Twitter Is Now an Elon Musk Company (theverge.com) 446
Elon Musk has "added [Twitter] to his business empire after months of legal skirmishes," writes The Verge's Elizabeth Lopatto, citing reports from CNBC, The Washington Post and Insider. From the report: Musk's first move on Thursday was to oust Parag Agrawal, who was Twitter's last CEO as a public company. Chief financial officer Ned Segal and Vijaya Gadde, the company's policy chief whom Musk had publicly criticized have also reportedly left the building. Sean Edgett, the general counsel, is also gone, The New York Times reports, adding that at least one of these executives was walked out by security. Chief customer officer Sarah Personette was also fired, Insider reports. The execs received handsome payouts for their trouble, Insider reports: Agrawal got $38.7 million, Segal got $25.4 million, Gadde got $12.5 million, and Personette, who tweeted yesterday about how excited she was for Musk's takeover, got $11.2 million
Questions still remain about what Musk plans to do with Twitter now that he owns it, though he's made a number of public comments. The Washington Post reported that Musk planned to cull 75 percent of Twitter's employees, citing estimates given to prospective Twitter investors. Musk told Twitter staffers that the 75 percent figure was inaccurate, Bloomberg reported. In Musk's text messages, provided during discovery to Twitter's lawyers, he and entrepreneur Jason Calacanis, a friend of his, discussed cutting staff by requiring a return to office. "Day zero," Calacanis texted Musk. "Sharpen your blades boys." Requiring Twitter employees to return to offices would mean 20 percent of the staff would leave voluntarily, Calacanis wrote. Also, Calacanis told Musk, "Twitter CEO is my dream job."
Twitter also faces challenges to its free speech stance in court, as the Supreme Court agreed to take up two cases that will determine its liability for illegal content. Musk, who is also CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has suggested he'll change the way Twitter's moderation works, potentially relaxing the kinds of policies that saw former President Donald Trump permanently banned from the platform. Although Musk has said that his Twitter acquisition is "not a way to make money," he's reportedly raised ideas for cost cutting and increasing revenue. Governments and corporations could be charged a "slight cost" to use Twitter, and there could be job cuts on the table to improve the company's bottom line. Some of Twitter's current employees have criticized Musk's plans for the platform as "incoherent" and lacking in detail. More broadly, Musk has talked about using Twitter to create "X, the everything app." This is a reference to China's WeChat app, which started life as a messaging platform, but has since grown to encompass multiple businesses, from shopping to payments to gaming. "You basically live on WeChat in China," Musk told Twitter employees in June. "If we can recreate that with Twitter, we'll be a great success."
Questions still remain about what Musk plans to do with Twitter now that he owns it, though he's made a number of public comments. The Washington Post reported that Musk planned to cull 75 percent of Twitter's employees, citing estimates given to prospective Twitter investors. Musk told Twitter staffers that the 75 percent figure was inaccurate, Bloomberg reported. In Musk's text messages, provided during discovery to Twitter's lawyers, he and entrepreneur Jason Calacanis, a friend of his, discussed cutting staff by requiring a return to office. "Day zero," Calacanis texted Musk. "Sharpen your blades boys." Requiring Twitter employees to return to offices would mean 20 percent of the staff would leave voluntarily, Calacanis wrote. Also, Calacanis told Musk, "Twitter CEO is my dream job."
Twitter also faces challenges to its free speech stance in court, as the Supreme Court agreed to take up two cases that will determine its liability for illegal content. Musk, who is also CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has suggested he'll change the way Twitter's moderation works, potentially relaxing the kinds of policies that saw former President Donald Trump permanently banned from the platform. Although Musk has said that his Twitter acquisition is "not a way to make money," he's reportedly raised ideas for cost cutting and increasing revenue. Governments and corporations could be charged a "slight cost" to use Twitter, and there could be job cuts on the table to improve the company's bottom line. Some of Twitter's current employees have criticized Musk's plans for the platform as "incoherent" and lacking in detail. More broadly, Musk has talked about using Twitter to create "X, the everything app." This is a reference to China's WeChat app, which started life as a messaging platform, but has since grown to encompass multiple businesses, from shopping to payments to gaming. "You basically live on WeChat in China," Musk told Twitter employees in June. "If we can recreate that with Twitter, we'll be a great success."
The one he maybbe didn't want (Score:3, Interesting)
Twitter will always be associated with him. Now. Is that enough or does he need to make an impression worthy of his $44 billion investment? Tough to be a billionaire, yet immeasurably tougher to be a week to week paycheck reliant bill payer.
Re:The one he maybbe didn't want (Score:5, Informative)
Well... (roughly) A little less than half if that ($21B) will be from him. The rest of the money is coming from banks ($13B and $6B) and other equity investors ($7B) according to the articles below (the Reuters article has a partial list). I imagine they will want some return on their investments...
- Who is financing Elon Musk's $44 billion deal to buy Twitter? [reuters.com] (Oct 7, 2022)
- Elon Musk Suggests Buying Twitter at His Original Pric [nytimes.com] (Aug 4, 2022)
- Elon Musk sells nearly $7 billion in Tesla shares to finance his Twitter deal. [nytimes.com] (Aug 10, 2022)
- The fate of Elon Musk’s deal to buy Twitter now comes down to the money [cnn.com] (Oct 7, 2022)
Re:The one he maybbe didn't want (Score:5, Interesting)
As many before me pointed out, Elon is now on the hook for roughtly $1bn a year in loan interests.
Good luck extracting that value from Twitter. I expect to see many stupid monetization changes in the near future - the kind that will eventually make the platform obsolete.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: The one he maybbe didn't want (Score:5, Informative)
Twitter is no Microsoft, they aren't Needed at all, Gates monopolized the OS market because he realized people would NEED this software to use their computers, nobody NEEDS twitter to do anything. It performs no irreplaceable function, and it can be easily replaced..
Re: The one he maybbe didn't want (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah yes (Score:4, Insightful)
Free speech absolutist. Until you talk about Elon. Then he fires you. https://www.nbcnews.com/busine... [nbcnews.com]
Let's see how long he allows criticism before the ban hammer falls.
How dare a coworker not join my righteous cause (Score:5, Informative)
Free speech absolutist. Until you talk about Elon. Then he fires you. https://www.nbcnews.com/busine... [nbcnews.com]
Let's see how long he allows criticism before the ban hammer falls.
Free speech is for your own time, not your work time, not you coworker's work time. Also it was reported that some of the questionable speech was repetitive and harassing for employees who did not get on board. How dare a coworker not join my righteous cause, they will hear from me.
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Right, so free speech is for your own platform too. Correct?
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Right, so free speech is for your own platform too. Correct?
Not your corporate network when a couple of employees are harassing other employees who are not interested in their crusade. Again, repeated annoying emails to coworkers.
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The point is that as it is the public square, it should not be. As it is the public square, minority views have a right to be expressed, even if you don't like them. Darwin, Galileo, etc. have all been different levels of victims of conformity, even though they were completely right.
"I may detest what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it?" - Frederick the Great
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So, theoretically, a state could restrict speech? If the right "originalist" Supreme Court Judges were installed?
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Before the 14th amendment, that was how it worked, though a lot of States also had similar in their Constitutions. Also the Common Laws were still there (and more important back then when a lot of law was not statutory), things like slander, incitement etc and of course Judges could and still can order someone not to speak about various things and throw you in jail for contempt.
Really the intent seems to have been no new Federal law restricting speech rather then an absolute freedom like the 2nd seems to ha
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Re:How dare a coworker not join my righteous cause (Score:5, Informative)
Too many originalists, constitutionalists, whoever, don't really seem to understand all this. They read the constitution like they read their bible - literally and out of context. The see amendments as blots that can be ignored, and common law as archaic and discarded once the sanctity of the constitution was endowed.
Particularly when it comes to the separation of Church and State. One need only read the minutes [loc.gov] of the discussion [loc.gov] to understand everyone agreed there would be no national religion. The debate was around the wording so that every person could worship as they pleased without government interference and that no person could be compelled to worship if they chose not to.
Madison, the intiator of this amendment, made these comments in reference to the amendment :
Mr. Madison said, he apprehended the meaning of the words to be that Congress should not establish a religion, and enforce the legal observation of it by law, nor compel men to worship God in any manner contrary to their conscience.
A Mr. Gerry probably said it best earlier in the debate:
Mr. Gerry said it would read better if it was, that no religious doctrine shall be established by law.
So when "originalists" talk about there being no separation of church and state, it's clear they either haven't read what the original founders said, or chose to ignore them.
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So when "originalists" talk about there being no separation of church and state, it's clear they either haven't read what the original founders said, or chose to ignore them.
No, they're not ignoring them. They're criticizing the modern notion of what "separation of church and state" has come to mean. When Madison, et al wrote the First Amendment, it was to prevent the federal government from establishing an official state church, as many colonies had done. But the late 20th Century interpretation of the 1st somehow morphed into "No religious expression ANYWHERE, ANYTIME, in ANY public space", because, these people reasoned, doing so would violate the rights of the non-religious
Re:How dare a coworker not join my righteous cause (Score:5, Interesting)
According to the wording of the Constitution,. yes.
Fortunately, a bunch of liberal judges in the 60s and 70s decided that "speech" didn't just mean speaking, but meant things like... protests. And porn.
This is the danger and stupidity of originalism, and why we absolutely need more liberals on the bench. But that is a debate for another day.
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...CONGRESS, which is, wait for it... the U.S. House of Representatives ALONE ...
No, its the entire legislature, House plus Senate.
... the U.S. Supreme Court, (which doesn't have the explicit right to decide cases as the final arbiter ...
Nope. "The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish." Deciding cases would be an example of "Judicial Power".
So when Musk says he's a "Free Speech absolutist" he clearly has no idea what he is talking about.
Nope, the phrase "free speech" is not limited to its constitutional definition outside of government. Therefore a corporation would be free to define "free speech" in some relevant context. The context Musk is referring to is the
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Elon called Twitter the public sphere & wanted everyone on it to be verified so what does that mean for his employees?
They were fired for annoying coworkers on corporate email, not twitter.
The Injustice (Score:5, Funny)
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Can't believe Elon's not a Free Speech Maximalist like he said he was. Just another lying hypocrite who supports Republicans.
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Just another lying hypocrite who supports Republicans.
Elon Musk didn't abandon the Democrats. The Democrats abandoned him.
They attacked him for not paying taxes on money he hadn't earned.
They attacked him for following existing labor laws rather than the labor laws they wish existed.
But mostly Democrats don't like Musk because he has shown that capitalism is more effective than big government at running space programs and addressing global warming.
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Gavin Newsom and the mayor of Fremont, CA, required Musk to retain Covid masking and social distancing restrictions in his Tesla factories. He hated that, because he saw it as government overreach. Whether you agree with that or not, he shortly thereafter decided to move his headquarters to Texas, where cops are now afraid to enforce laws because of all the open carry laws.
So yes, he did abandon the Democrats, because he didn't like their rules in northern California.
Re:The Injustice (Score:5, Interesting)
I.e. his employee's lives were deemed less important. I seen to remember it being a large sum.
Democrat here (Score:5, Insightful)
He didn't abandon the Democrats, he was never with us in the first place. The Democratic party is the party of working class Americans. Musk had never treated anyone who works for a living well.
We are a bit frustrated that he owes his entire Fortune (at least the parts he didn't get from his daddy's connections) to government subsidies. He's the biggest welfare queen on the planet but hangs with the Republican party.
The sheer scale of the hypocrisy is frustrating.
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We're a 2 party system (Score:5, Insightful)
Our voting system forces us to pick the best of 2 imperfect options. Only one of the 2 options is so far gone down the road to fascism we're not longer picking the best of 2 options, we're deciding between fascism and democracy.
I've already made my choice, now it's time for you to pick yours. And if you're not American you still need to pick. Only the way you pick is by not spreading "both sides" arguments.
I bring that up because every time I call one of you guys out you tell me you're not an American. Which is weird because you always seem to comment on our political system without understanding it even at the most elementary level...
Re:We're a 2 party system (Score:5, Insightful)
...if the Republicans take the Whitehouse again the next January 6th won't end with a transfer of power. It'll end with a President for Life....Only one of the 2 options is so far gone down the road to fascism...deciding between fascism and democracy....
This is the typical Left talking point right now: if you don't agree with us then you're trying to destroy Democracy. Nevermind that the democracy you and I live under was established--and has existed for 233 years with all ideas working together.
And where did that "Left talking point right now" come from? You would have sounded reasonable before Donald Trump's mob tried to stop the democratic process. They literally tried to "destroy Democracy". And you know this. You know this, and you support it. We see what you are.
Re: We're a 2 party system (Score:3)
Are you going to tell me armed Democrats are harassing people at polling places?
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Re:We're a 2 party system (Score:4, Insightful)
Your guys tried to destroy the republic. Literally. That's the thing that happened and nothing you say or think or do will change that.
From here the question is, do you want to live in a fascist autocracy for a mildly corrupt Democratic Republic. Make your choice. Once you turn to fascism you don't get a do-over
Re: Democrat here (Score:3)
Speaking as one of those working class Americans you are referencing, the arrogance and hubris required to make the statement that the Democrat party is the party that best represents me is breathtaking.
No, the Democrat party is not the party that represents working class Americans. They are the party that resorts to fear mongering about the end of Democracy as we know it any Republican stands a chance of winning agains them during an election season. They are the party that stupidly claims that if Trump ge
Re:The Injustice (Score:5, Informative)
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But "with limits" is exactly.... I mean fucking EXACTLY...what was there before. Just with different limits.
Musk is on record as saying that the only limits should be those defined by legislation. He has no problem banning people who openly call for violence, because that is also a criminal offense. But where he is less clear on are the edge cases, which require, I don't know, actual human analysis, and which Twitter pays people around the globe to specifically look at and review tweets to see if they cr
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Can't believe I was fired after writing a diss letter about my boss during work hours and posting it on our company's internal messaging service :(
Nailed it like a steel ball on armor glass.
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It is well known that the biggest abusers of freedom are the ones who were oppressed and then they get power. They are the most scared. Like an abused animal (human or otherwise) .. if you keep a dog caged up on a leash treat a dog like shit, it will bite you and any other human. Its pattern matcher will say human = potential abuser. Same thing with humans. Most mammalian brains cannot handle/channel abuse and mistreatment, even on the petty level (maybe especially on). Why do you think humans have wars? M
Re:Ah yes (Score:4, Insightful)
Right. Its hypocrisy of the highest order.
Musk will fire you if you say this on Twitter, but not that. The now-prior-executives would ban you if you said this, but not that; the only, literally the ONLY difference is that they had a set of rules they attempted to follow in how they banned people, with varying degrees of success; now it will be up to one person, Musk. ...except...
it will still come down to multiple people.
"Hey boss, this guy wants to tweet the address of home with children of a politician with the times they will be home from school with a gun emoji next to it."
"Well, ban him."
"OK, now he does the same thing under a different account with a butter knife emoji. Now what."
"Ban him, and figure out a policy that will ban stuff like this so you don't bother me because I am building rockets, subways, and robots"
"Boss, this comes down to people making decisions that are subjective. We need specific guidelines"
"Ok you are all fired since you can't do your job"
And that is how this bullshit will end.
And the assholes will post the politician's family's address the next day.
Dealing with people who want to use your platform for evil is hard.
Musk is going to find this out the hard way, as soon as someone uses it to murder a bunch of people in a massacre which WILL happen under his watch, mark my words.
Free speech absolutist my ass.
Fired sensationalism (Score:2)
Re:Don't need an absolutist... (Score:5, Insightful)
Can I share a viewpoint that a specific person's family should be murdered, and post their address, and do so repeatedly?
I understand that you may not like that (hey, maybe Musk will let you downvote tweets like that one!), but perhaps that is my viewpoint, and, you know, on this new Twitter thingy with a free-speech absolutist Chief Twit, maybe I could do that, even if you don't like it. And you know, maybe we could talk about it for a while without people trying to ban everyone on the other side. Maybe we could "discuss" whether or not this person's family should be murdered, and have a "rational" conversation about my open (and yet clearly hypothetical) call to violence in this hypothetical situation.
If you think that this sort of "open" Town Square should be allowed, you are a fucking moron.
Time for some good old fashioned employee action (Score:2, Interesting)
Trump is a danger to America specifically and democracy in general. What you say does matter. Musk is a genius when it comes to robots, rockets and cars. People, not so much. If he lets Trump back on, I do hope employees working there were smart enough to build back doors into the system to sabotage the company and it's holdings. The future of democracy could be at stake. I'm pretty certain that if he allows Trump back on, we will see a very intense revolt that could destroy or hinder the company.
And wha
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If our Democracy can't withstand a single man posting tweets on an internet website then it deserves to die.
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Holy fucking shit. They are quaking in their boots that Trump MIGHT return to twitter. To dumb to figure out its better to have him on a public site where any one can read him and contradict him if needed.
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That's what TRUTH Social is for. He can post whatever he likes there, we can keep tabs on him, and his reach is limited.
The danger with Twitter is that he ends up with tens of millions of followers, and looks like his nonsense is more mainstream than it really is. That emboldens his supporters and we end up with more attacks on democracy.
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No it's not better to have him out in public. He already was out in public and almost managed to overthrown the government.
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I remember a time when you couldn't even order a pizza on the internet. It's absolutely pathetic that the unwashed masses give a single social media entity this much sway over their political opinions. I miss the internet of the late 90s, when most people seemed to be keenly aware that everything online was complete bullshit.
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Well said. Democracy has to be cared for, like a good marriage. Failing to restrain one's words wild will kill either one.
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May as well say "if the Weimar republic can't withstand a single book from a jailed criminal then it deserves to be overthrown". Trump has what he thinks is an army. Though it's not really as big an army as he thinks as there seem to be many of the same faces at every rally. But in those crowds are some true believers. When he sent his mob to the capitol most of them were taking selfies or getting drunk, but there were enough who were taking it very seriously. So many of them gave excuses after being arrested that they were only "following orders". Since when did the president have the power to order civilians around, and would these bozos have followed orders from Obama?" It's utterly stupid, and yet those people exist in high enough numbers to do real damage. The origins of the next brown shirts are already there.
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can't withstand a single man
That's disingenuous. Democracy regularly falls at the behest of a single man. The issue at stake here is who is that man, what does he represent, and who follows him.
You're free to say stupid shit all you want and so am I, we are nobodies, no one will give a shit and our words have no impact. On the flip side the words of a single man led to a violent attempted insurrection during a democratic process last year, because the man in question wasn't some random nobody but rather a voice representing a signific
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If our Democracy can't withstand a single man posting tweets on an internet website then it deserves to die.
Except it's not just a single man, it is a group of people with a shared goal of destroying the democratic process. Technically it is two separate groups because one was out for eliminating the peaceful transfer of power to benefit a wannabe snowflake dictator, and the other wants to keep decreasing the size of the electorate allowed to vote so they can make America a Christo-Fascist theocracy. Think Iran, but run by Qnuts and Evangelicals who will punish you for being the wrong kind of Christian, you durt
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So the only 2 options are "not allow him to speak at all on the platform" or "allow him to put a hit on my family"?
That's a pretty massive False Dichotomy, even by Slashdot troll standards.
Twitter has always had a policy that illegal speech will be banned. That policy will continue under Musk. What WON'T continue is banning people because they shared the true story about Hunter Biden's laptop.
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I'm sure illegal speech will be banned, but only if it's illegal in the US, which has by far the least restrictions on speech than any other country.
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What is the middle-ground that you're proposing?
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Either he is a "Free Speech absolutist" or he is not. Period.
If he DOES have limits (and of course he does, as he's even told investors today that he won't allow Twitter to turn into a Free-for-all, whatever the fuck that means) then the only difference between himself and the board he just replaced is what those limits are and who decides them.
He's going to find out very very quickly that these are not easily solvable issues. People are not rockets, robots or stupid single-car subways. They are much mor
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Is censoring or banning tweets that advocate for "murdering the Jews" political censorship? Because those who advocate for that would certainly claim it is. It turns out that people have a different definition of what that should be. You can find engineers who will believe that censoring a man who openly called for rebellion, who asked that his militant followers "stand back and stand by", clearly implying their services would be needed shortly, is "political censorship" There are plenty of SF engineers
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He did not do that. I am using that as an example of how supposed political censorship is in the eye of the beholder; I did not mean to imply Trump said that.
A paragraph break would have helped. There are people who believe censoring "kill all the Jews" is political censorship, just as there are Trump supporters who believe that censoring open calls for violence against the government and murdering government officials on Jan 6 is political censorship.
Re: Time for some good old fashioned employee acti (Score:2)
The power of a contract (Score:2)
What a small endeavor for Musk (Score:5, Insightful)
SpaceX: If he succeeds with SpaceX, he'll go down in history as the person who demonstrated the next generation of re-useable rockets, cutting launch costs by an order of magnitude and helping humanity into space. If he succeeds in establishing a Mars colony, he'll go down in history next to names like Moses, Ceasar, and Christopher Columbus. He'll be remembered for literally thousands of years.
If he succeeds with Twitter, he'll be providing a platform where Trump can talk about his stolen election and his pussy-grabbing, and Kanye West can freely talk about going "deathcon 3" on the (insert minority group here) without fear of consequence. Human impact? Zero. Social chatter sites come and go like the wind, and barely leave any trace. They're like tic-tacs. Mmmm minty fresh and then they're gone. Replaced by some other nearly-identical platform.
One of these things does not fit with the others. What a distraction from his far more important projects.
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Tesla: If he succeeds with Tesla, he'll go down in history as the guy who successfully replaced the internal combustion engine with something superior.
Well, different anyway for now and the foreseeable future. You can yak about "superior" after you beat me long distance to my friend's house. In the mean time, I'll leave the light on for you and some suppers in the fridge -- I'm sure there will be a few by the time you get there, depending on which friend we're visiting. :-) On the other hand, for driving around town and daily commutes to work yes, probably better. Less expensive and/or ROI is still arguable depending on use and length of ownership. A
Human impact is NOT zero (Score:2)
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In each case, you focus on one aspect of each company, and declare that aspect meaningful or not to humanity.
While Elon Musk might indeed be unhelpful to mankind by allowing the likes of Trump to abuse the platform, there are so many other ways Twitter might actually make a major impact on humanity. For example, in some authoritarian country, Twitter could be a catalyst for transformation to a democracy. That would indeed be worthy of rivaling SpaceX or Tesla.
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Well there's even more:
Starlink: If Ukraine succeeds in pushing Russia out or at least retaining the territory they now have without further Russian advancement, it will be partly because of Musk, and his name will go down in history as the man who provided Ukraine the needed tools at a crucial time to retain their independence and halt further Russian western advancement.
Robots. Robots! Elon unveiled a new walking robot a few weeks ago. I have a deep suspicion this will lead to some world-changing advan
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Twitter made him rich. His tweets and the twits who hung on every word made stocks rise and fall, crypto moved way more. He was riding the waves he created. Not to mention the free promos he'd get for stuff.
He will likely continue to play games with it and make tons of money.
And Trump comes back in 3.....2....1.... (Score:2)
Re:And Trump comes back in 3.....2....1.... (Score:5, Insightful)
his own version of the truth.
That's normally referred to as "lying".
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It's a whole 'nother set of rules for the uber rich.
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It's also not lying if you sincerely believe it.
This is ultimately how I expect Trump is going to evade all criminal charges, as even in the face of incontrovertible evidence that what he was saying is false, there is no way to prove that he does not genuinely believe the things that he says.
Re:And Trump comes back in 3.....2....1.... (Score:4, Informative)
there is no way to prove that he does not genuinely believe the things that he says.
You only need to prove intent beyond a reasonable doubt.
It's quite reachable, and if it weren't, literally all criminal prosecution would be moot.
Re:And Trump comes back in 3.....2....1.... (Score:4, Interesting)
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You have a good point in that political "facts" are rarely objective. But these strongly left people are correct from their own perspective.
"Trump is okay with pandering to and courting racists" is observably true, and from their perspective, that in itself is racist.
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According to Trump and the CEO of Truth Social his platform has more "interaction" than twitter.
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According to Trump and the CEO of Truth Social his platform has more "interaction" than twitter.
[ non-Trump citation needed (always) :-) ]
TSLA shareholders beware! (Score:2)
I bet he screws things up enough that a substantial portion of the population will sour on buying Teslas.
Looking at the code (Score:3)
Tesla Engineers Visit Twitter Office to Review Code for Musk [bloomberg.com]
So they've got that going for them.
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Tesla engineers inside twitter today (Score:2)
Tesla engineers inside twitter today to get the code and dig into the system for Elon. Twitter employees were locked out of the code at Noon
https://twitter.com/Rampage95_... [twitter.com]
Users need moderation controls (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds like Musk is going to add some moderation and filtering controls so end users can control their experiences. Couldn't come soon enough. Censorship isn't the problem, it's WHO decides. Let users do it, that's the only way you get free speech and civil behavior at the same time.
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Yes, but this is not how you make a profit. If you provide me with an option to skip ads or relegate them to the bottom of my feed I will do it every time.
Spike Lee says (Score:2)
Spike Lee says: "Nah, that's an Elon Musk Joint."
Elon takes a drag, holds his breath, and nods sagely.
Governments should user other channels if it costs (Score:2)
There is nothing special enough about Twitter that should cause any government to *pay* to have their message broadcast.
In fact, perhaps there should be some kind of channels that Twitter should have to set aside just for such government messages.
Come the Pink Slip Fairy (Score:2)
I just had the disturbing image of Elon Musk in a pink tutu with fairy wings and a wand. He was dancing around the office of twitter handing out pink slips with the touch of his wand.
Twitter will be gone in 10 years (Score:2)
e.g. he's borrowed a ton of money, the debt from which he will shift to Twitter's books. Just like when this was done to Toys R Us it'll mean Twitter doesn't have the capital to run it's business and invest where needed. Eventually it'll collapse as more and more corners are cut.
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not because of mismanagement (not that it won't be mismanaged) but because Musk either didn't want to or couldn't spend his own money, so he's doing a "leveraged" or "debt" buyout. e.g. he's borrowed a ton of money, the debt from which he will shift to Twitter's books. Just like when this was done to Toys R Us it'll mean Twitter doesn't have the capital to run it's business and invest where needed. Eventually it'll collapse as more and more corners are cut.
If you had taken the time to study buyouts and mergers in the past 50 years of Wall Street...you would find that most of them are EXACTLY what you are ranting about.
And using Toys R Us in your argument is absolutely hilarious.
He's already told Wall Street (Score:2)
It remains to be seen if Trump will be back. Trump is still actively inciting violence [cnn.com] as are his water carriers [thewrap.com] so it's clear he shouldn't be let back on. But who knows what Musk's going to do.
I think it's safe to say if Trump makes it back onto Twitter we're going to see more Stochastic Terrorism, up to and including shootings and deaths. You can't keep pushing extremist's
Hail Freeduhm (Score:2)
This is great news. If my account can be moved from the table of accounts that can no longer log in without a phone number.
Even better, if such a requirement is removed from the whole network.
To make it more elon like... (Score:2)
It should only allow you to use a proprietary tesla image and video format that is slightly better than jpeg and mp4, but require asinine cumbersome conversion tools only available on IOS and the windows store.
Who Tweets? (Score:2)
Do you Tweet? I don't Tweet.
Donald Trump famously tweets. News sites tell me when athletes, actors and other famous people Tweet.
I know hundreds of people, many of them very tech savvy.
Heck, my kids are very tech savvy as are many of the younger generation.
SMS, emails, Facebook and many other sites.
I honestly don't know a single person that Tweets.
Watch it go down the plughole (Score:3)
And of course Apple & Google might decide to delist Twitter if it's not going to moderate content properly. Meanwhile every country and their legislative bodies might decide that if Twitter can't moderate itself then the law needs to and force them to comply.
Meanwhile Musk will insist this rancourous mess become a bloated hub for stuff it has no earthly reason to be involved with - payments, bookings etc. But all the best Twitter engineers will have left or been thrown out and replaced by god-knows-who. So quality will take a dive and the app will become a buggy, bloated, insecure mess that people have even less reason to install.
So yeah. Enjoy your overpriced toy Elon because by the time you desperately try to offload it, it'll be worth much less than you bought it for.
The meme (Score:3)
He walked into the offices carrying a sink, saying "Let that sink in."
Actually, Elon buddy, it's more like: "Congrats, you bought yourself a money sink!"
Re: (Score:2)
Twitter has been mass banning anyone interesting for years. It will be great to see if that changes, though, I'm not going to assume it will.
anyway basically the exact opposite of what you said
Re: Entitled Twits (Score:2, Insightful)
Maximalist doesn't mean what you think it means. Free speech is fundamental to democracy. China and Russia are theoretically democracies. But how the hell is that supposed to work if you can't make others aware of the misdeeds of the government? The Chinese can't even speak out against the idea of Xi Jinping running for a third term.
Progressives are calling for an end to free speech because they believe that speech itself can be a form of violence, even if it doesn't directly or even implicitly call for tha
Progressives are not calling to end free speech (Score:5, Insightful)
You're not arguing in good faith. Calls to violence are rarely direct and you know it. Trump did, but only occasionally. Most of the time even he had plausible deniability. That doesn't make the victims any less dead.
Re: Progressives are not calling to end free speec (Score:2)
Then explain to me why progressives want hate speech laws? Why the hell do they want to deplatform Joe Rogan? Sure, he speaks against vaccines, which is annoying, but other than that he's basically harmless. Why do they want to ban anybody who doesn't agree with them from speaking at public universities?
Re: Entitled Twits (Score:5, Insightful)
You are exactly wrong. There has never been a society where you could speak freely without consequences. Shunning, social ostracism, people kicking you out of their group for stupid shit you say, all of those things are FUNDAMENTAL to democracy. Because after all, you can't have Freedom of Association, which is also part of the constitution, without being free to dissasociate yourself from people who say stupid shit.
What idiot conservatives continually do, as you have done here, is conflate Freedom of Speech, (free from government interference), with Freedom of Speech (freedom from social consequences). You want to be able to speak freely without the government telling you what you can and cant say with being able to speak freely without members of the public (including property owners) telling you what you can't say.
Hilariously, you make my point, and contradict yourself, showing your hypocrisy. "So long as it's not a direct (and credible) call to violence, it shouldn't be banned."
Butbutbutbutbut...but... why stop there? Why is that your red line? That's not in the constitution. There's nothing in the constitution that says that people can't post direct calls for violence. And yet multiple courts have interpreted that to mean that there ARE LIMITS and FREEDOM OF SPEECH IS NOT ABSOLUTE.
Progressives are in no way calling for an end to freedom of speech. They are calling for stronger limitations. And even you admin in your abject hypocrisy that there are limits.
We just disagree on what those are.
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username checks out
Re: (Score:2)
You can't quite stop anyone from saying what they want on the internet, so "banning" things is just sweeping the problem under the rug and hopping it go away instead of growing up unchallenged.
So the best you can actually do is to analyze what is being said by those individuals and come up with effective counters. no one is hopefully born a neo nazi, so it's obvious they have ways to convince normal people into becoming neo nazis themselves, and by being able to look at it, you can come up with ways to show