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When your “public square” is a private company, any sulky billionaire can buy it

58 points by mwattsun 4y ago

mwattsun 4y ago
I'm guilty as charged as I sometimes moralize on Twitter, but I disagree that the Twitter "tool" hasn't shaped Elon Musk. I think it's become part of who he is.
bitxbitxbitcoin 4y ago
When your “public square” is in the middle of a company town… everything else follows.
exabrial 4y ago
Just a person who enjoys controlling other people's lives sulking. I'll gladly take a billionaire controlled public square. Why? Because I can walk away form it. I'm far more worried about: when your "public square" is government controlled, they can do things like, I dunno, invade Ukraine. Have a different opinion? Too bad. Government also has all of the guns.
- droopyEyelids 4y ago
  Are you thinking that private companies & individuals are more moral than governments, or just happy that private companies don't generally have the ability to wage war? I'm having trouble interpreting what you mean
  - gmadsen 4y ago
    the latter. monopoly on force and all that
    - troyvit 4y ago
      Social media has/had the potential to break the monopoly on force[1]. Granted it was the the form of assembling large groups of cannon fodder into one place to basically absorb ammo and abuse, but it did have some positive effects as well in terms of political change. It could again. I guess what I'm saying is that a monopoly on force doesn't always mean a monopoly on power. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- jayd16 4y ago
  We could just use federated tech like the open web. No one is asking for some government run facebook.
  - emteycz 4y ago
    So what's the problem anyways? One platform is changing ownership, the open web doesn't care.
    - jayd16 4y ago
      There's some lack of diversity in popular platforms. Would be nice to see $43B invested in popularizing Mastodon or some such thing.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - troyvit 4y ago
    People keep saying this and they keep getting ignored. I don't get it because to me it ticks all the boxes.
  - exabrial 4y ago
    I actually don't see any issue with this either. The 1995-2008 web was sorta like this and it was quite beautiful. The problem these days is people, for better or worse, walk towards platforms.
- notacoward 4y ago
  When the billionaires control the public square, you can be pretty sure they're controlling the government too. So there's no difference between these two scenarios.
  - willnonya 4y ago
    Thats a bit detached from reality. Conflating a billionaire spending their money for something that as far as youre co cerned is a different proposition to something the governement can madate and control through their monopoly on force.
    - gibolt 4y ago
      Especially when the government is actively working against this specific billionaire, promoting and funneling money only to their competitors (even foreign ones, via tax credit) They only work happily with SpaceX because it saves them potentially billions per year (and often there is no other option).
  - kevingadd 4y ago
    Plenty of the laws passed by American legislatures are literally written by corporate lobbyists and promoted by the corporate media, yeah.
  - CWuestefeld 4y ago
    Is the corollary to this that if we ever see some faction largely controlling that public square, we can assume that they're also controlling the government?
    - emteycz 4y ago
      Not at all. To me it seems like what people on Twitter say has basically zero relevance to what's happening IRL.
  - forty 4y ago
    I wonder how long it will take for Musk to run for the Whitehouse. Such a good way to have people talk about him even more, he cannot not do it.
- jimkleiber 4y ago
  Well if a billionaire controls a public square, I wouldn't consider it a public square. Edit: one thing that bothers me about HN is the context-less downvoting. I wish people would reply with why they're downvoting. For me, it wouldn't be a public square because it is privately owned, it would be more like a shopping mall or an amusement park. Just because a shopping mall has free admission to the public doesn't mean it is a public space.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - timdev2 4y ago
    Careful with the shopping mall analogy. Someone will inevitably bring up Pruneyard[0] and derail things. I think "a bar" is probably the best analogy out there. There might only be one in town. It's open to the (adult) public. People discuss issues. The barkeep can 86 you if he doesn't like your behavior, or shoes, or politics, and your rights will not have been violated. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._Robins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._R...
    - jimkleiber 4y ago
      Yes I like the bar analogy better, thank you!
- natch 4y ago
  Sounds like Twitter is already government controlled. Not the US government though… rather, the Saudi government, who hold an unknown but presumably massive portion of the shares.
mustached 4y ago
"the law doth punish man or woman that steals the goose from off the common, but lets the greater felon loose that steals the common from the goose" -17th-century poem Still holds up.
- dcgudeman 4y ago
  hmm yes really applies to this situation. Goose commons switcharoo. Really sheds light on the Elon Musk Twitter takeover.
  - sweetheart 4y ago
    If you don't think it does, you should explain how.
    - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
      Actually, no. The burden is on mustached to show that it does, not on dcgudeman to show that it does not.
      - mustached 4y ago
        I think the point sweetheart was making is that a sarcastic response without any counterpoint isn't productive. I don't think dcgudeman understood my comment without more context, but i was happy to provide that. I'm just here to have interesting, productive conversations :)
  - mustached 4y ago
    I'm expressing how the privatization and capitalization of public spaces is as old as america itself -- as expressed in this early colonial poem -- and the Musk takeover of twitter is just another example.
    - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
      But that begs the question. Is Twitter a public space?
aww_dang 4y ago
>We go there to make noise about how the world could and should be a “better place.” We go on Twitter to noisily call out strangers... Do "we"? I certainly don't. A few product updates, feature previews, giveaways and that's it for me. >Neoliberalism and its incessant privatization of public space also explains social media’s weaponizing of morality. Rather than a digital version of the town square, Twitter is the privately owned space in which private companies and billionaires can compete for public virtue. Rather than real citizenship, that’s the mock political identity of our neoliberal age. What exactly is this publicly owned web forum which the author pines for? I guess he cannot create it himself, because then it would be privately owned. What is he proposing? A government owned "public" Twitter? If there is no actual proposal, it is interesting that this issue is now so pressing. When this publicly traded private company was banning and moralizing, it didn't seem to be an issue. "It is a private company, go somewhere else if you don't like it", was the standard refrain. Now when the shoe is on the other foot, the problem is private ownership. From my side it reads as if Elon has master-level trolled partisans. His stated intent to literally take the company private should have been the first clue.
- CWuestefeld 4y ago
  From my side it reads as if Elon has master-level trolled partisans. I think that's exactly it. I can't find any other interpretation that makes sense. Lots of folks are up-in-arms about how he's going to destroy free speech. But since there's no hint from Musks's quarter that anything would be done to limit anyone's speech - more the opposite, that he largely opposes any such limitations - their concerns make no sense. I know it's partisan and uncharitable, but the only way I can find to read it is a fear that the kind of anti-speech limitations that they are accustomed to and they like will be removed. Thus, Musk has trolled them into revealing this secret preference.
  - zeroonetwothree 4y ago
    There is a weird new trend of redefining "free speech" to mean "speech that doesn't offend me".
matthewdgreen 4y ago
What is this article about? Is it about the privatization of public space? Because that would be an interesting subject to elaborate on. Is it about your objection to people being self-righteous and "woke" on Twitter? That's much more boring, tough luck and welcome to humanity. Is it about AI? Frankly I have no idea: that part of the article seemed like a wild right-turn when I hit the bottom of the article.
- DoneWithAllThat 4y ago
  This article is about trying to hammer into the public’s brain the conflation of Twitter and a public utility. Referring to something that a small fraction of the country interacts directly with and an infinitesimal fraction actually contribute to as the public square in order to build support for legislation that would wrangle it into requiring it to reflect their viewpoint.
  - drekk 4y ago
    Social media is the 21st century public square, and it's not just Twitter. 2% of US adults actively posting on Twitter means it's more common for you to see a Twitter user than a ginger on the street. Allowing tech companies (or more pointedly, their board of directors) to control public discourse is a huge error and one I'm sure we'll pay for in due time.
woah 4y ago
> "As I write this, the world’s wealthiest and noisiest man has made a characteristically loud public offer to buy the internet’s most memetic social media platform." There seems to be the idea in some lefty-er online circles that Elon Musk made a "loud offer" to "cause a media circus", "manipulate the market", or even "snub the SEC". They seem totally ignorant of the fact that this offer was made on the SEC's website to comply with their reporting requirements: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001418091/000110465922045641/tm2212748d1_sc13da.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001418091/000110465...
- SantalBlush 4y ago
  His past behavior gives strong evidence of these things. If one looks at this offer without any broader context, then sure, it looks like people are making a big deal out of nothing. But that's disingenuous.
  - willnonya 4y ago
    You mean the public characterizations of his past behavior, don't you? I'm not an EM fan but that doesn't mean he always gets a fair shake from the media.
- jayd16 4y ago
  What about announcing it on Twitter along with the trolly memes Elon is also posting about it? If it's not the threshold of "loud" its at least certainly not quiet. By comparison, how many memes did the president of nVidia tweet about hot boxing ARM's board? Not to say being loud is bad but c'mon. Its only not loud _for Elon_. This is a pretty loud as far as SEC filings go.
- Mountain_Skies 4y ago
  Amazing how quickly Musk replaced Trump as the world's noisiest man in their minds.
tayo42 4y ago
I think people are really blowing twitters influence and impact out of proportion. I think theres a small vocal minority on twitter that uses it that think twitter is the world and discourse happens on it. Most people don't use it let alone are even tweeting.
dotnet00 4y ago
This feels almost incoherent enough to be AI generated. I'm not sure what the argument being made even is. Are they mad that Elon wants to buy twitter because he's rich? Are they mad because of his stated position on free speech? Are they trying to point to some imagined hypocrisy in people considering twitter a public square who are also cheering Elon's attempted purchase of it? In the end the company would just be moving from one set of millionaires and billionaires to another set. And then what's with the sudden tangent to AI regulation?
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  > Are they mad that Elon wants to buy twitter because he's rich? Are they mad because of his stated position on free speech? I think yes to both. But they don't want to just blatantly say it so it's wrapped in some kind of gibberish.
- mft_ 4y ago
  Quite - a lot of words spent to make no particular point that I could discern.
  - golemotron 4y ago
    Yes. The headline talks about sulky billionaires but the whole article is sulky.
    - the_common_man 4y ago
      Both can be true
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
ParksNet 4y ago
Why is it acceptable for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to own and control online speech, but not Elon Musk?
shrubble 4y ago
1) I don't recall much outrage over Amazon's Jeff Bezos, a billionaire, buying the Washington Post; nor that the Atlantic is owned by Steve Jobs' widow. Nor the many other cases of rich and powerful people owning media properties. 2) Is it really that much of a "public square"? Since only about 22% of USA adults are on Twitter; and 80 percent of the tweets come from 10 percent of users (thus 2.2% of the USA population). see https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up-twitter-users/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up-tw... Could it be more that the noisy journalists are on Twitter, but the rest of us don't really care all that much ... ?
- foobarian 4y ago
  The UK/NPR model is the only way to do it right. Media companies simply can't make money, and therefore unless there is public funding it is inevitable we'll end up with a bunch of pet media outfits at the whims of rich tycoons.
- tristor 4y ago
  > Could it be more that the noisy journalists are on Twitter, but the rest of us don't really care all that much ... ? Most of the available evidence seems to indicate most of Twitter is bots or people who are indistinguishable from bots because they don't have any opinions of their own. I don't see much loss in Twitter being bought, or ceasing to exist entirely.
- scruffyherder 4y ago
  It's because we don't actually love the science, it's just what we lkke to say. Elon was the darling until we didn't need him anymore, he talked to the jujitsu guy, and now he is othered.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  Private media companies are different from platforms. Twitter, Facebook is more like phone network than a broadcasting or printing company. Media producers have always been since founding been owned and controlled by someone. I really don't understand why is it different that now a some new billionaire owns it...
zeroonetwothree 4y ago
This article is pretty bad, for example: > We live in a financially unregulated world where Elon Musk can wake up one morning and choose to use $43 billion of his own money to noisily acquire a social media platform. Musk's actions has to go through the SEC, and in any case it seems his offer will not be accepted. How is this an example of "financially unregulated"?
- tpmoney 4y ago
  I’m also unclear what regulations they seem to think makes sense. The other way to phrase it is “Elon Musk can wake up one morning and use his personal money to buy a private property that is publicly available for sale.”
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  "Financially unregulated"? Yes, there are not currently regulations prohibiting people from offering to buy stuff. If that's a problem, any solution is likely to be worse. If Musk already owned, say, Facebook, then the antitrust regulations might kick in. But just offering to buy a company? Yeah, that's unregulated. Free market and all that.
scruffyherder 4y ago
Pretty sure the kingdom of Saudi already owns your precious public square.
gnopgnip 4y ago
Public companies can have voting structures that prevent anyone from just buying it and taking over. Like Alphabet/google, Brin and Page have a majority of voting rights, but only own about 12% of the stock.
- Mountain_Skies 4y ago
  That can lead to the Crazy Monarch problem. Monarchy has lots of benefits over democracy but all it takes is one crazy monarch to reverse that. I'm starting to wonder if perhaps we're going to see that with Mark Zuckerberg and his Metaverse gamble.
kareemsabri 4y ago
> That’s “like church” some of you might say. No. Twitter is church. That’s why I don’t go there. And it’s why Elon Musk is willing to pay $43 billion to own it. Follow the money. It always leads to one kind of church or another. There's some leaps here the author takes as self-evident that I don't follow. This was spraying all over the place.
at_a_remove 4y ago
Personally, I hope Elon Musk buys Twitter and grinds all of the blue checks under a repressive heel, Leto II Atreides-style. When they are banned, I will reflect their "It's only censorship with the government does it *disingenuous look*" and "free speed doesn't mean freedom from consequences" and "it's a private company!" thought-terminating cliches back at them. I want them to feel "silenced" and mocked for complaining, until the value of what they have lost aches like a broken arm. They should be reminded of the disrespect they had for a document written, after all, by "dead white guys." I often despair and wonder if people as a group tend to only function ethically when they are true underdogs.
- CWuestefeld 4y ago
  While I tend to feel like you do, keep in mind that the hypocrisy runs both ways. While Conservatives were complaining about being gagged by the Left, they were all about free and open speech. But when Trump complains about platforms providing the soapbox for his enemies, it's his supporters that want to wield the gags. I'm sure that lots of people really do value free speech as such, whether or not it's benefiting them (I know I do, and I don't have any reason to suspect different of you). But it sure seems like at least the activists are only interested in using it as a weapon when it happens to be in their own hands, and stomping it underfoot when the circumstances differ.
  - at_a_remove 4y ago
    Hence my bit about underdogs. The ACLU seemed to fight for a lot more for free speech back when they and their side were not ascendant.
- troyvit 4y ago
  Man I think I subscribe to different twitter channels than you. But what you ended your post with has been proved out time and again. Maybe it is a reason to despair.
- memish 4y ago
  He wouldn't do that, but it would be useful for them to understand that's what they are doing right now.
mwattsun 4y ago
I've promoted this comment of mine since some are saying the article is incoherent. I posted it because: I took the author to be asking a couple of important questions: 1) Do we want the "Codes of Conduct" and "Mission Statements" of private corporations to be our moral guides? I think a lot of religious people take issue with some of their stances, especially in regards to trans rights. (I am not stating my own opinion here.) 2) An interesting idea about AI that I hadn't considered: Can we have a proper discussion about regulating AI on platforms that are regulated by AI?
JoeAltmaier 4y ago
Lots of idealism about free speech and suchnot. THe public interest however depends utterly on how often the media is use, by whom, and for what. All that matters deeply, at least in how folks view the issue and how they emotionally react. The arguments follow from that. So no its not ideal, and no, folks have not been free of hypocrisy in their responses, but few issues are completely black and white.
leeroyjenkins11 4y ago
It's funny when people get sulky because someone wants to provide a space force open discussion. Twitter is the place that banned a true news story and interfered in a presidential election. They also ban people for correctly stating a person's sex. If people are cranky, they can build their own.

58 points by mwattsun 4y ago

I'm guilty as charged as I sometimes moralize on Twitter, but I disagree that the Twitter "tool" hasn't shaped Elon Musk. I think it's become part of who he is.

bitxbitxbitcoin 4y ago

When your “public square” is in the middle of a company town… everything else follows.

exabrial 4y ago

Just a person who enjoys controlling other people's lives sulking. I'll gladly take a billionaire controlled public square. Why? Because I can walk away form it. I'm far more worried about: when your "public square" is government controlled, they can do things like, I dunno, invade Ukraine. Have a different opinion? Too bad. Government also has all of the guns.

droopyEyelids 4y ago
Are you thinking that private companies & individuals are more moral than governments, or just happy that private companies don't generally have the ability to wage war? I'm having trouble interpreting what you mean
- gmadsen 4y ago
  the latter. monopoly on force and all that
  - troyvit 4y ago
    Social media has/had the potential to break the monopoly on force[1]. Granted it was the the form of assembling large groups of cannon fodder into one place to basically absorb ammo and abuse, but it did have some positive effects as well in terms of political change. It could again. I guess what I'm saying is that a monopoly on force doesn't always mean a monopoly on power. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jayd16 4y ago
We could just use federated tech like the open web. No one is asking for some government run facebook.
- emteycz 4y ago
  So what's the problem anyways? One platform is changing ownership, the open web doesn't care.
  - jayd16 4y ago
    There's some lack of diversity in popular platforms. Would be nice to see $43B invested in popularizing Mastodon or some such thing.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- troyvit 4y ago
  People keep saying this and they keep getting ignored. I don't get it because to me it ticks all the boxes.
- exabrial 4y ago
  I actually don't see any issue with this either. The 1995-2008 web was sorta like this and it was quite beautiful. The problem these days is people, for better or worse, walk towards platforms.
notacoward 4y ago
When the billionaires control the public square, you can be pretty sure they're controlling the government too. So there's no difference between these two scenarios.
- willnonya 4y ago
  Thats a bit detached from reality. Conflating a billionaire spending their money for something that as far as youre co cerned is a different proposition to something the governement can madate and control through their monopoly on force.
  - gibolt 4y ago
    Especially when the government is actively working against this specific billionaire, promoting and funneling money only to their competitors (even foreign ones, via tax credit) They only work happily with SpaceX because it saves them potentially billions per year (and often there is no other option).
- kevingadd 4y ago
  Plenty of the laws passed by American legislatures are literally written by corporate lobbyists and promoted by the corporate media, yeah.
- CWuestefeld 4y ago
  Is the corollary to this that if we ever see some faction largely controlling that public square, we can assume that they're also controlling the government?
  - emteycz 4y ago
    Not at all. To me it seems like what people on Twitter say has basically zero relevance to what's happening IRL.
- forty 4y ago
  I wonder how long it will take for Musk to run for the Whitehouse. Such a good way to have people talk about him even more, he cannot not do it.
jimkleiber 4y ago
Well if a billionaire controls a public square, I wouldn't consider it a public square. Edit: one thing that bothers me about HN is the context-less downvoting. I wish people would reply with why they're downvoting. For me, it wouldn't be a public square because it is privately owned, it would be more like a shopping mall or an amusement park. Just because a shopping mall has free admission to the public doesn't mean it is a public space.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- timdev2 4y ago
  Careful with the shopping mall analogy. Someone will inevitably bring up Pruneyard[0] and derail things. I think "a bar" is probably the best analogy out there. There might only be one in town. It's open to the (adult) public. People discuss issues. The barkeep can 86 you if he doesn't like your behavior, or shoes, or politics, and your rights will not have been violated. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._Robins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._R...
  - jimkleiber 4y ago
    Yes I like the bar analogy better, thank you!
natch 4y ago
Sounds like Twitter is already government controlled. Not the US government though… rather, the Saudi government, who hold an unknown but presumably massive portion of the shares.

mustached 4y ago

"the law doth punish man or woman that steals the goose from off the common, but lets the greater felon loose that steals the common from the goose" -17th-century poem Still holds up.

dcgudeman 4y ago
hmm yes really applies to this situation. Goose commons switcharoo. Really sheds light on the Elon Musk Twitter takeover.
- sweetheart 4y ago
  If you don't think it does, you should explain how.
  - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
    Actually, no. The burden is on mustached to show that it does, not on dcgudeman to show that it does not.
    - mustached 4y ago
      I think the point sweetheart was making is that a sarcastic response without any counterpoint isn't productive. I don't think dcgudeman understood my comment without more context, but i was happy to provide that. I'm just here to have interesting, productive conversations :)
- mustached 4y ago
  I'm expressing how the privatization and capitalization of public spaces is as old as america itself -- as expressed in this early colonial poem -- and the Musk takeover of twitter is just another example.
  - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
    But that begs the question. Is Twitter a public space?

aww_dang 4y ago

>We go there to make noise about how the world could and should be a “better place.” We go on Twitter to noisily call out strangers... Do "we"? I certainly don't. A few product updates, feature previews, giveaways and that's it for me. >Neoliberalism and its incessant privatization of public space also explains social media’s weaponizing of morality. Rather than a digital version of the town square, Twitter is the privately owned space in which private companies and billionaires can compete for public virtue. Rather than real citizenship, that’s the mock political identity of our neoliberal age. What exactly is this publicly owned web forum which the author pines for? I guess he cannot create it himself, because then it would be privately owned. What is he proposing? A government owned "public" Twitter? If there is no actual proposal, it is interesting that this issue is now so pressing. When this publicly traded private company was banning and moralizing, it didn't seem to be an issue. "It is a private company, go somewhere else if you don't like it", was the standard refrain. Now when the shoe is on the other foot, the problem is private ownership. From my side it reads as if Elon has master-level trolled partisans. His stated intent to literally take the company private should have been the first clue.

CWuestefeld 4y ago
From my side it reads as if Elon has master-level trolled partisans. I think that's exactly it. I can't find any other interpretation that makes sense. Lots of folks are up-in-arms about how he's going to destroy free speech. But since there's no hint from Musks's quarter that anything would be done to limit anyone's speech - more the opposite, that he largely opposes any such limitations - their concerns make no sense. I know it's partisan and uncharitable, but the only way I can find to read it is a fear that the kind of anti-speech limitations that they are accustomed to and they like will be removed. Thus, Musk has trolled them into revealing this secret preference.
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  There is a weird new trend of redefining "free speech" to mean "speech that doesn't offend me".

matthewdgreen 4y ago

What is this article about? Is it about the privatization of public space? Because that would be an interesting subject to elaborate on. Is it about your objection to people being self-righteous and "woke" on Twitter? That's much more boring, tough luck and welcome to humanity. Is it about AI? Frankly I have no idea: that part of the article seemed like a wild right-turn when I hit the bottom of the article.

DoneWithAllThat 4y ago
This article is about trying to hammer into the public’s brain the conflation of Twitter and a public utility. Referring to something that a small fraction of the country interacts directly with and an infinitesimal fraction actually contribute to as the public square in order to build support for legislation that would wrangle it into requiring it to reflect their viewpoint.
- drekk 4y ago
  Social media is the 21st century public square, and it's not just Twitter. 2% of US adults actively posting on Twitter means it's more common for you to see a Twitter user than a ginger on the street. Allowing tech companies (or more pointedly, their board of directors) to control public discourse is a huge error and one I'm sure we'll pay for in due time.

woah 4y ago

> "As I write this, the world’s wealthiest and noisiest man has made a characteristically loud public offer to buy the internet’s most memetic social media platform." There seems to be the idea in some lefty-er online circles that Elon Musk made a "loud offer" to "cause a media circus", "manipulate the market", or even "snub the SEC". They seem totally ignorant of the fact that this offer was made on the SEC's website to comply with their reporting requirements: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001418091/000110465922045641/tm2212748d1_sc13da.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001418091/000110465...

SantalBlush 4y ago
His past behavior gives strong evidence of these things. If one looks at this offer without any broader context, then sure, it looks like people are making a big deal out of nothing. But that's disingenuous.
- willnonya 4y ago
  You mean the public characterizations of his past behavior, don't you? I'm not an EM fan but that doesn't mean he always gets a fair shake from the media.
jayd16 4y ago
What about announcing it on Twitter along with the trolly memes Elon is also posting about it? If it's not the threshold of "loud" its at least certainly not quiet. By comparison, how many memes did the president of nVidia tweet about hot boxing ARM's board? Not to say being loud is bad but c'mon. Its only not loud _for Elon_. This is a pretty loud as far as SEC filings go.
Mountain_Skies 4y ago
Amazing how quickly Musk replaced Trump as the world's noisiest man in their minds.

tayo42 4y ago

I think people are really blowing twitters influence and impact out of proportion. I think theres a small vocal minority on twitter that uses it that think twitter is the world and discourse happens on it. Most people don't use it let alone are even tweeting.

dotnet00 4y ago

This feels almost incoherent enough to be AI generated. I'm not sure what the argument being made even is. Are they mad that Elon wants to buy twitter because he's rich? Are they mad because of his stated position on free speech? Are they trying to point to some imagined hypocrisy in people considering twitter a public square who are also cheering Elon's attempted purchase of it? In the end the company would just be moving from one set of millionaires and billionaires to another set. And then what's with the sudden tangent to AI regulation?

zeroonetwothree 4y ago
> Are they mad that Elon wants to buy twitter because he's rich? Are they mad because of his stated position on free speech? I think yes to both. But they don't want to just blatantly say it so it's wrapped in some kind of gibberish.
mft_ 4y ago
Quite - a lot of words spent to make no particular point that I could discern.
- golemotron 4y ago
  Yes. The headline talks about sulky billionaires but the whole article is sulky.
  - the_common_man 4y ago
    Both can be true
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

ParksNet 4y ago

Why is it acceptable for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to own and control online speech, but not Elon Musk?

shrubble 4y ago

1) I don't recall much outrage over Amazon's Jeff Bezos, a billionaire, buying the Washington Post; nor that the Atlantic is owned by Steve Jobs' widow. Nor the many other cases of rich and powerful people owning media properties. 2) Is it really that much of a "public square"? Since only about 22% of USA adults are on Twitter; and 80 percent of the tweets come from 10 percent of users (thus 2.2% of the USA population). see https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up-twitter-users/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up-tw... Could it be more that the noisy journalists are on Twitter, but the rest of us don't really care all that much ... ?

foobarian 4y ago
The UK/NPR model is the only way to do it right. Media companies simply can't make money, and therefore unless there is public funding it is inevitable we'll end up with a bunch of pet media outfits at the whims of rich tycoons.
tristor 4y ago
> Could it be more that the noisy journalists are on Twitter, but the rest of us don't really care all that much ... ? Most of the available evidence seems to indicate most of Twitter is bots or people who are indistinguishable from bots because they don't have any opinions of their own. I don't see much loss in Twitter being bought, or ceasing to exist entirely.
scruffyherder 4y ago
It's because we don't actually love the science, it's just what we lkke to say. Elon was the darling until we didn't need him anymore, he talked to the jujitsu guy, and now he is othered.
Ekaros 4y ago
Private media companies are different from platforms. Twitter, Facebook is more like phone network than a broadcasting or printing company. Media producers have always been since founding been owned and controlled by someone. I really don't understand why is it different that now a some new billionaire owns it...

zeroonetwothree 4y ago

This article is pretty bad, for example: > We live in a financially unregulated world where Elon Musk can wake up one morning and choose to use $43 billion of his own money to noisily acquire a social media platform. Musk's actions has to go through the SEC, and in any case it seems his offer will not be accepted. How is this an example of "financially unregulated"?

tpmoney 4y ago
I’m also unclear what regulations they seem to think makes sense. The other way to phrase it is “Elon Musk can wake up one morning and use his personal money to buy a private property that is publicly available for sale.”
AnimalMuppet 4y ago
"Financially unregulated"? Yes, there are not currently regulations prohibiting people from offering to buy stuff. If that's a problem, any solution is likely to be worse. If Musk already owned, say, Facebook, then the antitrust regulations might kick in. But just offering to buy a company? Yeah, that's unregulated. Free market and all that.

scruffyherder 4y ago

Pretty sure the kingdom of Saudi already owns your precious public square.

gnopgnip 4y ago

Public companies can have voting structures that prevent anyone from just buying it and taking over. Like Alphabet/google, Brin and Page have a majority of voting rights, but only own about 12% of the stock.

Mountain_Skies 4y ago
That can lead to the Crazy Monarch problem. Monarchy has lots of benefits over democracy but all it takes is one crazy monarch to reverse that. I'm starting to wonder if perhaps we're going to see that with Mark Zuckerberg and his Metaverse gamble.

kareemsabri 4y ago

> That’s “like church” some of you might say. No. Twitter is church. That’s why I don’t go there. And it’s why Elon Musk is willing to pay $43 billion to own it. Follow the money. It always leads to one kind of church or another. There's some leaps here the author takes as self-evident that I don't follow. This was spraying all over the place.

at_a_remove 4y ago

Personally, I hope Elon Musk buys Twitter and grinds all of the blue checks under a repressive heel, Leto II Atreides-style. When they are banned, I will reflect their "It's only censorship with the government does it *disingenuous look*" and "free speed doesn't mean freedom from consequences" and "it's a private company!" thought-terminating cliches back at them. I want them to feel "silenced" and mocked for complaining, until the value of what they have lost aches like a broken arm. They should be reminded of the disrespect they had for a document written, after all, by "dead white guys." I often despair and wonder if people as a group tend to only function ethically when they are true underdogs.

CWuestefeld 4y ago
While I tend to feel like you do, keep in mind that the hypocrisy runs both ways. While Conservatives were complaining about being gagged by the Left, they were all about free and open speech. But when Trump complains about platforms providing the soapbox for his enemies, it's his supporters that want to wield the gags. I'm sure that lots of people really do value free speech as such, whether or not it's benefiting them (I know I do, and I don't have any reason to suspect different of you). But it sure seems like at least the activists are only interested in using it as a weapon when it happens to be in their own hands, and stomping it underfoot when the circumstances differ.
- at_a_remove 4y ago
  Hence my bit about underdogs. The ACLU seemed to fight for a lot more for free speech back when they and their side were not ascendant.
troyvit 4y ago
Man I think I subscribe to different twitter channels than you. But what you ended your post with has been proved out time and again. Maybe it is a reason to despair.
memish 4y ago
He wouldn't do that, but it would be useful for them to understand that's what they are doing right now.

mwattsun 4y ago

I've promoted this comment of mine since some are saying the article is incoherent. I posted it because: I took the author to be asking a couple of important questions: 1) Do we want the "Codes of Conduct" and "Mission Statements" of private corporations to be our moral guides? I think a lot of religious people take issue with some of their stances, especially in regards to trans rights. (I am not stating my own opinion here.) 2) An interesting idea about AI that I hadn't considered: Can we have a proper discussion about regulating AI on platforms that are regulated by AI?

JoeAltmaier 4y ago

Lots of idealism about free speech and suchnot. THe public interest however depends utterly on how often the media is use, by whom, and for what. All that matters deeply, at least in how folks view the issue and how they emotionally react. The arguments follow from that. So no its not ideal, and no, folks have not been free of hypocrisy in their responses, but few issues are completely black and white.

leeroyjenkins11 4y ago

It's funny when people get sulky because someone wants to provide a space force open discussion. Twitter is the place that banned a true news story and interfered in a presidential election. They also ban people for correctly stating a person's sex. If people are cranky, they can build their own.