Elon Musk now owns 9.2% of twitter...update.. will soon be the sole owner as Board of Directors accepts his purchase offer

[fskimospy]

As far as I understand a lot of Twitter and Facebook’s value to advertisers is precisely these algorithms that determine who sees what and when so asking them to open source it is to ask them to go bankrupt. Also, anyone who thinks open sourcing these algorithms is going to make things better is dreaming - it will make things worse because then you will just have people start fighting over the contents of the algorithms.

The main issue here is that people believe their preferred speech should be catered to and the speech they don’t like should be suppressed. This is true regardless of ideology. The right answer to this is for Twitter to do whatever it wants and if you don’t like it, speak somewhere else. There is no lack of competing platforms.

 

[fskimospy]

Totally the same thing so yea obviously.

Can you explain the difference to me?

 

[sportage]

Oh oh...
Seems talks are back on.
Reports of meetings taking place today, Sunday, taking another look at the Twitter buy-out proposal. Would appear that 43 billion is harder to turn down that originally thought.

But I don't care what happens or for how much.
If this Trump guy gets his hands on Twitter and Twitter turns into only a platform for Q conspiracies and Trump propaganda, people will leave Twitter. Wouldn't YOU ???
WHY would we need Twitter to follow Trump whining about stolen elections when we already have BitChute? Makes no sense....

 

[Brovane]

Oh oh...
Seems talks are back on.
Reports of meetings taking place today, Sunday, taking another look at the Twitter buy-out proposal. Would appear that 43 billion is harder to turn down that originally thought.

But I don't care what happens or for how much.
If this Trump guy gets his hands on Twitter and Twitter turns into only a platform for Q conspiracies and Trump propaganda, people will leave Twitter. Wouldn't YOU ???
WHY would we need Twitter to follow Trump whining about stolen elections when we already have BitChute? Makes no sense....

From the WSJ article, Musk has put together about $46B in financing. Now that Twitter knows that Musk has the financing.

If Trump is back on Twitter, you don't have to follow his Tweets. You could just block his account.

 

[K1052]

Dog catches car situation developing.

 

[fskimospy]

From the WSJ article, Musk has put together about $46B in financing. Now that Twitter knows that Musk has the financing.

If Trump is back on Twitter, you don't have to follow his Tweets. You could just block his account.

The reason Trump should be off Twitter is that he routinely violated their terms of service. Trump being on Twitter is actually a gift to democrats so from a political perspective I don’t care.

I suspect the changes Musk would make to Twitter’s moderation policies would be small because, well, everyone can see what the unmoderated Twitter clones look like and it’s a disaster.

 

[Brovane]

The reason Trump should be off Twitter is that he routinely violated their terms of service. Trump being on Twitter is actually a gift to democrats so from a political perspective I don’t care.

I suspect the changes Musk would make to Twitter’s moderation policies would be small because, well, everyone can see what the unmoderated Twitter clones look like and it’s a disaster.

Musk mentioned during his recent TED talk, that he really disagrees with permanent bans. So Trump's account might be re-activated but if he violates the TOS, he could very well get his account banned again.

 

[fskimospy]

Musk mentioned during his recent TED talk, that he really disagrees with permanent bans. So Trump's account might be re-activated but if he violates the TOS, he could very well get his account banned again.

Right but as we already covered Musk is lying about caring about free speech as shown by his repeated actions in his own life.

Twitter already has very loose and fair moderation policies and if anything has been forced by conservatives to give them a lot more leeway than their TOS requires.

 

[fskimospy]

I also find it amusing that the very same people who are outraged at private company Twitter banning people who violate its TOS love the actual government attacking Disney for its speech.

As we always knew these people don’t care about freedom of speech, they simply want their speech to be privileged.

 

[Brovane]

I also find it amusing that the very same people who are outraged at private company Twitter banning people who violate its TOS love the actual government attacking Disney for its speech.

As we always knew these people don’t care about freedom of speech, they simply want their speech to be privileged.

I for one, hopes Disney sues the state of Florida and wins. This was a clear case of the government retaliating against Disney for it's political position.

 

[Heartbreaker]

The reason Trump should be off Twitter is that he routinely violated their terms of service. Trump being on Twitter is actually a gift to democrats so from a political perspective I don’t care.

I suspect the changes Musk would make to Twitter’s moderation policies would be small because, well, everyone can see what the unmoderated Twitter clones look like and it’s a disaster.

It's only a gift for the GQP. He will give the megaphone back to Trump and other insurrectionists, the spreaders of Antivaxx misinformation, the harassers, the haters, and the conspiracy theorists.

This turns twitter into a GQP recruitment tool.

I'd expect drastic changes as Musk claims he's a "free speech absolutist". So he won't have policies against misinformation, and he will rescind bans.

 

[K1052]

It's only a gift for the GQP. He will give the megaphone back to Trump and other insurrectionists, the spreaders of Antivaxx misinformation, the harassers, the haters, and the conspiracy theorists.

This turns twitter into a GQP recruitment tool.

I'd expect drastic changes as Musk claims he's a "free speech absolutist". So he won't have policies against misinformation, and he will rescind bans.

If the platform becomes an unusable cesspool most will simply stop using it. This has been the fate of the numerous right wing attempts to duplicate it.

I got rid of Facebook and Insta. Twitter can easily meet the same fate and is ultimately more easily replaced if a certain thin skinned billionaire decides to piss away his rather large investment.

 

[fskimospy]

It's only a gift for the GQP. He will give the megaphone back to Trump and other insurrectionists, the spreaders of Antivaxx misinformation, the harassers, the haters, and the conspiracy theorists.

This turns twitter into a GQP recruitment tool.

I think history indicates the opposite and Trump was just too stupid and mentally I’ll to understand it. Having him say crazy things on Twitter constantly made him very unpopular and served as a constant reminder that he was a maniac. His unpopularity has waned since he was banned.

His own advisors shared this opinion - they constantly told him his Twitter account was hurting him politically but his pathological need for attention was so strong he couldn’t give it up until forced to.

I'd expect drastic changes as Musk claims he's a "free speech absolutist". So he won't have policies against misinformation, and he will rescind bans.

Right but that was a transparent lie - he is not a free speech absolutist at all.

 

[ponyo]

I'm now willing to sell my Twitter shares to Elon Musk. I think in the end it's the best outcome for everyone involved. The sooner this saga ends, the better for all parties.

 

[emperus]

It's only a gift for the GQP. He will give the megaphone back to Trump and other insurrectionists, the spreaders of Antivaxx misinformation, the harassers, the haters, and the conspiracy theorists.

This turns twitter into a GQP recruitment tool.

I'd expect drastic changes as Musk claims he's a "free speech absolutist". So he won't have policies against misinformation, and he will rescind bans.

I'm not sure that is a gift to Trump. I think the best thing that happened to him was that he was kicked off of twitter. That being said, I'm not I understand what Elon is trying to do. At the end of the day if Twitter doesn't share people's values, they'll just move on to the next thing. The success of twitter is the people who post there.

 

[fskimospy]

I for one, hopes Disney sues the state of Florida and wins. This was a clear case of the government retaliating against Disney for it's political position.

I’m not sure how you can say that about Disney but then say the government should force Twitter to speak in ways it doesn’t want to.

 

[Brovane]

I’m not sure how much of can say that about Disney but then say the government should force Twitter to speak in ways it doesn’t want to.

Because we clearly disagree on the position of Twitter as a "Town Square" for public speech.

 

[K1052]

That being said, I'm not I understand what Elon is trying to do.

Shitpost more without consequence.

 

[fskimospy]

Because we clearly disagree on the position of Twitter as a "Town Square" for public speech.

But town squares are public property and Twitter is very clearly private property. The reason you can’t restrict speech in the town square is because the government owns and controls it.

Is your difference of opinion on the two just that you believe the government can seize private property if it’s used for discourse?

 

[Heartbreaker]

I think history indicates the opposite and Trump was just too stupid and mentally I’ll to understand it. Having him say crazy things on Twitter constantly made him very unpopular and served as a constant reminder that he was a maniac. His unpopularity has waned since he was banned.

He got even more votes on his attempt at re-election. Probably only massive bungling of COVID that cost him a second term, not the crazy tweets on Twitter.

It's NOT just Trump, it opens the door, for concerted GQP misinformation campaigns on Twitter.

Trump may or may not run, but having Twitter as another misinformation tool only benefits the GQP.

Twitter didn't just do high profile bans, there were 70000 QANON accounts banned and misinformation dropped by 73%:

Election misinformation dropped 73 percent following Trump’s suspension from Twitter: research

Misinformation surrounding the topic of election fraud dropped by 73 percent after President Trump and several others were suspended from mainstream social media accounts, according to researc…

thehill.com

Right but that was a transparent lie - he is not a free speech absolutist at all.

Probably, but what is he likely to block? I doubt it will be GQP misinformation campaigns. He will call that a competition of ideas on the public square.

 

[fskimospy]

He got even more votes on his attempt at re-election. Probably only massive bungling of COVID that cost him a second term, not the crazy tweets on Twitter.

He was the first incumbent to lose in 28 years and he lost by the widest margin for an incumbent since Jimmy Carter.

The only reason it was even close was an extreme electoral college skew in his favor. Had Trump won by an identical margin against Biden it would have been viewed as a blowout.

It's NOT just Trump, it opens the door, for concerted GQP misinformation campaigns on Twitter.

I’m not sure if you’ve noticed but Twitter is not exactly short on that now.

Trump may or may not run, but having Twitter as another misinformation tool only benefits the GQP.

Twitter didn't just do high profile bans, there were 70000 QANON accounts banned and misinformation dropped by 73%:

Election misinformation dropped 73 percent following Trump’s suspension from Twitter: research

Misinformation surrounding the topic of election fraud dropped by 73 percent after President Trump and several others were suspended from mainstream social media accounts, according to researc…

thehill.com

Probably, but what is he likely to block? I doubt it will be GQP misinformation campaigns. He will call that a competition of ideas on the public square.

I think the evidence pretty clearly indicates that Trump being on Twitter made him and republicans less popular. People really didn’t like his tweets!

I understand it’s cathartic to see him banned because being banned so clearly drives him crazy but this really is a case where Trump’s mental illness made him act in self destructive ways. How many people did you hear during 2020 talk about how exhausting it was to have Trump as president as you could never get away from him? Twitter was a big part of that.

 

[Heartbreaker]

If the platform becomes an unusable cesspool most will simply stop using it. This has been the fate of the numerous right wing attempts to duplicate it.

This looks like wishful thinking. Twitter was becoming this cesspool before the election and most people were not abandoning it. It was only after the election and the mob storming the Capitol that they banned trump and 70,000 QANON accounts, and more people didn't start using it after the cleanup. If anything Twitter engagement is down since the cesspool purge.

Failed attempts to start competing GQP friendly platforms tell us nothing about how less moderation would affect twitter.

If you attempted to start an even better moderated Twitter competitor, it would also fail, because of network effects.

 

[Heartbreaker]

I think the evidence pretty clearly indicates that Trump being on Twitter made him and republicans less popular. People really didn’t like his tweets!

That makes no sense. GQP and Trump, got more votes in 2020 than in 2016, so they were obviously more popular than before, not less popular. More Votes = More popular, not less popular.

The difference was that Joe Biden didn't have Clinton's baggage and more people were willing to vote Biden than for Clinton.

 

[K1052]

This looks like wishful thinking. Twitter was becoming this cesspool before the election and most people were not abandoning it. It was only after the election and the mob storming the Capitol that they banned trump and 70,000 QANON accounts, and more people didn't start using it after the cleanup. If anything Twitter engagement is down since the cesspool purge.

Failed attempts to start competing GQP friendly platforms tell us nothing about how less moderation would affect twitter.

If you attempted to start an even better moderated Twitter competitor, it would also fail, because of network effects.

If the tools I use to curate my feed are withdrawn I will withdraw my usage of the service, as will many others.

 

[Braznor]

A very excellent development!


Great going, Elon. Now don't stop with Twitter.