Bezos-owned Washington Post warns Elon Musk's Twitter investment could be 'bad news for free speech' | The Post Millennial - "Elon Musk bought a 9.2-percent stake in Twitter, and the Washington Post essentially freaked out, publishing an article claiming that having the richest man in the world as a partial owner of a social media platform as influential as Twitter could spell trouble for free speech. Musk responded to the preposterous article by saying that the outlet is "always good for a laugh." Jeff Bezos was the richest man in the world, also a tech billionaire like Musk, when he bought the Washington Post in 2013. When Bezos made the buy, he became sole owner of the legacy news outlet... So it's alright when the richest man in the world buys an entire newspaper outright, but when the richest man in the world buys shares in a social media platform, free speech is endangered. Got it. Twitter continues as a public company after Musk's stock buy, but when Bezos bought WaPo, he took the company private. This meant that the Washington Post did "not have to report quarterly earnings to shareholders or be subjected to investors’ demands for ever-rising profits." The Washington Post reported at the time that this meant Bezos would "be able to experiment with the paper without the pressure of showing an immediate return on any investment."... "Elon Musk just bought a $3 billion stake in Twitter Inc., because when you’re the world's richest human you can toss billions around like poker chips," Bloomberg's Timothy L. O'Brien Timothy L. O'Brien wrote in the column that first appeared in Bloomberg, owned by billionaire Mike Bloomberg. Musk is a large shareholder, but far from the owner of the company itself... O'Brien critiqued Musk's stance as a "free speech absolutist." This in a newspaper for which the motto is "democracy dies in darkness." He further claims that it's "not clear why Twitter is his target." It's unclear how O'Brien could be unclear on that, since Musk is a free speech absolutist, and Twitter is an essential platform that the CEO of said platform has stated does not have an obligation to free speech. It's Musk's business dealings that O'Brien is taking issue with, and his tweets. WaPo doesn't like that Musk has compared Canadian PM Justin Trudeau to other historical tyrants, supported the concept of biological sex over gender identity, or that his tweets have the power to move stock markets. After Musk's ownership stake in Twitter was announced, Twitter's stock price jumped 23 percent. The claim goes further to say that Musk is a "free speech absolutist who isn’t absolutely in favor of free speech," and that he's likely not in the Twitter business for the money, but to make a point. It's his money, and his motivation, that are at issue for the Washington Post here... Musk has been a vocal critic of Twitter for some time. He's watched as users were suspended and censored on the platform. He's seen the Twitter administration shift from Jack Dorsey, the start-up's founder who tried to figure out how to balance free speech with concerns over hacked material, to Parag Agrawal, who does not see a need to uphold the values of free speech."
Look at all the woke Twitter employees that were triggered by Elon Musk becoming the company's largest shareholder 😂 - "It's a thing of beauty. One second, wokies are resting on their laurels, telling those MAGA dweebs that Twitter is a private company and can set whatever speech limits it wants. The next second, they're upset when someone they don't like buys a huge stake in said private company! Here's a wonderful series of screenshots from this thread by journalist Andy Ngô"
Proof that the company employs many liberals
Elon Musk unveils vision for Twitter after joining board - "Elon Musk has set out his vision for Twitter after buying a 9.2% stake in the company, in a series of posts on the social network described by one commentator as having “chaos energy”. Since being appointed to the Twitter board on Tuesday, Musk has posted a stream of open questions about the present and future of the site, proposing new features, highlighting areas of concern, and making jokes. Typically for the Tesla billionaire, it was not always clear which was which. Musk’s most long-running concern with the direction of Twitter has been its moderation policies. In late March – after he had acquired a large stake in the company, but before he had disclosed that publicly – he tweeted a poll asking users whether Twitter adhered to the principle of free speech. “Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy,” he added. “What should be done?” In 2021, Musk had declared: “A lot of people are going to be super unhappy with West Coast high tech as the de facto arbiter of free speech,” and just last month declared himself “a free speech absolutist”. Musk has personally started some moderation controversies on Twitter, as in March 2020, when he tweeted that children were “essentially immune” to Covid, leading to calls on the social network to remove his tweet for breaking then-new rules about Covid misinformation. Twitter ultimately declined, arguing that it did not break the rules “when reviewing the overall context and conclusion of the tweet”... Musk expressed concern that many of the most-followed accounts on Twitter “tweet rarely and post very little content”, asking: “Is Twitter dying? For example, Taylor Swift hasn’t posted anything in 3 months. And Justin Bieber only posted once this entire year.” In another set of tweets, he criticised the service offered by Twitter Blue, the company’s subscription package, arguing that it should come with an “authentication checkmark” and no adverts – since “the power of corporations to dictate policy is greatly enhanced if Twitter depends on advertising money to survive”... Drawing the line between a Twitter joke and a serious proposal can be hard with the former PayPal chief executive, who has previously made and sold flamethrowers, liquidated billions of dollars of Tesla stock, and launched a car into space, all after suggesting that he would do so on social media."
Chris Bakke on Twitter - "Elon Musk is in for a bad time. I’m not sure he’s prepared to take on a couple PhDs, a few MBAs, and a Baroness who use Twitter once a year (to reset their passwords) and collectively own 77 shares of the company."
Elon Musk on Twitter - "Wow, with Jack departing, the Twitter board collectively owns almost no shares! Objectively, their economic interests are simply not aligned with shareholders."
Twitter board of directors adopt ‘poison pill’ defense against Musk takeover bid - "With about 82 million Twitter followers, Musk is both a prolific user of the platform and a vocal critic of the measures it has taken to restrict accounts that spread misinformation or amplify violent rhetoric and hate speech. He said Thursday he’s opposed to permanent user bans — the most famous of which is Twitter’s suspension of former President Donald Trump’s account after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Musk revealed in recent regulatory filings that he’d been buying Twitter shares in almost daily batches starting Jan. 31, ending up with a stake of about 9 percent. Only Vanguard Group controls more Twitter shares... After Musk announced his stake, Twitter quickly offered him a seat on its board on the condition that he would limit his purchases to no more than 14.9 percent of the company’s outstanding stock. But the company said five days later that Musk had declined. Ives said Twitter’s poison pill path is a predictable defensive maneuver but could be seen as a “sign of weakness” for the company on Wall Street. Musk could try to fight the measure in court, but “no court has overturned a poison pill in the last 30 years,” said Columbia University law professor John Coffee. Rallying shareholders to kick out the board might be more doable but also presents challenges to Musk... A Saudi prince who is among Twitter’s major shareholders scoffed at Musk’s offer in a Thursday tweet. Al Waleed bin Talal said he would reject Musk’s overtures because he didn’t believe $43 billion “comes close to the intrinsic value of Twitter, given its growth prospects.”... Musk responded to the prince with a tweet asking how many Twitter shares he holds and then made what may have been a veiled reference to the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi that was tied to Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. “What are the Kingdom’s views on journalistic freedom of speech?”"
Both Elon Musk AND Jack Dorsey slam Twitter's board as it adopts "poison pill" strategy to keep Elon at bay - "excluding Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, the rest of the board owns just over 0.1% of the company COMBINED. Yet these woke ideologues are trying to stop mad lad Elon Musk from buying the platform by adopting a "poison pill" strategy that devalues company stock by offering discounts on shares – a strategy that financially destabilizes the company... Twitter founder Jack Dorsey replied to a separate thread from investor Gary Tan that discussed the damage that could be caused by appointing a bad member to your company board. In that tweet, Dorsey directly said that the board has "consistently been the dysfunction of the company." Yikes! He's not legally allowed to say that, but he said it anyway!!"
David Sacks on Twitter - "If the game is fair, Elon will buy Twitter. If the game is rigged, there will be some reason why he won’t be able to. We’re about to find out how deep the corruption goes."
Elon Musk on Twitter - "Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy. What should be done?"
Elon Musk now largest Twitter shareholder, prompting calls to reinstate Trump's account - "Musk's huge purchase comes days after he conducted an online poll and asked his millions of Twitter followers what they thought about Twitter's free speech principles. Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy," Musk tweeted in a caption of a Yes/No poll he put up on March 25. "Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle? The consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully," Musk wrote in a follow-up tweet to that poll. Out of 2,035,924 Twitter users who voted in Musk's poll, 70.4% voted 'No" while 29.6% voted "Yes.""... Musk's new position as majority shareholder will possibly allow him to enact those changes. As an example of the power Twitter shareholders wield, they were able to help convince and possibly even force former CEO Jack Dorsey to resign in Nov. 2021."
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey takes aim at board in series of tweets | Financial Post - "In response a tweet on Monday asking him why he did not “do anything about it” when he was the CEO of Twitter, Dorsey expressed frustration at his limited ability to speak freely."
Jesse Kline: Elon Musk wants speech to be free on Twitter and the left just can't handle that - "Twitter is much smaller than many of its competitors, boasting around 330 million monthly active users, compared to 2.85 billion on Facebook. But it plays an outsized role in public discussions, mostly because it is the favoured stomping ground of journalists and politicians. The echo chamber that has been created by people with an inflated sense of self-worth helps fuel the idea that such websites have somehow become an integral part of modern democracies, and therefore must be treated more like public utilities. At the beginning of December, many on the right were losing their minds about how the resignation of the company’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, would turn Twitter into a vehicle of censorship and authoritarian control — not because Dorsey had been particularly good about upholding the values of free speech, but because he resisted the U.S. Congress’ push to impose controls on the platform. Now it’s the left that’s freaking out over a bid by Elon Musk — the son of a Saskatchewan-born dietitian who did a brief stint at Queen’s University before moving to the United States and becoming the world’s richest man — to buy Twitter for US$43 billion ($54 billion) and take it private... Liberals who love tweeting about how morally superior they are for driving a Tesla hate the idea that anyone could amass a US$260-billion fortune from selling them, and think it’s dangerous to allow people to challenge their woke worldview. Prominent journalism Prof. Jeff Jarvis said the news feels like the “twilight of Weimar Germany.” Journalist and author David Leavitt contended that it could “result in World War 3 and the destruction of our planet.” Trans writer Lilah Sturges claimed Twitter “will become completely uninhabitable for trans people (and lots of other people).” Writing in the Toronto Star, tech columnist Navneet Alang claimed that, “No company that is as vital to the functioning of modern societies should even be in a position to be snapped up by a billionaire.” Which could be defensible if the social network really were a necessary institution, but 139 years of pre-Twitter Canadian democracy says we would get by just fine without it. The bigger problem is, even if the premise were true, we now have a large segment of the population, including many in the media, once staunch defenders of freedom of speech and of the press, who seem to believe that in order to avoid tyranny, we need to impose restrictions on expression. “I am frightened by the impact on society and politics if Elon Musk acquires Twitter,” tweeted Washington Post columnist Max Boot. “He seems to believe that on social media anything goes. For democracy to survive, we need more content moderation, not less.” The significance of such a statement in a historical context cannot be overstated. As we have seen time and again, it is the unfree countries that have placed curbs on expression in order to hide the truth from their citizens and prevent the masses from rising up. This is the whole foundation of the democratic system — to allow groups of people to come together to debate issues of public import and replace those in power through nonviolent means. There was a time when both sides recognized the value of free speech, because they knew that any restrictions on expression could easily be used against them in the future. Too many people seem to have forgotten this truism, perhaps because many have reconceptualized the definition of free speech. “Musk’s understanding of free speech … is quite plainly childish,” wrote Alang, “on the web, unmoderated spaces are profoundly unfree because they fill up with hate and harassment, silencing all but the loudest and most powerful — among whom Musk is clearly both.” He’s absolutely correct that misinformation spread through social media is causing huge problems in society. But free speech has never meant that everyone’s voice is equally as loud — only that everyone has a right to express themselves without fear of retribution. It is folly to think that simply imposing more controls on a social network will do anything to diminish the spread of misinformation. If Twitter starts censoring some people, they will move to another social network, or create their own. This has been implicitly recognized by those who once warned about big tech companies becoming the “gatekeepers” of the internet, yet are now incensed that Musk wants to remove Twitter’s gatekeeper status. Musk is right that if there is going to be a platform on which people are free to debate, they must actually be free to do so."
Freedom is slavery
Auron MacIntyre on Twitter - "If you think politics is downstream from culture watch as multiple corporate entities coordinate with investment firms, government agencies, foreign rulers, and media outlets to stop *one* piece of the cultural manufacturing apparatus from falling into the wrong hands"
Chuck Sharp on Twitter - "The fact that Twitter is willing to devalue their own stock, punish shareholders, and swallow a poison pill in order to avoid selling the Company to Musk, only tells the world what Twitter actually thinks and is willing to do to Censor and destroy Freedom of Speech. 🤔🤔🤔"
Thread by @ggreenwald on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Yesterday was a flagship day in corporate media. It was the day they were forced to explicitly state what has long been clear: they not only favor censorship but desperately crave and depend on it. Even if Musk doesn't buy Twitter, never forget what yesterday revealed. In US culture, we're inculcated from childhood that censorship is bad. So of course nobody -- especially journalists -- wants to say: "I favor censorship." That's why they need euphemisms like "content moderation": to pretend it's about bots, abuse, etc. rather than ideology. Everyone knows they are lying. Nobody cares about Twitter censoring bots or spam. That's not what this is about. The social media censorship people care about is 100% ideological: banning dissent on COVID, the Biden emails, culture war debates, etc. That's what's at stake.
Let's put it this way: On Google/YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, you are free to say the 2000 and 2016 elections were stolen and fraudulent. You can't say that about 2020. Before the 2020 election, you weren't allowed to post reporting on the Biden emails. It's all ideological. Throughout the COVID pandemic, you weren't allowed to question the efficacy of cloth masks. You weren't allowed to interrogate the origins of the virus. You weren't allowed to debate vaccines or lockdowns. No dissent from Fauci/WHO was allowed. The censorship is 100% political.
You're allowed to spread any lies, propaganda and disinformation you want if it advances the Ukrainian cause (i.e., the US/NATO cause), but will be instantly banned if you say anything that challenges that on the ground of "Russia disinformation." This is all explicit. Censorship of conservatives gets most attention because it's so common, but censorship of anti-establishment leftists is also frequent: any dissident can be banned. Pretending this is about bots or spam is fraudulent. This censorship is about control of political information.
Social media was heralded as an innovation that would liberate individuals from centralized control by the state and oligarchical power over their speech. It has become the exact opposite: the most powerful tool of information control and speech constraints ever devised. How dumb do you have to be to believe that journalists - who work at Bloomberg and the Bezos-owned WPost or Comcast or CNN - are worried about billionaires controlling media (🤣). They're only petrified that the *wrong* billionaire, one who may not censor for them, might reign. There are many reasons to be skeptical of Musk's motives and, even if pure, his ability to restore free speech to Twitter. Way too many powerful interests need this censorship. But the panic reveals so much. My @getcallin show yesterday covered all this"
Elon Musk’s vision of ‘free speech’ will be bad for Twitter - The Washington Post - "Musk’s appointment to Twitter’s board shows that we need regulation of social-media platforms to prevent rich people from controlling our channels of communication."
Irony aside, this ticks all the usual liberal check boxes. Ellen Pao - no wonder
Glenn Greenwald on Twitter - "I love that Elon Musk's potential influence in Twitter caused so much hysteria in the West while this Saudi billionaire's massive role never created any concern. That's because one says he believes in free speech and one clearly does not, and it's free speech that spurs panic."
Glenn Greenwald on Twitter - "Liberals and even parts of the "Left" have now become absolutely terrified at the thought of living in a country with free speech."
"They united to censor accurate reporting and authentic documents about Joe Biden right before the 2020 election, and in its place put the CIA lie that it was "Russian disinformation." Of course censorship is crucial to the liberal-left: it's one of their most effective weapons."
Robert Reich on Twitter - "Call me a radical Lefty, but I don’t want any oligarch to control the internet."
Glenn Greenwald on Twitter - "Right now, labor collectives and associations of homeless advocates control the internet, so it would be a terrible development if that changed of all a sudden and the internet was instead subject to the control of oligarchs for the first time ever due to Elon Musk."
Marc Andreessen on Twitter - "Gentle reminder that the First Amendment ONLY applies to the government, an Elon-owned Twitter can make any rules it wants oh my god stop it's too much I can't take it"
Cameron Winklevoss on Twitter - "Twitter is considering a poison pill to thwart @elonmusk's offer. They would rather self-immolate than give up their censorship programs. This shows you how deeply committed they are to Orwellian control of the narratives and global discourse. Scary."
Elon Musk on Twitter - "If the current Twitter board takes actions contrary to shareholder interests, they would be breaching their fiduciary duty. The liability they would thereby assume would be titanic in scale."
Will Chamberlain on Twitter - "The left: "Twitter is a private company, it can do what it wants." *
@elonmusk becomes Twitter's largest shareholder*
The left: "Twitter is too important to be left in private hands.""
Errol Webber on Twitter - "Today, @ElonMusk isn't trending anymore. Twitter is showing their true colors, trying everything possible to keep an African American down."
Meme - Warren @realtworoosters: "He's not going to encourage "free speech" he's just going to allow people to say whatever they want, which is not at all the same thing."
Sean Davis on Twitter - "The insane response to @elonmusk's proposal to buy Twitter at a significant premium proves that he isn't acquiring a private company, he's acquiring a global government censorship engine. Capitalists don't turn down $10 billion in free money. Only totalitarians would do that."
GuiXimenes 🇧🇷🏴 on Twitter - "Elon, seriously. It's a consensus in social sciences that free speech can't be limitless. You should keep investing your time in things you actually know how it works, like the engineering fields that u are great on it. Leave social matters to people that study it."
Basically the social sciences have been taken over by leftists?
Meme - Matthew Rozsa @MatthewRozsa: "Dear Parag Agrawal, If you're reading this: Right now, the world needs to know that you are stronger, smarter and more tenacious than Elon Musk. He thinks he can beat you. The free world needs to know that he is wrong. Yours truly, A lifelong and long-verified Twitter user"
Facebook - "The recent controversy around Elon Musk proves his point. If Twitter was just another private company and building another social network if we dislike its policies were so easy, nobody would be concerned at the prospect of a Musk takeover. That some are acting as if Musk owning Twitter would be the end of civilization shows that it’s not just another private company - it is in fact one of only a few de facto online public squares. Public squares are not necessarily a total free-for-all with no rules whatsoever, but there’s a reason why people are now fighting so hard to get to be the ones who determine what those rules should be."
Meme - "Saudi Prince Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud, one of Twitter's largest shareholders, rejects Elon Musk's bid."
Draft Dodger @HistoryExpert2: "Good. Billionaires shouldn't control media"
Somehow, I doubt his grasp of history now
Disclose.tv on Twitter - "NOW - Gov. DeSantis wants to hold Twitter's board and directors accountable for potentially injuring Florida's pension fund."
Meme - Brianna Wu: "If any reporters reach out to me today, I will share the stories I've kept private about the fight to improve Twitter moderation policies at the Trust and Safety team over the last ten years. Because this is what we're going to lose if this deal goes through."
When the left admit that they have lots of dirty secrets about Twitter censorship
Twitter Locks Changes To Site To Stop ‘Rogue’ Employees From Sabotaging Platform After Musk Buyout
Meme - Shaun King @shaunking: "At its root, @ElonMusk wanting to purchase Twitter is not about left vs right. It's about white power. The man was raised in Apartheid by a white nationalist. He's upset that Twitter won't allow white nationalists to people. That's his definition of free speech."
Meme - "Shaun King hates Elon Musk because Elon is something that Shaun will never be: African-American."
El American on Twitter: "BREAKING: Shaun King has DELETED his Twitter account and gone private on his Instagram after @elonmusk acquires Twitter."
Meme - Katie Herzog @kittypurrzog: "If Elon Musk buys twitter I'm moving to Canada"
Meme - Tim Wise @timjacobwise: "Fuck Elon Musk. Apartheid Baby. You, your company, and everyone who Stans for you. I'm saying this on your platform now and will keep saying it. Let's see how committed you are to free speech when we start roasting your ass...
We're gonna have to deal with Nazis the way our grandparents did because Elon Musk is gonna let them say whatever they want in the name of free speech. Cool, there are other options..."
Elon Musk on Twitter - "I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means"
Yasmine Mohammed 🦋 ياسمين محمد on Twitter - "It's so weird how none of you cared that a Saudi owned so much of twitter and that Saudi Arabia literally used the platform to hunt gay ppl so they could be arrested/executed, but you draw the line at the guy who builds electric cars and wants to fly to the moon..."
Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Issues Surprising Statement About Elon Musk Buying Company - "Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey responded Monday night to the news that Twitter’s board of directors unanimously approved a $44 billion definitive agreement to be acquired by Elon Musk by saying that Musk is the “singular solution” that he trusts to fix the company’s problems."
The great Musk meltdown - "One of the few pleasures of the current culture war is to observe the hysteria of its chief antagonists whenever something doesn’t go their way. A couple of weeks ago, it was the frenzy over the UK government’s announcement that Channel 4 was likely to be privatised. MP Claudia Webb claimed that the government’s plan was ‘not freedom or independence’ but rather ‘the seedbed of fascism’... the news that Elon Musk’s bid to buy Twitter has been successful has caused a predictable meltdown of volcanic proportions. In the unbridled mania among identitarian leftists, we are seeing evidence that they have not learned the lessons of Brexit or the election of Donald Trump, which they similarly treated as portents of the apocalypse. It takes an infantile mind not to accept that democracy works on the basis of the loser’s consent, the principle that – as Roger Scruton put it – ‘We respect our fellow citizens even when they do not vote our way, because the government is not “mine” or “yours” but “ours”’. Even the deranged reactions to the Brexit and Trump votes were but tepid premonitions of the responses to Musk’s takeover of Twitter. Comedian Kathy Griffin tweeted that Musk is a ‘media-thirsty, vindictive, white supremacist who is looking to convince you he is an innovative disruptor’. Activist Shaun King wrote that Musk’s move is ‘about white power’. Apparently, Musk is ‘upset that Twitter won’t allow white nationalists to target / harass people. That’s his definition of free speech.’ No evidence for these claims has been forthcoming, of course. Like all his fellow activists, King has the kind of access to his political opponents’ private thoughts that Uri Geller could only dream about. King has since deleted his Twitter account, and many others have threatened to do so, too. Actor Jameela Jamil’s statement that she is leaving Twitter has been clocking up the retweets and likes, so it’s understandable that her account still remains active. The broadcaster India Willoughby has said that ‘if Elon gets Twitter, I think that’s it for me’. Activist Tim Wise has gone straight for the trash talk: ‘Fuck Elon Musk. Apartheid Baby. You, your company, and everyone who Stans for you. I’m saying this on your platform now and will keep saying it. Let’s see how committed you are to free speech when we start roasting your ass.’ Twitter has not been this entertaining for years. There’s little doubt that Musk’s first tweet following the news of his successful bid has only enraged his detractors all the more. ‘I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter’, he wrote, ‘because that is what free speech means’. Musk is stubbornly refusing to dive into the squalid pit that his critics have dug for themselves, and from which they are frantically slinging mud that inevitably falls back on to their own heads. The moral high ground is far more satisfying. Who knows whether or not Musk will improve Twitter? He can hardly make it any worse. There are a few simple changes that he could make that would demonstrate his commitment to free speech. Firstly, he could disband Twitter’s ‘Trust and Safety Council’, or at least give it a name that makes it sounds less like a group of Maoist bureaucrats orchestrating their struggle sessions. He could draw up coherent terms of service to explicitly outline which kinds of behaviour are prohibited on the platform. At present, the rules are deliberately vague, which means that users are often booted off the site without justification. Even appeals tend to result in further automated responses, digital missives from the Ministry of Truth. For a long time, woke activists have been intoning the mantra that ‘Twitter is a private company and can do what it likes’, safe in the knowledge that the ideological bent of Silicon Valley conveniently aligns with their own. Few of them are saying that following yesterday’s news. The problem has never been that Twitter does not tolerate threats or harassment on its platform, but rather that harassment is often conflated with relatively innocuous behaviour in order to justify deleting accounts for political or ideological reasons. For instance, many gender-critical feminists have been censored simply for stating biological truths, or raising important questions about child safeguarding and the preservation of women-only spaces. With Musk in charge, perhaps these conversations could be allowed to take place. Admittedly, one corollary of Twitter reinstating its commitment to free speech will be that some ghastly people will be able to express their views. This is the price we pay for living in a free society and, as I have argued in Free Speech and Why It Matters, bad ideas only flourish if they are not subject to public scrutiny... It has been observed by child psychologists that when babies cry, what we assume is an expression of discomfort is often a form of rage. The collective mindset of the disciples of Critical Social Justice approximates a kind of arrested development, an inability to engage in reasoned discussion or to understand that, when it comes to persuading others of your point of view, tantrums have limited utility. The reactions to Musk’s takeover of Twitter are a useful reminder of how not to argue, and an illustration of the juvenile state of much of our public discourse. Above all, they prove that the very concept of free speech is, to many, still a radical and terrifying prospect."
"Why do you people assume you can get in? We have a border and immigration procedures, unlike the southern US."
Meme - Gad Saad @GadSaad: "This racist bigot is attacking @elonmusk, an African- American. We cannot tolerate such open hatred on New Twitter. As the new CEO of Twitter, I'll ban him for community cohesion."
