The whole article assumed blue checkmark shows "verified" status. It does not though, at least not in this initial rush-release version according to the document NYT reported on.
I don't like elon and I'm not going to pay $8 for Twitter. But I will stand here and criticize everything about it.
Much of my professional network and a growing number of contacts and project possibilities come from Twitter, but I'm in such a niche (and I don't care about numbers of followers or celebrity anything) that it would not make sense for me to pay for Blue even if Musk wasn't wrecking the platform in real time. So, no, I will not pay. There will soon be a viable alternative just like there was to AOL and Yahoo and MySpace. Given my mostly walled garden of a Twitter network, I'm not anxious to leave but neither will I dither if the decline continues and a better site becomes available. For prudent reasons, I did just download my Twitter archive. My take: MAGA types don't really want "free speech" or a place where they can be their worst selves with each other. They want a place where they can be their worst selves, troll their enemies, and have someone in power make their enemies take it. Hence the veneration of Musk and the excitement his purchase of Twitter brings--they want to inflict atrocities on the "others" and revel in the discomfort and anger it causes. Since these guys are a minority and nobody else is going to stay around a place where Nazis and white supremacists and anti-Semites hurl stupid memes everywhere, this "free speech" crusade is bound to fail, as is any platform which encourages it. Likewise, no legit corporation is going to be associated with such people. It's not corporations silencing the Right, but rather, the Right being so toxic that even when the corporate leadership agrees with the politics they can't stomach the association because it will hurt their bottom line with the majority of American consumers. Call it the Invisible Hand of the markets at work.
Elon is an ******* to work with, he is rarely prepared, questions everything because of that and people feel on edge like they could be fired at any moment. DD
The only high traffic platform that has "true free speech" is just 4chan, and even then people complain about moderators and admin on it. The ironic thing is that original owner of 4chan sold the platform because he had issues keeping ads running and was constantly hit with lawsuits. I honestly think those complaining about free speech on Twitter does not have basic understanding of how money is made on websites like this. A "free speech" social media platform will never attract any advertisers and will most likely be in debt. Maybe Elon just wants to backroll Twitter with his own money.
Musk's whining about the advertiser drawback is pretty obnoxious. Dude is smart enough to know that if Twitter turns into 4chan that nobody is going to want their ads running on it. That being said, supposedly he hasn't changed any of the moderation rules yet. So, he does have a point that this moral panic is a bit premature. At the end of the day though, if some mega billionaire wants to buy Twitter and take off all the guardrails... Fine by me, it'll be an interesting experiment . Twitter moderation wasn't exactly great to begin with. If it crashes and burns, who cares. It must be nice to be able to spend 50 billion on a pet project like this.
I think this has always been the plan. There has been discussion about Twitter as the new, national, public square for a long time. It feels like this is 50% social experiment and 50% vendetta and about.... 0.00001% business venture. Imagine being so wealthy you could just buy a social media platform if the mods pissed you off. That's what this is.
This is my observation. Any platform that makes political discourse their core product will fail. Facebook used to be a decent platform until Zuckerberg and friends discovered political interaction drove up engagement by large volumes. Now it's a complete **** platform. I do not have the impression Musk wants Twitter to be primarily about politics. This whole nonsense about the left wanting to censor the right, the right wanting to censor the left, and more ignorantly, that Twitter is going to ignore other countries laws and allow Twitter to be completely uncensored is stupid. I am expecting him to turn Twitter into a more robust platform that serves many needs. I get the most value out of Twitter when I filter out all the political discourse and nonsense.
His own money? He got investors in notoriously free speech countries like Saudi Arabia and China to buy in. Brookings Institute: The national security grounds for investigating Musk’s Twitter acquisition https://www.brookings.edu/research/...ter-acquisition-on-national-security-grounds/
Free Speechin’ Joe Rogan admits schools don’t have litter boxes for kids who ‘identify’ as furries https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/nov/04/joe-rogan-school-litter-boxes-kids-furries-gender At least ole Joe admitted he wrong… but not before pushing out this baseless claim.
It's an ironic tool from the guy that is trying to promote "free" speech. I think it will make Elon money. Money is not profit, though. But I also think it will chase the average user away. I think Twitter will be relegated to mostly corporations and journalists that will still push their agendas. Which is exactly what Twitter does now. Basically it won't change much. But it may bring in 150 million a year while decreasing the user base drastically. I think Elon knows this and is okay with it. I also don't think there is anything Elon can do to "fix" Twitter. I could also see potential scenarios where governments do allocate a few million a year in spam bots to push agendas, because with less chaffe to wade through, those bots will be brought to the forefront in replies, retweets, and whatever else you want to call it. Signed, Not a Twitter user. Also, someone who thinks Musk perpetually over promises and under delivers, and that will happen here too, just like in every other business venture he has had. At this point, the guy merely is a brand himself and he knows that and takes full advantage to the point to where I think it's become embarrassing and the bubble is getting overly swollen.
I think I figured it out. Lulz. He's a stock price genius-con-artist. He's going to install and talk about adding bells and whistles to Twitter. Promises. He's already alluded to it. Video games, p*rn, etc... once money is cheap and growth stocks recover - he goes public. Tech stocks will always be golden because greed conceals the mistakes of the past. He goes public at, at least $80/share probably more. Subscriptions and layoffs don't move the cash flow needle enough. And Elon's marketing is built on PR not advertising - his companies don't advertise. He and his team are not advertising experts. So unless he hires someone big from the outside and gives them a lot of autonomy, I don't know why you'd assume advertising revenue would improve at Twitter. There's no reason to believe that. Other than talk. Which Elon likes to do. We on Mars yet? GOOD LUCK
I don't know what he wants or what he's doing. What he has said and what he has done are contradictory many times. He's off to a very bad start. He got two main customers. The people that buy ads. The people that use Twitter. He has not reassured the ads buyers and he has alienated a whole bunch on both sides. He's pretty toxic to a good segment of those two customers at this point and seems to be taking advice from politicians and other idiots. ps. He's a key generator or spreader of hot politic topics on Twitter
