I say let people say whatever they want (outside of harassment, fraud, child pornography, and/or other criminal behavior), create whatever fake accounts they want. If you're so stupid that you sell Eli Lilly stock based on reading a fake twitter account, then you deserve to lose your money. Lilly stock lost $15 billion in market cap and none of those people thought to check the press release section of Lilly's website? If you read a twitter posting from a nobody like me who says that vaccines don't work while the CDC says the vax does work and "stops the spread", well clearly you're not going to take the vaccine regardless of what censorship FB, Twitter, or YouTube enact. As a matter of fact, censoring those messages makes people even more hesitant to take the vax. I'm on Bitchute and Rumble all the time and pretty much anything goes on both of those platforms. I decide what's misinformation for myself and if I'm wrong, that's on me. I don't need fact checking from the platform or from the government. Worse yet, when the fact checking becomes "this is disinformation because government said it was", that' makes people even more wary. FB is down over 70% because they've alienated half of the country with their campaign to censor conservatives, squash covid questioning, and promote mRNA vaccines. That should be a cautionary tale. Musk should allow free speech, even hate speech, even speech that questions vaccines or covid risk, and even speech that lies about Eli Lilly. People aren't that dumb and they'll figure out the truth on their own -- they always do.
In fairness there are still millions of people walking around in face diapers who haven’t bothered to check the definition of aerosol in the past 2 years. 🤷♀️
As I explained to my daughter at the beginning of the WuFlu overreaction, everyone has their own risk-comfort profile....and their own Darwin Award profile.
True. The reason I point to the definition of aerosol is my then barely 6 year old was saying early “how does a mask stop a little virus aerosol when jeans and underwear can’t stop a stinky fart?” I had explained they physically can’t work but the tooting comoarison at school stuck with him more. That was the kids joke at the time (at least the non masked ones in school in person at my kids’ private conservative school). My kids’ STEM teacher even amused them by showing a proportional chart of just how much bigger aerosol fart particles are than aerosol coronavirus particles (he didn’t use the word fart - it’s a private conservative Christian school 😂). I’m still unsure how to answer when they both ask why so many adults are “not smart” when even they realize as little kids that if you’re breathing contaminated air some piece of tissue or cloth does really change that. I adamantly oppose central planning and speech codes and all that, but Covid has taught me people are a lot dumber on average than I would have ever wanted to believe in the past.
I think people are dumb, or just ignorant not really understanding who is delivering pain on them. Democrats gave us a bad economy, a senile nasty president, a war, child mutilation and abortion to birth deaths, and the voters approved. CA is a dump and Gavin gets re-elected. Now the second biggest donor, Sam, who pretends to care about humans by insisting getting super rich is the way to help, has run off with client’s money.
Elon is in over his skis because trying to placate anybody today is impossible. We are coming apart at the seams. Sam has been lauded as the second coming by the brightest and best democrats in the country. Seriously the endless articles about how amazing this Sam is is enough to make a person puke. People say Trump voters are cult like? Really the many Sam followers love him way more than any Trump voter loves Trump.
Speaking of Trump, he told Elon he paid way too much for Twitter. Just saying…..
Would we really be any smarter to nominate Trump? It’s a serious question that I’ve been reflecting on and I’ve come to realize a 3rd Trump run is a terrible idea, and him running has a real possibility of destroying both his legacy and our future. Here are my reasons/ concerns:
1 - Trump is toxic to much of the country. That’s a reality wether it’s smart or not. He is not likely to win. His nomination wouldn’t even force a competent Democrat opponent to lose. If the midterms taught us anything, it’s that electability matters - for Republicans. Being unfair doesn’t change reality. With many more electable options to carry on the movement without Trump’s personal toxic drawbacks, isn’t it better for the country to choose the most electable candidate? Wouldn’t that be better for Trump’s legacy too?
2 - I know a lot of moms who hate Trump but Covid opened their eyes to wider corruption. These women (and their husbands) would passionately support DeSantis, but not Trump. They get Trump was mislead, they get a lot of the hysteria was aimed at ending Trump. They also get, rightly I think, that Trump is and was still accountable for his own decision to lockdown, keep Fauci, then show weakness by not using his bully pulpit to reopen the country and instead pass it off to the states - something he didn’t do in a material way when he shut it down. The ideological arguments have zero impact on reality.
The damage to kids is real and not being remotely acknowledged to its full extent by either party. DeSantis took the time to learn and stood firm for kids and people. He hired actual experts and fired fear mongers. Trump didn’t. Trump still refuses to accept or apologize for his own serious missteps with Covid. The governors of CO and FL won by the widest margins and they were both the best governors for their party on Covid - including communicating messages of freedom based in reality not ideology.
These people might not vote for Biden, but they will never vote for Trump. They hold Trump responsible too, and they are not wrong. They think, perhaps correctly, he’s too narcissistic to be a real leader and they won’t vote for anyone screwing kids because for them the outcome of both Trump and Biden was a disaster. While I fear the ideological crap with Biden, overall I find myself increasingly agreeing.
3 - If Trump really cared about the country he wouldn’t be slinging mud at Youngkin or DeSantis. They are both good leaders with conservative values, proven records, and approval ratings much higher than his own. They are capable of ensuring MAGA policies and the movement outlive Trump.
4 - I owe Trump to fight like hell to ensure he doesn’t rot away in some prison cell wrongly convicted by a corrupt 4th branch of government. I do not owe him such loyalty as to sacrifice my children’s future, my country, or my freedoms because Trump has some overblown sense of entitlement to another term as president. We can’t undo the 2020 election and failure to acknowledge that will only lead to more misery. It happened. It sucks. But it’s done. The biggest problem facing this country is people being detached from reality and the reality is Trump would do far more good for the country from the sidelines than at the top of the ticket. No person cares about a movement when they are prepared to burn it down simply because it might outlive them or move beyond them personally.
Very recently I thought Trump was the best choice because he’s motivated to end corruption in DC with all the attacks directed at him. I have reconsidered. He’s so obsessed with his own slights he refuses to see the forest for the trees. He cannot acknowledge mistakes. He doesn’t have any interest in his movement outliving him and he’s old. He may hand the Democrats another victory by either a general election loss, a 3rd party split ticket, or convincing his most loyal supporters to sit on their butts Election Day if he’s not the so whomever the nominee is looses. Those are signs of a narcissist, not a leader.
We can disagree with Alex but the people thinking like him have made their position clear. You don’t need to pay for his Substack but we ignore his words at our own peril.
Consider what happened after Wilson...... Lenin, Hitler, WW II, and birth of the US administrative state. The risk of repeating disaster is one I am unwilling to take because it’s stupid when there are better alternatives. Remember - “You can claim you didn’t know but you can never claim that you were not told.”
Alex may find Trump repugnant but you vote for the policies not the man. Maybe Alex liked being censored and quarantined by the Democrats. Maybe he still has the New York Times mentality and hypocrisy. I will be unsubscribing
You have made some super thoughtful points and I appreciate it. I am deeply torn. On the one hand, the GOPe and the swamp rats will naturally hate and reject anyone who challenges their entrenched power. The more they hate the greater the risk presented by that person.
So they hate Trump for a good reason: he is the greatest risk.
I hate that we have allowed the best fighters like Donald Trump and Sarah Palin, for example, to be taken down by the absolute worst people.
On the other hand, Ron DeSantis is much more strategic than President Trump. He is a humble man who is not at the mercy of his pride. I will be forever indebted to President TRump, the best president of my lifetime; the man who stood on the frontlines for my sake, but this is not about him anymore. It is about our country. And I have to ask who is better positioned to defend our country from democrats?That is something I will have to work out in my mind.
As far as Alex's comments about Trump. What a disappointment. I lost respect for him when I read his comments about TRump. While Alex has exceptional skills of discernment in some areas he is BLIND in others. Anyone who does not see that democrats are the enemy of America and could vote for a democrat has a shocking blind spot. I say this as a lifelong former democrat.
On electability of candidates. Blake Masters, AZ successful businessman, Dr. Oz, PA, brilliant heart surgeon, Laxalt, NV former AG, Bolduc, NH, military retired Brigadier General. These are 4 Republican candidates who are very qualified. They were running for Senate, could have won 4 seats and given Republicans the majority. Why did they lose? It wasn't because of their "low quality" as McConnell said. McConnell pulled funding from all of them. He put massive amounts of money into the AK race where, Murkowski, the incumbent, is running against a fellow Republican. Mitch wanted to stay in power as Minority Leader. He would only support candidates who were sure to vote fore him in the Minority Leadership race. To sum it up, McConnell would rather be in control of Republicans in the Senate than have a Republican majority that he would most likely not be leader of. Think about it. He chose his own power over the promises he made to his constituents. As far as Biden is concerned, he clearly has dementia. Anyone who would still vote for him after the damage he has caused in less than 2 years must have dementia also. We lost our rights. People lost their livelihoods and children lost almost 2 years of education. I would never vote to go back to that, never!
I don’t disagree. Some candidates that list were very good. I still think electability matters for Republicans (not so much for Democrats). McConnell and Trump pulled funding from them. Trump used their names to fundraiser then pulled the plug so he could sit on almost $100million for himself. McConnell was far more concerned about himself than the party, the country, or anything else. Fixing the mess we are in is going to take time. It’s also going to take a willingness to accept progress over unattainable ideals and the clearheadedness to accept doing that will have to occur, at least at first, under the voting system we actually have.
I agree with your conclusion on voting for Biden, but I thinks it’s important to recognize there is a material group out there with similar conclusions to Alex’s and they actually vote. We ignore their perspectives at our own peril. They aren’t saying no to populist Republican policies - they are saying they don’t want Trump to be the person to implement them. We can disagree all day, but unless we convince them to change their minds, which we haven’t despite the 💩 show we are living in, we’d be wise to listen to, and consider, their perspectives.
Conservatives in NV and AZ sat on their butts rather than voting. I’m not sure about turnout in PA, but the outside Philly landslide necessary to oust Dems in PA is enormous, and a huge number of people directly negatively affected by the harm these far left policies are causing sat at home. They didn’t vote. The fact that it sucks doesn’t change it is what it is.
I tell my kids all the time that complaining about a problem without offering a solution is called whining. It makes us feel better, but accomplishes nothing. I try to live by my own advice to my kids. There are many solutions to the never-Trump people and while they all involve someone not named Trump they are all competent proven leaders who can do the job and give us the possibility of real sustainable progress. I will take that over another election loss, an angry country, and watching my kids lose more freedoms any day.
I don't disagree with you about Trump. He is not the be all end all. He's controversial and many people still believe that he was working with Putin. even after it was proved false. Ron DeSantis is a great guy who works for his constituents not himself. He is a loving family man who has only been married once. He made FL a success. He actually fixed voting. He did not allow mail-in ballots. That was a main factor in his 20 point win. Other Republican governors, not so much. I would happily vote for DeSantis. I realize however, that Dems will treat DeSantis the same way they treated Trump and Republicans before him. It won't be a cake walk. I can't understand how anyone could even consider voting Democrat though. It boggles my mind.
Maybe DeSantis is Neo and Trump is Morpheus who is destined to find The One and pass the torch, but actively helping the side that wants everyone in a pod is just not helpful
It doesn't makes sense to me. Alex suffered under Democrats. They took away his livelihood. They censored him. Even if Biden doesn't run, another Dem will support the same type of policies. Biden took the midterm results as a sign he has a mandate, he's going to run again. Then we can look forward to the Disinformation agency with Scary Poppins as the leader. Does Alex not realize that Dems don't want information that is counter to their narrative to be public??
I do have children and I am very very worried. While I appreciate Trump for his first 3 years, he can’t win, and by staying in the race he’s dramatically increasing the odds of crazy Dems winning in 2024 - wether he gets the R nomination or not. While I think 2020 was stolen, I don’t think Trump would have won in any landslide in a completely clean election. Philly is always corrupt bs voting. There are only so many nursing home residents in Wisconsin or duplicate voters in AZ or fraud from a nonexistent pipe burst in GA. I have poll watched over 30 hours in 2020 and 2022. I don’t think the fraud changes the majority of people think Trump is toxic - right or wrong.
For both parties they should be looking at outcomes in CO and FL. Pragmatic, competent, and charismatic leaders who don’t hate kids. It’s not that hard, yet emotions are going to drive bad candidates like Trump and Newsome, which is so frustrating because the terrible outcomes are predictable and avoidable and the result of self owns.
“Crazy Dems” have cheated. And they cheated BIG! Trump did win in a landslide, even in my state of Commifornia. The only toxic thing I see are senseless wars being started and American taxes being laundered to Democrats through foreign countries.
And I wouldn’t think of putting Trump and Newsom in the same category. Not even close.
I despise both parties, but I will “vote” for my best interest and because it’s my right.
"As a matter of fact, censoring those messages makes people even more hesitant to take the vax."
AGREE. I am my own "fact checker" and don't relegate my thinking to others.
I had a positive feeling [but was keeping an open mind] about the vaccine until I started seeing the censorship coupled with the mindless chants "STOP THE SPREAD, STOP THE SPREAD" being parroted by our dumber citizens. Then I knew something was very wrong and decided to wait. I am glad I did since the vaccines do not work.
Our free speech protections are in place for the purpose of protecting speech we don't like. Speech we like doesn't need protection.
Individual responsibility is dead but people will still figure out the truth on their own. Whether the misinformation comes from me or from CNN, MSNBC, or the CDC is irrelevant. It's better for twitter to allow the information to come at people from all sorts of directions and let people decide what truth they want to believe. It's just futile for Google/FB/Twitter to try to direct people to the "correct" information.
Alex-I applaud your efforts to figure it out. But you should just stop wasting your time.
Twitter is an NSA/DOD surveillance and opinion shaping platform. Always has been. Always will be. Musk is the DODs largest outside contractor. The economic scale is unsustainable without deep pockets paying for the massive amount of server power and network capability needed to instantaneously and simultaneously deliver a tweet to 100 million users.
There is literally only one entity in the world with the resources and technology to do that.
Your taxes pay for that. Just like your taxes funded the Ukraine “war” and then much of that funding made its way back into the pockets of UniParty members.
Give up on the Twitter thing and look into something that might be useful.
I’m betting he’s in a CIA safe house halfway around the world. As I wrote elsewhere, it’s unsurprising FTX imploded on Election Day. Their work in laundering taxpayer money through Ukraine and returning it to UniParty politicians, thereby assisting the steal, along with setting the platform for the coming massive regulation (and destruction) of the Crypto industry was finished.
FTX hands are also all over the Covid Psyop. The 40 million dollar study by Unitaid the ‘debunked’ Ivermectin early in mid 2020 was co-funded by Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust and, wait for it, FTX.
To GLKs excellent point. We will likely never know the entire truth, or anything close to it. But as more facts come out, and for me there are already enough, those of us with even a hint of critical thinking skills and a non partisan view will conclude the entire thing was just another taxpayer (and in this case also an investor) fleecing psyop designed to get people to accept things that otherwise they would not, to wit, stolen election, Crypto regulation, etc.
Classic Hegelian Dialectic. Or Cloward-Piven. Or both.
Great reminder. I have a small amount of BTC (less than 1% of TP) and an even smaller amount of ETH. I’m still a skeptic but not a total skeptic. What I’m really hoping to see is (1) a complete decoupling of BTC from Nasdaq and (2) a drop below 14k. At that point I’ll load up a wheelbarrow. And if it drops below 10k I’m backing up the truck.
The only correction I would make is that it is not our taxes that fund these things. It is the printer at the Federal Reserve that creates fiat dollars out of thin air.
It’s an interesting question. I don’t know. What I do know, based on my own knowledge and skill set, is that the 5 billion in revenue Twitter garners is not enough to support the employee base and the vast amount of technology required to run the platform. Therefore, I conclude that ‘someone else’ is paying for it. Deductive reasoning (based on the unworkable financial model, the censorship, and the sophisticated bot farming designed to control the narrative) tells me that the US govt is heavily involved.
If you think about it logically, the Twitter model of using bots to ‘flood the zone’ to get people to adopt a narrative they otherwise would not, and the use of ballot harvesting and mail in ballots to flood the zone during elections to get a candidate elected who otherwise could not win, are essentially the same thing.
Bad actors are behind both strategies. People can draw their own conclusions as to who is behind the curtain.
Agree - he had to buy it even though he realized he way overpaid. I think the initial motive was genuine. His companies were being hamstrung with widespread lies about a not very dangerous virus and those pointing out actual data were being silenced.
I also disagree with Alex’s assessment of charging users. When 90% of revenue comes from advertisers then the advertisers, controlled by a cabal of far left wing activists, call the shots because they are the actual customers. When users pay, they are the customers. It’s why Substack could withstand the demands for censorship despite being a tiny start-up at the beginning of Covid.
Unless Must doesn’t care if the world turns into a woke hell hole, the current model doesn’t work and can’t work. No amount of criticism changes that reality.
The math also works for user fees. Say 20% pay the subscription fee in the long run. That’s 80million users x $8/month = $640million/ month or $7.68billion per year - a huge increase in revenue with little threat of a band of left wing activists convincing a few key advertisering consulting firms to bankrupt the company because it allows such objective facts as “men cannot give birth” to be freely stated.
Ultimately I think Musk wants a populist approach. Most people can tolerate the vast middle where meaningful debate happens. He can’t find $25million a month indefinitely. He needs a less volatile revenue stream to really change the speech codes.
Well he wasn't actually going to pay that until the lawsuit. Once he publicized his findings, the stock price dropped rapidly. That's what the lawsuit was all about. At some point it became easier to just pay it and take over, since the board could no longer object to the original bid.
Yes, and EU and Germany in particular recently expanded and tightened their constraints on free speech. Not every country, however “democratic“, shares the US constitutional commitment to free speech.
I don't think Elon Musk's ownership has been disappointing at all. The entertainment value alone has been priceless. It's entirely possible that he bought Twitter just to have fun watching the sanctimonious Twitter twits erupt.
i'm not sure we would have learned all the weird details about paul pelosi's underwear hammer fight under the old algo suppression
i don't think we would be this close to the truth about FTX either
we are seeing a bit more of the veil being pulled back & it's already pretty crazy
elon is doing all this under threat from the government about national security which reminded me of an old quote from ben franklin "if joe biden declares this man an enemy, invite him into your home & give him food and shelter."
Just as in Covid, we used common sense, to sense something wasn’t as it appeared, we should do the same now. Musk has ties to China et all, and the World Economic Forum. He is a fan a tech and human “creation”. Investigate, question, continually. As long as we can.
He wants Twitter to be a successful business. He saw it as a wasted opportunity given the potential as a true free town square. I think he is correct. I am betting on him.
Yoel Roth was the leader of Twitter's Site Integrity team ahead of the 2020 presidential election. This in my opinion the best thing he has done for the American people. This Person was influenced by our own government leaders to silence everyone who they didn't like and the Legacy media to the bait from Twitter and Ran with it. Example look what happened to the Trump the media shut him on all Major cable news networks. This guy was behind banning everyone in America 🇺🇸 who was Factual right and only a few was right and we now who he is ! The second thing that I like about Elon Musk is that he Loves his mother that too me is very important.
It’s been a few weeks. $25 million a month, every month, is a lot of money. He’s trying to set up a better revenue stream that makes the users the customers, rather than advertisers who are the real customers under the current model. Elon Musk is a human and things take time. I’m not ready to start questioning his motives. I don’t see any evidence he’s got a filter, much less some master plan to be smeared and harassed by the regime only to secretly be working for them.
He's one of 'them' who's had some disagreements with the gatekeepers of the The Current Conformity, and is rich enough to tell them where to stick it when they threatened him.
“ I support free speech and debate. I believe anyone can be a journalist. I believe honest speech will defeat lies and hatred will eventually die of its own ugliness if we let it expose itself. I believe government or private efforts at censorship are counterproductive. I want Twitter to be the world’s town square - and open to all.”
RE your stated second reason on account verification, you want to continue limiting verification to the large elite accounts, so the "important" people can volley comments back and forth without getting bogged down in the thoughts of all the "little people". How very elite. We need to know our place in the tech caste system, read the elite's thoughts and we are to get lost in the muddle because we have nothing intelligent to add?
Alex, I think you fail to appreciate Elon cannot truly have free speech at Twitter if it remains solely reliant upon advertising revenue model alone. The Twitter speech issues are grounded in the power of a relatively few big advertisers with outsized influence over the revenue stream. Twitter is not a must have advertiser for big brands relative to Google, Meta, etc. Small advertisers do not keep the lights on if you are advertising based trying to run a large-scale technology franchise. Twitter is highly unlikely to ever become even close to more important than Google to advertisers, so Twitter is and will always basically getting the advertiser market scraps. Twitter business success will be capped by Google and Meta is the reality. Therefore, Elon knows the ideal solution is a sustainable subscription revenue model (ie. Blue). Add the rapid growth opportunity of payment provider income from transactions and freedom from advertising dollars from the big guys driving your speech problems begin to disipate. Both of these two revenue models are far more sustainable than an advertising model reliant on big brand advertisers for Twitter. Twitter has to make a change to support additional business models or the business does not make sense.
First, my inflexible stance regarding Freedom of Speech. I'm a retired Political Scientist. Two years before I retired -- a few decades ago -- the president of my university created a committee of 7 faculty and assigned them the task of establishing limits for speech on campus. The committee drew up 10 pages of described situations and accompanying questions and sent to all the faculty. E.g., "a student says (X) to a professor. Rate his statement as completely acceptable or not at all acceptable on a 1 to 5 scale." Other situations and questions dealt with hypothetical faculty-to-student, faculty-to-faculty, and student-to-student exchanges. Rather than respond to the questionnaire, I wrote the committee a letter saying I was against ANY suppression of speech ANYWHERE, particularly at an academic institution; that if one of my students wanted to make a speech on the campus commons arguing I should be shot immediately, he would have my full support; though I would pay close attention to how many members of the audience applauded. My position has not changed one iota.
That said, why not have Twitter create various categories for posts? E.g. "Reasoned Analysis and Argument"; "Unsubstantiated Opinion"; "Insult"; "Hate", "Exploitation and Threat."
Interesting questions, Alex. Yes, this is a new kind of venture for Musk but his successes make me want to give him a chance. My guess is that the opposition within the company have been so vicious that he felt the gentle, step-by-step approach was not going to work. Asking employees to come into the office and no more free lunches were abrupt but realistic changes. He needs employees who want to work in a very new environment. I wish him the best.
I say let people say whatever they want (outside of harassment, fraud, child pornography, and/or other criminal behavior), create whatever fake accounts they want. If you're so stupid that you sell Eli Lilly stock based on reading a fake twitter account, then you deserve to lose your money. Lilly stock lost $15 billion in market cap and none of those people thought to check the press release section of Lilly's website? If you read a twitter posting from a nobody like me who says that vaccines don't work while the CDC says the vax does work and "stops the spread", well clearly you're not going to take the vaccine regardless of what censorship FB, Twitter, or YouTube enact. As a matter of fact, censoring those messages makes people even more hesitant to take the vax. I'm on Bitchute and Rumble all the time and pretty much anything goes on both of those platforms. I decide what's misinformation for myself and if I'm wrong, that's on me. I don't need fact checking from the platform or from the government. Worse yet, when the fact checking becomes "this is disinformation because government said it was", that' makes people even more wary. FB is down over 70% because they've alienated half of the country with their campaign to censor conservatives, squash covid questioning, and promote mRNA vaccines. That should be a cautionary tale. Musk should allow free speech, even hate speech, even speech that questions vaccines or covid risk, and even speech that lies about Eli Lilly. People aren't that dumb and they'll figure out the truth on their own -- they always do.
In fairness there are still millions of people walking around in face diapers who haven’t bothered to check the definition of aerosol in the past 2 years. 🤷♀️
As I explained to my daughter at the beginning of the WuFlu overreaction, everyone has their own risk-comfort profile....and their own Darwin Award profile.
True. The reason I point to the definition of aerosol is my then barely 6 year old was saying early “how does a mask stop a little virus aerosol when jeans and underwear can’t stop a stinky fart?” I had explained they physically can’t work but the tooting comoarison at school stuck with him more. That was the kids joke at the time (at least the non masked ones in school in person at my kids’ private conservative school). My kids’ STEM teacher even amused them by showing a proportional chart of just how much bigger aerosol fart particles are than aerosol coronavirus particles (he didn’t use the word fart - it’s a private conservative Christian school 😂). I’m still unsure how to answer when they both ask why so many adults are “not smart” when even they realize as little kids that if you’re breathing contaminated air some piece of tissue or cloth does really change that. I adamantly oppose central planning and speech codes and all that, but Covid has taught me people are a lot dumber on average than I would have ever wanted to believe in the past.
I think people are dumb, or just ignorant not really understanding who is delivering pain on them. Democrats gave us a bad economy, a senile nasty president, a war, child mutilation and abortion to birth deaths, and the voters approved. CA is a dump and Gavin gets re-elected. Now the second biggest donor, Sam, who pretends to care about humans by insisting getting super rich is the way to help, has run off with client’s money.
Elon is in over his skis because trying to placate anybody today is impossible. We are coming apart at the seams. Sam has been lauded as the second coming by the brightest and best democrats in the country. Seriously the endless articles about how amazing this Sam is is enough to make a person puke. People say Trump voters are cult like? Really the many Sam followers love him way more than any Trump voter loves Trump.
Speaking of Trump, he told Elon he paid way too much for Twitter. Just saying…..
Alex just announced he is voting for Biden and I might take a break from this site.
https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1592862524189220865?t=Mj1WQeD9o9aVrBelJ8aVyQ&s=35
Would we really be any smarter to nominate Trump? It’s a serious question that I’ve been reflecting on and I’ve come to realize a 3rd Trump run is a terrible idea, and him running has a real possibility of destroying both his legacy and our future. Here are my reasons/ concerns:
1 - Trump is toxic to much of the country. That’s a reality wether it’s smart or not. He is not likely to win. His nomination wouldn’t even force a competent Democrat opponent to lose. If the midterms taught us anything, it’s that electability matters - for Republicans. Being unfair doesn’t change reality. With many more electable options to carry on the movement without Trump’s personal toxic drawbacks, isn’t it better for the country to choose the most electable candidate? Wouldn’t that be better for Trump’s legacy too?
2 - I know a lot of moms who hate Trump but Covid opened their eyes to wider corruption. These women (and their husbands) would passionately support DeSantis, but not Trump. They get Trump was mislead, they get a lot of the hysteria was aimed at ending Trump. They also get, rightly I think, that Trump is and was still accountable for his own decision to lockdown, keep Fauci, then show weakness by not using his bully pulpit to reopen the country and instead pass it off to the states - something he didn’t do in a material way when he shut it down. The ideological arguments have zero impact on reality.
The damage to kids is real and not being remotely acknowledged to its full extent by either party. DeSantis took the time to learn and stood firm for kids and people. He hired actual experts and fired fear mongers. Trump didn’t. Trump still refuses to accept or apologize for his own serious missteps with Covid. The governors of CO and FL won by the widest margins and they were both the best governors for their party on Covid - including communicating messages of freedom based in reality not ideology.
These people might not vote for Biden, but they will never vote for Trump. They hold Trump responsible too, and they are not wrong. They think, perhaps correctly, he’s too narcissistic to be a real leader and they won’t vote for anyone screwing kids because for them the outcome of both Trump and Biden was a disaster. While I fear the ideological crap with Biden, overall I find myself increasingly agreeing.
3 - If Trump really cared about the country he wouldn’t be slinging mud at Youngkin or DeSantis. They are both good leaders with conservative values, proven records, and approval ratings much higher than his own. They are capable of ensuring MAGA policies and the movement outlive Trump.
4 - I owe Trump to fight like hell to ensure he doesn’t rot away in some prison cell wrongly convicted by a corrupt 4th branch of government. I do not owe him such loyalty as to sacrifice my children’s future, my country, or my freedoms because Trump has some overblown sense of entitlement to another term as president. We can’t undo the 2020 election and failure to acknowledge that will only lead to more misery. It happened. It sucks. But it’s done. The biggest problem facing this country is people being detached from reality and the reality is Trump would do far more good for the country from the sidelines than at the top of the ticket. No person cares about a movement when they are prepared to burn it down simply because it might outlive them or move beyond them personally.
Very recently I thought Trump was the best choice because he’s motivated to end corruption in DC with all the attacks directed at him. I have reconsidered. He’s so obsessed with his own slights he refuses to see the forest for the trees. He cannot acknowledge mistakes. He doesn’t have any interest in his movement outliving him and he’s old. He may hand the Democrats another victory by either a general election loss, a 3rd party split ticket, or convincing his most loyal supporters to sit on their butts Election Day if he’s not the so whomever the nominee is looses. Those are signs of a narcissist, not a leader.
We can disagree with Alex but the people thinking like him have made their position clear. You don’t need to pay for his Substack but we ignore his words at our own peril.
Consider what happened after Wilson...... Lenin, Hitler, WW II, and birth of the US administrative state. The risk of repeating disaster is one I am unwilling to take because it’s stupid when there are better alternatives. Remember - “You can claim you didn’t know but you can never claim that you were not told.”
Alex may find Trump repugnant but you vote for the policies not the man. Maybe Alex liked being censored and quarantined by the Democrats. Maybe he still has the New York Times mentality and hypocrisy. I will be unsubscribing
You have made some super thoughtful points and I appreciate it. I am deeply torn. On the one hand, the GOPe and the swamp rats will naturally hate and reject anyone who challenges their entrenched power. The more they hate the greater the risk presented by that person.
So they hate Trump for a good reason: he is the greatest risk.
I hate that we have allowed the best fighters like Donald Trump and Sarah Palin, for example, to be taken down by the absolute worst people.
On the other hand, Ron DeSantis is much more strategic than President Trump. He is a humble man who is not at the mercy of his pride. I will be forever indebted to President TRump, the best president of my lifetime; the man who stood on the frontlines for my sake, but this is not about him anymore. It is about our country. And I have to ask who is better positioned to defend our country from democrats?That is something I will have to work out in my mind.
As far as Alex's comments about Trump. What a disappointment. I lost respect for him when I read his comments about TRump. While Alex has exceptional skills of discernment in some areas he is BLIND in others. Anyone who does not see that democrats are the enemy of America and could vote for a democrat has a shocking blind spot. I say this as a lifelong former democrat.
On electability of candidates. Blake Masters, AZ successful businessman, Dr. Oz, PA, brilliant heart surgeon, Laxalt, NV former AG, Bolduc, NH, military retired Brigadier General. These are 4 Republican candidates who are very qualified. They were running for Senate, could have won 4 seats and given Republicans the majority. Why did they lose? It wasn't because of their "low quality" as McConnell said. McConnell pulled funding from all of them. He put massive amounts of money into the AK race where, Murkowski, the incumbent, is running against a fellow Republican. Mitch wanted to stay in power as Minority Leader. He would only support candidates who were sure to vote fore him in the Minority Leadership race. To sum it up, McConnell would rather be in control of Republicans in the Senate than have a Republican majority that he would most likely not be leader of. Think about it. He chose his own power over the promises he made to his constituents. As far as Biden is concerned, he clearly has dementia. Anyone who would still vote for him after the damage he has caused in less than 2 years must have dementia also. We lost our rights. People lost their livelihoods and children lost almost 2 years of education. I would never vote to go back to that, never!
I don’t disagree. Some candidates that list were very good. I still think electability matters for Republicans (not so much for Democrats). McConnell and Trump pulled funding from them. Trump used their names to fundraiser then pulled the plug so he could sit on almost $100million for himself. McConnell was far more concerned about himself than the party, the country, or anything else. Fixing the mess we are in is going to take time. It’s also going to take a willingness to accept progress over unattainable ideals and the clearheadedness to accept doing that will have to occur, at least at first, under the voting system we actually have.
I agree with your conclusion on voting for Biden, but I thinks it’s important to recognize there is a material group out there with similar conclusions to Alex’s and they actually vote. We ignore their perspectives at our own peril. They aren’t saying no to populist Republican policies - they are saying they don’t want Trump to be the person to implement them. We can disagree all day, but unless we convince them to change their minds, which we haven’t despite the 💩 show we are living in, we’d be wise to listen to, and consider, their perspectives.
Conservatives in NV and AZ sat on their butts rather than voting. I’m not sure about turnout in PA, but the outside Philly landslide necessary to oust Dems in PA is enormous, and a huge number of people directly negatively affected by the harm these far left policies are causing sat at home. They didn’t vote. The fact that it sucks doesn’t change it is what it is.
I tell my kids all the time that complaining about a problem without offering a solution is called whining. It makes us feel better, but accomplishes nothing. I try to live by my own advice to my kids. There are many solutions to the never-Trump people and while they all involve someone not named Trump they are all competent proven leaders who can do the job and give us the possibility of real sustainable progress. I will take that over another election loss, an angry country, and watching my kids lose more freedoms any day.
I don't disagree with you about Trump. He is not the be all end all. He's controversial and many people still believe that he was working with Putin. even after it was proved false. Ron DeSantis is a great guy who works for his constituents not himself. He is a loving family man who has only been married once. He made FL a success. He actually fixed voting. He did not allow mail-in ballots. That was a main factor in his 20 point win. Other Republican governors, not so much. I would happily vote for DeSantis. I realize however, that Dems will treat DeSantis the same way they treated Trump and Republicans before him. It won't be a cake walk. I can't understand how anyone could even consider voting Democrat though. It boggles my mind.
Alex voting for Biden is basically like when Cypher from the Matrix joined Agent Smith and took the blue pill
Maybe DeSantis is Neo and Trump is Morpheus who is destined to find The One and pass the torch, but actively helping the side that wants everyone in a pod is just not helpful
Also Kari Lake is Trinity
To be fair, he said he would vote Democrat. There was nothing said about Biden.
I seem to remember he said "I plan to vote for Biden or another pedophile to be named later by the Democrats", but maybe that was just implied
No he just any ass. Biden, Fetterman, anyone of them.
yeah that tweet is really bad. To state he will vote for any Democrat is so foolish. I can't support someone who thinks like that. Unsubscribing
It doesn't makes sense to me. Alex suffered under Democrats. They took away his livelihood. They censored him. Even if Biden doesn't run, another Dem will support the same type of policies. Biden took the midterm results as a sign he has a mandate, he's going to run again. Then we can look forward to the Disinformation agency with Scary Poppins as the leader. Does Alex not realize that Dems don't want information that is counter to their narrative to be public??
Well now you can caste your vote for Trump in 2024! Lol!
See I do not like either party. 31 trillion came from both parties.
Me neither! BUT, the USA is in a free fall right now. If I had children, I’d be VERY worried.
I do have children and I am very very worried. While I appreciate Trump for his first 3 years, he can’t win, and by staying in the race he’s dramatically increasing the odds of crazy Dems winning in 2024 - wether he gets the R nomination or not. While I think 2020 was stolen, I don’t think Trump would have won in any landslide in a completely clean election. Philly is always corrupt bs voting. There are only so many nursing home residents in Wisconsin or duplicate voters in AZ or fraud from a nonexistent pipe burst in GA. I have poll watched over 30 hours in 2020 and 2022. I don’t think the fraud changes the majority of people think Trump is toxic - right or wrong.
For both parties they should be looking at outcomes in CO and FL. Pragmatic, competent, and charismatic leaders who don’t hate kids. It’s not that hard, yet emotions are going to drive bad candidates like Trump and Newsome, which is so frustrating because the terrible outcomes are predictable and avoidable and the result of self owns.
“Crazy Dems” have cheated. And they cheated BIG! Trump did win in a landslide, even in my state of Commifornia. The only toxic thing I see are senseless wars being started and American taxes being laundered to Democrats through foreign countries.
And I wouldn’t think of putting Trump and Newsom in the same category. Not even close.
I despise both parties, but I will “vote” for my best interest and because it’s my right.
"As a matter of fact, censoring those messages makes people even more hesitant to take the vax."
AGREE. I am my own "fact checker" and don't relegate my thinking to others.
I had a positive feeling [but was keeping an open mind] about the vaccine until I started seeing the censorship coupled with the mindless chants "STOP THE SPREAD, STOP THE SPREAD" being parroted by our dumber citizens. Then I knew something was very wrong and decided to wait. I am glad I did since the vaccines do not work.
Our free speech protections are in place for the purpose of protecting speech we don't like. Speech we like doesn't need protection.
Yea the LLY thing was simply bots reacting to "information" created by other bots. Not Twitter's problem in ANY way.
Also: "I decide what's misinformation for myself and if I'm wrong, that's on me."
THAT idea simply will not fly in America today. Individual responsibility is DEAD.
Individual responsibility is dead but people will still figure out the truth on their own. Whether the misinformation comes from me or from CNN, MSNBC, or the CDC is irrelevant. It's better for twitter to allow the information to come at people from all sorts of directions and let people decide what truth they want to believe. It's just futile for Google/FB/Twitter to try to direct people to the "correct" information.
Alex-I applaud your efforts to figure it out. But you should just stop wasting your time.
Twitter is an NSA/DOD surveillance and opinion shaping platform. Always has been. Always will be. Musk is the DODs largest outside contractor. The economic scale is unsustainable without deep pockets paying for the massive amount of server power and network capability needed to instantaneously and simultaneously deliver a tweet to 100 million users.
There is literally only one entity in the world with the resources and technology to do that.
Your taxes pay for that. Just like your taxes funded the Ukraine “war” and then much of that funding made its way back into the pockets of UniParty members.
Give up on the Twitter thing and look into something that might be useful.
Like FTX and where did the money go.
Agreed. And SBF’s life expectancy has cratered. He knows too much.
I’m betting he’s in a CIA safe house halfway around the world. As I wrote elsewhere, it’s unsurprising FTX imploded on Election Day. Their work in laundering taxpayer money through Ukraine and returning it to UniParty politicians, thereby assisting the steal, along with setting the platform for the coming massive regulation (and destruction) of the Crypto industry was finished.
FTX hands are also all over the Covid Psyop. The 40 million dollar study by Unitaid the ‘debunked’ Ivermectin early in mid 2020 was co-funded by Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust and, wait for it, FTX.
To GLKs excellent point. We will likely never know the entire truth, or anything close to it. But as more facts come out, and for me there are already enough, those of us with even a hint of critical thinking skills and a non partisan view will conclude the entire thing was just another taxpayer (and in this case also an investor) fleecing psyop designed to get people to accept things that otherwise they would not, to wit, stolen election, Crypto regulation, etc.
Classic Hegelian Dialectic. Or Cloward-Piven. Or both.
You got it! Unless of course, you see the forest through the trees.
Great reminder. I have a small amount of BTC (less than 1% of TP) and an even smaller amount of ETH. I’m still a skeptic but not a total skeptic. What I’m really hoping to see is (1) a complete decoupling of BTC from Nasdaq and (2) a drop below 14k. At that point I’ll load up a wheelbarrow. And if it drops below 10k I’m backing up the truck.
I’ll take some gold and silver as my commodities. You can have all the Bitcoin you’d like!
The only correction I would make is that it is not our taxes that fund these things. It is the printer at the Federal Reserve that creates fiat dollars out of thin air.
Indeed. Excellent correction.
Is it not incredible people are looking to globalist Elon Musk to be the saviour and support free speech?
Is the current shenanigans a means to sabotage the Twitter platform altogether?
It’s an interesting question. I don’t know. What I do know, based on my own knowledge and skill set, is that the 5 billion in revenue Twitter garners is not enough to support the employee base and the vast amount of technology required to run the platform. Therefore, I conclude that ‘someone else’ is paying for it. Deductive reasoning (based on the unworkable financial model, the censorship, and the sophisticated bot farming designed to control the narrative) tells me that the US govt is heavily involved.
If you think about it logically, the Twitter model of using bots to ‘flood the zone’ to get people to adopt a narrative they otherwise would not, and the use of ballot harvesting and mail in ballots to flood the zone during elections to get a candidate elected who otherwise could not win, are essentially the same thing.
Bad actors are behind both strategies. People can draw their own conclusions as to who is behind the curtain.
This. This right here. This so hard. This so much. This.
He bought it because they were suing him for tanking the stock price. He was going to lose, so might as well take the company.
https://news.yahoo.com/twitter-sues-elon-musk-tries-215139889.html
Agree - he had to buy it even though he realized he way overpaid. I think the initial motive was genuine. His companies were being hamstrung with widespread lies about a not very dangerous virus and those pointing out actual data were being silenced.
I also disagree with Alex’s assessment of charging users. When 90% of revenue comes from advertisers then the advertisers, controlled by a cabal of far left wing activists, call the shots because they are the actual customers. When users pay, they are the customers. It’s why Substack could withstand the demands for censorship despite being a tiny start-up at the beginning of Covid.
Unless Must doesn’t care if the world turns into a woke hell hole, the current model doesn’t work and can’t work. No amount of criticism changes that reality.
The math also works for user fees. Say 20% pay the subscription fee in the long run. That’s 80million users x $8/month = $640million/ month or $7.68billion per year - a huge increase in revenue with little threat of a band of left wing activists convincing a few key advertisering consulting firms to bankrupt the company because it allows such objective facts as “men cannot give birth” to be freely stated.
Ultimately I think Musk wants a populist approach. Most people can tolerate the vast middle where meaningful debate happens. He can’t find $25million a month indefinitely. He needs a less volatile revenue stream to really change the speech codes.
You nailed it. It's all about incentives. On Substack, we cater to readers. Everywhere else (or nearly), they cater to advertisers.
The quality difference is obvious.
Yep. Substack is old fashioned in that they consider us customers. The other tech platforms consider us products.
Best take I've seen!
I think he was asking why did he offer to buy it in the first place for the price he did.
Agree about having to buy it in the end
It was the only way to see how many bots were actually on the platform.
it is a large amount of money to find out about that
Well he wasn't actually going to pay that until the lawsuit. Once he publicized his findings, the stock price dropped rapidly. That's what the lawsuit was all about. At some point it became easier to just pay it and take over, since the board could no longer object to the original bid.
Twitter employees confessed that the UN dictated censorship on social media. Perhaps Musk is following mandated orders ...from larger players.
Yes, and EU and Germany in particular recently expanded and tightened their constraints on free speech. Not every country, however “democratic“, shares the US constitutional commitment to free speech.
I don't think Elon Musk's ownership has been disappointing at all. The entertainment value alone has been priceless. It's entirely possible that he bought Twitter just to have fun watching the sanctimonious Twitter twits erupt.
i'm not sure we would have learned all the weird details about paul pelosi's underwear hammer fight under the old algo suppression
i don't think we would be this close to the truth about FTX either
we are seeing a bit more of the veil being pulled back & it's already pretty crazy
elon is doing all this under threat from the government about national security which reminded me of an old quote from ben franklin "if joe biden declares this man an enemy, invite him into your home & give him food and shelter."
Don’t hold your breath after all he is a WEF graduate. A nefarious agenda is my guess.
See Robert Malone's recent piece focused on why he thinks Musk wants Twitter: short answer is he wants it to be a WeChat for the West where users can do almost everything in just one app. https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/musks-dangerous-vision-for-twitter
Just as in Covid, we used common sense, to sense something wasn’t as it appeared, we should do the same now. Musk has ties to China et all, and the World Economic Forum. He is a fan a tech and human “creation”. Investigate, question, continually. As long as we can.
He wants Twitter to be a successful business. He saw it as a wasted opportunity given the potential as a true free town square. I think he is correct. I am betting on him.
Yoel Roth was the leader of Twitter's Site Integrity team ahead of the 2020 presidential election. This in my opinion the best thing he has done for the American people. This Person was influenced by our own government leaders to silence everyone who they didn't like and the Legacy media to the bait from Twitter and Ran with it. Example look what happened to the Trump the media shut him on all Major cable news networks. This guy was behind banning everyone in America 🇺🇸 who was Factual right and only a few was right and we now who he is ! The second thing that I like about Elon Musk is that he Loves his mother that too me is very important.
Begs the ultimate question: Is Musk one of "them," or is he a rogue agent fighting against the NWO? No one seems able to answer that one.
It’s been a few weeks. $25 million a month, every month, is a lot of money. He’s trying to set up a better revenue stream that makes the users the customers, rather than advertisers who are the real customers under the current model. Elon Musk is a human and things take time. I’m not ready to start questioning his motives. I don’t see any evidence he’s got a filter, much less some master plan to be smeared and harassed by the regime only to secretly be working for them.
He's one of 'them' who's had some disagreements with the gatekeepers of the The Current Conformity, and is rich enough to tell them where to stick it when they threatened him.
he's a native martian who have a storied & bloody history with the lizard people, so he's not exactly on our side, but we can def use his help
“ I support free speech and debate. I believe anyone can be a journalist. I believe honest speech will defeat lies and hatred will eventually die of its own ugliness if we let it expose itself. I believe government or private efforts at censorship are counterproductive. I want Twitter to be the world’s town square - and open to all.”
^^this!! 💯
RE your stated second reason on account verification, you want to continue limiting verification to the large elite accounts, so the "important" people can volley comments back and forth without getting bogged down in the thoughts of all the "little people". How very elite. We need to know our place in the tech caste system, read the elite's thoughts and we are to get lost in the muddle because we have nothing intelligent to add?
Alex, I think you fail to appreciate Elon cannot truly have free speech at Twitter if it remains solely reliant upon advertising revenue model alone. The Twitter speech issues are grounded in the power of a relatively few big advertisers with outsized influence over the revenue stream. Twitter is not a must have advertiser for big brands relative to Google, Meta, etc. Small advertisers do not keep the lights on if you are advertising based trying to run a large-scale technology franchise. Twitter is highly unlikely to ever become even close to more important than Google to advertisers, so Twitter is and will always basically getting the advertiser market scraps. Twitter business success will be capped by Google and Meta is the reality. Therefore, Elon knows the ideal solution is a sustainable subscription revenue model (ie. Blue). Add the rapid growth opportunity of payment provider income from transactions and freedom from advertising dollars from the big guys driving your speech problems begin to disipate. Both of these two revenue models are far more sustainable than an advertising model reliant on big brand advertisers for Twitter. Twitter has to make a change to support additional business models or the business does not make sense.
Banning parody accounts has always been in Twitter's TOS, it was just selectively enforced before Musk showed up.
Maybe you're thinking of impersonation?
Yes, sorry 🙄
First, my inflexible stance regarding Freedom of Speech. I'm a retired Political Scientist. Two years before I retired -- a few decades ago -- the president of my university created a committee of 7 faculty and assigned them the task of establishing limits for speech on campus. The committee drew up 10 pages of described situations and accompanying questions and sent to all the faculty. E.g., "a student says (X) to a professor. Rate his statement as completely acceptable or not at all acceptable on a 1 to 5 scale." Other situations and questions dealt with hypothetical faculty-to-student, faculty-to-faculty, and student-to-student exchanges. Rather than respond to the questionnaire, I wrote the committee a letter saying I was against ANY suppression of speech ANYWHERE, particularly at an academic institution; that if one of my students wanted to make a speech on the campus commons arguing I should be shot immediately, he would have my full support; though I would pay close attention to how many members of the audience applauded. My position has not changed one iota.
That said, why not have Twitter create various categories for posts? E.g. "Reasoned Analysis and Argument"; "Unsubstantiated Opinion"; "Insult"; "Hate", "Exploitation and Threat."
Interesting questions, Alex. Yes, this is a new kind of venture for Musk but his successes make me want to give him a chance. My guess is that the opposition within the company have been so vicious that he felt the gentle, step-by-step approach was not going to work. Asking employees to come into the office and no more free lunches were abrupt but realistic changes. He needs employees who want to work in a very new environment. I wish him the best.