If Anyone had Any Doubts…
I’ve never been much of a Twitter user, primarily finding it occasionally useful to follow breaking stories. When Elon took over the platform, though, I decided to follow him and others to see the effects on the platform itself as he consolidated power in the company. My conclusions, as you can imagine, are not good. First, just an observation, and it’s no secret – Twitter is already an open sewer of nonsense, misinformation, and dumbasses who don’t know how many hours are in a day, those who can’t do simple arithmetic, and those who have very low reading comprehension.
Then Elon took over, and it’s gotten worse. A lot worse. First, Musk is as impulsive and immature as a high school freshman complete with erratic behavior and childish judgment. Add that to the fact that he has no guardrails to guide him, and being the richest man in the world there’s no one around him to keep him from acting out his worst tendencies. After the takeover on Thursday, he fired the senior management team including those in charge of moderation of the platform, and has been hinting at massive layoffs of other employees. He’s also on record of being opposed to blocking racists, insurrectionists, domestic terrorists, anti-semites, and outright weirdos. He’s more than hinted that he’ll let TFG and Kanye West back on the platform. Use of the N-word on Twitter is up over 500% since he took over. Worse, he’s participating in misinformation himself retweeting, then later deleting an idiotic homophobic conspiracy theory that Paul Pelosi’s attacker was actually a male prostitute that Pelosi had brought to the house. His deleted retweet was directed at…wait for it…Hillary Clinton. That’s right, the “Chief Twit” showed such poor judgment that he amplified this idiocy to his 112 MILLION followers.
Elon’s control of Twitter has a LOT more downside than upside for not only him financially, but for simple common decency. Twitter is highly influential over global society and it’s critical that it gets it right between balancing free speech principles against threatening language and intentional disinformation. He’s demonstrated that he has no qualifications to not just manage this issue, but even to recognize it exists.
I am not hopeful for any good coming from this takeover, and can only hope that twitter goes the way of MySpace and Lotus 123.
Musk doesn’t own Twitter. Twitter owns him. I said that a couple days ago, and it didn’t take long for him to demonstrate how I was correct.
Whom the god would destroy, they first make mad.
1The problem is, the rest of us have to live through the “much worse” phase. Here’s to the Pelosi family suing him. this is slander, pure and simple.
2Personally, I’m hoping for lawsuits or other financial pain to make Elon regret having anything to do with the platform.
I also am grabbing the popcorn for all the new “reports” on how those who support Truth Social are disappointed at Trump’s abandonment to return to Twitter.
How these people can be so blind to the grift just amazes me.
3For entertainment value alone, it will be interesting to see how long it takes him to destroy Twitter completely and regret the day he bought it. At every site I look at, people are leaving in droves. I did as well about three days ago. All I really cared about were updates on Ukraine, and fortunately there are many alternatives.
4Note to the Pelosis: Better Call Little Bubba!
5A good time to remember that he was responsible for this disgusting slander four years ago:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/15/elon-musk-british-diver-thai-cave-rescue-pedo-twitter
Be grateful every day that he was born in South Africa and can never run for president. One trump is enough.
6As I said a couple days ago, making him pay for his latest toy needs advertisers to leave twitter in droves, too. So far I’ve only read that GM bailed. Maybe when con ye and TFFG are back spreading hate, conspiracies and other lies (designed to spawn violence), more advertisers will pull their money.
7I mean these questions sincerely, clearly recognizing that I’m an old fart and apparently behind the times. But I have to ask: Why do Musk and Twitter matter at all? What is it about Twitter that attracts so much attention and concern? Really!! Who cares, and why?
8https://blueskyweb.org/.
The execs who founded and got fired by Musk are developing a new social network that will be online soon.
9I used Twitter to stay in touch with friends around the world, until I was banned .Now …………………..
10Elon is the principle share holder, his consortium is also comprised of Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, Binance Holdings, a digital-asset exchange founded and run by a Chinese native and Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund.
Senator Chris Murphy is more than a bit concerned.
https://t.co/IDwnKGaxt7
I’m on Twitter for the news, it shows up there first. Musk’s (AKA Vapid Boy), newest strategy is to charge people $20 to be verified on Twitter, causing him to get into public negotiations/ a bargaining/begging session highly reminiscent of “Please clap!” with Stephen King – which is going about as well as one can expect. FWIW, Verification got started when Twitter got sued by Tony La Russia because it didn’t stop an individual from impersonating him.
The point of Twitter verification is that for some people/organizations it’s helpful to be able to verify that they actually said something. This is why so many journalists & government organizations are verified.) It’s supposed to help combat disinformation.
Currently you have to send Twitter your personal information (including an image of your government issued ID) for verification, and trust them to keep it safe.
As Stonekettle pointed out a few days ago, “Elon Musk now owns all of that information. And he needs money.” So yeah, that bodes well.
11AK Lynne: As well as bluesky, cohost is trying to start up:
https://cohost.org/rc/welcome and there is countersocial: https://counter.social/index.html
Mastodon has been around for some years now, but it has a completely different model, based more on small-ish communities starting their own mastodon instances and possibly later coalescing – sort of a federal model.
Me, I looked at the terms of service of FaceSlap and Twatter and decided not to sign up for them, way back when they began. I’m sorta like Gene B in feeling that I’m not losing anything by being out of those systems. Not being one of the twits, what Trump posts there is irrelevant to my life. The problem is that all of the big news media will reprint and repost whatever trash he exudes on it, amplifying what should be just irritating littering into a full-scale toxic waste dump that dominates and pollutes the national conversation.
12