165 Comments

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.

Expand full comment

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.

Expand full comment

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

Expand full comment
founding

Twitter employees confessed that the UN dictated censorship on social media. Perhaps Musk is following mandated orders ...from larger players.

Expand full comment
Nov 15, 2022·edited Nov 15, 2022

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.

Expand full comment

Don’t hold your breath after all he is a WEF graduate. A nefarious agenda is my guess.

Expand full comment

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

Expand full comment

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.

Expand full comment
founding

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.

Expand full comment

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.

Expand full comment

“ 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!! 💯

Expand full comment

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?

Expand full comment

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.

Expand full comment

Banning parody accounts has always been in Twitter's TOS, it was just selectively enforced before Musk showed up.

Expand full comment

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."

Expand full comment

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.

Expand full comment