Elon Musk and Twitter Reach Deal for Sale (1 Viewer)

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    SaintForLife

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    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.




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




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

    I'm curious as to why, as a Libertarian, you think it's a good idea for one man to control Twitter (that is, if you haven't put me on ignore because you never respond to me anymore)?
     
    And exactly why does SFL think that it’s a good idea for disinformation about vaccines, election results and QAnon be given free reign on Twitter?
     
    It really irks me how instead of using his billions for the betterment of humankind, he decided to buy something that will do nothing of the sort. Considering how much he trolls on twitter himself, I just have a feeling his policy will be of anything and everything goes. So it'll just fuel unfettered hatred, racism, conspiracy theories etc

    Also if he is so about free-dums, why is he opposed to workers unionizing at his companies?

     
    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.



    If Musk does what he claims he wants to do it will be a big improvement and good for free speech.
    If he does what he claims, it will be his right as the owner of the company. It is what we have been saying all along.

    It will have no effect on free speech because Twitter isn't a part of the government.
     
    Never mind that 'censorship' from Twitter has always been a strawman considering there are no shortage of other outlets for speech in the 21st Century. It's just another mindless talking point by the right like saying Disney supports child molesters, etc.
     
    I’m just interested if people’s Boogeymen come to fruition. Does the government intervene? Does Elon drastically change the platform? Will we get more bots? Will current Twitter employees find the workplace as bad tomorrow as they found it today?

    I like the move myself. Let the wealthy do with their money what they want.
     
    Well the GOP wanted to regulate Big Tech... now... not so much? Will be funny to see their tune change overnight.
     
    Last edited:
    About the Metaverse

    Wasn’t sure what thread to put this article in

    Scary stuff
    ===========

    Before I went into the metaverse, I’d read a few articles on it and people didn’t have the nicest things to say. But I wanted to see if that was true, or whether people were just trying to find negativity.

    I’m a heavy user of social media, so a 3D virtual space where you can interact with other people – where artists are doing concerts and fashion houses are doing shows? That’s exciting to me!

    But within the first 10 minutes of putting on a VR headset and entering a chat room, I saw underage kids simulating oral sex on each other.

    I experienced sexual harassment, racism and rape jokes. At one point, I heard someone say “I like little girls from the age of nine to 12: that’s just my thing.”

    I came across one user who was spewing the most disgusting language I’ve ever heard in my life, to the point where we couldn’t even broadcast what he was saying.

    I’m talking extreme racism – hate speech, listing the kinds of people he hated, the kinds of people he wanted to kill. It was just so violent. And it all happened in a room I was able to access despite using a profile that I’d listed as being 13 years old.

    It got to the point that I was really starting to worry how bad it was making our documentary look. I was conscious we needed balance, so I found myself desperately trying to find good things to latch on to. But the bad stuff kept coming so thick and fast. I didn’t prompt any of it, I was just existing in that space.

    I went into chat rooms and people were berating me, actually screaming at me. At one point, seven users surrounded me and tried to force me to remove my safety shield so they could do things to my body.

    I tried to run away, but they backed me up against a wall, trying to grab at me, making sexual comments. It was the virtual equivalent of sexual assault…….

     
    I’m just interested if people’s Boogeymen come to fruition. Does the government intervene? Does Elon drastically change the platform? Will we get more bots? Will current Twitter employees find the workplace as bad tomorrow as they found it today?

    I like the move myself. Let the wealthy do with their money what they want.
    It looks like he will be spending a lot of his money on Twitter. Especially because I read that he said there would be fewer ads. I don’t know if this guy’s numbers are correct, but I did read from a different source that Twitter isn’t making a lot of money.

     
    And exactly why does SFL think that it’s a good idea for disinformation about vaccines, election results and QAnon be given free reign on Twitter?

    It's insane to me that people who identify as "liberals" are so authoritarian. It's very hard for Twitter to identify what is disinformation. They have to either be a subject matter expert, or the claim is so untrue it's obvious disinformation. Things like horse pills, hunter's laptop, and lab leak don't fit that criteria.

    This world view of protecting "the gullible" via only allowing certain thoughts into public space is so dangerous, and easily abused.
     
    As usual, Americans are making everything political. If Elon removes bots from Twitter and makes the algorithms open source, this is a good thing if he can implement it. Want to truly combat the spread of misinformation? Remove bots, remove much of the ability of our adversaries to fragment or society.
     
    It's insane to me that people who identify as "liberals" are so authoritarian. It's very hard for Twitter to identify what is disinformation. They have to either be a subject matter expert, or the claim is so untrue it's obvious disinformation. Things like horse pills, hunter's laptop, and lab leak don't fit that criteria.

    This world view of protecting "the gullible" via only allowing certain thoughts into public space is so dangerous, and easily abused.
    some of that disinformation killed several hundred thousand people just recently in the US. If you think it’s organic, that is that it has just come up randomly, that’s totally naive. And your authoritarian insult is just hyperbole, done to provoke as far as I can tell. It should be beneath you, but here we are.

    Also, I find it “insane“ that someone who says they are liberal is okay with a billionaire deciding to buy a huge social platform because he doesn‘t agree with its supposed liberal political leaning. This is the authoritarian angle you are looking for.

    Musk says the right things right now, but he’s never done this before, at any level. His own postings are those of a troll often. He doesn’t have a good record of tolerating people who disagree with him in his businesses in the past. It’s understandable to be concerned about what he will do with Twitter.
     
    Musk says the right things right now, but he’s never done this before, at any level. His own postings are those of a troll often. He doesn’t have a good record of tolerating people who disagree with him in his businesses in the past. It’s understandable to be concerned about what he will do with Twitter.
    The more I think about this point, the more I wonder, has anyone in power ever done differently than what you accuse Elon of? Nobody comes to mind (political or titan of industry).

    As usual, Americans are making everything political. If Elon removes bots from Twitter and makes the algorithms open source, this is a good thing if he can implement it. Want to truly combat the spread of misinformation? Remove bots, remove much of the ability of our adversaries to fragment or society.
    Agreed. There is a lot to be hopeful of.
     
    This whole thing seems to be a collision point for a whole bunch of different mindsets causing a lot of cognitive dissonance.

    E.g. Jack Dorsey, one of the original co-founders of Twitter, has said that Twitter being "owned by Wall Street and the ad model," was bad, and that in principle he doesn't "believe anyone should own or run Twitter" and that it "wants to be a public good at a protocol level, not a company." And then immediately followed that by saying, "Solving for the problem of it being a company however, Elon is the singular solution I trust. I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness."

    That doesn't make sense. And not just the 'mission to extend the light of consciousness' part. The problems of being a public company that's consequently 'owned by Wall Street and the ad model' are not inherently solved by instead being a private company owned by one billionaire and quite probably still the ad model, since said billionaire hasn't said anything about getting rid of ads or otherwise expressed a desire to indefinitely subsidise Twitter to the tune of ongoing billions.

    That the financial interests of multiple shareholders can, for example, inhibit a company from taking moral and/or long-term financially beneficial decisions in favour of short-term returns, doesn't mean that becoming beholden to the financial and otherwise interests of a single shareholder is better. By analogy, it's a bit like saying, "Man, that government which was driven by the interests of its funding billionaires sure wasn't great. Hope this funding billionaire who's taking over as dictator instead turns out to be wise and benevolent!"

    There are, or certainly should be, some very clear reasons to be highly skeptical of that.

    As for what Musk has said, making "Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots and authenticating all humans," might sound OK on the surface. But the pertinent questions are, 1) really?, and 2) what else?

    Like, "new features" is obviously vague, it's not at all clear that simply publishing algorithms makes them trustworthy or solves the problems driven by the behaviour promoted by said algorithms (e.g. if people look at said algorithms and say, "See, these algorithms are promoting the worst, most controversial, and most hate-filled content, and this is why they're doing that, and this is how it can be fixed, please change them," will Musk-owned Twitter say, "OK, sure," or something more like, "The algorithms are content-agnostic and they're promoting what people are engaging with and we have no intention of moderating that."?) and neither "authenticating all humans" nor "defeating spam bots" are trivial tasks. Nor is a commitment to free speech and little-to-no moderation that doesn't descend into 8chan (hard to say where Musk actually is on that front in reality though).
     
    The more I think about this point, the more I wonder, has anyone in power ever done differently than what you accuse Elon of? Nobody comes to mind (political or titan of industry).


    Agreed. There is a lot to be hopeful of.
    I’m not seeing how that invalidates the concern about Musk. Are you arguing for the view that Musk is going to be different? This doesn’t make sense to me.

    The best comment I saw under Dorsey’s recent word salad about this (which Rob addresses) is the one that said this: ‘I think when you accumulate a certain sum of money, it breaks your brain’.

    I totally agree with that. When you look at the aggregate of multi-billionaires, it’s hard to find what I would call ‘normality’. They all act increasingly weird over time. It’s like you cannot control your ego at a certain point of accumulated wealth and you lose touch with reality (or rather what the human experience consists of for 99.999% of us). They start to get the idea they’re infallible or that they should be god-king.

    Edited to add: I didn’t know that Musk changed his actual title at Tesla to “technoking”. Lol. Talk about proving a point. 🤦‍♀️

    Also: Twitter this morning is full of (and I mean full) of posts about how ivermectin cures Covid and vaccines kill people and the newest thing is that ivermectin cures cancer. So, yeah, great.
     
    Last edited:
    About the Metaverse

    Wasn’t sure what thread to put this article in

    Scary stuff
    ===========

    Before I went into the metaverse, I’d read a few articles on it and people didn’t have the nicest things to say. But I wanted to see if that was true, or whether people were just trying to find negativity.

    I’m a heavy user of social media, so a 3D virtual space where you can interact with other people – where artists are doing concerts and fashion houses are doing shows? That’s exciting to me!

    But within the first 10 minutes of putting on a VR headset and entering a chat room, I saw underage kids simulating oral sex on each other.

    I experienced sexual harassment, racism and rape jokes. At one point, I heard someone say “I like little girls from the age of nine to 12: that’s just my thing.”

    I came across one user who was spewing the most disgusting language I’ve ever heard in my life, to the point where we couldn’t even broadcast what he was saying.

    I’m talking extreme racism – hate speech, listing the kinds of people he hated, the kinds of people he wanted to kill. It was just so violent. And it all happened in a room I was able to access despite using a profile that I’d listed as being 13 years old.

    It got to the point that I was really starting to worry how bad it was making our documentary look. I was conscious we needed balance, so I found myself desperately trying to find good things to latch on to. But the bad stuff kept coming so thick and fast. I didn’t prompt any of it, I was just existing in that space.

    I went into chat rooms and people were berating me, actually screaming at me. At one point, seven users surrounded me and tried to force me to remove my safety shield so they could do things to my body.

    I tried to run away, but they backed me up against a wall, trying to grab at me, making sexual comments. It was the virtual equivalent of sexual assault…….


    The game Second Life is a good example of what the Metaverse will become. Sex dungeons on every corner.
     
    This whole thing seems to be a collision point for a whole bunch of different mindsets causing a lot of cognitive dissonance.

    E.g. Jack Dorsey, one of the original co-founders of Twitter, has said that Twitter being "owned by Wall Street and the ad model," was bad, and that in principle he doesn't "believe anyone should own or run Twitter" and that it "wants to be a public good at a protocol level, not a company." And then immediately followed that by saying, "Solving for the problem of it being a company however, Elon is the singular solution I trust. I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness."

    That doesn't make sense. And not just the 'mission to extend the light of consciousness' part. The problems of being a public company that's consequently 'owned by Wall Street and the ad model' are not inherently solved by instead being a private company owned by one billionaire and quite probably still the ad model, since said billionaire hasn't said anything about getting rid of ads or otherwise expressed a desire to indefinitely subsidise Twitter to the tune of ongoing billions.

    That the financial interests of multiple shareholders can, for example, inhibit a company from taking moral and/or long-term financially beneficial decisions in favour of short-term returns, doesn't mean that becoming beholden to the financial and otherwise interests of a single shareholder is better. By analogy, it's a bit like saying, "Man, that government which was driven by the interests of its funding billionaires sure wasn't great. Hope this funding billionaire who's taking over as dictator instead turns out to be wise and benevolent!"

    There are, or certainly should be, some very clear reasons to be highly skeptical of that.

    As for what Musk has said, making "Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots and authenticating all humans," might sound OK on the surface. But the pertinent questions are, 1) really?, and 2) what else?

    Like, "new features" is obviously vague, it's not at all clear that simply publishing algorithms makes them trustworthy or solves the problems driven by the behaviour promoted by said algorithms (e.g. if people look at said algorithms and say, "See, these algorithms are promoting the worst, most controversial, and most hate-filled content, and this is why they're doing that, and this is how it can be fixed, please change them," will Musk-owned Twitter say, "OK, sure," or something more like, "The algorithms are content-agnostic and they're promoting what people are engaging with and we have no intention of moderating that."?) and neither "authenticating all humans" nor "defeating spam bots" are trivial tasks. Nor is a commitment to free speech and little-to-no moderation that doesn't descend into 8chan (hard to say where Musk actually is on that front in reality though).
    I think you are getting “vague” new features, because they need to see the secret sauce first, and see what they can keep in place, and then building out from there. I don’t think Elon’s team has had enough time to look under the hood to assess what can be changed.

    Speaking of vague, people are already suspicious of Musk changing Twitter for the worst, however nobody can pinpoint what the “worst” is. It’s like a few weeks back when everyone was parroting “Musk is a Republican”, or “Musk is going to ruin Democracy by buying Twitter.” People hear something, and keep repeating it until it’s a pillar of their faith system. Give the man time, and let him prove himself out. Let him ruin Twitter before we accuse him of ruining it.
    I’m not seeing how that invalidates the concern about Musk. Are you arguing for the view that Musk is going to be different? This doesn’t make sense to me.

    The best comment I saw under Dorsey’s recent word salad about this (which Rob addresses) is the one that said this: ‘I think when you accumulate a certain sum of money, it breaks your brain’.

    I totally agree with that. When you look at the aggregate of multi-billionaires, it’s hard to find what I would call ‘normality’. They all act increasingly weird over time. It’s like you cannot control your ego at a certain point of accumulated wealth and you lose touch with reality (or rather what the human experience consists of for 99.999% of us). They start to get the idea they’re infallible or that they should be god-king.
    Why stop at billionaires? Having a God complex isn’t a unique trait of the super wealthy. If you have spent any time Elon’s new social media company you will find tons of folks who can’t rub two nickels together that have God Complexes. It’s wild, and it’s true.

    The good news for Dorsey, and everyone else who made a mint from this Twitter sale is they don’t have to worry about wealth, they can donate all of their gains to fight hunger. I assume that is what they are all going to do right (donate all of their money to needy causes)?
     

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