Thoughts on Elon Musk buying a stake in Twitter?

Then stop using the cesspool. Very simple. My daughter removed her FB account, she doesn’t have Meta even.

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I have never had a Twitter account and I’m not the biggest fan of Musk (although Falcon 9 is an exquisite piece of engineering). What I have never understood is the outsized influence Twitter has had on the news cycle and a sort of “lazy” journalism it breeds. Not sure how that might change with its new owner.

Here’s some food for though re: Twitter and journalism.

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When you have something you enjoy or find value in, it’s natural to not just walk away from it when changes occurs.

You love to swim - what if your pool put in some new rules that went against your values or what you thought was fair. Or was limiting to who could use it. Or decided to use some less than favorable chemicals in it. Would you simply walk away without a care?

Those who are less attached/involved with the pool might walk away easier. But others who had the pool as a stable in their routine, their business, or simply really, really enjoyed the camaraderie they got there might make more of a fuss.

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Many, most actually, of the tech people I know do not use social media or allow their young children to use them.

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Sure, you raise your concerns with management, but when push comes to shove, their house-their rules. They figure they might lose you as a customer, but hope that their changes will bring in new customers.

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Actually I did walk away from Starbucks, I decided after watching something from cnbc about it. I did enjoy a pumpkin cafe late on some occasions.
Swimming is an exercise for me, it’s a must. I can pay to go to 24-hour fitness to use their pool as I did years ago when my local swimming pool was full of duck poop.

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We, the consumers of news, apparently prefer speed over accuracy.

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And those that want to spread false information quickly to a large amount of people where they can usually always reach them (e.g., their cellphones) absolutely adore platforms like Twitter. Is this what they call a “positive feedback loop”?

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I have a Twitter account. I rarely tweet, but I follow a group of journalists, doctors, theologians, meteorologists and a few people I find funny. It’s a quick way to keep up with things I’m interested in and know if I need to look into something more deeply. But the thing I will miss the most if Twitter goes down the tubes is the ability to get quick (sometimes erroneous, however) information during natural disasters. It has been the best place to find real-time information when wildfires are blowing up. You just have to be discerning about sources. That usefulness will go away if fewer people use the app and if anyone can post anything posing as anyone. Something new will emerge in the social media sphere but it will take a while to reach the level of community users that Twitter has now.

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This. My friends always are surprised that I am ahead of the news, and that’s largely because of Twitter. I would miss that. But I am a lurker. I like things but don’t retweet, don’t post and don’t accept follow requests.

I listened to this today and learned a lot. You can skip the ads and make it several minutes shorter.

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I agree with you completely, but you’re making a different point than I was. You’re talking about the broader context while I was talking about Musk’s actions specifically.

For a “free speech absolutist” to try to dictate the speech of others in order to support his own speech is going the opposite direction of his espoused principles.

Regardless, I look forward to Musk tweeting: “Join me in boycotting GM because they refuse to support violent racist hate speech!”

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I’m not a member of Twitter, but Musk telling me to boycott a product would make me more likely to support that product. Hate speech may be free speech, but if I’m an advertiser, then I’m not positioning my product next to bigotry, misogyny, anti-semiticism, anti-LGBTQ+, etc.

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My apologies for mis-reading your earlier post. But I still disagree.

Free speech means being able to convince others to support my pov, regardless of how whacked out it may be. Free speech means the ability to encourage others to boycott an organization for whatever (legal) reason, or for no reason. Others are free to boycott with me, or not.

I was going to put a ROFL emoji, but it’s so sad and true that this is the best I can do: :cry:

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So what? Is that the goal, to become the richest person in the world? To me, that’s the cause of so many worldwide problems, when people act like an end justifies the means.

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Forget about money, he solved problem that people didn’t think they could.

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Developing a new, faster and cheaper way to make electronic payments is a problem?

Showing the world that Electric Vehicles can be successful is a problem?

Building re-usable rockets is a problem?

I have no idea what drives the man; my point about being the richest was that he’s rich because he has built successfully things that are transformative and that the world wanted. Whether his Twitter investment will also have success or be a bust, time will tell. But its his investment.

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I found out he was not the original founder on Tesla, he came in later through series D financing. But we never heard of the other 2 starting founders.

Per Wiki, Elon bought in at the A round becoming the largest shareholder (as he was 87% of the A round) and Chairman. Via a lawsuit, he is considered one of the co-founders.

I’ve googled him before, it’s D, not sure about wiki because people can change them