Elon Musk buys Twitter

[Cacodemon345]

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/elon-musk-to-acquire-twitter-301532245.html

 

This is one hell of a big news.

[dasho]

Oustanding, I don't use Twitter at all but this pisses off the kind of people that I get amused by seeing pissed off.

[scalliano]

Neither do I, but it's hilarious watching the Twitter employees crying into their Tesla steering wheels.

 

Oh, and bUt MuH pRiVaTe CoMpAnY :P

[OniriA]

Now that's something to tweet about.

 

Except I don't use titler.

[Bucket]

Is Twitter going to be less of a reactionary cesspool now? Unlikely. But this development has for some reason been VERY popular among folks who erroneously believe their "freedom of speech" means they're owed a platform.

[Mr. Freeze]

7 minutes ago, Bucket said:

Is Twitter going to be less of a reactionary cesspool now? Unlikely. But this development has for some reason been VERY popular among folks who erroneously believe their "freedom of speech" means they're owed a platform.

 

Actually I'm really looking forward to an important public forum allowing people to spread hate speech easier. 

[leejacksonaudio]

You should see the flood of people migrating from Twitter over to CounterSocial. The incoming flow is astonishing.

[Rudolph]

Just how many Twitter clones are there?

[Doomkid]

Seeing even more people than usual simping endlessly for both Musk and Twitter - two inanimate, unfeeling objects that absolutely don't deserve to be simped for - is pretty irritating, but admittedly unsurprising.

[Gothic]

25 minutes ago, leejacksonaudio said:

people migrating from Twitter over to CounterSocial

Does this mean twitter will finally be good?

[yourlocalchef]

Now he can integrate paypal into the character limit as a tier based buy-in system. Standard Twitter and Twitter Ultimate Edition.

[Mr. Freeze]

1 minute ago, yourlocalchef said:

Now he can integrate paypal into the character limit as a tier based buy-in system. Standard Twitter and Twitter Ultimate Edition.

 

Can't wait for the Twitter Battle Pass

[Sena]

Maybe they could even come up with some new currency so you can buy items in the new Twitter store. Call it the Bytecoin or the Bitcoin or something.

[Biodegradable]

I've been following this story since the beginning as I regularly use Twitter, like a lot of freelancers, for my business. It's my main conduit to connecting with various internet-based creators and soliciting them for editing work and also them coming to me. It's been very beneficial for me in that regard as a small independent contractor trying to eke out a living. I could see the end result coming a mile away because there was no conceivable way in my mind that the current owners of Twitter were going to turn down a $40+ billion dollar paycheck, I mean come on. With that in mind, I became concerned with the the buyout because Muskrat said he wants to turn it into a private company, which to me sounds like someone who wants Twitter to be more profitable.

 

I'm a bit worried that Elongated Mustard might possibly slap some kind of paid subscription-based model onto the site. It's not even that big of a stretch considering the already existing subscription thing known as Twitter Blue. As someone who doesn't exactly make a great deal of money and has enough bills as it is, it's going to suck having to add another one to the pile should my fear come true. The one upside being I could at least claim it back on my taxes. It'd probably still be less expensive than those garbage freelancer sites that take huge percentages of your pay when you use them. Some have argued that my fear won't happen because like other social media platforms, Twitter's dependent on engagement and user-data suction so they can sell targeted ads and that such a move would only cause a mass exodus of users and really screw things up, which is a fair point. Meanwhile, a friend of mine thinks the chubby-faced technocrat's doing this as a power move rather than a financial one, which is always possible. Personally, I don't care who owns the place as long as they basically don't prevent me from continuing business as usual.

 

That's where my concerns begin and end with this development. Trust me, if that ridiculous hellsite wasn't so bloody useful to my work, I would've deleted my account years ago.

[SiMpLeToNiUm]

To the extent that I involve myself in Twitter for the people, conversations and media surrounding indie gamedev and other creative stuff, I would be pretty upset to see it all getting interfered with and people becoming cut off from networking by a not-unreasonable-to-assume rise in the number of individuals who will be emboldened to harass anyone for any reason due to the new change in leadership.

[scalliano]

1 hour ago, Bucket said:

Is Twitter going to be less of a reactionary cesspool now? Unlikely. But this development has for some reason been VERY popular among folks who erroneously believe their "freedom of speech" means they're owed a platform.

Everyone already had a platform before it was hijacked by Silicon Valley for their own ends. Once upon a time the platform was the town square, now it's social media. The whole point of freedom of speech is that, whatever form the platform takes, it should not be taken away. "Hate speech" is an inherently authoritarian concept that flies in the face of that principle.

 

Musk has styled himself as a free speech absolutist. I'm on board with that as a principle, however I am sceptical as to how much he can actually achieve, given that Twitter still has to abide by Apple and Google's partizan-as-fuck content rules in order to remain on their app stores *cough*tumblr*cough*. And, of course, there's the question of AWS...

 

Like I said, I'm not on any social media, I'm just here with a bag of chocolate cranberries watching the ree.

Edited April 26, 2022 by scalliano

[Bauul]

It's what rich people do when they no longer need to make money. They buy influence.

 

Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post, Boston Red Sox owner John Henry bought the Boston Globe, Las Vegas casino owner Sheldon Adelson bought the Las Vegas Review-Journal etc. etc. There are endless examples of rich people buying publications so they can control how they're depicted.

 

Musk wants a platform with huge reach where he can say what he wants, to anyone he wants, and no-one can stop him. He can't be banned from Twitter for spreading pro-Musk propaganda if he owns it.

 

I can't see this as being anything but a bad thing personally.

[scalliano]

Look on the bright side, at least he's unlikely to lop the heads of journalists he doesn't like, unlike some of the company's former owners...

[Bucket]

7 minutes ago, scalliano said:

Everyone already had a platform before it was hijacked by Silicon Valley for their own ends. Once upon a time the platform was the town square, now it's social media. The whole point of freedom of speech is that, whatever form the platform takes, it should not be taken away.

 

Maybe you're not from the USA but our Constitution outlines freedom of speech as the government not being allowed to arrest you for what you say (although of course that's been modified a bit to exclude things like blood libel and shouting "FIRE" in a crowded theater). You do not have a right to a platform.

[Rudolph]

1 hour ago, Doomkid said:

Seeing even more people than usual simping endlessly for both Musk and Twitter - two inanimate, unfeeling objects that absolutely don't deserve to be simped for - is pretty irritating, but admittedly unsurprising.

 

Spoiler

 

[AndrewB]

I might actually sign up for the website as a result of this.

[leejacksonaudio]

1 hour ago, Gothic said:

Does this mean twitter will finally be good?

 

Doubtful.

[Rudolph]

Elon Musk has proven time and time again that he has more money than sense to the point where you could say he has basically a reverse Midas touch, so maybe that is what is finally going to bring Twitter down.

[Blzut3]

1 hour ago, Biodegradable said:

With that in mind, I became concerned with the the buyout because Muskrat said he wants to turn it into a private company, which to me sounds like someone who wants Twitter to be more profitable.

Public vs private doesn't really change this.  Shareholders want to see growth, so as a public company this motivation to be more profitable is still there.  Arguably being private removes this pressure since it's entirely possible that the goal for a private company could be to just break even and be sustainable.

 

I have an account on Twitter but really only use it when prompted, so ultimately I don't care what happens.  But it will be interesting to see what the fallout of this ends up being in practice.

1 hour ago, leejacksonaudio said:

You should see the flood of people migrating from Twitter over to CounterSocial. The incoming flow is astonishing. 

I guess the honesty is nice to see, but I'm surprised there would be an influx of people moving from Twitter to a platform that seems very up front about being very restrictive.  Seems counter to what I got the impression people wanted, no pun intended.

 

It still baffles me that in all this concern about freedom Mastodon and the like hasn't been flourishing.  Well... I guess Truth social uses Mastodon's software but they don't federate because that would mean they'd actually have a free speech platform and would actually be solving the problem they claim to want to solve.

[dasho]

6 minutes ago, Blzut3 said:

It still baffles me that in all this concern about freedom Mastodon and the like hasn't been flourishing.

 

Because it's not about freedom, it's about people whose worldviews can only exist in a curated echo chamber.

[Sectorslayer]

The internet Is effectively owned by Metas, Alphabets and Musks. It was a  government project once. Payed for with public money!
Now, it’s capitalism's great gift to monetize everything that was once free. And money will always come before moral in that system. That’s why we sell weapons to autocrats, patent farmers seeds and life saving medicine and limit what can be found on the internet in some unfree countries. Everyone and everything is for sale to benefit a few. 
I turned to Mastodon a while ago when Twitter started to heavily control what I see and what’s worth my attention. It’s dead for me if it continues the Facebook path. Unfortunately. 
 

[Nikku4211]

why he buy twitter when it free on google play?

[esselfortium]

35 minutes ago, dasho said:

 

Because it's not about freedom, it's about people whose worldviews can only exist in a curated echo chamber.

Examples?

[dasho]

2 minutes ago, esselfortium said:

Examples?

 

Which would you prefer, people who believe everything from InfoWars or people who believe real Communism hasn't been tried yet?

[kwc]

Property changes hands from one rich asshole to another, idk if this really changes twitter or is any more of a cause of concern than anything else.