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Off the top of my head and solely? Mackenzie Scott (Bezos)? There are quite a few folks who could create structures for shared (vs. sole) ownership of Twitter a

• rayiner 5y ago
  What does Mackenzie Scott know about anything other than running Amazon? She’s a busybody who involves herself in stuff that’s none of her business. E.g. knee-jerk donating to anti-Asian front organizations like AAJC just because #stopaapihate was trending and they had “Asian” in the name: http://nwasianweekly.com/2020/08/mackenzie-scott-billionaire-ex-wife-of-jeff-bezos-donates-part-of-fortune-to-asian-charity/ http://nwasianweekly.com/2020/08/mackenzie-scott-billionaire... Musk is an infinitely better influence on something like Twitter.
  • ctvo 5y ago
    To spell it out clearly: Mackenzie Scott will leave running the platform to the people familiar with it. That's exactly why she's the best person to own Twitter and turn it into a public good vs. Elon, who also knows absolutely nothing about running Twitter, but will no doubt intervene.
    • rayiner 5y ago
      Twitter is already a public company left to its own devices. But free speech wise, what Twitter needs is intervention. Scott is plainly in the same bubble as the existing Twitter employees and can’t provide that intervention.
      • ascendantlogic 5y ago
        Free speech is the guarantee the government won't censor you. Just because Twitter shares are tradable on public markets doesn't mean they're a public utility.
        • fleddr 5y ago
          Stop beating this dead horse. Musk made his comments in context of social networks. In a digitizing world where all conversation is centered into a handful of platforms, those platforms become the free speech carrier, no matter who owns them. Yes, you're technically correct, but it's irrelevant from a pragmatic point of view. A legal definition of free speech is worthless if said free speech cannot be expressed in the places where most speech happens.
          • ascendantlogic 5y ago
            Then the laws need to change. I love how "how the constitution reads" is a dead horse.
          • tptacek 5y ago
            This is a thing many people believe, but it's not an axiom. The balancing of interests an "intervention" to resolve this would require come at their own cost of free association, and the lines you'd have to draw to make new restrictions on e.g. moderation workable are treacherous. You can argue that major platforms like Twitter are essential to free speech, maybe even persuasively. What you can't do is make your case as if it were a self-evident fact. It is not.
            • HereIGoAgain 5y ago
              Not if he literally owns it.. A public company can't have a right to association divorced from it's owners. (and arguably at all)
              • tptacek 5y ago
                If he owns Twitter he can do whatever he wants with it. It'd be his.
                • HereIGoAgain 5y ago
                  I kind of said that weird but that's basically what I meant.
  • notafraudster 5y ago
    Hey. I am sure you know a lot more about this than I do, but just to let you know, your comment comes off as sort of petty and ill-motivated. I've never heard of AAJC. You linked a news article that proves her donation but doesn't make the organization seem sinister. I search AAJC and I get a bunch of results that do nothing to tell me anything sinister. I check Wikipedia and there are a handful of political stances, some of which are expected from political NGOs. I can't find any indication that anyone views this organization as anti-Asian. Based on what I've found, I assume what you mean is that this organization seems to support affirmative action in college admissions, a position that sets them apart from many other Asian groups, and which you could argue hurts Asian participation in colleges relative to a race-neutral admissions standard. Again, I had to do research to figure out that was what you were thinking of, I couldn't read your mind. I'm not saying you're wrong in your belief, or that you can't make the argument you're making, I'm saying short-circuiting the entire argument and just declaring it so is both intellectually facile and unlikely to inform anyone about anything. I've seen the same argument before when people on the right baldly assert that the SPLC is a "hate group" -- when what they means is some nuanced take on a particular political stance SPLC takes being disagreeable to conservatives. But then that's not the only leap you make. It's not just taken as obvious that AAJC is an anti-Asian organization, and everyone knows that, and no one could think differently: it's also taken as an obvious conclusion that anyone who donates to them in spite of this must be an idiot dilettante who doesn't even understand what they're giving money to. I don't think that's a reasonable conclusion to draw. I think a much more reasonable conclusion to draw would be that Mackenzie Scott supports affirmative action in college admissions, doesn't mind supporting an organization that supports affirmative action in college admissions, and knows exactly what she's supporting. Again, not trying to change your mind about the organization or about Scott, trying to encourage you to express yourself in a more useful way so that readers actually know what it is you're trying to say.
    • MattRix 5y ago
      Thanks for writing this post. I had these same feelings after reading the original post so it was good to see someone bring up the issues with it.
    • rayiner 5y ago
  • jkestner 5y ago
    Yes, being a billionaire doesn’t qualify you to run anything. Great Man theory abounds. What’s anti-Asian about AAJC? The only thing I found is that management treated its unionized employees like shit.