academic freedom agit-prop, opinion manipulation and well-poisoning games Censorship Culture Free Speech Freedom Geo-strategic issues Governance & control vs anarchy Intellectual freedom Lessons of History Media Media Manipulation, Agit-Prop &/or Lawfare Politics/policy and origins issues UD Newswatch highlights

Breaking: Twitter accepts Musk’s Share offer buyout plan

Posted on Author kairosfocusComments(50)
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Breitbart, as I just saw:

After a two-week battle against opposition from the platform’s board members, self-declared free speech absolutist Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and currently the richest man in the world, has succeeded in his bid to buy Twitter.

In a press release, the Twitter board announced that they had reached an agreement with the multi-billionaire to sell 100 percent of the company at Musk’s original price of $54.20 per share.

Where does this point?

DEVELOPING.

U/D April 29, Followership jumps per Daily mail:

A chart of followership shifts from the verge:

50 Replies to “Breaking: Twitter accepts Musk’s Share offer buyout plan”

  1. 1
    kairosfocus says:
    April 25, 2022 at 2:50 pm

    Breaking: Twitter accepts Musk’s Share offer buyout plan

    What does this suggest?

  2. 2
    kairosfocus says:
    April 25, 2022 at 2:56 pm

    Farah and co at WND:

    https://www.wnd.com/2022/04/report-elon-musk-nearing-43-billion-deal-buy-twitter/

    Hours after declaring his hope that “his worst critics” will remain on Twitter, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk purchased the social-media giant for $44 billion on Monday, turning it into a privately held company.

    Musk, the world’s richest person, according to Forbes, has made it clear that his chief aim is not to make money on the deal but to turn Twitter into a genuine platform for free speech.

    “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Musk said in a statement upon closing the deal. “I also want to make Twitter better than ever.”

    The Big Tech giant – which notoriously censored the New York Post’s blockbuster stories on Biden family influence peddling in China, Russia and other nations – has banned the likes of former President Trump, Dr. Robert Malone and other notable figures whose tweets violated the establishment narrative on issues such as the 2020 election and COVID-19.

    Further food for thought. WND is an early, independent, libertarian leaning news site.

    KF

  3. 3
    kairosfocus says:
    April 25, 2022 at 2:59 pm

    And of course, MSNBC:

    https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/reidout-blog/elon-musk-twitter-deal-rcna25869

    Twitter accepts Musk’s offer to buy the company for $44 billion
    Prepare for an even more hellish experience on Twitter than you’ve ever imagined.
    April 25, 2022, 3:07 PM -04

    By Ja’han Jones

    Twitter on Monday agreed to allow Elon Musk, one of the platform’s most notorious trolls, to buy the company.

    Twitter’s board of directors unanimously agreed to Musk’s offer to purchase the social media platform for roughly $44 billion, NBC News reported.

    The announcement followed weeks of reported jostling between Musk and Twitter’s board of directors over whether he should be allowed to take over the company. Some people may have found comfort in recent reports saying Twitter’s board adopted a “poison pill” plan for shareholders that would prevent Musk from doing so. But Monday’s deal suggests Twitter was just holding out for the right price to sell out.

    Make no mistake: Musk’s ownership of the company will likely make the platform into even more of a hellscape. The reasons why are clear to anyone willing to see them.

    Musk has a warped view of free speech that’s not befitting of someone running a social media platform. His sophomoric perception of “free speech” draws from right-wing logic claiming moderation — even moderation of speech that might cause harm — is unjust. For example, he criticized Twitter’s decision to ban former President Donald Trump for posing a risk of inciting further violence after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

    “A good sign as to whether there’s free speech is: Is someone you don’t like allowed to say something you don’t like? And if that is the case, then we have free speech,” Musk said during an interview after he became Twitter’s largest investor this month.

    I saw commentary today that characterises those who do not toe the progressivist line as “nazis.”

    KF

  4. 4
    kairosfocus says:
    April 25, 2022 at 3:06 pm

    F/N: Wikipedia’s admissions on the Reichstag fire incident are worth noting:

    The Reichstag fire (German: Reichstagsbrand, listen (help·info)) was an arson attack on the Reichstag building, home of the German parliament in Berlin, on Monday 27 February 1933, precisely four weeks after Nazi leader Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany. Marinus van der Lubbe, a Dutch “council communist”, was the culprit along with his communist cell, but Hitler saw the fire as part of the wider communist violence. van der Lubbe said he hoped to spark a revolution in Germany, and Hitler argued that communists would seek to overthrow the German government. He induced President Paul von Hindenburg to issue the Reichstag Fire Decree suspending civil liberties and pursued a “ruthless confrontation” with communist groups and rioters.[1] This made the fire pivotal in the establishment of Nazi Germany.

    The first report of the fire came shortly after 9:00 p.m., when a Berlin fire station received an alarm call.[2] By the time police and firefighters arrived, the Chamber of Deputies (the lower house) was engulfed in flames. The police conducted a thorough search inside the building and found Van der Lubbe, who was arrested.

    After the Fire Decree was issued, the Nazi-controlled police made mass arrests of communists, including all of the communist Reichstag delegates. This severely crippled communist participation in the 5 March elections. After the 4 March elections, the absence of the communists gave the Nazi Party a majority in the Reichstag, greatly assisting the Nazi seizure of total power.

    As part of the effort to blame the Fire on the communists, on 9 March the Prussian state police arrested Bulgarians Georgi Dimitrov, Vasil Tanev, and Blagoy Popov, who were known Comintern operatives (though the police did not know it, Dimitrov was head of all Comintern operations in Western Europe). Ernst Torgler, head of the Communist Party, had surrendered himself to police on 28 February.

    They and Van Der Lubbe were the defendants in the Leipzig Trial. All four communists were acquitted. The responsibility for the Reichstag fire remains a topic of debate and research.[3][4] The Nazis accused the Comintern of the act. However, some historians believe, based on archive evidence, that the arson had been planned and ordered by the Nazis as a false flag operation.[5][6] The building remained in its damaged state until it was partially repaired from 1961 to 1964 and completely restored from 1995 to 1999. In 2008, Germany posthumously pardoned Van der Lubbe under a law introduced in 1998 to lift unjust verdicts dating from the Nazi era.

    Lessons from history.

    KF

  5. 5
    kairosfocus says:
    April 25, 2022 at 3:13 pm

    F/N, Holocaust Museum:

    https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-reichstag-fire

    On February 27, 1933, the German parliament (Reichstag) building burned down. The Nazi leadership and its coalition partners used the fire to claim that Communists were planning a violent uprising. They claimed that emergency legislation was needed to prevent this. The resulting act, commonly known as the Reichstag Fire Decree, abolished a number of constitutional protections and paved the way for Nazi dictatorship.

    Key Facts

    Implemented one day after the fire, the decree suspended the right to assembly, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and other constitutional protections, including all restraints on police investigations. It remained in effect until Nazi Germany was defeated in May 1945.

    The decree permitted the regime to arrest and incarcerate political opponents without specific charge, to dissolve political organizations, and to confiscate private property.

    The decree also gave the regime the authority to overrule state and local laws and overthrow state and local governments . . . .

    The Nazi press described the Reichstag fire as the work of the Communists and a signal for their planned uprising. Even the US independent Fox Movie Tones newsreel reflected the German government version. Although the Communists had not, in fact, developed any plans for an uprising, the impact of propaganda and terror on existing fears of a Communist takeover convinced many Germans that Hitler’s decisive action had saved the nation from “Bolshevism.”

    Within months, for example, the Nazi regime destroyed Germany’s previously vigorous free press. By 1941, the Nazi Party’s Eher publishing house had become the largest ever in German history, and its main daily newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter (The National Observer) had reached a circulation of over 1,000,000.

    KF

  6. 6
    polistra says:
    April 25, 2022 at 3:28 pm

    Elon is a full partner in Deepstate, but unlike most rich demons he has occasionally done the right thing. He has a long record of suing people who displease him, but he also protected his factory workers from forced muzzles and vaxes. No other corporate leader had the guts to do that.

    We’ll just have to wait and see which side of Elon takes charge.

  7. 7
    JHolo says:
    April 25, 2022 at 5:15 pm

    Well, full marks for the most WordPress key words In an OP. 14? Relevant? Not so much.

    [–> a clever quip, but not a sound one. See how one liner dismissiveness works? ED]

  8. 8
    News says:
    April 25, 2022 at 5:42 pm

    Favourite Musk: “I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means,” Musk tweeted.

    Say or think what you want about Musk, one of the American founders might have said much the same thing.

  9. 9
    Lieutenant Commander Data says:
    April 25, 2022 at 5:48 pm

    https://twitter.com/grandoldmemes/status/1518602046559113217
    I’ve heard Trump will not return to twitter, will be on TruthSocial .

  10. 10
  11. 11
    kairosfocus says:
    April 25, 2022 at 6:38 pm

    More commentary in reaction to Biden Administration announcements https://twitter.com/townhallcom/status/1518673723322163200

  12. 12
    Seversky says:
    April 25, 2022 at 7:28 pm

    We can hope otherwise but Lord Acton’s warning is still worth bearing in mind:

    Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.

  13. 13
    Seversky says:
    April 25, 2022 at 7:58 pm

    When this takeover is warmly welcomed by the likes of Mark Levin, Ron de Santis, Greg Abbott, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert you can see which way they think the wind is blowing,

    I hope Musk stands by his promise to welcome his critics on Twitter but only time will tell.

    And if Dear Leader Trump is returned to power – as is his right according to those who believe he has been anointed by God to lead the country – and then has himself created President-for-life – which would apparently be enthusiastically supported by many here – then it would be only a matter of time before Twitter becomes the online equivalent of the Volkischer Beobachter.

  14. 14
    JHolo says:
    April 25, 2022 at 8:06 pm

    Ed: [–> a clever quip, but not a sound one. See how one liner dismissiveness works? ED]

    Sorry Ed, I’m not sure you get it. 🙂

  15. 15
    kairosfocus says:
    April 25, 2022 at 8:13 pm

    JH, toxic side track. The recent rise of censorship was of little concern until grip on power was threatened. Had those who cheered on demonisation, scapegoating and targetting of the despised other been instead concerned for responsible freedom, this development would not have been of significant concern. That is what makes the themes you tried to deride highly relevant, KF

    PS, Concerns such as, ” academic freedom agit-prop, opinion manipulation and well-poisoning games Censorship Culture Free Speech Freedom Geo-strategic issues Governance & control vs anarchy Intellectual freedom Lessons of History Media Media Manipulation, Agit-Prop &/or Lawfare Politics/policy and origins issues UD Newswatch highlights “

  16. 16
    kairosfocus says:
    April 25, 2022 at 8:15 pm

    Sev, where were you when the tide of censorship against and demonisation of the despised other was rising? KF

    PS, it seems there is need for a reminder on the Christian theology of the civil magistrate, e.g. first, Rom 13:

    3 For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, 4 for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.

    These show what a legitimate ruler is, as God’s servant; set apart for the defence of the civil peace of justice; of course informed by first principles of law written into our evident, morally governed but morally struggling nature. Justice being due balance of rights, freedoms, duties, where none can properly claim as a right what compels another to do or uphold wrong. However, a magistrate who turns to injustice instead is subject first to correction then at length removal, with many exemplars. The general election is a solemn assembly with power of removal and reform, and corruption of elections is a particularly wicked act. The Reichstag fire incident amply illustrates.

  17. 17
    kairosfocus says:
    April 25, 2022 at 8:57 pm

    F/N, Mr Trump’s response https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/04/25/donald-trump-i-am-not-going-back-to-twitter/

    Donald Trump will not tweet again if Elon Musk restores the former president to Twitter.

    “I am not going on Twitter, I am going to stay on TRUTH. I hope Elon buys Twitter because he’ll make improvements to it and he is a good man, but I am going to be staying on TRUTH,” Trump told Fox News after Musk agreed to purchase Twitter on Monday.

    Trump also noted he will begin actively using TRUTH Social over the next week.

    TRUTH Social was launched last month after it was beta tested in February. The company is operated by former Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), the platform’s CEO.

    “We’re taking in millions of people, and what we’re finding is that the response on TRUTH is much better than being on Twitter,” Trump said. “Twitter has bots and fake accounts, and we are doing everything we can.”

    Twitter permanently blacklisted Trump after January 6, 2021, which the media has dubbed an “insurrection.” Twitter banned Trump because it claimed it did not want to risk the “further incitement of violence.”

    Twitter “became very boring because conservatives were thrown off or got off the platform when I left,” Trump told Fox News. “The bottom line is, no, I am not going back to Twitter.”

    KF

  18. 18
    kairosfocus says:
    April 25, 2022 at 9:09 pm

    F/N: Some research on turnabout, turnspeech projection:

    https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/01461672012711010

    Projection as an Interpersonal Influence Tactic: The Effects of the Pot Calling the Kettle Black
    Derek D. Rucker, Anthony R. Pratkanis
    First Published November 1, 2001 Research Article
    https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672012711010
    Article information
    Article has an altmetric score of 57 No Access
    Abstract

    In his analysis of Nazi propaganda, Ellis Freeman identified an influence tactic based on projection: accusing another person of the negative traits and behaviors that one possesses and exhibits with the goal of deflecting blame away from one’s own misdeeds and toward the accused. Although the use of projection as an influence tactic is not limited to fascist regimes and its consequences can be socially devastating, the projection tactic has not been subjected to experimental analysis. In four experiments, the authors found that projection was effective in (a) increasing the blame placed on the target of the projection and (b) decreasing the culpability of the accuser (or projectionist). These effects occurred despite (a) raising suspicions about the motives of the projectionist, (b) providing evidence that the projectionist is guilty of the deed, and (c) timing the projection so that it occurred after the misdeeds came to light.

    21 years ago.

    KF

  19. 19
    Seversky says:
    April 26, 2022 at 7:30 am

    News/8

    Favourite Musk: “I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means,” Musk tweeted.

    Say or think what you want about Musk, one of the American founders might have said much the same thing.

    Let’s hope he stands by that promise.

    Has there been a similar commitment from TruthSocial?

  20. 20
    jerry says:
    April 26, 2022 at 7:59 am

    Has there been a similar commitment from TruthSocial?

    If they don’t do the same thing, it will fail.

    Including criticism of Trump. People on both sides of the political spectrum get off on ad hominems. But one side is pretty much empty on content that can be justified, similar to here at UD.

  21. 21
    News says:
    April 26, 2022 at 9:35 am

    Just published:

    Muskageddon! Elon Musk, world’s richest man, now owns Twitter

    And wants it to be more of a free speech platform. How will that go?

    https://mindmatters.ai/2022/04/muskageddon-elon-musk-worlds-richest-man-now-owns-twitter/

    It’s almost as if free speech was a brand new idea, like Tesla. Actually, it’s not.

  22. 22
    kairosfocus says:
    April 26, 2022 at 9:59 am

    The Hill nails it:

    https://thehill.com/opinion/3462948-elon-musks-twitter-purchase-brings-free-speech-into-sharp-focus/

    Elementally, there is a meaningful distinction between utterances in the public square — of which Twitter and other social media platforms now form a prominent part — and the journalistic and other developed “content” traditionally delivered by professional media. The internet flattened and democratized access to information, giving rise to independent citizen journalism, and simultaneously expanded the public square. This technological step-change blurred (but did not eliminate) the lines between substantive “content”— the product of investigative journalism, subject matter expertise, relevant personal and professional experience, and the like — and “expression” more broadly defined.

    The ideological fault lines revealed by the contretemps over Musk’s bid for Twitter highlights this confusion. Content moderation can be applied to either expression or content to the extent necessary to eliminate truly inappropriate or offensive material. In contrast with “straight” content moderation, content curation — the process of determining coverage, story selection, editing, fact-checking and the like, and which includes some measure of content moderation — best applies to the professional media output of a publisher, not to posts on a social platform.

    Expression, in contrast with the standards expected of published media, need neither be informed nor even defensible; at its best, expression can serve as a catalyst for published content, informing professional media hypotheses, which are subsequently confirmed or refuted through research and investigation. Suppressing expression not only inhibits speech; it suffocates the “Fourth Estate” by denying it the oxygen necessary to produce output intrinsic to public discourse.

    That trust in media currently sits at all-time lows is a given; various reasons are offered for declining trust in the media. Many believe that journalism has strayed from a “just the facts” approach marked by relatively unbiased inquiry and transformed into something that looks more like advocacy. This colors not only the lens through which news is reported — see the rise of so-called “news analysis” features in major newspapers — but also what is deemed newsworthy. This inverts the practice of journalism into an inductive discipline, whereby reporting output conforms to a narrative, rather than how consumers of media understand (and prefer) it to work: as the result of a deductive, fact-driven empirical inquiry. When media content is seen as predetermined, faith in the profession and its contrivances are compromised. As this same approach has been applied to expression on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter over the past several years, user satisfaction and engagement have suffered. A December 2021 poll by The Washington Post reported that 72 percent of those surveyed distrusted Facebook; a similar poll undertaken by Newsweek in October 2020 revealed that registered U.S. voters distrusted Twitter even more than Facebook.

    Restoring trust in media requires drawing a clear, good-faith distinction between the standards that should apply to expression and media content. Expression is the easier of the two: It should be free, full stop. It’s why we have a First Amendment — and the reason that it is listed first among our enumerated Bill of Rights. This means putting an end to the suspensions, shadow-banning, and other forms of speech suppression — molding content in a manner more appropriate to a publisher — by Twitter and other social media companies. Moderation of genuinely objectionable content should not be controversial; banning The New York Post and The Babylon Bee for material out of favor with progressives most certainly is — or should be. These platforms maintain they are not publishers as described in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act; they can prove it by resisting calls for “content moderation” which seek to suppress expression by conflating curation with the actual moderation of content.

    Resurrecting the traditional respect accorded professional media — and reversing declining standards in content curation — is the greater challenge. There are no halcyon days of appropriately and expertly produced content to which we may return; absent the aforementioned checks and balances of technology-enabled distributed journalism, historically the ability to challenge narratives was limited. The biases of the past may not have been as overt — and a less concentrated media landscape may still have conveyed “all the news fit to print” in the aggregate, albeit across multiple outlets — but they were undoubtedly present.

    Still, even today one would hope a journalistic ethos and level of professional integrity exists capable of delivering the curated content necessary to allow major media outlets to recover such lost respect.

    In reality, only repentance, reformation and reconciliation [sometimes involving restitution for harm done] can restore innocence, and restored innocence is never the same as original purity.

    HT, News.

    KF

    PS, As the media are a key means by which the public learns and understands the business of democratic self government, the betrayal of trust by the media and elites including education institutions is misanthropic and anti civilisational. Hence the constellation of strategic issues in the themes tied to this OP. We are at kairos and it will be critical to see whether Twitter expels Musk and returns to business as usual. His apparent taking private looks like he intends to do major and difficult reforms. We can expect that this former darling of climate change thought and policy will be demonised and attacked without regard to the right of innocent reputation or respect for truth. A pattern we have seen all too much of.

  23. 23
    jerry says:
    April 26, 2022 at 10:21 am

    Jack supports it.

  24. 24
    kairosfocus says:
    April 26, 2022 at 11:16 am

    Jerry, if that is Dorsey who brought in a lot of the censorship and marginalisation, not a good sign. KF

  25. 25
  26. 26
    Belfast says:
    April 26, 2022 at 3:15 pm

    “ looks more like advocacy. ”
    But it’s not?
    cf “only looks like it has been designed.”
    -___
    Good one, LCD.
    Where were they found? In the trunk of a car?

  27. 27
    jerry says:
    April 27, 2022 at 6:43 am

    It’s not just Twitter melting down. LoTT is keeping score. Here’s Amazon having problems.

    https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1519029650294378497

    My theory – intelligence and mental health are not positively correlated and may actually be somewhat negatively correlated. Hence the mentally unstable get jobs in the digital world and that’s what we see in many cases.

    Aside: rumor of massive walkout at Twitter. Did Musk pay $43 billion just to kill it? How soon could it be up and running if such a walkout screwed its operations?

    https://www.projectveritas.com/news/breaking-twitter-insider-leaks-audio-recording-of-companys-internal-all/

  28. 28
    jerry says:
    April 27, 2022 at 7:06 am

    Not the Babylon Bee but could have been

    Canada to build border wall, demand Twitter pay for it

    Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced rthis morning that he will work closely with the Canadian parliament to rush building a wall along the country’s border with the United States to halt the mass immigration to Canada of American leftists, journalists, and celebrities fleeing after today’s sale of Twitter to Elon Musk …

    Asked how much money the project was expected to cost, the prime minister responded, “President Trump campaigned that he would wall off Mexico, three thousand, one hundred kilometers, at a cost of ten billion dollars, so do that math yourself. Not cheap. But don’t worry because I am going to get Twitter to pay for the wall.”

    “How are you going to do that?” asked a reporter.

    “I’ve got a plan,” Prime Minister Trudeau replied. “It’s a great plan, a fantastic plan, really. Best plan ever. Huge ideas about that, huge. You’ll see.”

    https://senseofevents.blogspot.com/2022/04/canada-to-build-border-wall-demand.html

  29. 29
    jerry says:
    April 27, 2022 at 9:08 am

    Trump’s Truth/Social launch – Devon Nunes video a few days ago.

    Before Twitter buyout. Wants Truth/Social to be competitor of Twitter. Instagram and Facebook.

    https://rumble.com/v124t4w-nunes-truth-social-fully-launched-for-iphone-users.html

    Rumble is a competitor to YouTube.

    People should also learn about The Cathedral!

  30. 30
    Seversky says:
    April 27, 2022 at 9:14 am

    Nunes is a Trumpoodle.

  31. 31
    jerry says:
    April 27, 2022 at 10:04 am

    Nunes is a Trumpoodle

    Truth/Social just got the ultimate endorsement.

  32. 32
    kairosfocus says:
    April 28, 2022 at 6:15 am

    F/N: mirror, mirror on the wall, is this confession by projection?

    https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2022/04/27/elizabeth-warren-we-need-big-tech-rules-to-break-elon-musks-stranglehold/

    Melber asked, “You have warned about the growing power of big tech. What do you see in Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter?”

    Warren said, “I see that we need to make two big changes. The first one is we need a wealth tax in America. [–> you have one, and here the effect will predictably be to block inheritance in families, public expropriation of the family, which predictably too will target the middle classes and disincentivise saving and investment; which the wonks pushing this through their face cards full well know . . . why the hatred of families and thrift, savings, investment and building for generations to come? Securing, blessings for posterity . . . ] Let’s talk about how Elon’s purchase here was subsidized by tens of millions of people who have paid their taxes every year. The second part is we need rules of the road for big tech. But ultimately, what all of this boils down to is power. Who’s going to have the power in our country? Are we going to make these decisions as a democracy, or is this going to be Elon Musk all by himself off in a room, a bazillionaire who just plays by his own set of rules, and that’s really what’s at stake here.”

    She added, “We need rules of the road, and look. There are going to be rules. [–> where was the cry for rules from these when censorship was descending on social and other media, while Section 230 was being twisted into pretzels?] Like I said, the only question is will Elon Musk decide all of the rules by himself in a darkroom, or is it going to be the case that we’re going to decide this as a country? We’re going to make rules in a democracy.” [–> who, we? What are the rules behind targetted demonetisation, suppression of search ranking, shadow banning, demonisation and banning on flimsy excuse and reichstag fire incident or red guard tactics?]

    Warren added, “Rules of the road could help facilitate that kind of competition and frankly, break the stranglehold of someone like Elon Musk coming in and owning the whole thing.” [–> and if alleged autocracy is bad, is lawless ideological oligarchy any better?]

    Cognitive dissonance-driven projection can be a useful tool for analysis, especially as an index of self referential absurdity.

    KF

  33. 33
    kairosfocus says:
    April 28, 2022 at 6:41 am

    PS, one of the things incentivised is inflationary policy, which degrades money across time and artificially pushes up value of assets, which then neatly fits with set number thresholds for taxes, which nearly always lag impacts of inflation by years to decades. This has all sorts of what sweet nanny goat mouth run ‘im belly style policies. Stealing from the future creates a false sense of advantage in the present.

  34. 34
    jerry says:
    April 28, 2022 at 7:21 am

    100 Facts Elon Musk-Owned Twitter Should Now Allow People To Say Without Getting Banned

    https://thefederalist.com/2022/04/28/100-facts-elon-musk-owned-twitter-should-now-allow-people-to-say-without-getting-banned/

  35. 35
    kairosfocus says:
    April 29, 2022 at 2:22 am

    H’mm, Jack Dorsey tweets:

    https://twitter.com/jack/status/1510314535671922689?s=20&t=sJ1P0jo2RxQtgYEUf5HvPA

    jack
    @jack
    the days of usenet, irc, the web…even email (w PGP)…were amazing. centralizing discovery and identity into corporations really damaged the internet.

    I realize I’m partially to blame, and regret it.
    1:53 PM · Apr 2, 2022·Twitter Web App
    13.1K
    Retweets
    4,213
    Quote Tweets
    82.1K
    Likes

    More:

    Apr 25
    I love Twitter. Twitter is the closest thing we have to a global consciousness.
    jack??
    @jack
    ·
    Apr 25
    The idea and service is all that matters to me, and I will do whatever it takes to protect both. Twitter as a company has always been my sole issue and my biggest regret. It has been owned by Wall Street and the ad model. Taking it back from Wall Street is the correct first step.
    jack??
    @jack
    ·
    Apr 25
    In principle, I don’t believe anyone should own or run Twitter. It wants to be a public good at a protocol level, not a company. Solving for the problem of it being a company however, Elon is the singular solution I trust. I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness.
    jack??
    @jack
    ·
    Apr 25
    Elon’s goal of creating a platform that is “maximally trusted and broadly inclusive” is the right one. This is also @paraga
    ’s goal, and why I chose him. Thank you both for getting the company out of an impossible situation. This is the right path…I believe it with all my heart.
    jack??
    @jack
    I’m so happy Twitter will continue to serve the public conversation. Around the world, and into the stars!

    Note, he sits on the board that tried a poison pill then backed off as from hints legal actions began to rumble like distant but fast approaching thunder.

    KF

  36. 36
    kairosfocus says:
    April 29, 2022 at 3:06 am

    F/N: J C Wright cites and cleans up Larry Correia — and why isn’t this part of a 24/7 media meltdown expose of insidious censorship:

    https://www.scifiwright.com/2022/04/we-knew-the-game-was-rigged/

    Larry Correia holds forth on recent events of public note, including the recent acquisition of YouTwitFace by Hank Rearden, famous industrialist, and inventor of Rearden Metal.

    He writes, in part (expletives in the original are here deleted.)

    Keep in mind, I’m a relative nobody on there [= Twitter]. I got up to like 12k followers before I bailed out. That’s zilch in the grand scheme of things, but I’ve done enough culture war [snip] that my name usually shows up on the naughty list. In the time I’ve been posting regularly again, that follower count remained remarkably static, only growing by a few hundred people over a year.

    Along comes Elon Musk, everybody is celebrating, having a good time, and I posted about how my feed looked a lot different. I was seeing people I’d not seen for years. (my first thought was that these were people who had been gone but were checking back in because of Elon buying it, but nope, they had been posting there the whole time)

    Then I started getting tweets from followers who are like, whoa, Larry is back on Twitter!

    So I got curious and started asking about this, and then the posts started coming. Dozens of them. Oh yeah, I thought you weren’t on here! I thought you only posted like once a month! I never see you post. So on and so forth. It was remarkably consistent.

    I knew I was throttled, but I had not realized just how bad it was. It was way harder than I thought. [–> this is a bigtime SFF author with a significant fan base]

    Then remember how my follower count had been static for the last year, even though I’d been tweeting a lot? I don’t know the actual numbers because I didn’t think to note them beforehand, but I jumped more that day than I had the prior year. It was like a pathetic growth of 200 for a year, and then 200 more THAT MORNING. I think it’s like 400 today.

    Which makes me wonder how many followers I would actually have if they’d not been hiding my stuff? Facebook does the same thing. My follower count on there grew steadily and rapidly up to around 20k, where it froze and has remained stable for the last few years, which isn’t suspicious at all)

    I’m just a social media blip. Yet meanwhile, all the big mega famous conservative accounts are jumping 5k, 10k, 80k(!) followers that day. While the giant lefty/RINO accounts are mysteriously shrinking by equally gigantic numbers. [–> smoking gun!]

    This was of course blamed on angry leftists leaving in protest, and curious conservatives arriving… Except I don’t buy that. Some yes. All? No way. That’s somebody at Twitter putting their thumb on the scale to make the people with bad politics look weaker, and those with good politics look more popular. [–> former practising accountant]

    Now, people were quick to point out that not enough time has passed for Elon to make changes. Nope. But changes have clearly happened. There is undeniable evidence of that. Which means while Twitter was busy burning evidence of all the things they lied to congress about, they must have flipped the [Expletive Deleted] Conservatives switch to off. The change was so sudden, blatant, and glaring that it was impossible to miss. Free speech had clumsily returned to Twitter.

    Twitter may be a wretched hive of scum and villainy, but it is also a big hive which has been disproportionately persuasive in American culture. Polling shows that Twitter users lean overwhelmingly left (do they really though?) and the most prolific and popular (?) swing super crazy left. The problem then is stupid corporations (Disney, Netflix) look at Twitter, think it represents America, say lets cater to that, and then promptly step on their dicks, because it turns out that’s not what regular normal America wants at all.

    So Elon forcing that thumb off the scale is potentially a huge thing in the culture war. I’ve been enjoying the hell out of all the wailing and gnashing of teeth from leftist blue checks, because they know their ideas are such [snip], the only way they can win is to lie with impunity about their competitors.

    The whole fake follower thing has been hilarious to watch. For example, Super RINO Bill Kristol supposedly has nearly a million followers. I’ve got a measly 13k. Yet when we post stuff, I get a similar amount of interaction (likes, comments, quotes, etc.) Yet he’s got 75 TIMES the actual human followers I do? Uh huh… That’s totally plausible.

    Long time readers will remember Sad Puppies, which in a lot of ways was a proto battle of the Culture Wars. The left used all the same sleazy dishonest tactics then, that are common now. If you’ll recall there was this one “news” website for scifi/fantasy publishing that everybody thought had this gigantic following. For years writers and publishers kissed this scumbag psycho’s fat ass, because they thought he had the power to make or break careers. Until we exposed the fact that 93% of his traffic was from Chinese bots, then poof. He became a meaningless punch line, and it turned out his audience was just a pathetic bunch of irrelevant whiners.

    This is the same sort of thing, only orders of magnitude larger. The tech has evolved, but the grift remains the same. Leftists need everyone to think that their stupid beliefs are far more popular than they are. They have to control the narrative, because their actual platform is [expletive deleted] garbage, which can’t ever stand up to logic or scrutiny.

    [JCW:] No comment of mine is needed. When one knows one is being gaslighted, one knows the lie is a lie. One never knows how big it is.

    In other news completely unrelated and having nothing whatsoever to do with this, the current occupant of the White House established a new division of the Department of Homeland Security called the ‘Disinformation Governance Board’ or Minitru, for short.

    I am not making this up. Nor is George Orwell. It merely sounds like he has. https://timcast.com/news/department-of-homeland-security-forms-disinformation-governance-board/

    Its recalibration time. Including, what has been done to UD as an almost trivial footnote.

    Far bigger, is what is the actual truth about events of 2020 starting with the pandemic and the dumpster fire known as the US Election?

    Will we ever know, short of a certain great white throne of judgement?

    KF

    PS, a sample comment from Correia’s onward linked:

    aivanther
    April 27, 2022 at 11:50 am

    I gave up Twitter when it made clear, for about the 12th time, that it didn’t want libertarian leaning conservatives. It’s nice to hear about the change, but I’m not going back.

    It is weird to me that suddenly Elon Musk is evil. He was the cool guy with electric cars and solar panels, and the left loved him. Then all of sudden he talks about free speech and looks to buy Twitter and he is LITERALLY WORSE THAN HITLER! It was such a weird and sudden change that I’m amazed more people aren’t commenting on the level of crazy “Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia” that represented. Even more entertaining are the hot takes and think pieces about “Oligarchs control social media/public square.” Like, who owns Twitter now? Who owns Facebook? Is a single Billionaire somehow worse than an multinational conglomerate like WarnerMedia Discovery? Who has ALWAYS owned most of the US media (hint: Search William Randolph Hearst for [snip] and giggles). That was small news before, but now it is A BIG DEAL! that a billionaire might own a tech company?

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    kairosfocus says:
    April 29, 2022 at 3:33 am

    PPS, another comment:

    J
    April 27, 2022 at 12:00 pm

    This is all about cleaning up the code base before Elon Open Sources it.

    I think their plan is to make the code and algorithms fair and balanced now, so that when they push it out to open source, they can say “Hey, see, its not biased!!”

    But Elon doesn’t need to just open source the current code, he needs to open source the whole repository and its entire change history!!! If he does that I believe forensic analysis of the code will show STUNNINGLY EVIL manipulation of the code to punish and block conservatives on the platform.

    I would not be surprised if they are trying to wipe out some of those changes from the historical code right now so the evidence can’t be found. But I’ll be really suspicious (so you mean there were ZERO code changes from July 2020 to January 2021??? REALLY?!?!)

    This is part of trying to HIDE THE EVIDENCE!!!

    How much of what has seemingly been going on is a madhouse hall of warped mirrors, Plato’s cave shadow shows, crooked yardsticks decrying what is actually straight and worse?

  38. 38
    jerry says:
    April 29, 2022 at 5:12 am

    Elon Musk does not own Twitter. His offer has been approved by the board.

    Will it happen? Probably but why is the stock trending lower than offer? Seems like a great way to make instant money.

  39. 39
    kairosfocus says:
    April 29, 2022 at 5:48 am

    Jerry, stocks normally fall after an acquisition, likely as such is a radical change with implied jump in risk thus needed risk premium. This is obviously hostile, and that compounds risk. Right now, the astute and insightful, ice water for blood investor is likely thinking the best time to buy is when blood runs in the streets. But that is not the general psychology involved. I am seeing from DM, that a string of conservatives so called have had followerships jump by 1 – 300k, while leading lights of the left have dropped like 10 – 30 k, Musk is the exception and jumped nigh on 3 mill, but he just became a hot property. I don’t think it is really organic, a switch just got flipped. KF

    PS, Take DJT Jr as a stand in. Updated OP. Right now I guess next Republican ticket looks like DJT- De Santis.

  40. 40
  41. 41
    Silver Asiatic says:
    April 29, 2022 at 8:40 am

    In other news completely unrelated and having nothing whatsoever to do with this, the current occupant of the White House established a new division of the Department of Homeland Security called the ‘Disinformation Governance Board …

    So, what people post on social media (or blogs?) will now be prosecuted as matters of “Homeland Security”.

  42. 42
    kairosfocus says:
    April 30, 2022 at 3:58 am

    U/D, Further evidence on Twitter follower trends:

    https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/27/23045005/conservative-twitter-follower-boost-musk-acquisition-data

    Data compiled by The Verge from social media statistics site Social Blade shows that in the two days since the deal was completed, influential conservative accounts have increased their follower counts at roughly ten times the average daily rate for the month leading up to the acquisition.

    Meanwhile, popular liberal accounts have suffered, collectively losing hundreds of thousands of followers on April 25th and 26th after a month of gains.

    They try to argue the deal isn’t complete and management hasn’t changed but seem to have overlooked the flip the switch in the algorithm effect. (Aka, turn on the light and watch the scramble for dark corners . . .)

  43. 43
    Silver Asiatic says:
    May 2, 2022 at 11:02 am

    Opens in select theaters today. The one in my local area is sold out. On-line streaming begins May 7:
    Trailer: https://2000mules.com/

    Looks like some nice investigative work: design detection …

    “2,000 Mules” is a compelling election integrity whodunit. Visually reminiscent of director Tony Scott’s thriller “Enemy of the State,” this film uses state-of-the-art technology to prove that the 2020 presidential election was stained, if not fully stolen, through the lowest-tech means: stuffed ballot boxes.
    https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/04/29/film-2000-mules-offers-vivid-proof-of-voter-fraud/?utm_source=TDS_Email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MorningBell&mkt_tok=ODI0LU1IVC0zMDQAAAGEGMVFADjY6j-ib8YUYuDDAKzGBeAOKLWuCoGSuqA4NM8yeT5R-sbVjQNRmHXQqQAElIp0HdtoaGVGcc4iDAoMwBzdNWWUk3A3H5FkE0Br8kqAnY7s

  44. 44
    jerry says:
    May 2, 2022 at 11:27 am

    Looks like some nice investigative work: design detection

    They will get around some of the investigative techniques in the upcoming up elections. They will instruct everyone to turn off the tracking on their phones. Hard to do but I am sure they know how.

    They immediately went to plastic gloves in Georgia for the senate elections after they saw that finger prints were being taken in Arizona at the drop boxes.

    Apparently is was incredibly well organized and probably paid for by Zuckerberg. What a half billion Zuck bucks can do.

  45. 45
    kairosfocus says:
    May 2, 2022 at 12:10 pm

    We are about to see what 44 Billion Musk bucks can do, looks like.

  46. 46
    jerry says:
    May 2, 2022 at 1:31 pm

    Here is something that Twitter is really good at, publishing individuals who have done hours of work compiling information. This is about the cost to Russia of their invasion of Ukraine.

    So far about $34 billion. They expected it would be $1 billion and over in 3 days.

    Next Monday is the biggest day of year for Russia. It’s their yearly anniversary celebration of the defeat of Germany. They had planned to include their war with Ukraine in the celebration.

    https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1520463608135749634.html

  47. 47
    Lieutenant Commander Data says:
    May 2, 2022 at 3:08 pm

    Here is something that Twitter is really good at, publishing individuals who have done hours of work compiling information.

    🙂 Cnn type of info? It’s called disinfo.
    US increased with 43% import of oil from Russia:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QjFZjt3cF0

  48. 48
    kairosfocus says:
    May 2, 2022 at 5:07 pm

    Jerry, if their spec ops had worked, that may well have been so. KF

  49. 49
    jerry says:
    May 4, 2022 at 7:36 am

    Not Twitter but definitely the spread of information.

    Bill O’Reilly just released his new book, “Killing the Killers.” The opening prologue is about the raid on Osama Bin Laden that killed him.

    If one never heard the details, part of this book is free including most of this prologue. But definitely not all. I am listening to the Audible version as I drive or walk.

    https://www.amazon.com/Killing-Killers-Against-Terrorists-OReillys/dp/1250279259/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1651670914&sr=8-1&asin=1250279259&revisionId=&format=4&depth=1

    O’Reilly’s books are some of the best histories available. I highly recommend “Killing England” which is one of his best.

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