So "X" - nothing to see here. Elon's in control - Part XXX

Do you have a facebook?

A microsoft windows PC?

have you ever purchased anything from Amazon?

Do you boycott websites that use Amazon Web Services?

Also actually, are you aware that one of the board members of twitter up to now has been the crown prince of saudi arabia?

If none of the above megalomaniac billionaires bother you, then why Elon Musk buying twitter?

Also that event coincided with severe street level flooding, so in that case the subway tunnels fared similarly to streets above. You clearly have a hatred of the man which you are entitled to, but this whataboutery about tunnels is bizarre

I think we know who is bothered here.

There are already 101 clones out there, but none of them really competed with twitter.

We might see a further fragmentation of the internet and social media, with everyone going on to their own platform that aligns with their ideals, more echo chambers and so on. Which while it wouldnt be a great thing, it would be terrible either. More decentralization is always a good thing.

That said if twitter does go private realistically not much will change, moderation will change slightly - more consistent with threats/incitement to hatred, less censorship for the very weak "hate speech" (trans women are no- BANNED).

People will give out stink about musk buying twitter and its dangerous and then end of the world but most people are lazy and will stay on the platform complaining about it while not doing the slightest thing to migrate elsewhere

Works great when you have a tunnel 1000s of feet above sea level, on the blue ridge parkway or something, not the subway, below sea level, the example musk mentioned specifically.

Everything in this points to Musk dragging the stock price up as far as he think it'll go on the markets. It's up nearly 10% over the weekend and up 25% overall since he bought it. Drag it up to about $52/share, sell as much of his stake as he can get away with without having to tell anyone and then formally withdraw his offer.

He walks away with nearly $1bn in profit in just a month, the share price collapses and the management of Twitter potentially find themselves on the chopping block. Win-win for Musk tbh.

Or, maybe he is insanely petty and vindictive and will buy Twitter just to prove he can.

That's a solid attempt at Revisionism there but here is the tweet again,

"(subways are a good example)" ... "if a hurricane was raging on the surface. You wouldn't even notice."

Where did I link to, or mention Gizmodo? Huh?!

No, you didn't. Elon did. Big tunnel guy that guy.

And what a success it was...

Tunnel CEO thinks he knows how to run a successful social media company after a 'successful' tunnel company.

This. And it's why it doesn't matter if the execs of Twitter aren't tweeting very often if at all, Twitter doesn't exist to listen to these people talk, it's to listen to regular people talk.

Elon Musk, the CEO of the Boring Company, wants to buy Twitter, a platform he ran off to to declare subways were a great example of tunnels that were immune to surface weather conditions. He is confidently incorrect about that, and it surely makes one wonder if Elon really has any idea (or, honest motivation) of how to run a successful social media platform, or if it's all just Pump and Dump. I figure the latter, and he will say dumb things like subways are immune to the elements just to attract Engagement (that or he really has no business in that industry).

The narrative on twitter can be steered though through the voices you allow and the voices the algorithm promote.

And because traditional media is so lazy these days, they will pick it up, becoming their talking points.

Oh, stop it. You've already used the "he hurt you" card, without substantiation.

To @seamus you similarly wrote:

And when @AndrewJRenko expressed not wanting to do business with Musk you challenged their virtue (eluding to CEOs and companies and products which have nothing to do with Elon Musk, or Twitter, or his bid to buy out the latter):

Clearly, you feel the need to lash out at people personally who have misgivings about Elon Musk buying Twitter; as though you cannot process the fact that people are not as in love with Elon Musk as you might be. People are allowed to criticize him, you look kind of petty though for attacking them for the mere act of doing so however.

It seemed like as soon as Obama won by leveraging social media, yes, cable news became a twitter feed. CNN would parade that man with a beard on to talk in front of a wall and read out tweets. They leaned into "iReporting" outsourcing their journalism to every joe with a camera. It seemingly left no room in their schedule for substantive news, I guess people in the graphics department weren't as big on the Pentagon Papers as karen yelling at a man in the park. Twitter has been a focal point for that instant-upload instant consumption of 'news'

Musk is certainly doing this for his own gain and not some philanthropic gesture.

It absolutely will not turn into a wild west 100% free for all, what he has actually proposed is requirement to verify your ID to participate, thereby wiping out most of the bot accounts. Good thing he's planning on going private because the drop in userbase alone from a move like that would cause havoc on share prices if it was still publicly traded.

Likes and RTs and trends can all be manipulated by bot farms, so if you need a human ID to participate it may well cut down substantially on that kind of thing. Stick in some more ads and twitter+ or some such nonsense and he'll make it worth his while.

At the end of the day its done for influence, same as Jeff Bezos buying up the washington post a few years back. Ironic that the same washpo was running articles lamenting the twitter buyout as dangerous to have such media power owned by one billionaire 🤣

Does he really think that people are going to trust him and the company with a copy of their ID?

I think that is a pretty good summary of the likely outcome of this purchase.

Unless Musk is going to fire the entire layer of upper management (such as Parag Agarwal, Sarah Berland and Vijaya Gadde) and middle management straight away, I can't see seismic changes to the platform in the short to medium term.

I could see a swathe of junior staff upping and leaving for other tech companies off of the back of this news. If they feel he's going to allow Trump and others back on the platform. Which we don't even know if he will.

I wouldn't - but sure plenty of people on twitter already do, because you get a status symbol of a blue checkmark. ID verification is one of the ways to get the famed blue tick, and plenty of ordinary joe soaps have sent in ID to get it and get some digital clout.

We've come a long way from the days when advice was not to put any personal info online unfortunately

Nope, sorry to disappoint you but I'm far from a Musk "fanboy". He is the same as any other billionaire businessman, acting in his own interest. Even with his twitter musings, its all about PR for his enterprises.

But trying to use a tweet about how tunnels are protected from surface weather as proof that his purchase of twitter is a guaranteed train wreck or something... lol. Its barely relevant to the discussion and seems more like bitterness than something relevant at all to the fact that twitter may be going private in the coming days/weeks.

When that database gets hacked people will be able to go to the dark web and get your home address for $15 and unmask your username.

The freedom lovers are not coming back at all. Majority of the twitter clones were spaces for freedom lovers, they already have their spaces, they are not a target demographic for twitter any longer.

As for who would pay to fart their opinions on an online soapbox, they length people will go to for validation online would surprise and depress you. Plenty of people would pay to either make their tweets more prominent (akin to an ad boosting) similar to how some pay 3rd parties for bot farms to farm retweets and likes. If they can clamp down on bot use, they could claw back some of that revenue by offering it in-house.

Do you sincerely think I do? Enough bollox.

Ordinary joe soaps don’t get blue ticks though.

Lots of people have lots of reasons for remaining anonymous on Twitter. Lots of people don’t have freedom from their spouse or their employer or their community to speak freely.

Anonymity is not the problem, and handing over ID to an impetuous fool like Musk is not the solution.