Elon Musk is Not Joining Twitter Board (techcrunch.com) 134
Elon Musk, the largest shareholder of Twitter, will no longer be joining the social media firm's board, CEO Parag Agrawal said late Sunday, in a surprising reversal following last week's announcement that the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive had been appointed to the panel. From a report: The Sunday disclosure from Agrawal, who said last week that he had been engaging with Musk for "a few weeks" before announcing his appointment to the board, follows a series of unusual tweets from the SpaceX executive over the weekend in which he wondered aloud to his over 80 million followers if Twitter was dying, citing low frequency of tweets from some of the most popular personalities on the social network. Musk also asked his followers if Twitter should convert its San Francisco headquarters into a homeless shelter, prompting a discussion that saw participation from a wide-range of industry figures, including Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos.
They asked, he declined. (Score:5, Informative)
“We announced on Tuesday that Elon would be appointed to the Board contingent on a background check and formal acceptance. Elon’s appointment to the board was to become officially effective 4/9, but Elon shared that same morning that he will no longer be joining the board,” Agrawal said in a tweet Sunday night.
“We have and will always value input from our shareholders whether they are on our Board or not. Elon is our biggest shareholder and we will remain open to his input.”
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I wonder what changed his mind. The SEC perhaps?
Maybe he just realized what a can of worms it would have been. While he claims to be a free speech abolitionist, in reality everyone who has ever claimed that has drawn the line somewhere and it's usually at the point where people start insulting their mothers. Does Musk really want to turn Twitter into 8chan and become responsible for all the stuff that gets posted as a result?
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I wonder what changed his mind.
Unlike Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk doesn't run Twitter, he is merely an investor. In a brief, rare moment of clarity, he realized that he probably can't fire anyone at Twitter who says something he doesn't like.
Re:They asked, he declined. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They asked, he declined. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's very possible he never really had any intention to join the board. He obviously loves public attention, and this way he gets it coming and going.
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Surely at SOME point, people have to start looking at the NATURE of the attention and start asking about the idiot^Wman^Widiot behind the curtain.
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Re:They asked, he declined. (Score:5, Insightful)
Quite possibly. He's been angry at the SEC because he can't post whatever he wants anymore - for whatever reason Musk refuses to believe that his words have real impacts on markets and he's not quite recovered from that incident where he tried to screw over short sellers by saying something that wasn't true (about taking Tesla private, I think).
The SEC doesn't take kindly to such market manipulation especially if they were known to be false.
If he joined the board at Twitter he'd be under the same kind of scrutiny because if he says anything about Twitter it could be taken as an official Board position.
As someone who likes to open mouth before engaging brain, Musk could easily land himself into more hot water by spouting the first thing that comes to his mind before engaging his brain and cause market turmoil.
Plus, he hates the SEC with a passion - one of the lawyers left the SEC and joined the law firm that Tesla uses. Even though said lawyer will have nothing to do with Tesla at all (they're a huge law firm with thousands of clients - it's not like one lawyer not able to work on one client will actually harm them), he still pulled all of Tesla's business from them.
As far as Musk is concerned, the SEC is a main impediment to him being able to make money and screw over people using the markets - after all, they should go after the little guys, not billionaires like him.
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for whatever reason Musk refuses to believe that his words have real impacts on markets
and he's not quite recovered from that incident where he tried to screw over short sellers by saying something that wasn't true (about taking Tesla private, I think).
I split that sentence up because it's quite obvious that the first half of your sentence is contradicted by the second half of your sentence.
Like many ultra-rich people, Elon believes he should be above the law. He doesn't "refuse to believe" anything. He wants to be able to say whatever whatever he chooses to say - even if what he says is intended to materially damage someone. In the case you refer to, he intended for his words to have "real impacts on markets".
Musk basically thinks he should be allowed to
Re:They asked, he declined. (Score:5, Interesting)
> I wonder what changed his mind. The SEC perhaps?
How about "the rest of the board as soon as they saw the stuff he'd started tweeting"?
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The other possibility was the fact that him joining the board had a stipulation that he not buy more than a certain amount of the company (14.6% IIRC). He could have decided to decline that and could very well buy sufficient stock to take a board position of his own volition without the stipulations.
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Probably. His infantile tweets over the weekend sound like he again has trouble dealing with the fact that he is not the center of the universe. Like a badly behaved 12 year old. Pathetic. This may well be because somebody explained to him how stupid what he wanted to do would be.
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I wonder what changed his mind. The SEC perhaps?
Maybe he just realized what a can of worms it would have been. While he claims to be a free speech abolitionist, in reality everyone who has ever claimed that has drawn the line somewhere and it's usually at the point where people start insulting their mothers. Does Musk really want to turn Twitter into 8chan and become responsible for all the stuff that gets posted as a result?
People who bawl about free speech tend to be people who only believe in their free speech, not that of others. They say whatever shite they want, but you cannot react, because your reaction infringes on their free speech,
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I wonder what changed his mind. The SEC perhaps?
That, which would probably have hampered what he could say/tweet, and the agreement that he not acquire more than 14.9% of Twitter stock during his 2-years term on the board -- along with any other legal/financial restrictions board members have to abide by.
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So, by deciding who can be heard, they shape the conversation of nations.
Don't you think that is a bit dangerous, giving that much power to "private corporations"?
This is where new thinki
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tl;dr your comments change nothing. Truth Social was started so you have zero complaints.
Re:They asked, he declined. (Score:4, Interesting)
But who is ultimately to blame if voices aren't heard? Do you blame a corporation that is looking to maximize their profits or do you blame the users that are trying to get all their information from only one source?
Shouldn't there be more criticism of people using Twitter and/or Facebook as their only source of news and information? Maybe if people would actually use some critical thinking and look to multiple sources before forming an opinion there wouldn't be so many people that believe in insane conspiracy theories and Twitter/Facebook wouldn't have the influence they currently do.
That being said, Twitter/Facbook still have plenty to answer for with their algorithms for which stories get promoted.
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Was the New York Times and all papers that existed in the 20th century squelching free speech because they didn't publish every letter written to the editor?
I think that's a false equivalency. In the first place, their business model wasn't based on subscribers using their platform to communicate and keep in touch with each other, whereas the business models of today's social media are built on those things.
In the second place, newspapers couldn't print every letter to the editor, even if they wanted to, for practical reasons. Today's social media giants can publish everything they get from their 'subscribers', and they prove as much on a daily basis.
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Was the New York Times and all papers that existed in the 20th century squelching free speech because they didn't publish every letter written to the editor?
JFC, you people are insane.
You're exactly correct. Our local paper wouldn't publish any anonymous letters.
Ohhh muh free speech is violated!
The concept that Twitter and Facebook must allow people who want to violently overthrow the government is ridiculous. to post and organize their revolt is stupid.
And Facebook does allow posts that are critical of them. Twitter? That's a fucking cesspool. I wouldn't hire a person who has a Twitter account. Peeps don't like? Tough titty.
No one is denying anyone the right to get their word ou
Re:They asked, he declined. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:They asked, he declined. (Score:4, Insightful)
This. The free market of ideas shuts some ideas down. How hard is this to understand?
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Lol, free market is just fine until it impacts someone negatively. Then suddenly the tears start flowing. Government help us!
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In the future, everyone is going to want their own Netflix TV show or they will cry "censorship."
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How many times do we have to cover this? Free speech does not mean everyone gets a platform. It simply means you can say what you want to say. Why do you think that means that people have to listen?
While I don't disagree, I think the concept of free speech needs modification to fit modern times just like other civil rights have needed modification.
While private entities are, of course, entitled to control over their platform I think it should come with the *corporation* having liability over how their platform is used. e.g. if it's reasonably proven that people conspired to commit an act of terrorism via tweets or similar, twitter should share in the civil and criminal liability.
Conversely, if a plat
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So, by deciding who can be heard, they shape the conversation of nations.
You're either pro-capitalist or anti-capitalist.
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Some of us are non-binary.
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You're either pro-capitalist or anti-capitalist.
Are you though? The current capitalism model is .. decidedly not actually capitalism by a fair margin.
Just like the "socialist Bernie" is not actually a true socialist.
The world is rarely black and white...heck, even computers are using more than 1's and 0's these days.
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So, by deciding who can be heard, they shape the conversation of nations.
Don't you think that is a bit dangerous, giving that much power to "private corporations"?
For decades now I've said that the internet and by extension much of the web should be treated as infrastructure. Once these things become so widespread that it's difficult or impossible to participate fully in society without them, then they should be taken over as utilities.
For example, if I was younger and looking for work it would be very difficult for me to even land an interview without a significant social media presence. I shouldn't have to subject myself to privacy rape and censorship in order to h
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Parag Agrawal, the CEO upon taking over at Twitter:
So, by deciding who can be heard, they shape the conversation of nations.
Don't you think that is a bit dangerous, giving that much power to "private corporations"?
Are they denying you the right to start and manage your own free speech site, where nothing is ever blocked?
Hint - I could start a site where people are allowed to make physical threats, incite violence, call for destruction of the country they live in.
But I won't, because that would be stupid, like demanding that elimination of free speech is a right, or that an election needs held to abolish elections.
Because once we get outside of a definition of free speech that demand any and all speech must b
Absolutist [Re:They asked, he declined.] (Score:4, Insightful)
While he claims to be a free speech abolitionist
I think he means free-speech absolutist.
A free speech abolitionist would be somebody who wants to abolish free speech.
And just like all the other people who loudly claim to believe in "Free Speech" he is just another lying liar, who only believes in free speech when it is something that he agrees with.
You see that a lot. There are good arguments in favor of free speech. BUT we've also seen that absolute free speech always seems to end with the trolls and haters and griefers and nazis and just plain assholes flooding the system.
Re:Absolutist [Re:They asked, he declined.] (Score:5, Insightful)
The extent of any and all liberties has long been debated. The old axiom "you're right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose" is the essential and necessary recognition that no liberty can be absolute, for if one person possesses unlimited liberty, someone else is going to have fewer, or even none. Even in the US, which has probably the most strongly worded guarantee of non-interference of the state in the freedom of expression, there still exists the Common Law notions of libel and slander. Now these are civil torts, of course, but even a civil court is a branch of the state, and thus the state, in the form of a judge (and jury, depending on the type of trial) does in fact have the power to limit speech.
In general, however, particularly in the US, the First Amendment was never intended to apply to private property. You're right to say anything you want basically ends in my living room. If I want to eject you from my house because I don't like what you're saying, that too is my right. Now if I have some sort of contract with you that limits my ability to throw you off my property, then presumably I freely entered that contract. Of course, if buried in the EULA is the right for me to alter the terms of the agreement anytime I want, if I on Wednesday I don't like what you said, so Thursday morning I alter the agreement (as per the contract you agreed to), then that to is my right.
And that's pretty much what social media companies have; a broad EULA and TOS agreement that gives them the right to alter the agreement, and also likely indemnify them against you suing them when and if they change it, and likely even if they don't remove posts or ban users in a consistent manner. That's the right of a property owner, and it predates even the US Bill of Rights, and has antecedents in English Common Law (the concept that a man's house is his castle). In the case of companies like Twitter and Facebook, they have shareholders and boards of directors whose sole responsibility is protecting and growing the value the shareholders have in the company. When advertisers discover that they're products are being marketed next to some crazy white supremacist conspiracy theories, the advertisers, who are the real customers of these companies, get pretty pissed off, and thus the board and management have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to keep the advertisers happy.
The real problem for social media companies is one of scale. No algorithm is going to perfectly recognize every post that violates the TOS. But even if we determined that these companies were unfairly disadvantaging one broad political group over another, unless you can demonstrate that removing posts violates the agreement a poster has with the social media portal, there is no, nor should there be, any legal leg to stand on. And believe me, just about every site that allowed public posts with little or no moderation ended up becoming a cesspool of trolls, and normal posters just left, and as it turns out, trolls don't pay the bills.
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Not attending your cognitive therapy sessions, I see
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In the rare instance that someone actually tweets actionable libel, I'm sure Twitter would respond to an appropriate subpoena with the information they have about the account.
I think that proposals to remove online anonymity are about a chilling effect, not a genuine concern about defamation.
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That's a balancing act too. The Framers of the US Constitution knew the value of anonymity. The Federalist Papers were at least nominally anonymous (although even at the time it wasn't hard to figure out who wrote what). The problem is that anonymity, like any valuable tool, can be turned to destructive purposes. Absolute anonymity outside of fairly rarified circles (like, say, political philosophers debating the nature of a possible new constitution) inevitably leads some to abuse the anonymity to bad, or
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What is really needed, rather than stifling all speech to try and prevent libel (which is impossible), is a stronger mechanism to tie speech to an individual so when it does enter the realm of slander you can sue the person responsible.
I'd like to agree (and Penny Arcade makes a similar point [penny-arcade.com])... but the problem is that standing up to authoritarian governments is also a feature of free speech, and protecting anonymity is critical to this.
It's possible, though, that the bad effects of the legions of trolls and assholes using anonymity to destroy any conversation may overwhelm any positive effects of anonymous protestors trying to take down dictatorships.
Re:They asked, he declined. (Score:4, Insightful)
Twitter is a private business. They are not required to do business with you. They can refuse to allow you on their platform for any reason, or for no reason at all. And that's the way it should be.
No, it isn't. At some point of growth companies become the equivalent of public utilities for the services they provide, and then they get regulated precisely so as to avoid causing damage to the common good with denial-of-service.
For example, would you be fine with tap water, sewage, trash collection, airports, train stations, bus stations, and similar biggies, not being required to do business with you? Refusing to allow you on their networks for any reason whatsoever -- such as, e.g., your skin color? I hope not.
The usual refutation to this is to make a distinction between natural or State-mandated monopolies, which would need laws granting access without discrimination, vs. contexts in which no such monopoly exist. The counter-refutation is noticing that network effects forms a natural barrier to entry and thus works, and is, very much natural monopolies, thus must operate under the same rules.
My own solution to this would be to treat any company with over n% of network-capture as a natural monopoly regulation, while at the same removing anonymity from them by requiring State-approved IDs for their use, and tremendously simplifying, and making it MUCH cheaper, to file defamation, libel, false advertisement etc. suits.
People would be orders of magnitude more careful in sharing "news" that their enemies-du-jour drink the blood of children raped in Satanic rituals or whatever, if it came with the risk of their income being halved for 10 years to pay up for damages, plus jail or even prison time, all the while enjoying perfectly free speech for anything truthful they want to say -- with the added benefit of learning to be very, very polite while doing so.
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The problem is that I don't think defamation is the real problem on the large social media companies. Yes, it happens, and yes, sometimes courts have a helluva hard time tying an anonymous account and IP address to an actual human being. But misinformation, like, say, claiming the 2020 presidential election was stolen or vaccines cause significant harm, are not often targeted at specific individuals. At best, you get a voting machine company suing some disseminators of fake news about the reliability of the
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(...) misinformation, like, say, claiming the 2020 presidential election was stolen or vaccines cause significant harm, are not often targeted at specific individuals.
That's the point. Spreading misinformation, such as by sharing it, without having personal responsibility for the sharing, shouldn't be hand-waved away. If one receives a bombastic piece of news from a random source, and shares it widely without having verified its accuracy, and it turns out to be a lie, that person who shared it should be targetable as an accessory to the slanderous attempt. "But I didn't know it was false, it looked reliable!" shouldn't work as an excuse -- everyone should act publicly as
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If one receives a bombastic piece of news from a random source, and shares it widely without having verified its accuracy, and it turns out to be a lie, that person who shared it should be targetable as an accessory to the slanderous attempt. "But I didn't know it was false, it looked reliable!" shouldn't work as an excuse
I can't tell if this is sarcasm.
If not -- there are facts which have rapidly evolved over time. The lab leak theory has gone from being a crazy (banned) conspiracy theory to a likely possibility: https://www.theguardian.com/te... [theguardian.com]. So how does one reliably determine whether a news article is true or false?
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I can't tell if this is sarcasm.
It isn't. In the case of the lab leak etc., I think that anyone must be free to share as much as they want the news it made the vaccine. But if it turns out not to be true, and the lab decides its reputation was severely damaged by everyone who spread it without being SURE of it, then the lab should have full right to sure everyone who spread the lie, and be rewarded damages from everyone, and expeditedly at that. Free speech comes with consequences, One consequence must be damages from wrongfully spreading
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Correction: the news it made the virus.
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There should be nothing wrong with simply speculating that a lab leak might have occurred.
I agree with this, but most people aren't careful when saying things. If everyone said "I think it's likely that", "I believe that", "I feel that", "I have the impressions that" etc., that alone would make conversation much more civilized, all the while reducing the strength of whatever is being said. It's hard to get worked up when everything one would become emotionally invested in gets qualified all the time with a "maybe", "possibly", "hypothetically", "somewhat likely" etc.
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I agree with this, but most people aren't careful when saying things.
Yeah, that's a very good point. I think some news sources still remember to add "allegedly" when they have no evidence, but not so often anymore.
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This is a critical point. However, while I support much, much stronger antitrust enforcement against tech (esp. FAANG), I'm much less confident about that in this case. The problem is that most antitrust law concerns itself with market power and what companies do to acquire and maintain market power.
The question of free speech and decency that's being debated here is much less about market power and more akin to past debates about language on news, movies and music. I do agree that there should be much c
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I'm also not super thrilled with the idea of requiring a state-sponsored ID (...)
I know that fear of a national ID is a strong cultural thing in the US, but most countries absolutely don't have any problem with it whatsoever.
Case in point, in my country we have a national tax ID, plus, for historical reasons, also a few others that are all now connected to and through that one. In fact, the many differing numbers are going away in a few years, leaving only that single number for everything. This transition is quite painless, everyone sees it as a simplifying of bureaucracy, and no one p
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fear of a national ID is a strong cultural thing in the US ... in my country we have a national tax ID
I think there is a bit of conflation here leading to some confusion. national ID != national tax ID.
In your country, is this national tax ID used to authenticate your identity? Is it perfectly safe for you if a scammer learns your national tax ID number?
As I understand it, US SSN number was designed to be a public piece of information which wasn't supposed to serve as a confirmation of your identity (more like a phone number). But then it became a super-secret way to verify your identity and potentially
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In your country, is this national tax ID used to authenticate your identity?
It's the most used ID for most everything. It's required for purchasing most everything online, signing up for services, and lots of other things (for in person purchases of small value items at the checkout it's currently optional). It's also a pre-requisite for most other IDs, including voter ID, driver ID, passport etc. For one to obtain it one must first get a regional ID, which involves the police (yes, police) taking your high-definition photo, plus scans of your 10 fingerprints and of your signature,
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Twitter is a private business. They are not required to do business with you. They can refuse to allow you on their platform for any reason, or for no reason at all. And that's the way it should be.
No, it isn't. At some point of growth companies become the equivalent of public utilities for the services they provide, and then they get regulated precisely so as to avoid causing damage to the common good with denial-of-service.
For example, would you be fine with tap water, sewage, trash collection, airports, train stations, bus stations, and similar biggies, not being required to do business with you? Refusing to allow you on their networks for any reason whatsoever -- such as, e.g., your skin color? I hope not.
At some point? At some point is not the law. Twitter is a public company, it is NOT a public utility. A business doesn't just become a utility because it got popular, that's not how utilities work. In the US, your ISP is not even a utility, or a common carrier. Your email is not a public utility, and if ANYTHING related to the internet was going to be, that would have been it, and it is unregulated. If Twitter wants to stop offering service in Florida, or any random small town in Colorado, nothing's s
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A business doesn't just become a utility because it got popular
I agree with all your statements of fact. I disagree that's how things ought to be. From an "is" no "ought" follows, they're unrelated. Hence, if you think that your list of how things are is exactly how things ought to continue being, argue for this second aspect. Merely listing how things doesn't suffice.
That said, I notice you take as self-evident that the criteria for how things ought to be is the productivity of the economy. For me the self-evident criteria is promoting the psychological well-being of
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No, it isn't. At some point of growth companies become the equivalent of public utilities for the services they provide, and then they get regulated precisely so as to avoid causing damage to the common good with denial-of-service.
How does a social media service do denial-of-service? Give a specific example of a reasonable scenario.
For example, would you be fine with tap water, sewage, trash collection, airports, train stations, bus stations, and similar biggies, not being required to do business with you? Refusing to allow you on their networks for any reason whatsoever -- such as, e.g., your skin color? I hope not.
You would have a point if not for the fact that you have a multitude of social media services to choose from, you don't really have a choice in physical infrastructure - equating virtual services with physical services is disingenuous.
The usual refutation to this is to make a distinction between natural or State-mandated monopolies, which would need laws granting access without discrimination, vs. contexts in which no such monopoly exist. The counter-refutation is noticing that network effects forms a natural barrier to entry and thus works, and is, very much natural monopolies, thus must operate under the same rules.
But there is no monopoly in social media services, nobody is forcing anyone to use a particular service over another. Twitter is only ranked 15th largest for example and TikT
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How does a social media service do denial-of-service?
There are many, many cases of small businesses and freelances who grow their businesses within social networks, and thus financial dependence from them, and who go bust when the social network changes their rules due to some arbitrary deal with a bigger businesses or whomever. Social networks that have this effect should be regulated as utilities precisely so as to avoid this kind of negative outcome, because...
You would have a point if not for the fact that you have a multitude of social media services to choose from, you don't really have a choice in physical infrastructure - equating virtual services with physical services is disingenuous.
... when a social network breaks up your service, saying they can move to another social network
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There are many, many cases of small businesses and freelances who grow their businesses within social networks, and thus financial dependence from them, and who go bust when the social network changes their rules due to some arbitrary deal with a bigger businesses or whomever. Social networks that have this effect should be regulated as utilities precisely so as to avoid this kind of negative outcome, because...
So what? Nobody is entitled to a guaranteed income from using a free service.
... when a social network breaks up your service, saying they can move to another social network is strictly akin to having a world in which there are many phone companies, but each one only completes calls between phones pertaining to their own network, not outside of their network. In such a world, if 90% of your customers are, let's say, AT&T phone users, and AT&T decided to cancel your line, then arguing said business isn't affected because they can get a new phone line from Verizon would be simply false, as that business would still have lost 90% of their customer, who are not going to move to Verizon for the sake of that small busted business.
When you use a phone-service you have a contract - now tell me about any businesses that have contracted a service from a social network that has been booted from said service for arbitrary reasons.
And there was similarly "no monopoly" in the above mentioned poor state of telephony past, after all, no one was "forcing" businesses to use this telephony network in preference to another, or any telephony network at all. They could perfectly operate with no telephony service at all, so no harm! Similarly with railways monopolies. There was none! No one obliged anyone to transport their cargo by train, they could all do it by horse, or on foot. And so on and so forth.
Why do you persist in using limited physical infrastructure as the metering stick for something that isn't limited? And businesses was and still are forced to use a particular telephone services because in many cases they have no altern
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No, it isn't. At some point of growth companies become the equivalent of public utilities for the services they provide, and then they get regulated precisely so as to avoid causing damage to the common good with denial-of-service.
Is Twitter at that point? I work in tech and in my team of about 10 people I am the only one that uses Twitter. In my close family of about 30 people, there are four of us on Twitter.
I know way more people that don't use Twitter than do.
I do not see Twitter as a public utility. It has a significant impact, for sure.
I'd argue Facebook is vastly closer to the point of public utility and even then I don't think I'd consider it a public utility that needs to be regulated separately - and I say this as a genera
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I replied to similar points in another answer [slashdot.org]. Please give it a look.
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Funny how the same people who want Twitter & FB regulated like media outlets don't want the ISPs that carry the content regulated like utilities.
And vice versus. We hear information wants to be free and bytes shouldn't be censored.
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But then we realized that 4/20 [wikipedia.org] was coming up, and decided this wasn't such a great idea.
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ummm, that never stopped him before?!! signs of maturity? NAHhh
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Makes you wonder what was in the "background check" that scared Elon off. A review of prior Tweets for potential legal issues, perhaps?
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How about a review of the tweets he realised between the joining and not-joining announcements for *sanity* issues?
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> and we will remain open to his input
With an industrial strength lightning-tolerant inverting NOT gate right after the pin.
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“We announced on Tuesday that Elon would be appointed to the Board contingent on a background check and formal acceptance. Elon’s appointment to the board was to become officially effective 4/9, but Elon shared that same morning that he will no longer be joining the board,” Agrawal said in a tweet Sunday night.
“We have and will always value input from our shareholders whether they are on our Board or not. Elon is our biggest shareholder and we will remain open to his input.”
I don't think that's not the proper way to decode this corporate speak. The formal announcement has more details [twitter.com]. But the important thing to look at is the timeline:
1. They'd been talking about it for a few weeks.
2. They announced Musk joining the board (you don't do that unless Musk has agreed).
3. Musk goes on a tweetstorm of now deleted tweets [slashdot.org].
4. Suddenly Musk isn't joining the board anymore! (And Agrawal agrees "this is for the best").
That's not Musk blowing off the Twitter board, that's Musk effectively
Re: They asked, he declined. (Score:2)
Poll: Was his decline voluntary?
Yes
No
Due to old age
CowboyNeil
Re:They asked, he declined. (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, the linked article isn't extensive on details, but that's essentially what happened.
As noted by the BBC [bbc.co.uk], both the chief executive (Agrawal) and Jack Dorsey were clearly looking forward to having Musk join the board [twitter.com], but Musk declined the offer, with Agrawal tweeting "Elon has decided not to join the board" [twitter.com].
Interesting to note the BBC points out the chief exec started with a cryptic line:
"Here's what I can share"
"Clearly a lot has gone on behind the scenes that he has left out."
Re:They asked, he declined. (Score:4, Interesting)
"Elon shared that same morning that he will no longer be joining the board" can cover a multitude of sins like "I want to spend more time with my Unicode-inspired fleshlings". Or "Musk you insane maniac, you try joining our board we will make your life hell every day and mobilise everything against your reputation. Now 0xFFFF off, ram a Falcon Heavy up your own exhaust port and tell everybody you're not joining".
I mean, let's bear in mind what ELSE the article said:
> Mr Agrawal said Twitter offered Mr Musk a seat on its board as the company had believed it was "the best path forward", with board members having to "act in the best interests of the company and all our shareholders".
> Addressing Mr Musk's decision, Mr Agrawal said: "I believe this is for the best".
If you've gone from "joining is the best path forward" to "not joining is for the best", then you've done some fairly serious re-evaluation in a pretty short time, haven't you?
Re: (Score:2)
then you've done some fairly serious re-evaluation in a pretty short time, haven't you?
Yes, you have reevaluated that your shareprice is sustained by appearing to always have done the "best thing" whether it's in your control or not.
Don't confuse PR with actual evaluations of the situation. What do you suggest the CEO tell everyone that it's horrible for the company that Musk won't be on the board? Fuck most CEOs can't even admit when a minor thing is bad let alone a thing with potential to actually move share prices.
Good! (Score:4, Insightful)
Temporary ban (Score:3)
Buying more stock (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Buying more stock (Score:4, Informative)
he could still buy while on the board, he is at 9.2%, the requirement would be that he didnt go over 15%.
Re: (Score:2)
He might be going for 50%.
Hostile Takeover (Score:2)
Right - he's going for a coalition of shareholders as an activist investor, up to and including a hostile takeover.
Which will be fine by most shareholders - the stock jumped 25% on just the potential for new management when he bought 9%.
He may not be on the board, but he will certainly get to appoint a few board members aligned with his interests.
Good (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Now he will not be bound by board rules of ownership or NDAs. He can say what he wants and buy more Twitter stock. Hostile takeover maybe?
Not so much hostile as "inebriated".
Re: (Score:2)
Now he will not be bound by board rules of ownership or NDAs. He can say what he wants and buy more Twitter stock. Hostile takeover maybe?
(insert bender oh wait your serious let me laugh even harder animted gif here)
No. He just realized he'd have to give up shiat-posting about Twitter as a board member. Oh and wanting to get rid of advertising? ROFLMAO does he even INTERNET? How does he think Twitter makes money? Since 90% comes from ads he must think unicorn farts and rainbows will make up the difference.
Keep in mind, I despise Twitter (and Meta / Instagram / et al.) as cancers upon society that seem to exist solely to spread misinfor
Re: (Score:2)
This used to be a big concern to me and I used to post constantly bemoaning the lack of rules on the short side. 5% longs must disclose. (But 5% shorts dont have to disclose. So Elon can not silently accumulate for a hostile take over)
Of course he can buy calls and exercise them all at once, no disclosure needed for buying calls exceeding 5% of 50%. There are also many dark
Reality check (Score:5, Interesting)
He can't criticize Twitter while sitting on the board.
I think the current board made Elon realize this, among other things. There was a letter circulated around, mentioning a background check and fiduciary duty.
Basically: no board, or no twitter rants. And he chose to keep his twitter rants.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm personally happy about that.
Putting the discussion of what good or bad traits the man has aside, I do enjoy his shitlording backed by humongous stacks of cash.
Re: (Score:2)
There was a letter circulated around, mentioning a background check and fiduciary duty.
I think even a janitor gets those when applying for a minimum wage job. Don't read too much into that.
Must've found a new shiny toy (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Must've found a new shiny toy (Score:5, Insightful)
Musk has the temperament of a six year old and an attention span to match.
So, what has your six-year-old put into orbit lately?
Re: (Score:2)
Give a 6 year old a few billion dollars and I'm sure they can afford to hire someone to do it. You think Musk is sitting in the basement designing rockets?
Re: (Score:2)
Musk runs multiple companies that do high end engineering in their fields, but his talking head time is not being spent doing anything useful for any of them...
Re: (Score:2)
Musk has the temperament of a six year old and an attention span to match.
Perfectly normal from someone with Asperger's like Elon. (see the announcement on his May 2021 SNL appearance)
Seeing how the sausage is made (Score:3)
I'd like to think he rolled in there and was like "take the guardrails off, let it fly!" and then someone took him over to the moderation department, opened up the queue of reports to be looked at and then he quickly changed his mind.
Imagine (Score:2)
Imagine if Elon Musk stuck to rockets, electric cars and storage for renewable energy.
Re: (Score:2)
And tunnels, and robots, and AI, and Dogecoin, and computer/brain interfaces, and...
Other implications (Score:2)
I guess this means the 15% cap on Twitter ownership for Elon is off the table also.
Heck, maybe that's why Elon declined to accept.
It's interesting to watch... (Score:3)
No there there? (Score:2)
What if the fact that half of accounts (tweeting about COVID) are just bots and Elon's realized that there's no there there?
How hard would it be to identify bots and shut them down? That would go a long way to eliminating the false amplification of one point of view. Of course, that would also give advertisers pause but then they might also realize that it's getting dealt with.
Two Key Words Explain this: "Background Check" (Score:2)
In Twitter's announcement, they state that appointment was subject to background check. I'm sure he didn't want to go through that process.
Instead he is taking over slashdot message board (Score:3)
Don't get me wrong I have been very positive and gung-ho about batteries, EVs, Teasla and the end of Age of Oil. But still this level of preoccupation seems a little excessive.
Shoot (Score:2)
There goes the entertainment value of the whole thing, I'll go back to binge watching TV shows.
Invisible Puppet Master (Score:2)
Glad to hear it. (Score:2)