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Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private

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Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private

#351

From observing various internet forums, including this one, I noticed that people from the "first world" countries don't know the value of free speech and often take it for granted. Sometimes even coming to such views as "free speech is dangerous" and that "we should limit free speech" (by blocking the views I don't like). Understand this: limits on free speech are far more dangerous to society than allowing fringe e…

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Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private

#352

From observing various internet forums, including this one, I noticed that people from the "first world" countries don't know the value of free speech and often take it for granted. Sometimes even coming to such views as "free speech is dangerous" and that "we should limit free speech" (by blocking the views I don't like). Understand this: limits on free speech are far more dangerous to society than allowing fringe e…

So in your model, some other random person can come along and force you to use unlimited amounts of your own resources to broadcast whatever they want to say?

We have freedom of speech in that the government cannot persecute us for what we say.

We do not have the right to commandeer other people’s resources without their permission to rebroadcast what we want to say.

Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private

#353

From observing various internet forums, including this one, I noticed that people from the "first world" countries don't know the value of free speech and often take it for granted. Sometimes even coming to such views as "free speech is dangerous" and that "we should limit free speech" (by blocking the views I don't like). Understand this: limits on free speech are far more dangerous to society than allowing fringe e…

Our entire legal system rests on the (rather obvious) principle of hearing both sides in order to find the truth, but the brain rot has somehow progressed to the point where in the media this is considered some sort of fallacy (“both-sidesism”). Lots of people want to appoint some sort of information gatekeeper, with no anticipation that one day the gatekeepers might turn against you.

Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private

#354
I believe this is not a hostile takeover. It's an unsolicited bid to purchase the company directly to the board. A hostile takeover would involve a tender or purchases directly to shareholders to purchase stocks ignoring the board or likely against the wishes of the board.

Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private

#355

Can anybody make a good argument as to why Twitter (in its current form) isn’t a major detriment to society? If Twitter poofed out of existence today, it would be a major win for this planet. People talk about a frightening future with a human hostile AI that wants to destroy humanity. That exists, it’s twitter. Elon buying it, even if he runs it into the ground is a good thing. Getting rid of some of the hostile AI…

Twitter is where you can see journalists craft narratives and talking points about news stories in real time. It’s been incredibly revealing imo.

At the very least it does reveal why the narratives constructed by some journalists are so utterly divorced from reality.

Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private

#356
post #126

As somebody from the first world who has had the experience of moderating Internet forums… free speech in the sense of “the government generally shouldn’t control people’s speech, with limited exceptions” is good and necessary. Free speech in the sense of “everybody should be forced to platform every idea” is silly IMO. Left alone user content rapidly devolves into the most low-effort salient content - flame wars, po…

For Twitter, perhaps a good compromise would be: instead of banning problematic accounts, set to them a "default-mute" state where only people who choose to follow the account can see its tweets.

See also Section 1.F of https://www.journaloffreespeechlaw.org/volokh.pdf , which distinguishes how Twitter's 'hosting' function might be treated differently from its curation functions.

Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private

#357
Scary if he wins. One super powerful shit disturber with a personal agenda controlling one of the largest social news sources out there.

It goes from a company fighting to survive, who probably has little agenda (or time and power to really fight for it), to a company that exists simply to serve the whims of one man's agenda and every change and action will be for that purpose, albeit not advertised as such. How else better to amplify one's voice and discredit anyone else's? Sow chaos, fuel rumours, surface chatter that will affect markets to his favour and to dick around with politicians and countries that aren't doing him any favours. It definitely doesn't sit right.

The real question is why, because I very much doubt he wants to "improve" twitter, it's more like what does he want to accomplish by owning the platform to advance his other goals.

Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private

#360
post #50

I personally think this is excellent, in the great scheme of things, maybe this will open a real discussion about the real oligarchic nature of the US political and societal life at the top. I mean, with tech titan (and second wealthiest man on the planet) Bezos owning the WaPo, the moment the tech titan (and the wealthiest man on the planet) Musk will put his hands on Twitter hopefully will also be the moment of som…

Oligarchs controlling every form of my mass communication can only make things worse, though.

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