this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2023
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The value of owning Twitter isn't the profitability of the company, it's the ability to control the conversation. It's the same reason Spez is tanking Reddit. Both platforms were enabling leftist dialogue, and that must be stopped at any cost.
As if they can stop the people that literally stood up these sites. But yea - money has a way to wrap left leaning people too. I don’t think Spez or Dorsey started out dumb.
Elon.. moreso given his privilege & weird connections early on. Just glad my gf stopped swooning over him. She didn’t want to believe me about him till more stuff came out that she could relate - wasn’t enough that he he was an asshole to nerds that worked for & with him. Plus discrediting the actual founder of Tesla & pretending the guy never existed.
Can't speak for Dorsey but Spez started out standard libertarian tech dude dumb vis a vis making reddit "free speech" and enabling the jailbait and racism subs to exist.
Musk didn't actually start out dumb. It's pretty disheartening to watch his descent into far right idiocy. Huffman was always a moron, on the other hand.
I remember hearing about Musk first at the time of the PayPal and X.com merger. There were a few persistent rumours around he was an arrogant idiot. At the time I thought there might well be merit to his argument that they were just competitors out to get him.
After the PayPal sale there was talk he hired a PR firm, and the rumour mill went quiet. Most people forgot about it. Then he started popping up in movies and TV all over the place. At the time I thought maybe he had grown or those original rumours were just malicious like he had said.
But then the Thai Cave fiasco happened and it was clear to me the rumours were accurate, but his PR firm did do an excellent job of concealing it until he fucked it all up for them.
Musk was always an idiot. He's just also always had enough money to conceal it until he can't help but announce it loudly.
He was always an asshole. But not an idiot. Those are two different things.
The rumours I remember indicated that it was both. Both a bad programmer and a bad manager. I think the 'bad at people' part was just mentioned less because it was part of the nerd techbro stereotype and everyone expected it.
He didn’t start out smart. The only thing that changed is he fired his PR team.
Huffman rode Swartz's coattails for engineering. People give a lot more knowledge credit to tech CEOs than they're due, Dorsey is the only one you mentioned who is known to have any programming skill at all.
Musk was apparently the worst at it though, with systems being set up to prevent him contributing code because it was so bad.
Spez isn't tanking Reddit for leftist speech alone. That's not the whole picture.
Reddit is A) Trying to go IPO and B) Investment chickens are coming home to roost. The main reason Spez is tanking is for monetary gain and a better-looking public offering. Yeah, discourse is there but also not stifled like on Twitter, I think it's EXTREMELY reductionist to paint all of Spez's actions as being against leftist speech when there's a dozen other factors that have been documented
Controlling the messaging on the internet is the most important thing for the corporate upper class. All of the other factors you could list support the colonization of the minds of the lower class.
And why does it have to be stopped exactly? Or did I misread and that’s sarcasm?
You really need to ask? Leftist discourse is inherently anti-authoritarian. When people form communities and start acting in their own best interest, they begin working against the interests of capitalist slavers.
Liberal discourse is inherently antiauthoritarian. Leftist discourse, including progressive and far-left rhetoric, is inherently authoritarian.
Bless your heart. Liberalism is right wing. Leftist discourse is anti-hierarchy. You've been fooled into thinking China and Russia have tried leftism. In each case, a hierarchy of power determined distribution of wealth, privilige, and freedom. Leftism is community building, direct action, egalitarianism, anti-hierarchy and anti-authority.
No, I have never believed that Russia and China tried leftism. It sounds like you're using a different definition of "liberal". Liberals comprise the majority of voters in the Democratic party and are not in favor of imposing their viewpoints on others. They are referred to with contempt and derision by the the right.
The "anti-hierarchy" faction is defined with the term "progressive" and is probably the group you are calling left wing. Progressives tend to be illiberal and favor the imposition of their social philosophies on others. They are anti-free-speech and support a more powerful, more intrusive government. Many also support alternate economic models, such as communism or socialism.
Keep trying to read my mind, maybe if you guess enough times you'll get it right.
Liberal discourse is at most anti-regulation, but it's fully supportive of wealthy powerful people being as oppressive as they may feel like. It calls it "freedom" when corporations submit people to their demands, by glossing over power disparities.
In this case, I'm using the contemporary definition of liberalism. I call the type of liberalism you're referring to "classical liberalism". It is the political philosophy that created the United States.
That doesn't change it. Classical liberalism puts the most focus on the importance of a free market, and in a free market the largest financial interests can rule however they see fit.
Economic freedom and individual autonomy are often at odds with each others. Often people even need to change their off-work habits to suit the demands and image that their employers expect.
And this is considering an ideal scenario, not even like, unpaid overtime or prejudice-driven market practices and so forth. Not to mention that monopolies and cartel practices are pretty much inevitable, it's only out of idealism that it's assumed that they are a result of not following the political philosophy properly.
Yes, you're describing classical liberalism. That's not what I was referring to. I was talking about the contemporary definition of liberalism, which "combines ideas of civil liberty and equality with support for social justice and a well-regulated mixed economy" (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_liberalism_in_the_United_States). Related, but clearly not the same.
I see. In that case I don't see where you draw the distinction from modern liberalism and progressism, and in what way this non-progressive liberalism is anti-authoritarian that is not in service of the free market.
Overall, calling all leftism authoritarian still seems misguided. Leftism is by itself a whole spectrum including philosophies like the social democrat. This vilification of the whole left seems like a remnant of the Red Scare.
Oh, I thought you were stating that as your position, so was curious to hear the take. I totally get why that's in their interest though.