WSJ Musk to buy controlling interest in Twitter
It seems fashionable to hate Billionaires, but they can be entertaining, and sometimes do great good. Elon Musk, who claims to be a free speech absolutist got offended by the Twitter staff’s arrogance and censorship of political views, so he will drop $50 billion or so to buy it and fix it.
And he will probably make a profit on it in the end.
Tidewater News and Opinion Forum 
RE: “And he will probably make a profit on it in the end.”
Probably so. Twitter is something of a dinosaur, an example of reverse evolution, perhaps. To the extent that process improvement is the origin of profits there is much for Elon Musk to improve.
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“Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy,” Musk tweeted last month.
From comment section of WSJ link.
Disney has a de facto Town Square at Old Town in Kissimmee FL, next to Disney World. Being privately owned, I would guess political grandstanding and demonstrations would not be welcomed there either.
There are lots of platform on the net. If conservatives want to dominate, they can. The problem is that few will follow them in siloes.
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Well, I’ve been annoyed by those arrogant millennial snots sneering at us and deciding whose and what opinions can be expressed but I don’t have $50million to give them their comeuppance.
Note that Musk is not saying he wants to take over Twitter and make it a conservative town square, he only intends to make it unbiased, yet that is being equated with the end of “Cabaret”
Liberals triggered
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RE: “I’ve been annoyed by those arrogant millennial snots sneering at us and deciding whose and what opinions can be expressed…”
I feel pretty much the same way. The problem is, you can’t codify or write a specification for free speech. As Toqueville noted, free speech arises from community tolerance. It cannot exist unless the community values it more than speech it merely likes.
This, in fact, is what makes the “millennial snots” snots.
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“…Arrogant millennial snots…”
My goodness. Just because a private enterprise is struggling to please as many as it can among the “snots” of all kinds, left and right, you think you have a God given right to use their platforms?
Don’t you ever tire of playing the perennial victim apparently for some kind of visceral pleasure?
Conservatives started a few sites to compete and found that, lo and behold, they started censoring speech also. Gab, Parler, etc. are all vetting speech they don’t like. Truth Social had some fine print in their contract that they can censor criticism of the owners.
https://www.aei.org/technology-and-innovation/what-happened-to-truth-social-free-speech-online-sounded-so-easy/
Conservatives are suffering from some kind of political Munchausen Syndrome. Faking “hurt” political feelings for sympathy and campaign literature.
That being said, Musk has some interesting points. He said advertising puts commercial entities somewhat in control of content since they have revenue levers to pull. So he is considering a subscription model. Not a bad idea since losing a few 3 dollar subscriptions over a controversy is a lot easier way to cull the herd than losing million dollar advertising revenue.
You might want to pull the immunity from platforms, but if you think censorship is bad now, wait until the provider is responsible for the nonsense, threats and other insane postings we still find on social media.
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“Don’t you ever tire of playing the perennial victim apparently for some kind of visceral pleasure?”
No.
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