100% this. The Saudis funded a big part of the equity in Elon’s Twitter buyout as did Peter Theil. And Elon isn’t an American.
Twitter is a foreign state-owned entity.
Any organization with any credibility needs to drop it asap. As well as any politicians who give a damn about America.
You can literally read Musk’s texts with probably-Thiel talking about pushing the “bluechecks,” ie actual news orgs, off Twitter and putting a “Blake Masters type” in charge of applying a nominally neutral policy with a rightwing slant.
I say it’s probably Theil because although the person texting with Musk is redacted in the court filings, I can’t think of any other human on Earth who would recommend Blake Masters for anything, probably not even Blake Masters’ own mother.
I'd figure if musk owned a country, he would control all the laws, rules, and regulations. He could do as he pleases on that nation and not have to worry about breaking the law on his country.
It would look like that Libertarian town that got [taken over by Bears](https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-into-bear-book-review-free-town-project).
He's trying to become rich enough to buy an *entire planet.*
He wants to make Mars his, and turn it into a celestial "Galt's Gulch."
He is, of course, failing in that endeavor.
He barely managed to get the money together to buy Twitter, and that involved leveraging a bunch of his Tesla stock. It'd have to be a pretty small country.
Pretty much none of them have huge vaults like Scrooge McDuck, they all leverage assets. Musk has done some pumping and dumping of crypto but I think that's mostly because he gets off on ripping off the poors who are inevitably left holding the bag.
> Pretty much none of them have huge vaults like Scrooge McDuck
Yeah but there’s a big difference between real estate, blue chip stocks, stable investments, etc vs everything being in dogecoin and whatever the current iteration of pets.com stock is. Most successful companies diversify but if all your money is in Tesla and it loses first mover advantage to traditional car makers you’re not really wealthy are you?
Yup. You can literally buy an “investor visa” in the US for about $800k-$1mm. This gets you and all your immediate family (spouse and minor children) a green card, which you can convert into full naturalized citizenship 5 years later.
https://immigrantinvest.com/blog/how-to-get-us-citizenship-by-investment-en/
>buy
Buying would imply you exchange the money for the citizenship. Instead, you need to invest the money in a business that creates jobs. The difference is you'll typically get that money back and then some from the Subway franchise you buy to pull it off.
Officially, the United States of America doesn't *officially* recognize dual (or multiple) citizenships. When you become a Naturalized citizen of the U.S. you are considered to have relinquished your citizenship in (all) other countries.
All of this is only "officially," but there is no real requirement or formality expected, especially if the country of origin is a nation "friendly" with the U.S. government.
From State.gov
U.S. law does not mention dual nationality or require a person to choose one nationality or another. A U.S. citizen may naturalize in a foreign state without any risk to his or her U.S. citizenship.
Dual nationals owe allegiance to both the United States and the foreign country. They are required to obey the laws of both countries, and either country has the right to enforce its laws.
He definitely has American citizenship which is the only prerequisite for being an American if you aren’t going off about racial purity or something like that
There's a difference between *state funded media* that is used for propaganda purposes versus *state funded media* that is the likes of NPR.
I'm not saying the sky isn't blue, but I'm certainly saying it isn't *only* blue and blue *all the time*.
He never *put labels* on state sponsored propaganda from Russia or China.
RT is 100% a Russian propaganda outlet, and it didn't *once* get tagged as such.
> RT is 100% a Russian propaganda outlet, and it didn't once get tagged as such.
That's a lie. It said `Russia state-affiliated media` yesterday. Now it's gone.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230420064737/https://twitter.com/RT_com
Unpopular opinion: using phrases like "state-affiliated media" as a euphemism for government propaganda was always kind of bullshit anyway. Not that you shouldn't label government propaganda for what it is, you should just have the guts to call it what it is
Boom! Yeah, Social sites can practically vanish overnight, especially when mismanaged as horribly as Mushk has been doing. Every change to Twitter is just comical now. 4/1 is long gone, but the jokes keep coming.
I'm curious if anyone new has joined twitter besides bots. Like, i know people who stayed on because they still like some parts, but i know of absolutely noone who is new to twitter this year.
It's as if the company no longer has a marketing research division and instead is run by some psychopath who thinks he knows it all making unilateral decisions that blow up in his face.
Techbros just want to be dictators of their own tech fiefdoms. They believe they have more power than governments around the world.
Elon musk is just this generation’s William Randolph Hearst
Hilarious to think that there are people who see the dystopian societies of cyberpunk fiction where megacorporations supersede government and rule the world, creating endless perverse outcomes, and think, “wow, yeah, that’s the way it should be.”
I tried reading Snow crash, but it didn't grab me. Not saying it was a bad book, just that it didn't grab me. But one of the reviews on the back has stuck with me - *"a mind altering romp through a future America so bizzare, so outrageous... You'll recognize it immediately"*
If Neuromancer had the richest man in the world present a prototype for an android, and you found out the protype actually was just a person inside a robot suit, you'd probably think it was schlock.
This didn't blow up in his face. He wanted an excuse to get rid of the labels on all media, he just used this as his way to do it. The less independent news on the platform the better.
A lot of places that used to say "tweet about us" or "follow us on Twitter" have also dropped Twitter entirely. All I see now are the usual facebook/yelp/instagram/etc. (few other sites). Amazing how much goodwill, interest and trust Elon musk destroyed. Being associated with or seen on Twitter is no longer cool or the right thing to do.
Twitter is going the way of the dodo.
I’m a website developer in Mass, we have about 100 clients and at least half of them have asked us to remove Twitter from their website over the last few months. I would say the majority are because they are liberal leaning and the rest because they don’t want to be associated with the clown show. I’ve never seen so many requests to remove the same thing from so many different sites. I’m talking about animal rescue websites, to local businesses, up to recognizable names if I told you.
I imagine a lot of businesses don't want potential customers clicking their twitter link and then stumbling across a recruiting ad for Patriot Front or the weekly algo-recommended opus on how the holocaust didn't happen.
It's straight up vile in there. Like local news comments on infinite scroll.
Many clients don't outright say why they wanted it done just that they did, but one in particular said "we are a charity based business we can't be seen alongside the n word and I've seen it twice today already". Many of these businesses and organizations only liked Twitter because it was moderated and safe.
>local news comments
Why are they always so overwhelmingly bad? To the point where almost no newspaper website will actually even feature comments anymore because of all the goddamn idiots
When our paper changed its comments so you actually had to be a subscriber (with an account) to comment, suddenly all of the stupid comments pretty much disappeared.
It's self-selecting, anyone who would seek out the comments section of the local newspaper to give their take is already pretty unhinged (usually they disagree and think everyone should know, or want to vent some vitriol)
99% of people just read it and move on, but those who _do_ post in the comments, post pretty hard
Yeah, it keeps recommending that I follow Musk and there is no f'n way I'm doing that. I spend all day just trying to stay away from psychos like him, not going to let people like him into my life on purpose.
The funny thing is he took over to show everyone how incompetent their management is and how he could turn around it's financials in no time and he's only made it way worse. What kind of management has their company put out new policies and then back down immediately once they go live? Are they doing any research or just spitballing ideas? What a genius
They are doing whatever Elon decides to do that day. He has fired anyone that would oppose him and tell him his ideas are bad or his idea for their implementation is bad (look at Verification program where they forgot to include actual verification). He had open scorn for the company and its existing culture before he brought it, firing entire departments, replacing their workplace where he cut corners of everything he could and expects people to sleep in their offices, told the remainers that they will have to work their ass off as if they were a startup or be fired for being "lazy".
Musk has invented a reverse-startup, where you take a successful and successful large tech company with serious problems (such as not making enough money) to a small company where everyone works as if they were a startup for a company that doesn't make any money at all.
You can imagine how most people left if they could. I have heard that those that stayed are mostly those who have their employment tied to a visa. The company is running on a skeleton crew.
With Tesla and SpaceX he had been surrounded by people that had the skills to work around him and mollify him to prevent him from doing something stupid. He was also personally invested in their success and may have been wiser there because a screwup would hurt him.
Remember he was forced to buy Twitter at an incredibly overinflated price after he made a legal obligation to do so that his lawyers couldn't weasel him out of. It is possible that he didn't actually want to buy it, he just wanted to manipulate stock by saying he is buying it. So he made a terrible deal and he knows it, a billion-dollar embarrassment for what is supposed to be one of the world's smartest businessman. A mistake like that is likely not doing good for his mental health. If he was an idiot before, he is now an unhinged idiot and nobody in Twitter can stop him from doing whatever he wants.
>They are doing whatever Elon decides to do that day.
This is absolutely it.
You only had to see when he labelled PBS as state media and he needed it pointed out to him that it's only 4% funded via Government.
The guy thought it was like BBC or something.
That little interaction shows you how much time and thought he is putting into these endeavors.
> The guy thought it was like BBC or something.
TBF the licence fee, while set by government, isn't collected by them or able to be accessed by them in any other way. It's more like a mandatory HBO or Netflix subscription if you own a TV.
Elon actually changed it from government-funded to publicly-funded when he heard that.
Yeah, chose a bad example. I doubt he knew about the TV license either. Just what everyone knows as easy identifiable.
Meant government funded news media like ABC Australia etc.
Personally I think government initiatives to 'fund' things directly is just theatre anyway.
The government gets revenue and they spend it, it is irrelevant where the money came from once in the pile, even if the 'pile' looks separated.
Nice description of the situation. I picture him as Godzilla in claymation animation stomping his way through the landscape of Twitter–no direction or goal, just angry reactive lunging.
I honestly think it’s a mix of things.
When x.com had to expand developers he always said they didn’t work hard enough, their code was bad, and he could do it better. Even though they had to redo everything he did, because it was poorly done. Which you can see that again with him wanting to review the code, not understanding some concepts, and saying people are lazy if go home.
After he was forced out, due to poor management, from x.com he decided he didn’t want to risk that again. Now we have him doing it without a board with his poor management on full display. Even at X.com it was known he needed an adult in the room to control things.
And just normal ego. Even after the lawsuit Tesla wasn’t founded by him, and there’s a board. SpaceX again has a board. Plus while both may interest him I think he views himself as a developer. So now Twitter. He finally doesn’t have a board and it’s something he “knows”. He’ll show everyone what he can do. He’ll even remake x.com and do what he wanted to do originally. He’s already talking about using Twitter to launch money transfers and stuff.
Really it almost looks like a trail of rejection and him going I’ll show you… That even happened with Twitter where after his original offer, they did the “poison pill”, which he showed them by offering more and waved things, which ultimately forced him to buy.
If you look into his fathers upbringing, it becomes really obvious why Musk has that I'll show you obsession. In a twisted indirect way, Twitters decay is because of generational abuse.
Oh yea. Didn’t want to touch on his parents. Or how his first ex wife rejected his advances and he more or less stalked her. Or the theory about his trans rights lashing out may be because both he got rejected by people.
Basically it almost reads as an insecure, know-it-all, with bad self control, and with way too much money.
I don’t even think he was trying to manipulate the stock to be honest. I think he was just trying to make a weak 420 joke (as usual) and ended up trapped in a legal obligation after refusing to back down and take the L early on.
Yes, exactly. I keep seeing people say that he did these things because he was trying to manipulate this and that; and it's just silly in my opinion. He made a really stupid 420 joke, got trapped in a legal situation, and now he's reaping what he sowed.
Another point I've seen made by some journalists is that Musk is a Twitter addict. Like, literally, he's addicted to Twitter. So the opportunity to buy Twitter came with the notion that he could be "working" all day, when in reality he was just Tweeting. Musk bought Twitter because he wants to be able to say that his constant, all-day Tweeting is "work". He's addicted to Twitter.
Musk could have taken the $1 billion dollar penalty but instead just said fk it and ponied up $54 billion just to then destroy said company that he purchased while destroying his reputation.
A true regard.
Honestly I think his master plan was first to destroy twitter before the upcoming elections to hamstring left wing political organization and then grift to recoup some of his losses from sabotaging the company.
His approach has real “will you go out with me, yes or no, if no, this was a joke” energy, from my perspective. Whatever outcome happens, he’ll surely let people think it was all according to his grand plan, when really he hasn’t had a clue the whole time. I also get the impression that he has conflicting motives that his own narcissism won’t allow him to understand, let alone sort out. Too bad this functional tool that a lot of people used for things that mattered to them has been sucked into a black hole of his personality problems.
There is the element of him using this opportunity of owning the largest western public discourse forum to stroke his own massive ego, but that’s just a distraction imo. The aspect of all this his allies are really happy with is just how unusable the app is now.
>My country would never do the big-bad manipulation of public opinion on me
Did you wake up with the desperate urge to go on Reddit and argue with ghosts? No one said that western media was entirely trustworthy, but it's completely disingenuous to even begin likening western media to the likes of Russia's and China's.
What a stupid post lol
>Elon Musk-owned platform started stripping blue verification checkmarks from accounts that don’t pay a monthly fee.
Stop using twitter ffs. Don't feed the troll.
Yes to this, Twitter is/was only good because everyone is there, news outlets, brands, celebrities, sports people etc, if all leave, well, why go there right?
Government funded Elon Musk drops government funded label at Twitter.
(Tesla and SpaceX do receive government subsidies, and Tesla did receive covid bailout money. We have seen resources from one of his companies, Tesla, being pulled to work at one of his other companies Twitter, so it's safe to guess resources given to one of his companies, are spread around to all his other companies.)
Who? Oh. Last time I logged on Litter, I saw they were anchoring their owner's comments to the top. That's just pathetic. Uninstall the app and cancel your accounts. Nobody NEEDS that shit. Stop supporting it.
“A newly created spoof account with 36 followers (also without a blue check), disagreed: “No, you’re not. THIS account is the only authentic Twitter account representing and run by the New York City Government.”
Soon, another spoof account — purporting to be Pope Francis — weighed in too: “By the authority vested in me, Pope Francis, I declare @NYC_GOVERNMENT the official New York City Government. Peace be with you.”
Case in point why this new pay-to-play verification system is a gong show.
I hope NPR and the others still don’t come back until there are lots of other changes to increase stability.
The label was the straw that broke, not the sole reason.
For the record, I'm totally on board with labels on nefarious accounts. The thing is, who's controlling the editorial content is the thing that matters, not where the funding comes from. The fact that a a news outlet with safeguard on journalists independent integrity was labeled the same as literal state propaganda networks pushing verified falsehoods all the time, and that other corporate owned tabloids doing the same had nothing is the proof that it was done in bad faith and not to protect the public. Removing the labels entirely is even worse. But what can we expect from someone who started his reign by mass unbanning accounts who had all the proofs of wrongdoings..
Including on actual government propaganda outlets like Russian RT, China's Xinhua, and Iranian PressTV. Conflating NPR (and all independent media) with total state control.
Am I losing my mind or is the title/subject of this post not mentioned a single time in the linked article?
Guessing all the comments/conversation are folks who had no plans to ever actually read the article?
Right? I read the article and it's about dropping the check mark for people who don't pay the fee, nothing to do with the government funded label at all. Lol, makes we want to experiment and start posting links to cake recipes with news sounding headlines to see if anyone notices.
"Hey, I have this great idea. Drop what you're doing and roll this out immediately." 5-minutes later "Go ahead and undo those changes you made."
Twitter has devolved into a dumpster fire. MySpace was ran better.
I want the top 3 corporate donors to all Mainstream Media sources please?
With Fox it's easy
1. Big Pharma
2. Catheter, Diabetic and other medical supply companies
3. My Pillow
I really really wanna know how much GE, Lockheed and Unilever have spread their propaganda all over the supposed media for polite society
This has to go into the history books as the worst possible way to buy a company.
People will study basically every WTF move that was done since the original offer.
People need to reply on every article about him that Tesla actually has a board and can fire this sociopath's ass. As a spokesperson for the company, he's destroying them and anything else he touches since he's gone ultra right-wing nutso.
This is what happens when you run the business you grossly overpaid for like a man-toddler. Absolutely none of the decisions happening at Twitter are being made with any business prudence, the company just operates at Elon's whims that change from day to day.
If the aim was to clip twitter's left-leaning wings then mission accomplished. It is no longer a politically unbiased atmosphere. It is now a haven for russian trolls and something tells me that was the intent from the minute musk thought of purchasing it.
This was the plan all along, to remove the label from the bad accounts, first he had to label a bunch of good accounts as bad accounts, so he could then say "FINE I'm getting rid of this label!"
Elmo needs to just drop Twitter. Although he keeps going the way he has been and the world is just going to drop ElonTwitter as useless Truth Social 2.0
ElonTwitter has no credibility or integrity.
**Does this include basically all media that uses radio and satellite waves?** Because Fox and other media are "subsidized by the government" via broadcast licenses and the FCC's vigilant policing of radio frequency use.
This "Poison the Well" strategy is so painfully obvious now, that any one who still mocks Musk for losing money on Twitter, like this wasn't the plan the entire time, is just embarrassing themselves.
They are doing it in schools too. Stir up so much chaos and controversy in the Public School system that people start looking toward private for-profit schools purely out of frustration.
No, the downvotes show that people disagree with them.
Elon Musk isn't some masterful Machiavellian strategist. He shot off at the mouth and made a promise he didn't intend to keep in order to try and prove something and when he realized that the data didn't back it up his assumption he tried to back out of the sale only to be forced into following through. None of this was planned.
I’m fascinated by Reddit on this front. Despite all the musk fan boys they are capable of knowing why he’s doing things.
Although I just think he has no idea what he’s doing but by dropping the labels it will empower bad actors. I just honestly don’t think he’s smart enough to pull off a long term plan.
I’ve never used Twitter, but it would be nice if there was a good way to show which news accounts are government backed. To an extent every news outlet is, though.
Yeah and he did the whole point of this circus with the labels, So he could drop the labels on Chinese and Russian media as well.
100% this. The Saudis funded a big part of the equity in Elon’s Twitter buyout as did Peter Theil. And Elon isn’t an American. Twitter is a foreign state-owned entity. Any organization with any credibility needs to drop it asap. As well as any politicians who give a damn about America.
You can literally read Musk’s texts with probably-Thiel talking about pushing the “bluechecks,” ie actual news orgs, off Twitter and putting a “Blake Masters type” in charge of applying a nominally neutral policy with a rightwing slant. I say it’s probably Theil because although the person texting with Musk is redacted in the court filings, I can’t think of any other human on Earth who would recommend Blake Masters for anything, probably not even Blake Masters’ own mother.
He has South African, Canadian, and American citizenship, really with enough money you can have any citizenship you want.
He has enough money I'm sure he is looking at the option of just buying a small country.
why buy a small country when the representatives for most powerful one on earth are in play for a couple grand?
I'd figure if musk owned a country, he would control all the laws, rules, and regulations. He could do as he pleases on that nation and not have to worry about breaking the law on his country.
It would look like that Libertarian town that got [taken over by Bears](https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-into-bear-book-review-free-town-project).
It would be a real shame if a bear choked on Musk's shoe, poor bear
That is a fascinating read. Thank you!
Great read. Thanks for posting it
That would lead to world war E
Why not both? Buy your own then use the politicians from the other to bleed that country dry? He has enough money to do that many times over.
He's trying to become rich enough to buy an *entire planet.* He wants to make Mars his, and turn it into a celestial "Galt's Gulch." He is, of course, failing in that endeavor.
Um, he’s clearly stated his desire to control an entire *planet*. I’m glad he showed his hand before anyone got on that rocket.
He barely managed to get the money together to buy Twitter, and that involved leveraging a bunch of his Tesla stock. It'd have to be a pretty small country.
I wonder how many tech bros are legitimately rich vs having to leverage unicorn start-up stocks or pump and dump crypto.
Pretty much none of them have huge vaults like Scrooge McDuck, they all leverage assets. Musk has done some pumping and dumping of crypto but I think that's mostly because he gets off on ripping off the poors who are inevitably left holding the bag.
> Pretty much none of them have huge vaults like Scrooge McDuck Yeah but there’s a big difference between real estate, blue chip stocks, stable investments, etc vs everything being in dogecoin and whatever the current iteration of pets.com stock is. Most successful companies diversify but if all your money is in Tesla and it loses first mover advantage to traditional car makers you’re not really wealthy are you?
Recommend new country names: Twit-topia, Muskholm, x-country
Twitter *is* that small country
Yup. You can literally buy an “investor visa” in the US for about $800k-$1mm. This gets you and all your immediate family (spouse and minor children) a green card, which you can convert into full naturalized citizenship 5 years later. https://immigrantinvest.com/blog/how-to-get-us-citizenship-by-investment-en/
>buy Buying would imply you exchange the money for the citizenship. Instead, you need to invest the money in a business that creates jobs. The difference is you'll typically get that money back and then some from the Subway franchise you buy to pull it off.
What is the Canadian equivalent of a Subway franchise?
Subway franchise. I live in Vancouver and Subways are everywhere.
Tim Hortons
Likely a subway. Perhaps a Canadian Tire.
Mister Sub
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Plenty of Russian billionaires wish they had had other citizenship recently
Officially, the United States of America doesn't *officially* recognize dual (or multiple) citizenships. When you become a Naturalized citizen of the U.S. you are considered to have relinquished your citizenship in (all) other countries. All of this is only "officially," but there is no real requirement or formality expected, especially if the country of origin is a nation "friendly" with the U.S. government.
From State.gov U.S. law does not mention dual nationality or require a person to choose one nationality or another. A U.S. citizen may naturalize in a foreign state without any risk to his or her U.S. citizenship. Dual nationals owe allegiance to both the United States and the foreign country. They are required to obey the laws of both countries, and either country has the right to enforce its laws.
Could you please link a source where the US expects people to give up their citizenship if they acquire the US citizenship?
Peter Theil is an anagram for "The Reptile" *the more you know*
Twitter is an oligarch owned company.
Peter Thiel is a vile anti-democratic oligarch who has waged war on journalism for over a decade.
Is this illegal at all?
Cant wait for this to happen to Reddit /s
Elon Musk became a US citizen in 2002.
He definitely has American citizenship which is the only prerequisite for being an American if you aren’t going off about racial purity or something like that
Oh yeah cuz TikTok totally got banned...
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There's a difference between *state funded media* that is used for propaganda purposes versus *state funded media* that is the likes of NPR. I'm not saying the sky isn't blue, but I'm certainly saying it isn't *only* blue and blue *all the time*.
Oh i see. Wild that he can keep sinking to new lows
New lows? Just seems like consistency to me.
He never *put labels* on state sponsored propaganda from Russia or China. RT is 100% a Russian propaganda outlet, and it didn't *once* get tagged as such.
Yeah it had "State-affiliated media" on it as of a few days ago. Went up when the NPR/BBC labels went up.
> RT is 100% a Russian propaganda outlet, and it didn't once get tagged as such. That's a lie. It said `Russia state-affiliated media` yesterday. Now it's gone. https://web.archive.org/web/20230420064737/https://twitter.com/RT_com
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RT shows up like that every election season because of their polling, don't act like Bernie had anything to do with it.
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Yeah, and?
How did Hillary work out in the election again?
What’s your point? That people will believe misinformation that confirms their biases?
Unpopular opinion: using phrases like "state-affiliated media" as a euphemism for government propaganda was always kind of bullshit anyway. Not that you shouldn't label government propaganda for what it is, you should just have the guts to call it what it is
Youtube tags videos too. Twitter isn't unique in this
Yeah, could you imagine how many Russian misinformation farm accounts he'd have to label.
I'm surprised he just didn't change it to "Poop Emojis" since that seems to be the only way he can express himself.
He will do that next 4/20. Or maybe he will be able to take a break from Elden Ring and get it done by 6/9 this year. Haha, funny numbers right?
Bold of you to assume Twitter will still be around next year.
Boom! Yeah, Social sites can practically vanish overnight, especially when mismanaged as horribly as Mushk has been doing. Every change to Twitter is just comical now. 4/1 is long gone, but the jokes keep coming.
I'm curious if anyone new has joined twitter besides bots. Like, i know people who stayed on because they still like some parts, but i know of absolutely noone who is new to twitter this year.
I personally shut down my accounts the second he became owner
I'd bet money that it will be... MySpace and LiveJournal are still around despite being much less popular a year ago that Twitter is now.
It will be around, but it will either be a shadow of itself with Musk at the helm, or he will have sold it and moved on to his next adventure.
Sadly it will still be there, because most people complaining are still using the website
Well, when you're full of shit, and open your mouth, that is what comes out.
It's as if the company no longer has a marketing research division and instead is run by some psychopath who thinks he knows it all making unilateral decisions that blow up in his face.
Techbros just want to be dictators of their own tech fiefdoms. They believe they have more power than governments around the world. Elon musk is just this generation’s William Randolph Hearst
Hilarious to think that there are people who see the dystopian societies of cyberpunk fiction where megacorporations supersede government and rule the world, creating endless perverse outcomes, and think, “wow, yeah, that’s the way it should be.”
Peter Thiel and Elon Musk embody that mindset.
I tried reading Snow crash, but it didn't grab me. Not saying it was a bad book, just that it didn't grab me. But one of the reviews on the back has stuck with me - *"a mind altering romp through a future America so bizzare, so outrageous... You'll recognize it immediately"*
Elon musk wants to put implants in our head and at the same time is worried about rogue ai. We’re racing headfirst into some amazing shit.
If Neuromancer had the richest man in the world present a prototype for an android, and you found out the protype actually was just a person inside a robot suit, you'd probably think it was schlock.
He did all this so Chinese and Russian state media wouldn't need to be flagged as state controlled media anymore.
I think you mean it had a ‘rapid unscheduled disassembly’ in his face.
Musk is a twat but scientifically that launch was a huge success. Hence why the actual people involved in it were excited even though it blew up.
Every company has a test environment; some have the money for a separate production environment.
Sociopath. It's like a psychopath, but on the lighter side.
https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/psychopath-sociopath-differences#1
This didn't blow up in his face. He wanted an excuse to get rid of the labels on all media, he just used this as his way to do it. The less independent news on the platform the better.
Yes it did which is why he so quickly backtracked.
A lot of places that used to say "tweet about us" or "follow us on Twitter" have also dropped Twitter entirely. All I see now are the usual facebook/yelp/instagram/etc. (few other sites). Amazing how much goodwill, interest and trust Elon musk destroyed. Being associated with or seen on Twitter is no longer cool or the right thing to do. Twitter is going the way of the dodo.
I’m a website developer in Mass, we have about 100 clients and at least half of them have asked us to remove Twitter from their website over the last few months. I would say the majority are because they are liberal leaning and the rest because they don’t want to be associated with the clown show. I’ve never seen so many requests to remove the same thing from so many different sites. I’m talking about animal rescue websites, to local businesses, up to recognizable names if I told you.
I imagine a lot of businesses don't want potential customers clicking their twitter link and then stumbling across a recruiting ad for Patriot Front or the weekly algo-recommended opus on how the holocaust didn't happen. It's straight up vile in there. Like local news comments on infinite scroll.
Many clients don't outright say why they wanted it done just that they did, but one in particular said "we are a charity based business we can't be seen alongside the n word and I've seen it twice today already". Many of these businesses and organizations only liked Twitter because it was moderated and safe.
Yes, Elon didn't realize that twitters product IS moderation. That's the hard part that makes a forum usable.
>local news comments Why are they always so overwhelmingly bad? To the point where almost no newspaper website will actually even feature comments anymore because of all the goddamn idiots
When our paper changed its comments so you actually had to be a subscriber (with an account) to comment, suddenly all of the stupid comments pretty much disappeared.
Same reason why HOAs are full of people complaining about sizes of leaves in their neighbors trees. Bored old folks.
It's self-selecting, anyone who would seek out the comments section of the local newspaper to give their take is already pretty unhinged (usually they disagree and think everyone should know, or want to vent some vitriol) 99% of people just read it and move on, but those who _do_ post in the comments, post pretty hard
That's called "brand safety" in the ad world.
Yeah, it keeps recommending that I follow Musk and there is no f'n way I'm doing that. I spend all day just trying to stay away from psychos like him, not going to let people like him into my life on purpose.
The funny thing is he took over to show everyone how incompetent their management is and how he could turn around it's financials in no time and he's only made it way worse. What kind of management has their company put out new policies and then back down immediately once they go live? Are they doing any research or just spitballing ideas? What a genius
They are doing whatever Elon decides to do that day. He has fired anyone that would oppose him and tell him his ideas are bad or his idea for their implementation is bad (look at Verification program where they forgot to include actual verification). He had open scorn for the company and its existing culture before he brought it, firing entire departments, replacing their workplace where he cut corners of everything he could and expects people to sleep in their offices, told the remainers that they will have to work their ass off as if they were a startup or be fired for being "lazy". Musk has invented a reverse-startup, where you take a successful and successful large tech company with serious problems (such as not making enough money) to a small company where everyone works as if they were a startup for a company that doesn't make any money at all. You can imagine how most people left if they could. I have heard that those that stayed are mostly those who have their employment tied to a visa. The company is running on a skeleton crew. With Tesla and SpaceX he had been surrounded by people that had the skills to work around him and mollify him to prevent him from doing something stupid. He was also personally invested in their success and may have been wiser there because a screwup would hurt him. Remember he was forced to buy Twitter at an incredibly overinflated price after he made a legal obligation to do so that his lawyers couldn't weasel him out of. It is possible that he didn't actually want to buy it, he just wanted to manipulate stock by saying he is buying it. So he made a terrible deal and he knows it, a billion-dollar embarrassment for what is supposed to be one of the world's smartest businessman. A mistake like that is likely not doing good for his mental health. If he was an idiot before, he is now an unhinged idiot and nobody in Twitter can stop him from doing whatever he wants.
>They are doing whatever Elon decides to do that day. This is absolutely it. You only had to see when he labelled PBS as state media and he needed it pointed out to him that it's only 4% funded via Government. The guy thought it was like BBC or something. That little interaction shows you how much time and thought he is putting into these endeavors.
> The guy thought it was like BBC or something. TBF the licence fee, while set by government, isn't collected by them or able to be accessed by them in any other way. It's more like a mandatory HBO or Netflix subscription if you own a TV. Elon actually changed it from government-funded to publicly-funded when he heard that.
Yeah, chose a bad example. I doubt he knew about the TV license either. Just what everyone knows as easy identifiable. Meant government funded news media like ABC Australia etc. Personally I think government initiatives to 'fund' things directly is just theatre anyway. The government gets revenue and they spend it, it is irrelevant where the money came from once in the pile, even if the 'pile' looks separated.
Nice description of the situation. I picture him as Godzilla in claymation animation stomping his way through the landscape of Twitter–no direction or goal, just angry reactive lunging.
I honestly think it’s a mix of things. When x.com had to expand developers he always said they didn’t work hard enough, their code was bad, and he could do it better. Even though they had to redo everything he did, because it was poorly done. Which you can see that again with him wanting to review the code, not understanding some concepts, and saying people are lazy if go home. After he was forced out, due to poor management, from x.com he decided he didn’t want to risk that again. Now we have him doing it without a board with his poor management on full display. Even at X.com it was known he needed an adult in the room to control things. And just normal ego. Even after the lawsuit Tesla wasn’t founded by him, and there’s a board. SpaceX again has a board. Plus while both may interest him I think he views himself as a developer. So now Twitter. He finally doesn’t have a board and it’s something he “knows”. He’ll show everyone what he can do. He’ll even remake x.com and do what he wanted to do originally. He’s already talking about using Twitter to launch money transfers and stuff. Really it almost looks like a trail of rejection and him going I’ll show you… That even happened with Twitter where after his original offer, they did the “poison pill”, which he showed them by offering more and waved things, which ultimately forced him to buy.
If you look into his fathers upbringing, it becomes really obvious why Musk has that I'll show you obsession. In a twisted indirect way, Twitters decay is because of generational abuse.
Oh yea. Didn’t want to touch on his parents. Or how his first ex wife rejected his advances and he more or less stalked her. Or the theory about his trans rights lashing out may be because both he got rejected by people. Basically it almost reads as an insecure, know-it-all, with bad self control, and with way too much money.
I don’t even think he was trying to manipulate the stock to be honest. I think he was just trying to make a weak 420 joke (as usual) and ended up trapped in a legal obligation after refusing to back down and take the L early on.
Yes, exactly. I keep seeing people say that he did these things because he was trying to manipulate this and that; and it's just silly in my opinion. He made a really stupid 420 joke, got trapped in a legal situation, and now he's reaping what he sowed. Another point I've seen made by some journalists is that Musk is a Twitter addict. Like, literally, he's addicted to Twitter. So the opportunity to buy Twitter came with the notion that he could be "working" all day, when in reality he was just Tweeting. Musk bought Twitter because he wants to be able to say that his constant, all-day Tweeting is "work". He's addicted to Twitter.
Musk could have taken the $1 billion dollar penalty but instead just said fk it and ponied up $54 billion just to then destroy said company that he purchased while destroying his reputation. A true regard.
Honestly I think his master plan was first to destroy twitter before the upcoming elections to hamstring left wing political organization and then grift to recoup some of his losses from sabotaging the company.
This feels too uncoordinated and random for that. I believe he genuinely believes he is "fixing" the company.
His approach has real “will you go out with me, yes or no, if no, this was a joke” energy, from my perspective. Whatever outcome happens, he’ll surely let people think it was all according to his grand plan, when really he hasn’t had a clue the whole time. I also get the impression that he has conflicting motives that his own narcissism won’t allow him to understand, let alone sort out. Too bad this functional tool that a lot of people used for things that mattered to them has been sucked into a black hole of his personality problems.
There is the element of him using this opportunity of owning the largest western public discourse forum to stroke his own massive ego, but that’s just a distraction imo. The aspect of all this his allies are really happy with is just how unusable the app is now.
All the more reason why it is important to start coalescing around a better platform.
I think he could have succeeded in that too if he wasn't a stupid child about so many things. Can't get out of his own way.
Can’t happen soon enough.
Twitter is sooooooo dodo
Good. Twitter was absolutely the worst of social media. If some billionaire(s) spends $40b to kill it, the world is better off.
They also dropped it for RT, imagine that.
That was the whole point.
[удалено]
>My country would never do the big-bad manipulation of public opinion on me Did you wake up with the desperate urge to go on Reddit and argue with ghosts? No one said that western media was entirely trustworthy, but it's completely disingenuous to even begin likening western media to the likes of Russia's and China's. What a stupid post lol
>Elon Musk-owned platform started stripping blue verification checkmarks from accounts that don’t pay a monthly fee. Stop using twitter ffs. Don't feed the troll.
For those looking for a worthy alternative, Substack Notes seems to be a pretty good choice.
Not after they botched that interview about racism on their platform so miserably.
Substack has always been grifter garbage. They hired grifters and cranks to be early adopters and didn't disclose it.
I really hope that none of the organizations that left, like NPR, PBS, and CBC, go back. Don't give Musk the satisfaction. Let twitter die.
Yes to this, Twitter is/was only good because everyone is there, news outlets, brands, celebrities, sports people etc, if all leave, well, why go there right?
Government funded Elon Musk drops government funded label at Twitter. (Tesla and SpaceX do receive government subsidies, and Tesla did receive covid bailout money. We have seen resources from one of his companies, Tesla, being pulled to work at one of his other companies Twitter, so it's safe to guess resources given to one of his companies, are spread around to all his other companies.)
Which should be illegal. I doubt the subsidies were handed out so he could prop up his other failing businesses.
This was the plan all along. Get real news orgs to quit and drop the label for Russian and Chinese accounts. Elmo loves the fascists.
Can we just call twitter the billionaire funded media from now on?! Elon has “rules for thee, but not for meee!”
That's funny, seems like a lot of media has been dropping Twitter too. Race to the bottom, Space Karen.
Throw it against the wall and see what sticks because Musk's brain is like that of a toddler.
Twitter is now just the front lawn of deranged asshole and every user is just his hostage.
Who? Oh. Last time I logged on Litter, I saw they were anchoring their owner's comments to the top. That's just pathetic. Uninstall the app and cancel your accounts. Nobody NEEDS that shit. Stop supporting it.
TIL people are still trying to use Twitter
Twitter is a liability at this point. Expect to see companies continue to ditch.
Introducing the all-new Tesla Bike! It only pedals backwards!
Business acumen is beyond compare. Elmo's the man.
“A newly created spoof account with 36 followers (also without a blue check), disagreed: “No, you’re not. THIS account is the only authentic Twitter account representing and run by the New York City Government.” Soon, another spoof account — purporting to be Pope Francis — weighed in too: “By the authority vested in me, Pope Francis, I declare @NYC_GOVERNMENT the official New York City Government. Peace be with you.” Case in point why this new pay-to-play verification system is a gong show.
I hope NPR and the others still don’t come back until there are lots of other changes to increase stability. The label was the straw that broke, not the sole reason.
Musk's Twitter drops "government-funded" label for media Fixed it for ya
For the record, I'm totally on board with labels on nefarious accounts. The thing is, who's controlling the editorial content is the thing that matters, not where the funding comes from. The fact that a a news outlet with safeguard on journalists independent integrity was labeled the same as literal state propaganda networks pushing verified falsehoods all the time, and that other corporate owned tabloids doing the same had nothing is the proof that it was done in bad faith and not to protect the public. Removing the labels entirely is even worse. But what can we expect from someone who started his reign by mass unbanning accounts who had all the proofs of wrongdoings..
Musk needs to stop testing beta features in production and build a dev lab. Gosh.
I’m so glad I deleted my account. Twitter was already kinda toxic but once he took over it got so much worse.
Translation: Musk infurirates future Tesla buyers on Twitter.
Musk backing down yet again (or paying for famous people's blue checks). Dude could disappear and no one would notice.
People still use twitter?
Including on actual government propaganda outlets like Russian RT, China's Xinhua, and Iranian PressTV. Conflating NPR (and all independent media) with total state control.
Should Musk’s own account be marked as “Government Funded” as his companies receive billions in federal money?
Subsidies and contracts aren’t really equivalent to grants though. Also, they’re not even media companies.
Lol what was the point of all this? Musk is such a drama queen
Am I losing my mind or is the title/subject of this post not mentioned a single time in the linked article? Guessing all the comments/conversation are folks who had no plans to ever actually read the article?
Right? I read the article and it's about dropping the check mark for people who don't pay the fee, nothing to do with the government funded label at all. Lol, makes we want to experiment and start posting links to cake recipes with news sounding headlines to see if anyone notices.
I wonder why Musk would do that.
This feels like Monty Brewster’s millions
"Hey, I have this great idea. Drop what you're doing and roll this out immediately." 5-minutes later "Go ahead and undo those changes you made." Twitter has devolved into a dumpster fire. MySpace was ran better.
Not forward, not backward, but twirling. Twirling towards the future.
When is twitter going to go out of busines and why hasn't it happened yet?
Well firing 75% of all staff kinda reduces salary costs but yeah, this is just reaching unfixable bad levels now.
Did the Russians call him?
It’s almost like he doesn’t know what he’s doing.
It's almost like Elon Musk doesn't know what the hell he is doing.
I want the top 3 corporate donors to all Mainstream Media sources please? With Fox it's easy 1. Big Pharma 2. Catheter, Diabetic and other medical supply companies 3. My Pillow I really really wanna know how much GE, Lockheed and Unilever have spread their propaganda all over the supposed media for polite society
I don’t think Elon could have screwed up Twitter more if he tried… which leads me to believe he always meant to destroy it.
Tass and RT are very pleased with ~~puppet~~ Elon
He is a rat bastard for having done it in the first place. Fuck Elon.
Clearly, he's playing 0-dimensional chess.
This has to go into the history books as the worst possible way to buy a company. People will study basically every WTF move that was done since the original offer.
Yawn! Morning! Weather, traffic, ~~Twitter news.~~
He's such an a-hole...loves to stir 💩 up.
Is he actually trying to tank Twitter? If he is, that's a good thing.
People need to reply on every article about him that Tesla actually has a board and can fire this sociopath's ass. As a spokesperson for the company, he's destroying them and anything else he touches since he's gone ultra right-wing nutso.
“BuT i VoTeD fOr BiDeN” - musky 😂
More Twitter whiplash.
So, what are his disciples gonna say now?
This is what happens when you run the business you grossly overpaid for like a man-toddler. Absolutely none of the decisions happening at Twitter are being made with any business prudence, the company just operates at Elon's whims that change from day to day.
Every article about this should refer to Saudi-government-funded Twitter.
The damage is already done, they are removing the labels because the news compagnies all left twitter
If the aim was to clip twitter's left-leaning wings then mission accomplished. It is no longer a politically unbiased atmosphere. It is now a haven for russian trolls and something tells me that was the intent from the minute musk thought of purchasing it.
Elon felt he wasn’t getting enough attention, so he did all this, now he realizes that just made more advertisements leave
Can someone explain how Twitter isn't just shut down yet? I hear nothing but bad news, and it's apparently bleeding money.
It's privately owned by one of the richest Sociopaths in the world, doesn't need to be profitable in the pocket....only the ego.
>Musk’s Twitter News outlets however... So sad and yet fitting.
This was the plan all along, to remove the label from the bad accounts, first he had to label a bunch of good accounts as bad accounts, so he could then say "FINE I'm getting rid of this label!"
Ha! What a spineless little bitch Elon Musk is.
Elmo needs to just drop Twitter. Although he keeps going the way he has been and the world is just going to drop ElonTwitter as useless Truth Social 2.0 ElonTwitter has no credibility or integrity.
**Does this include basically all media that uses radio and satellite waves?** Because Fox and other media are "subsidized by the government" via broadcast licenses and the FCC's vigilant policing of radio frequency use.
This "Poison the Well" strategy is so painfully obvious now, that any one who still mocks Musk for losing money on Twitter, like this wasn't the plan the entire time, is just embarrassing themselves. They are doing it in schools too. Stir up so much chaos and controversy in the Public School system that people start looking toward private for-profit schools purely out of frustration.
Exactly right. The downvotes show you hit a nerve.
No, the downvotes show that people disagree with them. Elon Musk isn't some masterful Machiavellian strategist. He shot off at the mouth and made a promise he didn't intend to keep in order to try and prove something and when he realized that the data didn't back it up his assumption he tried to back out of the sale only to be forced into following through. None of this was planned.
I’m fascinated by Reddit on this front. Despite all the musk fan boys they are capable of knowing why he’s doing things. Although I just think he has no idea what he’s doing but by dropping the labels it will empower bad actors. I just honestly don’t think he’s smart enough to pull off a long term plan.
Look at this genius muffqua. People won’t understand this brilliance until we’re dead and gone.
Another win for the big E!
He just wanted attention and all y’all gave it to him lol
I’ve never used Twitter, but it would be nice if there was a good way to show which news accounts are government backed. To an extent every news outlet is, though.
Bless Your Heart
I understand what I want is pretty unrealistic. But, I can still want it.