It's official fellas, Elon officially buys Twitter -- https://www.wsj.com/articles/twitter-and-elon-mus…
Really excited for him to open source the code & eliminate shadow-banning of anything that isn't alt left viewpoints. It's a new era
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Really excited for this. Twitter alternatives for right wing just haven't been able to scale (i.e. Gab). The blog / video platforms like Rumble have seen some traction as how communities in fringe on stuff like Discord but otherwise just nothing as most moderates don't want to make the effort
Now a mainstream pipe will become more fair
The bigger problem with those alternative sites is that they just devolve into rapidly radicalizing echo chambers. It's not just the right wing ones either. Mastodon was formed for liberals who think Twitter wasn't ENOUGH of an insane far left circle jerk. Honestly this is probably good for liberals, if anything. It will force them to confront views they don't necessarily agree with and might roll back some of the ideological radicalization that went into overdrive during COVID. Their entire intellectual class sat in an always-online echo chamber for two full years and they likely failed to appreciate the rift that developed vs. what Americans living in the real world actually give a shit about.
It's also might be bad for Trump if his account is restored. He's undisciplined and constantly posts divisive, erratic shit. His 2024 campaign pitch is "guy who was president when the country didn't suck ass" which could be enough to bring independents back if they aren't constantly reminded that he's kind of an asshole.
Finally! Someone to confirm I’m not crazy. Conservatives do not realize that Twitter was terrible for Trump. Trump getting kicked off Twitter has been the best thing for his popularity. I wish he would just stay the F off Twitter.
Except this won't happen, to either side, since people only follow people on their own side. People don't see a wide variety of views, they just see the information that confirms what they think and unfollow/block anyone who disagrees, it's just the nature of social media as it's currently constructed.
Hope Trump is able to return back on Twitter.
And in the oval office.
I think he stands a pretty darn good shot given the state of what Democratic policies have brought us to
I personally would prefer Ron Desantis but Trump is my close second
I think these two things are inversely related. The public forgetting how insane/ stupid/distracted he is on an hourly basis would have helped the swing voters tilt his way. I welcome him back and thank him for never even bothering to post on Truth Social so I could make a little money on that short.
Trump won’t go back to Twitter. Too many people are looking at this from a “free speech” perspective and forgetting the financials (even on the finance forum WSO). Musk has beaten Trump to the conservative social media market which certainly has had signs of being profitable based on Truth Social’s capital raise and app download interest. As a result, Trump has to be very angry at Musk right now so even if Musk offers him a spot back, he’ll deny it.
Wowwwww nice Elon
What will Musk do next???
I vote nuke the moon!
Gotta love this guy Isiah, he reminds me of you if you had $200+bl and were a lot thicker
Nah dude, gotta nuke Mars to colonize it
Hell yeah baby! A free speech absolutist is literally what we need in a time when people don't trust institutions anymore because they suppress alternative viewpoints. This is a necessary counter-balance to the deluge of woke content put out by other media companies. Elon's point on the woke mind virus hurting Netflix is too true, I can't think of a single NFLX Original I've seen in the past yr that hasn't been absurdly woke (Arcana, Space Force, etc)
If there isn't at least a 70% trans / gay / black cast, Netflix just won't allow the show to be made. Seriously I'm thinking of cancelling my Netflix by this point as I'm tired of having this garbage shoved down my throat
"Free speech absolutism" is just a rhetoric.
He's really buying it for the same reason Jeff Bezos bought Washington Post or for any reason any billionaire would buy any media company - To have a media outlet you can directly control. This is done for 2 reasons - 1) You can directly send messages to people that you have the ears of (this gives so much control and decreases the operational burden of figuring out the right "media strategy and tactics") , 2) You can now expand your sphere of influence, whom you have significant control over the opinions of because you hired a professional media company that already knows how to do this.
If you're an ultra-ambitious person like Musk or Bezos then you want to control the media directly and eliminate risk of losing on the rhetoric. Elon Musk is pretty genius at this.
As for why Twitter and not other media sources?
Musk is pretty "alternative" in lots of ways and his fan base are active on Twitter. I bet if you ranked media source subscribers by largest number of Elon Musk fans, then you'd see Twitter at the top.
REMEMBER. Elon Musk's media strategy is to be constantly on your minds and have people know what his vision is at any point in time.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure the free speech absolutism idea is made-up. I think Musk said recently that the idea is that the 10% on the political right and 10% on the left would be unhappy with Twitter’s speech policies. That point notwithstanding, Musk didn’t need to spend $43 billion to have direct access to the public. This is just unfounded conspiracy theory.
Bezos needs to step up if he thinks people ry on WaPo as their sole source for information.
Libs hate this man because he has both the capital and conviction to stand against their spread of cultural globohomo. Don't know how I feel about him personally but mad respect for the changes he's going to bring to Twitter (along with what he's done with Tesla & SpaceX already)
Elon will use the platform purely for his personal gain to pump and dump stocks, the masses will benefit from less woke nonsense. Everyone wins.
Not a bad tradeoff at all
I don't even use Twitter but now hopefully it will be open to more people regardless of their opinions. The more free speech is the better so I'm excited about this.
Kind of odd to keep seeing “free speech takes” on here. Musk saw the market that Truth Social had the potential to capture (by capital raise, # app downloads, etc.) and managed to beat Trump to the space by buying out an existing platform instead of having to build one from scratch. I have to say this is incredibly well played from a business perspective and can only imagine Trump is fuming right now that Musk has beat him to this new market.
Who gives a shit about Twitter lol. Platform sucks ass, and isn’t going to magically start not sucking. It’s an echo chamber for SJW and MAGA shills and bots
Twitter is the smallest of the major platforms buts it’s arguably the most influential. Twitter completely controls the Democratic Party. All the craziest ideas gain steam on Twitter and the echo chamber is so thick that Dem politicians and media believe the craziest ideas are mainstream. Also, Twitter sets the daily news narrative at major publications.
Interested to see how he'll try and monetize the platform. Do not care about the "free speech" whining that's going on in this thread - I think he'll be forced to censor things more than he'd like to.
Who will force him to censor?
The European governments, for one. Germany, in particular, which is just an evil country at its core. I’m ashamed that 30% of my blood is German.
The users themselves will force him to censor lest it devolves into 4chan.
It's crazy 1 man just bought Twitter. To put things in context...look at how large the flagship funds at the biggest PE firms like KKR are. I think KKRs latest fund was $19B.
That Tesla money is long
Crazy
Right?
In 11 days, ONE GUY completes a hostile takeover of a fortune 500 company.
I love it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Whats even crazier is when you will rejoin twitter in 2 weeks after saying never again.
Table meets Elon's dick. The chad energy radiating from this deal puts even Carl Icahn to shame.
I’m literally in love with Elon Musk. I don’t know who I want to marry more—Veronica Mars or Elon Musk (no pun intended).
I would be interested to see how this will work but I'm not optimistic. Yes, twitter absolutely artificially boosts certain topics and people...but you know what has the highest organic hit rate on reddit? Subs about anime and porn, sometimes anime porn. But the general populace doesn't really want to see that shit. So you're going to turn twitter into like tumblr - low moderation, higher community engagement, but I predict , like tumblr, it will devolve into high hit rate, low "real world engagement' topics like fetishes, anime, certain video games, etc.
The thing that makes twitter powerful - the massive engagement with thought leaders - won't endure.
I think people have it all wrong. I don’t think Twitter with Musk will be unmoderated. I think the point is to have very clear standards. Twitter currently has very broad standards that are used to arbitrarily shut down certain opinions. From what I understand, censored content will not be on the arbitrary whims of some 25 year old San Francisco lesbian.
Doesn't have to be about total lack of moderation. It's lack of arbitrary moderation on political topics. Sure, screen out porn. Or better yet, have a filter button where you can opt out of NSFW content so you have a choice. But it's more so about not surpressing critical thought (which is different from minimizing porn). They're not inextricably tied together and even if they are, adding filter options / buttons gives people choice -- which people don't have today as anything on the right is deliberately either de-platformed or suppressed
I mean that's an absurd take and you know it. There is a huge and thriving corner of twitter for right wing America. The problem is that the active political right LIKES to talk shit and get into fights. They LIKE to dunk on people - liberal tears, etc. It's the entire political ethos - hating liberals. Seriously, look at the comment above - you guys can't help yourself but make some snide swipe at your perceived left wing enemy even though I said NOTHING about left vs. right.
What was happening is you have a group of people who like to get into fights and toe the line. It's really not that complicated. They just tend to push it too far.
So now they won't get banned for things liek doxxing people or pushing it too far...I just don't think a lot of brands or celebrities will want to be in or around that kind that thing.
Elon be like:
This thread alone proves how smart of a business decision this is. All the WSO right leaning posters who hated twitter and said it was utter crap have learned no other platform can replace it and will be back on it now with new ownership.
Even the bee for all their anger they knew you could never recreate the following they got off twitter.
As for twitters useless board they were never into making money and walk away with lots of vested stock.
People are acting like Twitter was always a censorship overdrive shithole. It wasn't - it used to be extremely open by design for years and years. Dorsey wanted it that way, explicitly. In 2016 liberal outrage over Trump started to put pressure on Twitter to censor opposing views. There was a slow creep from 2016 to 2019 with Dorsey losing ground. Then COVID hits, libs go nuts, and he lost all remaining ground to the mob.
I doubt we return to the wild West pre-2015 days, but we'll likely end up with something far different than what we have now. There's a reason liberals are freaking out.
I agree with this the most part. The issue is that these tech firms became mammoth companies who had to find a way forward. There is a great episode of "Mythic Quest" where they talk about how they have to start to police the game.
The thing is that if you compare the left and right, the left for the most part learn to deal with censorship and move on. While the libertarian right (few people on this forum) consider censorship a very important topic for them and that it wrecks their entire experience.
Dorsey was never one to make money and to your point was more about growing the platform. I think Elon sees the value in twitter as whole and as long as they can keep people on the platform he knows a huge win is here.
I miss pre-2015 internet.
I'd wait before celebrating. Social media companies coordinate their actions with US Dems and UK govt intelligence.
wheres the link to this info
Don't question, the guy just knows things.
100%. Only good news is that as it infects Western countries & they fall, they fallout will largely be limited to them. Asian countries largely give no crap about being 'woke'
Why is twitter not trading at the buyout price?
I thought trading had been turned off yesterday.
same reason other buyouts dont automatically trade at their buyout.
Still a long way to with regulation, money getting put on the table, and due diligence.
analyst 1 discovers merger arbitrage
I'm not a tech guy, but is anyone else surprised there doesn't appear to be interest in an over-the-top bid by one of the big tech companies? Of course FB would never be allowed to buy it, but MSFT / AAPL, maybe GOOG?
I think they would have considered "white knight" role if twitter was better run and had a good management team. In reality it really does not and going private breaking it down and buying it back from Elon possibly in 2 years is an easier solution.
To your point, surprised one of other social players like bytedance or snap doesn’t try something. They could possibly figure out Twitter ads.
They likely don't want to deal with outsized scrutiny that owning something like Twitter would bring
The outrage from the left is comical. If you're actually concerned about getting your feelings hurt from an opinion you don't agree with you don't need to be on social media to begin with. There are already settings to only allow responses from people you follow and there is the good ol block button. That being said, if Elon is actually able to get rid of the majority of bot accounts it will automatically make the platform 1000x better. There's no telling what percentage of arguments in the comments are started by bots that immediately turn the thread into a cesspool. Oh yeah and the entire company has underperformed for years now so after 90% of the garbage employees get slashed it may actually be a solid company.
I wonder how truly free speech is gonna be. how will Musk respond if China for example demands that people mentioning Taiwan are banned or else Tesla in China will suffer. The CCP has gone after people for less. Also Musk always shitting on short sellers, who are basically expressing an opinion.
Also how is he gonna make sure those woke employees are not gonna pull all kinds of tricks to schadow ban people and stuff without him knowing about it. Some or off the opinion that even Jack Dorsey didn;t know how truly diabolical these people were.
Kinda weird that Jack Dorsey seems to endorse Musk's takeover and talking about the free speech stuff. Why the fuck didn't he do something about it when he was running the place? He obviously knew about the wuhan lab bannings and the Hunter Biden laptop cover up.
All and all i think it is a good thing, of political and cultural importance that people are standing up against this woke cancer that is still spreading over corporate America.
On Jack -- too much pressure from his board & political folks, esp since he didn't own majority share. Elon is the world's richest man & basks in criticism and now owns the entire thing -- as a private company as well vs public (HUGE - means way less scrunity). Doesn't need to be totally censorship resistant. Just not screwing over moderate right wingers and intelligent far right wingers (vs incels) will be massive in a cultural impact perspective & righting against the mental disease of modern liberalism
Can you expound more on this? How did Jack lose control of Twitter?
Dorsey always wanted it to be a free speech platform, and it was until the left started to go nuts. He lacked the will and the institutional power to stop the rot. Go watch his interview on Joe Rogan. It was Tim Pool, Jack Dorsey and Vijaya Gadde. Tim wanted Dorsey on to discuss twitter censorship. He dragged along their top lawyer who was in charge of this bullshit and it was pretty clear that he didn't realize this stuff was even going on.
There was a Politico article recently saying that Gadde broke down crying at the news of the Musk buyout, which is just great.
I am skeptical given Musk's own connections to the DoD and CIA, but he is pissing off the right people and once exposed neoliberals for the petty tyrants they actually are. I won't start cheering yet but he literally cannot do any worse than current Twitter, so I am cautiously optimisic.
However, people shouldn't be using social media to begin with.
What a fun world you live in.
I've noticed a lot of people online praising this move and saying that Elon is singlehandedly bringing back free speech. I am remaining skeptical.
Fair to be skeptical but if there's anyone in the world that can do it, it's Elon. Even Dorsey -- another guy who believes in free speech -- says Elon is the singular solution he trusts. No one else has the capital, the determination, and the willingness to prioritizre free speech over financial returns to do what he can
this aged well.... crazy how fast Elon moves.
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