Elon Musk buys 100% of Twitter

[isha]

GM and Musk's Tesla are rivals.

[schmittel]

I was thinking that if Musk makes major changes and brings back the likes of Trump, Kanye, etc he knows advertising will drop. That's Twitters income. He's not that stupid I think......

Edit - Damn you autocorrect

The cynic in me suspects Musk's interest in Twitter is nothing to do with free speech or advertising income, I think Twitter is a means to a profitable end.

Although the blue hair brigade make the most noise, there are a lot of other Twitter users quietly having sensible conversations. And one of the most active demographics is traders and investors.

Musk knows better than most the power of Twitter to move markets, his "funding secured" tweet and his musings on bitcoin have demonstrated this perfectly. Trump also had the ability to nudge the S&P one way or the other with an apparently ill-judged tweet. Maybe it was not so ill-judged if he had a big short position on S&P futures!

The problem with this from Musk's point of view is as an ordinary Twitter user, albeit a high profile one, it is very public and repeated activity along these lines is likely to cause a bit of trouble with the SEC.

However if you own the company you can be a) a lot more subtle about market moving messages and b) a lot more targeted.

Whether you like it or not, Twitter has shown it's outsized influence on the "narrative" and shaping trends.

If you were able to harness that ability to influence market sentiment and trend it would be enormously profitable.

Of course for the both the average investor and even the mega rich hedge funds it is impossible to harness that ability consistently and discretely, no matter how much you might daydream about the possibilities.

But if you're the richest man in the world and you start daydreaming about the possibilities, well then of course it's not impossible. You just need to buy the company!

[KHD]

Head of twitter censorship fired on air. Not sure if its a p1ss take or not.

[knownunknown]

Head of twitter censorship fired on air. Not sure if its a p1ss take or not.

It’s an old podcast with Vijaya Gadde and Jack Dorsey. It really revealed how bias they were at twitter. Very interesting podcast, among the most interesting of all time.

Interestingly Gadde was among the first fired and was the twitter employee Musk was addressing his letters to. She was also in the one from the internal twitter call that broke down crying upon hearing musk was taking over. I hated just about everything she said on that podcast.

[KHD]

Thanks unknown must take a listen

[knownunknown]

Thanks unknown must take a listen

It’s a long one but addresses the kind of issues we’re seeing on boards and hate speech legislation etc….

E.g. twitter took the ideological position with the idea of ‘misgendering’; to a lot of people it means calling someone a different sex than what they were born(I.e. calling a man a woman) To the regressive left this means calling someone the opposite sex of what they declare themselves to be. If you misgender an animal like a cat you’ve got its gender wrong; you’re not committing a hate crime against a cat.

Gadde goes on to explain that their rules are only there to prevent harassment of individuals etc.. but then Tim Pool shows her all the accounts that were banned for saying ‘men aren’t women though’ as well as all the people that were allowed to harass others. It follows ideological lines.

We’re just a couple of years behind with this stuff and we only need to look to the US to see what’s coming here.

[KHD]

It’s a long one but addresses the kind of issues we’re seeing on boards and hate speech legislation etc….

E.g. twitter took the ideological position with the idea of ‘misgendering’; to a lot of people it means calling someone a different sex than what they were born(I.e. calling a man a woman) To the regressive left this means calling someone the opposite sex of what they declare themselves to be. If you misgender an animal like a cat you’ve got its gender wrong; you’re not committing a hate crime against a cat.

Gadde goes on to explain that their rules are only there to prevent harassment of individuals etc.. but then Tim Pool shows her all the accounts that were banned for saying ‘men aren’t women though’ as well as all the people that were allowed to harass others. It follows ideological lines.

We’re just a couple of years behind with this stuff and we only need to look to the US to see what’s coming here.

I've listened to about 40 minutes of it there unknown. Can't listen to anymore of it. From what I see on twitter with regard to other current global issues, I can't take anything she says seriously. She's basically full of sh1t from what I can see.

[knownunknown]

I've listened to about 40 minutes of it there unknown. Can't listen to anymore of it. From what I see on twitter with regard to other current global issues, I can't take anything she says seriously. She's basically full of sh1t from what I can see.

That was the general consensus at the time among those who listened! It can only be a good thing for the world that she no longer yields that power

[Hugh_Bigazz]

What a wanker Musk has turned out to be. They noticed their accounts were locked and they were kicked out of Slack channels. That's how they found out they were being sacked.

https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2022/1 ... tter-musk/

[95438756]

What a wanker Musk has turned out to be. They noticed their accounts were locked and they were kicked out of Slack channels. That's how they found out they were being sacked.

https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2022/1 ... tter-musk/

There shall be more wankers after. He's not the worst: look up Noah Katz on YouTube. Not the same business context but this "star lord" jacket clad nooch takes the biscuit for me.

[Hugh_Bigazz]

There shall be more wankers after. He's not the worst: look up Noah Katz on YouTube. Not the same business context but this "star lord" jacket clad nooch takes the biscuit for me.

Seems the media darlings the stripe boys did the exact same redundancy by email yesterday but the Irish media dressed it up

[95438756]

Musk has titled his own Twitter Profile as "TwitterComplaint Hotline Operator". https://twitter.com/elonmusk

Utter Snark.

[schmittel]

According to the Guardian Eddie Perez is a former manager of Twitter’s civic integrity team

He tweeted this earlier:



So you have twitter's integrity police bemoaning the fact that they are no longer able elevate selected information and to pre-debunk similiarly selected information during an election!!

And they're wondering why this is all crashing down around them. The lack of self-awareness is astonishing.

[Hairy-Joe]

I think a lot are forgetting three things.

First, free speech does NOT mean free from consequences of the speech. If you say something that a majority consider hateful, inflammatory, etc, there will be consequences. They could be financial, reputation, etc

Second is that Twitter is a private company and as such, CAN take positions on who or what is reported on its platform. Free Speech is not a right on Twitter, in the same way as free speech is not a right here. The Gubu overlord has items that are allowed and not allowed to be discussed here (mainly don't be a dick).

Third is that Twitter NEEDS revenue. At the moment, due to the flux, advertiser's are getting cold feet due to their reluctance to be associated with something in flux. The world is fickle and if people think Musk's Twitter is a toxic brand, they won't advertise. Selling blue ticks at 20 quid a pop won't pay the bills.....

[knownunknown]

I think a lot are forgetting three things.

First, free speech does NOT mean free from consequences of the speech. If you say something that a majority consider hateful, inflammatory, etc, there will be consequences. They could be financial, reputation, etc

Second is that Twitter is a private company and as such, CAN take positions on who or what is reported on its platform. Free Speech is not a right on Twitter, in the same way as free speech is not a right here. The Gubu overlord has items that are allowed and not allowed to be discussed here (mainly don't be a dick).

Third is that Twitter NEEDS revenue. At the moment, due to the flux, advertiser's are getting cold feet due to their reluctance to be associated with something in flux. The world is fickle and if people think Musk's Twitter is a toxic brand, they won't advertise. Selling blue ticks at 20 quid a pop won't pay the bills.....

Saying free speech is not freedom from consequences is a red herring. There are already long established consequences to free speech such as libel, slander, defamation and incitement to violence. Nobody is asking for free speech without consequences. I’ve seen it argued as ‘equal speech’ which might make it easier to comprehend. People should be treated fairly under speech laws and they shouldn’t be biased.

The worst kind of speech to suppress is political speech(or speech that is politically controversial) and that is what is being suppressed the most, that’s what people are complaining about. No one is arguing for the right slander, libel and defame people, it’s a strawman erected by the side in favour of censorship of political speech.

Saying the advertisers are opting out because it’s in flux is a load of bollocks to be honest, the pressure is coming from social activist groups putting pressure on the advertisers. I posted up such a letter just last week. There is nothing like twitter of course they want to advertise on it. Musk hasn’t even changed anything yet.

These bad faith arguments coming from the media are so ridiculous to anyone paying more then cursory attention the story.

[knownunknown]

“ A coalition called #StopToxicTwitter — made up of more than 60 civil rights groups, including the Anti-Defamation League and Accountable Tech — said on Friday it plans to escalate calls to Twitter advertisers that they stop buying ad space on the platform in the wake of Musk’s sweeping layoffs.”

Bloomberg https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... #xj4y7vzkg

https://www.stoptoxictwitter.com/

[isha]

Personally I hope he has the guts to wait out the backlash. I am bored with people who think they are the righteous ones who decide what is said or not said, thought or not thought. Perhaps some of the powerful 'progressive' people will start their own social media platform, and they can run it how they want - off they go. It could be a great success to be honest. That's the way things go.

[knownunknown]

Personally I hope he has the guts to wait out the backlash. I am bored with people who think they are the righteous ones who decide what is said or not said, thought or not thought. Perhaps some of the powerful 'progressive' people will start their own social media platform, and they can run it how they want - off they go. It could be a great success to be honest. That's the way things go.

Me too. Those social acvtivists groups aren’t nearly as powerful as they once were. They give out about a different thing every week.

Twitter once billed itself as the ‘free speech wing of the free speech party’, every social media site starts this way. Yet it still had rules to follow. Does anyone know what was wrong with these initial rules? They weren’t able to police speech they didn’t like because the rules were not ambiguous like they are now.

https://web.archive.org/web/20090118211 ... ries/18311



“ We saw twitter as the public square. While that analogy has its limits, it’s important that a central ethos at the time was to help amplify individual voices. While those users may not have had power in the traditional sense, their words did.”

“ I don’t think this is embraced by current execs like
@Vijaya
, but that’s understandable.”

[KHD]

How is he going to make it into a revenue generating company? Looking at Twitter ( without an account ) I never see any ads on it. So how is it making money.

[knownunknown]

These are the groups that are pressurising advertisers to ditch twitter.

Access Now ● Accountable Tech ● Anti-Defamation League ● Advocates for Youth ● AI for the People Inc. ● Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC ● Azerbaijan Internet Watch ● Benton Institute for Broadband & Society ● Center for Countering Digital Hate ● Center on Race and Digital Justice ● Change the Terms Coalition ● Coding Rights ● Color Of Change ● Common Cause ● Dangerous Speech Project ● DemCast USA ● Digital Africa Research Lab ● Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR) ● Doctors In Politics ● Equality Labs ● Fair Vote UK ● Free Press ● Friends of the Earth ● GLAAD ● Global Indigenous Data Alliance ● Global Project Against Hate and Extremism ● Jewish Women International ● JustLeadershipUSA ● Latino Anti-Disinformation Lab ● Majal.org ● Maria Ressa ● Media Matters for America ● MediaJustice ● Muslim Advocates ● NAACP ● National Center for Transgender Equality ● National Hispanic Media Coalition ● National LGBTQ Task Force ● Numun Fund ● PFLAG National ● ProgressNow NM ● Public Citizen ● Public Knowledge ● Ranking Digital Rights ● Right To Be (formerly Hollaback!) ● Roger McNamee, Author of Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe ● Stop Hate for Profit Coalition ● SumOfUs ● Superbloom Design ● The Center for American Progress ● The Real Facebook Oversight Board ● The Sparrow Project ● The Tech Oversight Project ● The TransLatin@ Coalition ● Ujima Inc., The National Center on Violence Against Women in the Black Community ● UltraViolet ● Union of Concerned Scientists ● United Church of Christ Media Justice Ministry ● United We Dream ● Valor US ● Voto Latino ● Whose Knowledge?

Who do you think funds these organisations? Maybe the same person that was shorting(betting against) the greenest company in the world.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... ify%20wall

[knownunknown]

How is he going to make it into a revenue generating company? Looking at Twitter ( without an account ) I never see any ads on it. So how is it making money.

“ Twitter generates the majority of its revenue through selling ad space on its platform to global advertisers.”

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answer ... orms%20Inc.

[KHD]

These are the groups that are pressurising advertisers to ditch twitter.

Access Now ● Accountable Tech ● Anti-Defamation League ● Advocates for Youth ● AI for the People Inc. ● Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC ● Azerbaijan Internet Watch ● Benton Institute for Broadband & Society ● Center for Countering Digital Hate ● Center on Race and Digital Justice ● Change the Terms Coalition ● Coding Rights ● Color Of Change ● Common Cause ● Dangerous Speech Project ● DemCast USA ● Digital Africa Research Lab ● Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR) ● Doctors In Politics ● Equality Labs ● Fair Vote UK ● Free Press ● Friends of the Earth ● GLAAD ● Global Indigenous Data Alliance ● Global Project Against Hate and Extremism ● Jewish Women International ● JustLeadershipUSA ● Latino Anti-Disinformation Lab ● Majal.org ● Maria Ressa ● Media Matters for America ● MediaJustice ● Muslim Advocates ● NAACP ● National Center for Transgender Equality ● National Hispanic Media Coalition ● National LGBTQ Task Force ● Numun Fund ● PFLAG National ● ProgressNow NM ● Public Citizen ● Public Knowledge ● Ranking Digital Rights ● Right To Be (formerly Hollaback!) ● Roger McNamee, Author of Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe ● Stop Hate for Profit Coalition ● SumOfUs ● Superbloom Design ● The Center for American Progress ● The Real Facebook Oversight Board ● The Sparrow Project ● The Tech Oversight Project ● The TransLatin@ Coalition ● Ujima Inc., The National Center on Violence Against Women in the Black Community ● UltraViolet ● Union of Concerned Scientists ● United Church of Christ Media Justice Ministry ● United We Dream ● Valor US ● Voto Latino ● Whose Knowledge?

Who do you think funds these organisations? Maybe the same person that was shorting(betting against) the greenest company in the world.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... ify%20wall

If twitter goes down the tubes these groups will loose a convenient platform available to them to do their influencing / interference operations. Talk about cocking your firearm and pointing it at your foot.

[nlgbbbblth]

It surprises me that Twitter have (that many) employees.

Anytime I have had to contact Twitter, Facebook or Ebay about an issue, I either get no response or a formulaic one that's scripted by a bot. So what do these employees actually do?

[Setanta]

Seems the media darlings the stripe boys did the exact same redundancy by email yesterday but the Irish media dressed it up

TBF they gave a notice of intention for redundancies,whereas folks at Twitter got an email telling em of their sacking/were locked out of work accounts without prior notice

Youd be hoping,this and likelyhood of Facebook following suit as it collapses in value,would finally see unionisation of IT workers to protect their jobs/rights.....whatever ones view of Twitter/musk etc,noone should be treated like that where they work

[Hugh_Bigazz]

TBF they gave a notice of intention for redundancies,whereas folks at Twitter got an email telling em of their sacking/were locked out of work accounts without prior notice

Youd be hoping,this and likelyhood of Facebook following suit as it collapses in value,would finally see unionisation of IT workers to protect their jobs/rights.....whatever ones view of Twitter/musk etc,noone should be treated like that where they work

Ah yes, they gave 15 minutes notice!!!