The case that Elon Musk knows exactly what he’s doing at Twitter.
From November
Twitter Became Way Too Important to Journalists. Let It Die. - "our media class—our writers, pundits, and journalists—is made up of obsessive Twitter users, the kind of people who check the site habitually and ritualistically throughout their day. And that’s why the problems revealed by Musk’s ownership are bigger than Musk... [Elon Musk's Twitter is] an object lesson about maintaining a culture of free expression: you should take care not to justify censorship because you will often find yourself the censored, and not the censor. Reap what you sow. For another thing, it demonstrates the fickle hand of capitalism; on any given day, a beloved company can be snatched up by a bad actor with deep pockets and used to whatever ends they like. Which brings me to the deeper problem: the centralization of Twitter itself. For many users, Twitter has long been the social network they can’t live with, but really can’t live without. The culture of Twitter is notoriously vituperative and angry, with hordes of people at the ready to engage in the latest pile-on, and innumerable voices spewing invective. Some active Twitter users refer to it as “the hellsite.” And yet despite the obvious downsides, many people, particularly in the broad professional world of media and journalism, feel compelled to participate. Twitter is just too important to their careers not to. Within a few years of the founding of Twitter, the service became something like the default public square of those who worked for newspapers, magazines, TV, movies, universities, nonprofits, and sundry other sectors. Twitter became the place where our chattering classes went to talk to each other, and along with that arose a kind of perpetual popularity contest—with the number of followers and virality of individual tweets helping to define the hierarchy. As a working writer for the last 15 years, I have had innumerable conversations with various types of content creators who have said that they find Twitter unpleasant, often awful, but feel like they have no choice to be there. When I was a grad student, several professors told us that having a Twitter account had become an indispensable part of marketing oneself professionally. This advice has become ubiquitous across creative fields. Twitter’s ability to drive traffic to written work, in terms of pageviews, has often been overstated. But in terms of becoming notable among one’s professional peers, of becoming popular, there is truly no place like Twitter. For more than a decade, I’ve complained about the downsides of Twitter becoming something like the new high school for our media class, with cliques and a popularity hierarchy. Twitter creates echo chambers; Twitter privileges popularity with peers above quality of work; Twitter has bred a culture of conformity in a profession that should be defined by independence of thinking; Twitter is corrosive to seriousness, poise, and rumination; Twitter promotes rushing to judgment; Twitter engenders vindictiveness and undermines forgiveness; and, most central to our concerns here, Twitter concentrates too much influence in a single private company, leaving the entire industry and its professional incentives captive to that company and the whims of those who run it. Given the uncertain future of Twitter as a network, and company leadership’s antipathy to the liberals who recently treated the site as their clubhouse, many have proposed leaving Twitter for similar apps, such as Hive Social or Post News But if everyone suddenly decamped from Twitter to a similar network, the problems with Twitter would just be replicated. The fundamental issue is not merely who owns Twitter; the fundamental issue is that the centralization of so much elite conversations was always poisonous, and always subject to the whims of capitalism. My sincere wish, then, is that if Twitter were to die, the concentration of so much of elite conversation would die with it. It’s time to decentralize media and its professional culture. What would media look like after the kind of decentralization I’m proposing? We already have a model, which is the pre-social media internet... there was a time when that pressure to speak to everyone didn’t exist, and a thousand flowers bloomed. It’s not a coincidence that this was also a period of far greater independence of thought and diverse views in media than today... After the financial crisis of 2008 and ensuing recession, we spent a lot of time talking about the concept of “too big to fail”—that is, financial institutions that became such an important part of our greater economic system that the government felt compelled to intervene to save them. This led, in turn, to the argument that institutions that were too big to fail were too big to exist, that we should not allow institutions that have such immense influence on our economy to exist. For media, Twitter became too big to fail—and thus too big."
Meme - Taylor Lorenz @TaylorLorenz: "It's like the gates of hell opened on this site tonight PM"
"Taylor Lorenz stands in the breach, holding back the hordes of unbanned Twitter accounts: 2022 colorized"
Tesla's profits soared to a record – but challenges are mounting - "Tesla reported record profits and record revenues for 2022, as the company heads into a new year facing a number of steep challenges. Profit for the year hit $12.6 billion, more than doubling since 2021 and beating the expectations of most analysts."
So much for his dooming all his companies due to Twitter
Japan thanks Elon for "Saving Twitter" - YouTube - "controversial and absurd political tags have completely vanished from trending suggestions and now it's filled with anime idols and Japanese TV shows, uh TV show news... apparently they used to suppress anime and boost K-pop related topics... also lots of gender theory topics used to pop up"
竹下郁子 on Twitter - "確かにTwitterのニュースフィードは更新されてない気がする。私た
ちメディアは自社記事のモーメントを作成→Twitterキュレーションチームに連絡→審査の上ピックされたりされなかったり、という手順を踏んできたのだけど、この作業はしばらくは意味を成さないのかな？"
"I'm pretty sure Twitter's news feed isn't updated. We media created a moment for our own article → contacted the Twitter curation team → , and it may or may not have been selected after screening, but this work has made sense for a while. I wonder if there isn't?"
Comment: "a notorious japanese feminist journalist literally admitted that they were collaborating with twitter employees to select what to show or not. now she is sad that its not happening."
Elon Musk Tweets Letter to Twitter Advertisers
Liberals claim that since he said he didn't want "a free-for-all hellscape", his moderation regime would be no different from all the censorship that the old Twitter used to have. Since they have manichean thinking, that is no surprise
Twitter has grown under Elon Musk — mainly in the U.S., data shows - "Elon Musk has generated fresh interest in Twitter, and you don’t have to take his word for it. Data from two independent research firms, Apptopia and Sensor Tower, indicate that downloads and activity on Twitter are on the upswing in the weeks since Musk bought it and in comparison to last year, appearing to confirm Musk’s recent boasting that he has reinvigorated the social media app."
Elon Musk just took a SLEDGEHAMMER to the Washington Post 🔥 - "The claim by WaPo is that Elon messed with the Twitter algorithm in order to promote his own tweets... The facts and numbers on Elon's Twitter account reveal the Post's accusations to be factually inaccurate. And all it would take to prove or disprove their accusation would be to spend just a few minutes looking at the tweets. But they didn't do that."
Meme - Duty To Warn @duty2warn: "Tomi Lahren called flight attendants "nazis of the air" for enforcing the mask mandate. I call anyone who makes false equivalents to the Holocaust ignorant anti-Semites. Fuck you."
Duty To Warn: "Last night, in a bloodbath, Twitter purged en masse mainstream journalists who cover Elon Musk. I'm reminded of Kristallnacht. Free speech was the second Big Lie. This is what bare knuckled fascism looks like."
Only liberals get to make inappropriate Holocaust/Nazi comparisons
Here's what Facebook and Instagram's new pay-for-verification service means
I remember when people were mocking Musk for this
Meme - Lindy Li @lindyli: "Elon Musk will ban anyone who hasn't paid him $8 from voting in his future polls. Otherwise known as a poll tax. Who wants to tell him that we got rid of that Jim Crow shit last century?!"
Gail, Expand the Supreme Court @GailAnder: "There has to be something illegal in what Musk is doing. I believe this would be considered gambling. You are paying to place a bet. Or, purchase necessary, again illegal. They could shut him down."
The derangement is amusing
David Frum on Twitter - "The complaint seems to be that this platform under previous management was not hospitable enough to antivaxxers, Russian military intelligence, and Pepe the frog."
When you can't allow the narrative to be challenged
Elon Musk defends banning of journalists: ‘You dox, you get suspended’ - "Twitter CEO Elon Musk defended his decision to ban several prominent technology reporters from the platform on Thursday night, claiming they violated Twitter’s policies on “doxxing.” “You dox, you get suspended,” Musk said on a Twitter Spaces conversation with journalists. “End of story.” Doxxing is the act of sharing information like addresses, phone numbers and emails online in an attempt to allow others to harass the individuals. The billionaire abruptly suspended the accounts of reporters from The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and other outlets on Thursday night who had covered Musk’s recent dispute with Jack Sweeney, the creator of @elonjet... Washington Post Executive Editor Sally Buzbee said in a statement that the decision to suspend Harwell and the other reporters “directly undermines Elon Musk’s claim that he intends to run Twitter as a platform dedicated to free speech.”... Musk suggested that the suspensions would not be permanent"
Previously, liberals kept insisting that private companies could do what they wanted, and that if you violated terms of service you deserved to be banned. But they got really upset over this. Of course.
What is Doxing: Is it Illegal & How to prevent it? - "The answer is usually no: doxing tends not to be illegal, if the information exposed lies within the public domain, and it was obtained using legal methods. That said, depending on your jurisdiction, doxing may fall foul of laws designed to fight stalking, harassment, and threats."
Kaspersky says revealing public information can still be doxxing
How is it legal to track private planes like Elon Musk's? - "The owner of the @ElonJet account, Jack Sweeney, has previously said that all the information he used to create the account is publicly available. Sweeney didn't respond to a request for additional comment. Although the data used to operate the @ElonJet account and other similar accounts tracking celebrity planes is publicly accessible, experts note there isn't a single government registry of such data. Instead, it actually requires putting together separate pieces of information to create tracking accounts. Doing so, of course, raises privacy concerns... The FAA has another program that allows planes to encode their ADS-B signals so they can't be matched to other information in the publicly available Civil Aviation Registry. It's unclear whether Musk and his plane's operator participated in either the registration blocking program or the ADS-B signal encoding one. Musk couldn't be reached for comment."
Scott Wainner on Twitter - "Elon uses the FAA PIA privacy program for a private plane ID. When using a PIA address, the owner is anon and private, not public. Sweeney’s workaround is (likely) to spot a (rare) ICAO plane resembling Musk’s & noting the private code."
Meme - Ben Shapiro @benshapiro: "(1) As a person with 24/7 security to protect my family, I'm highly sympathetic to Musk's attempt to quash doxxing BUT
(2) Doxxing typically refers to giving people's real-time location, not speculating about publicly available flight information, as @esaagar points out."
Critical B @criticalsfl: "Ben, missing a key ingredient. Musk is part of multiple privacy programs with the FAA. It's not just "publicly available info" being used to track his plane. It's sleuthing to put together info to try and bypass the FAA privacy information and expose which is Elons jet. Doxxing."
Meme - The Other 98% @other98: "I didn't like Elon Musk before it was cool"
Bryce Verret: "No you didn't...."
The Other 98%: "Yes!
This is Elon. Elon wanted a new payment method on the Internet, so he created Paypal Elon wanted to drive an electric car, so he founded Tesla Motors. Elon wanted to go to space cheaper, so he created Spacex. Elon wanted faster transportation, so he is developing Hyperloop. Elon does not tell everyone how bad the world is. Elon is working on changing the world. Be like Elon."
Meme - Aaron RuparQ @atrupar: "The rules are so vague you can get banned for anything, which is probably the point"
Dispropaganda @Dispropoganda: ""Journalists" are now finding out what everyone already knew since 2010."
‘Skynet Is A Private Company, They Can Do What They Want,’ Says Man Getting Curb-Stomped By Terminator | Babylon Bee - ""The concerns of Big Tech becoming too powerful and the need for their power to be checked are as unfounded as they are ridiculous," argued Tina Richards as she was vaporized by a Terminator's plasma rifle blast... At publishing time, a fringe extremist named John Conner has taken up arms and decided to actively fight the machines, forming a resistance in hopes of saving humanity."
Collin Rugg on Twitter - "My favorite moment of 2022 was when Elon Musk fired 70% of Twitter’s staff and the site actually worked better."
How I learned to love free speech - "Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover has exposed the liberal elites’ fear of free speech. His relaxation of its content-moderation policies has sent the blue-ticks into meltdown. Many are so horrified at the prospect of encountering views that differ from their own, they are now threatening to leave the platform altogether. So why have so many on the liberal-left given up on free speech? Why do they seem to have forgotten the dangers of censorship?...
Murphy: It’s very strange. Of course it’s troubling when anyone advocates for censorship, but I can’t stand the hypocrisy. It used to mainly be the Christian right that went after art, hip-hop, film and so on. We have done almost a full 180, where it’s the left that is trying to censor anyone who doesn’t toe its preferred narrative and doesn’t support its politics. It’s scary, because these people don’t seem to see the big picture. Right now most liberal leftists are on the ‘correct’ end of the political spectrum – they are the mainstream. Their words are supported. Their views are supported. But what makes them think that will be permanent? What makes them think that someone else won’t be in power next year, who will want to censor them? What happens when you supported censorship, advocated against free speech, and now you no longer have it? Now you’re the one being persecuted. You thought you had this permanent power, on Twitter for example, to control the conversation. Now suddenly you’re faced with different opinions. Of course, liberal-leftists are not being censored on Twitter at this point, but they are behaving as though they are, just because they now have to deal with criticisms and challenges from people who don’t wholeheartedly agree with everything they say. I make this point this to my fellow feminists all the time. It makes me so angry that so many feminists refuse to support free speech. They’ll support free speech for feminists, but for no one else. So many feminists are essentially enmeshed in woke politics, except when it comes to the issue of gender identity. And then they want to stand up for speech for women. Obviously I want to advocate for free speech for women, but not just for women. And not just on the gender-identity issue. That is not how this works. I truly don’t understand how people don’t see that. You can’t fight for your own speech and no one else’s."
Black in the Empire 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."
Glenn Greenwald on Twitter - "The leading group of censorship advocates in the US are employees of media corporations. Here's one lamenting that Twitter's "progress" in censoring more might be undone. I point this out often because it's so bizarre: journalists as censorship leaders."
Meme - AG @AGHamilton29: "Umm wait... So the expert WaPo, NBC News, Axios etc. cited to justify the idea @elonmusk was allowing dangerous harassment on Twitter and thus the platform should be restricted (https://twitter.com/AGHamilton29/status/1595986148534456320) used her Twitter to promote harassing SCOTUS Justices?"
Seth Dillon @SethDillon: "Here we have a call to violent action for the purpose of intimidation (i.e., terrorism) from @Esqueer_, a far-left transgender activist who accuses conservatives of incitement for thinking it's wrong to sexualize, exploit, and mutilate children. It was deleted to cover tracks."
Alejandra Caraballoa @Esqueer_: "The 6 justices who overturned Roe should never know peace again. It is our civic duty to accost them every time they are in public. They are pariahs. Since women don't have their rights, these justices should never have a peaceful moment in public again. They're coming for contraception, same sex marriage, and the ability to criminalize LGBTQ people again. May those justices feel the unease, insecurity, and anxiety they seek to inflict on us. For reference. *6 faces*"
It's only "harassment" when liberals disapprove of it
As far as I'm concerned, Elon's $44 billion Twitter takeover has already paid for itself with this video - "Leave it to the Mad Lad himself to force AOC to start talking defending her merch empire like she's a capitalist tycoon"
NASA chief asks SpaceX president if Elon Musk is too distracted with Twitter - "Over the past few months, Musk has spent much of his time at Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco — even sleeping in the office. The Tesla CEO has also reportedly brought in engineers from his other companies to help out with Twitter. "I continue to oversee both Tesla & SpaceX, but the teams there are so good that often little is needed from me," Musk tweeted on Thursday."
Rogan On Musk Taking Over Twitter: ‘He Was Very Left-Leaning For Most Of His Life Until Really Recently’ - "Elon Musk, who took over the company last week, had always been “very Left-leaning” until he saw the political Left begin to crackdown on those with dissenting views."
Twitter was targeted by a coordinated trolling campaign following Musk takeover - "Twitter was working to stop an “organized effort” by trolls to make people think the company had weakened its content guidelines"
Libs of TikTok on Twitter - "This is “a day in the life of a Twitter employee.” No wonder @elonmusk is firing 75% of them"
Elon Musk is proving his miserable doubters wrong - "His opposition to private censorship would be “disastrous for women and marginalised communities”; deleting software bloat would cause “a massive outage in the next few days”; his free speech policies would see the platform flooded with Nazis screaming abuse at anyone daring to reveal their identity as anything other than white and male. The apocalypse had come! The end was nigh! Now fast-forward a month. Twitter still exists. It still works. It’s not noticeably any buggier than it was before. The flood of Nazis failed to materialise. For all that the New York Times has highlighted an “unprecedented” rise in hate speech, we are talking about a few thousand tweets out of 500,000,000 sent daily, and a spike which Musk claims has largely subsided, as the new moderation policy proves to have teeth. The brief period where the great and good of the website – the hysterical progressive worthies who pass for online royalty – declared that they were leaving for the safe harbour of Mastodon has passed; by and large, they're still on Twitter. Meanwhile, the headcount at Twitter has halved. The “entire human rights team” went; the moderators lost 15 per cent of their manpower. The number of contract employees has been slashed. An organisation run with considerable bloat is being stripped back and rebuilt. New features are being planned; regular users of the site know that the best way to search for content on it is to leave it and use Google. Musk has hired the prolific George Holtz to improve the site’s own functionality. The “Community Notes” feature allowing users to add fact-checks to tweets has been championed by Musk as a way to improve the quality of information on the platform. This isn’t to say Elon’s takeover has been a totally smooth pathway to success. It hasn’t. The launch of a premium tier of Twitter membership resulted in genuine concerns about imposers, as the blue verified checkmark was opened up to anyone willing to part with $8 per month. But you can also see in this the core of how Musk operates; spin out new ideas, trial them, iterate upon them, and ruthlessly cut the ones which fail to make it. It’s a recipe that’s proven successful in multiple industries; while it might fail here, it would be strange to bet against it so early on. There is a simple explanation for why so many Left-wing commentators are doing so; Twitter has been run by the Left, for the Left, and any change to this status quo is deeply unwelcome. Musk has repeatedly observed that Twitter “serves as the de facto public town square”. It plays host to a hugely influential discourse between politicians, journalists, activists, academics, field experts, and interested amateurs. This means that it acts as a de facto coordination point for elite opinion; views formed on the site make their way into the press, and then into policy. It also means that being able to put a thumb on the scale – to decrease the visibility of some views, and boost others – gives the site disproportionate influence over the direction of political discourse. It’s the fact of losing influence, rather than any genuine fear that Musk’s Twitter will break the site or cause catastrophic harm, that is causing progressives to throw tantrums. These tantrums are damaging; the drop in advertising revenue has been driven at least in part by coalitions of activists pressuring companies to withdraw their support with scare stories of what an unfettered site could become, as have threatening noises from politicians. But they are also temporary. As time goes on, and people adjust to the new normal, progressives will adjust to having to play on an even field. And if they don’t – if they can’t – then they can take the advice they so frequently handed to conservatives: Twitter is a private platform. If you don’t like it, you can always build your own."
Elon Musk Told Jack Dorsey 'No One Was Working on Child Safety' - "Elon Musk said it was a crime that former Twitter executives "refused to take action against child exploitation," telling cofounder Jack Dorsey via Twitter that "almost no one was working on child safety" until he took over on October 27... Musk responded to a user who shared a 2021 New York Post article about how Twitter refused to remove child porn because it didn't violate the platform's policies, saying it was a "crime" that Twitter hadn't taken action on child exploitation on the platform "for years"... Irwin, the trust and safety chief since November 18, previously raised her concerns with former CEO Parag Agrawal and ex-chief financial officer Ned Segal, but according to Musk, "they rejected her staffing request.""
Meme - Privatize Everything @PrivatizeEdu: "I'm no longer supporting SpaceX and will change my support to NASA. I refuse to support any organization that hires Nazis"
James Woods on Twitter - "So liberals applauded the suppression of millions of conservatives, including a POTUS. They now have their panties in a twist that everybody has an equally free voice. Note that they aren’t being suppressed in any way whatsoever. They’re just enraged that we aren’t any longer."
Insider Paper on Twitter - "NEW: SEMRush data shows that traffic to the subdomain https://t.co/epnYlEg1D8, which advertisers use to manage their campaigns, actually increased by 23% from October to November. This suggests that advertisers are still interested in using @elonmusk's Twitter"
So much for liberals claiming he's destroying it
Musk's Twitter selling espresso machine, office fridge; bids start at $25 - "After Elon Musk revealed that Twitter spends $13 million a year on food service at its San Francisco headquarters, the company is selling at least 265 kitchen appliances and office furniture online, and the bidding starts at just $25. However, there is no "sink" on the auction block as that had been taken away by Musk the day he acquired Twitter... The bid for Twitter Bird Statue opens at $25 and a "@sculpture planter" also starts at $25. There are several types of office chairs/cabinets, along with espresso machines/coffee grinders/steam tilting kettles, pizza makers, electric/bakery ovens, freezers (including bar refrigerator), mobile heated cabinets, ice-making machines, fryers, laser projectors and more that have been put on sale. Last month, Musk said that free staff lunches at Twitter HQ were costing more than $400 per meal. "There are more people preparing breakfast than eating breakfast. They don't even bother serving dinner, because there is no one in the building""
Twitter Is Auctioning Off Espresso Machines, Lounge Chairs, Other Employee Toys. Here’s What Else Is For Sale. - "Items for sale include La Marzocco espresso machines and Rotisol rotisserie ovens, as well as commercial blenders and grinders, refrigerators, grills and griddles, fryers, braising pans, and pizza ovens, according to a list posted by Heritage Global Partners. Electronics and furniture available for auction include Apple computers and monitors, Google Jamboards, NEC projectors, phones and speakerphones, soft seats and furnishings, and hundreds of office chairs. Also up for auction are a giant statue of the Twitter logo and a sculpture of the “@” symbol. The company is likewise discharging two novelty stationary bikes used to charge electronics. Musk has made headlines for quickly pivoting the culture of the social media company away from plush amenities and toward a dogged commitment to improving the platform... The sea change in company culture at Twitter has created shock waves throughout California’s Silicon Valley. Business leaders appeared to take note as Musk dismissed most of his employees with no apparent impact on the platform’s operations. The number of new users and the amount of time spent on the site has even increased under his leadership... Investors have since asked their portfolio companies to make similar moves. Firms such as Lyft and Amazon have announced layoffs or paused new hires in recent weeks, pointing to macroeconomic pressures and excess growth in their payrolls. “It is a poorly kept secret in Silicon Valley that companies ranging from Google to Meta to Twitter to Uber could achieve similar levels of revenue with far fewer people,” Altimeter Capital Management CEO Brad Gerstner wrote in a recent letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “I would take it a step further and argue that these incredible companies would run even better and more efficiently without the layers and lethargy that comes with this extreme rate of employee expansion.”"
Musk is a bad man for getting rid of waste, like novelty stationary bikes
Thread by @antoniogm on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "What Elon is doing is a revolt by entrepreneurial capital against the professional-managerial class regime that otherwise everywhere dominates (including and especially large tech companies), and that same PMC (which includes the media) is treating it as an act of lèse-majesté. In Burnham’s formulation, this new managerial class would supplant the former business-owning bourgeois and even capital itself as the elite ruling class. Most woke ‘labor’ scandals in tech are an entitled middle-management class at odds with founders. Elon simply defenestrating the entire HR regime, the ESG grifters, the Skittles-hair people with mouse-clicking jobs who think themselves bold social crusaders rather than a parasitic weight around any organization’s neck, is an intolerable overturning of the social order. Twitter *must* fail after the purge of such a former elite. For if Twitter does not fail, if in fact it manages to emerge stronger than before, then what sort of example would this set for every other organization similarly captured by this elite? Unthinkable."
Elon Musk points to Volkswagen's Nazi links after Alyssa Milano swaps her Tesla for a VW over 'hate and white supremacy' on Twitter - "Elon Musk pointed to Volkswagen's Nazi links after actress Alyssa Milano said she was trading in her Tesla for a VW over "hate and white supremacy" on the platform... "I gave back my Tesla. I bought the VW ev. I love it," Milano tweeted. "I'm not sure how advertisers can buy space on Twitter. Publicly traded company's products being pushed in alignment with hate and white supremacy doesn't seem to be a winning business model." Conservative comedians the Hodgetwins replied by pointing out that Volkswagen was "literally founded" by the Nazis, to which Musk replied with a laughing emoji and a "100" sign."
Meme - Clay Travis @ClayTravis: "There is not one single article about @elonmusk or the @twitter email release last night on @nytimes app this morning."
Elon Musk @elonmusk: "That is because The New York Times has become, for all intents and purposes, an unregistered lobbying firm for far left politicians"
Michael Malice: ""become" they ran interference for Stalin"
Programmable Psyche 🧠🧬| PsycheOS on Twitter - "Elon Haters be like: Rocket man very bad man. He make worker do 60-80 hours a week for $100k-$500k+ plus equity while on Crusade to reach stars + save free speech or leave. Tim Cook is good man & Ops Research expert. He installed safety netting at all his China Slave Factories."
Musk fires Twitter general counsel over Hunter Biden scandal - "The billionaire businessman — who acquired Twitter in a $44 billion deal earlier this year — has publicly confirmed his decision to fire James A. Baker, amid his “possible role in suppression” of information relating to the laptop scandal."
Thread by @mtracey on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Truly incredible -- former Twitter executive @yoyoel, who just got caught fabricating a fake justification for censoring a media outlet, says the decision to ban Trump after Jan 6 was impelled by the "trauma" he and other "content moderators" experienced online that fateful day. Yoel Roth confesses he was "deeply terrified" by Trump supporters who criticized him for applying "misinformation" labels to Trump's tweets. "I experienced those harms," he recounts. Roth defends the decision to ban @TheBabylonBee: "Not only is it not funny, it is dangerous" Kara Swisher, no fan of the Babylon Bee, gently disagrees -- noting that the account was engaged in satire. "It's still misgendering," Roth insists"
Harmful satire is anything that mocks the left
Twitter's potential collapse could wipe out vast swathes of recent human history
Such breathless hysteria. So much for it being a private company so no one should care what they do. And as if no one will archive anything
The Left Doesn't Value Free Speech, and That's a Problem – PJ Media - "The current kerfuffle over Twitter has demonstrated just how much the left prefers their politically homogeneous safe spaces over open public forums and debate. Prominent liberals have left the platform because they can’t tolerate a platform that isn’t a liberal echo chamber. Pseudo-economist Paul Krugman has been trying to create an audience on an alternative platform, though it’s been tough going. Actor Wil Wheaton, who is still on Twitter, had a hissy fit over Musk last week. There are many other examples. It’s strange how the same party that pretends to value diversity can’t stomach diversity of thought, but this is where we are now. As PJ Media’s Athena Thorne noted, dozens of liberal companies have decided to stop advertising on Twitter—some of them were even pressured to do so—because you can’t give money to a platform that allows conservatives the same rights as liberals. The ultra-left-wing Media Matters gloated about the exodus of advertisers and tried to cast Musk’s affinity for free speech in a negative light."
Jack Dorsey admits mistakes at Twitter, says site still has problems - "Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey didn’t mention Elon Musk by name. But in a blog post on Tuesday, he made it clear that the company he once led still had significant problems then and now... Dorsey said he’s come to believe in three principles. Social media must withstand “corporate and government control,” the author is the only person who can remove content they produce, and “moderation is best implemented by algorithmic choice.” “The Twitter when I led it and the Twitter of today do not meet any of these principles”... He said he personally abandoned his efforts to push the company in the right direction after activist firm Elliott Management got involved with the company over two years ago... he said that “mistakes were made” and Twitter would be in a better position today if the company “focused more on tools for the people using the service rather than tools for us.” Dorsey said that in general social messaging platforms shouldn’t take down content or suspend accounts, because “doing so complicates important context, learning, and enforcement of illegal activity.”"
Elon Musk says Twitter restored Ye's account without his knowledge before acquisition