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Twitter adopts poison pill in bid to thwart Elon Musk takeover

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Re: Twitter adopts poison pill in bid to thwart Elon Musk takeover

#21

Post by moralestapia »

hooande wrote: post #15
mountainriver wrote: post #3

Elon taking over Twitter would be a good thing for Twitter and probably a bad thing for him. Twitter is dying, and could probably use a fundamental revamp which Elon would provide. However Elon really has more important things to worry about.

every suggestion he's floated so far is bad. edit button, open source algorithm, "time outs" instead of bans, "free speech". all of these ideas have obvious flaws that he does not address and none of them would be sufficient to drastically change twitter's stagnant share price. If Musk, or anyone, has solutions to the problems with freedom of speech that have existed since civilization, let's hear them. If the ideas…

>open source algorithm

Huh? What's wrong about this?

Re: Twitter adopts poison pill in bid to thwart Elon Musk takeover

#22

Post by rufus_foreman »

Centigonal wrote: post #12
edmcnulty101 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think free speech is being absolutist. The goal in the constitution is to have free speech be the norm.

"free-speech absolutism" is an absolute view toward free speech. GP isn't saying supporting free speech itself is absolutism. The goal in the US Constitution is to prevent the government from abridging people's right to free speech. Twitter is not the government.

>> The goal in the US Constitution is to prevent the government from abridging people's right to free speech

Preventing the government from abridging people's right to free speech is the strategy, not the goal. Preventing large corporations from dictating what political views can effectively be expressed is another strategy towards the same goal.

Re: Twitter adopts poison pill in bid to thwart Elon Musk takeover

#23

Post by hooande »

moralestapia wrote: post #21
hooande wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

every suggestion he's floated so far is bad. edit button, open source algorithm, "time outs" instead of bans, "free speech". all of these ideas have obvious flaws that he does not address and none of them would be sufficient to drastically change twitter's stagnant share price. If Musk, or anyone, has solutions to the problems with freedom of speech that have existed since civilization, let's hear them. If the ideas…

>open source algorithm Huh? What's wrong about this?

people will immediately reverse engineer it to find what criteria give tweets the most engagement. if it's something like "joke tweet at 7 am" then millions of people will do whatever that is. Not to mention it will open it up to spammers, scammers and software hackers.

There may be common sense solutions to mitigate those problems. but I haven't heard them from Musk

Re: Twitter adopts poison pill in bid to thwart Elon Musk takeover

#24

Post by jollybean »

tatrajim wrote: post #11
jollybean wrote: post #2

Murdoch has used this to maintain control over Fox for some time. "Rupert Murdoch plans to 'poison' News Corp takeover bids" [1] [1] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/may/24/news-corp-rupe...

"Twitter emulates Fox News and channels the spirit of Rupert Murdoch"! -- A headline for the current age of media.

'Poison Pill' strategy is something that happens.

It's a quixotic artifact of power that plays some stakeholders against others, but it's not new.

I don't think it's a headline, but it's definitely relevant.

It kind of bothers me that this would receive down-votes.

Re: Twitter adopts poison pill in bid to thwart Elon Musk takeover

#25

Post by anamax »

Centigonal wrote: post #12
edmcnulty101 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think free speech is being absolutist. The goal in the constitution is to have free speech be the norm.

"free-speech absolutism" is an absolute view toward free speech. GP isn't saying supporting free speech itself is absolutism. The goal in the US Constitution is to prevent the government from abridging people's right to free speech. Twitter is not the government.

> The goal in the US Constitution is to prevent the government from abridging people's right to free speech. Twitter is not the government.

How about when the US Govt asks Twitter to "lean" on certain viewpoints?

Does the answer depend on which viewpoints and who's president?

Re: Twitter adopts poison pill in bid to thwart Elon Musk takeover

#26

Post by mountainriver »

kyleplum wrote: post #18
hooande wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

every suggestion he's floated so far is bad. edit button, open source algorithm, "time outs" instead of bans, "free speech". all of these ideas have obvious flaws that he does not address and none of them would be sufficient to drastically change twitter's stagnant share price. If Musk, or anyone, has solutions to the problems with freedom of speech that have existed since civilization, let's hear them. If the ideas…

He did mention changing the monetization scheme used by twitter from being ad-based to being subscription based. I've heard this idea floated around for awhile and my favourite version is something along the lines of requiring a monthly payment once you reach a specific size of followers/audience. The idea being that today, twitter is being used by corporations/individuals as essentially free marketing. Although not…

yup me too, my biggest complaint with twitter is all the ads, oh and jerks

Re: Twitter adopts poison pill in bid to thwart Elon Musk takeover

#27

Post by mlindner »

axg11 wrote: post #7

Elon’s views are extreme in the sense that no current and popular social media is being run with a light touch approach to moderation. I’m not sure how he plans to combat scams and bots, two issues which go against an absolutist free speech approach. I do think Elon being closely involved with running Twitter is a net good. We’ve tried a lot of different approaches to social media, now perhaps it’s time to try laisse…

> Elon’s views are extreme in the sense that no current and popular social media is being run with a light touch approach to moderation. I’m not sure how he plans to combat scams and bots, two issues which go against an absolutist free speech approach.

Bots can be shut off in a pretty easy way. Detect and prevent any kind of automation (something that randomly mangles the javascript/html to prevent scraping for example) and also completely delete the Twitter API that allows automated tweeting. Tweeting should only be done by humans.

Also auto IP bans of any "rapid" tweeting coming from any IP.

Re: Twitter adopts poison pill in bid to thwart Elon Musk takeover

#28

Post by mlindner »

mountainriver wrote: post #3

Elon taking over Twitter would be a good thing for Twitter and probably a bad thing for him. Twitter is dying, and could probably use a fundamental revamp which Elon would provide. However Elon really has more important things to worry about.

As a fan of Elon I completely agree on your second point. Tesla and SpaceX are WAAAY more important for the future than Twitter.

Re: Twitter adopts poison pill in bid to thwart Elon Musk takeover

#29

Post by hansvm »

mlindner wrote: post #27
axg11 wrote: post #7

Elon’s views are extreme in the sense that no current and popular social media is being run with a light touch approach to moderation. I’m not sure how he plans to combat scams and bots, two issues which go against an absolutist free speech approach. I do think Elon being closely involved with running Twitter is a net good. We’ve tried a lot of different approaches to social media, now perhaps it’s time to try laisse…

> Elon’s views are extreme in the sense that no current and popular social media is being run with a light touch approach to moderation. I’m not sure how he plans to combat scams and bots, two issues which go against an absolutist free speech approach. Bots can be shut off in a pretty easy way. Detect and prevent any kind of automation (something that randomly mangles the javascript/html to prevent scraping for examp…

I dunno. I've never met an unscrapable website, IP addresses are cheap, and any bot trying to sway real people's opinions would do well to rate limit itself per account anyway. I wouldn't want to have try to design a website that I personally wouldn't be able to bot.
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