And just like that, Twitter engineering might somehow develop the same poor culture and work-life balance as Tesla and SpaceX. If I was there, I'd be groaning at this news.
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
#452I can't imagine Musk can make Twitter any worse than it is. As much as I would have liked it to be a medium that elevated humanity, with some exceptions, it's served to be quite the opposite. I'd be pleased if Twitter disappeared from existence, but maybe Musk either improves it or leads to demolish it, and by no means would I suggest standing in the way.
Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private
#453They are backed into a corner here. They don’t have a choice. Elon’s got ‘em.
Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private
#454> Free speech absolutism is possible and is beneficial I don't think we have evidence to support this. Pursuant to the last major thread on the topic, I was thinking further about it, and realized that the vast majority of progress civilization has made has been under conditions much more regulated in terms of which ideas may propagate. We've never had a situation where fake news can and does spread the way it does t…
> We've never had a situation where fake news can and does spread the way it does today, where authorities are being undermined like this and casually dismissed by people with no knowledge of the respective fields, etc
Real authorities don't need society to defer to them as such. Their mastery over nature--the power of their ideas to deliver tangible outcomes--makes their authority undeniable.
It's the people whose expertise is of marginal real-world value who insist on deference to their "authority." At the limit, it's the clergy that insist on social norms to defend their claim to authority. Today, you'll find those sorts of folks mostly in the social sciences, insisting that their PhD in XYZ studies entitles them to speak authoritatively on issues of general concern: https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm.
Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private
#455I suspect most of the commenters supporting the right of a private company to moderate content is completely contingent on what those moderation policies are. Commenters feign holding an absolute position but would certainly balk if the moderation ever turned against them and the idea they support. If you believe on principle, the right of private companies to moderate content, then you must support all kinds of absu…
And if don't you believe on principle in the right of private companies to moderate content -- you arrive at even more absurd outcomes.
Like the idea that a private company has no such right, for example,
Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private
#456Everyone here is talking about free speech and Twitter censorship, but I have a different take: How do we know Elon Musk won't just ban criticism of him or his business ventures (Tesla / SpaceX / The Boring Company / Starlink / etc)? We know that his claims of being a "free speech absolutist" are absolute bullshit, because the moment the speech is about him he turns to every trick in the book to try and censor it[0].…
Your sentiment was my first instinct as well, that the only power worth that kind of money is the power to erase history. It's not about who's got the most bullets, it's about who controls the information.
Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private
#457And just like that, Twitter engineering might somehow develop the same poor culture and work-life balance as Tesla and SpaceX. If I was there, I'd be groaning at this news.
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Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private
#458They are backed into a corner here. They don’t have a choice. Elon’s got ‘em.
Substantiation needed.
Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private
#459Let the “420” aspect of the share price offer be lost on no one…
Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private
#460I suspect most of the commenters supporting the right of a private company to moderate content is completely contingent on what those moderation policies are. Commenters feign holding an absolute position but would certainly balk if the moderation ever turned against them and the idea they support. If you believe on principle, the right of private companies to moderate content, then you must support all kinds of absu…
Honestly, this challenged my view a bit, because I am a person who believes a private company has a right to moderate content, and I think you're right, I've been resting on that view because largely companies seem to have not done anything insane (IMO) with that.
Looking at it now, I honestly think it's totally okay for Elon Musk to buy Twitter and change fundamentally what its policies are. I think it'd be devastating for the platform, and I think a competitor would swoop in and scoop up the vast majority of folks who would find a "free speech site" repugnant, but I believe that's up to the platform to decide (right up until the platform violates a law, of course).
Out of all of this, I'm just kicking myself for not being that competitor. There's a ton of turmoil here, I think a Twitter-That-Is-The-Same-Except-Not-Named-Twitter could do real well right now.