"Musk delivered a vast trove of internal Twitter documents to two independent journalists, Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss, who have long endorsed aspects of the GOP’s indictment of the platform. Taibbi and Weiss proceeded to publish a pair of exposés on Twitter’s inner workings. Dubbed 'the Twitter Files,' these reports featured a couple genuinely concerning findings about pre-Musk Twitter’s operations. But they were also saturated in hyperbole, marred by omissions of context, and discredited by instances of outright mendacity. Musk’s commentary on the Twitter Files, meanwhile, proved even more demagogic and deceptive than the exposés themselves.
"For these reasons, the Twitter Files are best understood as an egregious example of the very phenomenon it purports to condemn — that of social-media managers leveraging their platforms for partisan ends."
Re: Elon joining the MAGA lynch mob against Dr. Fauci -
The only lockdowns are happening in China, a country that has massive economic leverage over Musk, and which Musk won't criticize. https://t.co/oU0m2IJBUV
LOL! I don't know what it is like in other parts of the country (Tesla's weren't very widespread when we left) but in California, the worst drivers all drive Teslas. Driving on the shoulders, cutting you off for no reason, speeding at 110 miles per hour in a school zone, nine out of ten times, that car is going to be a Tesla.
It's a bit strange to talk about Musk and twitter in terms of the first amendment. The first amendment is about the relationship of government to its citizens, so twitter's decisions regarding its users is obviously not a first amendment issue. The relationship of twitter to the government is, but Musk's supporters are either quiet or actively opposed to the first amendment here -- see Taibbi downplaying Twitter honoring Trump admin (the government) requests, while playing up honoring Biden campaign (not the government) requests, or the way politicians like DeSantis (whom Musk supports) seek to compel favored speech.
What Musk and his supporters really mean is the first amendment culturally, not literally. But here they just seem to mean "speech I like, and punishing speech I don't like." The complaint about the previous management of twitter is that decisions around moderation were inconsistent and not transparent. Under Musk, though, the previous process has been replaced by Musk's personal decisions -- which is inconsistent and not transparent. He certainly makes different decisions, but whether or not they are better is just a subjective judgement that says more about his supporters' and critics' ideological positioning.
Personally, I think a twitter that agreed to requests to take down non-consensual nude pics was making better decisions, but that's me.
Meanwhile, what Musk has been doing is to put current and former employees in danger via doxxing their personal information and playing games with the pay and benefits owed to them and demanding that anyone still working for him pass increasingly bizarre loyalty tests while he tanks the value of twitter ensuring that anyone who does manage to last isn't going to get much reward out of committing to "twitter 2.0". Keep in mind that many of those who've stayed are on visas, and so don't have as much flexibility to just quit and look for another job. Puts his installation of beds in the office into a somewhat different light, doesn't it? Encouraging a semi-captive labor force to seldom leave the office isn't a great look.
Correction: a "First Amendment-like" public square.
Which employees are in danger?
Twitter's doing fine, by the way. Here's an honest voice from the "woke" community:
This could be an unpopular opinion but if we are being shown a more evenly balanced amount of content from the left and right I am for it. So long as it’s happening to both the left and right. I see it like an equal time rule for twitter.
LOL! I don't know what it is like in other parts of the country (Tesla's weren't very widespread when we left) but in California, the worst drivers all drive Teslas. Driving on the shoulders, cutting you off for no reason, speeding at 110 miles per hour in a school zone, nine out of ten times, that car is going to be a Tesla.
Correction: a "First Amendment-like" public square.
Which employees are in danger?
"Current and former employees ..." as long as you're being a stickler.
And if you're oblivious to the very prominent news about what Musk is insinuating about a former senior employee, then read something other than Elon fanzines.
"Musk delivered a vast trove of internal Twitter documents to two independent journalists, Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss, who have long endorsed aspects of the GOP’s indictment of the platform. Taibbi and Weiss proceeded to publish a pair of exposés on Twitter’s inner workings. Dubbed 'the Twitter Files,' these reports featured a couple genuinely concerning findings about pre-Musk Twitter’s operations. But they were also saturated in hyperbole, marred by omissions of context, and discredited by instances of outright mendacity. Musk’s commentary on the Twitter Files, meanwhile, proved even more demagogic and deceptive than the exposés themselves.
"For these reasons, the Twitter Files are best understood as an egregious example of the very phenomenon it purports to condemn — that of social-media managers leveraging their platforms for partisan ends."
"Twitter Files" update - Last night, Bari Weiss twittered a nothing-side-of-fries to go with the earlier nothing-burger that Taibbi published.
What she described was the existence of "content monitoring" tools, which social media companies use for the obvious reasons.
Apparently, one of her screen shots inadvertently revealed that Elon Musk had given her and Taibbi access to the tools which let them look at any user's private messages on the platform.
That's not good.
This whole thing is effing weird. Who the heck would work for a company that publishes employees' internal emails (along with their personal email addresses) for the whole world to read?
About 100,000 people who seem to get the jobs done, somehow.
Apparently you think that Starlink is the only company providing that service, just like you think that without Musk, there would be no electric car market.
Apparently you think that Starlink is the only company providing that service, just like you think that without Musk, there would be no electric car market.
I don't know what Paul means by saying twitter is doing fine. Certainly not from a business point of view -- revenue's down, many advertisers have fled and those that remain are skittish, and none of the features Musk is promising are likely to make up anywhere near the lost revenue (and twitter's ability to even roll out features will be difficult with its skeleton staff -- how many times has the rollout of the new check system been pushed back already?).
But perhaps Paul doesn't mean this in business terms, but in content terms. That's fine for Musk I suppose -- he's got money to burn, and if he just had a spare $44bn to blow on a hobby, I suppose he's free too -- except of course twitter wasn't a hobby, but an actual company people worked at to earn money to pay rent and school and all the other mundane things billionaires don't have to think about but the rest of us do.
I don't even know what Paul means by saying Musk is taking a first-amendment-like approach here. Musk, twitter's owner, has been explicitly partisan, urging his followers to vote Republican, declaring his support for first-amendment adversary Rick DeSantis, and now helping amplify Republican conspiracy-mongering targeting the Biden administration. Musk also appears to be making content moderation decisions largely according to his own whims, especially high profile ones.
I'm unfamiliar with any reading of the first amendment that says it's spirit is that of an explicit partisan making personal decisions on what speech is acceptable and which is suppressed.
In the course of pursuing his hobby, Musk not only peremptorily fired most employees (including many on visas who now have 60 days to find a new job or be forced to leave the country), but has been playing games with pay and benefits owed them. He's also been careless with employee personal information, revealing emails and other personally identifiable information during the course of stunts like the "twitter files", opening up those former employees to harassment and possibly even physical danger. He's also used his own tweets to encourage harassment of former employees.
I don't really care all that much if Musk wants to turn twitter into a maga message board. I rarely used the site, and found it on net to be a negative on society. May twitter join the ranks of myspace, friendster, and other has-beens. But I do take issue with people lauding Musk's cavalier and even cruel actions as being a champion of anything, much less a champion of free speech.
Mr. Surovell can tell us why we should enthusiastically agree with Elon, here.
I strongly disagree. Forcing your pronouns upon others when they didn’t ask, and implicitly ostracizing those who don’t, is neither good nor kind to anyone.
As for Fauci, he lied to Congress and funded gain-of-function research that killed millions of people. Not awesome imo.
I just learned about this https://post.news/ from someone I follow on Twitter. It seems that a lot of people who have left Twitter have signed-up on Post.
So been on Post for a few days. It’s very much a work in progress but it shows promise. Worth a try. No trolls so far.
I will repeat again… Elon Musk is a dangerous person