Elon Musk Finalizes Twitter Acquisition

The West was once a bastion of free speech. I hope this will prove a step back towards this ideal.

What speech wasn't possible on Twitter today that this change will allow?

Speech which contradicts the opinions of those currently in power, obviously.

The ban of a US president by a company that relies on US law to exist was quite extraordinary. As was the ban on reporting the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop which likely affected the US election of 2020. Oddly, this was hardly reported upon, unlike the never-ending "RussiaGate" and "insurrection" stories. The banning of the Babylon Bee follows the same pattern of promoting a particular worldview and censoring another. It results in around half the US population feeling itself to be censored.

Similarly, the banning of anyone, including researchers who were well versed in their fields, who raised concerns about the use of pseudo-uraline based mRNA vaccines, which does not decay in a couple of hours as originally advertised, was a concern for those of us who believe science only works if it is properly debated, not if some "expert" on high decides what is and what isn't "true". That's religion, not science. There is now evidence that Twitter censored people based on requests by the government, which is a clear violation of the first amendment.

Another category are people who report on world events who do not follow the "narrative" enforced in popular Western media. This reduces diversity of opinion, and the ability to understand why we might be facing world war 3. In the USSR one could read foreign newspapers which did not follow the party line. In the West, it is rarer, and more discouraged. That is upsetting to me.

If this question is asked honestly, you can find many more examples.

However this question might also have been asked dishonestly, in order to punish dissenters to a certain worldview, by calling them names and trying to cancel them. I hope that is not the case here, since I find such people quite reprehensible.

This is the dumbest thing that Elon has ever done.

"This is the dumbest thing that Elon has ever done."

Everybody can become the victim of a scam, don't judge.

"where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence"

What if the "debate" is the reason for the violence, though?

"The West was once a bastion of free speech."

If you think banning violent racists on Twitter is an attack on free speech, let me introduce you to all the Republican legislators changing how library boards are appointed, so they can ban books they don't like.

A private company not wanting the 0.0001% worst racists on their platform is not the thing we all need to worry about. It's just the thing the right-wing outrage machine wants you to worry about, so you don't notice their politicians taking away your actual rights.

@Kristoffer: it might be. I hope he hasn't overreached, and put SpaceX into jeopardy.

Privatize then monetize. He's no dummy.

Dorsey was creepy enough. Elon Musk is worse. I finally left Twitter because why would I want a right wing troll controlling what I see and mining my data?

If you’re still on Twitter, change your location to Germany to benefit from better privacy. Then shut down your account. If you want to chat technical, do it on GitHub.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1586686935518498816#m

"There seem to be 10 people “managing” for every one person coding"

Elon Musk

Old Unix Geek: "There is now evidence that Twitter censored people based on requests by the government, which is a clear violation of the first amendment.”

That’s not even close to being true. It’s disturbing how many people are throwing around such accusations without ever, apparently, having taken even a basic high school class in U.S. government, or having read the document they claim to understand.

The very first words of the First Amendment (which is all of one sentence long!) are “Congress shall make no law”. Unless your “evidence” is in the form of a law passed by the U.S. Congress, then it has nothing to do with the First Amendment.

You seem to have confused “violation of the first amendment” with “tech company does something I disagree with”. Even if it originated as a suggestion from the executive branch, it’s still the latter.

@Washington There is a lot of case law around the first amendment, so that it doesn’t mean only what the text literally says. For example, it doesn’t only apply to Congress, but also to the executive branch and to state and local governments. And it doesn’t only apply to laws, but also to things like policies of public universities.

Apparently, @Washington, you need to educate professor Jed Rubenfeld, a professor at Yale Law School who is an expert on the First Amendment. He too "has not even taken a basic high school class in US government", nor has "he read the document he claims to understand". You'll find his clearly muddled opinion in an article of the Wall Street Journal entitled "Twitter becomes a tool of Governmental Censorship". I relied on his, and other experts' opinions, rather than that of some random person on the internet. For this unpardonable sin, I must clearly beg your forgiveness.

(For the irony impaired, this post may contain some sarcasm. Try to locate it!)

LOL… when Rubenfeld the anti-vaxxer refers to “censorship”, he means the removal of misinformation from social media platforms. Like for example those things your weird uncle on Facebook keeps posting about 5G, “George Soros” (wink, nudge), Fauci’s secret mind-control microchip in the Covid vaccine, etc.

@Old Unix Geek, why did you put insurrection in scare quotes? Are you referring to some thing other than the January 6 insurrection?

@Kristoffer

Because the event of January 6 does not meet the requirements of the pre-2020 definition of insurrection, and I consider it a misuse of language. In fact I consider it propaganda, which does not mean I condone the event itself. I consider the misuse of words to achieve political goals truly Orwellian.

I'm not familiar with what you consider the pre 2021 definition of insurrection to be.

But surely an armed mob storming a capitol building where the Congress is in season, with the explicit motive of overthrowing a democratic election must be an inspection?

If not, then why not?

Add to that the strong indications that the military head been approached beforehand. Why else the joint letter from the defence secretaries that meddling would be a bad idea just a few days before?

Maybe it would be better described as a failed coup.

Kristoffer, it is now part of Republican groupthink to downplay right-wing political violence. (Just look at the organized Repub disinfo campaign in response to the attempted assassination of Speaker Pelosi by one of their disciples—amplified by none other than Musk himself.) So don’t expect an honest appraisal of Jan. 6 from this guy. He’s apparently quite happy to remain in his parallel universe info bubble, with its peculiar private definitions of terms and concepts, unperturbed by inconvenient facts or reason. Not much point engaging with him.

This kind of thing is only going to get worse, thanks to Elmo. Buckle up.

Gord, you are hilarious. Speak about projection. I am not part of your "Democrat" tribe. Nor am I part of the "Republican" tribe. A plague on both your houses. I particularly despise the fact that there are so many people who think that others are either "with us" or "against us". This is not how a healthy democracy works.

I also make an effort to use the correct definitions of English words.

The Oxford English Dictionary's definition of insurrection is "violent uprising against authority or government".

The Oxford English Dictionary also states that a coup is "A violent and immediate seizure of state power, usually by armed forces, and with the implication of being undemocratic and unconstitutional."

I saw no armed forces attempting to overthrow the US government. The probability that a bunch of disorganized protesters from all over the US could wrest power from a government that has the strongest military in the world is literally nil.

By European standards, this was a mismanaged yet relatively peaceful demonstration.

Mismanaged because the police had plenty of warning, yet did not stop people entering a building they were apparently not allowed into, and because a number of deaths occurred, including the shooting of a protester by the police.

Relatively peaceful because relatively few if any artifacts got damaged. In France the farmers dumped industrial quantities of manure into the Élysée palace where the president lives, and that did cause quite a bit of damage. From the January 6th ITV video I saw, most people were remarkably well behaved and NPR's quip that it was a self-guided tour seemed not that far off.

I realize most of you have not lived in countries that have suffered actual coups, actual insurrections or actual military dictatorships, but quite honestly to anyone who has, you come over as completely delusional.

The most interesting question to me is why the authorities let it happen. Incompetence? Or a good excuse to put up fences and to make lots of political hay? Why did Mrs Pelosi have her daughter filming her speaking about punching the ex-President in the head on that day?

Anyway, I shall leave it at that, as I know this is not the forum for politics.

Twitter is only valuable so long as non-conservatives continue to engage with it. If they leave, it just becomes Parler, an empty room with zero people to enrage. They need liberals audience to thrive.

Should non-conservatives vote with their disengagement from the platform and make it the next Facebook, then Old Unix Geek can be Old Twitter Geek where no one listens to them there about being repressed.

@Old Unix Geek As always I appreciate that you actually make a statement and that you are willing to articulate and argue for it in a very clear way. No weaselwording or reading between the lines.

I don't agree with your view of the January 6th events, I don't agree that pouring manure outside a government building is worse than storming a capitol with the clear intent of overthrowing a democratic vote, severely compromising national security, and causing death and trauma.

I also think it's obvious that the army had been contacted beforehand and that the slow response was the result of this. But that is speculation based on the letter pf warning that the defence secretaries sent a few days before the event.

We will never agree on this, but that's fine. There are other things we agree on, and once again; I really appreciate that you are willing to articulate your opinions.

@Kristoffer, thanks!

Just for precision sake, the incident at the Élysée I was referring to involved spraying a whole truck load of manure (using some sort of machine used to spray it on fields I think) through a first story double french door into a room, thereby causing a real mess. It wasn't dumped outside.