Musk strikes deal to buy Twitter

Sounds like a good idea. I do sometimes read through Twitter threads that are published in the press, but I find the text message length of the tweets difficult. Personally, I would prefer a single message.

Given that Twitter has almost unquestionably influenced the outcome of several elections around the world, and seems guaranteed to do so in the future, I’m astounded that so many people above seem to think that who runs Twitter and with what policies and algorithms has no impact on them.

You might loathe Twitter with every fibre of your being and never have sullied yourself with it personally, but to think it has no effect on us in some way other, for good or ill, is deeply naive.

Mark

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Not naive at all. It’s more of a reflection of how stupid and gullible society has become if social media networks can have that much influence.

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As usual, Marina, the Queen of Snark, nails it.

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Baffled

Snark is US English for sarcasm. Marina Hyde is particularly good at it.

Snarky, ok, but who on earth is Marina Hyde???

Sometimes I feel I’m living in an alternate universe.

The text nails it is a link to this column by Guardian columnist Marina Hyde:

Post edited to put the link in a onebox now that I know how to do it :grinning:

Great opinion piece in the Guardian titled ‘What better owner for Twitter than Elon Musk, master of the ill-advised tweet?’

Well, when I say great I probably mean I found it amusing since it was attuned with my prejudices…

Marina Hyde does write this kind of piecw well (IMO).

Thanks to the OP for drawing my attention to it!

Ahh, I see, didn’t appreciate it was a hyperlink reading your post on my phone, the font colour is so similar to that of standard text.

Indeed. The way links are formatted on this site (that is, not at all) rather defeats the purpose of trying to weave the link text into the sentence.

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Seriously, he has changed2 the auto industry by introducing electric vehicles that everybody likes and that reduce both pollution and carbon emissions. Tesla has higher profits than GM or Ford despite selling fewer vehicles.

He has brought US back into space with SpaceX.

His Boring Company is able to dig tunnels faster, cheaper and more environmentally friendly than any others.

His Nuralink venture may well help physically disadvantaged people.

Musk is a flawed genius but he has already done so much to help us It is Tesla rather than government future plans that have forced traditional auto manufacturers into EV.

Also, please consider the vile accusation in the post by Chris SU.

Yes, he’s done well to force electric car markets forward.

And as stated above I really like his idea of making all SM users prove that they are a real person, and deleting all the bot accounts.

I just don’t know what to make of him overall as the new Twit in Chief; because I know very little about him.

My comment is based largely on his flagrant use of social media for his own ends. For example he has used Twitter to influence the price of cryptocurrencies of which he and Tesla own large amounts. He has so far escaped prosecution for this and other incidents but I suspect he has more nefarious intentions in wanting to own his chosen social media platform.

He may well have moved things on in the electric vehicle industry, but it was going to happen anyway, with or without Tesla. If he gave a **** about the environment he wouldn’t be involved in private space travel - or cryptocurrencies for that matter. I think he saw the chance to make a lot of money and grabbed a slice of the EV market when the time was right. He was successful in that, fair enough, but lets not kid ourselves that it was an act of social responsibility.

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It’s not just for his own gain, it’s for the gain of his company and investors. Some of his Tweets are to forewarn or soften the blow of the inevitable. I can’t think of anyone like him in the investor world, but there again I’m not an expert.

Good points.

But is Musk even in the worst half of the super rich?

His Twitter deal makes him a much more influential person and now we will see what he’s really made of.

Is there a difference?!

Like ChrisSU, my dislike of Elon Musk as an individual has nothing to do with my political meanings.

For me, one incident and the behaviour of Elon Musk during the well reported Thailand cave rescue event says everything to me about Elon Musk’s character. His description of the rescuer as “that pedo-guy” was completely unforgivable and not a comment that anyone with the remotest sense of decency would have made!

The fact that he was acquitted of defamation in a court case in the US is irrelevant. Imagine that the term had been used by the other party in the case to describe Musk, and Musk had brought the defamation case against him in the US courts. Do you think for one minute that Musk would have lost the case?

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How can it be irrelevant? That’s where the case was brought by the diver seeking a quite frankly ridiculous and, to my mind, much more “offensive” $190m in damages. It was a “playground” tit for tat argument instigated by the diver’s unprovoked comments to CNN. He saw an opportunity to cash in and rightly failed.

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