Elon Musk buys Twitter to bring back Free Speech

[Silent Mistwalker]

Hmmm...

Quote

Because look: Frankly, it’s not enough to have spent my childhood wanting for nothing due to my father’s massive wealth, to have struck it rich off of a fairly dull money-transfer service idea that I didn’t even come up with, to have alienated and berated everyone I’ve ever worked with, to lie repeatedly that I was the original founder of Tesla, to amass enormous wealth off of taxpayer-funded subsidies while insisting that I’m self-made, to wield my influence and inane ideas for unworkable projects to prevent actual functional improvements in multiple cities, to receive uncritical adulation from the fawning business and tech presses, to foster a repressive and even racist workplace in my factories replete with numerous labor violations, all in the name of making cars that don’t even really *****ing work—no. It’s not enough. What I desperately, desperately need is for you to think that I’m cool and funny. I need this. Please give me that satisfaction.

I brutally tortured some monkeys for literally no reason, for Christ’s sake! That’s so cool! Doesn’t that count for anything?

Please Like Me (theonion.com)

[Arielle Popstar]

2 hours ago, Aethelwine said:

I didn't need to go digging any where further than my memory. It is only a few years ago and the utter crassness of his conduct on twitter memorable . I am surprised no one mentioned it before me. Perhaps it got more coverage in the UK, because of the target being British.  Legal arguments his council presented that claims made on twitter, aren't expected to be factual and therefore protected regardless of how serious the slander I think likely to cause anyone pause for thought for people that use it and for twitters long term future. 

Even just from the awoken BBC article on the incident, it didn't sound to be an overly big deal and that the word pedo is often used to refer to a "creepy old man" rather then a direct accusation of engaging in the act. I have heard/read the term used that way myself by younger liberal people, so seems much ado about nothing which the courts  agreed with.

[Luna Bliss]

9 hours ago, Aethelwine said:

18 hours ago, Luna Bliss said:

I would like to see hate speech laws tightened in the US.  It looks like the EU is doing so.

I think many were astonished like me that a US court found Musk not guilty of defamation when he used Twitter to call the cave diver that put together the team that rescued the 12 Thai boys that got trapped a "pedo" because he had pointed out the autonomous vehicle system Musk was promoting wouldn't get around the corners. I very much doubt he would have won that case in Europe.

I wasn't aware of this incident, and it makes me more curious how hate speech and defamation is defined in different countries.  At first I wondered if Musk was just name-calling as a way to insult, but it looks like he actually tried to defame the guy with this accusation:

"In September 16th, 2019, a federal court in California posted a slew of documents in the ongoing defamation lawsuit between the British caver and Musk, revealing that the billionaire hoped to obtain compromising information that suggested Unsworth was a p-e-d-o-p-h-i-l-e.

"I did not intend to convey any facts or imply that Mr. Unsworth had engaged in acts of p-e-d-o-p-h-i-l-i-a.," Musk said in a court filing.

"Pedo guy was a common insult used in South Africa when I was growing up. It is synonymous with ‘creepy old man’ and is used to insult a person’s appearance and demeanor, not accuse a person of p-e-d-o-p-h-i-l-i-a..""

https://www.eyerys.com/articles/timeline/elon-musks-pedo-guy-insult-twitter-case-went-more-year#event-a-href-articles-timeline-elon-musk-taking-entirety-twitter-for-himselfelon-musk-is-taking-the-entirety-of-twitter-for-himself-by-acquiring-it-for-44-billion-a

I hope Musk is not part of this faction in the US accusing their opposition of being or supporting p-e-d-o-p-h-i-l-i-a, and throwing around words like "grooming" in an attempt to demonize the other side and remove LGBTQ+ rights.
https://www.them.us/story/republicans-conservatives-grooming-lgbtq-bills-dont-say-gay

Edited April 27, 2022 by Luna Bliss

[Luna Bliss]

11 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Even just from the awoken BBC article on the incident, it didn't sound to be an overly big deal and that the word pedo is often used to refer to a "creepy old man" rather then a direct accusation of engaging in the act. I have heard/read the term used that way myself by younger liberal people, so seems much ado about nothing which the courts  agreed with.

"In September 16th, 2019, a federal court in California posted a slew of documents in the ongoing defamation lawsuit between the British caver and Musk, revealing that the billionaire hoped to obtain compromising information that suggested Unsworth was a p-e-d-o-p-h-i-l-e".

Lots of articles online about this.

[Luna Bliss]

7 hours ago, CaithLynnSayes said:

... I find it funny how all kinds of arguments are being pulled to justifying the "Elon bad" narrative. 

I've seen a few people bring up some great arguments but those are conveniently ignored but no expense is spared to try and dig up anything, anything at all on Elon to, as i said, justify the narrative "Elon bad". Such a thing is really easy to do on just about anyone and then everyone just runs with it and uses that. Kinda pathetic in my view. Oh well.

Regarding my opposition to Musk...

Like Musk, I don't like censorship either. However I'm not foolish enough to imagine that ONE individual can be unbiased enough to safely wield the immense amount of power these social media companies have now.  There are numerous psychological studies that demonstrate people are simply not as objective as they believe themselves to be. Even those deliberately trained to be more objective (like judges, scientists, and therapists) often let their bias get in the way and make major mistakes in their assessments -- those trained may be better than the average person at viewing reality more objectively, but they frequently fail. So what hope would Musk have -- he doesn't even have any training. Trust in him is sorely misplaced.

In other words, centralized power (in the hands of one person) is simply dangerous. Shared power is a way to keep this in check, as there is more opportunity to become aware of any bias when many minds are involved making decisions. Not foolproof, of course, but better than trusting in only one individual.

The above is only one reason I don't like the guy and don't believe he should have such power, but maybe this is enough for now.

Edited April 27, 2022 by Luna Bliss

[Luna Bliss]

14 hours ago, Lindal Kidd said:

18 hours ago, Luna Bliss said:

I've worked on digital jobs for companies, and sometimes I've needed others with specific skills to complete said jobs. Let's say I hired one of the expert scripters we have in SL and discovered they were posting racist, sexist, or homophobic views on Twitter. I don't want anyone like that associated with my company, so why would it be wrong to fire them or "cancel" them?  It's not about balancing their words with my words of confrontation on their Twitter account -- I simply don't want to associate with jerks and why should I have to do so because of this "cancellation" phobia many are disturbed about?

Expand  

That's a different scenario, and is not "cancellation" in my view. Although firing someone for having different views from you carries its own set of legal perils.

I hope that Musk would "cancel" information that could harm the public, like the misinformation & disinformation so prevalent in the Covid crisis. It sounds like he won't though.
But how are you defining the term "cancellation"?  Is it only "cancellation" when certain aspects of another's life are cancelled, or is it a matter of degree that elevates the concept to a certain threshold that becomes "cancellation" in your terms?  I do agree it can (and has at times) gone too far.

Regarding my willingness to fire employees, I would not fire them because they had "different views", as you said. I'd fire them for expressing views that are abusive and cause harm to others. When we don't respect diversity and denigrate others on the basis of their skin color, whether they are male or female, whether they have an unpopular sexual preference or gender, we cause great harm to these people. Not respecting them as equals nearly always translates into hatred of them and the removal of rights the rest of society is afforded as default.

[Arielle Popstar]

2 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

"In September 16th, 2019, a federal court in California posted a slew of documents in the ongoing defamation lawsuit between the British caver and Musk, revealing that the billionaire hoped to obtain compromising information that suggested Unsworth was a p-e-d-o-p-h-i-l-e".

Lots of articles online about this.

Yes but did you note what actually started the little tiff between the two men? Mr Unsworth in an interview about his rescue attempts deciding to cast aspersions on Musk and the team of engineers he brought to the rescue effort as being nothing more then a publicity stunt and wouldn't work. Then followed it up with adding that Musk could "stick his submarine where it hurts".

Gee, surprising Musk took offense and got into a back and forth with Mr. Unsworth. 

[Luna Bliss]

9 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Yes but did you note what actually started the little tiff between the two men? Mr Unsworth in an interview about his rescue attempts deciding to cast aspersions on Musk and the team of engineers he brought to the rescue effort as being nothing more then a publicity stunt and wouldn't work. Then followed it up with adding that Musk could "stick his submarine where it hurts".

Gee, surprising Musk took offense and got into a back and forth with Mr. Unsworth. 

Telling a person with immense power to 'stick it' is not the same as a person with greater power and influence going to great lengths, (hiring lawyers/private detectives) to paint their adversary as a pedo.

Beware of those who wield great power and choose vindictiveness and lies to trample others.  This is a testament to the character of Elon Musk.

We can't trust Musk to own Twitter any more than we should trust the owner of Facebook to make the best decisions for the common good.

Edited April 27, 2022 by Luna Bliss

[Coffee Pancake]

11 hours ago, Ceka Cianci said:

I'm liking this StartPage.. It shows you what trackers are trying to track you and how many..

That's kind of a dark pattern very similar to those used by antivirus companies to keep your subscription, I'm not saying that's the intent, rather the apparent sense of security from displaying such a number. The internet bills are paid with advertising revenues, as paid for content isn't going to make a comeback we're just going to see the tracking moved away from cookies in the browser and advertising in general more deeply interwoven into content.

As far as blocking trackers and doing something to protect your privacy between sites, yes, brave great for that and I don't knock them for it all all.

I would strongly advise everyone to grab a raspberry pi 3B, a cute case to put it in and install pi-hole on it. 

[Ayashe Ninetails]

I don't have any strong feelings about Elon one way or the other, but he seems a bit too old to be engaging in that type of petty name calling. I had to look it up - honestly didn't realize he was 50. I remember wondering how old he was when the Azealia/Grimes incident was going down live on Instagram years ago, but I guess I didn't check.

[Coffee Pancake]

18 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

Like Musk, I don't like censorship either. However I'm not foolish enough to imagine that ONE individual can be unbiased enough to safely wield the immense amount of power these social media companies have now.  

Elon is just foolish enough to air his petty opinions in public. The rest of our ultrawealthy overlords work very hard to either stay invisible or limit their public exposure to public relations philanthropy. 

[Bree Giffen]

I know how to bring this topic back to Second Life! 

The mods need to stop censoring our words on the Forums! That way I can tell people to ****** their ***************** in the **** to *************** pizza ********** ****** ************* * ***** hell. We need free speech! 

[Arielle Popstar]

8 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

Telling a person with immense power to 'stick it' is not the same as a person with greater power and influence going to great lengths, (hiring lawyers/private detectives) to paint their adversary as a pedo.

Beware of those who wield great power and choose vindictiveness and lies to trample others.  This is a testament to the character of Elon Musk.

We can't trust Musk to own Twitter any more than we should trust the owner of Facebook to make the best decisions for the common good.

Perhaps you are missing the point that Mr. Unsworth chose to follow through with the verbal duel by launching the defamation suit? Musk at that point was defending himself using means that many others would have done also had they had the resources to do so.

I feel for Mr.Unsworth being on the hook for all the legal costs but at the end of the day, one needs to recognize that if one chooses to get into a fight with a lion to placate one's ego, the chances of coming out unscathed are slim.

[Luna Bliss]

2 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Perhaps you are missing the point that Mr. Unsworth chose to follow through with the verbal duel by launching the defamation suit? Musk at that point was defending himself using means that many others would have done also had they had the resources to do so.

I feel for Mr.Unsworth being on the hook for all the legal costs but at the end of the day, one needs to recognize that if one chooses to get into a fight with a lion to placate one's ego, the chances of coming out unscathed are slim.

Where is Rowan's big HUH emoticon.  That's all I can say.

[Ceka Cianci]

4 minutes ago, Bree Giffen said:

I know how to bring this topic back to Second Life! 

The mods need to stop censoring our words on the Forums! That way I can tell people to ****** their ***************** in the **** to *************** pizza ********** ****** ************* * ***** hell. We need free speech! 

I got'cha theme song Right Chur.

hehehehe

[AnthonyJoanne]

I'm well aware that this is off topic ... but I'll throw it out there before I go to bed just because:

If I had the chance to talk to Elon Musk for an hour on any topic I wanted ... twitter is the least likely topic I'd raise. Not until he does something demonstrably wrong with it.

Nope ... I'd ask him why he's got SpaceX working on a Mars programme.  Honestly, I still fail to understand why anyone would claw their way out of a gravity well to jump into one almost as deep. Not when you consider that there is the moon right there, with plenty of real estate and a much shallower gravity well ... and the asteroid belt with resources galore.

Food for thought.

Goodnight :)

 

[Arielle Popstar]

13 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Elon is just foolish enough to air his petty opinions in public. The rest of our ultrawealthy overlords work very hard to either stay invisible or limit their public exposure to public relations philanthropy. 

I would point out that the rest of the ultrawealthy overlords just don't have their petty opinions exposed in mainstream media or are cleaned up to be palatable by those swayed by such trash. One looks a little deeper, petty opinions are not just the hallmark of a small select group that one happens to not agree with.

[Ceka Cianci]

7 minutes ago, AnthonyJoanne said:

I'm well aware that this is off topic ... but I'll throw it out there before I go to bed just because:

If I had the chance to talk to Elon Musk for an hour on any topic I wanted ... twitter is the least likely topic I'd raise. Not until he does something demonstrably wrong with it.

Nope ... I'd ask him why he's got SpaceX working on a Mars programme.  Honestly, I still fail to understand why anyone would claw their way out of a gravity well to jump into one almost as deep. Not when you consider that there is the moon right there, with plenty of real estate and a much shallower gravity well ... and the asteroid belt with resources galore.

Food for thought.

Goodnight

 

Wasn't he talking about building on the moon first to get ready for mars? Something like that.. I know there was something about the moon from what I read a while back..

[Velk Kerang]

Twitter has been a poop show for a very long time now. I, personally hope Elon Musk does exactly what he claims he will do. Not gonna lie I've been amused by how many people got triggered over this. lol Moderation has been one sided for a very long time now. My primary gaming Twitter got locked for stating a simple fact and simply telling people to get over it because it wasn't a big deal. In other words stop arguing. Which was a tweet posted on my own page expressing my thoughts.

My secondary gaming Twitter account got locked for defending Jaden Smith on his page when people ganged up on him over something his Pops did. Because I am sitting there thinking ya'll actually took time out of your day to Tweet on this kids Twitter with toxic BS? Ya he is famous, but so what. That doesn't entitle the world to be a-holes to him. So I simply said they were punks for that type of behavior and could use a good slap themselves. lol Nothing compared to what was being said to him. They went unchecked. I caught some heat for it. It is what it is.

Certain groups of people can behave and say what they want and out right threaten people on that platform even. Speak against them, or gut check them rather and you catch the heat. So if Elon Musk levels the playing field then I am all for it. The reality is I should have never even participated in any of those conversations. Read them, sure. Either shake my head or laugh and move on. The only reason I even had a Twitter account in the first place was to promote my channel. So my Twitter problems are about to drop to zero anyway.

At best I might do a video about my experiences, but if I do it'd be more to ask Twitter to point out the exact rule I broke on the first instance because I read all the rules very carefully and I literally broke none. In fact that was how I found out about the whole censorship issue in the first place. On the fence post about it though because I don't want to pollute my channel with politics. Even in gaming news videos I considered doing I've opted out because of things like gender and/or racial politics. I don't want that crap on my channel.

So as far as my gaming persona goes I'm all about the good times. Plenty of other Youtubers out here talking about that stupid mess. I ain't about that life.👍😎

[Silent Mistwalker]

21 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Perhaps you are missing the point that Mr. Unsworth chose to follow through with the verbal duel by launching the defamation suit? Musk at that point was defending himself using means that many others would have done also had they had the resources to do so.

I feel for Mr.Unsworth being on the hook for all the legal costs but at the end of the day, one needs to recognize that if one chooses to get into a fight with a lion to placate one's ego, the chances of coming out unscathed are slim.

One of the jurors owns 2, not 1, but TWO Tesla cars. Makes me wonder which jurors Musk bribed/blackmailed, if not all of them.

[CaithLynnSayes]

31 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

I would strongly advise everyone to grab a raspberry pi 3B, a cute case to put it in and install pi-hole on it.

 

A pi-hole isn't as effective and reliable as just simply having adblock plus, uBlock Origin and Tampermonkey (has good scripts). Also editing your host file is a good idea. Search for a file called "Hostman" to edit your hostfile. There are tons of massive databases you can put in it and many are regularly updated. Crash course on what a host file does. It lives in your windows system and is sort of like what a DNS server does, it redirects IP addresses to host names. You can manually insert hostnames and just redirect them to invalid IP addresses. Hostman does this for you in a single click.

 

Also, i need to add this (!) It doesn't matter how many trackers you think you are blocking. If you register your accounts on websites with your personal details and don't read the Terms of Service where tell you they are going to sell your personal data to others and you agreed to it within less than 2 seconds (on average, studies show), then what is the point of blocking trackers again? - Please stop and think about this for at least 5 seconds. You yourself hand over your data on a silver plate, you agreed to it by accepting ToS'es when signing up for stuff. Are you going to block yourself now? Food for thought...

[Luna Bliss]

53 minutes ago, AnthonyJoanne said:

If I had the chance to talk to Elon Musk for an hour on any topic I wanted ... twitter is the least likely topic I'd raise. Not until he does something demonstrably wrong with it.

Nope ... I'd ask him why he's got SpaceX working on a Mars programme.  Honestly, I still fail to understand why anyone would claw their way out of a gravity well to jump into one almost as deep. Not when you consider that there is the moon right there, with plenty of real estate and a much shallower gravity well ... and the asteroid belt with resources galore.

Billionaires always do something demonstrably wrong with whatever they touch.
A little baby lying on a cold, hardwood floor with a plastic sack 3 inches from her head, a victim of poverty, etched into my brain forever from my Social Work days.
25% of kids in the US go to bed hungry.
Yet these billionaires do nothing but fly into outer space.

Edited April 27, 2022 by Luna Bliss

[Bree Giffen]

I've learned that the greatest people you've ever loved and revered have probably done something despicable in their life and you have to decide if you want to respect their achievements or tear them down. Not just within the sphere of the rich and famous but also within your own personal life among family and friends. It's a hard lesson that I think is only learned in adulthood. Everything is not so wonderfully black and white or right and wrong. Sometimes you have to just accept the many shades of gray in others and yourself.

[Istelathis]

If free speech generated enough revenue to sustain a major social media platform, there would be more social media platforms that allowed it.  Musk is not a savior of free speech, he is an entrepreneur, his entire spiel is to generate as much money as possible - and that is not done through free speech.  For twitter it currently is done through advertisements.  The advertisers that support twitter, the only ones that can pay the bills have a very large demographic of different people and would rather not be associated with hate, as that would drive off consumers. 

Free speech is just a gimmick he is using, to convince others to join his platform in an attempt to generate revenue.  Just like it is for most politicians, they don't really believe in it but they realize it is a trigger word that will induce a hypnotic like state into people.  He could attempt to make twitter a subscription based model, but that would likely fail miserable.  Elon Musk is not a savior of mankind, he likes to present that of himself, but he will do whatever is necessary to earn a few more bucks and do his best to look good while doing so - which he is great at doing.

Elon has a long track record of saying things to get people to let loose of common sense, and cling on to some far fetched idea, he makes a lot of promises that get pushed into the near future, repeatedly.  This is probably no different.  Perhaps he will sell some overpriced bricks while he is at it 😝

He might make some changes to twitter, he could provide features that people want, but as far as providing you a platform where you can express your ideas free from ridicule, free from being cancelled by people who find certain behaviors offensive, or free from banning is not likely to occur.

Honestly, I can't stand the guy because his personality is so predictable, he has been doing this sort of thing for years - and it is shocking that people still fall for it.  He is great at getting people to believe in whatever it is he is pitching, his entire history is made up, his greatest accomplishments are most often the accomplishments of others.  People don't want to believe that though, they want a real life Ironman.  It is through this, as well as being born into a wealthy family, that he has amassed a fortune, he can play society like a fiddle.  People still have this innate desire to defend him no matter what though, to oppose him is to oppose them.

I don't foresee twitter becoming anything spectacular in the near future, if anything I imagine some people will get irate when they find they got banned and thought they were immune to it as their guy was in charge.  I think this was a bad move on his part, because it will ruin his image for many people.

 

[Arielle Popstar]

26 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

One of the jurors owns 2, not 1, but TWO Tesla cars. Makes me wonder which jurors Musk bribed/blackmailed, if not all of them.

Correct me if I am wrong but jury selection is in a large part done by the lawyers on both sides and according to the article I read:

Quote

 

It is not insignificant that the jury that rendered the verdict contained more women than men and that the age profile was younger.

All of the 8 jurists were college-educated and one of them is reported to be the proud owner of two Tesla cars.

 

I'd have to wonder why the lawyers for Vernon allowed the inclusion of the proud owner if it would have affected the outcome. Being predominantly women and college educated the aspersions that they might have been bribed or blackmailed seems a little over the top and a grasping at straws. Being that this was in LA and California being left leaning and therefore the jurors likely fitting that mold, it really is a bit surprising that they did reject the claim but since they did, it was a resounding defeat for Vernon.