Ever More Unhinged
By Mitch Berg
Glenn Greenwald – the good liberal columnist – on Big Left’s response to Musk trying to buy Twitter:
“Liberals” promoting censorship? The heck you say?
The GOP may win the mid-terms. Maybe even the presidency in 2024.
But I’m increasinly wondering how this society keeps living together, and decreasingly hopeful that the answer is anything but “we can’t”.
April 18th, 2022 at 6:13 am
Good grief, what next? A billionaire controlling Facebook?
April 18th, 2022 at 6:17 am
Unhinged Robert “Third” Reich is such an insignificant piss any, that his rants are relegated to the likes of “The Guardian.”
April 18th, 2022 at 6:26 am
bosshoss429 on April 18, 2022 at 6:17 am said:
Unhinged Robert “Third” Reich is such an insignificant piss any, that his rants are relegated to the likes of “The Guardian.”
I wish that were true, but Reich has lots and lots of followers; just about every uttering of his ends up on my social media feed.
April 18th, 2022 at 7:20 am
Mr D is correct, I get this ratfaced toady shoved in my face by malignant Karens all the time. He is for many on the left the cholesterol free version of Paul Krugman.
April 18th, 2022 at 8:19 am
I guess that I haven’t seen or heard anything from him in awhile. Of course, I rarely listen to the lefty propaganda channels that he usually spouts off on, but I can’t recall any of his rants lately.
April 18th, 2022 at 8:55 am
You’d have a good point if there actually were a legitimate pro-free speech perspective.
But there isn’t. If you read the First Amendment you’d see why. Be concerned as you want about Twitter’s moderation policy. It’s just that Twitter isn’t inhibiting “free speech”. At all.
April 18th, 2022 at 8:59 am
Greg, better yet, it is not like Bezos owning WashPost.
April 18th, 2022 at 9:24 am
Even if Musk doesn’t buy Twitter, never forget what yesterday revealed.
If the reprobates are successful in thwarting Musk’s legit offer, expect 2 things:
1. Lots of lawsuits from shareholders
2. Musk uses his cash to destroy TwitR’s brand to the point that GAB looks like the better option to shy public figures, leaving Twit to be the spittle flecked nut house it wants to be.
April 18th, 2022 at 9:29 am
Reacting to a Twitter user, Dorsey said late on Sunday: “It (the board) has consistently been the dysfunction of the company”.
The former Twitter CEO also agreed with venture capitalist Gary Tan, who posted that a badly run board “can literally make a billion dollars in value disappear.”
Wow, when you lost Dorsey! I think I have some Vanguard in my portfolio too. There BETTER be a lawsuit! But then… it is all rigged.
April 18th, 2022 at 9:31 am
Remember the short squeeze on GameStop, when regulators stepped in to protect giant investment houses from a rag-tag bunch of amateurs who were about to bankrupt them? The Twitter situation has a similar feel.
Here’s how weird things are under Lesko Brandon: I’m rooting for the richest man in the world because in this situation, Elon Musk is . . . the underdog.
April 18th, 2022 at 9:32 am
Moderation. I’ll try again, with one slight modification.
Remember the short squeeze on GameStop, when regulators stepped in to protect giant investment houses from a rag-tag bunch of amateurs who were about to bankrupt them? The Twitter situation has a similar feel.
Here’s how weird things are under Lesko Brandon: I’m rooting for the richest man in the world because in this situation, Elon Musk is . . . this guy:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=underdog&t=brave&iax=images&ia=images&iai=https%3A%2F%2F4.bp.blogspot.com%2F-sSZQg-C8GPo%2FV5jOehsiMeI%2FAAAAAAAAKtI%2FA-sjl-PF-tMr7zANtenWiAN_nzDktPICACLcB%2Fs1600%2FUnderdog.jpg
April 18th, 2022 at 9:33 am
Nope, still doesn’t work. One last try:
Remember the short squeeze on GameStop, when regulators stepped in to protect giant investment houses from a rag-tag bunch of amateurs who were about to bankrupt them? The Twitter situation has a similar feel.
Here’s how weird things are under Lesko Brandon: I’m rooting for the richest man in the world because in this situation, Elon Musk is . . . the under canine.
April 18th, 2022 at 9:35 am
Emery,
In 1937-38 the NSDAP asked the corporations to enforce the NSDAP political platform, which the corporations happily did in return for very lucrative government contracts. Unlike the Communists the NSDAP understood you don’t have to seize the means of production, you just exert control of the market using the public purse. Currently the Democratic party intends to exert control and enforce state dogma via the(very willing) High Tech industries and Silicon Valley Oligarchs. In 1938 this was called fascism what do you call it today?
Emery are you finally going to loud and proud fly your proto-fascist flag?
April 18th, 2022 at 9:53 am
We can argue all day and night whether Elon Musk is an advocate of free speech (I think he is not but that’s besides the point).
Elon Musk is an excellent communicator and his communication skills have really seen Tesla, SpaceX wade through times when the whole of Wall Street essentially doubted their viability (and with good reason).
Musk managed to mobilize hordes of ordinary people by pandering to the lowest common denominators selling them a dream (rather than selling them a car). Tesla is still very much a meme stock and meme stocks live and die on social media rather than in board rooms, financial statements, market soundings or similar.
The only reason why Elon wants to buy twitter (although it looks to me like a half hearted attempt) is to keep on selling dreams than cars as he has every interest in keeping Tesla a meme stock. It’s no accident that the best selling electric vehicle globally for up to 2019 was Nissan’s Leaf while Tesla was trading for nearly 850 times price to earnings ratio while not making any profit.
April 18th, 2022 at 10:14 am
If I had billions to play with, I might engage in a little trolling just to stir up the hornet’s nest. Maybe that’s what Musk is up to?
The one thing Donald Trump succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest imagination, was de-masking. Not causing Liberals’ masks to slip, not pulling off their masks, infuriating them so much Liberals tore off their own masks and stomped on them while screaming in rage.
Musk is causing the same reaction with his claim to want free speech. Doesn’t matter if he really wants it or not: he’s got Liberals (who spent the decades since Senator McCarthy complaining about private company blacklists of members of a certain political party) now insisting on private company blacklists of members of a certain political party. Turns out they had no long-term committment to immutable core principles, only temporary tactics in a continuous effort to undermine American values.
The more ordinary people see the ugliness of the faces behind the masks, the more they distrust the still-maked faces telling them what they must think. That might be the greatest gift to mankind since the Constitution.
April 18th, 2022 at 10:24 am
The moderation problem, as I have mentioned before, is not an easy one to solve. Musk has hinted that he believes that any communication that is not actually illegal should be allowed on Twitter, but this is easier said than done. Just about any rule can be circumvented by bad actors.
We all think that we know the type of speech that should be protected, but sitting down and actually defining those rules is difficult, especially when you know that a sizable group of very smart people will work constantly to evade and undermine your rule set.
I am not on twitter. I don’t even know anyone with a twitter account. The people who cluster around twitter tend to be journalists and entertainers. They value twitter, they say, for career reasons.
What twitter does, then, is it can control the range of views that can be publicly expressed by journalists and entertainers.
April 18th, 2022 at 10:26 am
The one thing Donald Trump succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest imagination, was de-masking. Not causing Liberals’ masks to slip, not pulling off their masks, infuriating them so much Liberals tore off their own masks and stomped on them while screaming in rage.
It’s a common observation that while liberals want conservatives to shut up, conservatives want liberals to keep talking.
April 18th, 2022 at 11:12 am
Funny how “free speech” has gradually been twisted by the paternalist right to mean “publish my lies”.
In all the wailing about suppression have you even checked the analytics? Rightwing content providers fit in the top 3 and fill the top 10 in most social media.
Trump was allowed to slide for months despite his violation of TOS he agreed to on their private corporate property. Their rational was his status as a office holder and this ended with Jan 6.
Cries and rolling on the ground continue despite a half dozen alternates, gab, gettr, frank, 4 and 8 chan and not least Trump’s Truth Social
April 18th, 2022 at 11:33 am
Musk has hinted that he believes that any communication that is not actually illegal should be allowed on Twitter, but this is easier said than done.
GAB has been doing just that since 2016, and has grown exponentially. Are there some LARPing neo-natsies raving on there? Yes, there are. There are even some (few) filthy leftist reprobates promoting grooming on there. Solution to that problem?
Wait for it…it’s pure genius….
….a “mute” button and when you’re really upset, a “block” button.
Boom! Problem solved.
April 18th, 2022 at 11:58 am
Funny how “free speech” has gradually been twisted by paternalistic Liberals to mean “publish only our lies.”
Fixed it for you.
April 18th, 2022 at 12:11 pm
Funny how “free speech” has gradually been twisted by the paternalist right to mean “publish my lies”.
Cue the entry of the “fact”-checkers, whom are not only able to determine the veracity of disputed facts based on hard data, but to psychically divine the intent of the source of the disputed facts, usually by its/their political affiliation.
Sure, what could go wrong with that?
April 18th, 2022 at 12:35 pm
@ MacArthur Wheeler: Tech platforms did not ban Trump because they disagree with his politics. If that were the reason, they would have done it already: he’s been pretty clear about his politics for years. They did it because his actions on the platform threaten the integrity of the platform. We have become so accustomed to the notion of “free speech, except” that we do not realize that free speech is always limited, and that every limit arose from an event. Platforms always ban spammers, and if you believe in free speech, isn’t spam speech? Spam is just talking a lot.
There is no slippery slope, and tech’s actions do not reflect “left vs right” or a backlash by “the powers that be” or any such thing. Rather, the event is that a user (Trump) used their platforms to do something they never expect a user to be able to do: incite an insurrection to stop the lawful and orderly transfer of power in the world’s most powerful democracy. Remember that had he succeeded, it would have been the end of American democracy as we know it.
Tech depends on the continued existence of the United States being, however imperfectly, a democratic nation of laws. Its system of laws and freedoms is what allows tech, especially social media platforms, to grow and thrive: they were responding to an immediate, existential threat. It had nothing to do with free speech, or agreeing/disagreeing with your politics, so stop freaking out — don’t get too excited.
The fact that they continue to take action against other people who support the insurrection is merely them making sure that this threat is ended. Remember that they took no action until the threat was immediate. It was act or die. Tech companies don’t thrive in countries where the loser of an election can take power through a coup.
April 18th, 2022 at 1:00 pm
Emery,
everywhere you reference Trump let us replace that reference with Der Jude and then tell me what the difference would be if your rant had been written by a NSDAP apparatchik in 1938. Your unoriginality is the giveaway – there would be no difference.
“Tech depends on the continued existence of the United States…”
No it doesn’t!
April 18th, 2022 at 1:07 pm
Really, Emery?! Sheesh! You must lie awake nights thinking your shit up.
Keep your eyes open, loser, because the left’s manufactured, planned and executed January 6 “insurrection” mantra, is coming apart like those two dollar watches you buy on the streets.
And, today, Elon Musk will pay the largest tax bill, ever. Funny, huh that neither Bezos, nor Suckerberg, nor Gates nor Soros, nor Mikey Bloomberg, have ever told the public how little they pay.
April 18th, 2022 at 1:22 pm
Bidens made more money last year yet paid less taxes. MAGIC!
April 18th, 2022 at 1:22 pm
Tech platforms did not ban Trump because they disagree with his politics. […] They did it because his actions on the platform threaten the integrity of the platform.
Ooh, if only the host of this blog banned the trolls for- what was that again? ah! “the integrity of the platform”.
April 18th, 2022 at 1:29 pm
Instapundit passes on a comment from Wretchard, If political parties don’t use social media to influence elections then why is who controls them so important?
April 18th, 2022 at 3:31 pm
Assuming Musk succeeds in taking twitter private, what has his 54 billion dollars bought him? Twitter’s tech can and has been duplicated by others. Musk is essentially buying the existing twitter content and its user accounts. A rich lib could start his own twitter and encourage an abandonment of twitter by the movers and shakers that make up twitter’s most valuable users.
April 18th, 2022 at 4:39 pm
MP, I’m not sure that analysis is valid. I’ve seen commentary that Twitter’s revenue cannot possibly cover its expenses (we know it declared a $1 billion loss last year) so there must be a hidden subsidy. And who would want to subsidize Twitter in exchange for control over the means of communication to influence the election? Perhaps the same people who lied to a judge to spy on a presidential candidate? Perhaps the same people who seized evidence of corruption and sat on it until after the election?
Okay, yes, that idea is Out There. But nowadays, the time interval from “wild-eyed conspiracy theory” to “old news move on” is a few months at best. I wonder if Musk can force Twitter to open its books for public scrutiny? Must be some conservative-leaning auditors in the nation who could tell us if there’s weirdness going on.
April 18th, 2022 at 5:53 pm
JD, you said the magic word – “subsidy”. There is not a subsidy that Musk that does not like and have not had taken advantage of. This could indeed be the allure for him. But I also think that MP’s view on potential is wrong. I have seen an analysis somewhere that Twiter could double its user base if it threw off the shackles of censorship. Even if it is 25 or even 10%, that will pay for the purchase right there. And it would be REALLY hard to pull subsidies if there are any, and they will just multiply if subscriber list grows – maybe Musk knows more than he lets on.
JD, I also think business model is beyond start-up stage so copycats, even libturd ones, will fail miserably, just as did all conservative startups.
April 18th, 2022 at 10:50 pm
Have you ever noticed that “Star Link” means the same thing as “Sky Net”?
I’ve watched a few interviews with Musk. He is an obscure character. He is very smart, I think that unlike most people he understands the second, third, and fourth order effects of things. He plays 3-D chess, which is pretty neat, but you need to understand that if you play 3D chess then you have a killer advantage over the people playing 2D chess, but you are at a disadvantage when playing against a 4D chess player. The 4D chess player is Reality, or God, or the Truth.
Musk, I think, really believes in his Martian colonization scheme. He needs an open human culture to exist for as long as it takes to get that done. He needs a culture that will allow him, with his two hundred billion or so bucks, to exist and spend it as he chooses. That is why he is interested in influencing culture.
April 19th, 2022 at 6:42 am
JD,
I’m totally in agreement with your subsidy observation. If we look at history where oppression and suppression of dissidents were involved, we see a common culprit; government backing. Google is another tech platform that is subsidized by not only the U.S., but the ChiCom government, as well. Sergey Brin’s family came from a former Soviet Bloc country, so he illustrates that you can take the boy out of communism, but you can’t take communism out of the boy.
As jpa pointed out, besides Musk, mega millionaires and billionaires and take advantage of government subsidies. We just need to look at any public power entity. They are getting big subsidies for converting their grids to green energy. They know that full green energy is a wet dream of the deep state environazis, but the money is there, so grab it.
April 19th, 2022 at 8:05 am
MP, your analysis on Musk is spot on.