Elon Musk buys Twitter for $44 billion

Did Russia surrender? Did COVID go away? What happened to the news? All about some White Supremacist Free Speech guy.

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Is Elon Musk even a statist? It's hard to say for sure given his trolling tendencies, but quotes like the below suggest otherwise

Musk bought Bitcoin in 2021 and put it on the balance sheet of Tesla.. LoL.. far from a statist.
 

Is Elon Musk even a statist? It's hard to say for sure given his trolling tendencies, but quotes like the below suggest otherwise

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Musk bought Bitcoin in 2021 and put it on the balance sheet of Tesla.. LoL.. far from a statist.

I doubt any of those things would impress Larken Rose very much.

But I'm not sure how much it really matters, anyway ...

As I have said elsewhere a number of times, if a truly libertarian society is ever actually achieved, anarchists and minarchists will no doubt proceed to quarrel vehemently over whether they live under a "state" or not.
 
What's Musk's real agenda here?

It's not just to transform Twitter into platform for more diverse views out of some kind of altruistic commitment to free speech.

That may be the effect this has, and a legitimate secondary reason. And more power to him for it. If nothing else, it illustrates how capitalism can redirect selfish motives into reasons to serve the interests of others.

But still, underneath all that, I think Musk has to have selfish motives. What are they?

Is it that he sees a legitimate opportunity to make a lot of money by paying more for Twitter than it's worth? Possibly. That probably is the simplest explanation.

I still wonder though. In decades past (and to some extent still today). Wealthy oligarchs would buy major newspapers and media outlets, not so much for their profitability as for the opportunity to leverage their influence in ways that they saw as advantageous for their other business and political endeavors. I think Musk may see potential for something like that in Twitter. There may be a superficial ideal of it being an uncontrolled venue. But I'm sure that an intelligent and creative leader like Musk can see ways to steer the messaging that Twitter broadcasts in ways that look more hands off than they really are.
 
No doubt and there is some indication of that already in his tweet.



"and authenticating all humans".

In other words, no handles and proving who you are. At the bare minimum requiring a link to a valid cell phone number (not simply any DID) or worse drivers license or passport verification or full KYC.

Absolutely. My thoughts preceded the time I saw that. After I read it, it sent chills down my spine. (so to speak)
They are data mining. Musk is on their team.
 
They are data mining. Musk is on their team.

Bullshit.

There is no policy Musk can implement with respect to "authenticating all humans" for purposes of "data mining" that they couldn't already implement without him. So even granting the implementation of such a policy, the alternatives would be (1) more "data mining" and less censorship (with Musk), or (2) more "data mining" and more censorship (without Musk) - and it's silly to suggest that "they" would prefer (1) over (2).

But I guess some people just always have to find something to piss and moan about.
 
Absolutely. My thoughts preceded the time I saw that. After I read it, it sent chills down my spine. (so to speak)
They are data mining. Musk is on their team.

Don't be so naive. Nobody is under illusions that Twitter et. al. are data-mining. The entire value-proposition of Twitter is data-mining. That makes Twitter one of a dozen Big Tech companies all playing exactly the same game. So, no, Elon Musk is not single-handedly going to strip you of your privacy and "authenticate" you against your will. In context, his statement clearly means that all human users of Twitter will be authenticated so that you can't have bot/spam comments taking over every Twitter thread, posing as humans. Which is what is happening right now. It's a three-letter agency operation to use Twitter and other Big Tech platforms as the world's biggest single-voice megaphone. You thought British war propaganda ads were bad, wait until you find out what is really going on with propaganda bot farms brigading these Big Tech platforms. The problem that Musk is tackling is stopping the three-letter agencies from using Twitter for that purpose... a purpose that serves no social function except tyranny. Musk cannot solve the privacy problems that are baked into these Big Tech platforms. But he can shut down the spam/bots and I think we haven't even begun to realize just how massive that really is. Maybe we'll start to get an idea this November...
 
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