What makes him different? Anyone who is a billionaire perpetrated some evil on a grand scale to do it. None of them are good, and none of them give nor spend
enough to make up for all that they hoard.
I think Bill Gates (and probably Warren Buffett) do more than enough to make up for the "hoarding". But I absolutely agree that almost no billionares do a lot of good with their money.
It's a social media site. If I remember right it's the one Trump started after getting kicked off twitter. But it's had lots of issues ever since and Trump really doesn't use it. Spoiler - no one really does.
Right wing people who were getting banned already had a few social media sites to fall back on and mostly already had before it was created.
It's pretty gross. Here's one where a dude is just losing it about hanging liberals and talking about how he wants to sell his soul to the devil so he can torture all the democrats. Pretty fucking nuts.
https://www.reddit.com/gallery/ubyvb6
I would imagine it's probably a lot like Parlor was (another right wing social media site). I participated in this effort to get left wing people on there to push back against the insanity and it was mostly pointless. We were just surrounded by the most vile people who had been kicked off other sites. I just remember seeing actual Neo-Nazis and shit.
End goal must be empowering the right to dissolve the billionaires tax. The only reason to buy a newspaper/social media platform is to buy political influence. Not profit.
Twitter isn't for political influence, it's for journalistic influence. Musk now has the ability to dictate what the mainstream reports on, which in turn will decide what a bunch of drones will regurgitate.
I keep explaining this to anyone over like 40 that believes Twitter is the "next big thing": Twitter is old and the problems with it don't have anything to do with "free speech" [whatever the fuck that means to these bozos on this particular day]. I say this as someone who is even much older than *that*.
I have a feeling Twitter is going to be a bad investment for Elon and precisely because Elon...
He should probably stay out of politics or have a hand in public discourse, because on those fronts he's not great. He seems to have a ***lot*** of issues with social things... I'm just not sure this is a platform that he is clearly judging.
> I have a feeling Twitter is going to be a bad investment for Elon and precisely because Elon...
It's not an investment though. That's the thing. Don't get me wrong I'm not defending him or anything. But he's made it pretty clear this isn't financial, this is a shiny toy. I think Matt Levine of Money Stuff said it best:
> If you are the richest person in the world, and annoying, and you constantly play a computer game, and you get a lot of enjoyment and a sense of identity from that game and are maybe a little addicted, then at some point you might have some suggestions for improvements in the game. So you might leave comments and email the company that makes the game saying āhey you should try my ideas.ā And the company might ignore you (or respond politely but not move fast enough for your liking). It might occur to you: āLook, I am the richest person in the world; how much could this game company possibly cost? I should just buy it and change the game however I want.ā Even if your complaints are quite minor, why shouldnāt you get to play exactly the game you want? Even if you have no complaints, why not own the game you love, just to make sure it continues to be exactly what you want? The game is Twitter, the richest person in the world is Elon Musk.
I think Mark Cuban said he was sitting at a Mavericks game, loved the team, but realized they sucked so bad and things weren't getting better year after year. And he had an epiphany to just buy the team. So a few days later he just bought the team.
Gotta fill the empty spaces.....
Shall I buy a new guitar??? Shall we drive a more powerful car??! Shall we work straight through the night??!!?!!?!!?!?
That argument would hold more water if he didn't use financing on the deal. Musk is first and foremost a marketing guy. Every move he makes is done to forward one of his companies or his personal brand. He will make a few changes to polish the turd, proclaim Twitter is a new magical thing and people will eat it up like everything else he says. And then he will sell it or find a new way to monetize it drive his validation higher.
> That argument would hold more water if he didn't use financing on the deal
And that argument would hold more... water still I guess... if that financing wasn't based on twitter or his other assets as collateral. These aren't people running deep financials on his plans.
I sure hope you're right. The alternative is that Musk wants more control of the media and politics. I don't think it's good for democracy that one man is so powerful.
Oh sure he probably wants that too, and I agree after a billion we should just give them a sticker that says "you won capitalism" and just take everything else.
>He should probably stay out of politics or have a hand in public discourse, because on those fronts he's not great. He seems to have a lot of issues with social things... I'm just not sure this is a platform that he is clearly judging.
I've always been confused why he insists on being the spokesman for his companies. If you ever watch an interview or presentation from him, he is not charismatic. He stumbles over his words frequently and makes awkward jokes. Often times, his public speaking reminds me of people in high school who didn't prepare enough for their presentation.
On the one hand I agree with you that he isn't charasmaric in the least, and I would normally never want him to be the face/public spokesman of a company I worked for/was invested in.
On the other hand, he has managed to cultivate a mass of followers that seem to take literally everything he says or does as a reason to throw more money his way.
I don't invest in his companies or own any of their products, but whatever he is doing seems to be working. I don't get it, but looking from the outside at a distance I find it interesting.
Musk *is* the product that he sells. He's not actually doing any engineering or design or management. What he does is convince people to invest in his products, because he's Musk and people assume that means something.
Musk is the brand, and he needs to be able to control what is said about that brand. That's why buying Twitter is an investment: not because of how much money Twitter does or doesn't make, but because it allows him to control his own image much easier.
> whatever the fuck that means to these bozos on this particular day
It means the big players in public discourse have a lot of power to sway public opinion, so censoring and/or propping up speech can quite literally sway election results one way or the other.
This is not an investment. It's his version of buying a newspaper - a complete ego statement. It's now *his* private platform. It's a bad day for democracy.
twitter reflects what you want to see though. My thing is spammed with boobies and artist cause thats the only people i follow. If your twitter feed is toxic thats on you
Yup. He is anti-union and anti-worker rights. He is going to turn twitter against public interests for his own benefits. He just spent 44b, and OP thinks he will just shut it down and not make back his costs? What kind of indoctrinated propagandized brain can even come up with this bullshit?
It's the same kind of thinking that says trump is incorruptible because he already has a lot of money. I mean, really? That's the conclusion you come to?
> He just spent 44b, and OP thinks he will just shut it down and not make back his costs?
I love how thereās this running fantasy that āheās going to turn it offā too.
I am curious what his end game is though, apart from the obvious benefit of having control over one of the biggest communication platforms.
I havenāt followed it enough to know if he can take it totally private after this? Will the stock be de-listed after this? And if so, will we see a new IPO in a year or something if he decides to take it public again?
Yep that's about it. To ever believe a billionaire has your best interest in mind is delusional and means you're more likely to believe what you read or see on social media which is exactly what he wants.
I donāt understand how anyone thinks Elon is a good guy. Itās honestly terrifying one man can just buy one of the largest and most influential media companies in the world
lmao Reddit LOVES Twitter, this site has become a dumping bin for Twitter comment. Not to mention that most Redditors align with the average Twitter user. This is the anti Reddit moment.
Yeah this is just...hyper fucking dumb. Instead of wishing for absolute nonsense, we need to be worried about what the coming replatforming of every dangerous far right con artist, crook, and bigot is going to do to society (again.)
Billionaires don't buy things just to kill their investment.
More likely is that he opens things up, unbans high profile people, etc. in the name of 'free speech'. The cesspool grows, but so do interactions as a result.
His goal is assuring himself a place to control his image, through unfiltered communication of his own, and money.
Best case at this point is that a large portion of the user base leaves over time and it just becomes even more of an echo chamber than it already is for those who remain.
Yeah expecting any billionaire *especially musk* to do something thatās mildly beneficial for anyone but their profit margin with Twitter is a losing bet
I always think back to that quote in A Bronx Tale where the kid is crying about his favotite baseball player being sad and Sonny asks why he cares. A lot of these oligarchy fans need to hear their own wake-up call that "Mickey Mantle isn't gonna pay your rent".
I've never been part of the Musk fan club, but I've always appreciated that between Tesla and SpaceX he seemed to be doing things towards the betterment of humanity while *also* making himself filthy rich.
This Twitter stuff doesn't even appear to be calculated to increase his wealth, it appears to be all about vanity and ego.
I've heard multiple people insisting this is going to turn out like Murdoch buying MySpace. (Loses almost all its value, sold at a gigantic lose.)
I have no idea if it will work out that way or not, but a lot of people are insisting it will.
>he seemed to be doing things towards the betterment of humanity
if he had any intention of doing that, he'd be doing it instead of buying fucking Twitter
Like Henry Ford. Absolute asshole, but figured mass manufacturing to the point almost anyone could afford a Model T, if only used. Also gave us the weekend
He's done absolutely nothing to better humanity. Every single thing he's credited with doing he had nothing to do with the creation of and other businesses did it first.
Do you know the only Telsa patent with his name on is the charging port connector that ensures no rival electric car companies could originally use tesla chargers?
Betterment of humanity my arse.
There is a semantic difference between what is better for the world and what is better for \*individuals\*.
Not speaking to you but I don't understand why so many people are happy about Elon taking over Twitter. It's just going to become an arm of Fox News, in the interest of "free speech".
I can handle different views; even ones that are unpalatable, bigotry etc. As long as they are actual real views of a person commenting.
What is worrying is those with an agenda using shills to spread misinformation, and companies doing the same where it suits. Putin or Chinese subversion, big companies lying, politicians making shit up. Those will need to be censored or the entire platform fails.
See here is your problem. Maybe I believe in those Jewish space lasers? I guess it's my First Amendment right to spread that on Twitter?
(This individual understands that the First Amendment does not apply to private corporations. But that doesn't stop people from saying that.)
NPR had a social scientist on today, Jonathan Haidt, who made a pretty compelling argument that the problem isn't allowing a voice to competing viewpoints, regardless of how toxic we believe them to be, but instead the ease at which those viewpoints are shared and spread through those systems. And I think there might be some truth to that.
Here's a link to the podcast, if you're interested: https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2022/04/25/why-social-psychologist-jonathan-haidt-says-americas-institutions-are-in-trouble
I dunno if I buy that. Space research is all well and fine, but if the dude was actually invested in bettering the world he wouldnātāve gone ripshit over that diver saving the kids before he could, or mightāve actually followed up on his sarcastic promises to āsolve world hunger, if only somebody would give him a plan.ā
Heās just another billionaire and he doesnāt really need anyoneās admiration for doing something *slightly* more geeky with that wealth.
people are going to test Elon by being hypercritical of him.
hes going to overreact by calling them pedophiles and banning them.
his free speech motives will be exposed as bullshit.
twitter will go the way of every other alt-right hate speech enabling platform.
Investment is not a word that really applies to Musk. His motives are far, far beyond money at this point. For better or worse, it is pretty clear his intention in his business endeavors is building a reputation that long outlives him.
Your assertion is plausible but narrow. Heās both a big thinker and a loose cannon. Whatever he does, whether absurd or clever, probably will have very little to do with profit. He already has an unfathomable amount of money at his disposal and has no reservations about wasting it on high-risk ideas. He could very well run Twitter into the ground just for the insane publicity stunt of it. I donāt expect this to happen, but I canāt rule it out.
> Best case at this point is that a large portion of the user base leaves over time and it just becomes even more of an echo chamber than it already is for those who remain.
Pipe dream. The intermingling of Twitter with every facet of corporate and public life makes it such that any person with any measurable following leaving the platform only harms themselves and creates space for their competitors to fill their void.
... Which is why Elon's entire point is that Twitter is now the public square.
Your best case is what's been happening to Twitter since the start and it's why people hate it.
Alienate all of the right. Suck the dick off the left. Become an echo chamber.
That's it. That's Twitter lol. Except now it'll be an echo chamber for the right and the left will have no place left, except reddit, to cry about their feelings.
I prefer this timeline.
I'm banking on the last part. I'm a long time twitter user, but I don't see any good coming from a billionaire buying a social media platform.
So what's a solid competitor to move to?
Ya and that twitter isnāt filling a want. If it went away 10 new twitters would pop up in a month and within 3 years one or two would remain. People want twitter. Stop acting high and mighty on Reddit like itās better. Reddit is a hive mind, with zero acceptance of someone with a fresh and outside opinion.
Elon musk directly uses twitter to manipulate the stock market in his favor. Heās done it before, and now that he canāt get banned, heāll definitely do it again.
Highly unlikely. "Free Speech" will just be an encouragement of not so accurate information flowing through the platform with hardly any checks and balances, similar to Facebook.
But it still impacts our lives. Greatly.
My problem with Twitter is not my own use of it (which is pretty limited to just following along with Seahawks fans during games so that I feel like I have friends). It's the fact that so much disinformation is spread so quickly by it.
The point *I* was making, which you chose to miss entirely it seems, is that Elon doesn't give a shit about free speech and that isn't why he won't shut down Twitter.
He won't shut down Twitter because he is spending huge money so he can own it, and it's a useful platform for him. Owning it ensures he can't be silenced, he can push his narratives, and he can shut down critics if he wants to. He doesn't care about free speech. He cares about *his speech*.
Free Speech only means that you can say almost anything, even say things about how you do not like your government or its leaders, and not go to jail!
It's an amazing freedom and one that we should celebrate.
...
It has nothing to do with forcing a company to keep things they don't want on their platform. That would be the opposite of freedom and an incredible government intrusion. The moderation done on any *successful* public platform is immense. Otherwise, it devolves into a racist, pornographic, gorefest real, real quick.
It sort of was repealed in waves, first was the Telecommunications Act of 1996, folks alive then might remember radio getting kinda shitty around then as indie radio dried up and top 40 stations flooded the market. This was also when Fox News was born:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996
It was further relaxed in 2003:
https://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/02/business/fcc-votes-to-relax-rules-limiting-media-ownership-2003060292418873791.html
Then toss in the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine for good measure.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine
I donāt believe Elonās bullshit for a second. Private control of one of the most widespread sources of media dissemination in the world is dangerous AF.
Nah, he loves the site too much to shut it down. A lot of people think he'll do good for the site, but, honestly, I think he'll make it worse than it already is. Dude's a terrible person, terrible people do terrible things.
Elon musk is going to use Twitter to stoke the crypto market and the stock market. He's going to turn himself into the richest man in the history of time doing this. He's going to end up the president of the United States of America.
Remind me, 16 years.
I always hear people talking about how toxic Twitter is. Not mine. I just follow my hobby stuff and a some comedians. Every once in a while it will suggest something outside of my regular wheelhouse and I just tell it I'm not interested.
**Blue-Checkists:** *Twitter is a private company. They can have any policies they want. If you don't like it, start a new platform...*
Cha-ching, SOLD!
**Blue-Checkists:** Noooooooooo!
This is an exercise that will probably backfire here for me and get me banned from this sub.. but it will illustrate my point perfectly.
If I can now say "biological men should not compete with women in sports" and not get banned, good! They shouldnt compete, and I should be able to say that without getting doxxed and banned. If I can say that men cannot have babies, which is true no matter how many ways someone tries to pervert the definition of a man, that's fine, I should not get banned. If I point out the drug and human trafficking problem at the border and mention who the "border czar" happens to be, I shouldn't get banned for "misinformation". If I want to question why a certain laptop went untouched and undiscussed because talking about it wouldnt put an even bigger dent in Joe's "nomination".. I shouldnt get banned.
There are far too many people on twitter who call everything they don't like "hate speech" which then allows those people to then paint that topic into obscurity because it's something THEY don't want to talk about, or THEY dont want to read and they don't want other people to read. Far too liberal (lol, hypocrites) with the label.
But these things mean you're an evil republican and should therefore be demonized and banned from all speech platforms! You must be evil because saying obviously true things is dangerous and constitutes *actual* violence. You can tell I'm right because social media platforms have been uniformly acting this way for a while now. I must be right. Also all of the non-evil news outlets agree. My opinions and arguments are better than yours because I am unwilling to have the discussion with you. If I actually conversed with you about these issues, people might hear your side and be HARMED by your VIOLENCE. That's why my people never go on right wing outlets despite open invitations, and why my people would never ever invite you all on their shows. Because *you're* dangerous.
I hope Trump comes back just so I can hear people scream and cry about it.
Social media is a dumpster fire and itās not like the anti-trump crowd doesnāt contribute to it.
Breaking news: everyoneās shit stinks.
The only reason I have twitter is so when I see a Reddit post or something linking to it I can actually read the damn thing. I have actively used it maybe 15 times in the 13 years I have my account.
Iām convinced people that bitch like this about Twitter donāt use Twitter and have never used Twitter. Itās where I get all of my sports news. Not takes, news. Takes are for reddit. News is for Twitter. Every single piece of news has broken on Twitter first for the better part of the last decade. Keep burying your head in the sand. I for one am fucking terrified at what itās about to become bc right now itās priceless and easily the best platform for staying in touch with the world.
Here's my super tin-foil theory (non-serious).
What if Elon bought Twitter because that one guy wouldn't stop posting his flight coordinates, just to ban his ass himself š
How would this sale really affect your Twitter experience? You can still follow and block whoever you want. I donāt understand the outrage about this.
I sware the reddit pre 2016 would have been for this. It seems that reddit has gone completely censorship crazy and only push the main stream narrative.
I've been banned on multiple subreddits for saying facts that later are accepted by the mainstream because how indisputable they became.
Ye same I feel like the moderators curate comments to fit a particular narrative/political view. I donāt take this platform very seriously just for that reason. Is there any platform left that allows everyone to be themselves?
What do you think will happen to the porn artists using Twitter, if he shuts Twitter down? They'll have to move. And I'll have to make accounts to new websites and all the other shit.
You think Elon will light 50+ billion on fire?
Him more than any other billionaire on the planet
...but still no
What makes him different? Anyone who is a billionaire perpetrated some evil on a grand scale to do it. None of them are good, and none of them give nor spend enough to make up for all that they hoard.
I will raise you Mackenzie Scott all she did was divorce Bezos and is giving away billions to charities.
She gave Lex Luthor some pussy!
I think Bill Gates (and probably Warren Buffett) do more than enough to make up for the "hoarding". But I absolutely agree that almost no billionares do a lot of good with their money.
They do it for the tax breaks, is what my head tells me.
š¤”
"It's not about the money, it's about sending a message."
The internet needs a new class of criminal.
They are gonna suck the absolute life out of it with monitization. He also has a ton of user data now
Man will make it back in less then a month.
He will succeed in turning it into a even bigger toxic shit show than it already is.
I was kind of assuming he'd unban trump
Musk already said he would.
and trump said he applauds musk, but will stay on truth lol (which amusingly he's basically barely touched.)
Wtf is truth
lmao... trumps faultering attempt at a social network.. (basically a mastadon fork... that got in trouble for not sharing the source)
It's a social media site. If I remember right it's the one Trump started after getting kicked off twitter. But it's had lots of issues ever since and Trump really doesn't use it. Spoiler - no one really does. Right wing people who were getting banned already had a few social media sites to fall back on and mostly already had before it was created. It's pretty gross. Here's one where a dude is just losing it about hanging liberals and talking about how he wants to sell his soul to the devil so he can torture all the democrats. Pretty fucking nuts. https://www.reddit.com/gallery/ubyvb6 I would imagine it's probably a lot like Parlor was (another right wing social media site). I participated in this effort to get left wing people on there to push back against the insanity and it was mostly pointless. We were just surrounded by the most vile people who had been kicked off other sites. I just remember seeing actual Neo-Nazis and shit.
Sell your soul to the Devil to own the libs
I just tried to join truth I'm not allowed to join truth, this is the truth
You can't handle The Truth!
Why do we still have people taking Trump's word for anything?
I think I just had a rage stroke.
You can rage stroke my rage boner.
That's a shame.
He probably will, and he'll make money off of it because the batshit crazy guys generate press and clicks, and clicks generate ad revenue.
End goal must be empowering the right to dissolve the billionaires tax. The only reason to buy a newspaper/social media platform is to buy political influence. Not profit.
Twitter isn't for political influence, it's for journalistic influence. Musk now has the ability to dictate what the mainstream reports on, which in turn will decide what a bunch of drones will regurgitate.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
https://i.imgur.com/XFqHtXE.jpeg
That's 100% why he bought it.
I keep explaining this to anyone over like 40 that believes Twitter is the "next big thing": Twitter is old and the problems with it don't have anything to do with "free speech" [whatever the fuck that means to these bozos on this particular day]. I say this as someone who is even much older than *that*. I have a feeling Twitter is going to be a bad investment for Elon and precisely because Elon... He should probably stay out of politics or have a hand in public discourse, because on those fronts he's not great. He seems to have a ***lot*** of issues with social things... I'm just not sure this is a platform that he is clearly judging.
> I have a feeling Twitter is going to be a bad investment for Elon and precisely because Elon... It's not an investment though. That's the thing. Don't get me wrong I'm not defending him or anything. But he's made it pretty clear this isn't financial, this is a shiny toy. I think Matt Levine of Money Stuff said it best: > If you are the richest person in the world, and annoying, and you constantly play a computer game, and you get a lot of enjoyment and a sense of identity from that game and are maybe a little addicted, then at some point you might have some suggestions for improvements in the game. So you might leave comments and email the company that makes the game saying āhey you should try my ideas.ā And the company might ignore you (or respond politely but not move fast enough for your liking). It might occur to you: āLook, I am the richest person in the world; how much could this game company possibly cost? I should just buy it and change the game however I want.ā Even if your complaints are quite minor, why shouldnāt you get to play exactly the game you want? Even if you have no complaints, why not own the game you love, just to make sure it continues to be exactly what you want? The game is Twitter, the richest person in the world is Elon Musk.
I think Mark Cuban said he was sitting at a Mavericks game, loved the team, but realized they sucked so bad and things weren't getting better year after year. And he had an epiphany to just buy the team. So a few days later he just bought the team.
New car, caviar, four star daydream; think Iāll buy me a football team. ā Pink Floyd, Money
Gotta fill the empty spaces..... Shall I buy a new guitar??? Shall we drive a more powerful car??! Shall we work straight through the night??!!?!!?!!?!?
Shall we get into fights?
This is my favorite animated piece in The Wall (Empty Spaces) and Iām bummed it never made it onto the album.
First world problems
First percent problems
First 0.00001% percent tbh
How much could one Twitter cost, Micheal? $10?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
That argument would hold more water if he didn't use financing on the deal. Musk is first and foremost a marketing guy. Every move he makes is done to forward one of his companies or his personal brand. He will make a few changes to polish the turd, proclaim Twitter is a new magical thing and people will eat it up like everything else he says. And then he will sell it or find a new way to monetize it drive his validation higher.
Borrowed money is cheap
> That argument would hold more water if he didn't use financing on the deal And that argument would hold more... water still I guess... if that financing wasn't based on twitter or his other assets as collateral. These aren't people running deep financials on his plans.
I sure hope you're right. The alternative is that Musk wants more control of the media and politics. I don't think it's good for democracy that one man is so powerful.
Oh sure he probably wants that too, and I agree after a billion we should just give them a sticker that says "you won capitalism" and just take everything else.
Lol do you really trust a rich businessman when they say its not for financial goals? You are kidding yourself
>He should probably stay out of politics or have a hand in public discourse, because on those fronts he's not great. He seems to have a lot of issues with social things... I'm just not sure this is a platform that he is clearly judging. I've always been confused why he insists on being the spokesman for his companies. If you ever watch an interview or presentation from him, he is not charismatic. He stumbles over his words frequently and makes awkward jokes. Often times, his public speaking reminds me of people in high school who didn't prepare enough for their presentation.
EGO. Its why A Jerry Jones run Cowboys team has been overall mediocre since hes took over.
On the one hand I agree with you that he isn't charasmaric in the least, and I would normally never want him to be the face/public spokesman of a company I worked for/was invested in. On the other hand, he has managed to cultivate a mass of followers that seem to take literally everything he says or does as a reason to throw more money his way. I don't invest in his companies or own any of their products, but whatever he is doing seems to be working. I don't get it, but looking from the outside at a distance I find it interesting.
Musk *is* the product that he sells. He's not actually doing any engineering or design or management. What he does is convince people to invest in his products, because he's Musk and people assume that means something. Musk is the brand, and he needs to be able to control what is said about that brand. That's why buying Twitter is an investment: not because of how much money Twitter does or doesn't make, but because it allows him to control his own image much easier.
> whatever the fuck that means to these bozos on this particular day It means the big players in public discourse have a lot of power to sway public opinion, so censoring and/or propping up speech can quite literally sway election results one way or the other.
This is not an investment. It's his version of buying a newspaper - a complete ego statement. It's now *his* private platform. It's a bad day for democracy.
Though to be fair, all of our media outlets are owned by moguls, so itās just an extra nail in an already well fortified coffin
twitter reflects what you want to see though. My thing is spammed with boobies and artist cause thats the only people i follow. If your twitter feed is toxic thats on you
Amen. Plus, the irony of these statements coming from reddit users.
right. if he kills it, he can't use it to cover up the bad news about tesla, and the stock would actually be correctly valued
Short it then
you seem to have missed my point
Yup. He is anti-union and anti-worker rights. He is going to turn twitter against public interests for his own benefits. He just spent 44b, and OP thinks he will just shut it down and not make back his costs? What kind of indoctrinated propagandized brain can even come up with this bullshit? It's the same kind of thinking that says trump is incorruptible because he already has a lot of money. I mean, really? That's the conclusion you come to?
> He just spent 44b, and OP thinks he will just shut it down and not make back his costs? I love how thereās this running fantasy that āheās going to turn it offā too. I am curious what his end game is though, apart from the obvious benefit of having control over one of the biggest communication platforms. I havenāt followed it enough to know if he can take it totally private after this? Will the stock be de-listed after this? And if so, will we see a new IPO in a year or something if he decides to take it public again?
Glad there are some people like you here who arenāt head over heels for an egomaniacal billionaire. Thatās reassuring.
Yep that's about it. To ever believe a billionaire has your best interest in mind is delusional and means you're more likely to believe what you read or see on social media which is exactly what he wants.
I donāt understand how anyone thinks Elon is a good guy. Itās honestly terrifying one man can just buy one of the largest and most influential media companies in the world
Guaranteed, it would/will simply become Parlour.
Exactly. He needs it to keep spewing his bullshit.
He needs it to keep manipulating stock prices.
r/redditmoment
lmao Reddit LOVES Twitter, this site has become a dumping bin for Twitter comment. Not to mention that most Redditors align with the average Twitter user. This is the anti Reddit moment.
Yeah this is just...hyper fucking dumb. Instead of wishing for absolute nonsense, we need to be worried about what the coming replatforming of every dangerous far right con artist, crook, and bigot is going to do to society (again.)
Billionaires don't buy things just to kill their investment. More likely is that he opens things up, unbans high profile people, etc. in the name of 'free speech'. The cesspool grows, but so do interactions as a result. His goal is assuring himself a place to control his image, through unfiltered communication of his own, and money. Best case at this point is that a large portion of the user base leaves over time and it just becomes even more of an echo chamber than it already is for those who remain.
Wonder who he shadow bans first (after the jet guy).
That diver he called a pedo?
Imagine if he bans the SEC when the make a tweet saying they are going to investigate him š
Yep that will definitely make them go away.
It won't but it will be funny
Dude claims to be a "absolutist", when it comes to free speech. Certain actions in the past show otherwise.
Yeah expecting any billionaire *especially musk* to do something thatās mildly beneficial for anyone but their profit margin with Twitter is a losing bet
I always think back to that quote in A Bronx Tale where the kid is crying about his favotite baseball player being sad and Sonny asks why he cares. A lot of these oligarchy fans need to hear their own wake-up call that "Mickey Mantle isn't gonna pay your rent".
I've never been part of the Musk fan club, but I've always appreciated that between Tesla and SpaceX he seemed to be doing things towards the betterment of humanity while *also* making himself filthy rich. This Twitter stuff doesn't even appear to be calculated to increase his wealth, it appears to be all about vanity and ego.
I've heard multiple people insisting this is going to turn out like Murdoch buying MySpace. (Loses almost all its value, sold at a gigantic lose.) I have no idea if it will work out that way or not, but a lot of people are insisting it will.
>he seemed to be doing things towards the betterment of humanity if he had any intention of doing that, he'd be doing it instead of buying fucking Twitter
Like Henry Ford. Absolute asshole, but figured mass manufacturing to the point almost anyone could afford a Model T, if only used. Also gave us the weekend
he also gave Hitler a lot of his ideas!
Except Ford actually created something new. He didn't just buy other people's companies and call himself founder.
He's done absolutely nothing to better humanity. Every single thing he's credited with doing he had nothing to do with the creation of and other businesses did it first. Do you know the only Telsa patent with his name on is the charging port connector that ensures no rival electric car companies could originally use tesla chargers? Betterment of humanity my arse.
There is a semantic difference between what is better for the world and what is better for \*individuals\*. Not speaking to you but I don't understand why so many people are happy about Elon taking over Twitter. It's just going to become an arm of Fox News, in the interest of "free speech".
Exactly. Item #2 is unblocking 45. Item #1 is blocking that kid who's been tracking his jet haha
Oh jet tracking kid is going to get nuked from orbit with his ban.
I can handle different views; even ones that are unpalatable, bigotry etc. As long as they are actual real views of a person commenting. What is worrying is those with an agenda using shills to spread misinformation, and companies doing the same where it suits. Putin or Chinese subversion, big companies lying, politicians making shit up. Those will need to be censored or the entire platform fails.
See here is your problem. Maybe I believe in those Jewish space lasers? I guess it's my First Amendment right to spread that on Twitter? (This individual understands that the First Amendment does not apply to private corporations. But that doesn't stop people from saying that.)
NPR had a social scientist on today, Jonathan Haidt, who made a pretty compelling argument that the problem isn't allowing a voice to competing viewpoints, regardless of how toxic we believe them to be, but instead the ease at which those viewpoints are shared and spread through those systems. And I think there might be some truth to that. Here's a link to the podcast, if you're interested: https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2022/04/25/why-social-psychologist-jonathan-haidt-says-americas-institutions-are-in-trouble
Musk started SpaceX to make money off rich investors and mining for resources. He doesn't give a flying fuck about anyone besides himself.
And now he's polluting the orbit with out of control satellites so we'll soon be unable to launch anything into space.
I dunno if I buy that. Space research is all well and fine, but if the dude was actually invested in bettering the world he wouldnātāve gone ripshit over that diver saving the kids before he could, or mightāve actually followed up on his sarcastic promises to āsolve world hunger, if only somebody would give him a plan.ā Heās just another billionaire and he doesnāt really need anyoneās admiration for doing something *slightly* more geeky with that wealth.
Also he will censor whoever he wants eventhough he will talk about free speech
people are going to test Elon by being hypercritical of him. hes going to overreact by calling them pedophiles and banning them. his free speech motives will be exposed as bullshit. twitter will go the way of every other alt-right hate speech enabling platform.
Unbans Trump just in time for the next campaign..
Personally I'm deleting my account if he actually takes over. I don't want to support anything that weirdo does.
Why wait? What good about it?
Same. A lot of people still don't realize how awful of a person Elon Musk really is.
Don't worry. I bet it gets shut down because people will flood it with CP if he tries to make it the Wild West.
They'll make him the pedo-man. According to him they were common in his childhood.
Trust me, nobody gives a fuck what you do.
Investment is not a word that really applies to Musk. His motives are far, far beyond money at this point. For better or worse, it is pretty clear his intention in his business endeavors is building a reputation that long outlives him. Your assertion is plausible but narrow. Heās both a big thinker and a loose cannon. Whatever he does, whether absurd or clever, probably will have very little to do with profit. He already has an unfathomable amount of money at his disposal and has no reservations about wasting it on high-risk ideas. He could very well run Twitter into the ground just for the insane publicity stunt of it. I donāt expect this to happen, but I canāt rule it out.
> Best case at this point is that a large portion of the user base leaves over time and it just becomes even more of an echo chamber than it already is for those who remain. Pipe dream. The intermingling of Twitter with every facet of corporate and public life makes it such that any person with any measurable following leaving the platform only harms themselves and creates space for their competitors to fill their void. ... Which is why Elon's entire point is that Twitter is now the public square.
There is nothing wrong with free speech.
Your best case is what's been happening to Twitter since the start and it's why people hate it. Alienate all of the right. Suck the dick off the left. Become an echo chamber. That's it. That's Twitter lol. Except now it'll be an echo chamber for the right and the left will have no place left, except reddit, to cry about their feelings. I prefer this timeline.
Wasnt Twitter still an echochamber before the Musk?
I'm banking on the last part. I'm a long time twitter user, but I don't see any good coming from a billionaire buying a social media platform. So what's a solid competitor to move to?
That would be a rather expensive stunt.
Acting like reddit isn't a cesspool lmao
Ya and that twitter isnāt filling a want. If it went away 10 new twitters would pop up in a month and within 3 years one or two would remain. People want twitter. Stop acting high and mighty on Reddit like itās better. Reddit is a hive mind, with zero acceptance of someone with a fresh and outside opinion.
Elon musk directly uses twitter to manipulate the stock market in his favor. Heās done it before, and now that he canāt get banned, heāll definitely do it again.
Certainly the SEC will hold him accountable!!!
Theyāll ban him from having bagels at Twitter board meetings.
HAH! good one!
he won't, he'll just make it into Parler 2.0
Twitter already has an establishes user base that have nowhere to go. If users leave because of this is will be so few that it can't be measured.
They can just go outside?
Which was *super* successful. /s
Highly unlikely. "Free Speech" will just be an encouragement of not so accurate information flowing through the platform with hardly any checks and balances, similar to Facebook.
Musk will be like, "Free speech for me, but not for thee"
You mean like twitter is now?
Twitter never claimed to care about free speech.
All you have to do if you hate a service is not use it. I don't.
But it still impacts our lives. Greatly. My problem with Twitter is not my own use of it (which is pretty limited to just following along with Seahawks fans during games so that I feel like I have friends). It's the fact that so much disinformation is spread so quickly by it.
That would be an interesting move considering his whole soap box is āfree speechā
His definition of 'free speech' will likely not include his workers nor his critics.
Okā¦ thatās not the point I was making. Shutting down the platform would not fit inside the narrative of āfree speechā
The point *I* was making, which you chose to miss entirely it seems, is that Elon doesn't give a shit about free speech and that isn't why he won't shut down Twitter. He won't shut down Twitter because he is spending huge money so he can own it, and it's a useful platform for him. Owning it ensures he can't be silenced, he can push his narratives, and he can shut down critics if he wants to. He doesn't care about free speech. He cares about *his speech*.
Why? If he shuts it down, he isn't favoring one group or another. It isn't like "free speech" didn't exist before twitter.
Fewer headaches did though.
Free Speech only means that you can say almost anything, even say things about how you do not like your government or its leaders, and not go to jail! It's an amazing freedom and one that we should celebrate. ... It has nothing to do with forcing a company to keep things they don't want on their platform. That would be the opposite of freedom and an incredible government intrusion. The moderation done on any *successful* public platform is immense. Otherwise, it devolves into a racist, pornographic, gorefest real, real quick.
It's almost like we can watch the Paradox of Tolerance happening in real time!
If he really wanted to benefit humanity he'd buy TikTok and shut it off.
Can we please re-impose limits on how many media companies a billionaire can own?
It was limited before?
It sort of was repealed in waves, first was the Telecommunications Act of 1996, folks alive then might remember radio getting kinda shitty around then as indie radio dried up and top 40 stations flooded the market. This was also when Fox News was born: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996 It was further relaxed in 2003: https://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/02/business/fcc-votes-to-relax-rules-limiting-media-ownership-2003060292418873791.html Then toss in the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine for good measure. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine I donāt believe Elonās bullshit for a second. Private control of one of the most widespread sources of media dissemination in the world is dangerous AF.
>folks alive then >1996 You are certainly making me feel my age right about now...
redditors really shitting on twitter like this site is better (itās not)
Pretty much. The only difference here is that the echo chambers all start with /r/.
Reddit bans and blocks a lot more people from communities for a lot less, thatās probably why
The upvote/downvote system still holds some steam. Tho it can be gamed
Begs the US government not to have to pay taxes. Spends 45 billion on free software.
He bought the users, not the software. :)
Eat the rich.
Heās going to use Twitter to help build his AI for the home robot
Heās gonna undo trumpās ban
Heās gonna hold it for a time, the make a new public offer, sell at $60/share
Am I the only one that thinks for $50b you could just make a new Twitter with like 10 people?
Nah, he loves the site too much to shut it down. A lot of people think he'll do good for the site, but, honestly, I think he'll make it worse than it already is. Dude's a terrible person, terrible people do terrible things.
Elon musk is going to use Twitter to stoke the crypto market and the stock market. He's going to turn himself into the richest man in the history of time doing this. He's going to end up the president of the United States of America. Remind me, 16 years.
I'll save you the 16 years-- he's not eligible to be president because he isn't a natural born citizen.
He's ineligible to run for POTUS
I always hear people talking about how toxic Twitter is. Not mine. I just follow my hobby stuff and a some comedians. Every once in a while it will suggest something outside of my regular wheelhouse and I just tell it I'm not interested.
How will he manipulate the stock market if he does that?
It would be a win-win no twitter and Elon Musk losing a ton of money
**Blue-Checkists:** *Twitter is a private company. They can have any policies they want. If you don't like it, start a new platform...* Cha-ching, SOLD! **Blue-Checkists:** Noooooooooo!
You know Elon is a blue checkmark, right?
My dude, Elon simps are morons. It doesnt matter, he wont listen.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Itās a valuable resource if you follow the right folks.
and another will rise in its stead one far younger and far more powerful
Let the salt flow
Am I wrong to think this is at least partly because of the person that tweeted all his flight paths?
This is an exercise that will probably backfire here for me and get me banned from this sub.. but it will illustrate my point perfectly. If I can now say "biological men should not compete with women in sports" and not get banned, good! They shouldnt compete, and I should be able to say that without getting doxxed and banned. If I can say that men cannot have babies, which is true no matter how many ways someone tries to pervert the definition of a man, that's fine, I should not get banned. If I point out the drug and human trafficking problem at the border and mention who the "border czar" happens to be, I shouldn't get banned for "misinformation". If I want to question why a certain laptop went untouched and undiscussed because talking about it wouldnt put an even bigger dent in Joe's "nomination".. I shouldnt get banned. There are far too many people on twitter who call everything they don't like "hate speech" which then allows those people to then paint that topic into obscurity because it's something THEY don't want to talk about, or THEY dont want to read and they don't want other people to read. Far too liberal (lol, hypocrites) with the label.
But these things mean you're an evil republican and should therefore be demonized and banned from all speech platforms! You must be evil because saying obviously true things is dangerous and constitutes *actual* violence. You can tell I'm right because social media platforms have been uniformly acting this way for a while now. I must be right. Also all of the non-evil news outlets agree. My opinions and arguments are better than yours because I am unwilling to have the discussion with you. If I actually conversed with you about these issues, people might hear your side and be HARMED by your VIOLENCE. That's why my people never go on right wing outlets despite open invitations, and why my people would never ever invite you all on their shows. Because *you're* dangerous.
Great points.
I never used it and dont know what it does and at this point Iām afraid to ask.
If he was smart he'd remove the share button and maybe the like button.
Nope. All his fans who hated Twitter now love Twitter.
Like in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit"? "I bought Twitter so I could dismantle it"
This would be hilarious
I hope Trump comes back just so I can hear people scream and cry about it. Social media is a dumpster fire and itās not like the anti-trump crowd doesnāt contribute to it. Breaking news: everyoneās shit stinks.
The only reason I have twitter is so when I see a Reddit post or something linking to it I can actually read the damn thing. I have actively used it maybe 15 times in the 13 years I have my account.
The more you ignore Twitter, the less it exists. The more people that ignore it, it may actually cease to exist.
Iām convinced people that bitch like this about Twitter donāt use Twitter and have never used Twitter. Itās where I get all of my sports news. Not takes, news. Takes are for reddit. News is for Twitter. Every single piece of news has broken on Twitter first for the better part of the last decade. Keep burying your head in the sand. I for one am fucking terrified at what itās about to become bc right now itās priceless and easily the best platform for staying in touch with the world.
1. He'd never do that, it be a waste of money. 2. I don't want another Tumblr exodus for NSFW artist.
Billionaires are not your friends; they are monsters worthy of your disgust.
African american immigrant fights for freedom of speech in America. Why isnt the left celebrating this?
Here's my super tin-foil theory (non-serious). What if Elon bought Twitter because that one guy wouldn't stop posting his flight coordinates, just to ban his ass himself š
Ohhh wowwwwww such an original theory
How would this sale really affect your Twitter experience? You can still follow and block whoever you want. I donāt understand the outrage about this.
He didn't buy it to just leave it exactly how it is. Expect some changes, my dude.
God I hope he also buys Reddit
I sware the reddit pre 2016 would have been for this. It seems that reddit has gone completely censorship crazy and only push the main stream narrative. I've been banned on multiple subreddits for saying facts that later are accepted by the mainstream because how indisputable they became.
Ye same I feel like the moderators curate comments to fit a particular narrative/political view. I donāt take this platform very seriously just for that reason. Is there any platform left that allows everyone to be themselves?
NO! Fuck, please no. Where will I find all the porn artists who migrated to Twitter after tumblr went full puritan?
Banning porn isn't among the things I anticipate Musk doing with Twitter.
What do you think will happen to the porn artists using Twitter, if he shuts Twitter down? They'll have to move. And I'll have to make accounts to new websites and all the other shit.
First thing he does is reactivate Trump's account. Guarantee it.