Elon Musk buys Twitter to bring back Free Speech

[Luna Bliss]

3 hours ago, Jackson Redstar said:

the News from the WH should calm people's fears about Musk operating Twitter. The WH will be creating a new Ministry of Truth that will inform all us plebes what is true and what is not true.  We need not research anything on our own, the Ministry of Truth will have all the right answers, Trust them. They are the government!

How Congress Can Prevent Elon Musk from Turning Twitter Back Into an Unfettered Disinformation Machine

"In a column for the Guardian, Robert Reich, a former U.S. Secretary of Labor, argued that Musk’s real goal in purchasing Twitter is to create a position for himself where he is unaccountable to anything, from laws to market competition. Whether that’s entirely accurate or not, the pending takeover provides yet another confirmation that Congress needs to treat the big online platforms like the social utilities they are, and regulate them. A first step would be to pass the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, which cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee, on a bipartisan basis, in January. This legislation would prohibit dominant platforms, such as Amazon and Google, from exploiting their market power to boost their own products by discriminating against their competitors.

Regulating content in a manner consistent with protecting free speech may be a trickier proposition, but the E.U. has just provided a road map for how it could be done: by putting the onus on social-media companies to monitor and remove harmful content, and hit them with big fines if they don’t. The Digital Services Act is “nothing short of a paradigm shift in tech regulation,” Ben Scott, the executive director of the advocacy group Reset, told the Associated Press. “It’s the first major attempt to set rules and standards for algorithmic systems in digital media markets.”

Musk would surely object to the U.S. adopting a regulatory system like the one that the Europeans are drawing up, but that’s too bad. The health of the Internet—and, most important, democracy—is too significant to leave to one man, no matter how rich he is".

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/how-congress-can-prevent-elon-musk-from-turning-twitter-back-into-an-unfettered-disinformation-machine

[Love Zhaoying]

40 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

I'm surprised that a left-of-center libertarian like you apparently hasn't heard of Canada's NDP.

https://www.ndp.ca/commitments

Maybe is rare right-of-center Libertarian?

[Luna Bliss]

9 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

40 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

I'm surprised that a left-of-center libertarian like you apparently hasn't heard of Canada's NDP.

https://www.ndp.ca/commitments

You gotta be kidding right? After their support of the Liberals in some of the stunts that have been pulled, it became very obvious that the NDP is not at all for the working class people they are supposed to represent. That is way off-topic but probably another party that has been protected from being dragged through the deserved mud by Twitters censorship policies, being they helped the liberals push through some very questionable laws that had a direct negative effect on many of the middle class in Canada.

The so-called 'left' in most countries is not actually left -- they don't address the needs of the working class adequately.

BINGO

The world is moving to the far right.  We need to do something.

[Theresa Tennyson]

 

9 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

You gotta be kidding right? After their support of the Liberals in some of the stunts that have been pulled, it became very obvious that the NDP is not at all for the working class people they are supposed to represent. That is way off-topic but probably another party that has been protected from being dragged through the deserved mud by Twitters censorship policies, being they helped the liberals push through some very questionable laws that had a direct negative effect on many of the middle class in Canada.

I'm not saying anything for or against them. I'm just saying that in the grand scheme of things they're considered to be to the "left" of the Liberals, making the leader of the Liberals not as "left" as possible within that political system. 

[Aethelwine]

41 minutes ago, StarlanderGoods said:

What is a leftists to you?  And you are talking about communists or socialists (not the same thing)

Ill give you some clear cut examples to start from recent history.

Fidel Castro

Hugo Chavez

Evo Morales

Lula da Silva

Who else would you put on that list ?

They are more Bogeymen than examples of the real self identifying left in liberal democracies, the straw men examples the Right like to pull out a hat to justify themselves.

They represent conservative values, authoritarianism and a planned economy. The only part of that truly left wing is planned economy part. And a planned, economy is not defining really either there are as many if not more left wing economists that would criticise that than agree.    

Amy Goodman, from Democracy Now is a much better example of a consistently left voice 

https://www.democracynow.org/2022/4/26/twitter_elon_musk_free_speech

 

Edited April 29, 2022 by Aethelwine

[Ceka Cianci]

1 hour ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

If I were the Christian god, I'd wipe humanity from the face of the planet and be done with it.

He tried that before and ended up really messing up the unicorns..

[CaithLynnSayes]

6 hours ago, Luna Bliss said:

Regarding the Musk cartoon that you think reveals some sort of truth...

For sardonic humor to work (and sometimes sarcastic and ironic humor) it has to point to a truth -- generally someone or something is shown to be rather stupid or absurd and we are making fun of it in order to highlight the truth.
However, your Musk cartoon doesn't point to any truth. It demonstrates an understanding of economics at about a junior high level. So if you think that is funny it can only mean you're very unaware of how the economy operates.

Think of my cartoon in the other thread you had trouble comprehending -- it was making fun of, showing it was preposterous, for some people to think they have the right to own the uteruses of other people, and to make laws in order to achieve their control.

The "cartoon" (meme) i posted was pretty obvious i thought. I don't "think" it reveals some sort of truth, it simply does. *sigh* i can't believe i have to explain this. (making someone explain jokes, ruins them, but i'll make an exception for you.) the meme (not cartoon, get with the times ;)) shows how Elon made something people like. So they buy it from him, in masses, making him a billionaire and then when he is one, lefties are screeching because he's a billionaire. That's the point of it. I don't know where on God's green flat earth you get it from that me posting that equals me not understanding economics. you've actually blown my mind on that. I really don't see the mental gymnastics you're trying to pull here. It is a joke. And yes, one that tells the actual truth. How do you think Elon became a billionaire?

As for the fact that you say i don't appear to understand economics. I would find that offensive, but i simply can't stop laughing. Maybe once i've stopped laughing i might be a tad offended, but as for now, it's hilarious.

 

As for your uterus joke in the 'Make Us Laugh' thread, i thought it was distasteful. I voiced my opinion on it. Feel free to move on though. Also, off-topic here. Moles/Lindens apparently don't like that.  (selective though, i've noticed)

[Blaise Glendevon]

17 minutes ago, Nalates Urriah said:

If you follow those not preaching against the current political agenda, you aren't going to see people disappearing.

Pray tell, what is the "current political agenda." 

[Theresa Tennyson]

4 minutes ago, CaithLynnSayes said:

How do you think Elon became a billionaire?

 

By having a lot of stock in companies that people speculate heavily on.

https://www.yahoo.com/video/tesla-inc-nasdaq-tsla-fundamentals-130737959.html

[Blaise Glendevon]

6 minutes ago, CaithLynnSayes said:

shows how Elon made something people like.

Elon Musk hasn't made *****. He used inherited wealth from apartheid era mining to buy in to various flashy tech start-ups (PayPal, Tesla) to finance his vanity project that is entirely engineered, developed, and invented by other people (SpaceX). He's a dilettante and a vulture capitalist. 

[Arielle Popstar]

39 minutes ago, Blaise Glendevon said:

Elon Musk hasn't made *****. He used inherited wealth from apartheid era mining to buy in to various flashy tech start-ups (PayPal, Tesla) to finance his vanity project that is entirely engineered, developed, and invented by other people (SpaceX). He's a dilettante and a vulture capitalist. 

Might want to check your sources. I see no mention of inherited wealth and in fact he came out of College with a $100,000 student debt at a time when his divorced mother rented a small apartment in Toronto for him and his siblings. He started his first company on borrowed family money and slept in the office because he couldn't afford it and an apartment at the same time. End result was he did pretty good for an impoverished, abused and bullied kid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/30/elon-musk-says-he-had-six-figures-in-student-debt-after-college.html

[Lindal Kidd]

4 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I like that some are calling it "accountability" instead of "cancel".  

Don't like how a company operates, or how their CEO behaves? Don't buy their stuff!

Don't like how Disney relates to stuff you disagree with? Don't go to Disney!

Don't like how your politician treats Disney?  Don't vote for them!

Don't like Twitter? Don't go on Twitter!

Don't like how people treat you on the Forums? Don't go on the Forums!

 

I'm good with that. It's when someone, usually someone with a large online following, gets a huge crowd of other people to jump on that bandwagon that it becomes "cancellation." If the same people make the same decision on their own, well...that's karma.

[Blaise Glendevon]

4 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Might want to check your sources. I see no mention of inherited wealth and in fact he came out of College with a $100,000 student debt at a time when his divorced mother rented a small apartment in Toronto for him and his siblings. He started his first company on borrowed family money and slept in the office because he couldn't afford it and an apartment at the same time. End result was he did pretty good for an impoverished, abused and bullied kid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/30/elon-musk-says-he-had-six-figures-in-student-debt-after-college.html

Elon Musk is a very reliable narrator of his auto-hagiography, I'm sure.

[Arielle Popstar]

Just now, Blaise Glendevon said:

Elon Musk is a very reliable narrator of his auto-hagiography, I'm sure.

Well wiki doesn't do autobiographies and CNBC likely doesn't either so assuming both checked sources other then Musk, there is more proof's for his background and start-up monies then what you brought to the table.

[Theresa Tennyson]

13 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Might want to check your sources. I see no mention of inherited wealth

It's the part of the Wikipedia article you cited saying: The family was very wealthy in Elon's youth; Errol Musk once said, "We had so much money at times we couldn't even close our safe".

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20211125034322/https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/elon-musk-birthday-ceo-tesla-b1874017.html

[Istelathis]

To be fair, Elon Musk did create Zip2,  which did generate a lot of money when he sold it.  For X.com, he wrote the software - later X.com would merge with Confinity, I believe retaining the name X.com.  Most if not all of the software written by Musk was not used as it was considered lousy.  Later, X.com would be renamed to Paypal (very much against the will of Elon) later to be sold to Ebay which resulted in quite a bit of cash for Elon.

Elon is absolutely full of it though, if he could get away with it he would probably have us all believing that he hasn't a butt hole.  With that said, he is a great visionary, he is also amazing at hyping almost anything you can think of.    

 

Edit:
It was actually Zip2 which he wrote the code for, which was later rewritten.  It was considered to be full of hairballs. 

“They took one look at Zip2’s code and began rewriting the vast majority of the software. Musk bristled at some of their changes, but the computer scientists needed just a fraction of the lines of code that Musk used to get their jobs done. They had a knack for dividing software projects into chunks that could be altered and refined whereas Musk fell into the classic self-taught coder trap of writing what developers call hairballs—big, monolithic hunks of code that could go berserk for mysterious reasons.”

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9356850-they-took-one-look-at-zip2-s-code-and-began-rewriting

Edited April 29, 2022 by Istelathis

[Love Zhaoying]

4 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

It's the part of the Wikipedia article you cited saying: The family was very wealthy in Elon's youth; Errol Musk once said, "We had so much money at times we couldn't even close our safe".

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20211125034322/https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/elon-musk-birthday-ceo-tesla-b1874017.html

That's Richie Rich, rich! Heck, that's Scrooge McDuck Rich!

Or, just too cheap to buy a bigger safe.

[Silent Mistwalker]

20 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Might want to check your sources. I see no mention of inherited wealth and in fact he came out of College with a $100,000 student debt at a time when his divorced mother rented a small apartment in Toronto for him and his siblings. He started his first company on borrowed family money and slept in the office because he couldn't afford it and an apartment at the same time. End result was he did pretty good for an impoverished, abused and bullied kid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/30/elon-musk-says-he-had-six-figures-in-student-debt-after-college.html

Until someone starts digging into financials in South Africa, we only have his word for it. I'm not going to take his word for it just because he is rich or claims to be a self-made man.  There are millions of self-made men in the US. They've been coming here from other countries for centuries. Not all of them good people.

His word isn't good enough.

[Arielle Popstar]

19 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

It's the part of the Wikipedia article you cited saying: The family was very wealthy in Elon's youth; Errol Musk once said, "We had so much money at times we couldn't even close our safe".

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20211125034322/https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/elon-musk-birthday-ceo-tesla-b1874017.html

Then it would appear his mother didn't receive any of that in the divorce settlement a few years after Elon was born because in one of the links I posted, it was mentioned she worked 5 jobs to make ends meet when they first arrived back in Toronto. This was also verified by his mother in an interview she had with Huffpost about her modelling career.

Sounds more like a rags to riches story then being born with a silver spoon in his mouth and though that may have been questionably the case until he was in his mid teens, it didn't help him when he started working.

[Silent Mistwalker]

These people left Twitter after Elon Musk's bid on the platform (nbcnews.com)

[Istelathis]

10 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

These people left Twitter after Elon Musk's bid on the platform (nbcnews.com)

"User information is likely going to be collected, packaged and sold to anyone who is willing to buy it," he continued. "And I would rather not like to participate in it."

That is my worry when it comes to social media, all of our data is sold off without any oversight - and we start seeing services that sell our data which is neatly compiled in an easy to read summary to anyone willing to pay for that information.  It becomes more than just a means of revenue generated by advertising, but becomes a tool for insurance companies, potential employers, landlords, nosey neighbors, and just about anyone.

It is not just Musk I worry about when it comes to this, and it has been a concern before he entered the scene.  It is just a lucrative way to earn money.  One of his plans, as far as I have read, is that twitter will likely no longer be able to be used anonymously, and your real identity and all of the information you have ever posted on it could be sold - same for any other social media site.  This is to combat bots, but something I think people should consider in their future on their site.

This could result in a lot of people being "cancelled" from employment, insurance, housing, etc, all based upon a plethora of services that provide a social credit score based upon one's previous posts on these platforms and I am certainly glad I have avoided political or heated subjects on them.  

Edited April 29, 2022 by Istelathis

[Silent Mistwalker]

7 minutes ago, Istelathis said:

"User information is likely going to be collected, packaged and sold to anyone who is willing to buy it," he continued. "And I would rather not like to participate in it."

That is my worry when it comes to social media, all of our data is sold off without any oversight - and we start seeing services that sell our data which is neatly compiled in an easy to read summary to anyone willing to pay for that information.  It becomes more than just a means of revenue generated by advertising, but becomes a tool for insurance companies, potential employers, landlords, nosey neighbors, and just about anyone.

It is not just Musk I worry about when it comes to this, and it has been a concern before he entered the scene.  It is just a lucrative way to earn money.  One of his plans, as far as I have read, is that twitter will likely no longer be able to be used anonymously, and your real identity and all of the information you have ever posted on it could be sold - same for any other social media site.  This is to combat bots, but something I think people should consider in their future on their site.

This could result in a lot of people being "cancelled" from employment, insurance, housing, etc, all based upon a plethora of services that provide a social credit score based upon one's previous posts on these platforms and I am certainly glad I have avoided political or heated subjects on them.  

I'm glad I have avoided those kinds of social medias as well. Forums are about as good as it's going to get for me.

[Ayashe Ninetails]

5 minutes ago, Istelathis said:

That is my worry when it comes to social media, all of our data is sold off without any oversight - and we start seeing services that sell our data which is neatly compiled in an easy to read summary to anyone willing to pay for that information.  It becomes more than just a means of revenue generated by advertising, but becomes a tool for insurance companies, potential employers, landlords, nosey neighbors, and just about anyone.

Yup, I just read a report the other day about how students filling out their online FAFSA (financial aid) paperwork to apply to college had their data sent to Facebook.

Slightly off-topic maybe, but maybe not, considering the whole "let's authenticate everybody!" stance Elon's apparently running with.

https://themarkup.org/pixel-hunt/2022/04/28/applied-for-student-aid-online-facebook-saw-you

[Love Zhaoying]

I can't be the only one starting to see the whole "I'm gonna buy Twitter" thing as a cry for help.

Edited April 29, 2022 by Love Zhaoying

[Ayashe Ninetails]

4 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I can't be the only one starting to see how the whole "I'm gonna buy Twitter" thing as a cry for help.

Was my first thought. Well, second thought. First one was "Wow, why does he remind me of Kanye...?"

I'm biased, though. I saw the Azealia/Grimes/Elon drama go down live on social media years ago. It...was definitely something.