Elon Musk and Twitter Reach Deal for Sale (Update: WSJ report details Musk’s relationship with Putin) (2 Viewers)

[SaintForLife]

Elon Musk struck a deal on Monday to buy Twitter for roughly $44 billion, in a victory by the world’s richest man to take over the influential social network frequented by world leaders, celebrities and cultural trendsetters.

Twitter agreed to sell itself to Mr. Musk for $54.20 a share, a 38 percent premium over the company’s share price this month before he revealed he was the firm’s single largest shareholder. It would be the largest deal to take a company private — something Mr. Musk has said he will do with Twitter — in at least two decades, according to data compiled by Dealogic.

“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Mr. Musk said in a statement announcing the deal. “Twitter has tremendous potential — I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”

The deal, which has been unanimously approved by Twitter’s board, is expected to close this year, subject to a vote of Twitter shareholders and certain regulatory approvals.

The blockbuster agreement caps what had seemed an improbable attempt by the famously mercurial Mr. Musk, 50, to buy the social media company — and immediately raises questions about what he will do with the platform and how his actions will affect online speech globally.

Elon Musk and Twitter Reach Deal for Sale

Twitter agreed to be taken over at $54.20 a share, a 38 percent premium over the share price before it was revealed that Mr. Musk had been buying up the company’s stock.

www-nytimes-com.cdn.ampproject.org

If Musk does what he claims he wants to do it will be a big improvement and good for free speech.

 

[samiam5211]

SFL has chosen to read and believe people who are trying to mislead him. In the beginning this is all on them. For whatever reason, for notoriety or money or influence, they chose to skew facts and tell lies for a narrative.

But at some point, especially after so many times of having the falsehoods and misrepresentations pointed out to him, literally for years now, it has to be on him. It just does.

He's not too stupid to understand it either.

He's just trying to play a game like he's in a high school debate class. The internet is full of this. People arguing points they don't really believe because they think that it matters if they can score points online.

 

[MT15]

Because this stupid stuff just keeps getting repeated, it’s important to keep putting the truth out there.

No, The FBI Is NOT ‘Paying Twitter To Censor’

Sigh. Look. I want to stop writing about Twitter. I want to write about lots of other stuff. I have a huge list of other stories that I’m trying to get through, but then Elon Musk does someth…

www.techdirt.com

The liars Taibbi, Weiss and Shellenberger keep saying that the government was censoring content on Twitter. When what they were doing was flagging content, just as anyone else can do, for Twitter to review. There was no threat, or coercion in any way. In fact, Twitter took action on about 40% of the flagged content. So, well over half the time Twitter disagreed with the flag and did nothing. The presentation by Musk, and his associate liars is completely dishonest. And it avoids the actual discussion that should be had, per the article linked above:

“Now, we could have an interesting discussion (and I actually do think it’s an interesting discussion) about whether or not the government should be flagging accounts to review as terms of service violations. Right now, anyone can do this. You or I can go on Twitter and if we see something that we think violates a content policy, we can flag it for Twitter to review. Twitter than will review the content and determine whether or not it’s violative, and then decide what the remedy should be if it is.

That opens up an interesting question in general: should government officials and entities also be allowed to do the same type of flagging? Considering that anyone else can do it, and the company still reviews against its own terms of service and (importantly) feels free to reject those requests when they do not appear to violate the terms, I’m hard pressed to see the problem here on its own.

If there were evidence that there was some pressure, coercion, or compulsion for the company to comply with the government requests, that would be a different story. But, to date, there remains none (at least in the US).”

 

[Optimus Prime]

Prominent white nationalist and virulent antisemite Nick Fuentes has returned to Twitter, where he has a verified account.

Mr Fuentes gained more mainstream attention after dining with Donald Trump and Kanye West at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago property last year. Mr Trump has refused to condemn either of the men and their history of rampant antisemitism and Mr Fuentes’s links to neo-Nazism, anti-LGBT+ bigotry and misogyny.

At 7.30am ET, Mr Fuentes posted a meme of the character Patrick from Spongebob Squarepants to announce his return to the social media platform, where new owner Elon Musk has opened the door to white nationalist, neo-Nazi and other far-right extremist accounts.

Mr Fuentes was permanently blocked from the platform in July of 2021.

Following his Mar-a-Lago appearance, Mr Fuentes and the rapper – who has attracted several prominent far-right influencers to his 2024 presidential campaign – appeared on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s InfoWars broadcast, where Mr West praised Nazism and Adolf Hitler and denied that the Holocaust happened.

The banner image on his Twitter profile – which includes a blue “verified” checkmark – is a screenshot from that InfoWars appearance.

Mr Fuentes has continued to praise the genocidal fascist, recently saying that “he was also really f****** cool” and “awesome”.................

White nationalist and virulent antisemite Nick Fuentes returns to Twitter

 

[J-DONK]

Because this stupid stuff just keeps getting repeated, it’s important to keep putting the truth out there.

No, The FBI Is NOT ‘Paying Twitter To Censor’

Sigh. Look. I want to stop writing about Twitter. I want to write about lots of other stuff. I have a huge list of other stories that I’m trying to get through, but then Elon Musk does someth…

www.techdirt.com

The liars Taibbi, Weiss and Shellenberger keep saying that the government was censoring content on Twitter. When what they were doing was flagging content, just as anyone else can do, for Twitter to review. There was no threat, or coercion in any way. In fact, Twitter took action on about 40% of the flagged content. So, well over half the time Twitter disagreed with the flag and did nothing. The presentation by Musk, and his associate liars is completely dishonest. And it avoids the actual discussion that should be had, per the article linked above:

“Now, we could have an interesting discussion (and I actually do think it’s an interesting discussion) about whether or not the government should be flagging accounts to review as terms of service violations. Right now, anyone can do this. You or I can go on Twitter and if we see something that we think violates a content policy, we can flag it for Twitter to review. Twitter than will review the content and determine whether or not it’s violative, and then decide what the remedy should be if it is.

That opens up an interesting question in general: should government officials and entities also be allowed to do the same type of flagging? Considering that anyone else can do it, and the company still reviews against its own terms of service and (importantly) feels free to reject those requests when they do not appear to violate the terms, I’m hard pressed to see the problem here on its own.

If there were evidence that there was some pressure, coercion, or compulsion for the company to comply with the government requests, that would be a different story. But, to date, there remains none (at least in the US).”

I've used the verbage of censorship, and it's not wrong. You are arguing a very narrow semantic difference between flagging, and censorship. You can flag content with the intent of censorship.

What's dishonest is the framing that only the left was doing this. The Trump white house was asking for content to be flagged as well.

A real discussion would be around the government's ability to keep a lot of these request private. That should be reserved for real national security interest, not some Russian troll factory making pepe memes.

Twitter would have a lot less headaches if all these request to flag were made public from the outset. It would allow Twitter to take in public feedback before acting.

 

[MT15]

When the government does the same thing I do when I flag a post on Twitter, and it’s ignored almost half the time, that’s not censorship. It’s just not.

 

[MT15]

Meanwhile, Musk is still interacting with trolls and pedophiles on Twitter like it’s his job.

 

[MT15]

What is it about right-wing idiots that makes them afraid of answering simple questions?

 

[UriUT]

So after all the Twitter files conspiracy and hunter Biden suppression...those critics aren't jumping at the bits about what happened on the oversight hearings today?

Most notably that trump asked twitter while he was in the white house to remove tweets???? Isn't that worse than a father asking twitter to remove hacked penis pics?

 

[MT15]

Yeah, reading about the hearings was…interesting. It seems they didn’t go as the Rs wanted them to. Even the NY Post laptop story - exactly zero Twitter former execs testified that there was government pressure to remove access to the story, although they admitted it was a mistake to remove it.

The best example was after Trump’s “go back where they came from“ tweet against several D congresswomen. This language was exactly forbidden in the Twitter stated rules as harassment and it should have been removed. It was flagged by the public, and Twitter refused to remove it, and then quietly dropped that phrase from their rules as an example of harassment. This is decidedly NOT bias against right wingers.

The bias against right wingers is made up nonsense. Every actual study has shown the exact opposite.

 

[Bigdaddysaints]

Yeah, reading about the hearings was…interesting. It seems they didn’t go as the Rs wanted them to. Even the NY Post laptop story - exactly zero Twitter former execs testified that there was government pressure to remove access to the story, although they admitted it was a mistake to remove it.

The best example was after Trump’s “go back where they came from“ tweet against several D congresswomen. This language was exactly forbidden in the Twitter stated rules as harassment and it should have been removed. It was flagged by the public, and Twitter refused to remove it, and then quietly dropped that phrase from their rules as an example of harassment. This is decidedly NOT bias against right wingers.

The bias against right wingers is made up nonsense. Every actual study has shown the exact opposite.

He has to boost users somehow, so he has to make sure he gets as many MAGAs back as possible. of course the "Defender Of Free Speech" has bias, no different than the pervious ownership, oh the hypocracy...

 

[J-DONK]

So after all the Twitter files conspiracy and hunter Biden suppression...those critics aren't jumping at the bits about what happened on the oversight hearings today?

Most notably that trump asked twitter while he was in the white house to remove tweets???? Isn't that worse than a father asking twitter to remove hacked penis pics?

It's been pretty evident that Twitter was way out their depth with censorship for a while. That should be everyone's major takeaway. Twitter should have censored only what it was legally obligated too. Twitter erred the second it started down this other road.

The Hunter Biden story was simply the most flagrant example.

Twitter has never justified WHY published hacked material isn't allowed. The vast majority of leaked material is not obtained via legal means. If Russia was directly behind the Hunter Biden laptop leak. So what? This wouldn't be the first time an intelligence agency leaked information to reporters. For example, it's long been rumored American intelligence leaked the Panama Papers. That's an event that did some real good, and lead to fraud convictions.

I hate both sides on this topic. I find both to be logically inconsistent.

 

[UriUT]

It's been pretty evident that Twitter was way out their depth with censorship for a while. That should be everyone's major takeaway. Twitter should have censored only what it was legally obligated too. Twitter erred the second it started down this other road.

The Hunter Biden story was simply the most flagrant example.

Twitter has never justified WHY published hacked material isn't allowed. The vast majority of leaked material is not obtained via legal means. If Russia was directly behind the Hunter Biden laptop leak. So what? This wouldn't be the first time an intelligence agency leaked information to reporters. For example, it's long been rumored American intelligence leaked the Panama Papers. That's an event that did some real good, and lead to fraud convictions.

I hate both sides on this topic. I find both to be logically inconsistent.

So you think twitter should be 4chan when you say they should moderate only within the scope of the law? I can't agree with that. Sure the task to decipher the factual elements of a tweet is difficult, but it needs to be done. The bias is clearly in favor of the side that cries the loudest. In this case it has been the right wing. And the side that continues to push conspiracies and false stories has been the right. This has been the playbook since bannon's Clinton cash.

You may think it is the obligation of the reader to determine for themselves...and that fundamentally is true. But the important aspect of propaganda is the first time a reader/listener reads/hears a story. It becomes increasingly difficult to free them of that falsehood when they hear the falsehood first. And when folks they know and trust repeats the falsehood, it becomes difficult still. Look at the q movement and 1/6.

That is a danger to our democracy when we all have equal say.

Also, news organization routine vets their articles. Their editor is obligated to moderate what comes Out In their name. The NY post doesnt have that same standard. The article regarding hunter Biden is one that is factually false. As Dan goldman stated in the hearing yesterday, the article opened with a false description of the biden's involvement in burisma. He knew because he was involved in the impeachment proceedings. Biden only wanted the Ukrainian General prosecutor fired because he refused to prosecute corruption cases. The facts of the circumstance supports this. But bannon and gulianni twists that story into a something that isnt true. Now that bs is spreading in the right wing sphere and this has hyper polarized our political climate.

I'll give you another because sfl will likely bring it up. A Pulitzer Prize winner who is a russophile (he denies the chemical use in Syria and supports Putin) wrote a story that his editor denied because it has ONE uncorroborated anonymous source that the US was the one that destroyed the nord stream pipeline. That story gives Russia support in their invasion of Ukraine even if that story is shaky at best. They now are yelling the the US will pay. And we know that Russia is anything but reliable with facts.

 

[MT15]

Musk’s stewardship of twitter is going so well. And I notice he just dropped the pledge to find a new person to run the company like he promised when he lost that Twitter poll.

 

[MT15]

No surprise that she is repeating this lie. And it is untrue.

 

[UriUT]

Musk’s stewardship of twitter is going so well. And I notice he just dropped the pledge to find a new person to run the company like he promised when he lost that Twitter poll.

Musk’s such an arse. SpaceX officially confirmed that they limit Ukrainians' use of their Starlink network for their drones.

 

[bird]

Musk’s such an arse. SpaceX officially confirmed that they limit Ukrainians' use of their Starlink network for their drones.

Don’t insult arses. Musk is a guy who got where he is by tap-dancing and bullschlitz. He did not invent PayPal. He did not found Tesla. He, basically, is a salesman which is not bad in and of itself. His problem is that he believes his bullschlitz.

 

[J-DONK]

So you think twitter should be 4chan when you say they should moderate only within the scope of the law? I can't agree with that. Sure the task to decipher the factual elements of a tweet is difficult, but it needs to be done. The bias is clearly in favor of the side that cries the loudest. In this case it has been the right wing. And the side that continues to push conspiracies and false stories has been the right. This has been the playbook since bannon's Clinton cash.

You may think it is the obligation of the reader to determine for themselves...and that fundamentally is true. But the important aspect of propaganda is the first time a reader/listener reads/hears a story. It becomes increasingly difficult to free them of that falsehood when they hear the falsehood first. And when folks they know and trust repeats the falsehood, it becomes difficult still. Look at the q movement and 1/6.

You have no idea what is, or isn't propaganda. I suspect half the readers on this board think they would never fall for propaganda, but most certainly have at some point.

That is a danger to our democracy when we all have equal say.

Some of you guys should move to authoritarian countries if this is your honest opinion. Is democracy really in danger? How did swiftboating, or even earlier examples of Founding Fathers, including Washington himself being besmirched by publications of the time different from today? How fast information travels now? It's not like the past isn't littered with false flags, and disinformation.

I'll give you another because sfl will likely bring it up. A Pulitzer Prize winner who is a russophile (he denies the chemical use in Syria and supports Putin) wrote a story that his editor denied because it has ONE uncorroborated anonymous source that the US was the one that destroyed the nord stream pipeline. That story gives Russia support in their invasion of Ukraine even if that story is shaky at best. They now are yelling the the US will pay. And we know that Russia is anything but reliable with facts.

What a great example, of your own obvious BIAS coming to a conclusion you can't possibly backup, or know. You see this story as disinformation, and you have no idea. The Pulitzer Prize winner gave an extreme amount of detail for a made up story. We told Russia we would "bring an end" to Nordstream 2 publicly. There is plenty of reason to think America might have executed this attack. I personally will reserve judgement until we know more.

 

[UriUT]

You have no idea what is, or isn't propaganda. I suspect half the readers on this board think they would never fall for propaganda, but most certainly have at some point.



Some of you guys should move to authoritarian countries if this is your honest opinion. Is democracy really in danger? How did swiftboating, or even earlier examples of Founding Fathers, including Washington himself being besmirched by publications of the time different from today? How fast information travels now? It's not like the past isn't littered with false flags, and disinformation.



What a great example, of your own obvious BIAS coming to a conclusion you can't possibly backup, or know. You see this story as disinformation, and you have no idea. The Pulitzer Prize winner gave an extreme amount of detail for a made up story. We told Russia we would "bring an end" to Nordstream 2 publicly. There is plenty of reason to think America might have executed this attack. I personally will reserve judgement until we know more.

So you believe that prior to the this mass access to information, we in the us were under some authoritarian regime? The press were highly editorialized bc most wanted credible sourced material. Put it this way, this board is moderated. I ve seen some bogus stuff and users removed. Do you think your right were suppressed or that this site is authoritarian? Hell there are laws that suppress certain speech. Are we in an authoritarian government? There are clear distinction between accountability that what one express and publish meets certain standards vs the anarchist trap you are peddling. No one is suppressing Hersh’s free speech. He ultimately created a sub stack to peddle his bs. What the editors and many others have pointed out is that his story is unreliable. And now he has given ammo to the Russians. He did the same with the Syrian sarin gas. Or do you believe that crap that the Syrians didn’t do it?

And there are psychology of disinformation studies you can easily google to find how effective it is. I don’t claim to be invulnerable to it. I’ve posted one recently about how western firms leaving Russia was ultimately one. That is the point of moderation/editors vetting stories and peer reviews. Accountability and reliability. What you advocate is anarchy. The loudest and most shameless gets the biggest microphone. 4chan. That other local site.