Big Tech/Social Media Censorship. Musk: Blackmailing Advertisers Can ***** Off.

[BillStime]

16 hours ago, DRsGhost said:

@BillStime and @Tiberius do not identify with the principle of free speech.

 

Anti-American communists.

 

Like Putin.

 

 

👆🤡🤣

 

DR is so threatened he lashes out at anyone who gets in the way of “his” agenda.

 

Don’t let this cretin fool you - DR sides with Putin - from calling gays pedophiles, banning gay marriage, banning books with “incorrect” history and so on…

 

Idiots

[B-Man]

 

 

                                        

 

 

 

 

[B-Man]

 

 

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/04/14/elon-musk-make-a-massive-proposal-offers-to-purchase-twitter-for-41-billion-with-plan-to-take-company-private/#more-231743

 

 

Within the filing Elon Musk states his intentions:
 

“I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy.  However, since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.
 

As a result, I am offering to buy 100% of Twitter for $54.20 per share in cash, a 54% premium over the day before I began investing in Twitter and a 38% premium over the day before my investment was publicly announced. My offer is my best and final offer and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder. Twitter has extraordinary potential.  I will unlock it. (SEC LINK)
 

What Elon Musk appears to be doing is perhaps the biggest story that few understand.
 

I share this perspective having spent thousands of hours in the past several years deep in the weeds of tech operating systems, communication platforms, and the issue of simultaneous users.   What Twitter represents, and what Musk is attempting, is not what most would think.
 

In the big picture of tech platforms, Twitter, as an operating model, is a massive high-user commenting system.

Twitter is not a platform built around a website; Twitter is a platform for comments and discussion that operates in the sphere of social media.  As a consequence, the technology and data processing required to operate the platform does not have an economy of scale.
 

There is no business model where Twitter is financially viable to operate…. UNLESS the tech architecture under the platform was subsidized.
 

In my opinion, there is only one technological system and entity that could possibly underwrite the cost of Twitter to operate.  That entity is the United States Government, and here’s why.
 

</snip>
 

If my hunch is correct, Elon Musk is poised to expose the well-kept secret that most social media platforms are operating on U.S. government tech infrastructure and indirect subsidy.  Let that sink in.
 

The U.S. technology system, the assembled massive system of connected databases and server networks, is the operating infrastructure that offsets the cost of Twitter to run their own servers and database.  The backbone of Twitter is the United States government.
 

There is simply no way the Fourth Branch of Government, the U.S. intelligence system writ large, is going to permit that discovery.

 

 

 

 

 

[The Frankish Reich]

17 minutes ago, B-Man said:

If my hunch is correct, Elon Musk is poised to expose the well-kept secret that most social media platforms are operating on U.S. government tech infrastructure and indirect subsidy.  Let that sink in.

And on a related topic:

Today I just learned that the U.S. trucking industry is built on a tech infrastructure of roads and bridges that are built or highly subsidized by the U.S. government!

 

Allow me to stop and let that sink in ...

 

... O.K.. I'm done. It seems like the government builds infrastructure that private companies then use by creating profitable enterprises.

 

(The cut-and-pasted comment above is perhaps the stupidest Musk/Twitter take yet)

 

[716er]

Odd how right-wingers suck the teet of billionaire Elon for all he is worth. 

 

He has been and always will be a rich ass-hole - like pretty much every billionaire.

[B-Man]

8 minutes ago, 716er said:

Odd how right-wingers suck the teet of billionaire Elon for all he is worth. 

 

He has been and always will be a rich ass-hole - like pretty much every billionaire.

 

 

The situation is not odd at all, if you stop and think about it......................(lol)

 

If you had watched the Tucker Carlson video from last night it would enlighten you.

 

FREE SPEECH is the issue.

 

Would we rather get it some way other than depending upon a billionaire's actions ?     certainly.

 

But this is the only way open at the present.

 

Not unlike 2016, when we had to accept a loose cannon lout like Trump rather than coronate the leader of the swamp, Hillary, as our ruler.

 

 

 

 

[716er]

Just now, B-Man said:

 

 

If you had watched the Tucker Carlson video from last night it would enlighten you.

 

 

 

LOL

[B-Man]

33 minutes ago, 716er said:

 

LOL

 

 

34 minutes ago, B-Man said:

The situation is not odd at all, if you stop and think about it......................(lol)

 

FREE SPEECH is the issue.

Would we rather get it some way other than depending upon a billionaire's actions ?     certainly.

But this is the only way open at the present.

Not unlike 2016, when we had to accept a loose cannon lout like Trump rather than coronate the leader of the swamp, Hillary, as our ruler.

 

 

 

 

 

This is why I put LOL after asking you to "think about" the whole situation.

 

Sadly, I knew you wouldn't.

 

You post a gibberish statement about the right sucking Elon's teat, and I explained to you where you were wrong.

 

Unable (or unwilling)  to see that point you went with the standard PPP leftist answer. Pull one sentence out and make fun of it.

 

You're not much of a poster are you ?

 

 

 

 

Edited April 15, 2022 by B-Man

[The Frankish Reich]

43 minutes ago, B-Man said:

FREE SPEECH is the issue.

Which is why we should definitely use the power of the State of Florida to silence Disney.

These people are so hermetically sealed into their Tuckerverse that they can't see how contradictory their posts are.

[BillsFanNC]

22 minutes ago, The Frankish Reich said:

Which is why we should definitely use the power of the State of Florida to silence Disney.

These people are so hermetically sealed into their Tuckerverse that they can't see how contradictory their posts are.

 

Do you support Twitter banning the accounts of Trump, the Babylon bee, etc.?

 

And before you cite their absolute right to kick anyone they want off their platform.... I'll ask explicity again do YOU support Twitter banning accounts that don't align with their views?

 

How is the state of Florida silencing Disney?

[BillStime]

6 minutes ago, DRsGhost said:

 

Do you support Twitter banning the accounts of Trump, the Babylon bee, etc.?

 

And before you cite their absolute right to kick anyone they want off their platform.... I'll ask explicity again do YOU support Twitter banning accounts that don't align with their views?

 

How is the state of Florida silencing Disney?

Trump broke the TOC’s and incited a coup - he should be rotting in jail with you.

[wnyguy]

4 minutes ago, BillStime said:

Trump broke the TOC’s and incited a coup - he should be rotting in jail with you.

You should take this act on the road, you're hysterical.

[HamSandwhich]

1 hour ago, The Frankish Reich said:

And on a related topic:

Today I just learned that the U.S. trucking industry is built on a tech infrastructure of roads and bridges that are built or highly subsidized by the U.S. government!

 

Allow me to stop and let that sink in ...

 

... O.K.. I'm done. It seems like the government builds infrastructure that private companies then use by creating profitable enterprises.

 

(The cut-and-pasted comment above is perhaps the stupidest Musk/Twitter take yet)

 

Not a good take at all. Terrible argument. Last I knew the roads don’t control speech. 

[B-Man]

Just now, wnyguy said:

You should take this act on the road, you're hysterical.

 

Not in the funny sense, but his replies are based in hysteria.

 

 

Back to the thread.

 

 

MATT TAIBBI: Twitter’s Chickens Come Home to Roost:

 

The Great Elon Musk panic of 2022 is revealing a big fat boatload of blue-check hypocrites.

 

Media figures everywhere are openly complaining that they dislike the Musk move because they’re terrified he will censor people less. Bullet-headed neoconservative fussbudget Max Boot was among the most emphatic in expressing his fear of a less-censored world. . . .

 

In every newsroom I’ve ever been around, there’s always one sad hack who’s hated by other reporters but hangs on to a job because he whispers things to management and is good at writing pro-war editorials or fawning profiles of Ari Fleischer or Idi Amin or other such distasteful media tasks. Even that person would never have been willing to publicly say something as gross as, “For democracy to survive, it needs more censorship”! A professional journalist who opposed free speech was not long ago considered a logical impossibility, because the whole idea of a free press depended upon the absolute right to be an unpopular pain in the ass.

 

Things are different now, of course, because the bulk of journalists no longer see themselves as outsiders who challenge official pieties, but rather as people who live inside the rope-lines and defend those pieties. I’m guessing this latest news is arousing special horror because the current version of Twitter is the professional journalist’s idea of Utopia: a place where Donald Trump doesn’t exist, everyone with unorthodox thoughts is warning-labeled (“age-restricted” content seems to be a popular recent scam), and the Current Thing is constantly hyped to the moronic max.

 

The site used to be fun, funny, and a great tool for exchanging information. Now it feels like what the world would be if the eight most vile people in Brooklyn were put in charge of all human life, a giant, hyper-pretentious Thought-Starbucks.

 

Heh.

 

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/twitters-chickens-come-home-to-roost?s=r

 

 

.

[HamSandwhich]

1 hour ago, The Frankish Reich said:

Which is why we should definitely use the power of the State of Florida to silence Disney.

These people are so hermetically sealed into their Tuckerverse that they can't see how contradictory their posts are.

At some point we you gotta beat them at their own game. Rest assured, the republicans will cease control when they wrangle the communist authoritarianism lust from the Dems and put them in their place. Gotta break them down from the inside. Certainly not something Dems would do, they want to grow their power and keep control by any means necessary. 

Edited April 15, 2022 by HamSandwhich

[B-Man]

 

 

 

 

 

 

[The Frankish Reich]

1 hour ago, DRsGhost said:

 

Do you support Twitter banning the accounts of Trump, the Babylon bee, etc.?

 

And before you cite their absolute right to kick anyone they want off their platform.... I'll ask explicity again do YOU support Twitter banning accounts that don't align with their views?

 

How is the state of Florida silencing Disney?

Do I support Twitter banning the Babylon Bee?

A. Not if I owned Twitter. Their main offense is terminal unfunniness. But do I support the right of a platform to decide who it allows to post on it? Absolutely. Part of free speech is deciding what speech you don't want to engage in.

 

Do I support Twitter banning Trump?

A. Not in the abstract. But again, they're a private company, they should be able to make their own rules. If Elon Musk buys them and decides he wants to ban @TheRealJeffBezos, well, have at it.

 

How is the state of Florida [trying to] silence Disney?

A. Not by the Governor b!tching about Disney. That's fine. That's politics. Should he have more important things to think about? Of course. But, whatever. But when you start talking about punishing them by taking away special (pro-Disney World development) provisions in the law for expressing their political opinions? Yeah, that's trying to silence them. (He's bluffing because Disney would sue, and their lawyers are a hell of a lot better than Florida's. But still.)

Example: the Bills new stadium deal. The State of New York negotiated it. The theory is that keeping the Bills in Buffalo will be a net economic gain for NYS, even given the money up front. (I don't believe that, but, again ... whatever.) NYS made the deal, Pegula will build the stadium, sales taxes will flow in, etc., etc. Let's say its 2026 and the new stadium is built. Pegula decides he's gonna go full Trump and run for office. He starts tweeting some crap the new Governor doesn't like. The new Governor says "I'm taking away this or that tax break or special accommodation we gave him to build that stadium." That's the government punishing a private company for expressing an unpopular political opinion.

 

These concepts aren't that hard to grasp. I get that I'm a lawyer, most aren't, so that's why I'm explaining it. But try to follow and then try to present a reasoned response. Not "it's o.k. when DeSantis does it because he's right and Disney is wrong."

 

 

Edited April 15, 2022 by The Frankish Reich

[BillStime]

 

[BillsFanNC]

7 minutes ago, The Frankish Reich said:

Do I support Twitter banning the Babylon Bee?

A. Not if I owned Twitter. Their main offense is terminal unfunniness. But do I support the right of a platform to decide who it allows to post on it? Absolutely. Part of free speech is deciding what speech you don't want to engage in.

 

Twitter has that feature built in already.  Any accounts that you don't want to engage with, you can block.

 

Again, I don't dispute that Twitter has the right to kick off any account that they wish.  Just don't do it while claiming that you value the principle of free speech.

 

Twitter is not a free speech platform currently, and they are absolutely within their rights to be an anti-free speech platform.  Just own it is all that I ask.

 

7 minutes ago, The Frankish Reich said:

 

Do I support Twitter banning Trump?

A. Not in the abstract. But again, they're a private company, they should be able to make their own rules. If Elon Musk buys them and decides he wants to ban @TheRealJeffBezos, well, have at it.

 

If Elon Musk buys Twitter and begins banning leftist accounts then I'll be just as vocal against him for doing it.  If you truly adhere to the principle of free speech then being consistent isn't difficult.  Instead we often get splitting of hairs and "yeah, but..." justifications when it comes to silencing people and outlets on the other side.

 

 

7 minutes ago, The Frankish Reich said:

 

How is the state of Florida [trying to] silence Disney?

A. Not by the Governor b!tching about Disney. That's fine. That's politics. Should he have more important things to think about? Of course. But, whatever. But when you start talking about punishing them by taking away special (pro-Disney World development) provisions in the law for expressing their political opinions? Yeah, that's trying to silence them. (He's bluffing because Disney would sue, and their lawyers are a hell of a lot better than Florida's. But still.)

Example: the Bills new stadium deal. The State of New York negotiated it. The theory is that keeping the Bills in Buffalo will be a net economic gain for NYS, even given the money up front. (I don't believe that, but, again ... whatever.) NYS made the deal, Pegula will build the stadium, sales taxes will flow in, etc., etc. Let's say its 2026 and the new stadium is built. Pegula decides he's gonna go full Trump and run for office. He starts tweeting some crap the new Governor doesn't like. The new Governor says "I'm taking away this or that tax break or special accommodation we gave him to build that stadium." That's the government punishing a private company for expressing an unpopular political opinion.

 

 

 

I'm not familiar with what DeSantis has been proposing in terms of punishing Disney for whatever their woke politics of the day are so I won't comment other than to say if he is doing what you state above then I'm against it.

 

To bring it back to Twitter / social media how do you feel about the federal government pressuring social media platforms to flag "misinformation" for them?  That begins to take it out of the "they're a private company and can do what they want" realm, doesn't it?

 

https://nypost.com/2021/07/15/white-house-flagging-posts-for-facebook-to-censor-due-to-covid-19-misinformation/

 

Quote

 

“We are in regular touch with the social media platforms and those engagements typically happen through members of our senior staff and also members of our COVID-19 team — given as Dr. Murthy conveyed, this is a big issue, of misinformation, specifically on the pandemic,” Psaki said.

She added: “We’ve increased disinformation research and tracking within the Surgeon General’s Office. We are flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation.”

Psaki added, “it’s important to take faster action against harmful posts … and Facebook needs to move more quickly to remove harmful violative posts.”

 

 

 

 

 

[wnyguy]

Democrats like their social media how they like their elections. Rigged.