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Twitter applies 7-day suspension to half a dozen journalists

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Twitter applies 7-day suspension to half a dozen journalists

#851
Its frustrating because my immediate response to people like Musk in my day to day life is to ignore them at all costs. This is a largely successful strategy in person.

My strategy collapses however when the belligerent is able to buy a whole platform and then become a perpetual victim on that platform.

Worse, mastodon has fallen short for me as an escape hatch. The activity just isn't there.

Re: Twitter applies 7-day suspension to half a dozen journalists

#852

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think calling anyone defending Musk at any level a “cheerleader” isn’t a helpful framing of the debate. It’s important not to make any issue an “I align with X so you’re against me” conflict. Musk has achieved great, incredible things. That’s just indisputable fact. Musk is also behaving erratically, inconsistently, and seemingly also unethically over Twitter. And has done so in the past, eg in the dispute with the…

People at Tesla and SpaceX have achieved great things, not Musk. All he's demonstrating is that CEO pay and comp should never have got as high as it has and taxes on rich people needs to go way higher, they are just going to waste it any way.

[flagged]

Re: Twitter applies 7-day suspension to half a dozen journalists

#853

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think calling anyone defending Musk at any level a “cheerleader” isn’t a helpful framing of the debate. It’s important not to make any issue an “I align with X so you’re against me” conflict. Musk has achieved great, incredible things. That’s just indisputable fact. Musk is also behaving erratically, inconsistently, and seemingly also unethically over Twitter. And has done so in the past, eg in the dispute with the…

Will you mention all the bad about Elon in a post about SpaceX achivements? I guess not, from your post. So no need to mention the merits of the companies he owns in a post about his absurd behavior. Though in my opinion you assign way too much credit to a CEO of three companies that apparently spends most of his time on social media and being offended.

Founder, CEO, controller of the board. I can't think of a single person who has all of these titles at another company that people think deserve no credit.

Re: Twitter applies 7-day suspension to half a dozen journalists

#854

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think calling anyone defending Musk at any level a “cheerleader” isn’t a helpful framing of the debate. It’s important not to make any issue an “I align with X so you’re against me” conflict. Musk has achieved great, incredible things. That’s just indisputable fact. Musk is also behaving erratically, inconsistently, and seemingly also unethically over Twitter. And has done so in the past, eg in the dispute with the…

Quoted post unavailable.

The majority of Tesla owners know or care very little about Musk and what he does. It seems to be a curious American obsession from my observations.

Re: Twitter applies 7-day suspension to half a dozen journalists

#855
post #819

Musk joined a Twitter Spaces discussion about the bans and was mocked after he left [1]. Notably, suspended accounts were on stage with Elon during the discussion [2]. The space was ended abruptly 30 minutes later and it appears it was killed on Twitter’s side given that the usual metadata does not match what a closed Space has. This Space was being recorded and the replay is not available [3]. Musk now claims that t…

The buyers of Tesla are, by and large, rich liberals who care about the climate. Musk proceeds to position himself as a QAnon hack. Owning a Tesla was a source of pride and is now a mark of shame and mockery. The only people who actually do care about Twitter are journalists. Musk proceeds to ban some prominent ones from Twitter, for utterly frivolous reasons, which makes them realize that 1/ they're not immune to th…

Not one person I know with a Tesla has a strong passion or care for climate change or would meet the American definition for "liberal". I've also never heard any express pride or shame based on the CEOs actions.

I wonder if you're in a bubble here?

Re: Twitter applies 7-day suspension to half a dozen journalists

#856
post #819

Musk joined a Twitter Spaces discussion about the bans and was mocked after he left [1]. Notably, suspended accounts were on stage with Elon during the discussion [2]. The space was ended abruptly 30 minutes later and it appears it was killed on Twitter’s side given that the usual metadata does not match what a closed Space has. This Space was being recorded and the replay is not available [3]. Musk now claims that t…

The buyers of Tesla are, by and large, rich liberals who care about the climate. Musk proceeds to position himself as a QAnon hack. Owning a Tesla was a source of pride and is now a mark of shame and mockery. The only people who actually do care about Twitter are journalists. Musk proceeds to ban some prominent ones from Twitter, for utterly frivolous reasons, which makes them realize that 1/ they're not immune to th…

> This behavior is strange. Either Musk is engaging in self-harm, for some reason, or he's testing how much he can get away with.

There are other options as well for why he wants to take apart Twitter:

- revenge Peter Thiel-style against "librul" ideas that "made" his daughter trans (or his ex-wife Grimes date Chelsea Manning). Twitter is the biggest forum there is for left-wing and progressive people, and it was/is in financial duress, which made it a perfect target.

- the Saudis, who are the main financial backers of the deal (and even the dozens of billions they paid are petty cash!), want him to destroy Twitter, which has been an incredibly useful tool to organize protest and spread information about government violence

- Musk, like other SV billionaires, thinks they are the best that God has sent to Earth and what they do and want is best for everyone. Unfortunately, as a result he doesn't realize that large markets like Europe see it precisely the other way around.

- Musk, again like other SV billionaires, sees technology as the one and all solution hammer against society's problems. Hate speech? Have algorithms "moderate" the platform, instead of booting out abusers and putting those who cross legal lines behind bars. Fossil fuels? Invest in electric cars (and sooner or later, nuclear fusion vaporware, mark my words), instead of investing in renewable energies and public transport. And again, he doesn't realize that wide parts of the planet do not follow their idea(l)s.

Re: Twitter applies 7-day suspension to half a dozen journalists

#857

Quoted post unavailable.

> Even the NYT is questionable Your definition of journalist needs some work.

Keep in mind, the most memorable thing the NYT has published in recent years...

Wordle.

Don't get angry with me. I don't make the news. I simply report it. Now if only self-proclaimed journalists would do the same. Orwell would not be pleased with the current state of things.

Re: Twitter applies 7-day suspension to half a dozen journalists

#858

Someone posted yesterday that the beginning of Musk's Twitter buy happened shortly after elonjet refused his $5000 offer to buy the account. The rational part of me says he surely couldn't have spent $45 billion dollars to shut the account down, but it's kinda feeling more and more true as the story continues. It's like this is the 21st century version of the San Francisco story where Yung refused to sell their house…

perhaps the ultimate irony will be that people will ditch Twitter for something like Mastoden. Elon jet is alive and well over there. https://mastodon.social/@elonjet

I would assume given the situation, that account would be one of the most popular on Mastodon.

It currently had 41k followers, and 2.5k likes on the post about it being banned on Twitter.

Comparatively, Elon's most recently Twitter post ("Twitter right now is ") has 186k likes.

It seems very unlikely the "great exodus" is happening or likely to happen due to this, at least to Mastodon.

Re: Twitter applies 7-day suspension to half a dozen journalists

#859

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that this is a good defense, but I think "genuinely scared for his or his child's safety" is a real possibility. Especially if he (rightly or wrongly, no comment there) thinks someone threatened his child... well, protecting your children is one of the more powerful instincts humans have, one of the handful powerful enough to outweigh an ego like Elon's. Plus he has to be at least a little frazzled by Twitter hav…

> I think "genuinely scared for his or his child's safety" is a real possibility. I think he's scared for his own safety. In fact he has basically said as much. As rich as he is, he still owes a lot of money and favors to a lot of people. Some of them are quite powerful and ruthless. They're likely displeased at how he's pissing away the value of an asset in which they have an interest. Just because he's paranoid doe…

You believe rich investors and powerful people were relying on Twitter posts to track his location?

It seems more likely if you are rich or powerful, you have much better alternatives available.

Re: Twitter applies 7-day suspension to half a dozen journalists

#860
post #819

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The buyers of Tesla are, by and large, rich liberals who care about the climate. Musk proceeds to position himself as a QAnon hack. Owning a Tesla was a source of pride and is now a mark of shame and mockery. The only people who actually do care about Twitter are journalists. Musk proceeds to ban some prominent ones from Twitter, for utterly frivolous reasons, which makes them realize that 1/ they're not immune to th…

> The buyers of Tesla are, by and large, rich liberals who care about the climate. Or at least, want to pretend that they care, considering Tesla makes most of its money selling carbon credits to other companies so that they can pollute more. Buying a Tesla doesn't cause less emissions.

> Buying a Tesla doesn't cause less emissions.

what are you basing this off of? Are you specifically saying buying doesn’t cause less emissions (ie manufacturing) or overall compared to a generic ICE car that a Tesla generates more emissions?

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