressively pursuing and mobbing those who make their own choice. Not to mention that he already uttered multiple high-profile lies.


----------



## Eric

If he wasn't behind a wall of ignorance he would see that he's basically the laughing stock of the internet.


__
		https://www.reddit.com/r/MurderedByWords/comments/z7st0r


----------



## rdrr

Colstan said:


> I didn't expect my thoughts on Elon Musk to be popular, but fellow poster and good chap @Yoused has encouraged me to share my contrarian opinions in the past, and I did so in my small way here. As I said, I don't have strong opinions on Mr. Musk, as a human being. I certainly don't worship him, as some apparently do, but I don't hate him, either. I'll save my ire for real dictators. (Which, after an extraordinarily unpleasant experience concerning that subject, I have banned myself from the politics forums.)
> 
> As I said, I'm not diagnosing Mr. Musk, just speculating on what may inform us on some his behavior. After I made my post, I found that Musk claims to have Asperger's, a now defunct term to describe those on the spectrum. Also, I never claimed that a mental health diagnosis can explain his publicly known persona, just that a mental health component could be involved, and not necessarily ASD. I listed many disorders, and wasn't aware of Mr. Musk's diagnosis before I made that post; I was speaking in generalities.
> 
> Regardless, I appreciate your responses and critiques.
> 
> Okay, well, since you asked, I shall do my best to reply, despite my strong inclination to remain silent. I would first ask my left-leaning friends here to keep in mind that I am very much outnumbered here, on this specific issue, and I am not trying to start a one-man war on my favorite forum. This is simply me stating my personal opinion, I know everyone else here will disagree, which I am perfectly fine with.
> 
> I shall start out with the bad about Mr. Musk. I think he spreads himself too thin, makes impulse decisions, and doesn't understand the wisdom of silence. He has his hands in too many pies, can't focus on any one thing, and his mercurial nature has lead to a poorly planned acquisition of Twitter, from a business perspective. I think he hurt his newly purchased company by not thinking through staffing decisions. He should have already had a game plan long before the acquisition was completed, and now he and his remaining employees are suffering from that lack of foresight.
> 
> On the good side, I see SpaceX. I consider this to be Mr. Musk's greatest achievement and what will define his legacy. While his social media shenanigans feel important in the moment, his other companies like Tesla, the Boring Company, and yes, Twitter, don't really matter, not in the long-term. If humanity wishes to ensure its ultimate survival, we must become a space faring species. That means Mars colonies, that means an outpost on Europa, that means landing on Titan, that means venturing to Proxima-Centauri.
> 
> None of these things will happen in my lifetime, but they will eventually happen, as long as we continue to invest in enterprises like SpaceX. I value his drive to push humanity outward, over any of the other endeavors of Mr. Musk, and would prefer that he spend all of his time working on his rocket ships. We need to think big, need people who are willing to push forward, and I think SpaceX is at the forefront of much of that, along with Blue Origin and such. I think private enterprises in concert with organizations such as NASA and the ESA, along with contractors like Northrup Grumman, are vital to the future of our species.
> 
> Regarding the ongoing Twitter saga, daily matters are always in the forefront of our minds, it's the immediacy of the news cycle. Right now we are still in a global pandemic, undergoing an energy crisis, sustained economic recession, a brutal war in Europe, many are facing risk of famine, and Elon Musk has purchased Twitter. One of these things is not like the others, so I'm going to prioritize what I consider to be the most important of those issues. I just can't get myself worked up over a social media platform. However, I can understand why other folks here do, because it's at the intersection of both technology and politics, which is of great interest and concern to most of the people who visit Talked About.
> 
> Now, in regards to Twitter itself...
> 
> Firstly, I shall state the obvious. In the United States, First Amendment protections only apply to prosecution from the government, except in rare cases. Being a U.S. citizen, I'm going to approach it from that stance. I realize that other countries have different laws concerning speech, but Twitter is a U.S. company. I know that private entities, such as social media, can police their own business, and who posts on their sites, as they please. I don't think the government should dictate what should be said on social media, whether that be the owners, or the posters. That also goes for advertisers and users, who can spend their dollars and time elsewhere, of course, if they are dissatisfied with the platform.
> 
> While I think Mr. Musk has been quite ham-fisted in the way he has handled the acquisition, I am far more inclined to agree with his "free speech absolutist" mentality, than the restrictions that had been in place. I very much believe that the more voices, the better. I don't think the public should be infantilized by censoring things that make us uncomfortable, we should all have the right to be offended, not be coddled by the whims of corporate policy.
> 
> Unless somebody is literally breaking the law, I think they should be able to say what they want on Twitter. You can't yell "fire" in a crowded theater. You can't make terrorist threats or threaten to assassinate a politician. You can be taken to court for slander or libel. Twitter has become the online "town square", in many respects, and I think it should be treated just as a physical town square.
> 
> I may find someone's words to be disagreeable, I may find them repugnant, they may make me angry, but I'm not going to stand in the way while they say them. Mr. Musk's thinking on the issue is similar to my own.
> 
> As I said, my thoughts on this issue are going to be extraordinary unpopular around these parts. I like all the folks here, please don't associate your anger with Mr. Musk with my personal opinion on the issue. I'm not Elon, I think he has handled the transition poorly, I simply agree with his general philosophy regarding free speech on Twitter.
> 
> "When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say."
> - George R.R. Martin



About Twitter and the concept of Free Speech.   I agree with your boundaries, can't yell fire in a crowded room, etc.   My main objection with this "Town Square" concept is that Twitter isn't a town square, and the people there are mostly anonymous.  If you want to shout out some really offensive and objectionable thoughts in a "Town Square", you have to get the nerve up to stand on your soapbox and let your neighbors hear them.  You cannot be some faceless, nameless handle on twitter. 

So you if you want to scream those thoughts (that most likely should remain silent), then everyone should know who said them.  Let your family, friends, neighbors, community, employer know who you really are, and potentially become a social pariah.


----------



## SuperMatt

Colstan said:


> As I said, my thoughts on this issue are going to be extraordinary unpopular around these parts. I like all the folks here, please don't associate your anger with Mr. Musk with my personal opinion on the issue. I'm not Elon, I think he has handled the transition poorly, I simply agree with his general philosophy regarding free speech on Twitter.



Elon Musk says “free speech” loudly, over and over. His actions tell a different story.

He recently had public conversations with right-wing agitator Andy Ngo, which resulted in Elon banning some accounts that Andy claimed were of violent or pedophile groups. This is at the same time he is reinstating accounts associated with far worse violations. And those violations were not documented by a far-right provocateur, but by a presumably non-partisan group of professional content moderators, acting off a prescribed set of rules.

It’s also well-documented that Musk has banned people who made fun of him.

He is not upholding free speech. He is shutting down voices that he personally disagrees with, while amplifying those he prefers.

Don’t be fooled by his rhetoric. He doesn’t give a hoot about free speech. His actions prove it.

Of course, he can run Twitter as he chooses. But when advertisers seek out greener pastures, he’s got nobody to blame but himself.


----------



## Cmaier

SuperMatt said:


> Elon Musk says “free speech” loudly, over and over. His actions tell a different story.
> 
> He recently had public conversations with right-wing agitator Andy Ngo, which resulted in Elon banning some accounts that Andy claimed were of violent or pedophile groups. This is at the same time he is reinstating accounts associated with far worse violations. And those violations were not documented by a far-right provocateur, but by a presumably non-partisan group of professional content moderators, acting off a prescribed set of rules.
> 
> It’s also well-documented that Musk has banned people who made fun of him.
> 
> He is not upholding free speech. He is shutting down voices that he personally disagrees with, while amplifying those he prefers.
> 
> Don’t be fooled by his rhetoric. He doesn’t give a hoot about free speech. His actions prove it.
> 
> Of course, he can run Twitter as he chooses. But when advertisers seek out greener pastures, he’s got nobody to blame but himself.




He also suspended the guy who tweeting a link to his report that the twitter data breach was far larger (>5 million) than previously announced. (Suspended yesterday).

I should amend my prior statement - when Musk talks about free speech, he means speech that he agrees with should be free, and that speech he agrees with should be free of consequences.

Speech he doesn‘t like, on the other hand - there’s no place for that on Twitter.  (As is his right, of course. But please let’s not pretend he’s some sort of ”all speech is good” absolutist).


----------



## turbineseaplane

Cmaier said:


> Speech he doesn‘t like, on the other hand - there’s no place for that on Twitter. (As is his right, of course. But please let’s not pretend he’s some sort of ”all speech is good” absolutist).




Which is why I find tweets like this to be pure gaslighting


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

I don't know the exact details here and I hope we get a deep dive on this (if it doesn't already exist, book(s)?) but some comments I'm repeatedly hearing are Musk's wealth started with inheritance from apartheid-era South Africa (I don't think anybody is disputing that), a good part of his current wealth growth is thanks to government handouts, and the main source of Tesla's revenue is from selling carbon credits to other companies, not from selling cars.


----------



## Macky-Mac

I don't think Musk cares at all about "free speech"......it's just a slogan that he thinks will help him make money


----------



## Cmaier

Musk: ”free speech” includes speech that will kill people.









						Twitter has stopped enforcing its covid misinformation policies
					

Twitter won’t remove posts that contain covid misinformation.




					www.theverge.com


----------



## bwinter88

Colstan said:


> If humanity wishes to ensure its ultimate survival, we must become a space faring species. That means Mars colonies, that means an outpost on Europa, that means landing on Titan, that means venturing to Proxima-Centauri.



I just have to point out how much I hate this. No, we really don't. Mars is a barren wasteland that offers nothing. We have abundant resources right here. There's no reason humanity couldn't continue to exist here ad infinitum. No one has ever offered me a single persuasive argument as to why Mars is so crucial to human life. It's not. We are voluntarily destroying the only known habitable planet in the universe right here. All of Musk's resources devoted to SpaceX adventures could have instead been devoted to preserving what we already have. But instead, it's become a billionaire's race to leave the planet. To think that the fate of humanity lies in getting to Mars is not a heroic, brave or intellectual thought, it's fatalistic and a cover for selfish aspirations.


----------



## MEJHarrison

Colstan said:


> I didn't expect my thoughts on Elon Musk to be popular, but fellow poster and good chap @Yoused has encouraged me to share my contrarian opinions in the past, and I did so in my small way here.




I don't see eye to eye with you on everything you said.  But you made good arguments to back up your position. I appreciate the feedback.


----------



## turbineseaplane

All the Mars nonsense is just a distraction to avoid solving real issues here and now.

Every single thing about Earth is better than Mars (for us as humans).
Let's focus on where we already are and where we'll be for the very long foreseeable future

If we can't solve issues here, there's no point in trying to start all over on an inhospitable hellscape somewhere else


----------



## Eric

Interesting quote but as Musk is the only source it can't be trusted without a statement from Apple. However,  the more they stay silent the more respect I give them for staying out of the gutter with that troll.









						Elon Musk claims Apple has threatened to remove the Twitter app
					

Musk even tweeted out a meme that suggested he was "going to war" with Apple over paying 30%.




					www.cnbc.com
				




Twitter owner Elon Musk claimed on Monday in a series of tweets that Apple had threatened to remove the Twitter app from the App Store as part of its app review moderation process.
“Apple has also threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store, but won’t tell us why,” Musk tweeted.


----------



## turbineseaplane

Eric said:


> “Apple has also threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store, but won’t tell us why,” Musk tweeted.




He knows very well all the reasons.  Guy is so disingenuous
I've lost every shred of respect I ever had for him


----------



## Cmaier

bwinter88 said:


> I just have to point out how much I hate this. No, we really don't. Mars is a barren wasteland that offers nothing. We have abundant resources right here. There's no reason humanity couldn't continue to exist here ad infinitum. No one has ever offered me a single persuasive argument as to why Mars is so crucial to human life. It's not. We are voluntarily destroying the only known habitable planet in the universe right here. All of Musk's resources devoted to SpaceX adventures could have instead been devoted to preserving what we already have. But instead, it's become a billionaire's race to leave the planet. To think that the fate of humanity lies in getting to Mars is not a heroic, brave or intellectual thought, it's fatalistic and a cover for selfish aspirations.



In 5 billion years or so the Sun will explode.  Long before then we could get hit by a planet-killing gamma ray burst or rock.  A disease that spreads like covid but is far more deadly could come along at any time. 

There are plenty of reasons why it makes sense for humanity to spread out onto other planets, and Mars is the first step.


----------



## fooferdoggie

Eric said:


> Interesting quote but as Musk is the only source it can't be trusted without a statement from Apple. However,  the more they stay silent the more respect I give them for staying out of the gutter with that troll.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Elon Musk claims Apple has threatened to remove the Twitter app
> 
> 
> Musk even tweeted out a meme that suggested he was "going to war" with Apple over paying 30%.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.cnbc.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Twitter owner Elon Musk claimed on Monday in a series of tweets that Apple had threatened to remove the Twitter app from the App Store as part of its app review moderation process.
> “Apple has also threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store, but won’t tell us why,” Musk tweeted.



apple lets truth sucks on their store twitter will be no different. but I can see google dumping twitter.


----------



## turbineseaplane

Mars stuff is in part a distraction to not disrupt business interests in the here and now on Earth.

On MUCH shorter time scales than the Sun exploding, we should be dealing with climate change threats to civilization and progress.
Disease concerns are correlated with much of that actually.  Same with factory farming and monoculture growing.

Humans have only been around in any form at all for a couple hundred thousand years and only in civilization for 6,000 or so
Worrying about what happens when the Sun will explode in 5 billion years is not even worth thinking about

If you could get a sports book on a universal timeline, I'll bet odds would be heavily against humans even being here when the Sun is expiring on us.


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

Cmaier said:


> In 5 billion years or so the Sun will explode.  Long before then we could get hit by a planet-killing gamma ray burst or rock.  A disease that spreads like covid but is far more deadly could come along at any time.
> 
> There are plenty of reasons why it makes sense for humanity to spread out onto other planets, and Mars is the first step.





Given what we've done to this planet and each other there is no good reason for us to further spread ourselves out across the universe.  It's the ultimate elitist vanity project.


----------



## Cmaier

turbineseaplane said:


> If you could get a sports book on a universal timeline, I'll bet odds would be heavily against humans even being here when the Sun is expiring on us.




Which is a good reason to spread out.  If humans populate numerous solar systems, the chances of our descendants being around until entropy makes the universe go cold goes up tremendously.


----------



## turbineseaplane

Cmaier said:


> Which is a good reason to spread out.  If humans populate numerous solar systems, the chances of our descendants being around until entropy makes the universe go cold goes up tremendously.




Spreading will happen, if it's ever viable and desirable, anyways as technology moves on.  
Pushing much for that at this moment in our history, with billions of years to go on the Sun, is a distraction.

Very powerful International business interests want to do as much "business as usual" and not address real short term problems.

We aren't becoming some interplanetary species anytime soon and we'll never get there if we don't deal with climate, food and disease issues that are in our face, now.

"Mars" has really no role to play in solving pressing issues


----------



## turbineseaplane

We're off topic with Mars stuff anyways -- Elon can't even operate Twitter or build cars without big panel gaps at the moment

He's not our savior

The emperor has no clothes.

This is the clown who duped local politicians into his hair brained "Boring company" (see.. build tunnels for cars) nonsense with the express purpose of derailing high speed and light rail projects around the country.

@Cmaier I know from your posts here and back on MR that you're a very smart person.  Surely you see completely through Elon at this point.


----------



## Cmaier

turbineseaplane said:


> We're off topic with Mars stuff anyways -- Elon can't even operate Twitter or build cars without big panel gaps at the moment
> 
> He's not our savior
> 
> The emperor has no clothes.
> 
> This is the clown who duped local politicians into his hair brained "Boring company" (see.. build tunnels for cars) nonsense with the express purpose of derailing high speed and light rail projects around the country.
> 
> @Cmaier I know from your posts here and back on MR that you're a very smart person.  Surely you see completely through Elon at this point.



My thoughts on Musk are pretty clear, I think.  But even a stopped clock is right twice a day (or once in a 24-hr clock jurisdiction).  We won’t populate the galaxy unless we take steps to do that.  SpaceX has done amazing things - if it weren’t for them, the US would be begging russia for rocket engines right now.  Obviously Musk had little to do with those accomplishments, but I believe the spacex mission makes sense, and I am not going to tell anyone they need to spend their money on other stuff.


----------



## turbineseaplane

Cmaier said:


> My thoughts on Musk are pretty clear, I think.  But even a stopped clock is right twice a day (or once in a 24-hr clock jurisdiction).  We won’t populate the galaxy unless we take steps to do that.  SpaceX has done amazing things - if it weren’t for them, the US would be begging russia for rocket engines right now.  Obviously Musk had little to do with those accomplishments, but I believe the spacex mission makes sense, and I am not going to tell anyone they need to spend their money on other stuff.




I'm not against anything with SpaceX (or other space firms) -- by all means continue all that.

I'm just not at all worried about Mars or becoming a species that can live there full time (which would be awful and in no way a substitute for Earth), or anywhere beyond our solar system.  Feasibility on any of that is so so so far beyond our lifetimes and any technology we've even dreamed of, that I just honestly don't bother thinking about it personally.

Happy to watch people attempt Mars stuff as long as it's not distracting or diverting resources away from *way* more important near term concerns.


----------



## Eric

Chew Toy McCoy said:


> Given what we've done to this planet and each other there is no good reason for us to further spread ourselves out across the universe.  It's the ultimate elitist vanity project.




I don't normally applaud the bad guy but... agent Smith FTW


----------



## Nycturne

turbineseaplane said:


> I'm not against anything with SpaceX (or other space firms) -- by all means continue all that.
> 
> I'm just not at all worried about Mars or becoming a species that can live there full time (which would be awful and in no way a substitute for Earth), or anywhere beyond our solar system.  Feasibility on any of that is so so so far beyond our lifetimes and any technology we've even dreamed of, that I just honestly don't bother thinking about it personally.
> 
> Happy to watch people attempt Mars stuff as long as it's not distracting or diverting resources away from *way* more important near term concerns.




Honestly, there’s enough disinformation related to climate change out there that Mars isn’t a very good distraction in comparison. The oil companies don’t need to point to SpaceX, they just need to make people believe climate change isn’t a real thing, and they’ve been far too good at it. Mars isn’t even a good option for those short term concerns because a colony would be dependent on Earth for quite a while, and so if Earth‘s ability to support us collapses, then the colony is going to be one of the first things cut off, and it will be gruesome. 

As for the tech though, I think it’s closer than we think, but there’s still too many unknowns and so it’s going to be perpetually 10-20 years away until we fully solve them. There’s some space infrastructure projects that I think are much more valuable in the short term, and help deal with the unknowns. As for inspirational stuff, I want to see us analyze some exoplanet atmospheres and maybe find an Earth-ish planet in my lifetime. Getting a good idea what the Proxima Centauri system looks like, well enough to start mapping it, is another. 

As for the whole “Sun being a problem in 5 billion years”, it’s _guaranteed_ that the Sun will render Earth uninhabitable long before that. Still hundreds of millions of years, but still an order of magnitude sooner. Generally, I’m more concerned about probabilistic events such as asteroids that are hard to predict, but statistically likely to happen in our future. There’s other stuff that could be really bad (gamma ray bursts and supernovae that occur too close to the sun), but those are not feasible to defend against anytime soon, and you don’t exactly get advance notice.


----------



## Herdfan

SuperMatt said:


> He recently had public conversations with right-wing agitator Andy Ngo, which resulted in Elon banning some accounts that Andy claimed were of violent or *pedophile groups. This is at the same time he is reinstating accounts associated with far worse violations.* And those violations were not documented by a far-right provocateur, but by a presumably non-partisan group of professional content moderators, acting off a prescribed set of rules.




Sorry, but are there really worse things than pedophiles?


----------



## turbineseaplane

Mars is not a substitute for Earth unless someone is suggesting we can somehow completely remake the atmosphere and basically Star Trek style terraform it ... which is just so far beyond anything we can even sniff, it's almost laughable for me to mention it.

We aren't going to have a civilization living in pods

I'm all for being excited about space stuff (I'm a Star Trek kid through and through), but I honestly think shows like that maybe have really distorted where and what we should be focusing on and aspiring towards.

Our planet can be and should be a total utopia if we'd tweak our behaviors towards it and other species on it.

We can do that and still have million and millions of years to worry about what might be next and technology to tackle that.

Humans have only even been a thing for a tiny fraction of time.
We have civilization for 6,000 years and people are worried about 3,000,000,000-4,000,000,000 in the future?

It makes very little sense to even think about it.  
Future humans will -- if we make sure they even get a chance to exist (fix Earth and our behavior on it)


----------



## Yoused

Cmaier said:


> In 5 billion years or so the Sun will explode.




No.

Five billion years from now, the sun will go into red giant phase, expanding outward possibly as far as Mars. However, given the mass of the sun, the natural distribution of densities in a gravity well, and the overall volume involved, the region of the sun that the Earth will be plowing through, the local solar medium, will be somewhere between two and three times as dense as the current local medium – it will be almost as though nothing has changed.

Except, of course, the amount of solar radiation the Earth receives from the sun will be very different in intensity and profile. More importantly, though, the second half of main sequence (the intervening 5 billion years) will see a gradual, steady increase in solar radiation. The Earth will get slowly "migrated" past the inner boundary of the "Goldilocks Zone", and LAWKI will almost certainly become untenable long before all the water boils away.

At best, we might be able to squeeze out another couple billion years on this here rock. A hundred million is much more realistic (and still insanely optimistic). We better get on these problems, not much time left.


----------



## Eric

Herdfan said:


> Sorry, but are there really worse things than pedophiles?



No, so why do Republicans keep falsely accusing Democrats of running rings? It's ridiculously offensive and way out of line, disagree with the other side all we want, but we need to learn where to draw the line with such insidious attacks.


----------



## dada_dave

rdrr said:


> About Twitter and the concept of Free Speech.   I agree with your boundaries, can't yell fire in a crowded room, etc.   My main objection with this "Town Square" concept is that Twitter isn't a town square, and the people there are mostly anonymous.  If you want to shout out some really offensive and objectionable thoughts in a "Town Square", you have to get the nerve up to stand on your soapbox and let your neighbors hear them.  You cannot be some faceless, nameless handle on twitter.
> 
> So you if you want to scream those thoughts (that most likely should remain silent), then everyone should know who said them.  Let your family, friends, neighbors, community, employer know who you really are, and potentially become a social pariah.





Colstan said:


> I didn't expect my thoughts on Elon Musk to be popular, but fellow poster and good chap @Yoused has encouraged me to share my contrarian opinions in the past, and I did so in my small way here. As I said, I don't have strong opinions on Mr. Musk, as a human being. I certainly don't worship him, as some apparently do, but I don't hate him, either. I'll save my ire for real dictators. (Which, after an extraordinarily unpleasant experience concerning that subject, I have banned myself from the politics forums.)
> 
> As I said, I'm not diagnosing Mr. Musk, just speculating on what may inform us on some his behavior. After I made my post, I found that Musk claims to have Asperger's, a now defunct term to describe those on the spectrum. Also, I never claimed that a mental health diagnosis can explain his publicly known persona, just that a mental health component could be involved, and not necessarily ASD. I listed many disorders, and wasn't aware of Mr. Musk's diagnosis before I made that post; I was speaking in generalities.
> 
> Regardless, I appreciate your responses and critiques.
> 
> Okay, well, since you asked, I shall do my best to reply, despite my strong inclination to remain silent. I would first ask my left-leaning friends here to keep in mind that I am very much outnumbered here, on this specific issue, and I am not trying to start a one-man war on my favorite forum. This is simply me stating my personal opinion, I know everyone else here will disagree, which I am perfectly fine with.
> 
> I shall start out with the bad about Mr. Musk. I think he spreads himself too thin, makes impulse decisions, and doesn't understand the wisdom of silence. He has his hands in too many pies, can't focus on any one thing, and his mercurial nature has lead to a poorly planned acquisition of Twitter, from a business perspective. I think he hurt his newly purchased company by not thinking through staffing decisions. He should have already had a game plan long before the acquisition was completed, and now he and his remaining employees are suffering from that lack of foresight.
> 
> On the good side, I see SpaceX. I consider this to be Mr. Musk's greatest achievement and what will define his legacy. While his social media shenanigans feel important in the moment, his other companies like Tesla, the Boring Company, and yes, Twitter, don't really matter, not in the long-term. If humanity wishes to ensure its ultimate survival, we must become a space faring species. That means Mars colonies, that means an outpost on Europa, that means landing on Titan, that means venturing to Proxima-Centauri.
> 
> None of these things will happen in my lifetime, but they will eventually happen, as long as we continue to invest in enterprises like SpaceX. I value his drive to push humanity outward, over any of the other endeavors of Mr. Musk, and would prefer that he spend all of his time working on his rocket ships. We need to think big, need people who are willing to push forward, and I think SpaceX is at the forefront of much of that, along with Blue Origin and such. I think private enterprises in concert with organizations such as NASA and the ESA, along with contractors like Northrup Grumman, are vital to the future of our species.
> 
> Regarding the ongoing Twitter saga, daily matters are always in the forefront of our minds, it's the immediacy of the news cycle. Right now we are still in a global pandemic, undergoing an energy crisis, sustained economic recession, a brutal war in Europe, many are facing risk of famine, and Elon Musk has purchased Twitter. One of these things is not like the others, so I'm going to prioritize what I consider to be the most important of those issues. I just can't get myself worked up over a social media platform. However, I can understand why other folks here do, because it's at the intersection of both technology and politics, which is of great interest and concern to most of the people who visit Talked About.
> 
> Now, in regards to Twitter itself...
> 
> Firstly, I shall state the obvious. In the United States, First Amendment protections only apply to prosecution from the government, except in rare cases. Being a U.S. citizen, I'm going to approach it from that stance. I realize that other countries have different laws concerning speech, but Twitter is a U.S. company. I know that private entities, such as social media, can police their own business, and who posts on their sites, as they please. I don't think the government should dictate what should be said on social media, whether that be the owners, or the posters. That also goes for advertisers and users, who can spend their dollars and time elsewhere, of course, if they are dissatisfied with the platform.
> 
> While I think Mr. Musk has been quite ham-fisted in the way he has handled the acquisition, I am far more inclined to agree with his "free speech absolutist" mentality, than the restrictions that had been in place. I very much believe that the more voices, the better. I don't think the public should be infantilized by censoring things that make us uncomfortable, we should all have the right to be offended, not be coddled by the whims of corporate policy.
> 
> Unless somebody is literally breaking the law, I think they should be able to say what they want on Twitter. You can't yell "fire" in a crowded theater. You can't make terrorist threats or threaten to assassinate a politician. You can be taken to court for slander or libel. Twitter has become the online "town square", in many respects, and I think it should be treated just as a physical town square.
> 
> I may find someone's words to be disagreeable, I may find them repugnant, they may make me angry, but I'm not going to stand in the way while they say them. Mr. Musk's thinking on the issue is similar to my own.
> 
> As I said, my thoughts on this issue are going to be extraordinary unpopular around these parts. I like all the folks here, please don't associate your anger with Mr. Musk with my personal opinion on the issue. I'm not Elon, I think he has handled the transition poorly, I simply agree with his general philosophy regarding free speech on Twitter.
> 
> "When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say."
> - George R.R. Martin




Many others have already covered much of the salient points but I need to make something clear - a lot of the restrictrictions you seem to think apply to the 1st amendment ... don't.

The "yell fire in a crowded theater" is a common expression, but has in fact been superseded. I won't go through the whole history, but it is in fact protected speech and that's why as @Cmaier points out Covid misinformation is protected speech and Elon Musk is allowing it back. Ted Nugent screaming on stage with a machine gun that he's going to lift it up Hilary Clinton's c*** and pull the trigger is protected (as he did do and he was not prosecuted for). Hell making a video of yourself shooting a life like replica of a human being you don't like, especially a public figure, is protected (as politicians have done in campaign ads which they aired). Nazis posting "we should all burn the hook nosed jews" is protected speech. Saying "female-person-I-don't-like should be raped to death" is protected speech. In most of these cases it is both civilly and criminally protected as well and even if it could be found to constitute harassment if directed at most normal everyday people, they don't have the time, energy, resources to sue.

As @leman said, running a large social media site with such limited restrictions is impractical. Most people don't want any part of such a townhall and leave when it becomes inundated with such speech and advertisers don't want it either. Unsurprisingly most advertisers don't want "sponsored by me" next to "burn the Jews". It's simply not tenable to build stable non-extremist online communities based on those principles. And forcing people to join or stay in such communities is in fact abrogating their freedom association and speech. Heck at that point why not just get rid of the block/mute buttons while we're at it? We aren't standing in the way of people saying them. They can say them all they like. We're standing in the way of building communities with them. That's why as @Cmaier the Mastadon solution is different. You can join a server and its rules. Effectively it's like its own independent Discord or email server, but people can choose to federate or not. So if a server is overrun by Nazis with rules that allow that, no one else _has_ to federate with them. The server can be blocked by the other communities that don't want to deal with that. Basically anything from hosting to security services to social media don't _have_ to make it easy for such speech to be spread. That is not a requirement of the 1st amendment nor what it was meant for. It is meant to keep you safe no matter how odious or unpopular your speech is, it is not meant to force other people to even acknowledge your speech if they don't wish to.


----------



## dada_dave

Herdfan said:


> Sorry, but are there really worse things than pedophiles?




As @Eric said the point is they're not actually pedophiles and whatever violations they did commit to cover for the ban (Edit: and that's if they did commit any infractions in the first place, in some cases it's not clear that any actually were) are far less egregious than the accounts that are being let back on committed.


----------



## bwinter88

Cmaier said:


> In 5 billion years or so the Sun will explode.  Long before then we could get hit by a planet-killing gamma ray burst or rock.  A disease that spreads like covid but is far more deadly could come along at any time.
> 
> There are plenty of reasons why it makes sense for humanity to spread out onto other planets, and Mars is the first step.



Sorry, what? Disaster from human-caused climate change is literally happening right now. You want to justify spending the resources on spaceflight instead because the sun will explode in 5 billion years? You're naming apocalyptic events with a chance of occurring 1 every 500 million years, why should we care about that right now with climate change threatening doom within the next hundred or so?

This is absolutely horrific logic. If we can't learn to maintain the planets we occupy, spreading out to other ones is pointless. It's the difference between being a civilization and a planetary disease.


----------



## Cmaier

bwinter88 said:


> Sorry, what? Disaster from human-caused climate change is literally happening right now. You want to justify spending the resources on spaceflight instead because the sun will explode in 5 billion years?
> 
> This is absolutely horrific logic. If we can't learn to maintain the planets we occupy, spreading out to other ones is pointless. It's the difference between being a civilization and a planetary disease.



Solving one problem doesn’t mean you have to ignore other problems. We could get destroyed by a gamma ray burst tomorrow, for all we know.


----------



## bwinter88

Cmaier said:


> Solving one problem doesn’t mean you have to ignore other problems. We could get destroyed by a gamma ray burst tomorrow, for all we know.



Hmm, no, we won't. I can say that because the chances of a civilization-ending gamma ray burst are comfortably close to zero in the next 24 hours. Climate change on the other hand is a near certainty. If Musk wants to save humanity, where are his efforts to fight climate change? Show me.


----------



## turbineseaplane

(deleted)


----------



## Cmaier

bwinter88 said:


> Hmm, no, we won't. I can say that because the chances of a civilization-ending gamma ray burst are comfortably close to zero in the next 24 hours. Climate change on the other hand is a near certainty. If Musk wants to save humanity, where are his efforts to fight climate change? Show me.




None of us actually know the chance of a rock or burst hitting us on any given day, but putting that aside, why is it Musk’s responsibility to solve your preferred problem? It’s his money, and I won’t begrudge him for using it to solve a real problem, even if I don’t agree that it’s the most pressing problem of the moment.

If nobody is allowed to spend any effort or money to solve the problem that earth will inevitably become uninhabitable until all of the more immediate problems are solved, then it will never be addressed.  We will always have problems that seem more important, until it’s too late.  That, by the way, is how we got to where we are on climate change.  Even people who believed in the science had other, more pressing concerns.  Why should we switch to electric cars when we have high unemployment and people can’t afford to eat?


----------



## turbineseaplane

Cmaier said:


> If nobody is allowed to spend any effort or money to solve the problem that earth will inevitably become uninhabitable until all of the more immediate problems are solved, then it will never be addressed.




It’s the difference between putting out a house fire and worrying about when the roof needs to be replaced in 30 years.

The second concern won’t matter without dealing with the first immediately

It’s not a perfect comparison of course, as nothing really is…
Main point being.. no reason to worry about stuff so way way way off because it won’t matter if we don’t deal with pressing stuff now


----------



## Cmaier

turbineseaplane said:


> It’s the difference between putting out a house fire and worrying about when the roof needs to be replaced in 30 years.



Ok. But if Musk is a roofer and not a fireman, let him worry about the roof and let others worry about the fire. It’s truly bizarre to me that anyone thinks they have a right to demand that Musk spend his money the way they want him to.  There will always be fires. The roof will always need replacing. Let‘s solve both problems.


----------



## turbineseaplane

Cmaier said:


> Ok. But if Musk is a roofer and not a fireman, let him worry about the roof and let others worry about the fire. It’s truly bizarre to me that anyone thinks they have a right to demand that Musk spend his money the way they want him to.  There will always be fires. The roof will always need replacing. Let‘s solve both problems.




Ok. Fair enough. 
Let’s not tell Elon what he has to do…I agree totally 

But, the roofer should get down and help in the fire fight because we don’t need him at all if we don’t solve the fire


----------



## bwinter88

Cmaier said:


> Ok. But if Musk is a roofer and not a fireman, let him worry about the roof and let others worry about the fire. It’s truly bizarre to me that anyone thinks they have a right to demand that Musk spend his money the way they want him to.  There will always be fires. The roof will always need replacing. Let‘s solve both problems.



How can you make this argument seriously? Didn't Musk throw his hat into trying to solve the Thai cave rescue? Solving traffic with tunnels? But somehow climate change is out of his wheelhouse? How dare humans have the gall to demand someone with vast resources devote them to saving the planet.

Enough already with the bad faith arguments. The science on climate change is crystal clear and the problem is immediate, and you know it. Humans on this planet will be toast long before a gamma ray or asteroid if we don't do something, right now. The risks are orders of magnitude apart, stop insulting us with these responses. Some humility and self-awareness would be appreciated so we know we're not just arguing with a robot.


----------



## turbineseaplane

Ultimately I just believe we should expect more of a billionaire like Elon

We need his resources and attention on the most pressing problems not whatever fantasies get him excited on a whim or “seem cool” 

Concerns about living in different solar systems in 900,000 years are not pressing issues


----------



## Pumbaa

bwinter88 said:


> Didn't Musk throw his hat into trying to solve the Thai cave rescue? Solving traffic with tunnels? But somehow climate change is out of his wheelhouse? How dare humans have the gall to demand someone with vast resources devote them to saving the planet.



Well… If he tackles climate change as well as he did the cave rescue, traffic problems, or managing Twitter, we’re probably better of without his “assistance”.


----------



## Cmaier

bwinter88 said:


> How can you make this argument seriously? Didn't Musk throw his hat into trying to solve the Thai cave rescue? Solving traffic with tunnels? But somehow climate change is out of his wheelhouse? How dare humans have the gall to demand someone with vast resources devote them to saving the planet.
> 
> Enough already with the bad faith arguments. The science on climate change is crystal clear and the problem is immediate, and you know it. Humans on this planet will be toast long before a gamma ray or asteroid if we don't do something, right now. The risks are orders of magnitude apart, stop insulting us with these responses. Some humility and self-awareness would be appreciated so we know we're not just arguing with a robot.




What bad faith arguments? Please explain how any of my arguments was in bad faith?  

As for your demand that he “save the planet,” do you make the same demand of every rich person?  And I guess the fact that, if not for him, electric cars would be nowhere right now is not him “saving the planet?” Between solar panels and electric cars, how much carbon is he responsible for removing from the atmosphere?

He‘s a bad person in many ways, but picking on a guy who popularized electric cars and runs one of the biggest solar panel companies for also spending money on a company that hopes to eventually create the technology to allow mankind to go to other planets and not spending ALL his money on climate change is stupid.


----------



## fooferdoggie

Herdfan said:


> Sorry, but are there really worse things than pedophiles?



trump haters of course anti woke wokers.


----------



## Yoused

bwinter88 said:


> But somehow climate change is out of his wheelhouse?




Given that Musk has shown absolutely zero interest in addressing climate change an any real way, I would say that, yes, it is not in his wheelhouse. Tesla is just a profit-making enterprise to him, the theoretical benefits to the world climate merely a hypable selling point. Quite frankly, I am a bit relieved that he has not made an effort to fix the climate problem, given how his efforts to improve twitter – a much less complex system – have played out.


----------



## bwinter88

Cmaier said:


> What bad faith arguments? Please explain how any of my arguments was in bad faith?
> 
> As for your demand that he “save the planet,” do you make the same demand of every rich person?  And I guess the fact that, if not for him, electric cars would be nowhere right now is not him “saving the planet?” Between solar panels and electric cars, how much carbon is he responsible for removing from the atmosphere?
> 
> He‘s a bad person in many ways, but picking on a guy who popularized electric cars and runs one of the biggest solar panel companies for also spending money on a company that hopes to eventually create the technology to allow mankind to go to other planets and not spending ALL his money on climate change is stupid.




Yes, we make the same demand of every rich person who fancies themselves a problem solver. As inhabitants of _this_ planet, we are of course fully entitled to demand our rich overlords focus their attention on bettering it for the rest of us. To bring this thread full circle, what problems does buying Twitter solve? Looking forward to your response.

And by bad faith arguments, I mean I respect you enough to assume you don't actually expect anyone here to buy into your equivocating gamma rays with climate change as comparable threats to Earth.


----------



## Cmaier

bwinter88 said:


> Yes, we make the same demand of every rich person who fancies themselves a problem solver. To bring this thread full circle, what problems does buying Twitter solve? As inhabitants of this planet we are of course fully entitled to demand our rich overlords focus their attention on bettering it.
> 
> And by bad faith arguments, I mean I respect you enough to assume you don't actually expect anyone here to buy into your equivocating gamma rays with climate change as comparable threats to Earth.




You are making strawman arguments. I never said they were “comparable threats.” I said it was a problem that needs to be solved, and I stand by that. Earth will become uninhabitable someday. Now is as good a time as any to start working on what we are going to do about that.

As for your first question - now you are demanding that EVERY dollar a rich guy spends has to be to solve some problem you approve of?  I don’t like the guy, but he almost single-handedly moved the auto industry off of fossil fuels.  He has created products like solar roofs, battery packs, and mounting systems for traditional solar panels that has resulted in 10’s of thousands of homes and businesses getting off the fossil fuel grid.  He runs a company that reduced the cost of space launches by an order of magnitude or so, and which gave the U.S. a viable launch system so that we (the U.S.) don’t have to rely on Russia and don’t have to cave to their demands about other things.  In doing so he managed to make rockets which land vertically, which people thought would never work. 

So he spent some cash on twitter and is spending some cash on going to mars.  I won’t begrudge him that.  He claims that both of these are to solve problems (free speech and the inevitable uninhabitability of earth - I disagree that the first is a problem but I agree that the second will be).  The fact that you think those are less pressing than the problem you prefer he focusses on doesn’t detract from the fact that he’s probably responsible for reducing carbon emissions as much as anyone else you can name. 

And as I’ve stated repeatedly, there are other problems that need to be solved, and I don’t see it as a moral failing for him to try and solve them too.


----------



## turbineseaplane

Cmaier said:


> Earth will become uninhabitable someday. Now is as good a time as any to start working on what we are going to do about that.




That's where you're going astray _(from my perspective anyhow)_

"Now" is not the time for any of that when we have existential threats that need solving, like "now"


----------



## bwinter88

Cmaier said:


> You are making strawman arguments. I never said they were “comparable threats.” I said it was a problem that needs to be solved, and I stand by that. Earth will become uninhabitable someday. Now is as good a time as any to start working on what we are going to do about that.



No, the time to work on that is _after_ we solve the problems that will affect us long before then. Like, _obviously_?


----------



## Cmaier

turbineseaplane said:


> That's where you're going astray _(from my perspective anyhow)_
> 
> "Now" is not the time for any of that when we have existential threats that need solving, like "now"




There are *always* existential threats that need solving “now.”  Again, that’s why we didn’t address climate change in time.


----------



## Cmaier

bwinter88 said:


> No, now is *not* as good a time as any. The time to work on that is _after_ we solve the problems that will affect us long before then. This is common sense.



Common sense is neither common, nor sense.


----------



## turbineseaplane

Cmaier said:


> There are *always* existential threats that need solving “now.”  Again, that’s why we didn’t address climate change in time.




Massive disinformation campaigns and political purchasing by vested interests is why we haven’t made great progress yet.

And it’s not too late. The sooner we get going in the right direction the better off we’ll be.

We can’t lament the score of the game at this point .. we just need to start scoring points.


----------



## Cmaier

turbineseaplane said:


> Massive disinformation campaigns by vested interests is why we haven’t made great progress yet.
> 
> And it’s not too late. The sooner we get going in the right direction the better off we’ll be.
> 
> We can’t lament the score of the game at this point .. we just need to start scoring points.



Fine, whatever. You are still picking on the one guy who has actually done something tangible to improve the situation, just because he worries about other things, too.  It’s pretty ridiculous.


----------



## turbineseaplane

Cmaier said:


> Fine, whatever. You are still picking on the one guy who has actually done something tangible to improve the situation, just because he worries about other things, too.  It’s pretty ridiculous.




It’s incredible how much credit you seem to give him personally
Anyhow. This is fruitless…moving along


----------



## Cmaier

Meanwhile, Musk must be re-thinking his stance re: Apple - he deleted the “going to war” tweet.









						Elon Musk Is Feuding With Apple About a Lot of Things
					

Musk ranted against Tim Cook about everything from Apple stopping ads on Twitter to its 30% cut of App Store purchases.




					gizmodo.com


----------



## Cmaier

turbineseaplane said:


> It’s incredible how much credit you seem to give him personally
> Anyhow. This is fruitless…moving along




Wow. What a double standard. It’s vital that he spends billions on climate change instead of mars. But if you point out the billions he already spent on climate change, then that’s giving him to much credit.

So I guess with you guys the rule is you need to spend every penny of your personal fortune only on climate change, but when you do so, you don’t deserve any credit.  Where do I sign up for that deal?


----------



## bwinter88

Cmaier said:


> There are *always* existential threats that need solving “now.”  Again, that’s why we didn’t address climate change in time.



 Wouldn't more public pressure on industry leaders have solved it sooner?

You're so close, and yet, _woosh_


----------



## Pumbaa

Cmaier said:


> Meanwhile, Musk must be re-thinking his stance re: Apple - he deleted the “going to war” tweet.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Elon Musk Is Feuding With Apple About a Lot of Things
> 
> 
> Musk ranted against Tim Cook about everything from Apple stopping ads on Twitter to its 30% cut of App Store purchases.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> gizmodo.com



Good riddance!

Considering that Musk is aware of the war in Ukraine, “going to war” was extremely bad phrasing, meme or not.


----------



## bwinter88

Cmaier said:


> Wow. What a double standard. It’s vital that he spends billions on climate change instead of mars. But if you point out the billions he already spent on climate change, then that’s giving him to much credit.
> 
> So I guess with you guys the rule is you need to spend every penny of your personal fortune only on climate change, but when you do so, you don’t deserve any credit.  Where do I sign up for that deal?



When you rewrite other people's arguments and then argue against your own invention, you're just arguing with yourself. Nobody ever said anything like that.

We're criticizing Musk for his follies and refusal to focus on climate change. Even he has admitted in interviews his intentions with Tesla were to move people off of fossil fuels because they are a finite resource, not because they are warming the planet. And we are criticizing you for your surely jocular suggestion that we need to prioritize relocation of humanity from asteroids and gamma rays over solutions to the preventable and very immediate climate change facing us. Surely even you can admit these are perfectly reasonable criticisms.


----------



## Eric

Pumbaa said:


> Good riddance!
> 
> Considering that Musk is aware of the war in Ukraine, “going to war” was extremely bad phrasing, meme or not.



So far it's just Musk attacking and looking like a madman while Apple isn't saying a word, they have nothing to lose with this strategy IMO and should stick to it. Meanwhile, the world is seeing the real Elon Musk show himself and it's not pretty.


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

Herdfan said:


> Sorry, but are there really worse things than pedophiles?




Flutists.


----------



## Eric

It's fun watching the Musk defenders try to justify his actions over on MR. Screenshot because there's a better chance than not that they will delete the post over there.


----------



## MEJHarrison

Eric said:


> It's fun watching the Musk defenders try to justify his actions over on MR. Screenshot because there's a better chance than not that they will delete the post over there.




I read that thread yesterday.  I was cold and needed a good dumpster fire to warm up next to.  It didn't disappoint.


----------



## Pumbaa

Eric said:


> So far it's just Musk attacking and looking like a madman while Apple isn't saying a word, they have nothing to lose with this strategy IMO and should stick to it. Meanwhile, the world is seeing the real Elon Musk show himself and it's not pretty.



Well, not the far-right nutcases, they see something different… (Example, tweet and replies)

Elon Musk said that Apple wants to ban Twitter so that’s the truth. If Apple were to say something contrary they would be accused of lying. Can’t win with those people.


----------



## Eric

Pumbaa said:


> Well, not the far right nutcases, they see something different… (Example, tweet and replies)
> 
> Elon Musk said that Apple wants to ban Twitter so that’s the truth. If Apple were to say something contrary they would be accused of lying. Can’t win with those people.



Exactly, you won't placate these people so there's no point. Best way to handle a troll is to ignore them and look at how it has Musk foaming at the mouth, he's his own worst enemy.


----------



## Yoused

Chew Toy McCoy said:


> Flutists.



_He hears the silence howling
Catches angels as they fall
And the all time winner
Has got him by the balls
He thanks god he stole the handle
And the train, it won't stop going, no way to slow down
No way to slow down
No way to slow down
_​


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

Yoused said:


> _He hears the silence howling_​_Catches angels as they fall_​_And the all time winner_​_Has got him by the balls_​_He thanks god he stole the handle_​_And the train, it won't stop going, no way to slow down_​_No way to slow down_​_No way to slow down_​​




  Pure evil.


----------



## Cmaier

DiSantis says Twitter gets to have free speech, but Apple does not.









						Governor declares Apple should face Congress if Twitter is pulled | AppleInsider
					

In an appearance on Tuesday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis declared that if Apple removes Twitter from the App Store it should face antitrust penalties for violating free speech.




					appleinsider.com


----------



## fooferdoggie

Cmaier said:


> DiSantis says Twitter gets to have free speech, but Apple does not.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Governor declares Apple should face Congress if Twitter is pulled | AppleInsider
> 
> 
> In an appearance on Tuesday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis declared that if Apple removes Twitter from the App Store it should face antitrust penalties for violating free speech.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> appleinsider.com



I think you mean deathsantos wants to be the only one that able to limit free speech.


----------



## Macky-Mac

Cmaier said:


> DiSantis says Twitter gets to have free speech, but Apple does not.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Governor declares Apple should face Congress if Twitter is pulled | AppleInsider
> 
> 
> In an appearance on Tuesday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis declared that if Apple removes Twitter from the App Store it should face antitrust penalties for violating free speech.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> appleinsider.com




recently Musk has become quite vocal in supporting DeSantis for president, so this isn't surprising


----------



## Cmaier

Macky-Mac said:


> recently Musk has become quite vocal in supporting DeSantis for president, so this isn't surprising




It just amuses me that these goons don’t understand that if you COMPEL speech, that’s also a violation of freedom of speech.


----------



## dada_dave

Cmaier said:


> It just amuses me that these goons don’t understand that if you COMPEL speech, that’s also a violation of freedom of speech.



I bet some of them know and just don’t care. You can draw your own conclusions as to which is worse.


----------



## Pumbaa

The people have spoken …


Tweet link


Tweet link


----------



## lizkat

Should fans of Apple's walled garden chip in $3 apiece to ship Elon Musk to the moon?  

(Asking for some friends of Tim Cook.)


----------



## Cmaier

When you submit an app to the Tesla App Store, what cut does Tesla take?

Oh, wait…


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

Cmaier said:


> When you submit an app to the Tesla App Store, what cut does Tesla take?
> 
> Oh, wait…




Just speculating here, but aren’t the days of becoming App Store rich long dead?  Not because of Apple’s cut but because of over saturation. The games alone are highly redundant and I’m pretty good with the 35 photo editing apps I already have.


----------



## Cmaier

Chew Toy McCoy said:


> Just speculating here, but aren’t the days of becoming App Store rich long dead?  Not because of Apple’s cut but because of over saturation. The games alone are highly redundant and I’m pretty good with the 35 photo editing apps I already have.



Yep. I made a lot of money in the first few years of the App Store, then it fell off fast.


----------



## fooferdoggie

Cmaier said:


> It just amuses me that these goons don’t understand that if you COMPEL speech, that’s also a violation of freedom of speech.



or limit frees speech in a act of making speech free as In the Florida goon and don't say gay crap.


----------



## Cmaier

Elon Musk is delaying Twitter’s paid verification to avoid Apple’s 30 percent cut
					

And the price is going up by a penny, to $8 even




					www.theverge.com
				




This article is confusing - I don’t see how ”delaying” twitter blue solves Musk’s problem.  On the other hand, if the point is that you won’t be able to purchase twitter blue in-app, good luck with that. I’m sure lots of people want to give their credit card information to the company that lost data on 5 million accounts and which laid off so many of their security and data privacy people.


----------



## Eric

Cmaier said:


> Elon Musk is delaying Twitter’s paid verification to avoid Apple’s 30 percent cut
> 
> 
> And the price is going up by a penny, to $8 even
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.theverge.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This article is confusing - I don’t see how ”delaying” twitter blue solves Musk’s problem.  On the other hand, if the point is that you won’t be able to purchase twitter blue in-app, good luck with that. I’m sure lots of people want to give their credit card information to the company that lost data on 5 million accounts and which laid off so many of their security and data privacy people.



If you figure out how this benefits him or hurts Apple let us know. This guy has totally gone off the rails and is in meltdown mode.


----------



## Pumbaa

Cmaier said:


> Elon Musk is delaying Twitter’s paid verification to avoid Apple’s 30 percent cut
> 
> 
> And the price is going up by a penny, to $8 even
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.theverge.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This article is confusing - I don’t see how ”delaying” twitter blue solves Musk’s problem.  On the other hand, if the point is that you won’t be able to purchase twitter blue in-app, good luck with that. I’m sure lots of people want to give their credit card information to the company that lost data on 5 million accounts and which laid off so many of their security and data privacy people.



Why wait? 70% of $8 is quite a lot more than 100% of nothing, but what do I know, I‘ve never spent $44 billion on anything.


----------



## Citysnaps




----------



## Cmaier

From the Financial Times. Apparently Musk thinks that calling CEOs of advertisers and berating them is a good strategy.


----------



## KingOfPain

Alexander Vindman is a class act, while Elon Musk is the class clown.


----------



## Eric

Cmaier said:


> From the Financial Times. Apparently Musk thinks that calling CEOs of advertisers and berating them is a good strategy.
> 
> View attachment 19729



Personally calling to berate them because he's losing? It doesn't get much more Trumponian than that.

BTW I logged on under and old account I hadn't used in years this morning for the first time in weeks to try and figure out why my Amazon Echo is acting up and the feed is completely nonsensical, mostly Asian (even though I'm in the US region) and not targeted what so over, is it just me? Seems like a very different world there now.


----------



## turbineseaplane

"Calling CEO's to berate them for not advertising"

...Yeah Elon, that should totally make them want to get _right_ back to paying you for ADs on Twitter


----------



## Eric

Yeah I'm guessing having your ad randomly appearing in the comments of a holocaust denier doesn't sit well. He's essentially stripped any and all oversight, firing Account Executives (the life blood of any company) so advertisers have no insight into their stats nor anyone to talk to about it.

So far Elon's response of "But it's free speech!" to them doesn't seem to be resonating well.


----------



## dada_dave

Eric said:


> Personally calling to berate them because he's losing? It doesn't get much more Trumponian than that.
> 
> BTW I logged on under and old account I hadn't used in years this morning for the first time in weeks to try and figure out why my Amazon Echo is acting up and the feed is completely nonsensical, mostly Asian (even though I'm in the US region) and not targeted what so over, is it just me? Seems like a very different world there now.



Mine is fine. Paranoid but you double checked your own posting history to make sure some scammer/hacker hasn’t taken over the account? Low probability, but they like to do that with accounts that haven’t posted in awhile. 

The only weird glitch that I’ve noticed since the take over is on the mobile website the internal Twitter back button seems to be disabled for me for the last few days - an annoyance but that’s about it. Others have noticed more and supposedly in some countries Twitter is very broken though so mileage may vary.


----------



## turbineseaplane

Good article from Ed Zitron on Kara Swisher _(access journalist extraordinaire)_ and her recent "flip" from being a Musk sycophant to critic









						Manifesting History
					

It has been just under a week since I wrote about the year of finding out, where poorly thought-out assumptions and magical thinking have begun to erode (or outright destroy) supposedly unstoppable forces. Elon Musk, ever-vigilant for an opportunity to be destructive, has decided to “




					ez.substack.com


----------



## turbineseaplane

_Musk has been an irascible shithead for many years, but his overwhelming clout with the media meant that he could, effectively push through any idea his little mind desired. A flamethrower? Sure. $420 Tequila? Of course. Landing humans on Mars? He said 2022, but everybody was fine with saying “within five years” or “2029.”

Musk has gotten away with a mixture of half-truths and outright lies enough times that he believed that he had the popularity to do anything, another condition afflicted upon those with billions of dollars. When he bought Twitter, I truly think that he believed everybody would be behind him, because up until that point most of the media had been. Kara Swisher gave an interview in May about how smart Elon was. Jessica Lessin of The Information described the acquisition as “like watching a business school case study on how to make money on the internet.” Hell, he was able to con banks and investors into raising $13 billion for him. Musk still had the ability to manipulate the media - and still does, in the sense that he can still get a bunch of stories about literally anything he does - but couldn’t change the reality that he did not have a plan for the website that he tied his entire financial future to._


----------



## turbineseaplane

I'm sorry - Musk is a piece of s***
Has been for a long time, in a lot of ways, and much of it is only finally getting talked about openly

_"So the Hyperloop, for example, he admitted to his biographer that the reason *the Hyperloop* was announced—even though he had no intention of pursuing it—*was to try to disrupt the California high-speed rail project and to get in the way of that actually succeeding.*

I would say the Boring Company just kind of slides in there as *a way to distract from efforts to improve public transit* and have a greater focus on transit as a means of solving these problems with the automobile. Instead of, say, building subway systems he could say, look we’re going to build these really cheap tunnels, you’ll be able to take your car into it. And later he said, why also make it so people who don’t have cars can use it, too. And that promise doesn’t exist any longer either. And that’s really good for him as an automaker."









						Silicon Valley's Push Into Transportation Has Been a Miserable Failure
					

The titans of tech brought plenty of disruption to our broken transportation system but delivered little in the way of innovation.




					gizmodo.com
				



_


----------



## turbineseaplane

Not just Apple, but the EU also
The world is quickly tiring of the antics and behavior Elon
People are increasingly "done" with you thinking you can do whatever you want









						EU warns Musk that Twitter faces ban over content moderation -FT
					

The European Union has threatened Elon Musk's Twitter with a ban unless the billionaire abides by its strict rules on content moderation, setting up a regulatory battle over the future of the social media platform, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.




					www.reuters.com


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

Facts.


----------



## Nycturne

turbineseaplane said:


> _"So the Hyperloop, for example, he admitted to his biographer that the reason *the Hyperloop* was announced—even though he had no intention of pursuing it—*was to try to disrupt the California high-speed rail project and to get in the way of that actually succeeding.*
> 
> I would say the Boring Company just kind of slides in there as *a way to distract from efforts to improve public transit* and have a greater focus on transit as a means of solving these problems with the automobile. Instead of, say, building subway systems he could say, look we’re going to build these really cheap tunnels, you’ll be able to take your car into it. And later he said, why also make it so people who don’t have cars can use it, too. And that promise doesn’t exist any longer either. And that’s really good for him as an automaker."
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Silicon Valley's Push Into Transportation Has Been a Miserable Failure
> 
> 
> The titans of tech brought plenty of disruption to our broken transportation system but delivered little in the way of innovation.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> gizmodo.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _




Honestly, if we want to talk about Musk being a distraction from efforts to combat Climate Change, these are much more relevant, IMO. Car dependency, especially in urban cores, is a huge drain. On the city coffers, on people's time, on efficient land use, and uses more energy (fuel, electricity) than if we provide more alternatives. We bulldozed urban cores to run highways through poor neighborhoods, so I don't buy that we can't fix car dependence in urban cores, and improve land use efficiency to make more housing available. Cites have been made less dense in the 20th century.

Derailing the infrastructure we need to build to make re-densification of urban centers possible _is_ a pressing concern for climate change. And here Musk flat out admits his goals were to derail HSR and metro in the bay area and LA.


----------



## turbineseaplane

Nycturne said:


> And here Musk flat out admits his goals were to derail HSR and metro in the bay area and LA.




Really really disappointing_ (and revealing about his actual intentions and goals)_


----------



## rdrr

turbineseaplane said:


> Really really disappointing_ (and revealing about his actual intentions and goals)_



I whole heartedly detested Musk well before the revelation that he is actually a knuckle dragging bigot at his core.  This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone if we paid a little bit of attention to his prior actions.


----------



## Colstan

Elon Musk has met with Tim Cook at Apple's headquarters.









						Elon Musk Meets With Apple CEO Tim Cook Amid Claims of Twitter App Store Dispute
					

Twitter CEO Elon Musk today met with Apple CEO Tim Cook at the Apple Park campus in Cupertino, California, according to a tweet shared by Musk this...




					www.macrumors.com
				




Clearly they are putting aside their differences so that they can figure out ways to serve us more ads.


----------



## Eric

Colstan said:


> Elon Musk has met with Tim Cook at Apple's headquarters.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Elon Musk Meets With Apple CEO Tim Cook Amid Claims of Twitter App Store Dispute
> 
> 
> Twitter CEO Elon Musk today met with Apple CEO Tim Cook at the Apple Park campus in Cupertino, California, according to a tweet shared by Musk this...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.macrumors.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Clearly they are putting aside their differences so that they can figure out ways to serve us more ads.



Sad to hear this, the only one with a "difference" was the world's richest troll. Tim Cook obviously caved but should've never given that asshole the time of day.


----------



## dada_dave

Eric said:


> Sad to hear this, the only one with a "difference" was the world's richest troll. Tim Cook obviously caved but should've never given that asshole the time of day.




I dunno given Musk was mum about the details of the conversation it could’ve been more along the lines of “this beautiful duck pond is where we drown MFers”


----------



## turbineseaplane

Eric said:


> Tim Cook obviously caved




He did?  
What makes you say that?


----------



## Eric

dada_dave said:


> I dunno given Musk was mum about the details of the conversation it could’ve been more along the lines of “this beautiful duck pond is where we drown MFers”



He probably crashed the front door and demanded that the receptionist get him down there.


----------



## Eric

turbineseaplane said:


> He did?
> What makes you say that?



I mean in just acknowledging him but I'm not sure just how much Elon didn't force it either. We can expect him to probably stay quiet about it though, Elon is the only one gaslighting here and it's because he's losing his ass after ruining Twitter.


----------



## dada_dave

Eric said:


> I mean in just acknowledging him but I'm not sure just how much Elon didn't force it either. We can expect him to probably stay quiet about it though, Elon is the only one gaslighting here and it's because he's losing his ass after ruining Twitter.



Do we actually know Tim Cook was even there? Like the video is just of the Apple Campus with a couple of shadows … it could’ve been Billie the intern. At this point Elon is so low on credibility who the hell knows? I mean chances are of course it is Tim Cook, but Elon’s behavior is getting so (publicly) weird that it’s not out of the ream of possibility …


----------



## Eric

dada_dave said:


> Do we actually know Tim Cook was even there? Like the video is just of the Apple Campus with a couple of shadows … it could’ve been Billie the intern. At this point Elon is so low on credibility who the hell knows? I mean chances are of course it is Tim Cook, but Elon’s behavior is getting so (publicly) weird that it’s not out of the ream of possibility …



This is a great question, I asked over in the MR thread. Seems like nobody from the Apple side has confirmed.


----------



## Colstan

Eric said:


> Sad to hear this, the only one with a "difference" was the world's richest troll. Tim Cook obviously caved but should've never given that asshole the time of day.



Or maybe they're simply having a conversation about this as businessmen. I think the prosaic answer is the most likely one.

Look, I get it, this thread is for venting about how everyone here hates Mr. Musk, not the technicalities of the acquisition, philosophical differences, or business relationships between companies, which I find much more interesting and fruitful to discuss. Since that's not the purpose of this thread, there's no point in my attempts to engage any longer. So, I'll simply leave y'all with this, I hope everyone here finds contentment with your social media choices in the future, regardless of what happens with Twitter.


----------



## dada_dave

Colstan said:


> Or maybe they're simply having a conversation about this as businessmen. I think the prosaic answer is the most likely one.




Sure if it happened that is most likely explanation although again the details would be important.



Colstan said:


> Look, I get it, this thread is for venting about how everyone here hates Mr. Musk, not the technicalities of the acquisition, philosophical differences, or business relationships between companies, which I find much more interesting and fruitful to discuss. Since that's not the purpose of this thread, there's no point in my attempts to engage any longer. So, I'll simply leave y'all with this, I hope everyone here finds contentment with your social media choices in the future, regardless of what happens with Twitter.




Personally I find when the world’s richest* man with huge cult-like following openly embraces fascists under the guise of freedom and the flag, the implications and consequences of that plus the conditions that allowed someone like him, erratic being kind, to become so powerful and influential in the first place are what’s actually interesting and fruitful to discuss. Certainly more important. But you’re right to each his own.

*EDIT: (side note) I am referring to official wealth, if undeclared wealth were included the list of richest people would no doubt change rather dramatically and it's the Putins of the world who would dominate.


----------



## lizkat

More from the FT (yeah, it's paywalled).  The headline was:

"EU and US turn up the heat on Elon Musk over Twitter"​
So to the bottom line there:   Elon had a video chat with Thierry Breton of the European Commission today, about the newish Digital Services Act, which Thierry is charged with implementing.   Musk was basically warned that Twitter must



> adhere to a checklist of rules, including ditching an “arbitrary” approach to reinstating banned users, pursuing disinformation “aggressively” and agreeing to an “extensive independent audit” of the platform by next year.




Elon apparently tried to paper over any potential issues in Twitter's European operations by saying over and over again that he thought the EU's legislation was "very sensible" and should be applied globally.

Not sure how impressive such statements were. He recently closed Twitter's entire Brussels office. 

Anyway if Musk imagines that he can just blow off the EC's plan for an "extensive independent audit" of exactly how Twitter will have managed to comply with the rules, his rude awakening lies in the future.

Meanwhile the USA (through CFIUS, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US) have indicated interest in reviewing assorted aspects of the purchase of Twitter.  CFIUS members include representatives from 16 US government agencies including Defense, Treasury, Commerce, Homeland Security and others.

 Musk is a citizen of the USA but some of the foreign investors have bought interests of $250 million or more and above that level they have access to levels of information in or about Twitter that other investors do not have.  The US is interested in finding out more of what that means.

Those "special" investors include funds owned by Saudis and Qataris, plus the cryptocurrency firm Binance, which was originally based in China, then moved to the Cayman Islands and is known to have shared some of its data with certain Russians.  The concern at the very least is about lending Twitter account details to authoritarian regimes.

More on the above: a piece on 11/1/22 in the WaPo, (paywall removed):  https://wapo.st/3VmXPXE


----------



## Renzatic

Herdfan said:


> Sorry, but are there really worse things than pedophiles?




Yeah. Nazis. They're down there in the bottom of the barrel with the pedophiles.


----------



## Nycturne

Colstan said:


> Or maybe they're simply having a conversation about this as businessmen. I think the prosaic answer is the most likely one.




To be fair, those conversations can also involve Tim Cook laying out the reasons Apple is doing what they are doing, and what Twitter needs to do to allay Apple's concerns here. Much like what apparently happened with Musk's meetings with advertisers.

I'm more surprised that Tim would be personally involved here, as there's others on the senior leadership team that can get down to brass tacks when it comes to App Store policy or advertising spend just as well as Cook, and have been delegated the responsibility to oversee those areas.



Colstan said:


> Look, I get it, this thread is for venting about how everyone here hates Mr. Musk, not the technicalities of the acquisition, philosophical differences, or business relationships between companies, which I find much more interesting and fruitful to discuss. Since that's not the purpose of this thread, there's no point in my attempts to engage any longer. So, I'll simply leave y'all with this, I hope everyone here finds contentment with your social media choices in the future, regardless of what happens with Twitter.




It's become a bit of both, to be honest. Partly because we've gone over a lot of the rest already. It's not exactly news what happened with the Chancery court, or the large debt Twitter is now under that is pushing Musk to engage in vulture capitalism.


----------



## dada_dave

lizkat said:


> More from the FT (yeah, it's paywalled).  The headline was:
> 
> "EU and US turn up the heat on Elon Musk over Twitter"​
> So to the bottom line there:   Elon had a video chat with Thierry Breton of the European Commission today, about the newish Digital Services Act, which Thierry is charged with implementing.   Musk was basically warned that Twitter must
> 
> 
> 
> Elon apparently tried to paper over any potential issues in Twitter's European operations by saying over and over again that he thought the EU's legislation was "very sensible" and should be applied globally.
> 
> Not sure how impressive such statements were. He recently closed Twitter's entire Brussels office.
> 
> Anyway if Musk imagines that he can just blow off the EC's plan for an "extensive independent audit" of exactly how Twitter will have managed to comply with the rules, his rude awakening lies in the future.
> 
> Meanwhile the USA (through CFIUS, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US) have indicated interest in reviewing assorted aspects of the purchase of Twitter.  CFIUS members include representatives from 16 US government agencies including Defense, Treasury, Commerce, Homeland Security and others.
> 
> Musk is a citizen of the USA but some of the foreign investors have bought interests of $250 million or more and above that level they have access to levels of information in or about Twitter that other investors do not have.  The US is interested in finding out more of what that means.
> 
> Those "special" investors include funds owned by Saudis and Qataris, plus the cryptocurrency firm Binance, which was originally based in China, then moved to the Cayman Islands and is known to have shared some of its data with certain Russians.  The concern at the very least is about lending Twitter account details to authoritarian regimes.
> 
> More on the above: a piece on 11/1/22 in the WaPo, (paywall removed):  https://wapo.st/3VmXPXE



Yeah Thierry Breton made it clear from the beginning that “the bird will fly by our rules” after Musk declared that “the bird was free” so this is not a surprise and I don’t think they’re going to be mollified or intimidated by Musk.


----------



## lizkat

Nycturne said:


> I'm more surprised that Tim would be personally involved here, as there's others on the senior leadership team that can get down to brass tacks when it comes to App Store policy or advertising spend just as well as Cook, and have been delegated the responsibility to oversee those areas.




Yeah but in his own eyes Musk is the supreme arbiter so even to get his attention you s/b a CEO...

Cook is just saying Musk's company has an app that's on the app store and so must continue to play by the same rules as anyone else or else, well...   "You've had your tea now, have ye?"

That is an old Scottish saying. It translates roughly to what it says plus "... because I'm not feedin' ye."  and it carries about the same sentiment as a US Southerner saying "well bless your heart."


----------



## dada_dave

lizkat said:


> "You've had your tea now, have ye?"
> 
> That is an old Scottish saying. It translates roughly to what it says plus "... because I'm not feedin' ye."  and it carries about the same sentiment as a US Southerner saying "well bless your heart."



ha! Yup. The version of that expression I heard was “you will have eaten?” And the context of the story as it was relayed to me was quite literal in that case (the unfortunate in question arriving home to a rented room in Edinburgh).


----------



## Pumbaa

dada_dave said:


> Yeah Thierry Breton made it clear from the beginning that “the bird will fly by our rules” after Musk declared that “the bird was free” so this is not a surprise and I don’t think they’re going to be mollified or intimidated by Musk.



Coming soon to a feed near you: Musk tweeting a meme declaring war on EU.


----------



## turbineseaplane

_"Why does the EU hate free speech?"_


----------



## Herdfan

Renzatic said:


> Yeah. Nazis. They're down there in the bottom of the barrel with the pedophiles.




Put a Nazi and pedophile in a Supermax prison and see who comes out alive.  It won't be the pedophile.   Even hard core murders and rapists hate pedophiles.


----------



## Macky-Mac

Herdfan said:


> Put a Nazi and pedophile in a Supermax prison and see who comes out alive.  It won't be the pedophile.   Even hard core murders and rapists hate pedophiles.




so who's worse.....pedophiles or mass shooters who kill school kids?


----------



## Renzatic

Herdfan said:


> Put a Nazi and pedophile in a Supermax prison...




Sounds like a solid plan to me!


----------



## lizkat

turbineseaplane said:


> _"Why does the EU hate free speech?"_
> 
> 
> View attachment 19746




If Musk is stupid enough to laugh off the European Commission's rules,  and fails to follow online content regulation,  then he deserves to end up with the app ban and the fines that Thierry Breton just warned him about today.  The fines can run to 6% of global revenue for preceding financial year.  And, he must allow that EC audit of Twitter's moderation capabilities before summer of 2023. 

Call the potential fines "The Big Mouth Tax."  The EC rules are not avoidable by just saying in the fine print of "terms and conditions"  that the author of a post is responsible for content posted.    Pretty sure none of the co-investors in Musk's Twitter is a fan of any kind of tax really, much less an avoidable one.


----------



## turbineseaplane

@lizkat Yep -- well said

It's actually rather enjoyable to watch him run up against some guardrails in life -- finally


----------



## turbineseaplane

Twitter 2.0: Our continued commitment to the public conversation
					

Twitter’s mission is to promote and protect the public conversation–to be the town square of the internet. For many years, we’ve said that we want to give everyone the power to create and share ideas




					blog.twitter.com


----------



## lizkat

I don't know if this part of Musk's policy is going to be acceptable:

"Our approach to policy enforcement will rely more heavily on *de-amplification of violative content: freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.*"​
That's suggesting that Musk figures if Twitter can suppress initial visibility and quote-tweeting or retweeting of tweeted material that represents illegal content in some countries or for some providers (of net services or vending of the app itself),  the company will not have to remove such content or ban the tweet authors.

So now Musk proposes that one can tweet anything,  but an algo will eyeball it and say _uh yeah maybe not this_ and then somehow will isolate that tweet and prevent it popping up into anyone's feed, or a hashtag, or "trending topics" etc. ?

Great, but then he should not call it "absolute free speech," and anyway it starts to sound a whole lot like old Twitter --but without bans and suspensions--  so not really all that great after all. And obviously not all that foolproof since before Twitter flipped to Musk's ownership, the Trust and Safety group was still working hard at trying to improve moderation and toolboxes for users as well.   If the new algorithms fail, then users end up tweaking filters all day long or just reporting endless abuse of rules.

Not sure that will be acceptable to name-brand advertisers, regulators and companies that are now objecting to how it's been going on Twitter since Musk took over and started his grand experiments.

The EC is likely to chime in w/ "Please let's see the algos, and let's have a demo of how they work."


----------



## dada_dave

turbineseaplane said:


> Twitter 2.0: Our continued commitment to the public conversation
> 
> 
> Twitter’s mission is to promote and protect the public conversation–to be the town square of the internet. For many years, we’ve said that we want to give everyone the power to create and share ideas
> 
> 
> 
> 
> blog.twitter.com






lizkat said:


> I don't know if this part of Musk's policy is going to be acceptable:
> 
> "Our approach to policy enforcement will rely more heavily on *de-amplification of violative content: freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.*"​
> That's suggesting that Musk figures if Twitter can suppress initial visibility and quote-tweeting or retweeting of tweeted material that represents illegal content in some countries or for some providers (of net services or vending of the app itself),  the company will not have to remove such content or ban the tweet authors.
> 
> So now Musk proposes that one can tweet anything,  but an algo will eyeball it and say _uh yeah maybe not this_ and then somehow will isolate that tweet and prevent it popping up into anyone's feed, or a hashtag, or "trending topics" etc. ?
> 
> Great, but then he should not call it "absolute free speech," and anyway it starts to sound a whole lot like old Twitter --but without bans and suspensions--  so not really all that great after all. And obviously not all that foolproof since before Twitter flipped to Musk's ownership, the Trust and Safety group was still working hard at trying to improve moderation and toolboxes for users as well.   If the new algorithms fail, then users end up tweaking filters all day long or just reporting endless abuse of rules.
> 
> Not sure that will be acceptable to name-brand advertisers, regulators and companies that are now objecting to how it's been going on Twitter since Musk took over and started his grand experiments.
> 
> The EC is likely to chime in w/ "Please let's see the algos, and let's have a demo of how they work."




Not to mention:



> Our Trust & Safety team continues its diligent work to keep the platform safe from hateful conduct, abusive behavior, and any violation of Twitter's rules. *The team remains strong and well-resourced*, and automated detection plays an increasingly important role in eliminating abuse.




Which is very clearly not true. Also:



> *First, none of our policies have changed.* Our approach to policy enforcement will rely more heavily on de-amplification of violative content: freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.




Uh huh. Right. That ain't what's been said by Musk or the people who were told to review those policies.



> And we will listen to you, the people who make Twitter what it is: the town square of the internet.




Yay more "vox populi vox dei" Twitter polls which are clearly not intended to cover for Musk doing exactly what he intended to do all along. Edit /s


----------



## Eric

Ouch!


Elon eviscerated from
      RealTwitterAccounts


----------



## Edd

Colstan said:


> Or maybe they're simply having a conversation about this as businessmen. I think the prosaic answer is the most likely one.
> 
> Look, I get it, this thread is for venting about how everyone here hates Mr. Musk, not the technicalities of the acquisition, philosophical differences, or business relationships between companies, which I find much more interesting and fruitful to discuss. Since that's not the purpose of this thread, there's no point in my attempts to engage any longer. So, I'll simply leave y'all with this, I hope everyone here finds contentment with your social media choices in the future, regardless of what happens with Twitter.



Indeed, you routinely preface your posts about how neutral you are and what a minefield you’re posting into. While the rest of us are wild eyed leftists and we need to understand how clear-eyed you are compared to us. 

No need, man. We get it. You see the truth of things. Got it.


----------



## turbineseaplane

@Eric

Dayum.. That tweet reply to Elon


----------



## dada_dave

In related news:









						Anti-Semite Kanye West to buy Parler
					

Every time a rich guy gets his racist rants blocked by Twitter, seems he has to buy his own social networking company.   This will end well, I’m sure.




					talkedabout.com
				




Meanwhile Elon’s reaction to Parler backing out of the deal because of Kanye’s antisemitism:






This was a month ago:






Apparently there’s also one with him, Trump, and Kanye as three musketeers owning all the social media too.


----------



## dada_dave

dada_dave said:


> In related news:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Anti-Semite Kanye West to buy Parler
> 
> 
> Every time a rich guy gets his racist rants blocked by Twitter, seems he has to buy his own social networking company.   This will end well, I’m sure.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> talkedabout.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Meanwhile Elon’s reaction to Parler backing out of the deal because of Kanye’s antisemitism:
> 
> 
> View attachment 19770
> 
> This was a month ago:
> 
> View attachment 19771
> 
> 
> Apparently there’s also one with him, Trump, and Kanye as three musketeers owning all the social media too.



Apparently now they’re no longer best buds, Kanye’s been banned (Edit: or maybe just suspended, unclear) - ostensibly for inciting violence for posting a swastika inside a Star of David but probably actually for this:





Ahhhhh … this is just ... I can’t even keep up with these nut jobs.


----------



## Eric

Watching the rich eat their own, they should make it into a reality TV show that I'll never watch.


----------



## turbineseaplane

Are the advertisers excited to come back yet?


----------



## dada_dave

turbineseaplane said:


> Are the advertisers excited to come back yet?
> 
> View attachment 19786



Probably not



			https://mobile.twitter.com/aravosis/status/1598721692364410887
		


[Edit: preview isn’t coming up for me, so here’s a quote:



> Elon Musk just let a neo-Nazi white supremacist leader back on Twitter.




And he’s not referring to Kanye]









						Hate Speech’s Rise on Twitter Is Unprecedented, Researchers Find
					

Problematic content and formerly barred accounts have increased sharply in the short time since Elon Musk took over, researchers said.




					www.nytimes.com


----------



## Edd

turbineseaplane said:


> Are the advertisers excited to come back yet?
> 
> View attachment 19786



Advertisers = free speech opponents whose $ Twitter counts on and Elon publicly criticizes for not giving Twitter business. I’ve a lot to learn from Elon, I always thought you didn’t openly challenge the client publicly.


----------



## turbineseaplane

This is going just great /s









I swear some of these Fox "News" screenshots look like something out of the Command & Conquer games or something


----------



## Eric

dada_dave said:


> Probably not
> 
> 
> 
> https://mobile.twitter.com/aravosis/status/1598721692364410887
> 
> 
> 
> [Edit: preview isn’t coming up for me, so here’s a quote:
> 
> 
> 
> And he’s not referring to Kanye]
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Hate Speech’s Rise on Twitter Is Unprecedented, Researchers Find
> 
> 
> Problematic content and formerly barred accounts have increased sharply in the short time since Elon Musk took over, researchers said.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.nytimes.com



You can link to tweets or post screenshots but they'll no longer be displayed inline here at this site, here's the thread on it.


----------



## Eric

Good guys on both sides Trumpism at its finest.


----------



## Eric

Twitter is losing 1.5 million users per month at this point as Mastodon continues to grow.









						Migration to other social media platforms shows no signs of slowing following Elon Musk's chaotic takeover at Twitter, report says
					

Since Elon Musk's takeover, Mastodon account names have been added to the Twitter bios of more than 90,000 users, according to a report.




					www.businessinsider.com
				




Migration to other social media platforms shows no signs of slowing following Elon Musk's chaotic takeover at Twitter, report says​
A new report published on Friday found that the #TwitterMigration shows no signs of slowing.
In the midst of Elon Musk's Twitter takeover, users are joining other social networks like Mastodon.
Mastodon is growing by approximately 1.5 million new users per month, as per Dewey Digital.


----------



## dada_dave

An interesting pair of articles:









						What’s Going on With Twitter’s Trust & Safety Policy?
					

The status of trust and safety efforts at Elon Musk's Twitter are contested, writes John Perrino.




					techpolicy.press
				












						Hello! You’ve Been Referred Here Because You’re Wrong About Twitter And Hunter Biden’s Laptop
					

Hello! Someone has referred you to this post because you’ve said something quite wrong about Twitter and how it handled something to do with Hunter Biden’s laptop. If you’re new h…




					www.techdirt.com
				




Basically a good synopsis of what’s happening so far as content moderation after Elon as well as Elon’s efforts to gin up controversy and keep eyeballs on Twitter feeds (but also relates to how content moderation worked before Musk).


----------



## Eric

Not a fan of Breed but she's right to bust him on this, anyone who has had to even replace a sink in their homes in SF has to go through all sorts of regulations and permits. Musk is just an entitled asshole who does what he wants without following any of the same rules the rest of us do.









						Musk Slams San Francisco Mayor for Probe of Bedrooms at Twitter
					

Elon Musk is sparring with Twitter Inc.’s hometown of San Francisco after turning some space at the company’s headquarters into makeshift bedrooms, a possible violation of city building codes.




					www.bloomberg.com
				



Musk Spars With San Francisco Over Probe of Bedrooms at Twitter​
Company has converted spaces at office into sleeping areas
Billionaire slams Mayor London Breed over fentanyl in city


----------



## lizkat

Eric said:


> Twitter is losing 1.5 million users per month at this point as Mastodon continues to grow.




 I admit I've not even been checking into Twitter OR Mastodon lately as I got tired of the whole focus in social media (of any brand) on good ol' Elon Musk.    I find it hilarious though that a bunch of people I know who used to be on Twitter every day are now relying on one or two friends who still use Twitter and screengrab the tweets (in case they disappear?) for posts to the rest of the crowd via their FB accounts. 

Me, without a FB setup, well I rely on email from a pal who in turn takes screengrabs of occasional FB posts from her timeline.    So I'm seeing Twitter through increasing layers of opacity...  and still throwing it all away bc it's still all tweets about Elon Musk.

Wake me up when the Twitter changes hands again or Elon melts down and takes a break from work.


----------



## Eric

lizkat said:


> I admit I've not even been checking into Twitter OR Mastodon lately as I got tired of the whole focus in social media (of any brand) on good ol' Elon Musk.    I find it hilarious though that a bunch of people I know who used to be on Twitter every day are now relying on one or two friends who still use Twitter and screengrab the tweets (in case they disappear?) for posts to the rest of the crowd via their FB accounts.
> 
> Me, without a FB setup, well I rely on email from a pal who in turn takes screengrabs of occasional FB posts from her timeline.    So I'm seeing Twitter through increasing layers of opacity...  and still throwing it all away bc it's still all tweets about Elon Musk.
> 
> Wake me up when the Twitter changes hands again or Elon melts down and takes a break from work.



I've been using Reddit for a long time now anyway, long before Musk took over so I'm sort of set with that. I do miss the breaking news aspect of Twitter but I've gone back to Google News which does a pretty good job of aggregation, even in today's fast paced world.


----------



## lizkat

Eric said:


> I've been using Reddit for a long time now anyway, long before Musk took over so I'm sort of set with that. I do miss the breaking news aspect of Twitter but I've gone back to Google News which does a pretty good job of aggregation, even in today's fast paced world.




I've pretty much just gone back to using browser bookmarks for my online news subs, and added a couple of political newsletter briefings.   After the holidays if Twitter is still in hostile hands lol I will think about making my Mastodon setups more useful.  It's not that hard but it's time consuming.


----------



## Eric

Another one down...


Elon begging Elton to not leave Twitter from
      WhitePeopleTwitter


----------



## shadow puppet

Although I finally received my ticket to registering for Post, I've yet to sign up (but I will to check it out).  I'm grateful the accounts I follow on Twitter have remained sane and relevant.  As long as they do, I'll remain.  Mastodon just sounded like a headache I'm currently not interested in figuring out.  I check in on various Reddits, none of them political.  I pop in and out of FB for a quick check-in with friends and freelance work contacts.  Instagram I enjoy for all the lovely photographs, especially animals and nature.  Currently, this is already more than enough SM of which I know I need to pare down.  That will be my next step.


----------



## turbineseaplane

Eric said:


> Another one down...
> 
> 
> Elon begging Elton to not leave Twitter from
> WhitePeopleTwitter




Hopefully Elton doesn't take this bait

Musk isn't a moron -- it's pretty easy to figure out why many folks, particularly someone like Elton John, wouldn't be attracted to the "changes" Elon has unleashed.


----------



## turbineseaplane

shadow puppet said:


> Mastodon just sounded like a headache I'm currently not interested in figuring out.




If you change your mind, it's really been a refreshing and great thing for me so far...
So many purely wonderful interactions with folks

I got on the Ivory alpha today (from Tapbots) and it's just game changing as well.


----------



## Eric

turbineseaplane said:


> If you change your mind, it's really been a refreshing and great thing for me so far...
> So many purely wonderful interactions with folks
> 
> I got on the Ivory alpha today (from Tapbots) and it's just game changing as well.



I've really been digging it.


----------



## Eric

turbineseaplane said:


> Hopefully Elton doesn't take this bait
> 
> Musk isn't a moron -- it's pretty easy to figure out why many folks, particularly someone like Elton John, wouldn't be attracted to the "changes" Elon has unleashed.



Musk has given hate speech the biggest platform in the world.









						Report: Offensive Tweets With Racial or Homophobic Slurs Soar Since Elon Musk Takeover
					

Shortly after Elon Musk purchased Twitter, some users posted hate speech, seemingly to test the boundaries of the platform under its new owner.




					www.nbcconnecticut.com
				




Report: Offensive Tweets With Racial or Homophobic Slurs Soar Since Elon Musk Takeover​


----------



## shadow puppet

turbineseaplane said:


> If you change your mind, it's really been a refreshing and great thing for me so far...
> So many purely wonderful interactions with folks



I will probably check it out at some point but I've seen screen grabs & read some takes.  Just wasn't taken with what I saw of mastodon.  Glad it works for you though.  

As I posted earlier, Twitter and the accounts I follow are still sane and working.  I stay away from Musk and other whack jobs unless someone I follow retweets their insanity.

Post is still young and sounds interesting so I'm keeping an eye on it.


----------



## turbineseaplane

A "secret group" headed by the CEO, the Head General counsel, and the head of Trust (i.e.the moderation dept) made high level decisions.  You know, the "secret" heads of the company.

The overviewers were overviewing without any form of overview!

What has happened to half the country?
They've devolved into the dark ages of wishing for and seeing "conspiracy" everywhere

It's so hard to watch some of this and be even "neutral" about our future prospects, let alone optimistic.


----------



## Edd

turbineseaplane said:


> View attachment 19923
> 
> A "secret group" headed by the CEO, the Head General counsel, and the head of Trust (i.e.the moderation dept) made high level decisions.  You know, the "secret" heads of the company.
> 
> The overviewers were overviewing without any form of overview!
> 
> What has happened to half the country?
> They've devolved into the dark ages of wishing for and seeing "conspiracy" everywhere
> 
> It's so hard to watch some of this and be even "neutral" about our future prospects, let alone optimistic.



Surprised Colonel Sanders isn’t a part of that group.


----------



## Edd

Eric said:


> Another one down...
> 
> 
> __
> https://www.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/zh4c78



It galls me that Elon is like “whuuuut? Me, allow disinfo?” He opened the door for Trump, who’s the biggest fucking liar ever born, and that’s just scratching the surface.


----------



## lizkat

turbineseaplane said:


> View attachment 19923
> 
> A "secret group" headed by the CEO, the Head General counsel, and the head of Trust (i.e.the moderation dept) made high level decisions.  You know, the "secret" heads of the company.
> 
> The overviewers were overviewing without any form of overview!
> 
> What has happened to half the country?
> They've devolved into the dark ages of wishing for and seeing "conspiracy" everywhere
> 
> It's so hard to watch some of this and be even "neutral" about our future prospects, let alone optimistic.




Starting to think it's an inevitable result of confusing real life with the screen on one's phone or laptop, plus a global addiction to drama.  A long read is 85 characters.  Attention spans are shot.   Everyone's a walking encyclopedia by way of just plugging a word or two into a search bar and the first hit will suffice no matter the algo that fed it.  Celebrities and conspiracy theories draw clicks.  It doesn't matter if the celebrities are alive or dead, doesn't matter if conspiracy theories completely beggar belief or have some thread of attachment (in the past, maybe) to a few facts, even facts like "this is BS."

Add to that mix the people whose monied agendas include keeping the ignorant that way in order to maintain the status quo of tax cuts and deregulation...  and so to widen the already humongous gaps between haves and have nots in terms of opportunity for barely adequate education...   and so then also to widen gaps in employability, income, wealth.

Ah, yeah.  The money.  Or the lust for more of it.  Now we're getting somewhere. 

Some character in a now really old book once proposed that "the love of money is the root of all evil."

Is the love of money what keeps tempting us mortals to find out how low we can go?   Not sure, but we're doing a great job of demonstrating how to keep digging,  when the chance to make a quick buck still seems possible.  The whole idea is to buy something "everybody wants" and then reduce labor and product costs,  strip out some assets, take some profit, then flip the carcass for more profit before it's worth nothing. 

One could imagine there are downsides to this stepwise approach to human extinction, or at least the extinction of unfettered capitalism.  It's possible that the saga of Elon Musk and the dying blue bird Twitter are a cautionary tale about the run-up to the end game. Ironically, most of us are all too busy helping write that story to be able to keep up with what it's telling us, even if we can already barely read as it is,  and even if our only contribution amounts to retweeting fake parts of the saga.


----------



## Roller

Here's a new pronouncement from Musk:



			https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1601894132573605888?s=61&t=0iMW2occ-iKSHyRTY_rHpw
		


I've only been on Twitter for about five years. It's often been handy to be able to read about events before they made it to established news sources, even with the knowledge that accuracy was sometimes suspect and verification was needed (which has always been the case, no matter the source). I've also followed accounts to obtain information about non-news topics of interest or see brief amusing or uplifting vignettes from around the world.

When the pandemic started nearly three years ago, I noticed a rapid rise in the number of posts minimizing the seriousness of COVID-19. Later, when vaccines became available, even more examples of lies, disinformation, and conspiracy theories from people whose ability to manage in everyday life I questioned. 

I don't have many followers on Twitter, and I suppose I could just ignore the noise. But, when the guy who's calling all the shots is as toxic as the worst of them, I wonder if it's worth it. I used to have a grudging admiration for Musk, despite his eccentricity. No longer. He's not just a horrible person I wouldn't want to associate with, he's dangerous, intoxicated by the misguided certainty that he's doing good or cementing his legacy by bringing his version of the truth to light.


----------



## dada_dave

Edd said:


> It galls me that Elon is like “whuuuut? Me, allow disinfo?” He opened the door for Trump, who’s the biggest fucking liar ever born, and that’s just scratching the surface.




Right now Elon Musk is himself one of the biggest spreaders of disinformation on the platform. He’s acting as if the “Twitter files” showed anything meaningful (while firing lawyers whose crime was doing due diligence before release and threatening Twitter employees not to leak info themselves), accusing Twitter of previously not protecting kids (while  actually removing the protections they had emplaced himself and not having anyone attend meetings that Twitter people used to go to on that very subject), and finally of accusing the former head of Trust and Safety (a gay Jewish man) of being a pedophile (despite that Yoel Roth tried his damndest to work with Elon in the beginning and did so for several weeks). And as @Roller pointed out, he’s also promulgated some of the most dangerous COVID disinformation out there.

Further he continues to approvingly reply to Nazis, fascists, and other such affiliated individuals like pizza-gaters. He listed the reason for banning Kanye as “inciting violence” while letting people back on and even positively interacting with those who have done the same or worse. Laura Loomer was banned from Newsmax for her blatant antisemitism, spreading blood libel on air and she’s on Twitter with Musk saying how correct she is about Twitter not protecting kids. Oh and talking about inciting violence  accusing your opponents of pedophilia, especially when they’re a gay Jew, is a good way of getting smeone killed. Also, agitating that someone who has committed no crimes and thus will never be prosecuted is likewise not a bad way to get someone killed. Especially galling since he is doubtless aware there has been violence from the set of assholes before. He just doesn’t care.



Roller said:


> He's not just a horrible person I wouldn't want to associate with, he's dangerous, intoxicated by the misguided certainty that he's doing good or cementing his legacy by bringing his version of the truth to light.




He’s basically gone full QAnon.


----------



## dada_dave

turbineseaplane said:


> View attachment 19923
> 
> A "secret group" headed by the CEO, the Head General counsel, and the head of Trust (i.e.the moderation dept) made high level decisions.  You know, the "secret" heads of the company.
> 
> The overviewers were overviewing without any form of overview!
> 
> What has happened to half the country?
> They've devolved into the dark ages of wishing for and seeing "conspiracy" everywhere
> 
> It's so hard to watch some of this and be even "neutral" about our future prospects, let alone optimistic.




Yeah people have been writing that 80% of conservative outrage is simply finding out how things work in the real world.


----------



## lizkat

dada_dave said:


> Yeah people have been writing that 80% of conservative outrage is simply finding out how things work in the real world.


----------



## lizkat

Some sites have noted in their Twitter profiles that they're also on alternate social media sites.    This one puts a banner about their move on their landing page and doesn't mince words about why, either.


----------



## turbineseaplane

My main frustration is the amount of people going over to the Post site

This is going to drive a split, which sucks a little bit as it was convenient to follow people on one place over at Twitter, but it is what it is.

The a16z backing of Post has that as a non starter to me, right from the get go

_(I recognize they’ve been behind a lot of things, but their behavior around all things crypto has colored them very negatively for me moving forward)_


----------



## dada_dave

turbineseaplane said:


> My main frustration is the amount of people going over to the Post site
> 
> This is going to drive a split, which sucks a little bit as it was convenient to follow people on one place over at Twitter, but it is what it is.
> 
> The a16z backing of Post has that as a non starter to me, right from the get go
> 
> _(I recognize they’ve been behind a lot of things, but their behavior around all things crypto has colored them very negatively for me moving forward)_




Mark Andreeson who owns a16z is also another billionaire asshole who supports what Musk is turning Twitter into. Hopefully his influence at Post will be limited.


----------



## Cmaier

qanon theories good

tracking Elon‘s jet bad


----------



## dada_dave

Cmaier said:


> qanon theories good
> 
> tracking Elon‘s jet bad
> 
> View attachment 19941



They’ve also been filtering and issuing warnings on links and content pointing out that their Twitter files nonsense is in fact nonsense.



			https://mobile.twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1601747777427480577
		


And yeah she seems to be a piece of work. [Edit: she being Ella in your post, not emptywheel]


----------



## Eric

Musk has gone full MAGA


What has Fauci done.... 😅 from
      WhitePeopleTwitter


----------



## dada_dave

Eric said:


> Musk has gone full MAGA
> 
> 
> __
> https://www.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/ziolwv



And full QAnon as I wrote above.


----------



## turbineseaplane

Eric said:


> Musk has gone full MAGA
> 
> 
> __
> https://www.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/ziolwv




And like 24 hours ago the NYT published a piece saying that "it was difficult to discern whether Elon Musk was a far-right conservative because he...claimed to be a centrist."

Some of this is really starting to make me wonder who the vested interests are and what they are truly pushing for -- all across the spectrum.
Musk is telling us and showing us "who he is" --- Believe people when they tell you who they are

I don't really know what to make of the NYT anymore honestly


----------



## turbineseaplane

Remind me again why this guy is going after Fauci of all people?


----------



## dada_dave

turbineseaplane said:


> And like 24 hours ago the NYT published a piece saying that "it was difficult to discern whether Elon Musk was a far-right conservative because he...claimed to be a centrist."
> 
> Some of this is really starting to make me wonder who the vested interests are and what they are truly pushing for -- all across the spectrum.
> Musk is telling us and showing us "who he is" --- Believe people when they tell you who they are
> 
> I don't really know what to make of the NYT anymore honestly



Yeah it’s bad when the NYT pitchbot is just screenshotting the actual NYT headlines/tweets for its parody account.


----------



## Eric

A lesson in pronouns.


__
		https://www.reddit.com/r/clevercomebacks/comments/ziznps


----------



## turbineseaplane

Graham, Sacks, Musk

My god it’s just a full circle of completely self absorbed undesirables


----------



## lizkat

turbineseaplane said:


> And like 24 hours ago the NYT published a piece saying that "it was difficult to discern whether Elon Musk was a far-right conservative because he...claimed to be a centrist."
> 
> Some of this is really starting to make me wonder who the vested interests are and what they are truly pushing for -- all across the spectrum.
> Musk is telling us and showing us "who he is" --- Believe people when they tell you who they are
> 
> I don't really know what to make of the NYT anymore honestly




The NYT is standing back and doing a "That's just Trump being Trump" thing with Musk sometimes. 

The problem is that the NYT has done the equivalent, sometimes subtly and sometimes otherwise, with a lot of high profile individuals in politics, entertainment and assorted business sectors.  

They do it so often that one can be tempted by now just to say "That's just the NYT being the NYT."

 So I'm not one to cancel subscriptions out of pique or exasperation either but I'll say the idea crosses my mind more often with the Times than it ever has done with the Washington Post. 

And yet I love the NYT for so many reasons.  Sigh. But *I liked them better when they still had a public editor *who would air --right in the paper itself--  some of the concerns about focus or slant or potential conflict of interest that all of us have had concerns about from time to time.   The Times had created the slot after the Jason Blair plagiarism scandal, about 20 years ago.    I had thought of the position later on as possibly a way for the paper to avoid some future clusterF*** that would require another internal investigation, another painful and very public _mea culpa, _like the protracted project they had eventually launched after realizing terrible flaws in some of their own coverage of the run-up to the Iraq war.

Unfortunately (from my POV) the Times eventually decided not to have a public editor any more, after going through six of them. Of course they have editors.  *But in lieu of a public editor, they moved then essentially to let social media serve as a variant on a  public editor*,  and the columnists at the Times could pick up or not pick up trending views and relay them to NYT readers.  

To me that was insane.  One can pick fights with a public editor's take on anything, much the same as to disagree with a columnist in the same media outlet.  A paper can also fire a public editor and the Times did that too, more than a few times.   But a great many readers of the NYT appreciated the CONCEPT of a public editor airing her own or the public's "issues" --right in the paper itself-- with how the paper was covering or not covering any topic, event, person.    And these days to encourage staffers to use social media "public reaction" to the NYT day to day as a measure of anything, never mind a barometer of how professional the coverage of a mainstream newspaper appears to "the public" --  well there lies some stellar lunacy, especially now with Musk at the helm of Twitter.

 If I were managing the Times,  I'd hire a public editor and just run a very clear disclaimer over top the column, something along lines of _This is a regular account of what our public editor thinks of our coverage at the NYT,  written by a person we pay to write without fear or favor.  We might not agree at all with the content but we appreciate the scrutiny,  and readers' comments are certainly welcome. _

The managing editor of course was always always free to disagree with a public editor, and so were newsroom staff (and then there is the invisible hand of a publisher who might draw a line),  but there it was, the elephant in the living room living large:   someone on the staff whose sole job it was *to hold the paper's feet to the fire in public* and on behalf of the public whenever coverage (or, non coverage) seemed to have eluded the paper's guidelines or standards of professional journalism.

The last public editor at the Times before they eliminated the position was Liz Spayd.   She wasn't very popular at all "in the house,"  so to speak,  and so possibly she was doing a very fine job.   The Columbia Journalism Review had a writeup on her departure including her own take on it, and a lot of background on the slot itself.   This was a May 2017 piece, so for most of the Trump presidency, the voice of a formal public editor at NYT was absent, as it is right now.   A  pity, I say, and a mistake.  The readers of the Times are more discerning than the editors may realize, certainly if those editors think that feedback from Twitter on "how we're doing"  is better than a critique from the inside by a public editor.









						New York Times public editor Liz Spayd on decision to eliminate her position
					

<p>The decision this morning by The New York Times to eliminate the position of public editor touched off a debate over the value of a position established in the wake of the Jayson Blair fabrication scandal to hold the paper’s editors and reporters accountable to industry standards and reader...




					www.cjr.org


----------



## dada_dave

lizkat said:


> Unfortunately (from my POV) the Times eventually decided not to have a public editor any more, after going through six of them. Of course they have editors.  *But in lieu of a public editor, they moved then essentially to let social media serve as a variant on a  public editor*,  and the columnists at the Times could pick up or not pick up trending views and relay them to NYT readers.
> 
> To me that was insane.




Just to add to this already excellent post, to make it even worse they’ve made it very clear how little they respect the opinions that come to them through social media unless it’s a high profile person of note. So it’s almost as though as an institution they’re like those journalists (mostly opinion columnists) who quit papers and go to substack because they want to escape the ‘tyranny of editors’. Which really means they think they’re above critical feedback and get very defensive about it when received. This isn’t to say that every journalist there reacts that way, but as an institution they are pretty arrogant.


----------



## lizkat

Taylor Greene weighed in on Musk's Prosecute/Fauci "pronouns."    I see there are still a lot of right wing idiots following her around...


----------



## leman

Musk apparently got booed during an on-stage appearance at Dave Chapelle show. Which would be unremarkable in itself, but twitter posts related to this keep being mysteriously deleted and accounts are disappearing. Here is a Reddit thread discussing this. 


__
		https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/zjutsq


----------



## Pumbaa

Ah, yes, the mortal threat to civilization that is the woke mind virus.

Misinformation, bigotry, unsubstantiated conspiracy theories, lies, hate speech, institutional racism, pollution, torturing and murdering animals, etc.? Perfectly fine. 


Tweet link


----------



## dada_dave

leman said:


> Musk apparently got booed during an on-stage appearance at Dave Chapelle show. Which would be unremarkable in itself, but twitter posts related to this keep being mysteriously deleted and accounts are disappearing. Here is a Reddit thread discussing this.
> 
> 
> __
> https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/zjutsq




I think it is a little notable that even people who are still paying to see Dave Chapelle boo Elon Musk. I bet he (and Chapelle) thought that would be a much safer space for him than it turned out to be. I mean that’s an audience you might imagine would be more receptive to Elon’s “civilization ending woke mind virus” garbage since Chapelle is on a similar kick himself and apparently even Chapelle couldn’t get them to stop booing.

But yeah … Elon Musk, free speech absolutist.


----------



## Edd

Most of Elon’s jokes are like “English isn’t my first language” type quips. Dude is aggressively awkward.


----------



## Eric

leman said:


> Musk apparently got booed during an on-stage appearance at Dave Chapelle show. Which would be unremarkable in itself, but twitter posts related to this keep being mysteriously deleted and accounts are disappearing. Here is a Reddit thread discussing this.
> 
> 
> __
> https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/zjutsq



Nice to see Musk get a taste of what the real world outside of his Conservative online bubble thinks of him. As for Chappelle even having him there, WTF?? Those two can have each other.

Edit, sounds like the person who posted it lost their "free speech" as Musk is trying to rid the site of it. Here's a a source from site he doesn't own.


----------



## lizkat

Edd said:


> Most of Elon’s jokes are like “English isn’t my first language” type quips. Dude is aggressively awkward.




Just the phrase "woke mind virus" is likely to draw a blank with most Americans, I can still hope.

Meanwhile if his version of Twitter is meant to save civilization, Elon Musk needs to triple-down on staffing of the moderation group.   Otherwise new members might conclude that civilization will be saved only if everyone just adopts some of the truly vile mantras that are turning up in there, only to be squashed down by the ever more often tweaked "visibility algorithms" that "permit free speech while reducing its reach" or whatever the almighty F he's been promising regulators will make his platform compliant with their rules.   

Neither the algorithms nor their coders nor any special intervention teams of humans are managing to keep up with the tide of shopworn garbage posts sweeping into his platform.


----------



## Eric

Elon Musk set to relaunch Twitter Blue with higher price for iPhone users
					

The company says it has a new process to avoid the chaos that followed the first attempt. That led to a flood of accounts impersonating companies, politicians and celebrities.




					www.npr.org
				






> Twitter has restarted a service dubbed Twitter Blue, where users can pay a monthly fee for a blue checkmark, along with the ability to edit tweets and upload high quality video.
> 
> Apple users, however, will be charged more.
> 
> The company says the revamped service will cost $8 a month on the web, or $11 a month if purchased through an app on iPhones and iPads, where in-app transactions are processed through the company's App Store, which generally levies a 30% commission.
> 
> The price new tiers follow sharp words from Musk leveled at Apple over its so-called "Apple tax," a longtime pain point for app developers and cause of concern for regulators around the world who have viewed the fee as excessive and financially damaging to Apple's rivals. Musk has since claimed his row with Apple was resolved following a meeting with the company's chief executive, Tim Cook at the company's Cupertino headquarters.


----------



## turbineseaplane

lizkat said:


> Meanwhile if his version of Twitter is meant to save civilization, Elon Musk needs to triple-down on staffing of the moderation group.




It’s not meant to and it’s not going to.

He has shown zero restraint or even backing down off terrible positions…in fact seemingly he’s leaning into them.

I think Twitter as it was is done…some folks clinging to it just haven’t internalized and accepted it yet.  Depending upon what he does or not around a financial model may seal it to obscurity permanently.  He doesn’t get communities and why they form and maintain, are enjoyable and are clung to. He misunderstands what Twitter was and what it needed…. (Letting back the worst characters to run wild again was 180 degrees from being part of that answer)

I’ve checked on my account there a few times this last week and it’s just amazing how many absolutely toxic replies there are to most anything anybody is saying, barring perhaps just general sports or animal video type stuff.


----------



## fooferdoggie

so he puts a extra tax on his uses because he does not like the apple tax. Genius.


----------



## lizkat

turbineseaplane said:


> I’ve checked on my account there a few times this last week and it’s just amazing how many absolutely toxic replies there are to most anything anybody is saying




Same here. Doesn't matter the topic. It's toxic troll time!  And I had thought it was Christmas Elf time.


----------



## Edd

Interesting, after Apple supposedly committed to continue advertising on Twitter? I never confirmed that but, if true, pretty provocative move by Elon.


----------



## rdrr

So how much is the Android play store service fee going to up the blue check mark cost on Android?  Or hasn't anyone told the chief twit about their fees yet?


----------



## fooferdoggie

rdrr said:


> So how much is the Android play store service fee going to up the blue check mark cost on Android?  Or hasn't anyone told the chief twit about their fees yet?



none cause Musk does not hate google.


----------



## Scepticalscribe

There are two elments to this story, one of which this thread title strangely seems to overlook:  For, this attempt at bare-faced robbery is not confined to those who use Apple devices.

Anyway, the first element is the very fact that the loathsome Mr Musk has decided to charge for the "blue tick"; until now, this feature used not to incur a charge. 

This is the big story, a serious and significant change in how Twitter will be run by introducing the principle of charging for a feature that was free. 

Unfortunately, the outraged reaction from Apple users runs the risk of drowning out - or distracting from - the fact that Mr Musk has altered the principles by which Twitter is to be run, because he wishes to charge for something that used to be free.

And the second is what the thread title refers to: That those who wish to avail of this feature will not just be charged, but will not be charged equally: Apple users will be expected to pay more for this feature.

And, of course, this is another example - as if we needed yet another such example - of the capricious, spiteful, vindictive, and controlling nature of the egregious Mr Musk.


----------



## mac_in_tosh

Musk is a con man. For the last few years he has said he was confident that self driving cars, e.g. Los Angeles to New York unassisted,  would be a reality by the end of that year.


----------



## Eric

turbineseaplane said:


> It’s not meant to and it’s not going to.
> 
> He has shown zero restraint or even backing down off terrible positions…in fact seemingly he’s leaning into them.
> 
> I think Twitter as it was is done…some folks clinging to it just haven’t internalized and accepted it yet.  Depending upon what he does or not around a financial model may seal it to obscurity permanently.  He doesn’t get communities and why they form and maintain, are enjoyable and are clung to. He misunderstands what Twitter was and what it needed…. (Letting back the worst characters to run wild again was 180 degrees from being part of that answer)
> 
> I’ve checked on my account there a few times this last week and it’s just amazing how many absolutely toxic replies there are to most anything anybody is saying, barring perhaps just general sports or animal video type stuff.



Glad I deleted my account when I did, anyone keeping an account is letting a right-wing nutjob billionaire troll control their content. If/when I can figure out a way to get out from under my Tesla without losing a bunch of money I will be doing that also.


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

YouTube Red/Premium did the same thing years ago, $13 a month through iOS compared to $10 direct through Google.  Not sure if they are the only ones, but this isn't some new Musk spite innovation tactic.


----------



## Eric

rdrr said:


> So how much is the Android play store service fee going to up the blue check mark cost on Android?  Or hasn't anyone told the chief twit about their fees yet?



The reality is that Apple has always charged 30%, he just never knew about it and then threw a hissy when he learned it. This guy is a total idiot, how he's made it this far is baffling.


----------



## Eric

Scepticalscribe said:


> There are two elments to this story, one of which this thread title strangely seems to overlook:  For, this attempt at bare-faced robbery is not confined to those who use Apple devices.



Just FYI both the title and body of this post came directly from NPR.









						Elon Musk set to relaunch Twitter Blue with higher price for iPhone users
					

The company says it has a new process to avoid the chaos that followed the first attempt. That led to a flood of accounts impersonating companies, politicians and celebrities.




					www.npr.org


----------



## Scepticalscribe

Eric said:


> Just FYI both the title and body of this post came directly from NPR.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Elon Musk set to relaunch Twitter Blue with higher price for iPhone users
> 
> 
> The company says it has a new process to avoid the chaos that followed the first attempt. That led to a flood of accounts impersonating companies, politicians and celebrities.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.npr.org



Well, yes.

Nevertheless, I would argue that the real story here is the fact that the deplorable Mr Musk is introducing charges for features that used to be free, and that the further gouging of those who use Apple devices is simply an added unpleasant element of this sorry and sordid tale.


----------



## Edd

Step 1: Make Twitter worse. 

Step 2: Start charging for free features. 



What scares me is enough people might actually pay it and make it profitable. Now, that’s insane and should not happen but since Trump became President all things are possible.


----------



## rdrr

Eric said:


> Glad I deleted my account when I did, anyone keeping an account is letting a right-wing nutjob billionaire troll control their content. If/when I can figure out a way to get out from under my Tesla without losing a bunch of money I will be doing that also.



Wait for the Ioniq 7, although the Ioniq 6 looks interesting if you like sedans.


----------



## lizkat

Charlie Warzel, a writer on tech and media for _The Atlantic_,  weighs in to help the NYT lose its recently displayed confusion over exactly what "side" Elon Musk is on.









						Elon Musk Is a Far-Right Activist
					

One tweet says it all.




					www.theatlantic.com
				




Warzel first referenced Musk's tweeted assertion "My pronouns are "Prosecute/Fauci"...



> In five words, Musk manages to mock transgender and nonbinary people, signal his disdain for public-health officials, and send up a flare to far-right shitposters and trolls.




Right, and then Charlie Warzel went to town on the NYT for its recent attempt to dance on the head of whatever thumbtack is holding that paper's circulation expansion programs to the wall:



> Currently, Musk’s politics are a subject of debate in the press. On Saturday, _The New York Times_’ Jeremy W. Peters attempted to offer a nuanced portrait of the Twitter owner’s ideologies, arguing that Musk “continues to defy easy political categorization.” But Peters’ laundry list of Musk’s recent lib-trolling and “woke” scolding—such as Musk’s November recommendation to his millions of followers to vote Republican—undermines the very thesis of the article. The nuance Peters is looking for does not exist: Musk’s actions and associations make a clear case that he is a right-wing reactionary.




I'm sure the NYT figures that you have to squint to actually read that from Elon's tweets and they'll be sure to say so in the near future,  after they step back 200 yards from their laptop screens.

There is more in Warzel's piece, of course, and worth the read.

Also turns out to be one of _The Atlantic_'s lucky days:  my sub was on the verge of renewal... or not.

As some members of this forum may recall, I remain ambivalent about that magazine's now long ago shift in focus and its eventual move from Boston to DC.    I did like it better when they were in New England and concentrated on literary offerings.  Nonetheless I run into pieces I like now and then, and this was one of them.   Anyway I'm letting the sub renew, and _The Atlantic_ can thank Warzel,  Elon Musk and the more than occasionally hapless _New York Times_ for a successful retention effort.


----------



## dada_dave

Edd said:


> Step 1: Make Twitter worse.
> 
> Step 2: Start charging for free features.
> 
> 
> 
> What scares me is enough people might actually pay it and make it profitable. Now, that’s insane and should not happen but since Trump became President all things are possible.



People have looked at the math of this and that seems … unlikely (read numerically impossible)



Edd said:


> Interesting, after Apple supposedly committed to continue advertising on Twitter? I never confirmed that but, if true, pretty provocative move by Elon.




I don’t think they did, they just said they weren’t blocking Twitter apps from the App Store.


----------



## Eric

Edd said:


> Step 1: Make Twitter worse.
> 
> Step 2: Start charging for free features.
> 
> 
> 
> What scares me is enough people might actually pay it and make it profitable. Now, that’s insane and should not happen but since Trump became President all things are possible.



I would ask what value the blue check has now that it's not tied with "actual" true verification of those of celebrity status? It's taken something that ensured credibility and that a person is who they claim to be and made it a novelty for any user just to say they have it.


----------



## Herdfan

So let me understand that there is nothing stopping someone from simply using a web interface to sign up for the $8 and then go back to using the iOS app.


----------



## Eric

Herdfan said:


> So let me understand that there is nothing stopping someone from simply using a web interface to sign up for the $8 and then go back to using the iOS app.



I don't know the mechanics of it but my guess is there will likely be something in place that detects the app your using and will prevent you from moving forward without the proper credentials if you're on iOS.


----------



## Nycturne

Eric said:


> Glad I deleted my account when I did, anyone keeping an account is letting a right-wing nutjob billionaire troll control their content. If/when I can figure out a way to get out from under my Tesla without losing a bunch of money I will be doing that also.




Speaking of Tesla, when I picked up my ID.4, my boss had commented that I hadn't given any serious consideration to his suggestion of getting a Tesla. About all I could think of to say in return was: "You're right, I didn't." and leave it at that.



rdrr said:


> Wait for the Ioniq 7, although the Ioniq 6 looks interesting if you like sedans.
> 
> View attachment 19963




That is certainly… a vehicle.


----------



## dada_dave

Eric said:


> I don't know the mechanics of it but my guess is there will likely be something in place that detects the app your using and will prevent you from moving forward without the proper credentials if your on iOS.



No I think @Herdfan is right it’s purely about whether the 30% “Apple tax” is charged. Under his scenario there wouldn’t be one. This is true for any subscription/in-app payment system that has a web store.


----------



## Herdfan

Eric said:


> I don't know the mechanics of it but my guess is there will likely be something in place that detects the app your using and will prevent you from moving forward without the proper credentials if your on iOS.




But remember you can't buy books in the Kindle app but can still read books you purchased. 

Guess I might have to give it a try.


----------



## lizkat

Eric said:


> would ask what value the blue check has now that it's not tied with "actual" true verification of those of celebrity status? It's taken something that ensured credibility and that a person is who they claim to be and made it a novelty for any user just to say they have it.




Hasn't Musk already tried selling blue checks and then it backfired since bozos were buying the right to wear the blue checkmark of..  yeah, Elon Musk...

Really verifying members are who they say they are is expensive, it's not going to help him defray costs of keeping the lights on  while trying to entice the big bucks advertisers to come back to the platform. 

Far as I can tell a lot of those big brands are all still like "yeah no, first show me the moderation".


----------



## dada_dave

Eric said:


> I would ask what value the blue check has now that it's not tied with "actual" true verification of those of celebrity status? It's taken something that ensured credibility and that a person is who they claim to be and made it a novelty for any user just to say they have it.




It’s going to get additional features not available to the plebs. Also there _might_ still be the “official” tag for blue checks that are authentic and companies/governments will have different colors. But yes it’s still going to be messy and unnecessarily complicated.


----------



## lizkat

Herdfan said:


> But remember you can't buy books in the Kindle app but can still read books you purchased.
> 
> Guess I might have to give it a try.




But why buy into it?   There's still this confusion about what blue checks mean.



> Twitter acknowledges the confusion on its help page: "Now the blue checkmark may mean two different things: either that an account was verified under the previous verification criteria (active and authentic), or that the account has an active subscription to Twitter Blue."




EDIT:  Whole f'g thing is ridiculous.  That NPR article wraps with a reminder that Twitter still doesn't have a communications team so it's you talking to Elon if he feels like answering.. on the boards.


----------



## Eric

dada_dave said:


> No I think @Herdfan is right it’s purely about whether the 30% “Apple tax” is charged. Under his scenario there wouldn’t be one. This is true for any subscription/in-app payment system that has a web store.



Interesting, this article seems to support that.



> Twitter is officially bringing back the Twitter Blue subscription Monday, starting in five countries before rapidly expanding to others, according to Esther Crawford, director of product management at Twitter. Web sign-ups will cost $8 per month and iOS sign ups will cost $11 per month for “access to subscriber-only features, including the blue checkmark,” per a tweet from the company account.




So I guess if you purchase it through the web, you can then use your iPhone (or iOS) freely after? Seems like a pretty big loophole.


----------



## Eric

Nycturne said:


> Speaking of Tesla, when I picked up my ID.4, my boss had commented that I hadn't given any serious consideration to his suggestion of getting a Tesla. About all I could think of to say in return was: "You're right, I didn't." and leave it at that.
> 
> 
> 
> That is certainly… a vehicle.



Regardless of Musk, everyone has their own reasons for not choosing Tesla, not the least of which is their high price tag. There are a lot of comparable cars out there, some with more and some with less features and it's really just a matter of personal taste. I have a hard to bagging on anyone for their preference when it comes to a car.


----------



## dada_dave

Eric said:


> So I guess if you purchase it through the web, you can then use your iPhone (or iOS) freely after? Seems like a pretty big loophole.



That’s been true for all apps where they run their own stores. Apple is actually pretty lax about allowing outside purchased content on the iPhone. The companies that want Apple’s “tax” to be reduced/go away for subscriptions/in-app purchases and either forgo those entirely or charge more within app want to have more impulse buying through the app as opposed to forcing users to go through additional hoops like an outside website to get more of that profit.


----------



## rdrr

Eric said:


> Regardless of Musk, everyone has their own reasons for not choosing Tesla, not the least of which is their high price tag. There are a lot of comparable cars out there, some with more and some with less features and it's really just a matter of personal taste. I have a hard to bagging on anyone for their preference when it comes to a car.



Feature one: Apple Carplay


----------



## Nycturne

rdrr said:


> Feature one: Apple Carplay



Yeup, I live in CarPlay, partly because my beta app is something I use during my commute daily.


----------



## Eric

rdrr said:


> Feature one: Apple Carplay



I had no idea how much I would miss it until I got the Tesla. One thing I love most about the car is its ability to maintain between the lines on freeways, it's virtually flawless and never loses them as to where my BMW would miss them a lot. However, I've learned that tradeoff isn't worth it, would rather have my hands on the wheel 100% of the time and keep my Apple CarPlay, I'm just fumbling around without it and it seems far less safe. My next car will have it or I won't even consider it.


----------



## Herdfan

Eric said:


> Interesting, this article seems to support that.
> 
> 
> 
> So I guess if you purchase it through the web, you can then use your iPhone (or iOS) freely after? Seems like a pretty big loophole.




Not really.  Just covering his "Apple Tax".    He still gets the same basic amount of money.


----------



## Eric

Herdfan said:


> Not really.  Just covering his "Apple Tax".    He still gets the same basic amount of money.



The 30% is what is what Apple charges from the app store to download the Twitter app itself, right? I don't see how charging more for iOS users to buy the checkmark makes sense in relation to this. I must be missing something here.


----------



## lizkat

Isn't the app free?   The 30% of $11 is for the in-app purchase through the iOS device of the checkmark?


----------



## Nycturne

Eric said:


> The 30% is what is what Apple charges from the app store to download the Twitter app itself, right? I don't see how charging more for iOS users to buy the checkmark makes sense in relation to this. I must be missing something here.




Twitter Blue is an in-app purchase. IAP are subject to Apple's cut, explicitly because of the whole freemium model would bypass the cut for paid apps. So long as the purchase can be done from within the app, then Apple demands that you use their frameworks for it, which means they get their cut.



lizkat said:


> Isn't the app free?   The 30% of $11 is for the in-app purchase through the iOS device of the checkmark?




This.



dada_dave said:


> That’s been true for all apps where they run their own stores. Apple is actually pretty lax about allowing outside purchased content on the iPhone. The companies that want Apple’s “tax” to be reduced/go away for subscriptions/in-app purchases and either forgo those entirely or charge more within app want to have more impulse buying through the app as opposed to forcing users to go through additional hoops like an outside website to get more of that profit.




Apple's take is that if the customer is coming to the purchase through the iOS device (more accurately, the app store and apps available on it), Apple wants their cut. If the customer comes to the purchase from any other mechanism, then there's no issue. But what you can't do (at least usually, the rules have been in flux lately) is link to that outside mechanism from your app to bypass Apple's cut.


----------



## dada_dave

Nycturne said:


> Twitter Blue is an in-app purchase. IAP are subject to Apple's cut, explicitly because of the whole freemium model would bypass the cut for paid apps. So long as the purchase can be done from within the app, then Apple demands that you use their frameworks for it, which means they get their cut.
> 
> 
> 
> This.
> 
> 
> 
> Apple's take is that if the customer is coming to the purchase through the iOS device (more accurately, the app store and apps available on it), Apple wants their cut. If the customer comes to the purchase from any other mechanism, then there's no issue. But what you can't do (at least usually, the rules have been in flux lately) is link to that outside mechanism from your app to bypass Apple's cut.



Yup but some companies block any content purchased from the outside or charge fees to allow it. This is common on consoles and came up during the Apple v Epic trial. Basically Apple gets a lot of shtick but can actually be more reasonable than other companies at times.

Edit: Epic not Epyc


----------



## dada_dave

So … Yoel Roth has had to flee his home because of Musk:



			https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/12/tech/twitter-files-yoel-roth
		


And @lizkat posted that Elon dissolved the Trust and Safety Council









						Musk offers to buy Twitter
					

Glad I deleted my account when I did, anyone keeping an account is letting a right-wing nutjob billionaire troll control their content. If/when I can figure out a way to get out from under my Tesla without losing a bunch of money I will be doing that also.   Speaking of Tesla, when I picked up...




					talkedabout.com
				




“The last vestiges of the old republic have been swept away”


----------



## lizkat

dada_dave said:


> So … Yoel Roth has had to flee his home because of Musk:
> 
> 
> 
> https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/12/tech/twitter-files-yoel-roth
> 
> 
> 
> And @lizkat posted that Elon dissolved the Trust and Safety Council
> 
> https://wapo.st/3Wac6qP
> 
> “The last vestiges of the old republic have been swept away”




(Thanks for bumping the WaPo link, I subbed it into your quote above...  I should have posted it in this thread anyway, forgot that other one was on a more specific issue related to the Twitter app and pricing. I'm gonna delete it from there.)

Yeah I dunno what he's doing.  Clearing out prior courtiers is a King's prerogative... he assumes.


----------



## dada_dave

lizkat said:


> (Thanks for bumping the WaPo link, I subbed it into your quote above...  I should have posted it in this thread anyway, forgot that other one was on a more specific issue related to the Twitter app and pricing. I'm gonna delete it from there.)
> 
> Yeah I dunno what he's doing.  Clearing out prior courtiers is a King's prerogative... he assumes.



Sure though if you do delete it there repost it here since I linked to your post and I’ll edit my post.


----------



## lizkat

dada_dave said:


> Sure though if you do delete it there repost it here since I linked to your post and I’ll edit my post.




Here it is

https://wapo.st/3Wac6qP        

all i had in the post short of that was that Musk is crazy.  But, we already knew that.


----------



## lizkat

It's interesting that before Musk dissolved the Trust and Safety Council today,  three members had resigned on December 8th over dismay that so much of the work was heading towards algorithmic moderation...  and that NPR and several other media outlets had interviewed some of those people early this morning.









						Former members of Twitter's safety council voice concerns over Musk's acquisition
					

NPR's Rachel Martin talks to Eirliani Abdul Rahman and Anne Collier, ex-members of Twitter's Trust and Safety Council. They say under Elon Musk, Twitter lost sight of its commitment to protect users.




					www.npr.org


----------



## Eric

lizkat said:


> It's interesting that before Musk dissolved the Trust and Safety Council today,  three members had resigned on December 8th over dismay that so much of the work was heading towards algorithmic moderation...  and that NPR and several other media outlets had interviewed some of those people early this morning.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Former members of Twitter's safety council voice concerns over Musk's acquisition
> 
> 
> NPR's Rachel Martin talks to Eirliani Abdul Rahman and Anne Collier, ex-members of Twitter's Trust and Safety Council. They say under Elon Musk, Twitter lost sight of its commitment to protect users.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.npr.org



It gets worse.









						Report: Ex-Twitter executive flees Bay Area home as Musk attacks
					

Yoel Roth has reportedly received increased threats after Elon Musk repeatedly tweeted...




					www.sfgate.com
				



Ex-Twitter head of safety reportedly flees Bay Area home amid Musk attacks​


> Yoel Roth, Elon Musk’s former right-hand man who was instrumental to the new era of Twitter, has reportedly been forced to flee his home, likely in the Bay Area, after getting harassed by Musk and his supporters.
> 
> Roth, the now-departed head of trust and safety, received increased threats after Musk promoted a baseless accusation that his former employee endorsed children accessing “adult Internet services,” CNN first reported Monday afternoon.




More QAnon conspiracy bullshit, he won't be happy until someone is killed.


----------



## lizkat

Eric said:


> It gets worse.




There's possibly no bottom,  short of regulators just pulling the plug.

So is there a financial angle to this?   Like bankruptcy is now preferable to Musk rather than trying to make a go of the thing,  or backing off to say Person X is the new CEO and will fix it up and so I am officially hands off now, enjoy your day.   Where are his co-investors at with all this,  I wonder.


----------



## Eric

When the world's largest social media platform is owned by a Russian sympathizer. 


__
		https://www.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/zky43f


----------



## theorist9

So you could bypass the App Store and get the blue checkmark without paying a premium, but then wouldn't be able to access any of the blue checkmark's additional features (editing tweets and uploading HQ video) when using your iPhone?  Would it be the same when you use Twitter on your Mac?


----------



## dada_dave

theorist9 said:


> So you could bypass the App Store and get the blue checkmark without paying a premium, but then wouldn't be able to access any of the blue checkmark's additional features (editing tweets and uploading HQ video) when using your iPhone?  Would it be the same when you use Twitter on your Mac?



No no if you pay for the blue check mark on the web you get everything associated with paying the $8 no matter where you access your account from later. So there is no benefit to paying extra through the App.


----------



## theorist9

dada_dave said:


> No no if you pay for the blue check mark on the web you get everything associated with paying the $8 no matter where you access your account from later. So there is no benefit to paying extra through the App.



In that case NPR's headline is incorrect—the price is not higher for iPhone users (who are free to purchase on the web);  it's only higher for those buying through the App Store.  

The correct headline would be:  "Elon Musk set to relaunch Twitter Blue with higher price for users who buy through Apple's App Store."

There's a big difference between the two--the former would be much more controversial.   Indeed, so much so that I initially though the incorrect headline was clickbait, until I realized it's NPR.


----------



## Eric

theorist9 said:


> In that case NPR's headline is incorrect—the price is not higher for iPhone users (who are free to purchase on the web);  it's only higher for those buying through the App Store.
> 
> The correct headline would be:  "Elon Musk set to relaunch Twitter Blue with higher price for users who buy through Apple's App Store."
> 
> There's a big difference between the two--the former would be much more controversial.   Indeed, so much so that I initially though the incorrect headline was clickbait, until I realized it's NPR.



Right, this whole thing is really confusing to me, too. In the end it sounds like hyperbole to throw Apple under the bus but in the end it just left everyone scratching their heads as usual when he makes these statements.


----------



## Eric

The hits keep coming.


__
		https://www.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/zlbufs


----------



## Cmaier

Eric said:


> The hits keep coming.
> 
> 
> __
> https://www.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/zlbufs




He’s got a good plan.

1) force all employees back into the office.
2) put illegal bedrooms in the office so the employees can be in the office around-the-clock
3) don’t pay rent on the office
4) profit!


----------



## Herdfan

Eric said:


> Right, this whole thing is really confusing to me, too. In the end it sounds like hyperbole to throw Apple under the bus but in the end it just left everyone scratching their heads as usual when he makes these statements.




Yeah, he should have just made it $10 no matter how you paid and eaten the Apple Tax as a cost of doing business.


----------



## Eric

Herdfan said:


> Yeah, he should have just made it $10 no matter how you paid and eaten the Apple Tax as a cost of doing business.



The problem is that he makes these decisions based on emotion and a whim, most of the time without the right functionality, testing, etc. necessary to pull it off and then wants to roll it out the next day. In the IT world this guy is a nightmare scenario but it also makes sense now that we know why somany of his products have such terrible QA coming off the line, we used to think it was production/facility problems but now we know it's a their bipolar CEO.


----------



## Roller

Eric said:


> The hits keep coming.
> 
> 
> __
> https://www.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/zlbufs



Asked to comment on the Times story, Twitter owner Elon Musk characterized it as “yet another scurrilous attempt by the liberal elitist woke virus east coastal press to sully the reputation of true patriots.” He added that Twitter is indeed funding severance packages by paying for neural implants that prevent employees from recalling what happened at the office after they leave for the day, similar to the eponymous Apple TV+ series. In a moment of unusual candor, Musk added “We’ve been doing this at all my companies for years. Do you think anyone would come work for me if they knew what it was actually like on the inside?” /s


----------



## lizkat

Cmaier said:


> 3) don’t pay rent on the office




So I guess a company that stops paying its rent might not be worth even $8B, never mind $44B.  I'd still like to know what the heck the co-investors are thinking.  Perhaps, unlike Twitter itself,  they actually have competent legal and financial counsel, as well as PR departments able to form the phrase "No comment."


----------



## dada_dave

The free speech absolutist has banned the Elonjet account.


----------



## lizkat

dada_dave said:


> The free speech absolutist has banned the Elonjet account.
> 
> View attachment 20007




Musk was on record previously saying he wasn't going to do that,  even though he regarded it as an affront to his personal safety.   The info of course was all based on publicly available data anyway...    but first he reduced visibility of the Elonjet account, and now...  anyone who gives a damn has to look it up same as Elonjet's owner was doing.     Elon, Elon...   this is the kinda petty vengeance that even Trump would probably delegate to an aide.  Musk is just showing off his intimate knowledge of how Twitter works.


----------



## turbineseaplane

lizkat said:


> The info of course was all based on publicly available data anyway...




That's the key.  Anyone legitimately out there planning to "shoot down his jet", or w/e other paranoid delusion he has, continues to have ample ways to find and track him ... and will continue to have those ways.

I think it's more about him not wanting to get dunked on so easily, right on Twitter, for his carbon footprint and gallivanting around the world.

I'm sure he doesn't enjoy the "did you buy todays flight attendant a Horse for her services" jokes...  LOL
Guy is such a POS


----------



## Edd

Naive question alert:

If I delete my Twitter app on iPhone, does Apple or Twitter have an awareness of it? I’d  like it if someone knew.


----------



## dada_dave

Edd said:


> Naive question alert:
> 
> If I delete my Twitter app on iPhone, does Apple or Twitter have an awareness of it? I’d  like it if someone knew.



Twitter will know how you log in (web, app, etc …), but shouldn’t know if you delete the app. Apple would because you’ll get on your App Store account a list of all apps that you own but you don’t have on your phone. I don’t know if they actually track those changes on a personal level (probably anonymized if they do) and I doubt they share it.

Edit: as @Andropov notes below they do share aggregate statistics, so Twitter will know how many people have deleted it within a timeframe


----------



## Roller

Edd said:


> Naive question alert:
> 
> If I delete my Twitter app on iPhone, does Apple or Twitter have an awareness of it? I’d  like it if someone knew.



If you want Twitter to know, the best way is to delete your account. I  limited my account so only my followers can see my Tweets, then exported an archive. I also erased the app from my phone, which markedly reduced my Twitter usage. The next step will be deactivating my account, which will be permanently deleted by Twitter after 30 days.


----------



## Cmaier

Roller said:


> The next step will be deactivating my account, *which will be permanently deleted by Twitter after 30 days*.




Given the current situation, I tend to doubt that.


----------



## lizkat

Cmaier said:


> Given the current situation, I tend to doubt that.



Because Twitter won't be around in 30 days?   Or...  ?


----------



## turbineseaplane

Only fully delete your account if you don't mind someone else grabbing your username

I could imagine mildly high profile folks not wanting to be dealing with impersonation


----------



## lizkat

turbineseaplane said:


> Only fully delete your account if you don't mind someone else grabbing your username
> 
> I could imagine mildly high profile folks not wanting to be dealing with impersonation




Yeah in that case better to just lock it down as much as possible and leave it.   Always possible someone will take the thing off Elon's hands (where is the vulture emoticon?) and turn out to be one of the good guys.


----------



## turbineseaplane

lol!  (ElonJet guy)


----------



## Roller

turbineseaplane said:


> Only fully delete your account if you don't mind someone else grabbing your username
> 
> I could imagine mildly high profile folks not wanting to be dealing with impersonation



Yeah, I thought of that. While I doubt anyone would be interested in a low profile account like mine, taking over someone's abandoned Twitter handle could cause the original owner a lot of grief. So maybe the safest course of action is to just log in once a month so the account doesn't get deactivated, assuming Twitter follows their stated policy. I guess I could also let the followers I care about know what I'm doing.


----------



## Nycturne

Edd said:


> Naive question alert:
> 
> If I delete my Twitter app on iPhone, does Apple or Twitter have an awareness of it? I’d  like it if someone knew.




I'm sure Twitter is tracking their active user count, and knows how those active users are reaching Twitter (Web, mobile apps, etc).


----------



## lizkat

Nycturne said:


> I'm sure Twitter is tracking their active user count, and knows how those active users are reaching Twitter (Web, mobile apps, etc).




Some people are "cross posting" from other social media venues to "the bird site" while trying to entice their followers away from Twitter... whether they are doing that manually or using a bot etc.

Twitter can likely figure out how much of that is happening too, but only if their devs actually have some free time on their hands.


----------



## Eric

Edd said:


> Naive question alert:
> 
> If I delete my Twitter app on iPhone, does Apple or Twitter have an awareness of it? *I’d  like it if someone knew.*


----------



## Eric

Cmaier said:


> Given the current situation, I tend to doubt that.



In my case they stayed true to their word, my account was deleted after 30 days.


----------



## lizkat

Eric said:


> In my case they stayed true to their word, my account was deleted after 30 days.




Yeah but you left before Elon noticed that you had a lot of company on your voluntary way off the platform.


----------



## lizkat

Eric said:


> The problem is that he makes these decisions based on emotion and a whim, most of the time without the right functionality, testing, etc. necessary to pull it off and then wants to roll it out the next day. In the IT world this guy is a nightmare scenario but it also makes sense now that we know why somany of his products have such terrible QA coming off the line, we used to think it was production/facility problems but now we know it's a their bipolar CEO.




Yeah the problem with his having taken Twitter private is that it's more difficult for investors to dislodge a CEO with medical malfunctions...  but not any more difficult for a regulatory body to decide whether rule violations are being addressed as agreed upon, etc.    So ball in Elon's court until the regulators get tired of broken promises and go to court to shut him down or force change in management.


----------



## Andropov

Edd said:


> Naive question alert:
> 
> If I delete my Twitter app on iPhone, does Apple or Twitter have an awareness of it?* I’d  like it if someone knew.*



If that's the goal, Twitter does not have access to a per-user deletion statistics (that is, Twitter won't know that *you* deleted your Twitter app), but AppStore Connect statistics provide developers with a statistic of app deletions. So Twitter will have access to statistics showing that *someone* deleted their Twitter app. Basically, your app deletion will show up in a plot like this one:





Just with a lot more zeroes for Twitter.


----------



## turbineseaplane

And now Elon has ensured that Sweeney got his personal Twitter and all of his other tracking accounts suspended
What a petty little child Elon is


----------



## Andropov

lizkat said:


> Because Twitter won't be around in 30 days?   Or...  ?



Even if Twitter is around in 30 days I wouldn't bet on non-essential services being available anyway. Non-working account deletion would be a violation of GDPR laws, but Musk does not appear to care about that.



lizkat said:


> Twitter can likely figure out how much of that is happening too, but only if their devs actually have some free time on their hands.



Ha!


----------



## lizkat

turbineseaplane said:


> And now Elon has ensured that Sweeney got his personal Twitter and all of his other tracking accounts suspended
> What a petty little child Elon is
> 
> View attachment 20027




What a piece of work Musk is. _ "I can do this so I'm doing it..."_

He must have been a piece of work to manage as a kid.  And, he never grew out of it.

Sweeney could pass the hat amongst his erstwhile followers at this point and then make a bid for Twitter that the lending banks might even tell Elon to take.


----------



## Nycturne

lizkat said:


> Some people are "cross posting" from other social media venues to "the bird site" while trying to entice their followers away from Twitter... whether they are doing that manually or using a bot etc.
> 
> Twitter can likely figure out how much of that is happening too, but only if their devs actually have some free time on their hands.




I’d be surprised if they hadn’t set up that sort of bucketing before Elon took over. Anything using the API has an app token meaning any activity can be traced back to the endpoint used, be it some sort of service that lets you post to multiple accounts on a schedule, or if you just prefer TweetBot to the official client.

Of course, I’m assuming a bit of competence on the part of the previous leadership team and the engineers, but the data is all there to be mined.


----------



## Eric

Here's the original tweet...


----------



## lizkat

Eric said:


> Here's the original tweet...




So yeah now on top of everything else, Elon's pants are on fire again.


----------



## Eric

lizkat said:


> So yeah now on top of everything else, Elon's pants are on fire again.



The way I see it is it's his platform and his rules, I just choose to no longer participate. When they had a system of policies and pretty much the same rules for everyone (except for Trump which they openly admitted to) you knew what you could and could not do, on a site that large it's necessary IMO.


----------



## lizkat

Eric said:


> The way I see it is it's his platform and his rules, I just choose to no longer participate. When they had a system of policies and pretty much the same rules for everyone (except for Trump which they openly admitted to) you knew what you could and could not do, on a site that large it's necessary IMO.




My objection there is that "his rules" are by the seat of his impulsive pants.   So I locked down my setup and check in once in awhile as a lurker.   Hard to believe the whole thing could go south.   If I were convinced that would happen for sure,  I'd just delete my setup but there's a part of me hoping somehow Musk will step back and his now unstable platform will get righted before regulators end up feeling that they have to sink it.


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

Well, this is just odd. I can’t seem to find any of the headline news articles about Truth Social’s right-wing political bias. This kind of information is the most important news of the day, a company flagrantly operating within its legal rights.


----------



## Andropov

https://twitter.com/webster/status/1603124997991505920?s=46&t=4_pIg9wOvlK6Ann9mq5G5g
		


Edit: Oops. Wrong thread.


----------



## Andropov

https://twitter.com/webster/status/1603124997991505920?s=46&t=4_pIg9wOvlK6Ann9mq5G5g


----------



## lizkat

Andropov said:


> https://twitter.com/webster/status/1603124997991505920?s=46&t=4_pIg9wOvlK6Ann9mq5G5g




Micromanagement by a real master of the art.    But he's still just Nero, fiddling while Rome burns.


----------



## lizkat

Chew Toy McCoy said:


> Well, this is just odd. I can’t seem to find any of the headline news articles about Truth Social’s right-wing political bias. This kind of information is the most important news of the day, a company flagrantly operating within its legal rights.




Could always check into whatever the TruthSocial parody account on Twitter has to say about that, assuming Elon's been too busy to notice there is (or was) such an animal.   Last thing I saw they had posted was a pitch to give $8 to Warnock's campaign for the Senate in Georgia instead of buying a blue check at Twitter.


----------



## Herdfan

turbineseaplane said:


> That's the key.  Anyone legitimately out there planning to "shoot down his jet", or w/e other paranoid delusion he has, continues to have ample ways to find and track him ... and will continue to have those ways.
> 
> *I think it's more about him not wanting to get dunked on so easily, right on Twitter, for his carbon footprint and gallivanting around the world.*
> 
> I'm sure he doesn't enjoy the "did you buy todays flight attendant a Horse for her services" jokes...  LOL
> Guy is such a POS




Do you feel the same way about John Kerry, Climate Czar, gallivanting around the world in his private jet?  Or all the celebs attending climate summits in their private jets?


----------



## lizkat

Herdfan said:


> Do you feel the same way about John Kerry, Climate Czar, gallivanting around the world in his private jet?  Or all the celebs attending climate summits in their private jets?




Yeah, actually...  why can't they just have a remote teleconference, or submit papers to a website or something and then schedule a vote-by-phone on any actionable items.   Too under-radar?  Too bad!


----------



## dada_dave

Herdfan said:


> Do you feel the same way about John Kerry, Climate Czar, gallivanting around the world in his private jet?  Or all the celebs attending climate summits in their private jets?




To an extent, yes, but especially if they spent $44 billion dollars to, in part, try to suppress information about that.


----------



## Eric

dada_dave said:


> View attachment 20031
> 
> 
> View attachment 20032
> 
> View attachment 20035
> 
> 
> To an extent, yes, but especially if they spent $44 billion dollars to, in part, try to suppress information about that.



He basically wrote a brand new policy just for this one user to justify it. It's still open information that can be freely shared on any other platform, not like anyone should give a shit about Elon's jet travels but it's public information nonetheless. This guy's skin is thinner than rice paper.


----------



## dada_dave

lizkat said:


> Yeah, actually...  why can't they just have a remote teleconference, or submit papers to a website or something and then schedule a vote-by-phone on any actionable items.   Too under-radar?  Too bad!




The occasional in person is fine and for some types of things, invaluable - even for climate change. That doesn’t excuse everyone who does this, far from it, but there are strong “and yet you live in society” vibes from @Herdfan’s post since lots of people travel for lots of different reasons. And of course the main issue is again that none of them spent $44 billion trying to suppress that information.






Edit: I should stress the conspicuous (and inconspicuous) consumption of the wealthy and powerful (… and everyone else … looks nervously at the pile of plastic bags in his home) is a conversation we should have, but it’s systemic changes that are needed when it comes to climate change.


----------



## Pumbaa

Great news! Now they can’t tweet whereabouts during future attempted coups.


----------



## turbineseaplane

Herdfan said:


> Do you feel the same way about John Kerry, Climate Czar, gallivanting around the world in his private jet?  Or all the celebs attending climate summits in their private jets?




To me, it probably depends what they are doing it for and how often, etc

I don't expect them to all "never use a jet", no

I was really commenting on what I've seen people say to him on Twitter about his jet usage and why he'd probably enjoy shutting that down


----------



## turbineseaplane

Seeing reports of Elon dumping 3.5B of TSLA stock

And with it so depressed ... ouch


----------



## lizkat

dada_dave said:


> but there are strong “and yet you live in society” vibes from @Herdfan’s post since lots of people travel for lots of different reasons




Well rumor has it that @Herdfan has been walking from W Va to his new digs in AZ with all his worldly possessions except for the odd item that's just too weirdly shaped to fit in a backpack.


----------



## lizkat

turbineseaplane said:


> Seeing reports of Elon dumping 3.5B of TSLA stock
> 
> And with it so depressed ... ouch




He's gonna end up sued by Tesla shareholders to quit mucking around w/ the halfdead bluebird and get on with keeping Tesla stock off the penny market.


----------



## dada_dave

lizkat said:


> He's gonna end up sued by Tesla shareholders to quit mucking around w/ the halfdead bluebird and get on with keeping Tesla stock off the penny market.




Yeah I’ve read that some aren’t terribly happy with him effectively being an absent CEO.

Though I got to think given everything, things at Tesla have probably never run smoother.


----------



## dada_dave




----------



## dada_dave

Eric said:


> He basically wrote a brand new policy just for this one user to justify it. It's still open information that can be freely shared on any other platform, not like anyone should give a shit about Elon's jet travels but it's public information nonetheless. This guy's skin is thinner than rice paper.




Yeah that guy runs a bunch of different handles for tracking different kinds of jets: from Elon Musk to celebrity jets to Russian oligarch jets to NATO jets all on publicly available information. They were all suspended, but you’ll be shocked to learn which handle was suspended first and by quite a bit …

Edit2: so some of the accounts are back up like Elonjet but the main account is still suspended. 

Edit: oh boy it gets worse …





He’s admitting full out that his new rules are just based on his own personal grievances. I have no idea if this story is true (and to be clear that’s scary as a parent), but it is immaterial to the actions at hand. No wonder the new rules are so full of holes and poorly thought out. And what legal action? What “organizations”? If legal action could be taken, then his former head of safety would have a far stronger case against him than he has against Sweeney.

Hell if the story is true then the stalker isn’t very good since they should’ve followed Sweeney’s account about Elon’s jet (note not his car) and known Elon isn’t in LA!


----------



## KingOfPain

Now he's fully delusional, if he thinks Sweeney is tracking his car...

I'm not sure if this was covered by one of the Twitter links above, since I'm blocking Twitter...
I guess Elon also fired all graphics designers (or they left on their own terms), because the new Twitter Blue logo is atrocious:


			https://www.fastcompany.com/90823987/elon-musk-twitter-blue-logo


----------



## Pumbaa

dada_dave said:


> He’s admitting full out that his new rules are just based on his own personal grievances. I have no idea if this story is true (and to be clear that’s scary as a parent), but it is immaterial to the actions at hand. No wonder the new rules are so full of holes and poorly thought out. And what legal action? What “organizations”? If legal action could be taken, then his former head of safety would have a far stronger case against him than he has against Sweeney.



Well, forgive me if I don’t take his word for it when he has been caught lying about his kid’s death for Twitter points before…

Musk posting a video of a person and the license plate of the car they are sitting in, implying they are criminal scum and asking for information about them is obviously not a problem on Twitter.


Tweet link


----------



## dada_dave

Pumbaa said:


> Well, forgive me if I don’t take his word for it when he has been caught lying about his kid’s death for Twitter points before…
> 
> Musk posting a video of a person and the license plate of the car they are sitting in, implying they are criminal scum and asking for information about them is obviously not a problem on Twitter.
> 
> View attachment 20047
> Tweet link



Oh I’m not taking his word either. My earlier post though is meant to say that even if one did, the incident is irrelevant to him going after Sweeney (and shadowy “organizations”) and even irrelevant in trying to (too quickly again) create new rules around OSint (and making a mess, again). Basically he’s using it as an excuse to do what he always wanted to do anyway which fits with his earlier pattern of behavior on Twitter.


----------



## Pumbaa

dada_dave said:


> Oh I’m not taking his word either. My earlier post though is meant to say that even if one did, the incident is irrelevant to him going after Sweeney (and shadowy “organizations”) and even irrelevant in trying to (too quickly again) create new rules around OSint (and making a mess, again). Basically he’s using it as an excuse to do what he always wanted to do anyway which fits with his earlier pattern of behavior on Twitter.



Sorry, didn’t mean to imply that you did, was just ranting about the predictable hypocrite Musk.


----------



## Eric

__
		https://www.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/zmbzkw


----------



## Eric

Robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Bloomberg 
Elon Musk’s Tesla Share Sales Approach the $40 Billion Mark​
Carmaker’s CEO offloaded $3.58 billion more stock this week
Latest disposal coincided with losing spot as No. 1 richest


----------



## lizkat

Welp, WaPo reports Twitter has suspended accounts of a bunch of journalists... . from CNN, NYT, WaPo "and other outlets" tonight.  Stay tuned, it only began around 730pm.

Breaking news piece WaPo - paywall removed:   https://wapo.st/3YpT6qj


----------



## shadow puppet

lizkat said:


> Welp, WaPo reports Twitter has suspended accounts of a bunch of journalists... . from CNN, NYT, WaPo "and other outlets" tonight.  Stay tuned, it only began around 730pm.
> 
> Breaking news piece WaPo - paywall removed:   https://wapo.st/3YpT6qj



Time to get my Post News account set up.  Have been seeing Twitter users list their Post accounts all day.  The great migration is beginning.


----------



## lizkat

shadow puppet said:


> Time to get my Post News account set up.  Have been seeing Twitter users list their Post accounts all day.  The great migration is beginning.




Well when Musk starts banning journos,  the papers and other media outlets for which they work will have to make some decisions about their own "umbrellla" presence on Twitter as landing page accounts from which they tout feature stories etc.     At the very least you'd expect them to start setting up either their own Mastodon server for social media accounts of their employees,   or else amp up their presence elsewhere in existing platforms .


----------



## turbineseaplane

This really begs the question of why he bought Twitter at all

Is he really just going to destroy everything that made it what it was and essentially light 40+ billion on fire?

Incredible


----------



## dada_dave

Twitter also suspended the official join mastodon account and people are now saying Twitter will no longer allow the posting of links to mastodon - the reason given that such links are “unsafe”.


----------



## lizkat

turbineseaplane said:


> This really begs the question of why he bought Twitter at all
> 
> Is he really just going to destroy everything that made it what it was and essentially light 40+ billion on fire?
> 
> Incredible




So many questions about this acquisition's financing and what those lenders and co-investors think, what is the impact on the management (and capitalization) of his other businesses, are there private channel talks between social media hosting "behavior" regulators in Europe and the US, etc.  

There is also at least one class action suit of former Twitter shareholders pending,  over allegations that Musk's tweets last autumn about intent to abandon the acquisition (due to his own later dismissed allegations about Twitter-induced flaws in the merger agreement) caused the plaintiff class losses during a specific timeframe.

Meanwhile he has sold at least $20 billion of Tesla shares and is losing money by the truckload pending whatever are his "fixes" that he imagines will turn the thing around and start making money. 

Tonight's wave of dismissing journos who may have dissed him from their Twitter accounts doesn't sound like a contribution to a fix.    Suppressing dissent is exactly the thing he claimed to be fixing, no? 

Sure it's his site now and he may censor what he wishes to suppress.  The main problem remains that he's not suppressing material that regulators regard as illegal.   But now that he's into suppressing dissent from the left, or criticism of his own behavior,  there are other platforms more hospitable to journalists,  and if he keeps that up then mainstream media outlets will depart:   to stay makes them look complicit with the overall aims of Musk, whose goals would now appear to have very little to do with "absolute free speech."

Musk has made Twitter into his own image.   He is Twitter and Twitter is Musk.   What's a paper like the WaPo or NYT doing there with landing page accounts  churning out links to their own wares and so helping draw traffic to Musk's site,  while its own journalists get banned for expressing content Musk dislikes?


----------



## lizkat

dada_dave said:


> Twitter also suspended the official join mastodon account and people are now saying Twitter will no longer allow the posting of links to mastodon - the reason given that such links are “unsafe”.




Some of them probably are unsafe,  even if Mastodon eventually catches up with the hosts and denies use of their further association to Mastodon.

But re Twitter's assertion:   Hah.    As if some of the links in the "free speech" sh^tposts that Twitter's hastily constructed algos are pushing to the bottom (rather than banning the authors) are safe. 

Rule one of pursuing links on the net:  _caveat emptor.

_Just because a site has rules doesn't mean they aren't violated.  People report unsafe links all the time but it takes awhile for them to disappear even on reputable sites.


----------



## Eric

lizkat said:


> Welp, WaPo reports Twitter has suspended accounts of a bunch of journalists... . from CNN, NYT, WaPo "and other outlets" tonight.  Stay tuned, it only began around 730pm.
> 
> Breaking news piece WaPo - paywall removed:   https://wapo.st/3YpT6qj



Here they are, from the NYTimes luckily everyone from Fox News made the cut.



> The accounts suspended included Ryan Mac of The New York Times; Drew Harwell of The Washington Post; Aaron Rupar, an independent journalist; Donie O’Sullivan of CNN; Matt Binder of Mashable; Tony Webster, an independent journalist; Micah Lee of The Intercept; and the political journalist Keith Olbermann. It was unclear what the suspensions had in common; each user’s Twitter page included a message that said it suspended accounts that “violate the Twitter rules.”


----------



## lizkat

Eric said:


> Here they are, from the NYTimes luckily everyone from Fox News made the cut.




Also from that piece



> After his suspension from Twitter, Mr. Sweeney turned to Mastodon, an alternative social network. After Mastodon used Twitter to promote Mr. Sweeney’s new account on Thursday, Twitter suspended Mastodon’s account. As some journalists shared the news of Mastodon’s suspension, their own accounts were suspended.




The guy is just a vindictive bully.  Easy to bait, eh?   Like Trump.


----------



## dada_dave

lizkat said:


> Some of them probably are unsafe,  even if Mastodon eventually catches up with the hosts and denies use of their further association to Mastodon.
> 
> But re Twitter's assertion:   Hah.    As if some of the links in the "free speech" sh^tposts that Twitter's hastily constructed algos are pushing to the bottom (rather than banning the authors) are safe.
> 
> Rule one of pursuing links on the net:  _caveat emptor._
> 
> Just because a site has rules doesn't mean they aren't violated.  People report unsafe links all the time but it takes awhile for them to disappear even on reputable sites.



No no these were just journalists testing links to mastodon and none were allowed, all were marked unsafe regardless of content. As of right now, you can no longer post *any* mastodon links on Twitter.

Also this:


----------



## lizkat

dada_dave said:


> No no these were just journalists testing links to mastodon and none were allowed, all were marked unsafe regardless of content. As of right now, you can no longer post *any* mastodon links on Twitter.




So they're unsafe because they're competition.   Got it.


----------



## Eric

lizkat said:


> So they're unsafe because they're competition.   Got it.



He's hemorrhaging millions per day at this point without advertisers and I doubt the check mark thing will even put a dent into that sort of debt. I'm sure he's putting up every wall he can to keep people from leaving.


----------



## fooferdoggie

Eric said:


> He's hemorrhaging millions per day at this point without advertisers and I doubt the check mark thing will even put a dent into that sort of debt. I'm sure he's putting up every wall he can to keep people from leaving.



gonna need a cage to keep the non crazy ones.


----------



## dada_dave

Cmaier said:


> qanon theories good
> 
> tracking Elon‘s jet bad
> 
> View attachment 19941



Even more ominous in retrospect, no?

Also as I said in a previous post this Ella Irwin seems to be a piece of work:



			Twitter’s New Head of Trust and Safety Offers to Partner with Controversial Anti-Trafficking Group - VICE
		


No idea if she moved forward with this, but it follows the track record so far …


----------



## lizkat

dada_dave said:


> Even more ominous in retrospect, no?
> 
> Also as I said in a previous post this Ella Irwin seems to be a piece of work:
> 
> 
> 
> Twitter’s New Head of Trust and Safety Offers to Partner with Controversial Anti-Trafficking Group - VICE
> 
> 
> 
> No idea if she moved forward with this, but it follows the track record so far …




The penultimate paragraph of that piece is really rather sickening.



> All of this, as well as OUR’s distance from the established anti-trafficking community—as Motherboard has reported, it is infamous in NGO circles, and many reputable groups both domestically and abroad refuse to work with it—would seemingly make it an ally of questionable value. It had, though, expressed eagerness to align itself with Musk’s Twitter even before Irwin’s invitation to partner, tweeting at Musk on December 9, “We couldn’t agree more about protecting children, and are ready to help Twitter in any way we can,” and tagging him in a similar tweet a few days later. If Irwin does indeed move forward with a partnership, it would offer OUR legitimation from a major company, and a continued way to burnish the image it’s worked hard to impress upon the public.




Start with the assertion that established NGOs apparently want nothing to do with the OUR group. I mean that it's "infamous" in their circles is quite a strong assertion,  and doubtless one that can be verified.  Musk has been making Twitter a hellscape of "absolute free speech" per his own definitions of that, even though he claims to have adequate moderation of illegal or hate speech in place via "allow the speech but not the reach."  So even if the visibility of inappropriate posts is merely reduced in lieu of removing that material and banning the authors,  one can only imagine the opportunities on Musk's Twitter for an entity that purports to be about deterring  CSEM or trafficking but may be about something else entirely.    Ugh.

Sounds like another thing for the regulators to look into.


----------



## Runs For Fun

Seems Musk and Twitter are having a meltdown today. So far a bunch of journalists have been suspended who have been critical of Musk. And he suspended the official Mastodon account. Lol what a baby. Also Mastodon links are now blocked.


----------



## Cmaier

turns out that banning still allows you to use twitter spaces.  So a bunch of the banned journalists got together for a pow wow there.  Elon eventually showed up, made a fool of himself when he was fact-checked, and then had the feed shut off.


----------



## lizkat

Runs For Fun said:


> Seems Musk and Twitter are having a meltdown today. So far a bunch of journalists have been suspended who have been critical of Musk. And he suspended the official Mastodon account. Lol what a baby. Also Mastodon links are now blocked.




Musk Shakes Up Twitter’s Legal Team as He Looks to Cut More Costs (NYT, paywall removed)

Subhead:  "Twitter has stopped paying rent on offices and is considering not paying severance packages to former employees, among other measures."

But the piece is about the legal ramifications of that and about where Musk is getting his legal counsel from these days.  



> Twitter’s leaders have also discussed the consequences of denying severance payments to thousands of people who have been laid off since the takeover, two people familiar with the talks said. And Mr. Musk has *threatened employees with lawsuits if they talk to the media and “act in a manner contrary to the company’s interest*,” according to an internal email sent last Friday.






> With Twitter drained of legal talent from layoffs and departures, Mr. Musk has sought lawyers from his other companies, including rocket maker SpaceX, to fill the void. More than half a dozen lawyers from the space exploration company have been given access to Twitter’s internal systems, according to two people and documents seen by The Times. SpaceX employees who have been brought in to Twitter include Chris Cardaci, the company’s vice president of legal, and Tim Hughes, its senior vice president, global business and government affairs.




Meanwhile it seems Musk may be entertaining or executing moves that invite further legal woes:  not paying office rents, not finalizing all termination paperwork so severance payments lag, and perhaps most importantly, continuing to lay off execs who may be integral to Twitter's former or existing tech and security concerns, including head of global Infotech and VP of info security.   This while the FTC is asking Musk to confirm that it's still capable of adhering to an "expanded consent decree" that went into effect after Twitter under previous management had violated an earlier decree and paid a fine, related to originally insufficient response to two data breaches and user privacy.  Possibly Musk wants to disclaim responsibility,  as the decree went into effect before he bought the company.  Good luck with that.


----------



## AG_PhamD

I have never liked Musk, but I figured I would give him a chance to turn things around… but wow. I have no problem with him outing the “trust and safety” board provided he replaces it with something different to fulfill the same function. By the looks of things, it pretty much seems to be Musk making the decisions influenced by his own emotions. So much for a free speech platform with rules consistent with laws.

Just to take an extreme example to highlight the point- If this is a free speech platform, why is Alex Jones banned (Believe me, I’m 100% not advocating for Jones to be on Twitter)? But if it’s a free speech platform and everyone else seems to have had a reset, then why not him. Why do Musks emotions around losing a child have anything to do with not allowing him back on?

As for this whole plane tracking nonsense- I actually think there is a fair argument not to allow dedicated accounts posting peoples locations without a delay, even if it is publicly available information. Musk banning the creator’s personal website is definitely a step too far.

It appears Musk may have banned a journalist who checked into the story about his son’s car being attacked- which reportedly was never phoned into the police, contradicting the story Musk gave as justification for banning the plane tracking account. Other journalists that re-tweeted the story may have also been banned for this reason. Again, totally inappropriate.

(Perhaps if you don’t want your private jet tracked, sell it and use charter companies)

This type of behavior will undoubtably kill Twitter. The best thing Musk could do is step out of the role of moderator. Doesn’t he have better things to be doing?  

As for the “Twitter files”, I don’t think they are a complete “nothing burger”. I’m not sure they necessarily show the extent GOP has claimed over the years. What I think is more interesting is how Twitter operated behind the scenes and more so the interface between the government and Twitter.

I just find it unfortunate Matt Taibi has received so much flack. It’s actually disturbing the smear campaign used to try to discredit him. Before anything was published the messenger was already being attacked. He’s one of the few journalists these days I trust to look at things in a fair, objective, and non-hysterical manner. And he most definitely not a conservative as the WaPo falsely claimed, he’s a Bernie Sanders progressive.

Frankly, I have I have very mixed feelings on Bari Weiss for a number of reasons. I think she’s probably a better option than many majors journalists that would likely be overly biased to the right or left. As it is, MSNBC claims there’s nothing to see, FOX claims universal conservative censorship. From what I can tell, neither of those takes are accurate.

Like it or not, Twitter has a tremendous amount of power over society. I think it’s in the public interest to understand how social media sites operate regarding how they censor/limit speech. And if and how the government influences things. That said, Musk seems to be making Twitter everything he said it shouldn’t be.


----------



## dada_dave

I don’t have the bandwidth to go over why the OSint ban doesn’t make much sense but I’ll address your thoughts on Weiss/Taibi and the Twitter files.



AG_PhamD said:


> As for the “Twitter files”, I don’t think they are a complete “nothing burger”.




To be absolutely clear: Yes they are.



AG_PhamD said:


> I’m not sure they necessarily show the extent GOP has claimed over the years. What I think is more interesting is how Twitter operated behind the scenes and more so the interface between the government and Twitter.




and no they don’t really show anything of the sort:








						Hello! You’ve Been Referred Here Because You’re Wrong About Twitter And Hunter Biden’s Laptop
					

Hello! Someone has referred you to this post because you’ve said something quite wrong about Twitter and how it handled something to do with Hunter Biden’s laptop. If you’re new h…




					www.techdirt.com
				






AG_PhamD said:


> I just find it unfortunate Matt Taibi has received so much flack. It’s actually disturbing the smear campaign used to try to discredit him. Before anything was published the messenger was already being attacked. He’s one of the few journalists these days I trust to look at things in a fair, objective, and non-hysterical manner. And he most definitely not a conservative as the WaPo falsely claimed, he’s a Bernie Sanders progressive.




So were Brianna Gray Joy and Tulsi Gabbard and Glenn Greenwald. Look who they are now and probably who they always were.

I’m sorry you feel Matt Taibi is some sort of beacon of journalism. He isn’t … as this episode proves. He isn’t just the messenger, he’s part of the message. As emptywheel put it those upset by the label of conservative journalists applied to Weiss and Taibi should be glad that WaPo restrained themselves from a more accurate description: PR flack. And truthfully it didn’t need proving again as he’s been awful for years. It isn’t a smear to use his own words against him or his own positions taken, especially when they are appropriate to the context. Like say noting the hypocrisy of his derision of “billionaire controlled media” having tight influence over news stories and then _participating in exactly that. _Musk is controlling what is seen, when, and how, and even then it doesn’t show anything of importance despite their best efforts to play these internal documents up as some sort of grand revelation. They even ghoulishly celebrated how they got James Baker fired _for doing his job as a company lawyer_. But of course him doing that job was a proof of a conspiracy rather than … how things work in the real world when you release documents. I mean he tried to manipulate the information that Twitter removed posts at the behest of the Biden campaign because they … ::checks notes:: … were pictures of Hunter’s dick. Kinda against TOS (well at the time, who knows now - “_yeah but that’s funny_” chortles Elon while banning accounts showing him in his bathing suit being hosed down).

Taibi’s a classic news manipulator and has been awful/toxic for a very long time. Even his own memoir details some pretty horrible things that he thought was funny and put himself in some sort of “good light”.

Okay so I don’t have the bandwidth for Weiss either but these are people with an axe to grind rather than the best people to go over the material. Oh and it’s of note that they are screeching about how the MSM won’t fully cover their bombshells while not actually making the underlying information available. I can’t imagine why. Taibi and Weiss are why editors exist at news outlets.



AG_PhamD said:


> That said, Musk seems to be making Twitter everything he said it shouldn’t be.




Yeah … and therefore what do you think that says about the people helping him do that and the claims they are disingenuously making?


----------



## dada_dave

Cmaier said:


> turns out that banning still allows you to use twitter spaces.  So a bunch of the banned journalists got together for a pow wow there.  Elon eventually showed up, made a fool of himself when he was fact-checked, and then had the feed shut off.



That’s … impressive on several levels.


----------



## AG_PhamD

dada_dave said:


> I don’t have the bandwidth to go over why the OSint ban doesn’t make much sense but I’ll address your “I don’t like/support Musk, but” caveat about Weiss/Taibi and the Twitter files.
> 
> 
> 
> To be absolutely clear: Yes they are.
> 
> 
> 
> and no they don’t really show anything of the sort:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Hello! You’ve Been Referred Here Because You’re Wrong About Twitter And Hunter Biden’s Laptop
> 
> 
> Hello! Someone has referred you to this post because you’ve said something quite wrong about Twitter and how it handled something to do with Hunter Biden’s laptop. If you’re new h…
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.techdirt.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> So were Brianna Gray Joy and Tulsi Gabbard and Glenn Greenwald. Look who they are now and probably who they always were.
> 
> I’m sorry you feel Matt Taibi is some sort of beacon of journalism. He isn’t … as this episode proves. He isn’t just the messenger, he’s part of the message. As emptywheel put it those upset by the label of conservative journalists applied to Weiss and Taibi should be glad that WaPo restrained themselves from a more accurate description: PR flack. And truthfully it didn’t need proving again as he’s been awful for years. It isn’t a smear to use his own words against him or his own positions taken, especially when they are appropriate to the context. Like say noting the hypocrisy of his derision of “billionaire controlled media” having tight influence over news stories and then _participating in exactly that. _Musk is controlling what is seen, when, and how, and even then it doesn’t show anything of importance despite their best efforts to play these internal documents up as some sort of grand revelation. They even ghoulishly celebrated how they got James Baker fired _for doing his job as a company lawyer_. But of course him doing that job was a grand conspiracy rather than … how things work in the real world when you release documents.
> 
> 
> 
> Yeah … and therefore what do you think that says about him, the people helping him do that, and the claims they are disingenuously making?




So who would you prefer be chosen to report on these files? (Preferably I would say everyone should, but I’m not sure that’s entirely feasible, at this point). 

If you think Taibi, Grey, Greenwald, etc are shills for the right, I think you are quite mistaken. It’s frankly quite laughable. Do you think Greenwald would have posted the Snowden files if he was Conservative?  Grey is clearly progressive. Or does she just write all those articles about workers rights, Medicare for All, and gun control to disguise herself? “I will say they don’t fit into the mainstream liberal” schema. The thing these 3 all have in common is a distaste for the MSM and an appreciation for civil liberties, which for some reason has become less and less of a value held by the left in recent times. It’s actually quite interesting how the ideology of this on the mainstream left and right have reversed in many cases. And to some degree, both the right and left both are moving towards authoritarian ideologies, they just only favor their side. 

The government absolutely interfaced with Twitter. There quite a lot of evidence of that. But the Trump administration also did it too. I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing, in fact it’s probably necessary. But it can potentially be a abused. I think it’s important to see how this occurs. 

I was watching Anderson Cooper a night or two ago, he suggested this line of journalistic inquiry is not a nothing burger. I guess he’s on the right now too. 

It may not be the story the right wanted it to be, but that doesn’t mean it is nothing. There is quite a bit of interest into how Musk is running Twitter, which is totally fair. Why is it that the previous operators are immune from any investigation?

The problem here is the right and left have become so tribal that if anyone steps outside the designated ideology and unspoken “rules” that person automatically becomes shunned and told they’re a wolf in sheeps clothing, Just because someone doesn’t perpetuate the mainstream left wing narrative to a T does not make them a member of the right, and visa versa. The messengers were shot even before they reported anything. What does that tell you?


----------



## dada_dave

AG_PhamD said:


> So who would you prefer be chosen to report on these files? (Preferably I would say everyone should, but I’m not sure that’s entirely feasible, at this point).
> 
> If you think Taibi, Grey, Greenwald, etc are shills for the right, I think you are quite mistaken. It’s frankly quite laughable. Do you think Greenwald would have posted the Snowden files if he was Conservative?  Grey is clearly progressive. Or does she just write all those articles about workers rights, Medicare for All, and gun control to disguise herself? “I will say they don’t fit into the mainstream liberal” schema. The thing these 3 all have in common is a distaste for the MSM and an appreciation for civil liberties, which for some reason has become less and less of a value held by the left in recent times. It’s actually quite interesting how the ideology of this on the mainstream left and right have reversed in many cases. And to some degree, both the right and left both are moving towards authoritarian ideologies, they just only favor their side.




Bullshit. Sigh … if you still think Taibi, Greenwald, and Grey (and I noted you left off Tulsi) are some sort of champions of the left or civil liberties after everything they’ve done (or Aaron Mate/Michael Tracy, there’s another pair of assholes) - I just don’t know what to say and frankly nothing I could say would convince you at this point - speaking of tribal and identity. They are horseshoe theory incarnate and all have literally shilled for the right and often some of the worst, most extreme right.

As to your query … yeah any newspaper could’ve reported it, multiple ones could’ve, they all could’ve been. There’s no limit on that.



AG_PhamD said:


> The government absolutely interfaced with Twitter. There quite a lot of evidence of that. But the Trump administration also did it too. I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing, in fact it’s probably necessary. But it can potentially be a abused. I think it’s important to see how this occurs.




Yeah and you would’ve gotten the same information by paying attention over the last 6 years and listening to the public statements made by everyone involved. Nothing nefarious happened here. Did you even read the link?



AG_PhamD said:


> I was watching Anderson Cooper a night or two ago, he suggested this line of journalistic inquiry is not a nothing burger. I guess he’s on the right now too.




Hardly. But I’d like to know what specifically he thought was interesting as to me it’s been a no show.



AG_PhamD said:


> It may not be the story the right wanted it to be, but that doesn’t mean it is nothing. There is quite a bit of interest into how Musk is running Twitter, which is totally fair. Why is it that the previous operators are immune from any investigation?




Immune from investigation … over what exactly? And what investigation? So far there hasn’t been one … there’s been a selective release of documents that didn’t even show what the people who released them said they showed - including Taibi, his analysis is bunk though I suppose you could give him credit for not going as far as Elon tried to claim he did. But, hey, I mean let’s release all Twitter documents including recent ones under Musk. Somehow they don’t want that … weird.



AG_PhamD said:


> The problem here is the right and left have become so tribal that if anyone steps outside the designated ideology and unspoken “rules” that person automatically becomes shunned and told they’re a wolf in sheeps clothing, Just because someone doesn’t perpetuate the mainstream left wing narrative to a T does not make them a member of the right, and visa versa. The messengers were shot even before they reported anything. What does that tell you?




Sigh … when someone screams at the top of their lungs “I’m such an independent thinker!”, “I’m so neutral!”, “I’m so over both sides”, “I’m not mainstream and that’s why I’m trustworthy and not a crank” …  it’s a very good indication that they are none of those things. Statements like that immediately should get your bullshit detector up and running. They are often the mark of the cynical or the delusional.

You talk about the left abandoning the civil liberties? Again bullshit, but if so those sets of jackasses are at the forefront, if they were to be counted as left still. They all use the classic “I do not support but they are right about X” then “Y” and “Z” to cover support for some of the worst regimes and people on the planet. And then dress up the criticism they get for doing so as suppression. Same playbook that we see over and over again.

I’m shooting the messengers because of the way they manipulated the message even in this instance and how it fits into the broader pattern of how they have done the same for years. I don’t trust them because they are not trustworthy.

Edit: Even the parodies of them are barely parodies anymore:





For a free thinker who doesn’t conform to any tribalistic dogma, he’s rather predictable.


----------



## Scepticalscribe

Herdfan said:


> Do you feel the same way about John Kerry, Climate Czar, gallivanting around the world in his private jet?  Or all the celebs attending climate summits in their private jets?



The issue here is a perceived double standard as Elon Musk (thanks to his links with Tesla) is - or rather, was - linked in the public eye, or public space, with the support of, and the promotion of, modes of transport that are not based on fossil fuels.

If your public image is based on your (perceived) support of -  or promoting awareness of - environmental issues, don't howl with outraged surprise when you are called out on a double standard.

In this context, I would argue that the violation of "security" argument (especially if the flight path information is public source) is a distraction, or diversion; besides, the so-called "richest man in the world" (now, as of this week, demoted to a new slot where he is the supposedly the "second richest man in the world") should be well able to afford decent security.

For that very reason, I don't have a quarrel with - for example - the loathsome Mr Trump "gallivanting" around in a private jet; private jets are in complete compliance with his revolting public image.




lizkat said:


> Welp, WaPo reports Twitter has suspended accounts of a bunch of journalists... . from CNN, NYT, WaPo "and other outlets" tonight.  Stay tuned, it only began around 730pm.
> 
> Breaking news piece WaPo - paywall removed:   https://wapo.st/3YpT6qj



So much for the "free speech absolutist".

Guys like this only like "free speech" when it is enlisted in support of their causes, or in sycophantic praise of themselves.


lizkat said:


> Well when Musk starts banning journos,  the papers and other media outlets for which they work will have to make some decisions about their own "umbrellla" presence on Twitter as landing page accounts from which they tout feature stories etc.     At the very least you'd expect them to start setting up either their own Mastodon server for social media accounts of their employees,   or else amp up their presence elsewhere in existing platforms .



Agreed.


lizkat said:


> So many questions about this acquisition's financing and what those lenders and co-investors think, what is the impact on the management (and capitalization) of his other businesses, are there private channel talks between social media hosting "behavior" regulators in Europe and the US, etc.
> 
> There is also at least one class action suit of former Twitter shareholders pending,  over allegations that Musk's tweets last autumn about intent to abandon the acquisition (due to his own later dismissed allegations about Twitter-induced flaws in the merger agreement) caused the plaintiff class losses during a specific timeframe.
> 
> Meanwhile he has sold at least $20 billion of Tesla shares and is losing money by the truckload pending whatever are his "fixes" that he imagines will turn the thing around and start making money.
> 
> Tonight's wave of dismissing journos who may have dissed him from their Twitter accounts doesn't sound like a contribution to a fix.    Suppressing dissent is exactly the thing he claimed to be fixing, no?
> 
> Sure it's his site now and he may censor what he wishes to suppress.  The main problem remains that he's not suppressing material that regulators regard as illegal.   But now that he's into suppressing dissent from the left, or criticism of his own behavior,  there are other platforms more hospitable to journalists,  and if he keeps that up then mainstream media outlets will depart:   to stay makes them look complicit with the overall aims of Musk, whose goals would now appear to have very little to do with "absolute free speech."
> 
> Musk has made Twitter into his own image.   He is Twitter and Twitter is Musk.   What's a paper like the WaPo or NYT doing there with landing page accounts  churning out links to their own wares and so helping draw traffic to Musk's site,  while its own journalists get banned for expressing content Musk dislikes?



If memory serves, he was forced to follow through ("performance" of a contract) and actually purchase the site, although, initially, he sought to renege on the deal but was compelled in court to complete the contract.

Nothing I have seen since his purchase has altered my conviction that he wishes to thrash the site, I suspect, for both personal and perhaps, political reasons.


----------



## Andropov

Mastodon links are malware now 



			https://twitter.com/sebaaltonen/status/1603660561803366400?s=46&t=Cpp1i6olTt7-8B2yWmyQEw


----------



## Eric

When your own poll isn't going your way.


__
		https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/znauys


----------



## turbineseaplane

A very good point from Bálint Szilakszi on Mastodon

_This “Elon is free to do what he wants on Twitter, and you’re free to move elsewhere” is a very american take.

Elon must comply with European laws and regulations in data protection, anti-trust, anti-discrimination, etc or the EU will seize his property to enforce fines or make Twitter unavailable for EU.
_


----------



## Eric

turbineseaplane said:


> A very good point from Bálint Szilakszi on Mastodon
> 
> _*This “Elon is free to do what he wants on Twitter, and you’re free to move elsewhere” is a very american take.*
> 
> Elon must comply with European laws and regulations in data protection, anti-trust, anti-discrimination, etc or the EU will seize his property to enforce fines or make Twitter unavailable for EU._



Ahh, the standard reply over at MR as soon as anyone complains in the forum designed for complaints.


----------



## fooferdoggie

Guess who just managed to Streisand Effect his way to an entire subreddit dedicated to tracking his stupid jet?








						ElonJetTracker • r/ElonJetTracker
					

Given the latest attempt to hide this corporate jet's whereabouts, which is in part funded by US taxpayers, this community will help to keep this...




					old.reddit.com


----------



## turbineseaplane

Eric said:


> Ahh, the standard reply over at MR as soon as anyone complains in the forum designed for complaints.




So true ... Anytime any jurisdiction threatens any aspect of what Apple does (and how they do it), the retort from the cult is always "Apple should just pull out of XYZ!" -- "Apple doesn't need XYZ customers anyways!"   

Real business wizards over there


----------



## Scepticalscribe

The EU has warned Mr Musk that Twitter could face sanctions "soon" for having suspended the accounts of a number of journalists, describing this development as "worrying" (EU Commissioner Vera Journova was quoted as saying that "news about the arbitrary suspension of journalists on Twitter is worrying").

She further added: “(The) EU’s Digital Services Act requires respect of media freedom and fundamental rights. This is reinforced under our #MediaFreedomAct. 
Elon Musk should be aware of that. There are red lines. And sanctions, soon.”

The howling hypocrisy - and thin-skin - of this utter narcissist and self-described "free speech absolutist" is breath-taking (for this a freedom that is evidently reserved only for aspiring Nazis, misogynists, racists, and others who dwell on the alt-right).


----------



## Cmaier

turbineseaplane said:


> So true ... Anytime any jurisdiction threatens any aspect of what Apple does (and how they do it), the retort from the cult is always "Apple should just pull out of XYZ!" -- "Apple doesn't need XYZ customers anyways!"
> 
> Real business wizards over there




Goes both ways. “I dropped my iPhone in my septic tank and then ran over it with my cargo bike full of baguettes and contrary to EU regulation xxx.yy Apple refuses to give me a shiny new one plus 40 euros for my troubles.”


----------



## Eric

Scepticalscribe said:


> The EU has warned Mr Musk that Twitter could face sanctions "soon" for having suspended the accounts of a number of journalists, describing this development as "worrying" (EU Commissioner Vera Journova was quoted as saying that "news about the arbitrary suspension of journalists on Twitter is worrying").
> 
> She further added: “(The) EU’s Digital Services Act requires respect of media freedom and fundamental rights. This is reinforced under our #MediaFreedomAct.
> Elon Musk should be aware of that. There are red lines. And sanctions, soon.”
> 
> The howling hypocrisy - and thin-skin - of this utter narcissist and self-described "free speech absolutist" is breath-taking (for this a freedom that is evidently reserved only for aspiring Nazis, misogynists, racists, and others who dwell on the alt-right).



Frankly, I'm a huge fan of the EU based GDPR and that's why we employ it here. It's a clearcut set of rules, policies and guidelines that are sensible and ubiquitous.

Being the world's richest troll does not make him exempt from the same rules everyone else must follow, I mean who does he think he is, Donald Trump?


----------



## turbineseaplane

Cmaier said:


> Goes both ways. “I dropped my iPhone in my septic tank and then ran over it with my cargo bike full of baguettes and contrary to EU regulation xxx.yy Apple refuses to give me a shiny new one plus 40 euros for my troubles.”




Sometimes, for sure
Lots more of the other complaining lately, though, with all the news around new EU legislation that will impact Apple

_(much to the chagrin of the "Apple can do whatever it wants! Screw 'em!" crowd)_


----------



## lizkat

Cmaier said:


> turns out that banning still allows you to use twitter spaces.  So a bunch of the banned journalists got together for a pow wow there.  Elon eventually showed up, made a fool of himself when he was fact-checked, and then had the feed shut off.




Imagine being a software engineer at Twitter these days:  come out from under desk where you are expected to sleep when not coding,  plug in a kettle for some java if there is any instant around, since no catering service or pantry...   Do this quick fix now,  and undo that other thing from yesterday, and please, just trust Elon when he says to put the shutoff right here, it will be fine, two Tesla lawyers signed off on it.


----------



## fooferdoggie

lizkat said:


> Imagine being a software engineer at Twitter these days:  come out from under desk where you are expected to sleep when not coding,  plug in a kettle for some java if there is any instant around, since no catering service or pantry...   Do this quick fix now,  and undo that other thing from yesterday, and please, just trust Elon when he says to put the shutoff right here, it will be fine, two Tesla lawyers signed off on it.



You cant be under the desk as the rent has not been paid on your office.


----------



## dada_dave

Eric said:


> When your own poll isn't going your way.
> 
> 
> __
> https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/znauys




Vox populi, vox dei!


----------



## dada_dave

Cmaier said:


> turns out that banning still allows you to use twitter spaces.  So a bunch of the banned journalists got together for a pow wow there.  Elon eventually showed up, made a fool of himself when he was fact-checked, and then had the feed shut off.




Here’s a link to clip of it:



			https://mobile.twitter.com/ForeverEversley/status/1603612770892918784?cn=ZmxleGlibGVfcmVjcw%3D%3D&refsrc=email
		


Though supposedly the full audio recording isn’t available on Twitter spaces as it normally would be … weird!

Edit: … And he’s killed the Spaces feature entirely as a response.









						Musk Kills Twitter Audio Feature After Bizarre Talk With Journalists
					

It's clear Musk would rather burn Twitter to the ground than hear people question the wisdom of his choices.




					gizmodo.com


----------



## Andropov

Musk is now putting quotes around the word _journalists_ and claiming that what they did equals to *ahem* giving out assassination coordinates (for real).

This is Cult Tactics 101: he has created an enemy (the press) against whom they (Musk and its followers) are fighting. Only the cult can provide protection, by (coincidentally) barring all critics from the platform.


----------



## lizkat

Andropov said:


> Musk is now putting quotes around the word _journalists_ and claiming that what they did equals to *ahem* giving out assassination coordinates (for real).
> 
> This is Cult Tactics 101: he has created an enemy (the press) against whom they (Musk and its followers) are fighting. Only the cult can provide protection, by (coincidentally) barring all critics from the platform.





omigod muh freedom to speeeeeeeeeeeek...  on Twitter is being nipped in the bud by a self described free speech absolutist.  Fancy that.

Meanwhile the main reason the EU hasn't shut him down is their digital regulations act is new and some of it doesn't even roll out until 2024.   But somehow I don't think Elon Musk still gonna be running the bluebat by then.


----------



## dada_dave

Andropov said:


> Musk is now putting quotes around the word _journalists_ and claiming that what they did equals to *ahem* giving out assassination coordinates (for real).
> 
> This is Cult Tactics 101: he has created an enemy (the press) against whom they (Musk and its followers) are fighting. Only the cult can provide protection, by (coincidentally) barring all critics from the platform.



Yup he’s appealing to the Trump cult. Thank goodness he can’t run for president.


----------



## Eric

lizkat said:


> omigod muh freedom to speeeeeeeeeeeek...  on Twitter is being nipped in the bud by a self described free speech absolutist.  Fancy that.
> 
> Meanwhile the main reason the EU hasn't shut him down is their digital regulations act is new and some of it doesn't even roll out until 2024.   But somehow I don't think Elon Musk still gonna be running the bluebat by then.



TBH I'm surprised we're not seeing more credible news agencies dropping them at this point, it shows the hold the platform really has on them.


----------



## dada_dave

Eric said:


> TBH I'm surprised we're not seeing more credible news agencies dropping them at this point, it shows the hold the platform really has on them.



True though if they are preparing a mass response amongst the different agencies that might take awhile to organize. I don’t know that they are, but if they are …


----------



## lizkat

dada_dave said:


> Yup he’s appealing to the Trump cult. Thank goodness he can’t run for president.




Laughing because Musk for Prez (if he could run) might be a step too far even for this GOP.

At least Donald Trump didn't pretend to have any interest in micromanaging his "fiefdom" day to day.  He just liked signing things --and with a sharpie pen!--  once he had decided how they should work.  How his ideas would get from his brain to a vote on the floors of Congress was immaterial to him and an annoyance,  not an opportunity to showcase talent for handling minutiae.


----------



## Andropov

lizkat said:


> Meanwhile the main reason the EU hasn't shut him down is their digital regulations act is new and some of it doesn't even roll out until 2024.   But somehow I don't think Elon Musk still gonna be running the bluebat by then.



EU's bureaucracy wouldn't have come into play yet either way, it's painfully slow even for well established laws. But oh, the day they come knocking...



dada_dave said:


> True though if they are preparing a mass response amongst the different agencies that might take awhile to organize. I don’t know that they are, but if they are …



I wouldn't hold my breath.


----------



## dada_dave

Andropov said:


> EU's bureaucracy wouldn't have come into play yet either way, it's painfully slow even for well established laws. But oh, the day they come knocking...




There’s an expression that I believe was coined for the US DOJ (although maybe older and boarder than that): the wheel of justice grinds slowly, but finely



Andropov said:


> I wouldn't hold my breath.




Maybe


----------



## dada_dave

lizkat said:


> Laughing because Musk for Prez (if he could run) might be a step too far even for this GOP.




If Musk takes control of that base, even if he can’t run for president, he’ll effectively run the GOP. There is no step too far … or bottom.


----------



## lizkat

dada_dave said:


> If Musk takes control of that base, even if he can’t run for president, he’ll effectively run the GOP. There is no step too far … or bottom.




Point taken, although unclear to me that Musk is in control of much of anything really, past day to day adjustments for how yesterday's controlling efforts backfired.   Either he gets a meds adjustment or things will continue to slide into the red for him on every level -   corporate, financial, legal, mental...


----------



## Eric

As a Tesla owner I get this, we've had several quality issues right out of the gate. It speaks to how Elon runs his factories, getting them out the door is more important to him than ensuring quality. Their service centers are always backed up as a result.


__
		https://www.reddit.com/r/Wellthatsucks/comments/zni97u


----------



## dada_dave

lizkat said:


> Point taken, although unclear to me that Musk is in control of much of anything really, past day to day adjustments for how yesterday's controlling efforts backfired.   Either he gets a meds adjustment or things will continue to slide into the red for him on every level -   corporate, financial, legal, mental...




Control in the context means the idolatry, the willingness of the base to follow the whims of dear leader - erratic, even self destructive behavior are almost features not bugs as the resulting criticism results in a deepening of the defensive identity association. It’s actually quite difficult for cult association to transfer, for obvious reasons as they’re built around the leader, but, given Musk’s “qualities”, he may be uniquely suited for it. It isn’t definite but it’s certainly plausible. He already had quite a cult-like following and he’s added or brought to the forefront many of the things that appeal to the MAGA wing.


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

Musk's jet is now being tracked on Reddit.  Does anybody know how much it would cost to buy Reddit?


----------



## Eric

Chew Toy McCoy said:


> Musk's jet is now being tracked on Reddit.  Does anybody know how much it would cost to buy Reddit?



Musk literally paid $44 billion to ban this guy from posting information that's already publicly and legally available.


----------



## lizkat

Eric said:


> Musk literally paid $44 billion to ban this guy from posting information that's already publicly and legally available.




He needs to give himself a break from micromanaging.  Sell $6 or $8B more worth of Tesla, pay the back rent  and severance packages,  hire some in-house legal counsel and just go skiing for a month or something.   Let his senior help make the decisions with the lawyers.  It might save the investment.   That assumes he's not still in such a rage over being forced to go through with the purchase that he doesn't care any more to try to remedy a worse than rocky reboot.


----------



## Eric

There's some speculation around him filing for bankruptcy.


__
		https://www.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/znkxe1


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

Eric said:


> There's some speculation around him filing for bankruptcy.
> 
> 
> __
> https://www.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/znkxe1




Using recent history as an indicator, it will probably be a Musk limited edition collector's card.


----------



## Scepticalscribe

Eric said:


> There's some speculation around him filing for bankruptcy.
> 
> 
> __
> https://www.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/znkxe1




I have suspected that this was one of his intended destinations, all along.


----------



## Andropov

This made me laugh https://twitter.com/pbump/status/1603591325219168258?s=46&t=IjjMVl1h7ahyvpvk9aJbfg


----------



## fischersd

Eric said:


> There's some speculation around him filing for bankruptcy.
> 
> 
> __
> https://www.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/znkxe1



I'm kinda hoping it's:



Ok...before the multitude of messages about insensitivity to mental health issues - I think we need to repeal sensitivity for despots.


----------



## Macky-Mac

Chew Toy McCoy said:


> Using recent history as an indicator, it will probably be a Musk limited edition collector's card.




maybe he's going to sell Twitter to Ye


----------



## shadow puppet

I wish the old Twitter owners and staff could create a newer, better version of Twitter.  
I really miss those days.  Before Elon, TFG and all the cray.


----------



## Cmaier

https://twitter.com/GabeHoff/status/1603820718084481025
		


Now he’s suspending reporters for pointing out times where he doxxed people.


----------



## turbineseaplane

Clearly it's time for Elon to offer up a "limited edition NFT" to raise money from his cult..

ala Trump


----------



## Yoused

fischersd said:


> I'm kinda hoping it's:



But, would we notice any difference?


----------



## lizkat

turbineseaplane said:


> Clearly it's time for Elon to offer up a "limited edition NFT" to raise money from his cult..
> 
> ala Trump




He has to come up with something pretty soon or the roof's going to cave in.  

[ Memo to Elon:   Well look, you can't just go around not paying rent on your offices and not providing paperwork on severance for people you've fired.   That stuff catches up with you even if you borrowed legal counsel from one of your other swell businesses, and even if you don't have a communications department to refer inquirers to HR to say "We cannot comment on employee matters." ]​
He may believe that his "coup de grace" today refers to his latest ban on some hapless journo who once stuck a cloud on his blue sky,  but the coup de grace for Musk's Twitter is also just over the horizon. 

 I feel like what he's doing lately is just a long vamp while he figures out whether to sell some more Tesla and keep the lights on or just file for bankruptcy and "see what happens."   Maybe the fun of just throwing all his toys out the pram after having to buy Twitter is starting to wear off.  Not much left in the pram now but invoices, collection notices and the kind of paperwork that comes dressed in blue cover sheets with echos of "You've been served" echoing down the hallway.

Cue Txell Sust & August Tharrats Blues Trio's track _Waiting for the Singer_ (their 2003 album Nonstop)


----------



## dada_dave

Cmaier said:


> https://twitter.com/GabeHoff/status/1603820718084481025
> 
> 
> 
> Now he’s suspending reporters for pointing out times where he doxxed people.




Amongst other things, yikes


----------



## lizkat

dada_dave said:


> Amongst other things, yikes




There's a post in there from Elon saying Spaces is back. 

Who would use it now after however he had it tweaked?


----------



## Roller

I've stayed away from Twitter for a couple days now. Although I miss reading posts from a few accounts I followed, overall it's been positive. I suppose I could have ignored the toxicity, but it was hard to escape.


----------



## shadow puppet

My brain hurts.  Just finished signing up for both Post and Mastodon.
I realize it's not _that _difficult but I miss the simplicity of Twitter. 


ETA:  This gets crazier by the nanosecond.


----------



## turbineseaplane

.


----------



## lizkat

shadow puppet said:


> My brain hurts.  Just finished signing up for both Post and Mastodon.
> I realize it's not _that _difficult but I miss the simplicity of Twitter.
> 
> 
> ETA:  This gets crazier by the nanosecond.
> 
> View attachment 20098




Yeah I'm OK w/ Mastodon now but I don't spend much time on it, have no clue where most of the bird watchers I was following have gone (probably Instagram)  and it's definitely short of what felt intuitive enough at Twitter.   I expect that will change at Mastodon as time goes on,  but right now one can't help but feel annoyance at Musk all over again whenever thinking to make a couple clicks to do something on Mastodon that can take way more than that to get done.

Nice move scanning DMs for Mastodon links now in Twitter.  /S     

Musk could make all this go away for us AND himself if he'd just flip the thing.   Sell it to Dorsey or somebody for enough to cover the bank loans... and get out from under it while Tesla is still worth something.   Then the Trumpers can go back to TruthSocial and waste money on Trump's NFTs instead of Elon's checkmarks.


----------



## dada_dave

Eric said:


> There's some speculation around him filing for bankruptcy.
> 
> 
> What does this even mean? from
> WhitePeopleTwitter



It was just another Twitter files drop that he was hyping up. 

I didn’t write this description of the Twitter files but it’s pretty accurate:


----------



## dada_dave

Apparently mastodon users have been figuring out how to get links past the Twitter filters:









						postmodern (@postmodern@infosec.exchange)
					

Content warning: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion




					infosec.exchange
				




Their conclusions:





Probably doesn’t help that I bet it was a rush job done by a skeleton staff of whoever is left operating on minimal sleep and even less motivation.


----------



## Eric

Elon's Jet now on Mastodon for anyone interested, couldn't care less about his stupid jet, following to show support. This guy never sold out.









						Elon Musk's Jet (@elonjet@mastodon.social)
					

7 Posts, 4 Following, 50.4K Followers · Tracking Elon Musk's Private Jet (N628TS) with a bot using public ADS-B data  @ADSBExchange , contact @JxckS   for inquiries http://ElonJet.net




					mastodon.social


----------



## fooferdoggie

Eric said:


> Elon's Jet now on Mastodon for anyone interested, couldn't care less about his stupid jet, following to show support. This guy never sold out.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Elon Musk's Jet (@elonjet@mastodon.social)
> 
> 
> 7 Posts, 4 Following, 50.4K Followers · Tracking Elon Musk's Private Jet (N628TS) with a bot using public ADS-B data  @ADSBExchange , contact @JxckS   for inquiries http://ElonJet.net
> 
> 
> 
> 
> mastodon.social



he brought this on himself.


----------



## Macky-Mac

everyone should know where Elon's jet is........who knows when he'll flush the toilet !!!


----------



## Andropov

This is comic book villain stuff.


			https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1603985491505795072?s=46&t=14UhFdRblB6Ci_yElIuKdw
		


He’s going to use his pawns (who else is paying for Twitter Blue?) to turn Twitter into a massive echo chamber by reducing the reach of people muted/blocked by them.


----------



## Pumbaa

Yeah, no, more like the EU has spoken. 


Tweet link

Also lying about doxxing his location. Again.


----------



## Andropov

Pumbaa said:


> Yeah, no, more like the EU has spoken.



I hear sanctions for violations of the Digital Services Act can be "up to 6% of a platform’s global annual revenue". Not sure how much would that be with advertisers fleeing the platform. Maybe Musk can offset the sanctions with that yard sale of pans and pots from Twitter's HQ kitchen the NYT reported on.

Anyhow, for the first time since this whole thing started, I can go into Mastodon and actually read posts from people I'm interested in. It's a far cry from the 2k+ people curated timeline I had in Twitter, but enough people have moved there by now for it to be marginally useful to me. I miss artists the most, so far it's mostly tech people in Mastodon.


----------



## lizkat

Pumbaa said:


> Yeah, no, more like the EU has spoken.
> 
> View attachment 20111
> Tweet link
> 
> Also lying about doxxing his location. Again.




The people have spoken?  More like members are writing limericks about him.   He's toast!


----------



## Edd

Deleted my Twitter account. My wife is holding onto hers tight. I’d guess her internet activity consists of 20% Instagram, 20% Amazon, 20% Zappos, and 2000% Twitter.


----------



## Eric

Edd said:


> Deleted my Twitter account. My wife is holding onto hers tight. I’d guess her internet activity consists of 20% Instagram, 20% Amazon, 20% Zappos, and 2000% Twitter.




Well, you'll have 30 days should you decide to return, this has always been the policy. Here's a link and a screenshot, as @Cmaier mentioned, I would be surprised if this remains in place with the massive purge, they may eventually take steps to prevent this. In my case the account did get permanently removed in 30 days.









						How to deactivate your Twitter account | Twitter Help
					

Deactivation puts your Twitter account in a queue for permanent deletion. Find out how to delete your Twitter account.




					help.twitter.com


----------



## lizkat

Edd said:


> Deleted my Twitter account. My wife is holding onto hers tight. I’d guess her internet activity consists of 20% Instagram, 20% Amazon, 20% Zappos, and 2000% Twitter.




You now have the ideal household setup:   one foot in Twitter to see what's going on and the other foot on record w/ Twitter as "deactivated..."   so you can see if they entice you to return via email "opportunity" or something... we can only imagine the limits of Elon's imagination at this point: 

_"Come back and see what you've been missing!  Special offer for those reactivating:   for a short time we are offering blue checkmarks for only 88c instead of $8 by way of a $7.12 credit to your account after purchase,  if your first post upon returning would probably have got you a suspension in the bad old days!  Your credit will be applied inside of six months!  Free speech rules!"  /S_​


----------



## lizkat

Andropov said:


> This is comic book villain stuff.
> 
> 
> https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1603985491505795072?s=46&t=14UhFdRblB6Ci_yElIuKdw
> 
> 
> 
> He’s going to use his pawns (who else is paying for Twitter Blue?) to turn Twitter into a massive echo chamber by reducing the reach of people muted/blocked by them.




Not only that, but if downvotes are shown and work the same as likes,  members can see who exactly has downvoted tweets,  so this new gig of Elon's may invite harassment of people who mute/block accounts  by "friends" of the owners of those muted/blocked accounts, or by those owners operating from alternate accounts.


----------



## shadow puppet

lizkat said:


> You now have the ideal household setup:   one foot in Twitter to see what's going on and the other foot on record w/ Twitter as "deactivated..."



It's become such a thing to say "I deleted my Twitter".  I'm still there and I will be until whatever card Elon plays is my final end point.

Neither Post or Mastodon currently does it for me.  I can't even look at Post for more than a few minutes due to no dark mode UI and Mastodon just seems like too much work in certain regards.  I like how one of my favorite Twitter accounts puts it re: staying or leaving:  "I do think what happens here is too important to give up on. If we cede the informational battleground, this place just turns into an alt-right cesspool. I’d rather stay and fight the disinfo."


----------



## Andropov

lizkat said:


> Not only that, but if downvotes are shown and work the same as likes,  members can see who exactly has downvoted tweets,  so this new gig of Elon's may invite harassment of people who mute/block accounts  by "friends" of the owners of those muted/blocked accounts, or by those owners operating from alternate accounts.



I expect it to work per account rather than per tweet. Which is probably going to be even worse for the community. It discourages dialog: accounts that fact-check or try to fight the narrative of the Twitter Blue subscribers will have a much higher chance of being blocked/muted, which in turn will reduce the reach of those accounts into oblivion. Some communities with little connections to Twitter Blue subscribers may see little effect for this change tho.

This is a terrible idea unless your goal is to polarize the community. With the additional caveat that one of the 'poles' has power over the other. Twitter Blue users will have their visibility boosted, while also being able to cut down the reach of the most notable accounts they don't like. Blocking/Muting them has a dual effect: Twitter Blue users won't see their accounts *at all* (creating a strong echo chamber) and those accounts will reach less users in their own communities (making the survival of opposing communities more difficult). 
For users in the middle ground, they'll see a distorted version of reality: Twitter Blue users narrative will be promoted, while dissenting voices will be silenced in a sort of self-sustaining way, making lies more difficult to catch.

We'll see how strong the effect of those downvotes is going to be (if there are enough devs to actually implement this). On the flip-side, this sort of environment can quickly become toxic and make people migrate to other platforms.


----------



## shadow puppet

I couldn't wish this on a "nicer" guy.  Except perhaps TFG.


----------



## turbineseaplane

It must be just my circle of interest, but I say I’m getting 90% of what I used to enjoy on Twitter over on Mastodon…

The Tapbots Ivory app has made it so incredibly similar in feel also.

And Mastodon has shown me basically zero negativity or nastiness …. It’s like a dreamland of great people having nice conversations and sharing things and being friendly and engaging


Only thing I’m popping into Twitter for is occasional sports stuff during games.


----------



## shadow puppet

turbineseaplane said:


> It must be just my circle of interest, but I say I’m getting 90% of what I used to enjoy on Twitter over on Mastodon…
> 
> The Tapbots Ivory app has made it so incredibly similar in feel also.
> 
> And Mastodon has shown me basically zero negativity or nastiness …. It’s like a dreamland of great people having nice conversations and sharing things and being friendly and engaging



Glad it works for you.  I'll keep learning my way around and hope either Post or Mastodon will evolve into something better for me.  But I've never been a crowd follower and prefer to find my own way.  I keep my Twitter feed mostly free of the nastiness and negativity.  I also love my collection of Twitter lists I've cultivated over the years.

Or maybe I'll just stick with Instagram.  I do enjoy all the amazing photography.


----------



## lizkat

I've axed my follows down to some  media outlet homepage accounts,  and a few NGOs and public interest accounts plus some government agencies.  Yeah weather and wildlife etc.   They're all in a couple lists which I use instead of bothering with my timeline.   So really they might as well be browser bookmarks and that's all I see short of occasionally linking in there when some pal says "ya gotta see this."    I looked in there yesterday and before that I think it was a few times in late November. 

 I'll be gone if Musk decides to try to paywall the whole platform for individuals after 2 minutes or three hits on links or whatever, if he can't get enough advertisers back on board.  Is he that nuts?   Otherwise I'm sitting on a pretty locked-down setup and hoping for the best after regulators finally tire of _L'Enfant Terrible. _


----------



## Eric

shadow puppet said:


> It's become such a thing to say "I deleted my Twitter".  I'm still there and I will be until whatever card Elon plays is my final end point.
> 
> Neither Post or Mastodon currently does it for me.  I can't even look at Post for more than a few minutes due to no dark mode UI and Mastodon just seems like too much work in certain regards.  I like how one of my favorite Twitter accounts puts it re: staying or leaving:  "I do think what happens here is too important to give up on. If we cede the informational battleground, this place just turns into an alt-right cesspool. I’d rather stay and fight the disinfo."



It's a very personal decision so I get it. I waited until the day I learned Musk's purchase was final, as I mentioned I had over 8000 followers, many who were truly verified as well, so it was not something I took lightly but when I make up my mind that's that. I don't know that I've ever found anyone more off putting than Musk, not even Trump and not a day goes by that I don't regret letting him profit off of me for that car.


----------



## Andropov

Eric said:


> It's a very personal decision so I get it. I waited until the day I learned Musk's purchase was final, as I mentioned I had over 8000 followers, many who were truly verified as well, so it was not something I took lightly but when I make up my mind that's that. I don't know that I've ever found anyone more off putting than Musk, not even Trump and not a day goes by that I don't regret letting him profit off of me for that car.



Honestly he got a lot of us. I used to think he was a net positive force in society until not that long ago. Had I been in the position a few years ago of needing a car and having enough money for an EV a few years ago and I'd have probably bought a Tesla. Weird that he took all that branding and reputation effort put into Tesla and smashed it into the ground for no apparent reason.


----------



## shadow puppet

Eric said:


> It's a very personal decision so I get it. I waited until the day I learned Musk's purchase was final, as I mentioned I had over 8000 followers, many who were truly verified as well, so it was not something I took lightly but when I make up my mind that's that. I don't know that I've ever found anyone more off putting than Musk, not even Trump and not a day goes by that I don't regret letting him profit off of me for that car.



I agree, it is very personal.  Believe me, I can't stand Musk.  But I also don't want to just give up.  And it's not about followers for me.  It never has been.  I originally joined Twitter to have a place to post anonymously.  As a freelancer who relies on work contacts connected on Facebook, I have to be careful about what I post.  But on Twitter, no one really knows me so it's a safe zone to spout politics, etc.  It's been a weird yet interesting psychology experiment.  I have followers and have no clue why they find my ramblings interesting enough to follow.  But that's been part of the fun.

What I really hate is that we can't just slide over to a new platform and have all the people and lists we followed in one place.  Folks are spread out all over the place now:  Mastodon, Post, Substack, Instagram, Discord and Patreon, to name a few.  I spend too much time on SM as it is.  I don't want to spend more time tracking down and sleuthing out where everyone I followed, landed.  They used to be conveniently in one place.

Sigh.

Maybe this is my nudge to spend less time on SM.  That's not necessarily a bad thing.  But I would definitely miss certain people.


----------



## Andropov

He’s now claiming that the journalists were making a “criminal offense”.



			https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604275749187424257?s=46&t=vz2McyghM9KRtExVFm5GeA
		


Maybe people who claim the journalists had to be un-suspended to avoid breaking the EU’s Digital Services Act law were right. He doesn’t seem too happy about it.


----------



## Cmaier

Andropov said:


> He’s now claiming that the journalists were making a “criminal offense”.
> 
> 
> 
> https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604275749187424257?s=46&t=vz2McyghM9KRtExVFm5GeA
> 
> 
> 
> Maybe people who claim the journalists had to be un-suspended to avoid breaking the EU’s Digital Services Act law were right. He doesn’t seem too happy about it.




Remember, he accused good law firms of being corrupt. So he now probably gets his legal advice from the Trump counselor clown car.


----------



## lizkat

Andropov said:


> He’s now claiming that the journalists were making a “criminal offense”.
> 
> 
> 
> https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604275749187424257?s=46&t=vz2McyghM9KRtExVFm5GeA
> 
> 
> 
> Maybe people who claim the journalists had to be un-suspended to avoid breaking the EU’s Digital Services Act law were right. He doesn’t seem too happy about it.





Cmaier said:


> Remember, he accused good law firms of being corrupt. So he now probably gets his legal advice from the Trump counselor clown car.




His lack of self-control causes him to make such a spectacle of himself.   It's one thing to take a company private and then create mayhem or make mistakes behind the scenes with the modification (or demolition, stripping, etc) of the acquisition.   But meanwhile in this case Musk remains the CEO of a very visible publicly traded company, Tesla,  and also head of SpaceX which although private is expected eventually to hit IPO status.     He clearly doesn't see himself as others see him now, in the overall context of his [expected] business leadership.   He has a blind spot the size of an ocean.  It will suck him in and drown him if he doesn't take counsel from someone in time to save Twitter from bankruptcy or just ruination.


----------



## dada_dave

Andropov said:


> He’s now claiming that the journalists were making a “criminal offense”.
> 
> 
> 
> https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604275749187424257?s=46&t=vz2McyghM9KRtExVFm5GeA
> 
> 
> 
> Maybe people who claim the journalists had to be un-suspended to avoid breaking the EU’s Digital Services Act law were right. He doesn’t seem too happy about it.



You know I half considered answering “never” on that poll for precisely that reason … 

I didn’t - I didn’t interact at all because ewww I’d have to interact with his account - but it was a temptation I had to resist


----------



## Pumbaa

Elon sharing his location in real-time is kinda funny now.


----------



## Cmaier

Pumbaa said:


> Elon sharing his location in real-time is kinda funny now.
> 
> View attachment 20135




“Assassination coordinates”


----------



## Eric

Literally what a 10-year old would say from
      facepalm


----------



## Andropov

Pumbaa said:


> Elon sharing his location in real-time is kinda funny now.
> 
> View attachment 20135



It has to be bait


----------



## Pumbaa

Andropov said:


> It has to be bait



Doubt it. More likely he just wanted to brag.


----------



## Cmaier

Twitter bans users from linking to other social media platforms like Instagram and Mastodon
					

On Sunday, during the World Cup, Twitter officially banned its users from linking to their profiles on other social media sites like Mastodon, Facebook and Instagram. Mentions of other platform handles are also now banned. The policy means Twitter users flocking to Mastodon are now longer...




					9to5mac.com
				




Free speech, my ass. Also, I hope some of the lawyers in that clown car I was talking about are antitrust lawyers.


----------



## Pumbaa

Ah, yes, Elon Musk, the free speech absolutist.


----------



## SuperMatt

Pumbaa said:


> Ah, yes, Elon Musk, the free speech absolutist.



It turns out he is absolutely against it.


----------



## Pumbaa

SuperMatt said:


> It turns out he is absolutely against it.



Absolutely not. Very pro free speech. _He_ can say whatever he wants, and other people can say anything he approves of.


----------



## Cmaier

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/16/tech/mastodon-twitter-links/index.html
		


Great lawyers think alike.


----------



## dada_dave

Cmaier said:


> https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/16/tech/mastodon-twitter-links/index.html
> 
> 
> 
> Great lawyers think alike.



Yup, and as I said above, for the things he’s put up to votes and likely to put up to votes in the future, “winning” is likely to be the worst outcome for him.


----------



## Pumbaa

> Twitter, which has cut much of its public relations team, didn’t respond to a request for comment.



Gotta love quips like this in every single article.


----------



## Roller

Sadly, I think Musk is a lost cause. So is Twitter unless it can be wrested from his control, and Tesla is in jeopardy as long as he's associated with it. I'm also concerned about SpaceX, since it's further ahead than any other company sending spacecraft and satellites into Earth orbit, as well as providing Internet service to places that lacked it.


----------



## Eric

Cmaier said:


> Twitter bans users from linking to other social media platforms like Instagram and Mastodon
> 
> 
> On Sunday, during the World Cup, Twitter officially banned its users from linking to their profiles on other social media sites like Mastodon, Facebook and Instagram. Mentions of other platform handles are also now banned. The policy means Twitter users flocking to Mastodon are now longer...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 9to5mac.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Free speech, my ass. Also, I hope some of the lawyers in that clown car I was talking about are antitrust lawyers.



Maybe he meant only free speech for himself because that's all we're getting at this point.


----------



## Cmaier

Elon Musk: Apple should be forced to allow app developers to post links to better prices on their websites

Also Elon Musk: even mention that you have an account on facebook and you're banned


----------



## dada_dave

Cmaier said:


> Elon Musk: Apple should be forced to allow app developers to post links to better prices on their websites
> 
> Also Elon Musk: even mention that you have an account on facebook and you're banned



Yup


----------



## shadow puppet

People are confused AF right now.  Just as I was going to add my Post and Mastodon handles to my profile.


----------



## Eric

Cmaier said:


> Elon Musk: Apple should be forced to allow app developers to post links to better prices on their websites
> 
> *Also Elon Musk: even mention that you have an account on facebook and you're banned*



I was just about to say... JFC this guy is a bigger hypocrite than Trump.


----------



## shadow puppet

In summary:





Judging by the way Musk Rat has been waffling on his latest rules / actions, this prediction wouldn't surprise me one bit.  Or I hope ALL his advertisers finally give Elon the finger and say hasta la bye bye.


----------



## Eric

shadow puppet said:


> In summary:
> 
> View attachment 20150
> 
> Judging by the way Musk Rat has been waffling on his latest rules / actions, this prediction wouldn't surprise me one bit.  Or I hope ALL his advertisers finally give Elon the finger and say hasta la bye bye.
> 
> View attachment 20153



All this is going to do is paint them into a more isolated corner but it's clear that's the direction Musk wants to take them. Also, acknowledging Mastodon in such a public way is going to do nothing but boost their membership.


----------



## shadow puppet

Eric said:


> All this is going to do is paint them into a more isolated corner but it's clear that's the direction Musk wants to take them. Also, acknowledging Mastodon in such a public way is going to do nothing but boost their membership.



Agree.  It's also going to get interesting real quick if things like this are true.





What will be the consequences of non-compliance?









"What’s 20% of an only partially on fire Tesla? This works for both the vehicle and the company."

Link to above discussion:  https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1604564509884030977


----------



## lizkat

shadow puppet said:


> Agree.  It's also going to get interesting real quick if things like this are true.
> 
> View attachment 20156
> 
> What will be the consequences of non-compliance?
> 
> View attachment 20157
> 
> View attachment 20158
> 
> "What’s 20% of an only partially on fire Tesla? This works for both the vehicle and the company."
> 
> Link to above discussion:  https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1604564509884030977




Holy mother of antitrust laws.   Elon Musk needs a timeout for sure.

Every time I see his name now,  what flashes into my mind is the recollected image of one of my brothers hastily exiting the wedding reception of one of my other brothers, while carrying his then 3yo daughter under his arm like a piece of firewood (with waving arms and kicking feet attached). 

She had ingested a few pieces of wedding cake and some cookies and sodapop or whatever the F else had sugar in it, and someone had finally told her NO MORE COOKIES FOR YOU MISSY. 

Inconsolable and hyped to the ceiling on sugar, she had briefly become the center of attention,  flopping face-down onto the dance floor and throwing a screaming hissy fit that even drowned out the very fine local rock band then playing.

That's Elon now.   A three year old throwing hissy fits.  How the heck did he ever become a billionaire?!


----------



## shadow puppet

lizkat said:


> Holy mother of antitrust laws.   Elon Musk needs a timeout for sure.



HA!  This needs to be a tagline somewhere.


----------



## lizkat

shadow puppet said:


> HA!  This needs to be a tagline somewhere.




Yeah right next to "You've been served" when they lay the lawsuit on him.    Imagine being his co-investors.


----------



## Andropov

Has any other social network tried to ban links to others before? I can’t think of any.



shadow puppet said:


> What will be the consequences of non-compliance?
> 
> View attachment 20157




Is Twitter considered a gatekeeper company?


----------



## Cmaier

https://journa.host/@juddlegum/109536375067286342

https://indieweb.social/@stevestreza/109536435446892542


----------



## Eric

I promise this is not to give his position away, don't ban me!


Elon Musk hanging out with Jared Kushner at the World Cup Final in Qatar from
      pics


----------



## Pumbaa

Eric said:


> I promise this is not to give his position away, don't ban me!
> 
> 
> __
> https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/zp5c42



Hey @Weaselbot , @Eric is doxxing Elon with assassination coordinates!


----------



## lizkat

Eric said:


> I promise this is not to give his position away, don't ban me!
> 
> 
> __
> https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/zp5c42




So was Elon there to watch some football or to try to talk Jared into buying Twitter for $2 billion?


----------



## dada_dave

Okay this time I admit I voted:






Not that I expect things to change… but just in case

Edit: link to poll

Again he’ll probably still own it and just give the day-to-day running of Twitter to someone else just as big of asshole, but still …


----------



## Eric

dada_dave said:


> Okay this time I admit I voted:
> 
> View attachment 20166
> 
> 
> Not that I expect things to change… but just in case



This is the poll we need to see.


----------



## dada_dave

Eric said:


> This is the poll we need to see.



As I edited in my post above, this is a real poll by him … but how meaningful  it is … well that is a different story


----------



## Eric

dada_dave said:


> As I edited in my post above, this is a real poll by him … but how meaningful  it is … well that is a different story



Wow! This is one worth voting for.


----------



## lizkat

dada_dave said:


> As I edited in my post above, this is a real poll by him … but how meaningful  it is … well that is a different story




Heh, you mean "accept correct answer from console?"   



Eric said:


> Wow! This is one worth voting for.




I bothered to log in and vote YES.  Of course he should step back.   Legal counsel probably tried to tell him that weeks ago, part of why that group has been a revolving door.

Also possible he'll suspend the "YES"  voters..  but that can't help him monetize the platform, so it's just silly.   He probably just sees the handwriting on the wall and anyway the novelty of being a bad boy while burning through millions of dollars a week is likely wearing off fast now...  with prospect of hefty fines and lawsuits down the road.  What's the fun in that?   Time for some other poor sod to step in and try to sew the wings back on the bluebird.


----------



## dada_dave

lizkat said:


> Heh, you mean "accept correct answer from console?"
> 
> 
> 
> I bothered to log in and vote YES.  Of course he should step back.   Legal counsel probably tried to tell him that weeks ago, part of why that group has been a revolving door.
> 
> Also possible he'll suspend the "YES"  voters..  but that can't help him monetize the platform, so it's just silly.   He probably just sees the handwriting on the wall and anyway the novelty of being a bad boy while burning through millions of dollars a week is likely wearing off fast now...  with prospect of hefty fines and lawsuits down the road.  What's the fun in that?   Time for some other poor sod to step in and try to sew the wings back on the bluebird.



More like he “steps down” but he still owns it, chooses a successor CEO who is just like him, and he’s still effectively in control just not as CEO.


----------



## Eric

dada_dave said:


> More like he “steps down” but he still owns it, chooses a successor CEO who is just like him, and he’s still effectively in control just not as CEO.



Yep, he'll find a way to squirm out of it or run it by proxy. At the same time if he even peers his head out from that bubble he's in for a second he will have likely seen how much he's hated across the board by the general population, this would give him an exit but nothing will ever make up for the financial hit he's taken.


----------



## lizkat

Eric said:


> Yep, he'll find a way to squirm out of it or run it by proxy. At the same time if he even peers his head out from that bubble he's in for a second he will have likely seen how much he's hated across the board by the general population, this would give him an exit but nothing will ever make up for the financial hit he's taken.




Still the company must get into compliance with existing court orders and related laws on security and privacy of user data.    So a new CEO can't be quite as cavalier about such matters as Musk has seemed.


----------



## Cmaier

Looking good

He’ll probably hand over the reins to some qanon person.


----------



## Eric

Cmaier said:


> Looking good
> 
> He’ll probably hand over the reins to some qanon person.
> 
> View attachment 20168



Maybe Kushner.


----------



## fooferdoggie

ran across a patriot group that is praising musk. Saying he is exposing all the lies democrats have been spreading and he is revealing secrets and promoting fee speech. I guess I missed those parts.


----------



## Eric

fooferdoggie said:


> ran across a patriot group that is praising musk. Saying he is exposing all the lies democrats have been spreading and he is revealing secrets and promoting fee speech. I guess I missed those parts.



If you really want to have fun ask how many of them own a Tesla and watch them shit all over the idea. The only thing Musk gains from this is getting his ego stroked by like minded MAGA conspiracy theorists, hope is was worth $44 billion.


----------



## Cmaier

LOL.


----------



## rdrr

Cmaier said:


> LOL.
> 
> View attachment 20172



How long until cries of "The vote was rigged!"


----------



## Eric

rdrr said:


> How long until cries of "The vote was rigged!"



He's still down 14 points with 8 hours to go, not much has changed in the last couple of hours.


----------



## Cmaier

rdrr said:


> How long until cries of "The vote was rigged!"



Nah, he WANTS out.  He has to go fix Tesla.  All he cares about is that he can ban whoever he likes and he can post whatever he wants. Whoever he installs as Twitter CEO will still let him do that.


----------



## Eric

Fun watching the meltdown.

MAGA 2 hours ago: He's winning hahaha!

MAGA Now: It's bots!


----------



## Cmaier

Eric said:


> Fun watching the meltdown.
> 
> MAGA 2 hours ago: He's winning hahaha!
> 
> MAGA Now: It's bots!



If you look at the vast majority of replies to the poll, you can see why Musk is confused. He is surrounded by an all-encompassing mob of people who think that hate speech is nothing more than a woke left wing construct and that everything Musk has done has been perfect,


----------



## dada_dave

Cmaier said:


> If you look at the vast majority of replies to the poll, you can see why Musk is confused. He is surrounded by an all-encompassing mob of people who think that hate speech is nothing more than a woke left wing construct and that everything Musk has done has been perfect,



Some of the smarter ones are trying the “all you ‘yes’ people realize nothing will change” line as though we couldn’t figure it out that he’ll still control Twitter. Of course they’re doing that as a salve because in idolatry of a leader even the appearance of a ‘defeat’ is anathema. They want Musk and Musk-ism to not only happen to Twitter but _be popular - _proof that this sort of toxic environment is what everyone really wanted, not just online, but in America. That it’s not has got to hurt.

And hell this result is _after _he drove a lot of people out.


----------



## dada_dave

Respectfully telling him he’s ruining everything…



			https://mobile.twitter.com/BriannaWu/status/1603942515723436033


----------



## Cmaier




----------



## Eric

dada_dave said:


> View attachment 20178
> 
> Respectfully telling him he’s ruining everything…
> 
> 
> 
> https://mobile.twitter.com/BriannaWu/status/1603942515723436033



The word is that he's all but abandoned them while selling stock to cover his Twitter losses. To be fair though when you're serial tweeting for 20 hours a day you really don't have time to properly run any company.


----------



## Cmaier




----------



## Andropov

Tweets from Twitter Support detailing the policy banning users from posting to other social networks has been removed. There's now no mention of that policy anywhere.


----------



## dada_dave

Eric said:


> The word is that he's all but abandoned them while selling stock to cover his Twitter losses. To be fair though when you're serial tweeting for 20 hours a day you really don't have time to properly run any company.



Yup … but as I’ve said before and I’ll again, Tesla (and SpaceX) have probably never run smoother. Heck in that quote, Elon says Tesla are executing better than ever! I’ll bet that’s not even BS for once! Precisely because they don’t have to deal with his normal BS day-to-day anymore.


----------



## Pumbaa




----------



## Eric

We have a final result.


----------



## Pumbaa

Eric said:


> We have a final result.
> 
> 
> View attachment 20187



I bet the result hurt his ego, even if he is happy to have an “out”.

Too bad no timeframe for stepping down was specified


----------



## Eric

Pumbaa said:


> I bet the result hurt his ego, even if he is happy to have an “out”.
> 
> Too bad no timeframe for stepping down was specified



Nor the terms, @Cmaier called this one IMO, it gives him an out to get back to his failings but in the end he'll still have full control and his finger on the ban hammer. This probably won't change much.


----------



## Eric

I have it on good authority it was rigged by bots...


----------



## lizkat

Cmaier said:


> If you look at the vast majority of replies to the poll, you can see why Musk is confused. He is surrounded by an all-encompassing mob of people who think that hate speech is nothing more than a woke left wing construct and that everything Musk has done has been perfect,




You don't think that he did that to himself?   Probably had code installed to reduce visibility of replies to that poll where the author of the reply had voted YES in the poll.    If he wants to step back as CEO,  then he doesn't care about poll results swinging hard to YES,  but I'm not sure he'd want everyone to find it easy to read user-supplied reasons for a YES vote.


----------



## Eric

lizkat said:


> You don't think that he did that to himself?   Probably had code installed to reduce visibility of replies to that poll where the author of the reply had voted YES in the poll.    If he wants to step back as CEO,  then he doesn't care about poll results swinging hard to YES,  but I'm not sure he'd want everyone to find it easy to read user-supplied reasons for a YES vote.



I think he put all of 30 seconds of thought into that tweet, Elon is not a man who thinks things through.


----------



## Cmaier

lizkat said:


> You don't think that he did that to himself?   Probably had code installed to reduce visibility of replies to that poll where the author of the reply had voted YES in the poll.    If he wants to step back as CEO,  then he doesn't care about poll results swinging hard to YES,  but I'm not sure he'd want everyone to find it easy to read user-supplied reasons for a YES vote.



No, I think that’s too much effort for him.

I think it’s just the fact that 40% of the population or so feels a generalized sense of grievances stemming from disappointment that their unearned societal privileges are being chipped away at.  They’ll vote for anyone or anything that promises to hurt people - like school kids picking on the weak to raise their own stature.


----------



## dada_dave

Edit: this is not where I thought I was posting


----------



## dada_dave

Cmaier said:


> No, I think that’s too much effort for him.
> 
> I think it’s just the fact that 40% of the population or so feels a generalized sense of grievances stemming from disappointment that their unearned societal privileges are being chipped away at.  They’ll vote for anyone or anything that promises to hurt people - like school kids picking on the weak to raise their own stature.



Case in point:


----------



## Eric

dada_dave said:


> Edit: this is not where I thought I was posting



Merged threads to avoid this confusion going forward.


----------



## leman

dada_dave said:


> Case in point:
> 
> View attachment 20193




This is absolutely nauseating. 

Btw, I find it remarkable that every time I open Twitter I either see this Kim fella or some weird lady who talks about how Elon is protecting children or the "not murderer" Kyle on how Elon is a champion of free speech. I never followed these people or clicked on their tweets. Why do I keep seeing them instead of people I follow?


----------



## dada_dave

leman said:


> This is absolutely nauseating.
> 
> Btw, I find it remarkable that every time I open Twitter I either see this Kim fella or some weird lady who talks about how Elon is protecting children or the "not murderer" Kyle on how Elon is a champion of free speech. I never followed these people or clicked on their tweets. Why do I keep seeing them instead of people I follow?



I’ve heard that if you set your “home” to timeline instead of the algorithm one it eliminates a lot of these problems. You can also set thing to hide muted or blocked accounts when you search.


----------



## shadow puppet

Re: the Elon poll, I was reading many tweets from those who felt if they voted "yes", they would be banned.  Considering how off the chain he has been, I refrained for this very reason.


----------



## rdrr

shadow puppet said:


> Re: the Elon poll, I was reading many tweets from those who felt if they voted "yes", they would be banned.  Considering how off the chain he has been, I refrained for this very reason.



I hesitated to vote yes for the same thought.  However when I thought about it a second time, losing my twitter account didn't seem like a world ending situation...  Clicked Yes!


----------



## shadow puppet

rdrr said:


> I hesitated to vote yes for the same thought.  However when I thought about it a second time, losing my twitter account didn't seem like a world ending situation...  Clicked Yes!



I'm sure most here will agree with you.  I'm probably the last hold out, lol.


----------



## AG_PhamD

Cmaier said:


> View attachment 20182




I think Musk was well aware Twitter would go nowhere under his leadership and will result in an implosion. I interpret this as just an act to save face with him stepping down, which is what has to happen for Twitter to have any chance of surviving in any meaningful way. He knew very well what the results would be. 

That said, it’s silly to think that him stepping down will prevent him from pulling the strings. At least there might be a buffer of sensibility between him and stupid decisions being made.


----------



## lizkat

shadow puppet said:


> Re: the Elon poll, I was reading many tweets from those who felt if they voted "yes", they would be banned.  Considering how off the chain he has been, I refrained for this very reason.




Musk will really be Twitter-destructive if he bans people just for voting YES on that poll...  the lean towards YES winning was immediate, so if he wants to keep the lights on at Twitter he needs minimize losses from the existing user base in case he or a successor CEO can think of a way to monetize the base.

I'd expect him to continue to ban members only when they're somewhat high profile and manage to tick him off...  maybe especially if some tweet goes viral in a surprising way and he doesn't notice it immediately because they weren't high profile initially.


----------



## rdrr

lizkat said:


> Musk will really be Twitter-destructive if he bans people just for voting YES on that poll...  the lean towards YES winning was immediate, so if he wants to keep the lights on at Twitter he needs minimize losses from the existing user base in case he or a successor CEO can think of a way to monetize the base.
> 
> I'd expect him to continue to ban members only when they're somewhat high profile and manage to tick him off...  maybe especially if some tweet goes viral in a surprising way and he doesn't notice it immediately because they weren't high profile initially.



I think that it is more likely that the "yes" voters emails will be somehow "hacked" and leaked.  Only the ones who voted "yes", mind you,


----------



## rdrr

Now this is a Twitter CEO I can get behind.


----------



## lizkat

rdrr said:


> Now this is a Twitter CEO I can get behind.
> 
> View attachment 20205




Personally I think the ideal CEO for a social media platform would be an advocate for human rights and public education.

Someone like *Malala Yousafzai*


----------



## Renzatic

lizkat said:


> Personally I think the ideal CEO for a social media platform would be an advocate for human rights and public education.
> 
> Someone like *Malala Yousafzai*




She's a good choice, though Snoop Dogg is a close 2nd.


----------



## rdrr

Renzatic said:


> She's a good choice, though Snoop Dogg is a close 2nd.



I am all for Malala as CEO as long a Snoop is the Czar of Funk n' Flow.


----------



## Eric

Putin's propagandist Nailya Asker-Zade takes a selfie with Elon Musk at the World Cup in Qatar from
      pics


----------



## Renzatic

rdrr said:


> I am all for Malala as CEO as long a Snoop is the Czar of Funk n' Flow.




I could support that.


----------



## Eric

Tesla stock is stuck in its worst sell-off since the company went public in 2010
					

As Elon Musk remains embroiled in Twitter antics, investors are dumping Tesla stock, which has shed about 62% since its high in November 2021.




					markets.businessinsider.com
				



Tesla stock is stuck in its worst sell-off since the company went public in 2010​
Shares of Tesla are down 62% since their peak in November 2021, marking the company's largest drawdown since it went public in 2010.
That sell-off is worse than the 60.6% plunge Tesla saw in February to March 2020, per data compiled by Yahoo.
Elon Musk has drawn ire for his Twitter antics, which many Tesla investors see as a distraction.


----------



## lizkat

Eric said:


> Tesla stock is stuck in its worst sell-off since the company went public in 2010
> 
> 
> As Elon Musk remains embroiled in Twitter antics, investors are dumping Tesla stock, which has shed about 62% since its high in November 2021.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> markets.businessinsider.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Tesla stock is stuck in its worst sell-off since the company went public in 2010​
> Shares of Tesla are down 62% since their peak in November 2021, marking the company's largest drawdown since it went public in 2010.
> That sell-off is worse than the 60.6% plunge Tesla saw in February to March 2020, per data compiled by Yahoo.
> Elon Musk has drawn ire for his Twitter antics, which many Tesla investors see as a distraction.




This is exactly why he has to step back from mucking around with Twitter.


----------



## Cmaier




----------



## Pumbaa

The full exchange is even funnier/scarier.


----------



## Eric

Has he responded to stepping down?


----------



## Pumbaa

Eric said:


> Has he responded to stepping down?



As far as I can see, no.


----------



## Eric

Fox News, not TheOnion...









						Elon Musk should remain Twitter CEO to keep up the free speech fight
					

Twitter's Elon Musk conducted an online poll this weekend asking users whether or not he should stay on as CEO. More Twitter users want Musk to step aside than stay. He shouldn't go.




					www.foxnews.com
				




Elon Musk should remain Twitter CEO to keep up the free speech fight​Twitter CEO Elon Musk has exposed how our law enforcement agencies worked with Twitter to censor free speech. He should not walk away now​


----------



## lizkat

Pumbaa said:


> As far as I can see, no.




Only thing I think Musk has said past indicating he'd accept the results of the poll is that "No one wants the job," which is likely true.  I mean they'd be reporting to Musk, so...  not everyone would relish that idea.  Especially if unsure whether Musk even really means it.   Taking off a hat marked "CEO" is not necessarily the same as actually delegating control.


----------



## Pumbaa

lizkat said:


> Only thing I think Musk has said past indicating he'd accept the results of the poll is that "No one wants the job," which is likely true.  I mean they'd be reporting to Musk, so...  not everyone would relish that idea.  Especially if unsure whether Musk even really means it.   Taking off a hat marked "CEO" is not necessarily the same as actually delegating control.



“No one wants the job *who can actually keep Twitter alive*.”

Could anyone do that?


----------



## Pumbaa

Certainly looks like he will ignore the poll and blame the result on deep state bots, woke brigades or something.


----------



## Yoused

lizkat said:


> Taking off a hat marked "CEO" is not necessarily the same as actually delegating control.



Well, if apartheid-dude does not allow the new CEO a hiring budget, what would be the difference?


----------



## Eric

Just saw on the Nightly News that Tesla stock has dropped 30% since he took over Twitter.


----------



## dada_dave

So deep state fraud rigged the vote to stop the incumbent from winning. I swear I’ve heard this one before … 

(Edit: and the parallels are even more striking: claiming vote rigging to stay in control of an organization which they are clearly unfit to run, making deeply polarizing, erratic, unwise decisions that merely self harm said organization, tarnishing the brand of “genius billionaire” built on a throne of lies, etc … there’s a reason he could take over that cult)


----------



## dada_dave

Neither of them realize that this is a self own …


----------



## Roller

lizkat said:


> This is exactly why he has to step back from mucking around with Twitter.



I think he needs to step back from mucking around with anything.


----------



## lizkat

Pumbaa said:


> “No one wants the job *who can actually keep Twitter alive*.”
> 
> Could anyone do that?




Not by time he's done.  Still not clear to me that any of what he's done is more than a weird sort of dog-in-manger inversion, i.e. "_I didn't want it but ya made me buy it so I did and when I'm done with it, that'll show you!"  _


----------



## lizkat

Yoused said:


> Well, if apartheid-dude does not allow the new CEO a hiring budget, what would be the difference?




Cosmetics.   Don't give the NO-voters in that poll too much credit for brainpower.

The problem though is that a move like that won't assuage concerns of Tesla shareholders or Twitter stakeholders.


----------



## Eric

A sincere thanks to the man in charge.


Thanks Elon from
      RealTwitterAccounts


----------



## Macky-Mac

so is anybody NOT thinking he'll weasel out of it?


----------



## Pumbaa

Macky-Mac said:


> so is anybody NOT thinking he'll weasel out of it?



Given how people are using the meme format Musk so kindly provided us with, I would say no.


Who would vote against this? from
      mathmemes


----------



## lizkat

Macky-Mac said:


> so is anybody NOT thinking he'll weasel out of it?




He'll put up a new poll.    Two absurd choices for a new CEO and a third option "Elon, temporarily".


----------



## Eric

Should I not step down and remain as CEO?

Yes
No
Wait, what?


----------



## Cmaier

Eric said:


> Should I not step down and remain as CEO?
> 
> Yes
> No
> Wait, what?




Saw someone post, in response to him saying that for now on only Twitter Blue subscribers can vote: 

“it only took a month for Elon Musk to implement apartheid.”


----------



## lizkat

Cmaier said:


> Saw someone post, in response to him saying that for now on only Twitter Blue subscribers can vote:
> 
> “it only took a month for Elon Musk to implement apartheid.”




I missed that update.  So he's a free speech absolutist but voting in polls will cost money.   Brilliant.


----------



## Pumbaa

Funny that polls are the voice if the people when they go his way, but ruined by bots otherwise.


----------



## rdrr

Pumbaa said:


> Funny that polls are the voice if the people when they go his way, but ruined by bots otherwise.



Yes it sounds very familiar to another recent gripe by the GOP...   I can't quite put my finger on it.


----------



## Pumbaa

Very Musky.


Tweet link


----------



## rdrr

The Software and Server teams are the core of twitter, and essentially he would be defining and running the platform.  All of the other parts of running Twitter are headaches, like HR, compliance, finance, and security are what defines the company's culture.   I wonder if this is how he runs Tesla and SpaceX?


----------



## Nycturne

Andropov said:


> Honestly he got a lot of us. I used to think he was a net positive force in society until not that long ago. Had I been in the position a few years ago of needing a car and having enough money for an EV a few years ago and I'd have probably bought a Tesla. Weird that he took all that branding and reputation effort put into Tesla and smashed it into the ground for no apparent reason.




There were signs, but if you weren’t following him on social media where he was unfiltered, you would absolutely miss it. It’s just kinda amazing how people can have their eccentricities sanitized in news outlets to be honest. And that benefits people like Musk, Weinstein, and others who are much uglier people once you get a glimpse beyond the sanitized reporting. 

I mostly saw the signs because I am in LGBT circles on Twitter and a couple other places. But even then, his _open_ flirting with the alt-right is pretty recent, but can be traced back to the early pandemic, I believe.


----------



## Chew Toy McCoy

Pumbaa said:


> Funny that polls are the voice if the people when they go his way, but ruined by bots otherwise.




I’ve come to accept that I am the only member on here who is not a bot. I imagine it might be alarming if you are finding out just now that you are a bot.


----------



## Pumbaa

Chew Toy McCoy said:


> I’ve come to accept that I am the only member on here who is not a bot. I imagine it might be alarming if you are finding out just now that you are a bot.



Nice try! Sounds like something a bot would say. Not to mention missing my verification badge… Clearly a bot!

Related listening: Anna the Bot


----------



## rdrr

Pumbaa said:


> Related listening: Anna the Bot




First and best comment to Anna the Bot link.


----------



## Andropov

Nycturne said:


> I mostly saw the signs because I am in LGBT circles on Twitter and a couple other places. But even then, his _open_ flirting with the alt-right is pretty recent, but can be traced back to the early pandemic, I believe.



Same here. First sign I can remember was ~2018 with that whole thing about the Thai rescue diver Elon called a "pedo". I brushed it off back then as something just weird to say, maybe because I was pretty excited about SpaceX at the time. Then 2020 happened and he started mocking people with pronouns in their bios and his discourse got increasingly more openly hateful and I think that was when my opinion about him started to plunge. He forcing workers to go back to the factory amid the initial COVID-19 lockdown certainly didn't help.
After that, this has been ~2 years of him doing that thing people who get tangled up with the alt-right do: listening only to his own echo-chamber, started showing a mentality of 'us' vs 'them'... I've seen it before. It's sad.


----------



## Eric

Tesla to freeze hiring, lay off employees next quarter - Electrek
					

Another wave of layoffs are coming at electric-car maker Tesla Inc in the next quarter, news website Electrek reported on Wednesday, citing a source familiar with the matter.




					www.reuters.com
				



Tesla to freeze hiring, lay off employees next quarter - Electrek​


> Dec 21 (Reuters) - Another wave of layoffs are coming at electric-car maker Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) in the next quarter, news website Electrek reported on Wednesday, citing a source familiar with the matter.
> 
> Tesla is also going to freeze hiring, according to the report. The company did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.


----------



## lizkat

Eric said:


> Tesla to freeze hiring, lay off employees next quarter - Electrek
> 
> 
> Another wave of layoffs are coming at electric-car maker Tesla Inc in the next quarter, news website Electrek reported on Wednesday, citing a source familiar with the matter.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.reuters.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Tesla to freeze hiring, lay off employees next quarter - Electrek​




Well he was in the right place over the weekend to look for some capital infusions, we may just have assumed it was all about Twitter, but...  maybe not!

Washington Post piece, paywall removed:  https://wapo.st/3Whz6EQ

"From Jared Kushner to Salt Bae: Here’s who Elon Musk was seen with at the World Cup"


----------



## dada_dave

Andropov said:


> Same here. First sign I can remember was ~2018 with that whole thing about the Thai rescue diver Elon called a "pedo". I brushed it off back then as something just weird to say, maybe because I was pretty excited about SpaceX at the time. Then 2020 happened and he started mocking people with pronouns in their bios and his discourse got increasingly more openly hateful and I think that was when my opinion about him started to plunge. He forcing workers to go back to the factory amid the initial COVID-19 lockdown certainly didn't help.
> After that, this has been ~2 years of him doing that thing people who get tangled up with the alt-right do: listening only to his own echo-chamber, started showing a mentality of 'us' vs 'them'... I've seen it before. It's sad.



For me the first inkling was when he was complaining about the launch alliance. This was when NASA was just starting SpaceX trials and he wanted DoD contracts. Now let me start off: taking in isolation his griping could easily be dismissed as DoD procurement is Byzantine, political, inefficient, and well … sometimes more than inefficient. ::cough:: So for someone trying to break in from the outside that isn’t easy.

However, this was at a time when SpaceX rockets had just stopped failing/blowing up regularly. The reason the launch alliance exists and DoD launches are so pricey is that the military through hard experience learned that shaving costs on rocket launches was penny-wise-pound-foolish: the payloads are worth an order of magnitude more than the launch and the risk of losing one is not just that investment but the time that a national security asset isn’t flying. 

Again this was a small thing, easily explainable and dismissible. But it still rubbed me the wrong way - I dunno the stridency of the language almost evoked a sense of entitlement or arrogance. And when further stories came out about Tesla cutting corners, getting into trouble with OSHA because of Elon’s whims, allegations of racism and bigotry, and then of course everything else you guys have already mentioned, well those are all way more important and indicative.


----------



## Citysnaps

dada_dave said:


> For me the first inkling was when he was complaining about the launch alliance. This was when NASA was just starting SpaceX trials and he wanted DoD contracts. Now let me start off: taking in isolation his griping could easily be dismissed as DoD procurement is Byzantine, political, inefficient, and well … sometimes more than inefficient. ::cough:: So for someone trying to break in from the outside that isn’t easy.




I'm still astonished Musk was able to break into national security launches. That was quite a feat. 

Long ago I would have bet money that would never have happened.  Relatedly, on a past Amtrak train trip along the California coast, which went through Vandenberg AFB (now SFB), I was surprised to see a large SpaceX operations building and a Falcon 9 on pad at Launch Complex 4, which is where many of the earliest US national security satellites were launched from.


----------



## dada_dave

Citysnaps said:


> I'm still astonished Musk was able to break into national security launches. That was quite a feat.
> 
> Long ago I would have bet money that would never have happened.  Relatedly, on a past Amtrak train trip along the California coast, which went through Vandenberg AFB (now SFB), I was surprised to see a large SpaceX operations building and a Falcon 9 on pad at Launch Complex 4, which is where many of the earliest US national security satellites were launched from.




The impression I got is that they were even let in before their safety record justified it. But I’m on the outside, far enough that I may be being unfair. I doubt it though. Beyond the politics, Air Force programs like to show they’re “doing something” and cost cutting penny-wise ventures can be attractive for that. (NB: so far obviously it has worked out) In terms of politics,  often it comes down to hiring the right former air force general for the company board or a VP position. Being very wealthy with wealthy backers, I’m sure Musk was able to make the right connections and enticements.


----------



## Andropov

dada_dave said:


> For me the first inkling was when he was complaining about the launch alliance. This was when NASA was just starting SpaceX trials and he wanted DoD contracts. Now let me start off: taking in isolation his griping could easily be dismissed as DoD procurement is Byzantine, political, inefficient, and well … sometimes more than inefficient. ::cough:: So for someone trying to break in from the outside that isn’t easy.
> 
> However, this was at a time when SpaceX rockets had just stopped failing/blowing up regularly. The reason the launch alliance exists and DoD launches are so pricey is that the military through hard experience learned that shaving costs on rocket launches was penny-wise-pound-foolish: the payloads are worth an order of magnitude more than the launch and the risk of losing one is not just that investment but the time that a national security asset isn’t flying.
> 
> Again this was a small thing, easily explainable and dismissible. But it still rubbed me the wrong way - I dunno the stridency of the language almost evoked a sense of entitlement or arrogance. And when further stories came out about Tesla cutting corners, getting into trouble with OSHA because of Elon’s whims, allegations of racism and bigotry, and then of course everything else you guys have already mentioned, well those are all way more important and indicative.



Yeah, in retrospect there were several red flags. I used to dismiss the small things like language choices as simple eccentricities. I was wrong.


----------



## AG_PhamD

Eric said:


> Tesla stock is stuck in its worst sell-off since the company went public in 2010
> 
> 
> As Elon Musk remains embroiled in Twitter antics, investors are dumping Tesla stock, which has shed about 62% since its high in November 2021.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> markets.businessinsider.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Tesla stock is stuck in its worst sell-off since the company went public in 2010​
> Shares of Tesla are down 62% since their peak in November 2021, marking the company's largest drawdown since it went public in 2010.
> That sell-off is worse than the 60.6% plunge Tesla saw in February to March 2020, per data compiled by Yahoo.
> Elon Musk has drawn ire for his Twitter antics, which many Tesla investors see as a distraction.




I have long held Tesla is one of the most overvalued stocks on the market. Tesla makes as many cars in a year as some of the major automakers make in like a month. They build their cars in tents, they have a long history of missed/late payments to their suppliers and other creditors. They have atrocious customer service, customer support, and vehicle support. Their cars build quality is subpar for the amount of money they cost. A lot of their engineering is very poorly designed. As technologically advanced as they are in some respects, they also lack a lot of options you’d expect- Last I checked they still don’t offer a heads up display, 360 camera, cross traffic alert, CarPlay/Android Auto, ventilated seats, augmented reality cameras, power trunk, etc. It was only relatively recently heated steering wheels and rear seats found there way into their cars. 

Elon has a terrible history of overpromising and underdelivering… while simultaneously doing some creative accounting. He said in 2018 we’d have true full self driving autopilot and robo-taxis. Still waiting for that LA to NYC road-trip with no driver inputs. The 2020 Tesla Roadster is nowhere to be found. The $35,000 Model 3 has never really existed. The CyberTruck was supposed to be delivered in 2021… now it’s been pushed back (again) until the end of 2023… we’ll see… it’s base price certainly is not going to be $49,000. The Tesla semi allegedly started low volume production a couple weeks ago despite being marketed in 2017… I’m not confident they will be making 50k/yr in 2024. And we have no idea how much it really costs- probably a lot more than the suggested $200,000 5 years ago. 

Someone could literally write a book here. Don’t get me wrong, Musk’s vision of EV’s people want to buy has revolutionized the car industry. And of all the EV’s on the market, despite their numerous shortcomings, they’re probably the most practical to own at the moment. But as chargers are added, this will be sure to change. 

It’s just funny for me because only a few years ago, any criticism of Musk would result in his army of online fanboys going nuts. Any negative review in the press was a “big oil” conspiracy. I’m wondering where all these people are now… 

It’s not shocking people are bailing ship on Tesla… but I suspect it largely has to do with all the wrong reasons- musk’s personally and less to do with factors like the dwindling economy/inflation, solid competitors coming on the market, and that Musk built his company on lies and deception. 

And don’t get me started about how they literally sell options on their vehicles for many thousands of dollars that don’t even exist. 

To be fair, all the automakers are hurting bad right now. GM down 40% YTD,  Ford 45%, VW 46%, Toyota 26%, BMW 15%, etc. But as of this moment Tesla is down 65% YTD, which is just atrocious. Especially when they’re best poised to handle the downturn from high gas prices and supply chain issues.


----------



## AG_PhamD

dada_dave said:


> The impression I got is that they were even let in before their safety record justified it. But I’m on the outside, far enough that I may be being unfair. I doubt it though. Beyond the politics, Air Force programs like to show they’re “doing something” and cost cutting penny-wise ventures can be attractive for that. (NB: so far obviously it has worked out) In terms of politics,  often it comes down to hiring the right former air force general for the company board or a VP position. Being very wealthy with wealthy backers, I’m sure Musk was able to make the right connections and enticements.




SpaceX has contracts with NASA and DOD because they significantly undercut the legacy launch providers, most notably United Launch Alliance (ULA) which is a partnership between Lockheed Martin and Boeing. Being defense contractors and the primary players for some time, I’m sure they took advantage of their position. 

It’s not really an apples to apples comparison since there are tons of variables, but the Falcon 9 costs as little as $50-$70m since it’s reusable (but can also be expended for more lift), while the main  ULA competitor, the Atlas V, is $110-150m, which is getting retired because it’s uses Russian engines and the US Govt decided a while ago to enact ban on them. ULA also has the Delta IV Medium which is $165+ (Up to $350m+ on heavier lift versions). Northrop Grumman came out with the Antares about a decade which is $80-90m, also not reusable. There’s also the Ariane ($140-180m+) from the European Space Agency, which has launched stuff for NASA (ie James Webb Telescope) but the DOD is not going to use foreign rockets. 

If you went to the DOD and could launch satellites into space for 1/2 the price with equal or better reliability, I’m sure they’d be happy to hand you contracts. 

Of course, there’s a lot of new players coming into the market. But for the moment SpaceX is basically untouchable. 

What is absolutely crazy though is SpaceX/Musk willfully ignored the FAA’s denial of a launch request of their experimental Starship rocket a couple years ago. Why was it denied?Because the FAA was concerned about public safety. Think about how insane and dangerous it is to launch a rocket without the government being on the same page. And it just seems like it was swept under the rug. This guy (Musk) has zero respect for the law. 








						FAA denied SpaceX a safety waiver. Its Starship SN8 rocket launched anyway
					

As SN9 gets the green light to fly, the Federal Aviation Administration reveals that its predecessor never did.




					www.cnet.com


----------



## dada_dave

AG_PhamD said:


> SpaceX has contracts with NASA and DOD because they significantly undercut the legacy launch providers, most notably United Launch Alliance (ULA) which is a partnership between Lockheed Martin and Boeing. Being defense contractors and the primary players for some time, I’m sure they took advantage of their position.
> 
> It’s not really an apples to apples comparison since there are tons of variables, but the Falcon 9 costs as little as $50-$70m since it’s reusable (but can also be expended for more lift), while the main  ULA competitor, the Atlas V, is $110-150m, which is getting retired because it’s uses Russian engines and the US Govt decided a while ago to enact ban on them. ULA also has the Delta IV Medium which is $165+ (Up to $350m+ on heavier lift versions). Northrop Grumman came out with the Antares about a decade which is $80-90m, also not reusable. There’s also the Ariane ($140-180m+) from the European Space Agency, which has launched stuff for NASA (ie James Webb Telescope) but the DOD is not going to use foreign rockets.
> 
> If you went to the DOD and could launch satellites into space for 1/2 the price with equal or better reliability, I’m sure they’d be happy to hand you contracts.




At the time they were being considered they didn't have equal or better reliability - SpaceX rockets were still having accidents up to a couple years before - in contrast DoD launches hadn't failed in decades. Saving 10s of millions in launch costs is silly when the risk is billions in payload + the time lost on a national security asset. Again obviously it worked out, but at the time Elon was complaining, they had no track record of reliability. However, as Elon Musk complained about, DoD contracts are notoriously byzantine - that part is a valid complaint and in order to compete, even with a superior product, it requires a large amount of politicking and connections. Hence, the second part of my earlier post.



AG_PhamD said:


> Of course, there’s a lot of new players coming into the market. But for the moment SpaceX is basically untouchable.
> 
> What is absolutely crazy though is SpaceX/Musk willfully ignored the FAA’s denial of a launch request of their experimental Starship rocket a couple years ago. Why was it denied?Because the FAA was concerned about public safety. Think about how insane and dangerous it is to launch a rocket without the government being on the same page. And it just seems like it was swept under the rug. This guy (Musk) has zero respect for the law.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> FAA denied SpaceX a safety waiver. Its Starship SN8 rocket launched anyway
> 
> 
> As SN9 gets the green light to fly, the Federal Aviation Administration reveals that its predecessor never did.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.cnet.com




Kinda my point. Elon’s companies are notorious for cutting corners, amplifying risks, and ignoring regulations. Not okay when the stakes are high.


----------



## diamond.g

AG_PhamD said:


> Last I checked they still don’t offer a heads up display, 360 camera, cross traffic alert, CarPlay/Android Auto, ventilated seats, augmented reality cameras, power trunk, etc. It was only relatively recently heated steering wheels and rear seats found there way into their cars.



Recently offered heated rear seats? You are right on the steering wheel heater though. They also have been offering a power trunk for a while. You are also correct on the HUD and 360 camera and AR view.


----------



## mr_roboto

Here's a warning flag from 2018. Variations on this story kept popping up many times over the years, but never got sustained national press attention.









						Menial Tasks, Slurs and Swastikas: Many Black Workers at Tesla Say They Faced Racism (Published 2018)
					

African-American workers have reported threats, humiliation and barriers to promotion at the plant. The automaker says there is no pattern of bias.




					www.nytimes.com
				




Money quote which makes it clear why these problems persisted:


> In an email to employees last year, which the company later released in response to one of the lawsuits, Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, warned against “being a huge jerk” to members of “a historically less represented group.” At the same time, he wrote, “if someone is a jerk to you, but sincerely apologizes, it is important to be thick-skinned and accept that apology.”




In other words, in a Musk-run company, as soon as an insincere apology is presented, the victims are obliged to shut up and go back to work.  How much do you want to bet nobody ever got fired from Tesla for drawing a racist caricature and placing it where Black coworkers were guaranteed to see it?


----------



## AG_PhamD

mr_roboto said:


> Here's a warning flag from 2018. Variations on this story kept popping up many times over the years, but never got sustained national press attention.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Menial Tasks, Slurs and Swastikas: Many Black Workers at Tesla Say They Faced Racism (Published 2018)
> 
> 
> African-American workers have reported threats, humiliation and barriers to promotion at the plant. The automaker says there is no pattern of bias.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.nytimes.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Money quote which makes it clear why these problems persisted:
> 
> 
> In other words, in a Musk-run company, as soon as an insincere apology is presented, the victims are obliged to shut up and go back to work.  How much do you want to bet nobody ever got fired from Tesla for drawing a racist caricature and placing it where Black coworkers were guaranteed to see it?




I always am suspect of the claims of smearing people (ie Musk) as inherently racist explanation why situations like this are not addressed. I think the more likely case is that Musk/Tesla is just not concerned with HR-type issues. For Musk, it seems the product, productivity, profitability, sales, etc is the priority, no matter what the cost. I imagine issues like workplace conflicts distract from company goals. And having to fire people over issues like this only creates inefficiencies. 

As a small business owner with 10-20 employees and subcontractors, I could never imagine treating them like this. 

If you look at Tesla’s history of wage disputes, workplace safety, and OSHA violations (including covering up injuries), you see the exact same trends. Workers come last and the product is everything. 









						Tesla Had 3 Times as Many OSHA Violations as the 10 Largest US Plants Combined
					

CEO Elon Musk once called California OSHA the 'most stringent' safety organization in the US.




					www.thedrive.com
				












						Tesla’s construction workers at Texas gigafactory allege labor violations
					

Whistleblowers claim constant hazards, onsite accidents and wage theft while working on the manufacturing facility in Austin




					www.theguardian.com
				












						Tesla’s on-site health clinic accused of undercounting worker injuries
					

The factory clinic’s director says employees were ‘gaming the system’ before he took over




					www.theverge.com
				




And you may remember Musk refused to comply with the CA state lockdown policies, back in the early days of COVID. Again, no regard for employee safety. 








						Elon Musk Defies Lockdown Orders and Reopens Tesla's Factory
					

The CEO sued a California county over the weekend and threatened to move the company to Texas—his latest tangle with government authorities.




					www.wired.com
				




It’s just shocking to me for years Musk was largely given a pass this kind of stuff. For the most part, the media fawned over him. Any negative press was attacked by his personality cult. I have been talking about this stuff for years. Now that his political rhetoric has changed, all of a sudden attention is being paid. It’s pretty obvious he took advantage of peoples (particuarly the left wing) desire for environmentalism to ingratiate himself. This is despite a long history of what could be considered anti-left wing behaviors. 

It’s just kind of disgusting this is how the media and politics works. Ever since declaring right wing views and especially since taking over twitter, he has been relentlessly attacked. But where were these people for the past 10 years? 

It’s just funny to me Musk is now being treated like some sort of hero by the right. I don’t think Musk really has any strong political allegiance, he just does what he thinks best suits his ambitions. 

I will say what is actually quite interesting/unique about Musk is that I genuinely don’t think his ambitions have much to do with flaunting and amassing wealth- only to the extent it allows him to follow his passion of developing technology. He doesn’t seem particularly focused on making money for the sake of making money and living the stereotypical billionaire lifestyle. At the same time, he also doesn’t seem to be big into philanthropy either. I honestly think he is all about his products, but at the expense of everything else. And that shows.


----------



## dada_dave

AG_PhamD said:


> I always am suspect of the claims of smearing people (ie Musk) as inherently racist explanation why situations like this are not addressed. I think the more likely case is that Musk/Tesla is just not concerned with HR-type issues. For Musk, it seems the product, productivity, profitability, sales, etc is the priority, no matter what the cost. I imagine issues like workplace conflicts distract from company goals. And having to fire people over issues like this only creates inefficiencies.
> 
> As a small business owner with 10-20 employees and subcontractors, I could never imagine treating them like this.
> 
> If you look at Tesla’s history of wage disputes, workplace safety, and OSHA violations (including covering up injuries), you see the exact same trends. Workers come last and the product is everything.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Tesla Had 3 Times as Many OSHA Violations as the 10 Largest US Plants Combined
> 
> 
> CEO Elon Musk once called California OSHA the 'most stringent' safety organization in the US.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.thedrive.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Tesla’s construction workers at Texas gigafactory allege labor violations
> 
> 
> Whistleblowers claim constant hazards, onsite accidents and wage theft while working on the manufacturing facility in Austin
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.theguardian.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Tesla’s on-site health clinic accused of undercounting worker injuries
> 
> 
> The factory clinic’s director says employees were ‘gaming the system’ before he took over
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.theverge.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And you may remember Musk refused to comply with the CA state lockdown policies, back in the early days of COVID. Again, no regard for employee safety.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Elon Musk Defies Lockdown Orders and Reopens Tesla's Factory
> 
> 
> The CEO sued a California county over the weekend and threatened to move the company to Texas—his latest tangle with government authorities.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.wired.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It’s just shocking to me for years Musk was largely given a pass this kind of stuff. For the most part, the media fawned over him. Any negative press was attacked by his personality cult. I have been talking about this stuff for years. Now that his political rhetoric has changed, all of a sudden attention is being paid. It’s pretty obvious he took advantage of peoples (particuarly the left wing) desire for environmentalism to ingratiate himself. This is despite a long history of what could be considered anti-left wing behaviors.
> 
> It’s just kind of disgusting this is how the media and politics works. Ever since declaring right wing views and especially since taking over twitter, he has been relentlessly attacked. But where were these people for the past 10 years?
> 
> It’s just funny to me Musk is now being treated like some sort of hero by the right. I don’t think Musk really has any strong political allegiance, he just does what he thinks best suits his ambitions.
> 
> I will say what is actually quite interesting/unique about Musk is that I genuinely don’t think his ambitions have much to do with flaunting and amassing wealth- only to the extent it allows him to follow his passion of developing technology. He doesn’t seem particularly focused on making money for the sake of making money and living the stereotypical billionaire lifestyle. At the same time, he also doesn’t seem to be big into philanthropy either. I honestly think he is all about his products, but at the expense of everything else. And that shows.




As @mr_roboto showed the media did cover him critically when there was cause to and those of us who were paying attention did take note. That this was largely overlooked by society  until it became blatant, except I guess not blatant enough for you?*, doesn’t mean it didn’t exist or wasn’t a problem.

As for rest, you’re giving him way too much credit. What part of his “overriding ambition to push technological progress above everything” led him to purchase Twitter for $44 billion and spend his “limited” time constantly tweeting and retweeting some of the worst right wing culture warriors/fascists/Nazis/white supremacists? What part of it causes him to be a “free speech absolutist” when such views are on the line but not when criticism of him is, which is pretty typical of “free speech absolutists”. In that vein, which part was the cause of him talking about how the previous Twitter suspension of the Babylon Bee for transphobia was the worst thing ever and the sign of the destruction of society and other examples of him being pretty explicitly transphobic?

This is who he is. Oh and his claims to  a lack of extravagance in his personal life have largely to be shown to be bullshit. Could he have a larger conspicuous consumption? Sure, but he ain’t skimped on the luxury.

Edit: *I’m actually curious what it would take for you to say someone is a bigot? I mean in my view tolerating bigotry against your workforce is condoning it and is an example of how someone’s innate bigotry manifests. But obviously we disagree on that front.


----------



## AG_PhamD

dada_dave said:


> As @mr_roboto showed the media did cover him critically when there was cause to and those of us who were paying attention did take note. That this was largely overlooked by society  until it became blatant, except I guess not blatant enough for you?*, doesn’t mean it didn’t exist or wasn’t a problem.
> 
> As for rest, you’re giving him way too much credit. What part of his “overriding ambition to push technological progress above everything” led him to purchase Twitter for $44 billion and spend his “limited” time constantly tweeting and retweeting some of the worst right wing culture warriors/fascists/Nazis/white supremacists? What part of it causes him to be a “free speech absolutist” when such views are on the line but not when criticism of him is, which is pretty typical of “free speech absolutists”. In that vein, which part was the cause of him talking about how the previous Twitter suspension of the Babylon Bee for transphobia was the worst thing ever and the sign of the destruction of society and other examples of him being pretty explicitly transphobic?
> 
> This is who he is. Oh and his claims to  a lack of extravagance in his personal life have largely to be shown to be bullshit. Could he have a larger conspicuous consumption? Sure, but he ain’t skimped on the luxury.
> 
> Edit: *I’m actually curious what it would take for you to say someone is a bigot? I mean in my view tolerating bigotry against your workforce is condoning it, is an example of how someone’s innate bigotry manifests. But obviously we disagree on that front.




I’m not saying these stories weren’t covered, but they weren’t really major news stories. Most of them put more blame on Tesla than they do Musk. As Mr Roboto says, these were not really sustained. And I would argue Musk was still a darling of the media and public up until very recently. And his lies and deception around Tesla was ignored I would imagine because the stock was doing so well.

If you haven’t noticed, the whole free-speech Twitter is a complete charade. He’s garnered support from the right using this “marketing”… but I would not be surprised if sooner or later his interests change and decides to pander elsewhere. His actions don’t actually align with concept of free speech anyone has in mind. I’m not aware of him retweeting neo-Nazis, you’ll have to show me what you’re talking about.

Re: Bigots. Here is the definition:
“a person who is obstinately or unreasonably attached to a belief, opinion, or faction, especially one who is prejudiced against or antagonistic toward a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group.”

For me, a bigot must have prejudiced beliefs against a group of people (and usually takes antagonistic actions against them). A failure to intervene in a case such as Tesla does not necessarily imply bigotry… but at best implies negligence. I understand many people would believe a failure to take action is bigotry (with the implication Black people aren’t deserving of such attention), but there are reasons why one might fail deal with an issue like this. That’s not to say just because something may not be motivated bigotry doesn’t mean they’ve done nothing wrong. Obviously Musk has an obligation to deal with such issues appropriately. 

Given the track record of Musk’s companies, I would assume the disregard for workplace racism stems from the same place as the disregard of employee safety… which probably stems from the same place as the disregard for properly addressing incidents of workplace sexual harassment (which I forgot to mention before). The common thread is a disrespect for all employees.


----------



## dada_dave

AG_PhamD said:


> I’m not saying these stories weren’t covered, but they weren’t really major news stories. Most of them put more blame on Tesla than they do Musk. As Mr Roboto says, these were not really sustained. And I would argue Musk was still a darling of the media and public up until very recently. And his lies and deception around Tesla was ignored I would imagine because the stock was doing so well.




Yes but your basing your conception of him - the eccentric engineering genius who pursues technological progress above all else - on the narrative that was formed then rather than what he has shown himself to be - you've never updated your priors.



AG_PhamD said:


> If you haven’t noticed, the whole free-speech Twitter is a complete charade. He’s garnered support from the right using this “marketing”… but I would not be surprised if sooner or later his interests change and decides to pander elsewhere. His actions don’t actually align with concept of free speech anyone has in mind.




That was *my* point. It wasn't marketing. The bigoted always claim to be free speech warriors whose views are being "censored" (i.e. criticized). It's how they roll, and of course the free speech part is always bullshit. Nobody actually expected it to be anything else. But in their minds that's what they are and it is what Elon is still claiming to be.



AG_PhamD said:


> I’m not aware of him retweeting neo-Nazis, you’ll have to show me what you’re talking about.




But you are aware of him retweeting fascists and white supremacists? It's in the this thread multiple times. He's replied in the affirmative to the likes of Kim DotCom, Andy Ngo, Ian Miles Cheong, and Laura Loomer. Things like: "totally right" or "rofl" to comments they made regarding his perceived enemies all being pedophiles or isn't amusing how Russia is destroying Ukraine's energy grid. Thankfully while he let Andrew Anglin back on (who btw is waaaaay worse than Kanye), I don't think he's interacted with him ... yet. It's hard to tell about all the accounts because in his relentless effort to drive the progress of technology forwards, Elon spends so much of his time tweeting people that it's hard to search it all or know who they all are. Just look for yourself at what he writes now: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/with_replies You can tell by searching through it that Elon is not personally invested in the extreme right wing culture war. /s

Oh and if you want to question if any of the people above are they really "X"? Just look at them all and what they've had to say about Hitler, Jews, Muslims, Blacks, Gays, and other minorities. Oh an what they've said about various hate groups (and on occasions participated with like Andy Ngo).



AG_PhamD said:


> Re: Bigots. Here is the definition:
> “a person who is obstinately or unreasonably attached to a belief, opinion, or faction, especially one who is prejudiced against or antagonistic toward a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group.”
> 
> For me, a bigot must have prejudiced beliefs against a group of people (and usually takes antagonistic actions against them). A failure to intervene in a case such as Tesla does not necessarily imply bigotry… but at best implies negligence. I understand many people would believe a failure to take action is bigotry (with the implication Black people aren’t deserving of such attention), but there are reasons why one might fail deal with an issue like this. That’s not to say just because something may not be motivated bigotry doesn’t mean they’ve done nothing wrong. Obviously Musk has an obligation to deal with such issues appropriately.




A belief that a group is not experiencing racism or prejudice when they are or that if they are it doesn't matter is indeed bigotry itself. It's a belief that members of that group are just whiners or soft or looking for handouts, etc ... That qualifies even under the strictest interpretation of the definition above. 

BTW when pressed on his views toward trans people and how harmful they are Elon Musk doubled down and said "his views will not be censored" (remember he's still a free speech absolutist in his mind). I mean put it together. He runs businesses which have been accused of bigotry towards minorities, he's openly transphobic, he unbans Nazis in the name of free speech while banning journalists who criticize him, and then openly and positively tweets with fascists, anti-semites, and racists? You can't say, gee maybe the guy might be a tiny bit bigoted?



AG_PhamD said:


> Given the track record of Musk’s companies, I would assume the disregard for workplace racism stems from the same place as the disregard of employee safety… which probably stems from the same place as the disregard for properly addressing incidents of workplace sexual harassment (which I forgot to mention before). The common thread is a disrespect for all employees.




Sure ... all are equally disrespected ... some more equally than others.


----------



## dada_dave

Eoof this thread about Elon’s recent Twitter space meeting with investors is indeed brutal:



			https://mobile.twitter.com/waltisfrozen/status/1606127957377810432
		













It continues on and on …


----------



## AG_PhamD

dada_dave said:


> Yes but your basing your conception of him - the eccentric engineering genius who pursues technological progress above all else - on the narrative that was formed then rather than what he has shown himself to be - you've never updated your priors




I think you’re basing your own conception of my conception of Musk on your own narratives. I never said he was a engineering genius. People treat him like he’s one, he crafts an image of being one, but I’m not convinced that’s the case. He’s obviously not totally incompetent, except maybe socially and when it comes to running Twitter, but AFAIC the achievements he’s made are likely the outcome of the teams of engineers and lots of money. I suspect his strengths revolve around leadership and getting his employees strive for innovation. 




dada_dave said:


> That was *my* point. It wasn't marketing. The bigoted always claim to be free speech warriors whose views are being "censored" (i.e. criticized). It's how they roll, and of course the free speech part is always bullshit. Nobody actually expected it to be anything else. But in their minds that's what they are and it is what Elon is still claiming to be.




Okay, so you’re saying everyone that values free speech is actually a bigot or a closeted bigot? One cannot be pro-free speech but not a bigot?

I think there were a lot of people who expected him to bring free speech (or something close to that that’s still commercially viable), most notably the right wing. The right of course doesn’t care about censorship so long as they’re not being the ones censored. And that’s also very true for the left wing as well. By whatever means necessary to have power the opposition…





dada_dave said:


> But you are aware of him retweeting fascists and white supremacists and that's okay? It's in the this thread multiple times. He's replied in the affirmative to the likes of Kim DotCom, Andy Ngo, Ian Miles Cheong, and Laura Loomer. Things like: "totally right" or "rofl" to comments they made regarding his perceived enemies all being pedophiles or isn't amusing how Russia is destroying Ukraine's energy grid. Thankfully while he let Andrew Anglin back on (who btw is waaaaay worse than Kanye), I don't think he's interacted with him ... yet. It's hard to tell about all the accounts because in his relentless effort to drive the progress of technology forwards, Elon spends so much of his time tweeting people that it's hard to search it all or know who they all are. Just look for yourself at what he writes now: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/with_replies You can tell by searching through it that Elon is not personally invested in the right wing culture war. /s
> 
> Oh and if you want to question if any of the people above are they really "X"? Just look at them all and what they've had to say about Hitler, Jews, Muslims, Blacks, Gays, and other minorities. Oh an what they've said about various hate groups (and on occasions participated with like Andy Ngo).




No, I’m not. Because I don’t use Twitter. I deleted my social media in 2012 and haven’t looked back. You’ll have to be more specific for me. I’ve hastily googled Musk and these people/incidents but haven’t found anything… unless you’ve mistaken retweet and reinstate?

I think you’ve completely misunderstood or misrepresented what I was saying regarding his interest in innovation. It was an observation to which you interpreted as a value statement. But I was saying will pander to whoever he thinks will benefit his business. He is clearly pandering to the right at the moment, but it wasn’t long ago he was a close Obama ally, on the board of Zuckerberg’s Fwd.us immigration group, he supported Clinton and denounced Trump in 2016, etc. I suspect part of his political shift has do with California business regulations and pro-union democrats affecting Tesla. And I think Biden’s early poor performance and the (now false) predictions midterm red wave emboldened him to commit to the right publicly.

I get the sense however you assume everyone that’s on the right is a bigot?



dada_dave said:


> A belief that a group is not experiencing racism or prejudice when they are or that if they are it doesn't matter is indeed bigotry itself. It's a belief that members of that group are just whiners or soft or looking for handouts, etc ... That qualifies even under your definition. BTW when pressed on his views toward trans people and how harmful they are Elon Musk doubled down and said "his views will not be censored" (remember he's still a free speech absolutist in his mind). I mean put it together. He runs businesses which have been accused of bigotry towards minorities, he's openly transphobic, he unbans Nazis in the name of free speech while banning journalists who criticize him, and then openly and positively tweets with fascists, anti-semites, and racists? You can't say, gee maybe the guy might be a tiny bit bigoted?




Who said anything about anyone not _believing_ a group is experiencing bigotry? I would mostly agree, obstinately refusing to accept a person/group is being discriminated or minimizing its effects could and in many cases would be a form bigotry. I would say it’s a different type of bigotry than objective hatred, but indeed a subtle form of bigotry.

I was talking more about knowing there is a problem and doing nothing about it. Based on your comments you seem like a person who would automatically jump to the conclusion that it’s because of hate.

I can say from personal experience, I have been in schools and workplaces where acts of hate have occurred, it is reported, and the administration does nothing to actually address the issue despite being receptive to it. But it’s usually not because they are indeed themselves racist / antisemitic / homophobic or see the incident as insignificant.



dada_dave said:


> Sure ... all are equally disrespected ... some more equally than others.



I’m not sure that’s a fair judgement one can make. How do you judge who is “mistreated” more by a company- a person discriminated by coworkers based on race / ethnicity / gender / sexuality / etc or a person who becomes permanently disabled from a workplace accident because of an systematic lack of proper safety implementations? I don’t think there is an answer to that.

When a company ignores worker’s wellbeing and concerns thereof altogether, there is no equal or unequal treatment since no one is being treated to begin with and all HR issues are just swept under the rug.


----------



## dada_dave

AG_PhamD said:


> I think you’re basing your own conception of my conception of Musk on your own narratives. I never said he was a engineering genius. People treat him like he’s one, he crafts an image of being one, but I’m not convinced that’s the case. He’s obviously not totally incompetent, except maybe socially and when it comes to running Twitter, but AFAIC the achievements he’s made are likely the outcome of the teams of engineers and lots of money. I suspect his strengths revolve around leadership and getting his employees strive for innovation.






AG_PhamD said:


> I will say what is actually quite interesting/unique about Musk is that I genuinely don’t think his ambitions have much to do with flaunting and amassing wealth- only to the extent it allows him to follow his passion of developing technology. He doesn’t seem particularly focused on making money for the sake of making money and living the stereotypical billionaire lifestyle. At the same time, he also doesn’t seem to be big into philanthropy either. I honestly think he is all about his products, but at the expense of everything else. And that shows.




That's you. That's what I based my slightly exaggerated view of your above statement, where I merely included the word genius to highlight the ridiculousness of the rest of it when clearly his acquisition of Twitter and his running of it has everything to do with his personal beliefs and not anything to do with striving for technological innovation at all times. It doesn't apply. Twitter, in fact most social networks, are fundamentally not technology companies - not in the traditional sense. They are about users and communities.



AG_PhamD said:


> Okay, so you’re saying everyone that values free speech is actually a bigot or a closeted bigot? One cannot be pro-free speech but not a bigot?




This is what I said:



> The bigoted always claim to be free speech warriors whose views are being "censored" (i.e. criticized). It's how they roll, and of course the free speech part is always bullshit. Nobody actually expected it to be anything else. But in their minds that's what they are and it is what Elon is still claiming to be.




You stated that I said the converse which is the height of bad faith misreading. p => q does not necessarily imply q => p: bigots claim to be free speech warriors does not imply free speech warriors are bigots. Also I said "free speech warrior" implying a performative adulation of free speech, not anyone who values free speech. I also used the word the “claim” likewise implying the opposite. I'm unsure if this problem is in the quality of your reading comprehension or in your argumentation.



AG_PhamD said:


> I think there were a lot of people who expected him to bring free speech (or something close to that that’s still commercially viable), most notably the right wing. The right of course doesn’t care about censorship so long as they’re not being the ones censored. And that’s also very true for the left wing as well. By whatever means necessary to have power the opposition…




No what the extreme right-wing expected is what they got. They expected a platform far more tolerant of hate with all the Nazis and fascists let back on and they expected the “lefties” (or really anyone else) to get banned when they complained and criticized. Oh and for your statements below, please note the use of the word *extreme* when combined with the right wing. While they may have effectively taken over the right’s political power, I did not in fact include everyone with a conservative viewpoint.



AG_PhamD said:


> No, I’m not. Because I don’t use Twitter. I deleted my social media in 2012 and haven’t looked back. You’ll have to be more specific for me. I’ve hastily googled Musk and these people/incidents but haven’t found anything… unless you’ve mistaken retweet and reinstate?
> 
> I think you’ve completely misunderstood or misrepresented what I was saying regarding his interest in innovation. It was an observation to which you interpreted as a value statement. But I was saying will pander to whoever he thinks will benefit his business. He is clearly pandering to the right at the moment, but it wasn’t long ago he was a close Obama ally, on the board of Zuckerberg’s Fwd.us immigration group, he supported Clinton and denounced Trump in 2016, etc. I suspect part of his political shift has do with California business regulations and pro-union democrats affecting Tesla. And I think Biden’s early poor performance and the (now false) predictions midterm red wave emboldened him to commit to the right publicly.
> 
> I get the sense however you assume everyone that’s on the right is a bigot?




No I call bigots, bigots. Because they are. If you don't know who these people are, good for you! I'm glad your life is so insulated as to not have to care. Others aren't so lucky. No I didn't confuse retweet and reinstate - some of these assholes never got booted in the first place. He’s talked to all of them, some on a regular basis. There are screenshots in the thread and you can find them in the link I just sent you above. I even mentioned some of the things he would say to them, so no it’s not just about reinstatement. The only one he hasn't interacted with (so far as I can tell) is Andrew Anglin, who would be the worst though not by as large of a margin as it should be. And there the mere reinstatement is bad enough.

Here's an example from this thread:









						Musk offers to buy Twitter
					

Edit: this is not where I thought I was posting




					talkedabout.com
				




Oh and now he openly supports DeSantis who is Trump's mini-me turned wannabe usurper because Trump wasn't far enough to the right on Covid. Do people change that drastically? Maybe. Regardless it is who he is now and again the point of these posts are that there were warning signs that this part of he always was.

If nothing else his transphobia is on pretty full display, I mean I posted about it right here, not just in this thread but right after my reply to you:









						Musk offers to buy Twitter
					

Here's a warning flag from 2018. Variations on this story kept popping up many times over the years, but never got sustained national press attention.  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/30/business/tesla-factory-racism.html  Money quote which makes it clear why these problems persisted:  In an...




					talkedabout.com
				




I should also stress that you basically just admitted to arguing over his bigotry or lack thereof without actually paying attention as to what is happening right now. Which is why I keep trying to tell you that you have not updated your priors. If you are not on Twitter, don’t see what he’s saying or with whom or how he is talking, then why are you arguing with people who do?



AG_PhamD said:


> Who said anything about anyone not _believing_ a group is experiencing bigotry? I would mostly agree, obstinately refusing to accept a person/group is being discriminated or minimizing its effects could and in many cases would be a form bigotry. I would say it’s a different type of bigotry than objective hatred, but indeed a subtle form of bigotry.
> 
> I was talking more about knowing there is a problem and doing nothing about it. Based on your comments you seem like a person who would automatically jump to the conclusion that it’s because of hate.
> 
> I can say from personal experience, I have been in schools and workplaces where acts of hate have occurred, it is reported, and the administration does nothing to actually address the issue despite being receptive to it. But it’s usually not because they are indeed themselves racist / antisemitic / homophobic or see the incident as insignificant.




If you are at the top of an institution and you breed a culture of bigotry at said institution, which lets be clear that is what Tesla is accused of here not a single incident, then yes at some level you must be tolerant of that bigotry. It is in fact the legal standard by which places like California go after companies and institutions for failing to address sexism and racism in the workplace - sadly the state lacks the wherewithal to go after everyone who deserves it which is why it is still so prevalent even in "liberal" California. Activision-Blizzard was a toxic stew for decades before the state finally sued them. And before you ask yes that means I think that institutionally the state doesn't value discrimination in the workplace cases and yes this is part of the structural bigotry that still pervades our society. Fixing that will take years if not many more decades of work.



AG_PhamD said:


> I’m not sure that’s a fair judgement one can make. How do you judge who is “mistreated” more by a company- a person discriminated by coworkers based on race / ethnicity / gender / sexuality / etc or a person who becomes permanently disabled from a workplace accident because of an systematic lack of proper safety implementations? I don’t think there is an answer to that.
> 
> When a company ignores worker’s wellbeing and concerns thereof altogether, there is no equal or unequal treatment since no one is being treated to begin with and all HR issues are just swept under the rug.




This is a nonsensical argument - even if we accepted your hypothesis expressed here that he could just hate all workers equally who knows what’s in his heart when he fails to deal with bigotry, the entire point of mine and @mr_roboto and @Andropov and @Nycturne was that these were red flags as to who he was stretching back years that explain his current behavior of which you are, by your own admission, largely ignorant. In other words we can combine them what’s happening now to say, yup those aren’t just blips. Edit: you in contrast contend that they aren’t indicative of anything and are just being used to smear him because he’s espoused right-wing views. Well which right wing views are we talking about? We aren’t talking about wanting low taxes … we’re talking about the ones above expressed as a full flung member of the far right culture wars which yes is rife with bigotry and hate.


----------



## diamond.g

dada_dave said:


> Eoof this thread about Elon’s recent Twitter space meeting with investors is indeed brutal:
> 
> 
> 
> https://mobile.twitter.com/waltisfrozen/status/1606127957377810432
> 
> 
> 
> View attachment 20287
> View attachment 20288
> 
> View attachment 20289
> 
> It continues on and on …



Yeah if we don't hear from the SEC on Tuesday....


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## Scepticalscribe

@dada_dave; @Nycturne: In addition to the stuff you have cited, there were also plenty of ugly and unpleasant red flags re Mr Musk's unreconstructed attitudes to women.



Nycturne said:


> There were signs, but if you weren’t following him on social media where he was unfiltered, you would absolutely miss it. It’s just kinda amazing how people can have their eccentricities sanitized in news outlets to be honest. And that benefits people like Musk, Weinstein, and others who are much uglier people once you get a glimpse beyond the sanitized reporting.
> 
> I mostly saw the signs because I am in LGBT circles on Twitter and a couple other places. But even then, his _open_ flirting with the alt-right is pretty recent, but can be traced back to the early pandemic, I believe.






Andropov said:


> Same here. First sign I can remember was ~2018 with that whole thing about the Thai rescue diver Elon called a "pedo". I brushed it off back then as something just weird to say, maybe because I was pretty excited about SpaceX at the time. Then 2020 happened and he started mocking people with pronouns in their bios and his discourse got increasingly more openly hateful and I think that was when my opinion about him started to plunge. He forcing workers to go back to the factory amid the initial COVID-19 lockdown certainly didn't help.
> After that, this has been ~2 years of him doing that thing people who get tangled up with the alt-right do: listening only to his own echo-chamber, started showing a mentality of 'us' vs 'them'... I've seen it before. It's sad.



Yes, there were signs, warning signs about his attitudes to race, ethnicity, and also, his appalling attitudes to (and about) women.



lizkat said:


> Well he was in the right place over the weekend to look for some capital infusions, we may just have assumed it was all about Twitter, but...  maybe not!
> 
> Washington Post piece, paywall removed:  https://wapo.st/3Whz6EQ
> 
> "From Jared Kushner to Salt Bae: Here’s who Elon Musk was seen with at the World Cup"



As my dear old granny (who trained as a primary teacher over a century ago, qualifying as a teacher in the years immediately preceding the First World War), used to say, (a remark frequently cited, approvingly, by my mother): "Show me your friends and I'll tell you who you are."


Andropov said:


> Yeah, in retrospect there were several red flags. I used to dismiss the small things like language choices as simple eccentricities. I was wrong.



Language choices are exactly that: They are choices, and if people choose to use epiteths or expressions that they know to be offensive, hurtful or harmful, then, what should be stressed is not  "free speech absolutism", or the right to say what you like, but, rather, the fact that you have chosen to use words (because you can, because you have that power, you have that privilege) that clearly express your contempt for others, because you choose to use words that you know full well will wound, hurt, harm, insult or offend others.


----------



## SuperMatt

@AG_PhamD How far does somebody’s bigotry have to go before others are allowed to call them a bigot?

To all: why do so many people seem to think being *called* a bigot is worse than *being* a bigot?

I see this kind of whining (mainly from right wing media and regular people in its orbit), and it goes so far that white people are now claiming to be facing increased discrimination. I guess it doesn’t matter that the data say otherwise.









						The Truth about Anti-White Discrimination
					

Many white Americans feel that discrimination against whites is on the rise. Experiments suggests otherwise




					www.scientificamerican.com
				




It’s real simple: if you don’t want people to call you a racist or a bigot, don’t be one. Musk failed in this simple task, repeatedly.


----------



## Nycturne

Scepticalscribe said:


> @dada_dave; @Nycturne: In addition to the stuff you have cited, there were also plenty of ugly and unpleasant red flags re Mr Musk's unreconstructed attitudes to women.




As I’ve seen said in the trans community: scratch a transphobe and you’ll find more ugliness underneath. Replace transphobe with other forms of discrimination, and I think it still holds true. Once you feel it’s okay to create a hierarchy where one group of people automatically are placed above another, it’s not a big leap for that person to believe that should apply to more groups.

It’s something I’ve seen in folks who ”believe” in a meritocracy, specifically people who believe the US is one. When asked why group A, B or C are under-represented in their meritocracy, I’ve seen one after another try to justify the status quo. It’s exhausting at times dealing with this in the tech industry.


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## dada_dave

When sucking up to the boss doesn’t work out:



			https://mobile.twitter.com/Atrios/status/1606347985838751744
		







Edit: Btw he’s talking about the people they brought back who weren’t supposed to have been let go in the first place. This a good but long thread:



			https://mobile.twitter.com/williampietri/status/1591502124977950720


----------



## Eric

When you listen to Musk's statements they're just all over the place, now he wants to take the code back to base but cannot explain why, how it would be done or even forumate the slightest plan. Every decision he makes is done so on impulse, just sounding off the cuff and sounding nonsensical.

One thing he said that I agree with though, it can't be saved. He went in there with a wrecking ball, tanked both Twitter and Tesla and now is going to hand it off to someone else to go down with the ship.


----------



## turbineseaplane

I know it's immature, but I'm really enjoying watching Elons downfall of late

He's become such an unsavory character _(perhaps always was one)_, and I find it refreshing to watch at least some amount of humble pie getting delivered to his plate.

It's rare that billionaires take any actual "L's" in life -- and basically all of this is self inflicted, so it really is hard to be sympathetic, even if one were inclined to lean that way.


----------



## lizkat

turbineseaplane said:


> I know it's immature, but I'm really enjoying watching Elons downfall of late
> 
> He's become such an unsavory character _(perhaps always was one)_, and I find it refreshing to watch at least some amount of humble pie getting delivered to his plate.
> 
> It's rare that billionaires take any actual "L's" in life -- and basically all of this is self inflicted, so it really is hard to be sympathetic, even if one were inclined to lean that way.




All I know for sure is that the whole planet should have saved the "dumpster fire" meme for Elon Musk.


----------



## turbineseaplane

lizkat said:


> All I know for sure is that the whole planet should have saved the "dumpster fire" meme for Elon Musk.




On a more serious note, it's really sad and concerning to see people get swallowed whole by the far right meme culture of "everything is woke" and "we are being censored" and "white men are the real victims", on and on.  People are going truly off a deep end in that direction


----------



## lizkat

turbineseaplane said:


> On a more serious note, it's really sad and concerning to see people get swallowed whole by the far right meme culture of "everything is woke" and "we are being censored" and "white men are the real victims", on and on.  People are going truly off a deep end in that direction




Yes,  What gets obscured is that the right wants things their way and the left wants there to be choice, which latter of course implies negotiation and compromise when it comes to legislation.

Leaving as much choice  --freedom!--  as possible to the most people while retaining a rule of law and ability to enforce it is a democratic principle, and it's an inclusive one by definition.  We fall short of the ideal sometimes,  because of course it's true one can't please all of the people all of the time.

Still though, the intent of the Rs in recent decades seems to be to narrow rather than expand the list of whose rights are to be respected,  and therefore the list of those who shall benefit from both lawmaking and agency rule-making.

That's not about choice, or freedom.  It's about attempts to consolidate power to a minority that has turned to touting fear of a nonexistent "tyranny of the majority."   A majority that votes for choice is not tyrannical... at least not until it becomes apparent that winning elections honestly by a majority no longer means ability to govern choicefully, and at that point a situation can tip into anarchy.  Anyone sane does not wish for that.

Why the Republicans have decided to abandon freedom for authoritarianism is a mystery to me because conservatives were once fans of personal liberty.  Today's "conservatives" prefer obstruction of choice and substitution of poison pills attached to bills when they can't get what they want through negotiations.

One wonders when the GOP will realize that obstructionism and acceptance of cult-like leadership tactics are not sustainable strategies for an American political party.   Perhaps the tide is already turning.  The omnibus bill just passed got 68 votes in the Senate and 225 in the House.   Those numbers do include some Republican votes, despite the stridency of the party's far right groups.

Naturally no member of Congress could possibly have known every detail of what was in the 4K pages of that bill.  But they all did know that the Electoral Count Reform Act was incorporated... and that means that the Republican Party members of Congress do know that they can never allow to happen again the attempted overthrow of an election as was attempted on January 6, 2021.

Edit:  didn't mean to drift this away from Musk...  "I didn't start it" lol.


----------



## Macky-Mac

Eric said:


> When you listen to Musk's statements they're just all over the place, now he wants to take the code back to base but cannot explain why, how it would be done or even forumate the slightest plan. Every decision he makes is done so on impulse, just sounding off the cuff and sounding nonsensical....




it's a bit like listening to Trump talk about things


----------



## lizkat

Macky-Mac said:


> it's a bit like listening to Trump talk about things




 Trump at least had a few people who were better at saying "uh, no" to him once in awhile.  But that's because there was the Constitution sometimes standing between his big mouth and people actually doing whatever he said to do.  Some on his team had read that document and saw red flags in time to say no.

Elon's pretty much unfettered though.   Seems like only the regulators or banks/co-investors get to say no.


----------

