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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

#221

Post by mcdonje »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #105

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…

I don't know why anyone would trust Musk to champion free speech.

He has no background with any org that works on protecting free speech. He hasn't done work with the ACLU.

Billionaires buying media companies has been great for broadcasting the billionaire perspective, but mixed at best on free speech.

A lot of people currently decrying moderation activities on US social media sites as being against free speech are the same people supporting bills, mostly in state governments, that limit free speech.

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

#222

Post by motohagiography »

Imo, he's taking responsibility. If as an individual you can deploy the most money in the world, what do you do with it? Twitter became a negative-sum game of people competing to debase themselves in service of narrative in exchange for nothing but the approval of others who had already done the same. Unlocking that negative cycle can release a lot of captive value for everyone. The best way to do that is to connect great minds and scale them based on their revealed desires.

I remember Musk offered to solve world hunger but the NGO people who said they could do it flaked when (pen in hand) he offered to cut them a cheque. The next best thing is to provide a platform for discourse so that smart people indexed on truth and reality can thrive and wield influence.

The opportunity is that Twitter just isn't funny, and as a signal of alignment to truth, that's a pretty honest sign it has become oppressive and that it has become a thing that most people just do not want. The controversial censorship on Twitter has been against humour, which makes Musk's play such an obvious win. As an activist target, Twitter has spent almost a decade contorting itself and spending a lot of effort to make itself suck, and it just needs to suck slightly less to be a benefit to humanity. Value for money, it's probably the most effective $43B anyone has spent in the US.

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

#225

Post by jrsj »

542458 wrote: 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…

Hacker News isn’t comparable to Twitter. They’re not doing coordinated censorship with other big tech companies or working on behalf of intelligence agencies to spy on their users etc. Twitter & other large corps aren’t just private companies because they have such strong relationships with the government. Politicians also threaten to penalize them for not doing censorship the way that they want, so they aren’t really acting in a free market regardless.

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

#226

Post by dorkwood »

tasubotadas wrote: post #86

This is great news. Twitter definitely has potential but at the moment it is a cespool of triggered personalities where the voice of the sane and interesting people is drowned in an endless screaming.

Is Elon one of the interesting people? Let's look at a couple of his most recent tweets:

"Weather is fake. I seen Truman Show!"

"69.420% of statistics are false"

Personally, this content is exactly the type of thing I try to filter out. Unfunny, uninteresting fluff.

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

#227

Post by RockyMcNuts »

snowwrestler wrote: post #94

As a Twitter shareholder I would vote against this. Musk says there is tremendous financial potential in Twitter but then offers $54 a share, which is not even 2x the IPO price. That’s not a “tremendous potential” premium. There is a lot of evidence that platforms which de-prioritize moderation have trouble attracting revenue and experience significant compliance costs. See: the sad story of Moot, who ran one of the…

probably just wants to get Benioff or someone else to step up, make a couple of billion, further buff his edgelord street cred.

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

#228

Post by thaway2839 »

542458 wrote: 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…

It's, in fact, the opposite of free speech.

Now, there may be an argument that Twitter, for example, has become such an integral part of the public square that the government SHOULD compel Twitter to allow every form of speech on it. And that could be a reasonable argument to make.

What it wouldn't be is free speech. It would, in fact, be coerced speech.

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

#229

Post by yibg »

mrtksn wrote: post #2

I don't have an opinion over the consequences for politics over this, I'm just excited over the potential shakedown of the social media landscape that I grew to despise. Musk is an activist, can make it or break it. He is absolutely right over its enormous potential, all the problems it has - as a business or ones it creates for the society - can be solved. Free speech absolutism is possible and is beneficial once yo…

How do you define free speech absolutism? Is it literally anything goes? Anything legal? Is porn ok?

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

#230

Post by nradov »

542458 wrote: 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…

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas suggested extending common carrier legislation to cover social media platforms. That would essentially prevent them from censoring any content legal in the US.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2021/04/09/justice-t...

I don't understand your point about user experience. Twitter is already mostly low effort flame wars, political proselytizing, and porn. But people seem to still use it anyway.

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