Buying Twitter 'is Not a Way To Make Money,' Says Musk (theverge.com) 166
Speaking for the first time since news broke of his attempts to buy all of Twitter, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said his offer had been made for the public good. From a report: Musk emphasized that he was motivated by the public interest value of the platform. "Twitter has become kind of the de facto town square. So it's just really important that people have both the reality and the perception that they're able to speak freely within the bounds of the law," Musk said. Musk was speaking at TED 2022 conference in Vancouver. Asked why he wanted to buy Twitter, Musk opened with a joke. "I don't know," Musk told a live audience. "A little bird tweeted in my ear or something." To protect that venue, Musk went on to say he believes Twitter should "open source the algorithm" in order to build trust and ensure availability. "The code should be on Github so people can look through it," Musk said. Musk insisted that buying Twitter wasn't an economic move for him. "This is not a way to sort of make money. My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important," he says. "So the future of civilization, but you don't care about the economics at all." Musk said he has a Plan B if Twitter rejects his offer, without offering more details.
Probably true. Still misleading. (Score:5, Insightful)
Buying a newspaper isn't about the money either, because it's very hard to be profitable in that sector. Yet people do it, because it gives them outsized influence on the conversation. I think this should be looked at in the same light -- an attempt to influence the conversation, without explicitly being seen as part of it.
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If he's honest about open-sourcing the algorithms, then it's hard to see it as an attempt to influence the conversation.
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By his very admittance he is looking to change the nature of the conversation. That itself is an attempt to influence the conversation. That isn't to speak of whether that is good/bad. It just merely is.
When influencing a conversation is to let both sides speak within the bounds of the law, that is a good thing.
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Theory and practice are not the same. This is especially true online. If there is zero censorship, people will abuse it for the sake of abusing it. I would not necessarily call that an improvement. If there is any censorship, it's not truly open.
Again, "zero censorship" is a misrepresentation. He clearly refers to lawful speech.
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Except there is no reason to believe he's honest, plus even if there was "open-sourcing" of an algorithm, there's no reason to believe it would be the deployed algorithm, whatever that means. We would have no visibility into code actually running, so whatever is on GitHub is meaningless.
Open source makes code available to you, it does not tell you what code other people use. Musk is a con man, this is a con.
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Also, if there's any machine learning the algorithm is only half the story.
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Open sourcing the code changes little about the moderation policies of the company he wants to own.
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If he's honest about open-sourcing the algorithms, then it's hard to see it as an attempt to influence the conversation.
Unless he genuinely wants to make it better for the community - not the shareholders (which would only be himself). That's clearly a positive influence.
And just because someone can outsource it doesn't mean Twitter would be replaced. Brand loyalty (and human laziness/aversion to change) matter.
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If he's honest about open-sourcing the algorithms, then it's hard to see it as an attempt to influence the conversation.
Not quite, with machine learning based "algorithms" things are pretty indecipherable. Of course looking at the machine learning training data might help spot bias intentionally inserted into the machine learning system.
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I think this should be looked at in the same light -- an attempt to influence the conversation, without explicitly being seen as part of it.
When I was 12 I did and said a lot of stupid things.
Elon Musk is a 12 year old, with 150 Billion Dollars.
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Mod parent Funny but true. We should all be so lucky?
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I think this should be looked at in the same light -- an attempt to influence the conversation, without explicitly being seen as part of it.
When I was 12 I did and said a lot of stupid things. Elon Musk is a 12 year old, with 150 Billion Dollars.
That works. We have 8 year olds moderating twitter.
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> Yet people do it, because it gives them outsized influence on the conversation. I think this should be looked at in the same light -- an attempt to influence the conversation, without explicitly being seen as part of it.
That's pretty much what Twitter already does, given that it has long been known that they censor trends.
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Sure, but that wasn't the question. I was saying why Elon Musk might want a piece of that. Out-Bezos Bezos.
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No, most newspapers have been hemorrhaging money since the late 1980s. This led to many of them consolidating or just becoming places to run AP stories and local feelgood. I worked for the Pasadena Star-News, I watched it happen.
An excellent troll (Score:4, Informative)
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The law (Score:3)
Interesting news (Score:5, Interesting)
News about Musk and Twitter is rapidly changing.
The Saudi Prince just declined [twitter.com] the offer, he's a 5% owner, and the announcement is sending waves around the news cycle.
Twitter stock was up today, but has fallen.
Musk has stated that he has a "plan B" if his offer is rejected, and Twitter management is scrambling to implement a poison pill [zerohedge.com] plan to prevent a takeover.
(For reference: a poison pill refers to a tactic taken by a company to make takeovers difficult. There are several tactics available, but the most common is to pass a resolution saying something like: if Musk reaches 30% ownership, the company will issue more stock and offer it to everyone *except Musk* at a steep discount. Surprisingly, singling out a specific person in this way is legal.)
All this is highly entertaining. It almost looks as if Musk is playing some sort of elaborate game, causing much mayhem with very little effort.
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Surprisingly, singling out a specific person in this way is legal.)
Why is that surprising? A business has to right to refuse service to whoever they want as long as it's not specifically because they are part of a protected class.
This shouldn't be any more surprising then "no shoes, no shirt, no service" store policies.
It's surprising because it's one group of owners specifically penalizing another owner (and potentially hurting the value of their investment).
I mean image you owned 1/5th of a company and the other 4 owners decided to issue a bunch of discounted new shares that you couldn't buy, effectively diluting you to 1/50th, I'm pretty sure that would be illegal.
Now this is different because there's a specific trigger, but it still smells fishy (not to mention, easily circumventable if Musk just uses a proxy).
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The company has the right to sell their stocks to whoever they want just like any store front operation. The fact that Musk owns stocks in the company is irrelevant, he's not the owner of the company.
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It's surprising because it's one group of owners specifically penalizing another owner (and potentially hurting the value of their investment).
Absolutely, which is why this is a tactic of last resort.
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It's surprising because it's one group of owners specifically penalizing another owner (and potentially hurting the value of their investment).
IMO at least equally likely:
It's surprising because it's one group of owners specifically penalizing another owner (and likely protecting the value of their investment).
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Sounds like every privately held company I've ever owned stock in. It does seem a little shady for a public company to do it. It also sounds like a quick buck for anyone offered the discount who then flips the stock to Musk.
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This has literally nothing with 'refusing service' to a customer in the course of doing business.
This is a publicly listed and traded corporation; and the rules around share offerings are substantially regulated.
It is kind of funny that you can hack around that by issuing new shares and offering them to "everyone not Elon Musk"; it definitely feels a bit like a loophole. A private placement is limited to 200 persons - so this isn't that, an issuance by right allows shareholders to by in proportion to exist
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It's Twitter, so, YES!!!!
The public good? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think I'm alone in this opinion: I'm pretty sure there are quite a few significantly more effective ways that ~40 billion US dollars could be used to serve the public good.
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Then get rich and spend 40b in whatever way you feel would best serve the public good.
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there are quite a few significantly more effective ways that ~40 billion US dollars could be used to serve the public good.
Maybe that is true, but opinions differ on what constitutes the public good. It's called politics. To make my position clear, I am very much in favour of supporting ordinary working folks, and those less fortunate than me, and I am not sure owning an organisation like Twitter would help with that in a direct way. However, Twitter is a political tool, so maybe it could do some good, in the right hands.
If the money doesn't matter... (Score:5, Funny)
Then he should just buy Slashdot instead.
Every other story is about him anyway, it's exactly what he wants!
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Mod parent funnier. But I'm still searching for the popcorn-worthy comments...
And what's with the artificial scarcity of mod points these years? Maybe the new owners of Slashdot are planning to sell them as NFTs?
Re: If the money doesn't matter... (Score:2)
Holy shit shut up don't give them any ideas...
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ACK
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They're going to sell an NFT of the first time they used that DEC logo in a Slashdot story.
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Damn it, you beat me to the punch. But I'll bet the "C - celeb' level social networks like Reddit, are salivating at this engineering rube walking in from the real world with a wad of cash burning a hole in his pocket. Reddit's like, if we IPO we'll be lucky to pull in a few hundred million in this climate. Hell, /stocks is worth more than Reddit itself. We'll gladly take just $2 billion from Elon and leave the courage of our convictions in the rubbish bin on the way out.
Elon Musk petrified (Score:2)
No, I will never let that meme die. Never!
A political contribution (Score:5, Insightful)
In effect, he's paying US$43,000,000,000 to unban Donald Trump and other extreme figures on the far right.
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Trump already has his own social media site, though nobody seems to use it except people looking for righties to troll.
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Do you have any evidence that Elon Musk is a far right supporter? He seems to be more of an adventurer to me. That would I think imply a libertarian attitude, rather than any kind of authoritarianism.
He's exercising control (Score:5, Insightful)
Musk is very much not a free speech absolutists. He's been caught paying for bots to Stan him on social media, so we already know he puts his thumb on the scale. Buying Twitter is him taking control of media. Similar to how Rupert Murdoch did with TV and newspapers.
The question isn't, "Is Musk taking more control of our lives?" it's "Do we want him to?". For a lot of folks on this forum the answer seems to be yes...
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Paying for bots for Stan him on social media is the kind of thing a free speech absolutists would consider a legitimate activity.
I disagree completely (Score:2)
It would be like what would happen at the groc
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> The question isn't, "Is Musk taking more control of our lives?" it's "Do we want him to?". For a lot of folks on this forum the answer seems to be yes...
It's funny that you're only worried about him and not the existing billionaires who own everything.
Never mind that Twitter is already owned by the prince of a country that hacked apart a journalist/arms dealer with bone saws.
Also, I'm not sure that guy's life was "wrecked" he got a large settlement and nobody seems to have taken that random tweet serio
I'm worried about Elon Musk (Score:2)
The argument is usually that he's brought us these wonderful things like the Tesla and SpaceX. But how many people on this forum own or could even afford a Tesla and how many people here have taken a ride on a SpaceX rocket? And are we really better off having SpaceX launch satellites then we w
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> But for some reason Elon Musk gets a pass.
Because he hasn't done anything really bad. That'll change if he starts doing something terrible, like say trying to force every computer user in the world to pay him rent.
> And are we really better off having SpaceX launch satellites then we were having NASA do it?
Yes. He's doing far better than NASA, as is obvious to anyone.
> Worse he is campaigning to make it so that tax credits can only be used for luxury electric vehicles which is preventing any fu
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Insightfully and well modded.
But, per my earlier comment, I still think it's about the "gold in them thar hills" of dreck. You don't get as rich as Musk without loving money more than is mentally healthy.
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ACK of the sad sort.
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If Twitter just up and vanished, it would be a net gain for the world.
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and power. Over you and me. That's what buying Twitter would do. Let's not forget that Musk used that power to call a man a pedophile and destroy his life when he called Musk out for a dumb idea.
Musk is very much not a free speech absolutists. He's been caught paying for bots to Stan him on social media, so we already know he puts his thumb on the scale. Buying Twitter is him taking control of media. Similar to how Rupert Murdoch did with TV and newspapers.
The question isn't, "Is Musk taking more control of our lives?" it's "Do we want him to?". For a lot of folks on this forum the answer seems to be yes...
I agree with most of your post but...
With social media isn't a change in ownership often (perhaps usually) a herald to users abandoning that platform en masse?
Twitter could be the most expensive white elephant in the world. Sure he could unban Donald Trump, but I'm pretty sure we've all figured out from his less than successful (or even relevant) attempts at his own social media that few people were following Trump, they were following the train wreck around the 45th president. Now the fire's been put
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[Musk is exercising control and power]. So what?
I enjoy living in a democracy where each person's vote has equal power to shape the future of society. I think it makes for a nice and stable country to live in which does best overall for people's lives.
I also live in a capitalist society where each dollar has equal power to shape the future of society. History suggests to me that this leads to a wonderful life for the people who have more dollars (myself included) and a worse life for those who don't. My personal moral compass is set to reject this as unf
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Life is unfair.
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Fair? Nobody's beaten this out of you yet? If someone has the wherewithal to buy the company, does so, and makes changes, you literally have FUCK ALL say about it. Who's it "not fair" to? Is it FAIR to tell someone who wholly owns something what they can or cannot do with that piece of property.
Someone said "so what if Musk is exercising control and power". I have a moral compass which pushes me to exercise what control and power I have in the opposite direction. That's all there is to it. Yes I and other people do have something to say about it -- like I said, we're in a democracy where each person has equal power to influence society through our vote.
I call bullshit! (Score:5, Insightful)
Everything Musk has done has been for a profit. Why should we believe this crap from him now?
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megaphone (Score:2)
Elon just wants to control his favorite megaphone and tweak for his own ends.
Of course not (Score:2)
Someone needs to explain to Musk that Lex Luthor is generally not regarded as a hero in most cases.
Plan B - Buy Slashdot ! (Score:2)
We could spend $1 billion to allow unicode and another $1 billion to figure out ASCII art abusers
No Moderation = Death of Twitter (Score:3)
Elon is not so stupid to know that a total lack of moderation is 4chan. There’s no money there, advertisers wont want their ad next to whatever insanity is being shared.
So buying twitter and opening it is the step to either making people realize why we need moderation, or to perform his own type of moderation that allows people he agrees with to speak freely.
Why wouldn't shareholders take it? (Score:3)
Why wouldn't shareholders take it though? Twitter is past its peak so I doubt they are ever going to get that kind of price. And it's not like it's a super profitable company to count on dividends etc (I just looked it up and it has only been profitable two years in its history - 2018 & 2019). I'd get rid of it while it's time and let Elon do whatever the hell he wants with it - sure, put it all on github!
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This is more about politics. It's pretty funny watching him troll these clowns.
Plan B idea (Score:2)
Buy every communications company capable of serving their data centers and cut them off for violation of the new terms of service.
And so it begins (Score:2)
Correct (Score:2)
It's a way to make a shit load of money.
Yellow media (Score:2)
Yellow journalism and yellow press are American terms for journalism and associated newspapers that present little or no legitimate, well-researched news while instead using eye-catching headlines for increased sales.[1] Techniques may include exaggerations of news events, scandal-mongering, or sensationalism. By extension, the term yellow journalism is used today as a pejorative to decry any journalism that treats news in an unprofessional or unethical fashion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Yup. Just a way to dismantle all of the moderation ("censorship!"), so that he can then post all of his little stock manipulation tips, and MAGA ramblings, without hindrance.
Re:not a way to make money (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean replace the moderation, not dismantle it. Free speech for Musk, not for you.
Re:not a way to make money (Score:4, Interesting)
If someone says it ain't about the money, then you should absolutely bet that it's ALL about the money.
And you mean someone trusts Elon Musk? On his track record?
Yeah, I'm going for Funny, but there ain't much of that around Slashdot these years.
As usual, my take is dark, but not funny enough for black humor. I think all of this censorship talk is silly, but it shows that Musk's lies and diversions are working. That plus his megalomania. No off switch, and he usually has it dialed up to 11.
But whatever Musk says about anything he's doing, I'm not buying it. Or believing it. Or investing in it, to boot.
My guess is that he's rushing for gold. Again. He actually has an impressive track record of striking the mother lodes. I'm not saying he's stupid, but I think he's mostly lucky. Finding the mother lode is like predicting the future, and "That trick never works." Except by luck, pure or tainted. Plus Musk plays lots of lotteries and he eagerly forgets about his losses and mistakes. (And his fans are even more forgetful.)
But Twitter? Really? Could there be any gold on Twitter? I actually speculate that the answer could surprise you. Maybe it started with The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch and now aggravated by Chomsky's Universal Grammar by VJ Cook?
My first hypothesis is that some memes are quite valuable. (And a tip of the hat to Richard Dawkins for the meme of memes.) My second hypothesis is that most memes can be compressed down to tweet size. So there could be a large supply of "golden tweets" in the vast cesspool of dreck known as Twitter. I also doubt Musk has much originality, but his timing for reviving old ideas is often excellent, so in this case maybe Musk actually has a new idea about how to find the golden tweets and profit from them.
And whenever anyone says it's not about the money, I'm more certain that it is about the money.
(And nice FP branch.)
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If someone doesn't have the interests of the shareholders as their goal...that's a basic definition of someone you shouldn't give control over the 'interests of the shareholders'
Re: not a way to make money (Score:2)
To the shareholders, who at the end of the day by and large aren't laymen, they are going to look at the performance of the stock price vs engagement and realize that Musks offer is their best bet outside of holding the stock for a decade and hoping the old guard manages to turn things around.
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Actually Musk may be making a fortune by betting on his own inside knowledge. He doesn't have to tell anyone when he's going to withdraw the offer, but if he's sure that will cut Twitter's share price, what's to stop him from loading up on shorts just before he does it? (This time the answer should not surprise you. It's "Nothing.")
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Oh it's even more obvious than that. He just bought a bunch of Twitter stock. The price jumped on the buyout offer. So now he can make a tidy profit selling his stock out, load up on shorts, announce he's withdrawing his offer, then make money again on the shorts.
Wouldn't be the first time Scammer Musk pulled an insider-trading scam, nor will it likely be the last. He does the same pump-and-dump shit with cryptocurrencies on a cyclical basis.
Re: not a way to make money (Score:2)
It would be blatantly illegal and he'd really easily be caught. He already got in trouble for something similar, and Twitter didn't censor it.
Re: not a way to make money (Score:2)
Offering shareholders a 38% premium on the share price would seem in their interests given the recent trend in the price.
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I would have thought one of the benefits of being rich is to spend your money on things you like. That does not necessarily mean that you expect to make a profit. Does Jeff Bezos make money from owning the Washington Post? Maybe just likes to support liberal journalism. I don't know. I have not asked him.
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The Washington Post is obviously quite determined to make money, though I am deeply skeptical of the "last [newspaper]man standing" business model. The disaster porn model (as in CNN) and the disguised propaganda model (as in FAUX) are worse.
However I'm not buying any claims Musk wants more free speech. There was a period when most of his income was coming from his partnership with one of the biggest haters of free speech in the entire so-called Libertarian loonie bin. If Musk donates that dirty loot to cha
Re: not a way to make money (Score:2)
Re: not a way to make money (Score:2)
Afaik Musk hasn't faced any stiff moderation from Twitter. The trouble he has gotten into on it has been with legal torts that don't break any Twitter rules.
Re:not a way to make money (Score:4, Insightful)
This, and enable others to do the same. Easing the spread of disinformation and hate speech like this would lead to a second resurgence of fascism across the globe and would likely boost a few genocides here and there. Don't forget that Musk is also a bit of an anti-vaxxer and would allow related disinformation to flow freely as well, so we'd also have a new wave of anti-vax sentiment before the pandemic is over, likely extending it and locking third-world countries into low vaccination rates, increasing the risk of a COVID19 "forever pandemic."
He probably doesn't even mean to do this - his ideology is a strange blend of technocracy, self-interested economic opportunism (aspects of which might appear to be environmentalism or economic conservatism), and a sprinkling of reactionary social conservatism. He might actually believe that he's trying to do something good for democracy, which I think he largely supports in his own naive way. The catastrophic failure of decades of "marketplace of ideas" philosophy culminating in the first resurgence of fascism in the mid-2010s disproves his approach though.
Musk taking over Twitter and imposing his "free speech absolutism" on it (unless someone uses it for Tesla safety whistleblowing I guess?) would be the worst thing that happened to democracy since Facebook.
LOL - your post is full of disinformation (Score:3)
Easing the spread of disinformation and hate speech like this would lead to a second resurgence of fascism across the globe ...
Blocking only one side's disinformation also threatens to lead to authoritarianism.
Blocking inconvenient facts under the guise of "disinformation" also threatens to lead to authoritarianism.
Musk is also a bit of an anti-vaxxer
That is disinformation. He and his family are vaccinated and what he opposes are absolutist mandates.
imposing his "free speech absolutism"
This is disinformation. In the summary he explictly says "they're able to speak freely within the bounds of the law".
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Blocking only one side's disinformation also threatens to lead to authoritarianism.
Blocking inconvenient facts under the guise of "disinformation" also threatens to lead to authoritarianism.
Let me know as soon as those start happening or when somebody proposes doing those...by the way did somebody lose a straw man?
That is disinformation. He and his family are vaccinated and what he opposes are absolutist mandates.
It may be slightly outdated information at most, if you really want to nitpick the definition of an anti-vaxxer:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/29... [cnn.com]
This is disinformation. In the summary he explictly says "they're able to speak freely within the bounds of the law".
I'm repeating his own description of his stance on free speech. Hate speech is legal in many jurisdictions, including the US.
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Easing the spread of disinformation and hate speech like this would lead to a second resurgence of fascism across the globe ...
Blocking only one side's disinformation also threatens to lead to authoritarianism. Blocking inconvenient facts under the guise of "disinformation" also threatens to lead to authoritarianism.
Let me know as soon as those start happening or when somebody proposes doing those
Your statement was vague and needed clarification. The controversy with twitter is not simply about the spread of disinformation or hate speech, it is about a perceived political bias in the labeling of speech as disinformation or hate speech. You original statement was misleading in this manner.
That is disinformation. He and his family are vaccinated and what he opposes are absolutist mandates.
It may be slightly outdated information at most, if you really want to nitpick the definition of an anti-vaxxer:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/29... [cnn.com]
Outdated, erroneous information is one way to promulgate disinformation. Disinformation is not about the nature of the falsehood, it is about using a falsehood to manufacture perception.
Your own citation indicate
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It's becoming increasingly difficult to tell your nitpicking from surprisingly clever fascist trolling.
Your own citation indicates he wasn't simply against the vax, rather it was more of a risk/reward decision, "I'm not at risk for Covid, nor are my kids". So he made a risk/reward decision based on evidence, which as of Sep 2020 was sketchy. Presidential candidate Biden and Vice Presidential candidate Harris also thought information on a vaccine as of Sep 2020 was sketchy given the doubts they raised. Both deferring decisions to some future date when more evidence is available. Musk seems to have done the same, when more evidence emerged he changed his mind, he later said "To be clear, I do support vaccines in general & covid vaccines specifically. The science is unequivocal." Would you label President Biden and VP Harris anti-vaxx for their doubts of Sep 2020? Certainly not, and neither would a fair minded person looking at Musk. But you are offering disinformation, and like a lie, a nugget of the truth is helpful.
It was just as anti-vax to categorically refuse any vaccine then as it is to suggest that there was anything reasonable about his stance now in hindsight. He was painting the vaccine as meaningfully risky and stating that he would never take it before it was even available to the public. You could argue that Musk stopped being an anti-vaxxer at some point when he stopped spreading FUD about the vaccines, b
Disagreement is fascism? Do you work at Twitter? (Score:2)
It's becoming increasingly difficult to tell your nitpicking from surprisingly clever fascist trolling.
So someone who disagrees with you is a fascist? Do you work at Twitter?
Your own citation indicates he wasn't simply against the vax, rather it was more of a risk/reward decision, "I'm not at risk for Covid, nor are my kids". So he made a risk/reward decision based on evidence, which as of Sep 2020 was sketchy. Presidential candidate Biden and Vice Presidential candidate Harris also thought information on a vaccine as of Sep 2020 was sketchy given the doubts they raised. Both deferring decisions to some future date when more evidence is available. Musk seems to have done the same, when more evidence emerged he changed his mind, he later said "To be clear, I do support vaccines in general & covid vaccines specifically. The science is unequivocal." Would you label President Biden and VP Harris anti-vaxx for their doubts of Sep 2020? Certainly not, and neither would a fair minded person looking at Musk. But you are offering disinformation, and like a lie, a nugget of the truth is helpful.
It was just as anti-vax to categorically refuse any vaccine then ...
Again, you offer disinformation. He did not categorically refuse. He made a risk/reward decision, "I'm not at risk for Covid, nor are my kids".
... as it is to suggest that there was anything reasonable about his stance now in hindsight. He was painting the vaccine as meaningfully risky and stating that he would never take it before it was even available to the public.
Again, misinformation, he did not say the vaccine was risky in your CNN citation, he said "I'm not at risk for Covid, nor are my kids".
Again, Biden and Harris were also saying they would not take it until more information is available in the same time frame. Biden, Harris and Musk were not ant
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He probably doesn't even mean to do this - his ideology is a strange blend of technocracy, self-interested economic opportunism (aspects of which might appear to be environmentalism or economic conservatism), and a sprinkling of reactionary social conservatism. He might actually believe that he's trying to do something good for democracy, which I think he largely supports in his own naive way. The catastrophic failure of decades of "marketplace of ideas" philosophy culminating in the first resurgence of fascism in the mid-2010s disproves his approach though.
Musk taking over Twitter and imposing his "free speech absolutism" on it (unless someone uses it for Tesla safety whistleblowing I guess?) would be the worst thing that happened to democracy since Facebook.
The printing press helped start a lot of religious wars in Europe. TV & Radio helped fuel the rise of fascism, the Internet has already given rise to a bunch of far right politicians, it takes time for society to figure out how to handle a new communications technology without going crazy. Sometimes that means laws, sometimes it means society just figuring out how to stop or ignore bad actors.
The US is supposedly a bastion of free speech, but if you buy a radio station and start broadcasting hard core N
Re: not a way to make money (Score:2)
FCC won't shut it down, but you're unlikely to be able to pay the operating costs of running a major station unless you can somehow raise money like PBS does.
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'Easing' does not mean 'make easy', it means 'make better', usually where better means less of something. I think most of us want less misinformation. Technically, you are saying the opposite of your main argument.
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Either you've completely lost your mind or you're a fascist who has very rationally accepted that the Republican political platform is heavily reliant on lies and hatred.
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Mod parent Insightful, though I missed the insight on first reading. Stock prices are just a matter of opinion these years. Musk should be more aware of that than the average bear, though I'm not sure if he's smarter or just luckier.
HUGE profits to be made in manipulating the opinions about share values. All you need is control over the timing... Lots of profitable games to play no matter which way the so-called "fair market" prices are moving.
Re: not a way to make money (Score:2)
It's a good way to make money if you manipulate the stock price.
Re: Speaking of money (Score:2)
Also be born to wealthy parents. Don't forget that easy step!
Re: (Score:2)
To bad our elected officials are more interested in self-enrichment or we could otherwise have a significantly simpler tax code that didn't have such loop holes for the rich.
Who am I kidding though. That's pretty much how it's always been and I can't see it changing now.