Wednesday, April 27, 2022

Twitter

My prediction is not much will change, for good or ill. Consequently, I wish Musk would spend that much money elsewhere.

7 comments:

james said...

Is there more likely to be support for gov't regulation of social media?

David Foster said...

Marc Andreessen, at twitter, today:

"Overheard in Silicon Valley: "We’ve had decades of preference falsification in corporate America. Turns out when Elon stands up and says 'this is absurd' a lot of people have courage to do the same.""

https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/1519441880852828161

Christopher B said...

A fairly simple change like 'any item posted by an identifiable organization with designated contacts and registered with a legal authority that is also published in a similarly identifiable non-digital format will not be subjected to moderation' would have been a game changer in 2020.

Mike Guenther said...

"Consequently, I wish Musk would spend that much money elsewhere."

So do a lot of leftists with their own pet causes. ( Not that you are a leftist. Just that THEY are the ones who think they know better than you how to spend your money and on what it should be spent on.) We shouldn't fall into that trap.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Not so much a cause. I was thinking that his other uses of the money would likely be more generally productive.

David Foster said...

Maybe it's obvious, but the money doesn't cease to exist: it will go to current TWTR shareholders who can do whatever they want with it. Some will start companies, some will pay off loans, some will contribute to (good or bad) causes.

David Foster said...

If free speech is not preserved in the US, then nothing else much matters. This assertion is only a slight exaggeration...if any...because without free speech, the society's feedback system is destroyed, and the effects are far-reaching.

Is there anything else Musk could have done, other than buying Twitter, that would have had such a potentially-positive impact on free speech?

Personally, I'd rather see people doing more of their Internet interaction at multiple independent websites and blogs, rather than staying 'safely' within walled garden (which always come complete with serpent), but there are millions and millions of people who are not going to do that.