Elon Musk buys Twitter to bring back Free Speech

[Alwin Alcott]

6 minutes ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

the next Messiah will present himself within twenty-five minutes.

 

/me waits for 22 more minutes to present myself...

Edited May 1, 2022 by Alwin Alcott

[Alwin Alcott]

2 minutes ago, Alwin Alcott said:

/me waits for 22 more minutes to present myself...

i'm in a bit of a hurry, it;s sunday after all ..

be nice
be yourself
don't let the success of money of others make you feel bad
let them play their game, you do yours

( now send me your 10% income, my car needs gas)
( and a new car)

[Love Zhaoying]

4 hours ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

Yesterday:

I had recently posted the song, "You're So Vain" on the "What are you listening to?" thread.

[Istelathis]

2 minutes ago, Alwin Alcott said:

play their game, you do yours

I'm trying to play my own game, but they keep rewriting the rules on me.  When I complain, they feel I am trying to control their game, which in a way I suppose I am - since it appears I am their game.

[AnthonyJoanne]

1 hour ago, Akane Nacht said:

Hm.. is he though? He's certainly a celebrity and a successful businessman who makes the news frequently, but he isn't an elected official and is not required to uphold any moral code beyond obeying the law of wherever he's doing business. 

And of course as the person directing those businesses ... to the extent that he does ... he's in a position of authority. And as such he has a responsibility to his shareholders, and if they believe he's failed in that responsibility they can sue him. In fact that recently happened. The shareholders lost btw. But if they had won ... he personally would have been responsible for the amount awarded against him.

Now contrast that to the elected official in the same jurisdiction (i.e. the US) ... to avoid a hot button issue we'll go with a hypothetical:

• A woman sues her city government because they did X, and it cost her a lot of money.
• It goes to court. After a trial the woman wins her case. The city is awarded a penalty of $100,000 dollars and costs of $75,000 dollars.
• The money to pay for that comes from the city's coffers. $175,000 plus whatever the city spent in it's legal costs.

The money for the penalty and costs comes from the city coffers, as did the money to defend the case. And the people who are responsible for actually doing the wrong thing don't pay a cent, and more often than not stay in their job.

I'd suggest that a businessman like Elon Musk may well have a more of an idea of the responsibility that goes with authority than elected officials who rarely have to bear personal responsibility for their actions.

*edit* Inserted missing sentence

Edited May 1, 2022 by AnthonyJoanne

[Akane Nacht]

3 hours ago, Istelathis said:

He of course, has no legal obligation to this matter, and morality being a figment of our imagination can not tie him down as well. 

Not a figment of our imagination, but our value system, which varies person to person, though it overlaps enough to have a reasonably functioning society (for the most part). Elon will naturally have his own value system, as every human does (assuming he is human 👽)

3 hours ago, Istelathis said:

Why wouldn't people care about it though?  Especially people who feel his actions may have an impact on their lives?

It's not possible to insulate people from weird stuff "influencers" say online - that ship has long since sailed (at least in the Western world). Instead I think it's better to train people from young how to sort the nonsense from the good sense online. Ownself must protect ownself. Otherwise, it's censorship, which comes at a cost as we all know.

(interesting discussion btw, thank you)

[Akane Nacht]

2 hours ago, Alwin Alcott said:

i'm in a bit of a hurry, it;s sunday after all ..

be nice
be yourself
don't let the success of money of others make you feel bad
let them play their game, you do yours

( now send me your 10% income, my car needs gas)
( and a new car)

i'm agnostic so no money, but good thoughts 👍

[Ceka Cianci]

From what I read, The old CEO who is the only one on the board that had any stock shares in twitter seems happy that the market doesn't control twitter anymore..

I'm just going by what I've heard, but he seems glad that Elon Musk is going to be the one that takes it private..

I remember that CEO getting grilled pretty hard by congress months back, when they were going after the big tech companies..

If anything, It's gonna get interesting, not that I'm gonna lose sleep over any of it either way.. hehehehe

I thought that guy didn't care for Elon, but I guess that was just a misunderstanding on my part..

From what I gather, That guy will still be working for twitter.. He didn't sound like he was happy with the board either, From what I read he felt they were holding twitter back as well.

 

[Silent Mistwalker]

6 hours ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

It appears that this strongman hype thing is repeating itself at an ever-accelerating pace now. Around AD 33, it was JC, circa AD 610, it was Muhammad, AD 2016, we had DJT, last Saturday, we witnessed the rise of Musk. According to my calculations, the next Messiah will present himself within twenty-five minutes.

Hopefully you get the humor.

[Silent Mistwalker]

3 hours ago, Akane Nacht said:

It's not possible to insulate people from weird stuff "influencers" say online

Strange. I do insulate myself from influencers online. Been doing it since the 1980s.

[Ceka Cianci]

16 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

Strange. I do insulate myself from influencers online. Been doing it since the 1980s.

I used to do that myself, but then Switched to this brand and  omg!!  It's soo much better..

especially in the summer time when things get really hot.. hehehe

[Ayashe Ninetails]

Is the forum working again? *pokes it with a stick*

[Silent Mistwalker]

12 minutes ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

Is the forum working again? *pokes it with a stick*

Must have been your turn. It got me about a half hour ago.

[Luna Bliss]

I'm very worried, and can't take these developments lightly, as social media has the potential to create such harm. While some may be relatively immune from its influence many others are not. There is such tribalism in the US of late, and a lemming mentality. Thinking of how our government in the US was almost overthrown Jan 6 when the Capitol was stormed -- how close we were to descending into autocracy as a democratic election was almost overturned.

Reading this book did not help!

Antisocial: How Online Extremists Broke America:

".... a deeply immersive chronicle of how the optimistic entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley set out to create a free and democratic internet - and how the cynical propagandists of the alt-right exploited that freedom to propel the extreme into the mainstream".

I'm hoping for more regulation  with Facebook as well as Twitter, and it looks like it will be happening and we might almost be on par with Europe and their laws. I suppose I'll be a bit on edge until I see for certain how all this will be managed here. 

[Coffee Pancake]

6 hours ago, Alwin Alcott said:

i'm in a bit of a hurry, it;s sunday after all ..

be nice
be yourself
don't let the success of money of others make you feel bad
let them play their game, you do yours

( now send me your 10% income, my car needs gas)
( and a new car)

That's the wrong kind of messiah .. they want one that say's it's ok to kill queer people.

[Ayashe Ninetails]

6 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

Must have been your turn. It got me about a half hour ago.

Gaaaaaaaaah. That's about when mine died, too. Or a little earlier. I posted a reply in here and got a Bad Gateway error, waited, posted again, it seems to have stuck, saw Luna post a few posts after me, went back to the forum homepage, everything new disappeared. When I checked the rest of the forum, everything I'd read this morning was unread again, and nothing much newer than 3-5 hours ago had been posted across the board. 

*shakes fist*

Edited May 1, 2022 by Ayashe Ninetails

[Luna Bliss]

11 hours ago, Robberinthemuseum said:

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of misandry either.

Why is misandry, or even feminism being mentioned?  I don't dislike Musk because he's a man, I dislike him because he's a jerk. From his Twitter responses to documentation regarding how he treated those at the mining rescue it's easy to see.

I am a card-carrying feminist, one of my majors was Women's Studies, and I love my grandson and my ex-husband was a fine man.

[Ceka Cianci]

4 minutes ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

Gaaaaaaaaah. That's about when mine died, too. Or a little earlier. I posted a reply in here and got a Bad Gateway error, waited, posted again, it seems to have stuck, saw Luna post a few posts after me, went back to the forum homepage, everything new disappeared. When I checked the rest of the forum, everything I'd read this morning was unread again, and nothing much newer than 3-5 hours ago had been posted across the board. 

*shakes fist*

We must have been typing ours up at the same time.. I got one of those 500 errors when I went to submit.. hehehe

[Luna Bliss]

5 minutes ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

saw Luna post a few posts after me, went back to the forum homepage, everything new disappeared.

Oh is that why?  I scoured my two posts searching for something that might be wrong with them.   Then I felt wary to even post anything today.

[Ceka Cianci]

I think the forums are down again, Because nobody has posted in this thread in the last 8 minutes!! \o/

 

 

hehehehe

 

 

Edited May 1, 2022 by Ceka Cianci

[Luna Bliss]

21 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

they want one that say's it's ok to kill queer people.

It's the last day of lesbian visibility week    

[Silent Mistwalker]

26 minutes ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

Gaaaaaaaaah. That's about when mine died, too. Or a little earlier. I posted a reply in here and got a Bad Gateway error, waited, posted again, it seems to have stuck, saw Luna post a few posts after me, went back to the forum homepage, everything new disappeared. When I checked the rest of the forum, everything I'd read this morning was unread again, and nothing much newer than 3-5 hours ago had been posted across the board. 

*shakes fist*

I had to repost the Lurch meme after I had seen the post go through.

So yeah, same thing happened to me.

[Ayashe Ninetails]

1 minute ago, Luna Bliss said:

Oh is that why?  I scoured my two posts searching for something that might be wrong with them.   Then I felt wary to even post anything today.

I think so. I posted right before you and nothing seemed questionable in there. It was fully related to Twitter. I saw your posts pop up just below mine and they looked fine, too. I think it was just a forum glitch - especially since everything I'd read went unread again.

Soooo rather than repost it all again, I'll just respond to you this time!

 

15 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

I'm very worried, and can't take these developments lightly, as social media has the potential to create such harm. While some may be relatively immune from its influence many others are not. There is such tribalism in the US of late, and a lemming mentality.

I know you're mostly worried about the politics side of the Twitter buyout, but I wouldn't be, and here's why - I don't think the current climate is sustainable over the long term. Brands are super important to the platform (in its current form - he says he wants to change that but we'll see), and Elon's got one of the biggest voices on there.

Hop into Coca-Cola's mentions and what will you see? Doge memes, Elon memes, memes about drugs - now imagine being the person who has to monitor and manage that account and respond to questions and comments and complaints from customers, etc. Do you want to be filtering through that mess all day? Probably not. And that's just him making jokes that aren't even negative.

That said, he is not the only influencer on there with a massive "stan" following. He is, however, one of the biggest ones who is very hands-on (other celebrities don't tweet nearly as much, and with something like the Beyhive - she rarely tweets at all - the last few being from 2020). So any company pile-ons those fanbases engage in aren't really directly influenced by the celebrity - most likely it's just organic through breaking news.

So yeah - if that continues...Twitter might struggle keeping companies engaged with the platform. I just can't see that working out over the long term.

Short version - stan culture might destroy the platform far faster than anything else at this rate.

[Silent Mistwalker]

I find this to be rather telling. 

9 Strict Rules Elon Musk’s Kids Must Follow | YourTango

[Rowan Amore]

Honestly?  Do we really need to worry about Musk allowing ALL free speech on Twitter?   Seems it might be just HIS free speech and those he agrees with and those who agree with him that will be free...

Elon Musk and free speech: Track record not encouraging (cnbc.com)