My pet theory is that Musk acquired Twitter to destroy one of the most effective platforms for anyone on the left to organize.
You're giving Musk too much credit here.
He bought Twitter because a) he's addicted to it, and b) he rushed into a buying agreement he didn't get his lawyers to vet properly (probably due to his massively inflated "I understand more than anyone else" ego).
He wanted to back out of it, but faced a lawsuit that he was almost certainly going to lose, so had no choice but to go through with the sale. The lawsuit happened because the shareholders at the time realized the company was worth nowhere close to the inflated $44 billion he offered for it, so they weren't going to back down either.
Everything else that happened after the sale is a result of a man-child feeding his addiction and recuperate from the dumb deal he was legally forced to uphold.
Just wait for the quid pro quo. SpaceX was supposed to get us back to the moon on 3 billion dollars. They are now at 5 billion dollars, and all they have to show for it is a flaming husk of a booster caught by "the chopsticks".
For anyone who thinks that was some incredible accomplishment.. NASA has been landing rovers on Mars using truly incredible engineering that makes SpaceX look like a bunch of kids eating Baby Ruth bars in the sandbox.
So if Elon gets appointed to a government position and starts awarding Tesla and SpaceX all kinds of extended taxpayer-funded gravy grift, you will know your pet theory is 100% spot on.
For anyone who thinks that was some incredible accomplishment.. NASA has been landing rovers on Mars using truly incredible engineering that makes SpaceX look like a bunch of kids eating Baby Ruth bars in the sandbox.
You're belittling and attacking the thousands of engineers and scientists who really built SpaceX, because their financier is a fascist sociopath. If you knew anything about this at all, you'd understand how exceptionally ignorant, naive, and disrespectful this is.
I like to post this to make SpaceX fans who also claim to care about the environment confused:
https://qz.com/spacex-starlink-satellites-ozone-layer-1851544567
Omg how good it feels to see others with this feeling
And/or weaponize it for his buddies to do so instead...
He just straight up bought the cultural elite's own means of mass communication.
The cultural elite used the left to get people behind themselves.
That's incredibly cynical of you...
Well done! It is a scarily plausible scenario!
To be honest, I'm basing this on screenshots of Musk's private conversations as reported by Gizmodo.
I distinctly remember this bit:
March 24, 2022
TJ [affiliation unclear] [Edit, October 4: We now know TJ is Musk’s ex-wife Talulah Jane Riley]:
Can you buy Twitter and then delete it, please!? xx
America is going INSANE.
The Babylon Bee got suspension is crazy. Raiyah and I were talking about it today. It was a fucking joke. Why has everyone become so puritanical?
Or can you buy Twitter and make it radically free-speech?
So much stupidity comes from Twitter xx
Elon Musk:
Maybe buy it and change it to properly support free speech xx
It was on attack on progressives.
Yep many people left twitter and did not return. Basically they are silent now.
We need to regroup ASAP, on other platforms, like here on Lemmy. I'm already seeing some happenings, we just need to beg more people to come here. Let's make Lemmy the place chuds imagine what Reddit is! Minus the toxic callout stuff, that will be just weaponized against us, and anyone trying to leave the far-right (far-right trollfarms like to impersonate leftists to convince real leftists into attacking each other).
I still think he bought into the Twitter files conspiracy.
The biggest problem is the damage is done.
The party holds the supreme court. House. Senate. Executive. Under the unitary executive theory, the rest of the federal government, while being completely inept, will be party members.
All we can do now, is collectively survive. It's a death cult. Steps we take to prevent the detainment, torture and death of our neighbors, friends, and family are the biggest fuck you to these people.
I don't know how we'll do it. But we don't do it by joining or tolerating them. We don't have to make it easy for them.
From time to time the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
From time to time the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/thomas-jefferson-tree-of-liberty/
okay. So please. Stop using X. Use Mastodon or other Fediverse alternatives, even if your reach is smaller there?
Sorry, internet activists will let you down like young voters. If leaving a platform slightly inconveniences them in even the most superficial insignificant sense, they won't do it.
Edit:
Or they'll do it for like 3 days. Make a post saying "Hi guys! I just left twitter!" and then never write another message beyond that.
I finally deleted my account. Had since 2007...it's not useful anymore.
Good on you.
Haven’t deleted mine yet but have two active accounts on blusky and mastodon and my twitter one is inactive with a pinned post linking my new socials.
Honestly that might be more helpful.
I sometimes see the overwritten reddit comments when searching for a topic, and I wish that the comment would link to the person's new account (wherever they may be) in addition to the usual blurb on whg they aren't active on reddit anymore
Going from X account...
To ex account.
It's a little bit naive and self destructive that human beings have created tools as powerful as mainstream social media with absolutely no checks or balances, absolutely no accountability, absolutely no transparency, and entirely at the whims of billionaire owners and nation states they're in bed with.
Regulating and banning social media that is being used to blatantly conduct massive psyops should be uncontroversial.
I'm sick of private ownership and private decision making about every fucking single aspect of human life from who gets housed to who gets fed to our very culture.
Americans "hate" dictatorships but allow the economy to be run by a bunch of Lords.
Socialism is the democratization of the economy. Socialism puts the human and the worker and the people most impacted by these economic decisions at the helm.
But no, democracy in the economy wouldn't be free. We need to slave away for fascist dictators.
It would be, if those same billionaire owners didn't pull the politician's puppet strings.
But muh TikTok!!!
And also: it's racist to ban social media platforms.....or whatever......I don't know. Whatever garbage is usually spewed anytime a platform that leans heavily left is about to get shut down.
Why is anyone still using twitter?
because other people are. idk why anyone has trouble understanding that for most users social media is only as good as its population.
Same on Threads.
Everything went quiet.
I would love to see these accounts, when they were opened, when they ceased posting, what they posted, and what the IP addresses were.
Same on Lemmy to be fair.
Half of Lemmy.ml mysteriously disappeared too
Source: my ass
As it was the same on Reddit last cycle
Like, where is his data? Is there a list of all bot accounts on Twitter, with a column showing recent activity? Or is this guy doing the same thing as the other side - talking out of his ass?
Have you been on twitter recently? [Note that I recommend users do not use twitter]
It’s pretty obvious when for the past two weeks you had every single tweet of yours get spammed replies like “#TRUMP2024 #MAGA” with clearly AI generated profile pictures and fake names. All these accounts have like 20 followers and are following 5k+ accounts. And a bunch of them instantly reply to your posts like 5 seconds after posting. All these accounts have ceased activity overnight.
Nah, I don't go on Twitter. Too many bots.
Probably talking out of his ass. I like to read conservative threads to see comments outside of my bubble - they say the same shit, just about other platforms like reddit.
It's the age of post-truth and I don't think there is a fix for that anytime soon.
Its not enough to say "fuck it", active participation on any viable alternatives is essential to breathe oxygen into alternatives
The god damned problem is everyone still links to X because a flaming dumpster fire is hard to look away from
Brexit already happened but for the rest of Europe yeah get out of shitterx
it is well known that bot farms red and blue fireup in the run up to election season, and there are millions of these bots.
It is well known that your false equivalence BS is an old, tired narrative. There was no "blue bot" propaganda campaign targeting red voters in an attempt to stop them from going to the polls. Oh, if only.
I garuntee you there was. Maybe not on Twitter, but there was. Its odd to me that you would doubt that.
I sense a bit of bias. Politic isn't football stop stomping so hard for your team.
How the fuck did the Muskrat know Mango Mussolini was going to win?
That's a good question, odd how all that vote fraud claims stopped after the election. We all know Republicans project.
It's not even projection, every accusation is a confession
Surely they would cheat so boldly by 15 millions votes! Surely!
He controls the cultural elite's discussion space, what they see and what they can say. People think that was not worth 50 billions... They are very wrong, it bought him the government. Controlling the means of mass communication means you control what public believes and who will make the laws and take the decisions.
They just let it happens, they just let him buy democracy from the weakling brain damaged public.
before? where have you been this whole time?
And what about 'Fuck "Tesla", Fuck "SpaceX"'?
They are fucked already
What is he talking about?
Twitter is riddled with MAGA bots. Like AI generated accounts who spam pro-Trump content.
I don't agree with all of this. I agree with the investigation. I agree with the ban. I don't agree with waiting for anything. Ban it, irrespective of the investigation. It's a cesspool, and no investigation is going to fix that.
Edit: autocorrect.
Reddit in general and r/politics doesn't have their democratic party astro turf campaign going either. Even here, there was clearly a campaign to convince leftists to stay out of the election.
We need to realize that the majority of people talking to us online during election years are probably not real people.
before he does it to us
Too late, sorry.
what would happen if it came out that musk played with the voting totals? sure seems odd for the repugs to pull 94% as much as shown
Ah, the new propaganda has started, and they're attacking Gen X for whatever reason? Guess the boomers are dying off and someone needs a new scapegoat? Seeing a lot of variations on "Thanks to Gen X for screwing up (insert whatever)". Not sure what the value of it is. Gen X didn't really have much of a shot at making any long-reaching policy, the boomers stayed in charge for as long as they could hang on to everything and created pretty much all the issues we're facing now. Gen X never much of a shot, they just kept telling us to turn on the TV and eat the TV dinners.
Idk why that is relevant to this post he is referring to twitter now called X not blaming specifically the generation X here.
My comment was in reference to social media, which this post is referring to along with bots, and if it is bots, my comment was regarding a shift in focus - blaming Gen X instead of boomers.
Fuck you for being on social media.
(I know)
fuck musk, fuck twitter and especially fuck kraut.
fuck Kraut because he supports Ukraine’s right to defend itself?
what? no because he's a western chauvinist and an islamophobe. everyone fucking hates him.
No, because he is pushing bad history: https://youtu.be/FSN6dL5MUUM?si=crSyFD6JMGuGsfkm
Why are they asking for Europe to investigate election interference in the US? I'm pretty sure they'll just claim that isn't their jurisdiction.
