Elon vs Twitter update: Elon helped America win , Tesla stock through the roof

I can already hear the men's group at church "YALL HEAR APPLE IS BANNING FREE SPEECH!"

 

Exactly. This was the argument the Left always made. But now that they can't silence the other side anymore as they please, they cry foul.

 

The right has cried wolf about being censored for over a century.

 

Is Apple banning the internet or televisions?

What's the right want to let the world know about that's being suppressed? Is it covid bullsh**? Because that's being spread. Is it hate speech? That's being spread.

 

You have to forgive ATW. After calling Jacinda Arden evil, he has since been on the run from her death squads.

 

What if it's not about "sides"? What if what you're calling a "side" is objectively misinformation (e.g. Trump won (sic) the election) with a mix of N-word-style hate speech, Holocaust denialism, and / or Jewish space lasers (MTG)? That's not a side to people who embrace the Enlightenment. Public platforms have to make hard decisions about that kind of stuff, and it's mostly about their business's bottom line. Old Twitter had one standard, and updated Twitter is going to have a more lenient (and to some people, disturbing) standard, apparently popular with white edge lords and less popular with many others. *shrug* Advertisers and users will make their decisions accordingly, but it seems like a lot of them are taking a "wait and see" approach, counter to the predictions of many liberals.

It's been interesting to watch Mr freedom of speech squirm at barely allowing criticism and parody.

It's less interesting, and more disquieting, to watch DeSantis arbitrarily pick on private companies (Disney, now Apple) that don't conform to his views. His party, nationally, has even suggested going after financial investment vehicles that believe in global warming and invest accordingly. That's an extreme line to cross; the fact that would-be conservatives don't blink at that tells us a lot about what the term "conservative" has become in the US. No, you pretty much have to invest in oil. That's not government incentivizing behavior; that's closer to nationalizing (at least dictating whims to) parts of the private sector. Super creepy, but we'll see where it goes. It's darkly entertaining to watch societies dance on the edge of a new dark age; humans gonna human, at the end of every day, and the last few hundred years may well be an anomaly for our species.

 

Hence the label of fascism. When you think of freedom of speech in such blatant one way street terms, ya that's semi-fascist like.

 

The pivot of GOP from free market to this weird theocratic nationalism is really interesting, albeit frightening.

It’s no coincidence that “morals” are underlying DeSantis decisions to go after certain companies.

 

It's more than a suggestion here in TX. Last year, TX bans firms that don't invest in firearms and fossil fuels at a huge financial cost to taxpayers.

This is part of a pattern of "conservative" moving away from free market and toward government mandate that matches the political party values on one side and government-pushed crony capitalism where the private sector must invest in certain businesses on the other side. As we already see in this example after less than 1 year, it's no surprise that it's not efficient and very costly.

Texas laws bar Wall Street firms from operating in the state if they stop investing in firearms and fossil fuels. An analysis shows that has cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars this year.​

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...-showdown-costing-cities-hundreds-of-millions

Texas taxpayers are footing the bill for the state’s war with Wall Street over guns.

The state’s municipal borrowers have been hit with as much as $532 million of extra debt costs because of a new GOP law that’s led some banks to step back from Texas’s bond market. That’s the conclusion of a new paper by Daniel Garrett, a University of Pennsylvania professor, and Ivan Ivanov, a principal economist at the Federal Reserve.​

 

Probably why China and Saudi Arabia are part owners of Elon’s Twitter.

 

That sounds like bad UX which hurts signup conversion which MAY or MAY NOT be worse than paying the 30%. But it certainly doesn't mean you net 30% savings. Because you WILL hurt conversion rate.

 

It was only being offered on Apple initially. Now anyone can sign up and get the perk on mobile

 

Listen, we can't stop the nazi/prc/crypto spambots and incels from making this into a hellscape that we promised it wouldnt be, but here's a random quote from JFK that justifies our ineptitude.

 

Conservative mantra “Heads I win, tails I win”

They fought tooth and nail against government regulations….

And now they are fighting tooth and nail for private companies and investors from implementing their own policies….

 

They want to regulate companies that they don't like.

 

DealBook Summit: Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg Says App Store’s Dominance Is Not ‘Sustainable or Good’

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/11/30/business/dealbook-summit-conference

excerpt:

Speaking at the DealBook Summit on Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg, C.E.O. of Meta, said he believes that Apple’s power as a gatekeeper for the apps marketplace was problematic.

“If you look at all the major competing platforms that have existed — iOS, Android, Windows — Apple stands out,” he said. “It is the only one where one company can control what apps get on the device. I don’t think it’s sustainable or good.”

App stores can exert pressure on companies like Facebook and Twitter because of their ability to remove apps that don’t meet their guidelines, which would make it more difficult for billions of potential users to download and gain access to the services.

Yael Roth, the former head of trust and safety at Twitter, wrote in an opinion piece for The Times this month that if Apple or Google were to remove Twitter from its app store, it would be “catastrophic,” and suggested that the app stores played a role in governing content moderation in the app.

This week, Elon Musk complained on Twitter that Apple had “threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store but won’t tell us why.”

Mr. Zuckerberg contrasted the Apple App Store with the Google Play app store. “Google might control what goes in the play store, but they have always made it so you can side-load and have other app stores and work directly with phone manufacturers.”

Apple also made changes to its privacy policy last year that made it more difficult for social media apps like Facebook to target their users with ads. The changes have contributed to a drop in the revenues for Facebook and other companies reliant upon digital advertising. Meta’s profits slid by more than 50 percent in the third quarter compared with the same period the year before.

Mr. Zuckerberg said that unlike a government, “Apple obviously has their own interests” and that “the fact that companies have to deliver their apps exclusively from platforms controlled by competitors — there is a conflict of interest there.”

— Sarah Kessler
​

more

 

https://www.rebelnews.com/mark_zuckerberg_says_elon_musk_free_speech

"You can agree or disagree with what Elon is doing, or how he's doing it, but I do think it's going to be very interesting to see how this plays out," said Zuckerberg at the New York Times DealBook conference, Reuters reported.

"I would guess that not everything is going to work, but I think some things might work," he said.

Reed Hastings, Netflix’s co-founder, praised Musk for his efforts and called him the “bravest, most creative person on the planet.”

“What he’s done in multiple areas is phenomenal. You know, his style is different. I’m trying to be a steady, respectable leader. He doesn’t care. Think of a guy who’s spent $44 billion. He could’ve built a mile-long yacht for $44 billion but it’s like not good for the planet. He’s not interested,” added Hastings.

Speaking at the same event, Hastings said that Musk’s approach to management is very different from his own, but noted that he’s “100% convinced he’s trying to help the world with all of his endeavors.”

“And he’s trying to help the world on that one because he believes in free speech and its power for democracy and that’s an option,” said Hastings.

"It's not how I would do it, but I'm deeply respectful," Hastings added. "I'm amazed that people are so nitpicky. Yeah sure the blue checkmark, he’s making a mess of some things or not. But give him a break he just spent all this money to try it make it much better for democracy and society, to have a more open platform and I am sympathetic to that agenda.”

 

Some humans ain't human, though they walk like we do
They live and they breath, just to turn the old screw
They screw you when you're sleeping, they try to screw you blind
Some humans ain't human, some people ain't kind
You might go to church and sit down in a pew
Those humans who ain't human, be sitting right next to you
They talk about your family, they talk about your clothes
When they don't know their own ass from their own elbows

-John Prine