Neither is this, but it interprets Musk’s actions as those of another Roy:
Technically not, since you can’t run an experiment. But you can look at the trends, both with Twitter and elsewhere. You can see that such “woke” policies as not allowing harassment, incitements to violence, deadly misinformation, and have helped, while allowing that stuff tends to result in companies going down.
Sure, Twitter isn’t actually woke. But my point is that there is money in pushing that direction. That’s why they do it. They don’t have a conscience. They just know that users will feel more comfortable without the worst of the worst.
Plus I was talking more generally. A lot of people just can’t seem to figure out that insisting on ignoring social progress can doom a company. Sure, most can’t sustain being on the bleeding edge. The vast majority are quite behind. But they still have to start moving the direction the populace is moving.
There’s a reason it’s not just Twitter who has these policies. There’s a reason it’s pretty much all large web platforms with user-generated content. This sort of thing is necessary for a thriving community that includes more than just one class of person.
Some questions.
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Is there any price at which Twitter might sell?
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Is there any merit to Musk’s claims?
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Musk’s biography by Vance suggests Musk displayed a fair amount of self-doubt until 2012. Did something change?
Not that this is your position, but It’s something of a misdirect by the Right to keep saying this is the issue. There are still tons of conservatives happily using Twitter, and there’s no one on the Left that pulls the same crap as Trump or Musk without consequence. They’re conflating prosecution with persecution.
The actual issue is the same as with guns - the philosophy that the greatest power (freedom) shouldn’t be encumbered by responsibility/laws/rules if you’re a white male, especially a rich one.
The debate in the financial sector is if they can find a way not to sell. The board has a legal fiduciary duty to look out for shareholder interests, and selling the company at a profit clearly is. They either have to prove that Musk will destroy the company (nigh impossible) or find someone to outbid him (also difficult).
For instance, names that might crop up are Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett. Lots of people would likely find Bezos as problematic as Musk, and he’d likely have issues raising the money. Buffett, despite pretty much thinking Musk is a charismatic flim-flam man and literally sitting on enough cash to buy the company twice over, would be totally uninterested in Twitter.
That’s ultimately up to the shareholders, I guess. I do not think left and right are equivalent, and do not know much about Twitter. But the idea of the left being unable to be obnoxious or intolerant is mistaken. What do these even mean in modern terms - is Putin really still left wing? Trump before his opportunism liked Canadian health care.
I’m not saying they aren’t. But people at either end of the spectrum manage to post within Twitter’s guidelines. You can post all you want about the pandemic being a hoax or conspiracy without advising people to drink bleach as a possible cure or other nonsense. Trump and other right-wingers weren’t banned for their politics, but for their steadfast refusal to acknowledge the rules applied to him. Rules put in place because Twitter, Facebook, and Google were the ones called up in front of Congress demanding they moderate harmful posts or they would remove Section 230, making them even more restrictive about content to avoid liability.
They just enacted a poison pill plan, which makes it more difficult/expensive for him to buy it & the stock is currently trading at $45.08, on a somewhat steady decline from peak a few days ago which means the street doesn’t necessarily think it’ll happen either.
Sometimes it is hard to tell if Musk is being serious. Or irreverent but which will become serious.
This article explains, but does not fully represent my personal views. He is more complex than portrayed.
I found this exchange very entertaining.
From February. Note this part:
Released in December 2020 as part of a software update, Boombox mode allows drivers to play sounds outside their cars. Instead of a normal car horn, it includes options like a goat bleating, ice cream truck music, applause, and fart sounds.
Only a troll like Elon Musk would include that in his cars.
Does this article correctly describe Twitter?
It spends precious little time describing it at all. It just discusses some of the history of the platform and some of the nonsense surrounding it, namedropping Musk and Trump. I agree with the point that the public square isn’t what the internet or Twitter or anything else online is. How can you have a public square with several billion mostly anonymous people in it?
Maybe you should spend time on Twitter forming an opinion rather than gather The Atlantic’s opinion.
I don’t want to spend time on Twitter. My question was not to describe the experience as such. More along the historical lines about if it was first broadly viewed as a utopian agora, was then used as a recruitment tool for terrorists and conspiracy theorists, increasing harassment led to more regulation which some considered heavy handed and others insufficient, more government interest, more focus on free speech… yada yada.
If I went on Twitter now, it would not necessarily tell me what it was. Since these trends have occurred on other platforms, it seems there is little cause to doubt them.
Let’s see – we have one corporation (Twitter) that has one set of rules and another (Truth Social) that has another. What are the results?
So, yes, the Islamic State had a Twitter account. It had a bunch of social media accounts. Asked and answered?
Sure.
Elon Musk: Thinks he’s real-life Tony Stark, but is more like real-life Ted Faro.
See, this is a great example the idiotic memes that people just repost because they like what it says regardless if it’s true or not. This is no better than the ring-wing doing the same thing.