figmentPez
Staff member
How long before the shit hits the fan?
[Brazelton] Twitter
- Thread starter Dave
- Start date
It's too late for him to do something meaningful as an October surprise, but then the Rs don't need it anymore anyway.
I don't really see the doom and gloom about this. Except the rich guy potentially getting richer. Twitter isn't known as some sanctified place, beloved by all. That isn't even remotely its reputation. If this is about deplatforming racists and such, that was never a permanent solution. Basically, the fan is already made of shit, so hitting it with more shit doesn't worry me.
Twitter has a (undeserved and unjustified) name as The Place to hear what people have to say, to hear the opinions of regular people, where big announcements are made, etc.
Journalists and politicians have favored it and despite its user base still pretty much being pretty limited it has a far outsized influence on things. Compare and contrast to FB which, despite its multitude of other failings, can actually up to a point state they can reach the vast majority of normal people in the western world.
Twitter allowing or even supporting hate speech, lies, propaganda, etc will poison the well of public speech and public opinion even further.
It wasn't great before, definitely, but it will get even worse.
Yeah, basically I addressed all of that in my lack of concern.
Zappit
Staff member
Eh, he’s already backtracking on that free speech “paradise” shit. Twitter barely turns a profit on ads, and they’ll bail in droves if Twitter turns into Parler or Truth Social. Plus, he financed this deal. If he fucks Twitter sideways and people and advertisers leave, he’s royally fucked himself. It doesn’t just tank Twitter; Tesla stock would plummet, too. He’s can’t manipulate the market out of this one.
I figure this ends up like almost all of Elon’s ventures - big promises and either nothing or incremental, minor change.
I figure this ends up like almost all of Elon’s ventures - big promises and either nothing or incremental, minor change.
figmentPez
Staff member
I think there's another possibility. He attempts to meddle with the system, advertisers freak out, and then he has to backpedal to get them to stick around, and that results in big changes that advertisers and banking have been wanting for a while, namely cracking down on adult content (not just outright porn, but all sorts of adult oriented discussion, educational content, and more.)
Twitter has already been pushing in the direction of removing content that isn't advertiser friendly, and if Elon tries to push too hard to get his preferred type of unfriendly content, he might just bring down the whole house of cards.
Elon Musk completes Twitter purchase, immediately fires CEO and other execs
Musk completes $44B purchase, fires CEO Parag Agrawal and others.
arstechnica.com
--Patrick
figmentPez
Staff member
So was Ivermectin. A lot of crappy stuff has been trending, because it's trendy to "test" the system by posting lists of topics that have been censored in the past. It's a fucking stupid trend and it doesn't prove anything about the change in ownership, though it does indicate the user base is still collectively as dumb as a sack of bricks.
EDIT:
Yup, there's a huge increase in assholery on Twitter right now.
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Who'd have thought that was possible?
It's funny since Foghorn Leghorn was already a parody of another Southern parody character.
--Patrick
--Patrick
Musk's desperation is showing.
That's probably Musk's thinking. He expects advertisers to leave and thinks this will help keep profits up.
Unfortunately, apparently 92% of Twitter's income is from advertising. It was already operating at a loss. And there sure as hell won't be enough existing blue checks willing to pay anything. So this will just cause them to lose MORE money.
To be fair, 15 for all of English language Twitter just means the quality will come closer to quality of Twitter in all other languages.
There was apparently one (1) Dutch speaking person moderating. If that person was sick or in vacation? Well, guess your report for dangerous or hate speech will be Google translated and rated by someone from another language... If they can understand it at all, because of course auto translators don't handle slurs and dogwhistle stuff well at all.
There was apparently one (1) Dutch speaking person moderating. If that person was sick or in vacation? Well, guess your report for dangerous or hate speech will be Google translated and rated by someone from another language... If they can understand it at all, because of course auto translators don't handle slurs and dogwhistle stuff well at all.
My god, this is sad.
That's unfair. To be on equal footing they should start out with a rotting cabbage with maggots all over it.
That's not really a fair comparison.
