I feel like we’re going to look back in a couple years and mark this as the beginning of the collapse of Tesla. Musk is already spread thin, now he’s so unfocused and undisciplined that he’s unable to stop himself from buying an irrelevant social media company as an expensive hobby. It’s the height of hubris.
So are you admitting that Elon musk is solely responsible for Tesla’s success?
Because whenever Tesla has a huge accomplishment, people always come out of the woodwork and claim Elon is Not the founder and all he does is take credit for everyone else’s work.
He is almost certainly responsible for Tesla not having filed for chapter 11 yet, but they have gotten close a few times. Every time they get close, he does something in the media that raises the stock price by 200% so they can quietly sell shares to cover the shortfall.
I personally wouldn't give him credit for the great engineering done at tesla. It seems like he is good at hiring decent people, and when he gets out of their way, great things happen. When he gets involved (like with the absurd touchscreen console, no-LIDAR self-driving, and the "lights-off" factory idea) it goes wrong. Musk is an amazing marketer and he deserves credit for that, but not for engineering work.
> Every time they get close, he does something in the media that raises the stock price by 200%
This is not really the case at all. Why are you just making stuff up?
Go look at between 2016 and 2018, by far the closest Tesla came to bankruptcy then at any time sine 2008.
So I'm looking at that data and there is no magical 200% stock price raise based on media.
What actually happened it Tesla managed to execute and bring a mass market vehicle market successfully.
> like with the absurd touchscreen console
Man somebody should have told the 1.5 million vehicles they will sell this year for 30% magin how stupid that is.
> no-LIDAR self-driving
That's why you can now anywhere in the US can jump on a self-driving LIDAR tax and buy a LIDAR self-driving car at your local dealer.
> and the "lights-off" factory idea
And now Tesla has some of the most advanced factories in the car industry where literally the CEO of VW said that VW was not able to produce vehicles as fast. What an idiot he is ...
> Musk is an amazing marketer and he deserves credit for that, but not for engineering work.
That is literally the opposite impression you get when you actually investigate anything other then twitter opinion.
Pretty much everybody who got to spend any time at Tesla or SpaceX comes away with the opposite impression. Musk literally spends the waste majority of his time in detailed engineering review meetings.
Tesla had a gigantic amount of negative press, more then any other company I can think of. But Musk made the company successful with marketing?
What are you even talking about, what marketing? His twitter account and a TED interview or something every could of months? The viewer numbers on those things are far to low to explain Tesla value.
At the nearby Gruenheide factory outside of Berlin, Tesla is currently trucking along and set to achieve the goal of making an electric vehicle in under 10 hours. At this time, Volkswagen’s main Zwickau plant requires 30 hours per vehicle. Diess hopes to reduce that to 20 hours per vehicle by next year.
Conclusion: Neither Tesla nor VW are producing EVs in ten hours. And Zwickau is not a dedicated EV plant and needs rebuilding to become one. Interesting that we only get concrete numbers from VW, so. I have to admit, it is funny to see VW, which was the most marketing dependent car maker I know up until Tesla showed up, and Tesla to slug it out in a PR and marketing war!
Even if you want to make the most pessimistic possible attitude.
Tesla went from a company who had never manufactures anything in large quantity, 5 years later they are seriously comparing to VW a company that has been a globally dominate automaker for decades.
So look at Tesla in 2017 and say 'Musk is an idiot he thinks he can automate production' and then look at how Tesla produces cars in 2022 and tell me he is an idiot.
Musk still is an idiot when it comes to car manufacturing. Why? Because he gives a fuck about first pass yield and those things. Plus, Tesla is still almost a factor 10 away from production volumes of VW, Toyota and the like.
From publicly available footage, a Tesla factory looks not any more impressive, even less so from commentary that knows much about automotive manufacturing than I do, than state of the art factories from legacy coomoanues.
Tesla and SpaceX are impressive feats, I don't get the urge to pass Tesla and Musk as all encompassing geniusus that know everything better than encumbents.
Ford is on track to deliver 1.6 million cars this year. Tesla is doing 300k a quarter with two factories and about to open two more factories. Volkswagen is targeting 2.4 million this year. Consensus from the street (not provided by Tesla) is that Tesla will deliver around 1.5 million as it works through the Germany and Texas ramp up.
So non EV cars don't count anynore or what? VW is just a tad above 10 M cars per year, that is without Audi, Skoda, SEAT and the trucks under MAN / Scania. Ford is at 6.4 M cars.
Not sure where you get your numbers from, but they are incorrect per WSJ / NYT. A quick Google doesn't validate your 6.4 million number anwhere.
On Ford -
"The Detroit automaker sold 1,905,955 vehicles in 2021, ending up behind new U.S. leader Toyota Motor Corp (7203. T) and rival General Motors Co (GM. N). Ford had sold 2,044,744 vehicles a year earlier.Jan 5, 2022"
VW (not including sub-brands, which are managed and mostly built separately):
4,896,900
It's worth noting both of those companies production is failing, while Tesla is increasing 50% YoY.
Edit: Turned out it was more like 2017 numbers... This source here has 9.5 million units for Toyota, 8.8 million for VW, both after steep drops in 2020. Ford is down to 3.9 million, I am honestly surprised by this. But then I undersetimated the drop in car deliveries in 2020.
What we are seeing now in the car industry that there is a lot of grouping up to save cost.
We will have a few really large groups, VW, Toyota, Stellantis, Renault–Nissan–Mitsubishi alliance. GM has also lost a gigantic amount of vehicle volume in the last 10 years. There will likely be even more consolidation.
In general volume is going down and because of supply issues its not going up as much as people thought this year.
> Because he gives a fuck about first pass yield and those things.
Do you mean he doesn't? Anyway whatever you are trying to say, fact is Tesla is producing a lot of vehicles, they are a major automaker, they are growing fast, and they have industry leading margins.
> Plus, Tesla is still almost a factor 10 away from production volumes of VW, Toyota and the like.
What an absurd argument is that? So do you think BMW, Daimler and co are also all shit at manufacturing? Because they don't make as many cars as VW either.
So in your mind, only if Tesla creates the largest car company in the world he can be considered good at manufacturing? You realize that is a totally absurd position right?
Tesla went from selling a few 100 vehicles 10 years ago to likely outproducing BMW and Geely in 2023. That means they had continues massive growth curve for 10+ years straight.
If you compare the output of individual plants, Tesla plant in Shanghai is easily one of the most productive car plants in the world and that is the first plant that Tesla ever even built.
> I don't get the urge to pass Tesla and Musk as all encompassing geniusus that know everything better than encumbents.
That not the argument anybody made. Tesla is not better at everything. But they are actually very good and anybody that still thinks of Tesla in 2017 is just stuck in time. In some important they are actually better, body structure, electronics, battery integration is just ahead of everybody else.
If you want to dislike Tesla and Musk that's fine, but your arguments about him being and idiot and Tesla being depended on marketing just don't have a bases in reality.
He did say that, but see my sister comment. It was actually a disparaging remark about Tesla QC, and how even VW's plans to improve their line productivity would still see their vehicles spend twice as long as a Tesla on the line (but hey, you would at least feel pretty confident your car would be delivered with four brake pads, so that's a bonus).
- 2016 - model 3 preorders with no backing except a drawing.
- 2018 - cybertruck, semi, and full-self-driving preorders with one single prototype of the vehicles.
- And after each one of these, there is a huge bump in stock price. 200% is hyperbole.
These are feats of marketing, not feats of engineering. A CEO spending a lot of time in detailed engineering reviews doesn't make you an engineer, it means you enjoy doing detailed engineering reviews.
It is undeniable that Tesla is successful in large part because of the cult of personality that Musk has built, largely on Twitter. That has bought his company the good grace to do preorders with ridiculous turnaround times and to lose money year over year on the stock market while keeping an astronomical valuation.
The rest of Tesla-the actual car making thing-is something that an organization of several thousand engineers could have certainly done without Elon Musk given the amount of cash they had, and probably could have done better without Elon Musk. They just needed Elon Musk to raise the cash.
He is exactly like Steve Jobs: a briliant marketer with a cult of personality, who people think of as an "inventor" because he likes to spend time doing that.
Very common mistake to assume he is exactly like Steve Jobs. Jobs was not technical, he had great design awareness and marketing skills. Musk is an engineer at heart AND a great marketer.
> - And after each one of these, there is a huge bump in stock price. 200% is hyperbole.
Its not hyperbool is literally just false.
The stock price in 2018 was essentially flat.
The stock price in 2016 is flat.
You made an argument about 200% and at best its like a few %, meaning your argument is total nonsense. Literally made up with nothing to back it up.
And even if the stock went up a bit based on announcement, that doesn't even remotely prove that that stock raised 'saved' the company.
> These are feats of marketing, not feats of engineering.
No what are actually feats of engineering, and actually had impact on the stock price is when Tesla from 2017 to 2018 made the first EV that was produced over 5000 times a weak and had significantly possessive margin. And when they turned a mud field in China in to a working factory in about a year.
That is when the stock ACTUALLY started to go up. When Tesla proved they could produce cars at very high volume and good margin.
So you are just flat out factually wrong on this and I don't know why you are trying to hold on to your take. The data is right their anybody can look up the data and instantly know that you are wrong about this.
> It is undeniable that Tesla is successful in large part because of the cult of personality that Musk has built, largely on Twitter.
That is just total nonsense. Tesla successful brought the first modern Li-Ion EV to market before Musk was famous. Even when the Model S came out Musk was not very well known. Actually releasing the Model S successfully and getting car of the year is part of why Musk did get more famous.
So Tesla already had like 5 years of growth before Musk got all that well known. Also, you vastly overrated, twitter, far fewer user, use it then you might think.
People were attacked to Tesla because they made actual real EV that you could buy, that had a charging network. Tesla had a message about EV saving the environment and that message reached 100x wider then Musk twitter. People don't spend 50k+ on items because of a guy on twitter.
> That has bought his company the good grace to do preorders with ridiculous turnaround times and to lose money year over year on the stock market while keeping an astronomical valuation.
Well turns out they very actually undervalued not overvalued. And they didn't actually lose that much money, and didn't raise that much money.
They showed they were profitable with the Model S and they were a sustainable company. Then they went into Model 3 and everybody knew this was capital intensive and they guided for loses for a few years.
Do yourself a favor and compare how much money Tesla raised and what their evaluation is compared to companies that are in this space now, Rivian, Lucid and so on.
Tesla actually operated handled their cash very well and did a lot with not that much money.
> The rest of Tesla-the actual car making thing-is something that an organization of several thousand engineers could have certainly done without Elon Musk given the amount of cash they had, and probably could have done better without Elon Musk. They just needed Elon Musk to raise the cash.
And who heirs the engineers? Who defines strategy? Who decides what people should have leadership positions and so on. Tesla was not a company with 1000s of engineers when Tesla became CEO, its was a company about to go bust who had not delivered a single car.
This is HN, building a company from tiny to gigantic is a huge achievement that doesn't just 'happen'.
There were Tesla competitors many had just as much or more cash then Tesla, but they failed. Why? I thought if company just had money they would magically start mass produce cars.
> He is exactly like Steve Jobs: a briliant marketer with a cult of personality, who people think of as an "inventor" because he likes to spend time doing that.
That you think they are the same just proves that you have not really been paying attention beyond surface level....
I want to just clarify that I think that Tesla the company has done some amazing engineering work. However, _Elon Musk_ himself has not been a great contributor to that work, and he is not a good engineer. He is good at hiring people and holding them accountable to a vision. He is good at raising money from both investors and average people. He is good at selling dreams. He is clearly not particularly good at actually building things.
Being an "engineer at heart" is part of his marketing game, just like it was for Elizabeth Holmes and Steve Jobs. Also, being an engineer at heart doesn't make someone a good engineer. Tesla has accomplished incredible feats of engineering, but that doesn't mean that _Elon Musk_ has accomplished them. Also, the fact that Elon Musk is an incredible marketer shouldn't be taken as a dig: he is clearly the best marketer of his generation and Tesla undeniably would have failed without him. It's when he or his followers get fantasies about Elon Musk being brilliant at everything that I get upset.
As to credibility as an engineer, let's look at the other examples of Musk's engineering work (the ones we know _Elon Musk himself_ was responsible for):
* The hyperloop is a ridiculous concept that defies physics and engineering. Musk personally wrote the "white paper" for it. He wrote that white paper because the California legislature was proposing high speed rail from LA to SF (that would be a ridiculous waste of money), and he didn't like their proposal.
* The boring company makes tunnels. They are not particularly cheap or fast to dig, unless you compare their tunnels to tunnels several times the diameter (as Elon Musk does in his marketing material).
I have no problem with Tesla and I hope they become a successful car company. There is a good chance that my next car 3-5 years from now will be a Tesla if the company proves itself capable of surviving a bear market and the quality issues go away. Musk has been great for Tesla in the growth phase, but they may need a new CEO for the next stage of life.
> However, _Elon Musk_ himself has not been a great contributor to that work, and he is not a good engineer.
This old sad meme again.
Do you mean he is not a technically certified engineer? Because a lot of people are not that but go into engineering, specially in software.
What would you suggest qualifies somebody as an engineer?
Musk studied physics and was was accepted as PhD student for material science at Standford. Many people from that path go into engineering fields. Musk didn't finish his work on ultracaps and instead created a software company where he was the main software engineer. He actually wrote the code and lead the team of coders at a company that sold for 20+ million. Does that not count as engineering?
And Elon did actually work on the actual Falcon 1 rocket. Both on design and on the actual hardware.
He is not the Chief Engineer in name only. He does what a Chief Engineer does. He is in every technical review meeting with senior engineering leaders and make top level decisions, he defines the strategy and direction of the engineering work. He fundamentally makes a the choice of material/manufacturing process and so on, and takes responsibility if it doesn't work out.
There are plenty of domain experts who have interacted with Elon who have talked about how he actually has the knowlage to talk with all the engineers about domain specific details in those peoples field. And those people were not working at Musk companies.
> * The hyperloop is a ridiculous concept that defies physics and engineering.
Funny then as it was validated by engineering teams of both Tesla and SpaceX with the best simulation tools available in the industry at the time. Please tell me what defies physics.
> * The boring company makes tunnels. They are not particularly cheap or fast to dig, unless you compare their tunnels to tunnels several times the diameter (as Elon Musk does in his marketing material).
Well the bought a commercial tunnel boring machine to start of at. So of course those are not faster. But the point of the company is to make it faster. Are you suggesting that they have made their next generation tunnel boring machines slower then currently commercially available designs?
Where do you get your knowlage about tunneling prices and speed? Do you have some sort of internal knowlage about cost from the boring company?
The Boring Company just raised 600M$ but so I guess at least some investors who look at the tech don't think its trash.
> where literally the CEO of VW said that VW was not able to produce vehicles as fast
Musk's RDF in full effect here.
That quotation was about quality control - and Tesla's relatively abysmal QC compared to other production lines.
VW's CEO said that an average VW took nearly 30 hours to come off the line, versus approximately 10 for Tesla.
He also said that they're targetting 20 hours in the next decade. Huh. They're not even trying to beat Tesla, there. Wonder why? Maybe it's so they don't deliver cars with mismatched tires, leaking sunroofs, _missing brakepads_, and so on.
I think it's hilarious that people like you believe with a straight face that a $250B/year production line hasn't fired up a spreadsheet and done the numbers on costs of "implement another line, so we can spend more time on each car and push more out in parallel" (VAG manufactured 8.4M vehicles in 2021 versus 900K for TMC), than "hey, if we just cut some more corners, and deal with things after the fact, it'll be cheaper".
So what? If they target 20 or 10h doesn't matter. The fundamental point is that they clearly outperform VW there their CEO admits it and they are doing major investments to catch up.
And the claim that you need 10h for quality control is utterly ridiculous. The reason they likely are not targeting a lower number is because their production centers are far more distrusted and they don't have full vertical integration from battery cells to cars in one building.
There are other possible explanation. You can't just assert whatever you want without any evidence at all.
If VW has a higher quality standard then Tesla (questionable) then that fine. That literally changes nothing about my argument about production argument.
And Tesla quality issues have been far less in Shanghai were they have faster production then in Fremont. We have yet to see if Berlin will have production issues.
And outside of VW or whatever. Its unquestionable that Tesla made major gains in manufcaturing that is a competitive advantage. So the claim that Musk is dumb because he wanted to increase automation or simply wrong.
The idea that they cut 20h of production by 'cutting corners' is just a delusional take. Sorry. If that was possible do you think GM would not have done that in the 2000s. Do you think Nissan wouldn't have done it?
Tesla first attempt at that automation was wrong, but they adjusted and actually did make real innovations. Denying that is just making you look silly and uninformed.
As far as I have been able to gather he is an engineer of historic significance like Brunel and Stevenson. He does get involved in engineering, and quite evidently "gets involved" way better than any other hands on technology investor alive.
Starts up a reusable rocket company after Blue Origin has started with the same basic ambitions - achieves it and remains the only reusable space launch system in the World for 7 years and counting... and is a good way through building a model carrying 150 tonnes to orbit, made out of stainless steel. I cant appreciate how to chalk that exceptional success up to an ability to hire talent that can push him of the way at the right time, but even that alone would be a great gift and demonstrated in multiple super successful technology ventures.
Telsa's self driving is while incomplete, also the most capable that has yet been produced or revealed to the world. The idea that Lidar is the secret of the final success is your hunch, I'm inclined to agree with Elon that its a software achievement - it certainly is in humans.
Was The Washington Post the tipping point where Amazon started to collapse?
I think we're approaching a point in the lifespan of Tesla where is can stand on its own merit and no longer requires Musk to continue making a ridiculous amount of money. However, Musk is integral to the continued innovation and success, the same as Steve Jobs was to Apple. Under Tim Cook, Apple continued to thrive, albeit in a different way.
Regardless, no way will Musk run Twitter on a day-to-day basis, he'll remove the board, replace the CEO with someone he trusts, likely get Jack involved again, and a lot of developers will leave, leaving the company in a better position financially. Musk will likely just guide functionality and policy decisions from afar.
Kind of, yeah? A few years later I deleted my Amazon account because Amazon became the new AliExpress and I could usually find everything for cheaper on eBay.
Which is not an answer to the question “Was The Washington Post the tipping point where Amazon started to collapse?”, which you were responding to.
I don’t eat at McDonalds, but that doesn’t make me think they’re going to collapse. In fact they’re likely successful for precisely for the reasons I don’t eat there.
If you view it as a pure engineering problem, sure, but the problem with managing social media companies hasn't been "we can't figure out how to store and display 280 character messages at high scale" in a long, long time. How to properly moderate social media to control some of its worst tendencies has been a very visible and very difficult issue for pretty much every social media company for the past 10 years.
There's a resolution, but any resolution will bring additional problems. If Musk's approach brings increased radicalization along with it, that's not a solved problem, even if you don't particularly care about radicalization (since the media definitely will and you're painting a bullseye on yourself).
>How to properly moderate social media to control some of its worst tendencies has been a very visible and very difficult issue for pretty much every social media company for the past 10 years.
Define "worst tendencies", because most people agree that "doxxing" and calls to violence are unacceptable but the left has just labeled all speech that they disagree with as "violence" or "misinformation" and just banned it all. I think musk has a good pulse on the dividing line that is most appropriate and that having the wrong opinion on the definition of a man, who won the last presidential election, and whether or not a vaccine is "safe or effective" have no business being censored by the cretins currently running twitter.
He may have someone in mind who he will appoint CEO.
Fundamentally, his beef with Twitter seems to be around their speech policies and maybe some missing site features. He doesn't need to be even close to full time to resolve those. He just has to find a tech CEO who agrees with his values and who can execute when given a clear mission. There are plenty of those kicking around the Bay Area.
They also have over 100,000 employees. How much can Musk really be involved in?
Tesla is pretty much on full self driving now, it's basically blue chip and not going anywhere. Yes the trillion $ market cap is due in large part to him.
>Musk is already spread thin, now he’s so unfocused and undisciplined that he’s unable to stop himself from buying an irrelevant social media company as an expensive hobby. It’s the height of hubris.
I couldn't disagree more. He's the richest person in the world, he's so tremendously successful whatever attributes that you want to apply to him is literally only something to learn from. Hubris? Overconfidence? He's basically the world's first trillionaire. He has had how many doubters along the way and he's right every time?
I get why he's buying twitter and it's not about it being a hobby. Sure babylon bee was a catalyst but basically he sees the societal value of twitter. He sees the damage that twitter is doing through their political censorship. By fixing these problems it will provide tremendous value to twitter. He's going to benefit greatly with the purchase.
Latest figures put him around $270 billion USD. That's mainly based on him owning ~20% of tesla. Whose market cap is around a trillion.
That figure doesn't include spacex/starlink, boring company, etc.
Spacex has gross revenues in the billions, 12,000 employees. Not to mention... ISS basically is Russian or Spacex launches to get there and back. With Ukraine... that makes Spacex the only option? What's the intrinsic value there?
What valuation would you give SpaceX? Their only real competitor right now is Russia and people dislike them.
His Tesla stake is worth ~190bn and the rest of his estimated net worth is comprised of SpaceX etc. Not sure why you think that is his Tesla equity only.
>His Tesla stake is worth ~190bn and the rest of his estimated net worth is comprised of SpaceX etc. Not sure why you think that is his Tesla equity only.
Lets say you're right. How did you come to a $80 billion valuation for spacex? The last valuation in 2021 was $100 billion. So spacex has lost value in your eyes? Starlink has happened since. Ukraine happened since.
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy."
So interesting thing, that's a quote attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee by an op-ed piece by Elmer T. Peterson in the 9 December 1951 The Daily Oklahoman[1].
What he really did say is a bit more complicated:
> "The people flatter themselves that they have the sovereign power. These are, in fact, words without meaning. It is true they elected governors; but how are these elections brought about? In every instance of election by the mass of a people—through the influence of those governors themselves, and by means the most opposite to a free and disinterested choice, by the basest corruption and bribery. But those governors once selected, where is the boasted freedom of the people? They must submit to their rule and control, with the same abandonment of their natural liberty, the freedom of their will, and the command of their actions, as if they were under the rule of a monarch"
The irony is modern democracy with free speech, where the scale of your wealth directly transfers to the scale of your speech, makes the wealthy just as powerful as they would be in any standard oligarchy.
>He's the richest person in the world, he's so tremendously successful whatever attributes that you want to apply to him is literally only something to learn from. Hubris? Overconfidence? He's basically the world's first trillionaire. He has had how many doubters along the way and he's right every time?
Is it the goal ? To be the richest ? Amazing perspective for our world ahead, let people amass cash, it's going to go _great_
>he's right every time
Except when he bets on camera only FSD, causes deaths, pushes the Hyperloop, does the Vegas Loop, calls people who reject him pedophiles, pushes Starship, pushes absolutely terrible working conditions for both factory workers and engineers, and an unending list of Elon bullshit. In the same way, is he "right" when Tesla only exists because of credits from the state (which he then complains about when the state asks him to respect the law), when SpaceX only exists because the US has kept it afloat, when he was kicked out of Paypal for being a dumbass, when he threatens our spacefaring possibilities with bullshit pride projects such as Starlink, when his stocks are propped up with his lies and just his personality ? Sure. Must be nice to live in the Musk Reality Distortion Field. Be real. He's not a hero.
>Is it the goal ? To be the richest ? Amazing perspective for our world ahead, let people amass cash, it's going to go _great_
No, Elon understands money unlike most people. Money is not a thing to anyone except the poor. Money is not a measurement of being able or not to do anything. In understanding that you generate wealth that is beyond money.
>Except when he bets on camera only FSD, causes deaths, pushes the Hyperloop, does the Vegas Loop, calls people who reject him pedophiles, pushes Starship, pushes absolutely terrible working conditions for both factory workers and engineers, and an unending list of Elon bullshit.
Controversial guy eh. Crazy how much society is rewarding him so much.
>n the same way, is he "right" when Tesla only exists because of credits from the state (which he then complains about when the state asks him to respect the law), when SpaceX only exists because the US has kept it afloat, when he was kicked out of Paypal for being a dumbass, when he threatens our spacefaring possibilities with bullshit pride projects such as Starlink, when his stocks are propped up with his lies and just his personality ? Sure. Must be nice to live in the Musk Reality Distortion Field. Be real. He's not a hero.
I agree, a certain political persuasion really dislikes him.
You're being down voted because your comments came off very angry and ranty. However, you are not wrong. His twitter usage is often hate filled or bullying. The one that stands out most is calling the scuba diver a pedo because he called Elon's submarine idea a PR stunt, which it totally was. Or when he trolls Bernie by saying he forgot he was still alive, because he doesn't agree with his stance on taxation. Elon is not really the best example or leader of free speech I would hope for.
> I couldn't disagree more. He's the richest person in the world, he's so tremendously successful whatever attributes that you want to apply to him is literally only something to learn from. Hubris? Overconfidence? He's basically the world's first trillionaire.
Am I right to say that Elon is not going to dinner with you?
> He has had how many doubters along the way and he's right every time?
So the robo-taxis have released on time as promised at the end of 2020 then as he suggested.
> Elon is already rather uninvolved with tesla because of the fight with the SEC.
I think this is hilarious.
"I can't run my company because a lawyer is meant to review my tweets so that I don't commit securities violations".
"I can't be involved with my company because the SEC is investigating my brother and I for insider trading".
This is horseshit. If this is the case, and I doubt it, it's entirely because he is trying to martyr himself, not because of any actuality of the "fight with the SEC". The SEC doesn't give two shits about the efficiency of his production lines, his plans to open a new battery production facility, or whatever. Let's stop the narrative that the evil bad SEC is stopping Musk from innovating to move humanity forward.
A guy who has managed to lead multiple startup companies to huge companies for literally decades threw multiple economic crisis. He is one of the longest running CEO in the auto industry.
Its just amazing to me how people focus so much on 'omg look at how he manages social media' compared to 'simple looking at the actual record of the companies he leads'.
People said the same thing about Neurolink and the Boring Company. And yet neither SpaceX nor Tesla have suffered.
That said, I'm against it too. I just think that the idea that this will collapse Tesla is not realistic.
I don't think they did fail just yet, but even if they did Tesla is still well and alive. It's actually doing better than ever I think. The point was that this is not the beginning of the end for Tesla or SpaceX, just like it wasn't when he started doing those other projects too.
How has Neurolink failed? They've successfully implanted within a chimp, allowing the animal to control a game (pong) via its brain.
They're now moving onto human trials before the end of the year.
How has Boring Company failed? They've successfully opened the Vegas loop, have a pitch to open a similar project in (I believe) Miami? And now they're looking at building a Hyperloop 'in the coming years'.
Oh, I am one of those people that don't see raising money as anythng else than success in raising money. Which is success, but doesn't mean that the company is successful, yet.
So we have a company that is growing and has costumers in the pipeline. Their first costumer is so happy that they want to extend the system considerably.
But that I guess is not enough either?
What more do you want other then happy costumers, new costumers and the ability to raise money on the bases of those things?
This is a company that builds actual machines. They make their own tunnel boring equipment. That is a capital intensive businesses not a software startup. They need to raise money to expand production.
He uses one company to bail out another, in a major conflict of interest (see SolarCity and SpaceX's use of NASA funding to buy junky bonds, then Tesla purchase with song and dance of fake solar shingles that couldn't economically work as designed).
PayPal was sold to Ebay and was under different managers after.
And if you invest your money into Musk companies you would now be far, far, far, far richer then anything you would have invested into any of the other PayPal founders companies (or Ebay or PayPal).
He talks a lot about crypto scams as one of the reasons he is buying twitter, I'm willing to put money that he tasks someone or a group to develop 'review' mechanisms for any account with the name 'elon' or 'musk'
I suspect that it'll be for replies from accounts with substantially the same name and avatar as the original poster, and that it won't be just for him.
And that's good, I think - a better investment direction than NFT avatars.
The owner of the account is a stalker attempting to extort his victim. Why hasn't he been banned? If I were to make an account tracking a random person's movement I'd likely be banned. Why should it be treated differently when the stalking victim is a celebrity?
Just to play Devil's Advocate, the account is only tracking the movement of Elon's jet, not Elon himself. I don't know if you can consider that 'stalking' when, different to a private car, the movement of private planes is still somewhat public information.
I know this. If I were to track movements of a car around a city and call the account KarensCar and try and extort her in exchange for shutting down the account it wouldn't be any different than what this guy is doing to Musk.
> “I go like, Oh my gosh, Elon Musk just DM’d me: ‘Can you take this down? It’s a security risk,’” Mr. Sweeney said. “Then he offered me $5,000 to take it down and help him make it slightly harder for ‘crazy people to track me.’”
[...]
> Mr. Sweeney made a counteroffer to Mr. Musk, according to the screenshots of the exchange, saying that he would abandon the account if Mr. Musk upped the ante to $50,000. He said that he would also accept a Tesla Model 3, an electric car that costs more than $38,000, adding that he was joking.
Or if someone personally canceled the Tesla order of a Tesla critic which he has done at least once. For all his talk about free speech without limits he doesn't really practice it.
If the location of Karen’s car is publicly tracked and available, then it’s exactly like the Elon Musk plane situation.
However, Karen’s car is not required to have a transponder, so the location of it isn’t public information. Therefore, it’s actually nothing like the Elon Musk plane situation. Hope this helps!
Karen's car drives and parks on public streets. It has an identification number posted on it. The information is out there for everyone to see. It's not as easy to automate as a transponder, but it's not necessarily private.
And I just pointed out to you that the movement of private planes is already far more public than the movement of private cars, and for good reasons. The account isn't (as far as I know, I've never looked at it) actually doing their own tracking; they are simply (I assume) collating public information from air traffic control authorities, etc.
Aircraft transponders, which are legally required to broadcast on public frequencies, aren't remotely similar to whatever cell based surveillance trickery you're thinking of.
Flights are public information. Cars are not. Are you seriously such a fanboy of Elon that you have to pretend to be offended by someone sharing public information that anyone can google and get in 3 clicks? If the 1% doesn't want their private flight info to be shared, then they can just take a normal flight like the rest of us.
No, I'm not a fan boy. I just think it's ridiculous that people are ok with this. I know it's very easy to look up flight data. But looking up flight data and making a Twitter account dedicated to a private plane's movement and then trying to extort the owner is different.
No-one is defending the owner of the account asking for more money in response to Elon asking them to take it down and offering some compensation. However, they didn't take the initiative to approach Elon first and ask for money for removal of the account, and their responses to Elon can be read as just (immature) bravado. So your accusation of 'extortion' looks to me as overhyped as your accusation of 'stalking'.
This sort of repression of free speech is a very slippery slope. It starts with publicly stating the location of Elon's private jet becoming a crime, and ends with a dictator in control of the world's most powerful armed forces.
> The owner of the account is a stalker attempting to extort his victim.
Extortion is a criminal offense and stalking can also be one, depending on its severity. So that means you're the one who brought crime into the discussion (with wrongful accusations, in my view).
Flights are clearly not public information. I cannot look up where you've been flying on regular airlines recently and that's how it works for virtually everyone.
Reality is, governments and the airline industry could make this system be sufficiently private if they wanted, or at least a lot harder to abuse. There's no particular reason personal details of jet owners have to be linked to the radio transponders.
It's not extortion to respond to an offer from that person to accept a sum of money to take that information down. Nor is it extortion to negotiate on the sum.
That particular incident is under intense spotlight, so it will probably not happen and if it happens it will change the course of free speech discussions.
I'm psyched either way. Instead of a faceless organisation with a CEO who can justify anything as his duty to the shareholders, now we will have a directly responsible figure. If Musk fails to deliver on free speech, his persona will be on stake.
> If Musk fails to deliver on free speech, his persona will be on stake.
His past actions show he isn't a believer in free speech and that almost all his principles are transactional. An example of this transactional behavior is calling out Saudi Arabia for lack of free speech while owning twitter which is interesting because he didn't have much problem with SA when they held 4.x percent of Tesla a few years back.
His beliefs appear to be built on a sand, not rock.
Tesla is a car company, not a speech platform. Not sure why he should have a problems SA holding a % in Tesla? His comments were specifically targeted towards how their prince was opposing selling twitter without holding a vote from the shareholders.
I expect people who hold very public positions of specific rights to keep those positions and moral values in mind when making decisions every time they make such decisions, not just when it is best for them.
I mean US is the one which gives arms to SA. US also destroyed Syria, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and so on. No one’s hands are pure when it comes to the military industrial complex.
Not really. Unless you propose that he completely stops doing business with everyone, shuts down spacex and Tesla etc, not sure what’s your point.
SA, a major energy country, having a stake in Tesla is a pretty remote thing as compared to their prince having a stake in a speech platform.
> An example of this transactional behavior is calling out Saudi Arabia for lack of free speech while owning twitter which is interesting because he didn't have much problem with SA when they held 4.x percent of Tesla a few years back.
what are you even expecting here? he should've called them out for lack of free speech when they owned tesla? was there some instigating event during that time period which he ignored more than every other public figure? (i don't think we expect all public figures to make annual condemnations of every nation that does anything we consider appropriate. do we?)
as far as i know, he was snarking at saudia arabia's involvement in twitter because they commented negatively on his buyout proposal.
I expect people who says that specific freedoms and/or principles are important to them to let such beliefs guide all their actions not just when it is convenient for them.
I expect them to also live under the same sort of rules and regulations they would have the rest of us live under.
Being honest and not lying often would be nice too.
It's not a matter of "he must do X every time" but the obvious juxtaposition between two countries that are economic powerhouses with questionable records on free speech: Saudia Arabia gets criticism for for its dubious free speech record and China, seemingly more restrictive on personal liberties overall, gets none.
If he has offered any criticisms of the CCP's relationship with free speech, I apologize for missing it. Otherwise, it's hard not to be cynical about people like him that claim to care deeply about freedom of expression while playing up business interests in countries that do not share such a value.
If he truly cared about free speech, he would have criticized the CCP at least once. I did not say he has to criticize them everytime he mentions them.
> An example of this transactional behavior is calling out Saudi Arabia for lack of free speech while owning twitter which is interesting because he didn't have much problem with SA when they held 4.x percent of Tesla a few years back.
Tesla is a public company and anyone can buy stock. What did you expect Elon Musk to do if Saudi billionaires buy stock?
He was with Grimes for years. If woke was a turn off for him, would he have been with Grimes for years let alone had children with her?
I think it’s either that he’s upset with Grimes for leaving him and is being anti-woke in response OR he’s up to something else that’s yet to be revealed. I don’t think this virtue signaling matters to getting state legislatures to allow direct Tesla sales. Maybe it does in his mind?
Not everybody expects their partner to share their political beliefs. There is a reason we let married men and women vote independently for themselves.
(Maybe-also? <- Just adding stuff, but am unsure if we agree or not as we are both just adding stuff I think ;P.) FWIW, 1) it was never clear that Grimes actually truly "stands for" anything, and 2) she did leave him, so clearly something didn't work out ;P.
Yeah, so it could be a response to her leaving him. She may have left him because of it. I imagine Elon isn't the easiest of romantic/parenting partners given his work ethic.
How do i know what's a "turn off" for anyone, or what motivates relationships. Plenty of mysterious and contradictory and/or dysfunctional relationships in the world. Maybe that's part of why they broke up?
Making theories about the private lives of celebrities and what they demonstrate about what they really are like or are motivated by... seems pretty much like fanfic to me. Fun game if you're into it, but I wouldn't base my worldview on it.
Yeah, and so what? We thought Trump becoming President was "exceedingly unlikely", too - and then it happened anyway, thanks to a bunch of Russian propaganda and a literal ton of dark money.
Who says that the richest man on the planet can't set up a lobbying/propaganda operation to secure him a shot at Presidency too? Especially a man who has a lot of very vocal, very dedicated fans all over the US? Have them e-mail and call bomb enough representatives and he'll get his will.
> It doesn’t make any sense on its face other than as a way to con certain ideologies.
Meh, Netflix does produce a lot of low-effort woke content: Sense8 and the one where they stopped a school shooting through interpretive dance comes to mind.
I'd love to watch more high budget series where diversity is achieved without it being shoved in your face (all female Ghostbusters / all female oceans). They come across as pandering to their audiences instead of progressing societal views elegantly - hence why people say Netflix produces woke content and loses subscribers.
The goal should be subtlety and not wokeness. So far the only show (of Netflix) I've seen that hit these tones was Altered Carbon and it was aided a lot by the fact that it's set in a futuristic society where bodies are viewed as disposable sleeves.
Exactly. This is just a money making opportunity for him, and possibly to start letting rightwing content easily flourish again online which will benefit him in the long run. He's not a free speech fan for things he doesn't like.
> When Elon Musk Tried to Destroy a Tesla Whistleblower
Unless you take it as a premise that right wing content is bad, then what is wrong with letting it flourish just as much as left wing content?
Depending on where you stand, either will be bad to you and should be stopped. If you are building a company that moderates content, then you have to choose to be neutral, left leaning, or right leaning. Twitter started as neutral, arguably started to lean left, and under Musk many assume will start leaning right, or at least move more back towards neutral. We will have to wait and see.
IIRC when conservatives were complaining that twitter was reducing their reach, the refrain from the left was that twitter is a private company and can do what it wants. With Musk taking it over and taking it private, it is an even more private company, and if it becomes less obviously supportive of left-leaning thought and more tolerant of right-leaning thought, then the same argument applies, its a private company and it can do what it wants.
Maybe this will be the opportunity for a twitter competitor to pop up and vacuum up all of the disgruntled left. It would be interesting to see how an explicitly left-wing version of twitter would faire compared to the right-wing versions that have not been able to land.
There’s plenty of right-wing content on Twitter. Trump wasn’t even banned until his coup attempt. AFAIK, you can lie on Twitter until it causes real world danger.
> IIRC when conservatives were complaining that twitter was reducing their reach
Conservatives were only getting their reach reduced because they were being banned for posting racist content. Them screaming "shadowbanning" isn't a real thing.
There have been reports that US GOP politicians have been exempted from the algorithmic moderation because too many of their accounts are posting content indistinguishable from white supremest talking points such that they would get banned too.
Nobody that defended him could even cite something. Somebody mentioned a show about teenage girls from a few years ago is all. But why would that affect subscriber counts in Q122?
Netflix produces a lot of content. I would venture a guess that 99% of it isn't woke or anti-woke.
Do they? I don't. Mainly because I don't even know what that phrase means anymore. Any meaning the word "woke" HAD has been thoroughly lost as it has now become a stand-in word for any position some conservatives don't like.
> Everyone agrees that Netflix is woke, the disagreement is weather wokeness is good or bad.
This is factually wrong. I never even knew that there was a conversation about wokeness and Netflix. And I still don't understand why. Netflix just streams videos? Is this about the content they make/license or about their corporate/employee culture?
People who are pro/anti wokeness I think spend a lot more time thinking about this stuff than everyone else does.
I'm not saying it's woke or not woke, I doubt anyone could agree on one definition, but I think it's clear people talking about Netflix "being woke" are saying this because of the original content they create.
Everyone agrees that the word "everyone" in discussions is not be taken literally. Citation not needed.
Netflix is extremely woke. If you doubt this, go watch Bridgerton (playing on my TV right now) and observe how half the people in regency England, including the Queen, are now black. Then go watch Manifest, and observe that in the final episodes one of the characters suddenly starts talking about how the government is "putting people in cages", quite out of the blue.
That's just the last two shows watched in my household. Manifest isn't as woke as Bridgerton but ... let's just say none of the characters are suddenly espousing the wisdom of Adam Smith.
in the history of England, the United Kingdom and the whole Commonwealth there has not been a single instance of a king or queen being anything other than - here comes the dreaded word - white.
what's the point of making them black?
coming from Eastern Europe, it's like you made John Paul II black - or any of the patriarchs of Eastern Christian Churches. you can do it, but it's so far offbeat it isn't even funny.
in the US, I guess you could make Lincoln, Washington and Reagan black. they just weren't.
> in the history of England, the United Kingdom and the whole Commonwealth there has not been a single instance of a king or queen being anything other than - here comes the dreaded word - white.
This is, in fact, (while completely beside the point) wrong. There are several non-white Kings and Queens in the history of the Commonwealth; e.g., Mswati III of the Kingdom of Eswatini.
> what's the point of making them black?
What's the point of alternate history and historically-inspired fantasy? That's a kind of big question. Do you literally think every film or show should simply depict life literally exactly how it actually occurred at some time in the past?
> in the US, I guess you could make Lincoln, Washington and Reagan black.
Or make Lincoln a vampire hunter.
(Of course, there isn't a long history of rumors that Lincoln actually was a vampire hunter taking as their starting point a too-literal reading of contemporary descriptions probably meant as throw-away insults.)
The complaints about Bridgerton seem to be highly-selective blindness to the entire concept that overtly fictional entertainment is typically something other than an exact recreation of history. (And/or assertion that race is somehow a uniquely unacceptable thing to fictionalize for unspecified reasons.)
Replacing White people in medieval England with black people is no different than portraying an African tribe as led by White members — the exact same racism that “woke” people pretend to care about.
“Woke” racists are the usual source of such race-swapping, because they’re obsessed with race and can’t simply tell a story as it makes sense.
Using a literal historical setting unchanged doesn't make sense when the central premise of a story is taking a particular ahistorical (though historically rumored) fact proposition and dialing it to 11.
It's like making a complaint about the political intent of the X-Files because it shows unrealistic FBI procedures rather than telling the “story as it makes sense”.
The show Bridgerton is an alternate reality. I think if you wanted to do an alternate reality of slavery with white slaves captured in Africa, I don't think you'd get complaints from the "woke" except to the extent that it takes jobs. But I think you could do a script where casting whites in this role made sense.
I think if you wanted to do an alternate reality of slavery with white slaves captured in Africa, I don't think you'd get complaints from the "woke" except to the extent that it takes jobs
This is so far out of touch it's unreal.
Woke people are currently trying to claim that maths education is racist because too many famous mathematicians are white. And you're claiming those same people would have no issue whatsoever with making a TV show about the history of Africa in which the Africans were all depicted by white people? It's hilarious and sad that people are actually reduced to trying to claim that.
And no, Bridgerton is not some fantasy or alternate reality. For goodness sake. Absolutely nothing in it is out of place in any way for the time except the races of all the actors.
This is out of touch? It's one of the most popular shows in the history of Netflix. More than 80 million people watched the first one. But of course it was so racist, no one would watch the Bridgerton 2. Oh, wait, it had the biggest debut of any English speaking show in Netflix history. Who's out of touch again?
> Woke people are currently trying to claim that maths education is racist because too many famous mathematicians are white.
I'm in the middle of "Woke America" and work on math curricula, and I've NEVER heard anyone assert this in one of the most liberal public school districts in the US. Is there someone that has said this before? I'm sure there is. Just like there are people on the right who believe Blacks don't have the intellect to learn math - neither represent the majority of these groups.
Now if someone tried to pass off white Africans as real history -- yes, you'd have complaints. But a fantasy story about it I think could be absolutely fascinating. Spoken from someone who self-identifies as "woke". Just in case you're keeping count.
You're statements would be funny, if they weren't so scary.
Most people don't care about anti-white racism so much that they'd stop watching a TV they liked because of the choices of actors. That isn't evidence that it's not actually racism, the definition doesn't depend on viewer counts.
Is there someone that has said this before?
Oh boy, yes. Just search for 'racist maths' to find endless discussion of it. For instance here's Ontario editing maths textbooks to put woke nonsense at the start:
> watch Bridgerton (playing on my TV right now) and observe how half the people in regency England, including the Queen, are now black.
Bridgerton is not a documentary, or even historical fiction, it's a romance set in a fantasy setting largely spun off of an extended what-iffing of a long-standing popular (but rejected by all current serious sources) rumor about Queen Charlotte.
Not sure how it's existence supports claims that Netflix is “woke”; sounds a lot like the fringe Christian Right descriptions of any fiction including magical elements (but not exclusively explicitly Christian miracles) as satanic.
Bridgerton is a bog standard period drama. The idea that it's a fantasy has no more credibility than the idea some people are trying to spread that CRT doesn't exist or wokeism isn't a real thing at all. Please stop making excuse for racists. Netflix's approach with it is no more acceptable than it would be to make a story about American history in which the Cherokee were played by a collection of red headed blue eyed white people. If you then claimed that such a story were merely a 'fantasy' inspired by US history, you would, rightly, be raked over the coals for it.
They refuse to define "woke" because when they try it sounds as ridiculous as "you can't teach that George Washington owned slaves just because it's true!"
Bridgerton is "woke" for two reasons:
1. Like the extremely lucrative romance novels it is adapting, it doesn't care what men think of it & the female characters are the protagonists
2. It includes interracial relationships
That's it. To the anti-woke crowd celebrating Musk's purchase of Twitter, romance = bad, racism = good and any media that disagrees is "woke".
I like Bridgerton it's trashy but visually appealing. Don't understand how it could make anyone angry except for being a guilty pleasure and not super high quality. I like brown people and am not threatened by them being on tv
Netflix funds content. Netflix licenses content and has a say on how future content from that IP is produced. They are not just a streaming platform. When you look at every new show as of late you see themes commonly associated with wokeness. Replacing characters with "BIPOC" (I hate this term) when adapting from source material when it clearly seems out of place. Mixing in subtle commentary about immigration, healthcare, "hate" speech, etc. Women are always the strong saviors, men are always the aggressive out of control beasts or they're docile homemakers.
You can see it in pretty much every show. Witcher Season 1/2 (immigration, replacing characters, men/women tropes), House of Cards Season 6 (all of the above), Altered Carbon, etc.
Altered Carbon too: if anything they downplayed its themes of the ridiculousness of bigotry.
Unless they were only going to adapt actual fascists like Campbell, it is impossible to create science fiction without questioning the premises our society is based on. That's sort of the whole point of the genre. If one considers science fiction "woke" that says more about the person watching than it does about the company making Hillbilly Elegy and Cobra Kai and The Crown.
Westworld manages to make it work. Plenty of science fiction films like Interstellar make it work. Hell, Black Mirror's entire point is social commentary yet it doesn't feel woke.
> questioning the premises our society is based on
There's a difference between doing this in a way that also tells a coherent story and one that just forces themes that don't exist into the story. One of those things is woke and the other one is not.
Wouldn't this just be commercially smart when you're streaming to a broad variety of countries and people? It might look like a Benetton ad to anyone in the West if we're used to shows made primarily for our market, but less so to a lot of the world.
I don't think Netflix is "wok". Their content standard has just taken nose dive. Case in point: Stand-up comedy specials. Netflix pays out staggering $10M-$20M for this one hour stand-up. They used to be high quality and worth watching. In recent years, comedians have been using Netflix as ATM machine. You need money? Just call your buddy there, schedule a special 6 months down the line and collect money. This leads to majority of special with aweful content that you would probably stop watching in few minutes.
What Netflix experiencing is very similar to communist economy. Producers don't get paid for views hey generate and they have no market incentive. Unlike cinematic releases, you cannot go in loss on Netflix because deals are made upfront. There is no cost of failure to you. There is no real economic award or punishment from the market. So people just come in and slap whatever content they can to spend the available money.
As somewhat of an aside, I think ElonsJet should be allowed to exist but I also think its a terrible thing to do and harassment. Do you not have a right to privacy if you're wealthy? Could I start tracking and broadcasting the whereabouts of someone in my office? How about [unpopular politician]? It's weird that people celebrate this invasion of privacy. He's still a human being.
This was crystalized for me when I came across an article detailing what they found from dumpster diving through Mark Zuckerberg's garbage. I mean, really?
So it would be okay to you to list the home address, movement and acquaintances of senators, congressmen, judges, etc?
Who writes the rules about "public sphere"? If I donate to a cause that hopes to influence public policy, should I be doxxed? How much money? Does it depend on the cause I'm donating to?
If I buy a private jet and use it to fly around the world, people would have access to the same information as they do on Elon Musk. He wants the convenience of having his own jet, that comes with a cost.
If I buy a [legal private means of transportation] to travel, people should be able to track my whereabouts.
Is this limited to private jets? How about private boats? Single engine airplanes? Or is there a price cap? Is a $50k plane allow you to maintain privacy? 100k? What's the cutoff? Should it be inflation adjusted?
My comment was about the known requirements for air travel. You have to register your flight and that information is available. He has other options that would more safely guarantee privacy. If the privacy of your travels is more important to you than the convenience of having a private plane available, then you choose another option.
> Is this limited to private jets? How about private boats? Single engine airplanes? Or is there a price cap? Is a $50k plane allow you to maintain privacy? 100k? What's the cutoff? Should it be inflation adjusted?
One does not need to answer literally every single edge case or scenario, to answer other more obvious questions.
Elon Musk is a public figure. A random person driving a car is not. And everything in between is a spectrum, and we don't need to know the exact specific cutoff point to know the obvious answers here.
You cannot remove Elon Musk from the discussion. He is a public figure[0]; the same discussion would not apply to you (I presume) or me (I know).
What exactly a 'public figure' is depends on the given legal system. But its pretty clear that is a public figure, by any definition. He's among the most wealthy (some might say; obscenely wealthy) persons on the planet and thus enjoys outrages amounts of social and political leverage.
Of course he doesn't enjoy the same rights to privacy as you and me.
> So it would be okay to you to list the home address, movement and acquaintances of senators, congressmen, judges, etc?
Yeah probably. Publicly elected official is pretty up there on it being important to have transparency.
> If I donate to a cause that hopes to influence public policy, should I be doxxed?
No, you shouldn't.
> the rules about "public sphere"?
The rules are a spectrum. Someone can both believe that it is important for very large public figures to be transparent, and also believe that it goes to far to dox anyone who has donated 1$ to a political cause.
And there is no contradiction here. And if you are to imply that there is a contradiction, then you are engaging in Loki's fallacy.
No I don't know the exact specific point where someone becomes a public figure. But I do know that Elon Musk is a public figure, and a random person who donated 1$ to the ACLU is not a public figure.
There's a long and healthy discussion about this question in many legal systems. The topic of discussion is the definition of 'public figure'[0] and what that entails. Public figures usually don't enjoy the same right to privacy as other persons.
Except it is already being broadcast, on hundreds of sites.
You can search for people on google and get literally all of their information. Address, phone number, job, family, friends, and anything else that is public knowledge. Presented in a very easy to read format.
Why should the wealthy be special? Just because they have the money to stop it? I didn't opt in to having my information packaged nicely and presented to anyone who cares to search for me.
It's inferred data only. Elons jet is required to publish ADS-B location beacons for air traffic control etc. Crowdsourced platforms like ads-b exchange collect and publish these public/unencrypted airplane gps beacons worldwide. You just need to know the jet's registration to look it up.
That's not 100% correct. Yes, the ADS-B data packets are out there in the public ether but for covering longer flights you need access to a network of receivers.
There are only a handful of ADS-B tracking networks out there. Most of them filter out certain airplanes if requested/paid by the owner (FR24, FlightAware). ElonJet exists solely at the mercy of ADSBExchange.com at this time.
I don’t disagree but I also don’t think there’s less sympathetic example on the entire planet to use than Mark Zuckerberg. He’s quite literally made his fortune exploiting the privacy of the rest of us. I’m certainly not going to lose any sleep over his privacy being violated.
> Do you not have a right to privacy if you're wealthy?
Interestingly, the courts have ruled that the ultra wealthy are "public figures" whether they act so or not, because of their "undue/oversized influence on public and social policy".
> Do you not have a right to privacy if you're wealthy?
Honestly? Maybe not. He's the richest person in the world, and as such he's incredibly influential (and unelected). It's absolutely in the public's interest to know what he's using all that money and influence on, in a way that isn't relevant for your average median-earning Joe Schmoe. Once you get that rich you become more influential than a senator, and senators certainly don't have a right to privacy for their constituents to not know what they're up to.
On the private jet front, airplanes don't have privacy, necessarily so, because you need to know where they all are at all times to prevent collisions, protect airspaces, etc. So if you don't want people to know where you're traveling, don't use an airplane that has a 1-to-1 correspondence to you.
I believe privacy is a right. Rights have to granted equally otherwise they're not rights. If you cross a certain threshold and lose your rights then they are not rights. And if rights can be granted and removed arbitrarily without due process then they're certainly not rights.
In your example about right to build whatever you want on your property, that restriction is limited to a property, not a person. So saying "this property is zoned for a building of X stories" is different than "if you're a 'public figure' your property is zoned for building X stories, otherwise its zoned for Y stories"
Do you think we should broadcast the location and movement of sitting judges and politicians? They're certainly "public figures"
I do not believe the location and flight paths of your private jet being kept private is a right. Its transponder is also publicly broadcast whenever active, and any receiver in range on ground or in space can receive and retransmit its broadcasted payload.
I’d subscribe to an SMS or email feed of @ElonsJet if it was deplatformed. Higher level, I try to get any info available on Twitter in my email instead; it’s just a shitty message bus for my purposes.
It's an interesting conundrum. As someone who believes in rights, the problem here seems to be neither with elon's expectation of privacy nor with elonsjet's expectation of free speech, but in the requirement of having to report his plane's ADS-B realtime output to a public system.
It doesn't seem impractical that the government needs that data to operate effectively, but to require that a person (or plane) broadcast their information to a registry that is public seems to be the crux of the issue here.
It's not only the government that needs that data, it's other pilots. These transponders are used to prevent in-air collisions between planes. That's not a centralized system; it's peer-to-peer. Your plane has antennas that are directly receiving these signals and ensuring that no other plane is too close, or on a collision course. These signals are also read by ground-based antennas for similar purposes (and also by avgeeks who want to collate the data, e.g.: https://www.flightradar24.com/add-coverage ).
The system fundamentally doesn't work if you try to make it non-public. The end result might end up being more privacy for Elon's jet, sure, but also way more mid-air collisions, as it would no longer be able to serve its function of letting a plane tell other planes where it is.
A very good point that embarrassingly highlights my lack of knowledge about it. Thank you for the correction.
I suppose a decent, easy system for evading its tracking would just be for rich people to swap keys to their private jets. Or chartering. Or flying commercial. Etc.
Human rights were invented to protect the weak against abuses from the strong (who would otherwise always get their way because in nature might always makes right).
I think it's a bit of a pointless concern to think about the equal privacy rights of a man who's worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
If the strong don't have human rights too, then the strong will obviously dispense with any pretext of valuing the premise of human rights in the first place.
Privacy isn't a right because it can't be enforced. Should I be able to sue someone for taking photos of me walking to the grocery store? Should other people be able to sue me for reading a newspaper over their shoulder? No, that kind of litigation is insane. There is no such idea as a "reasonable expectation of privacy" when you own a multimillion dollar private jet. You're being taxied through airports on one of the largest vehicles mankind can make, of course you're not going to be private. There's no basis for enforcing that kind of right, it would quickly devolve into a game of "who can buy the better lawyer", which certainly doesn't balance the scales of justice.
The whole "privacy is a human right" shtick is a virtue-signally scam. Privacy is your duty, nobody will give it to you for free. Complaining that the rest of the world won't ignore you after writing a Tweet that 500 thousand people liked is absurd. Musk had his chance to live a private life. He threw it away, and now he lives the consequences. Defending some multi-billionaire because he can't have his cake and eat it too is just ridiculous. I say that as someone with neutral feelings towards Musk overall.
I'm sympathetic, but some aspects of privacy are absolutely rights (and should continue to be). In the US, for example, HIPAA restricts health care providers from wanton dissemination of your private health information. This applies to Elon Musk as much as anyone else. I'm happy enough considering that a human right, inasmuch as similar laws don't apply to my dogs' veterinary records.
Or consider someone pointing binoculars into our window from a a high vantage point so that he can watch my partner undress. If privacy is "our duty", should we be required to use closed blackout curtains on all windows at all times, or else it should legally be our own fault for being watched? My vitamin D is already low enough.
I absolutely agree that you give up certain aspects of privacy when you accept the privilege of being extremely wealthy. No argument from me there. But I still think Musk should enjoy the right of showering without someone selling uncensored photos of the event.
From a legal perspective, this depends on the country you're in. In the US where Musk lives things like Article 8 do not apply. Also, public figures in general are considered differently under various legal tests than private figures.
Hum... It would be a great point if it was about people tracking him giving money to politicians, buying communication platforms, ads spending, or even random investments.
But tracking where he goes on vacation is really not relevant.
(Yes, the point about airplanes not having privacy stands, so the kid is obviously on the clear. It's just not a worthy social service.)
True, and he has also not passed a single law or regulation.
Rachel Maddow is also unelected, and likely has more influence than Musk does. Oprah also had tremendous influence, though she seems to have stepped away from the limelight recently.
Posting his airplane's position on twitter has nothing to do with aviation safety and everything to do with doxxing and harassment.
It is true, because lobbying is not passing a law or regulation.
In fact, a large corporation must make political contributions, otherwise they'll be targeted by the politicians (as Microsoft discovered in the 90's.) Large corporations are expected to pay tribute.
That's such a revisionist look at history. I don't know how anyone can be educated about the matter and think somehow that Corporations are at the whim of politicians, and not the other way around.
Microsoft overreached significantly and the US government 30 years ago gave them a slap on the wrist.
> Corporations are at the whim of politicians, and not the other way around.
Corporations are creatures of law and exist and are structured solely at the discretion of government, except to the extent government delegates power to other entities.
So, yes, they are at the whim of politicians.
Politicians may be at the whim of the haut bourgeoisie as a class, and those are the same class of people who the joint stock corporation as a form disproportionately serves, but there aren't the same thing as corporations.
I think that after certain threshold of wealth you're not quite human anymore and fair game. You definitely don't have much in common with 99.999% of others, and have effectively infinite resources to bend reality to your will. So yeah, eat the rich and all that.
Blame the FAA. ADSB data is stupidly simple to receive with an RTLSDR and a raspberry pi, and there are community sites where you can upload. Point being: his plane can be tracked as long as it’s flying legally with its beacon on. This wouldn’t be a problem if the FAA just pushed back harder on the FOIA request for his jet data, then it would just be another anonymous private jet in the system instead of Elons Jet.
FOIA wasn’t meant to make every record the government has public, it was meant to prevent the government from hiding things from the people. I can’t FOIA your social security number. I probably shouldn’t be able to FOIA the cell phone tracking data firehose that the FBI has, either. What I should be able to FOIA is the fact that the FBI has such a firehose.
I think the real harm @ElonsJet does to Elon Musk is not that his privacy is breached, if we learn where he's taking a plane a couple of times a week that's not exactly particularly intrusive[0]. It is that he is trying to position himself as the man who is directly tackling environmental issues by single-handedly bootstrapping an electric car company ... while frequently flying a private jet and having a carbon footprint thousands of times more than the average person.
If you're a public figure want to project a certain image of yourself, it hurts to be exposed as being the opposite of that.
[0] - not least because the source of the data is his own plane broadcasting its position
The guy who made a bot to copy data from adsbexchange has almost half a million followers, and is a public figure. I wonder if he would enjoy getting harassed in the same way or not.
I honestly don't believe he thinks that deeply about it and doesn't see any contradiction over what he says about free speech and how he acts. If it wasn't for the negative PR it would receive, he wouldn't think twice about booting the account. I don't think he realises that everyone has their own line at which point someone's "free speech" becomes unacceptable to them and that everyone has an idea on what the consequences should be for crossing that line. It's just "me and my pals are alright, we're harmless and shouldn't be cancelled but the guys I don't like can take a hike"
Also, why offer the original creator $50k to remove the bot?
If it gets removed, other developers will obviously create other ones - it's a public API, after all.
It is easy to justify banning this kind of accounts. It is borderline stalking.
Would you like it if there is a twitter account that tweets everywhere you visit?
Elon can totally hire private investigators to follow the family members of a journalist just to prove that nobody would like this kind of accounts when they are the targets.
Part of me hopes this is the end of the social media age. I've been on twitter since the very beginning and lately it feels like it's a toxic cesspool on all sides.
I say this as a twitter addict and prolific poster over more than a decade.
I agree. Elon Musk taking control of Twitter won't spell the end of social media. Social media fills the intrinsic human need to be connected to others and recognized by others for a lot of people. Network effects make it very hard for a competitor to dislodge the incumbents, but as TikTok showed, it's not impossible. Social media is here to stay indefinitely.
It depends who you follow. I only follow people I think are funny so now my Twitter feed is almost entirely toxicity-free. If you follow political accounts then you're gonna get hit with the toxic firehose
If I could go on Twitter and only see stuff from people I follow I'd feel the same as you about it. But they make it almost impossible not to be barraged with other stuff too, and not just ads, but hate and insanity that I tried hard not to follow. Those are the things that drove me away.
Now I exfiltrate the good stuff with Nitter RSS feeds, and that way I get the experience you say you like about Twitter.
> If I could go on Twitter and only see stuff from people I follow I'd feel the same as you about it. But they make it almost impossible not to be barraged with other stuff too, and not just ads, but hate and insanity that I tried hard not to follow. Those are the things that drove me away.
The only sane way to use Twitter is through a 3rd-party client: no ads, none of that Notifications spam and other recommendations
I don’t see how it ever would be. But that said, I remember the era of the Arab Spring where everyone said social media would liberate us all… of course it never turned out to by true but I feel as though Twitter is still pretending that it will.
Being bought by Musk ought to bring about an end to any such perception. It’s going to be a rich man’s plaything (nothing new there, billionaires used to buy newspapers instead!) and who knows if it’ll be a success or not, but it has no higher calling and we’re probably all better off for recognising it.
I’d argue FB and Google stopped pretending to be about free speech and such a long time ago with Twitter being the one left that claimed to be a beacon of freedom (while not really being one).
Any website claiming to be a "beacon of free speech" is lying. The very idea of it is nonsensical from the outset, it's like a cartoon idea of what a website is supposed to be. One person's "free speech" is just another person's toxic abuse that makes the site unusable. That much is blatantly obvious from spending even just a small amount of time on Twitter.
> I've been on twitter since the very beginning and lately it feels like it's a toxic cesspool on all sides.
> I say this as a twitter addict and prolific poster over more than a decade.
It's possible Twitter(and Social media in general) is as not as toxic you feel. I spend more time on LinkedIn than other sites and I feel it's more toxic than others. SM sites do feel less toxic if you tune up your feed, mute people and spend a little less time on them.
I don't consider Linkedin a social network at all any more. It's just a spam/announcement/congratulations feed for me.
Twitter underwent a change over the last ~4 years where it went from having its own, weird "extremely online" culture to being a battleground. You really can't avoid the mess unless you put in an extreme amount of effort.
I was one of the first users, still have a 3 digit API ID, and made some good money from Twitter over the years. The often cited cesspool is highly exaggerated among certain peer groups. Twitter can be fun and happy and hasn't really changed a lot, provided that you follow the right people — Which can be hard for new users given the non-explorative/gradual onboarding. Back in the days, we built proprietary blocking into the app — all those things, filtering, etc. are now available natively. Twitter only gets frustrating if you let it.
This is my hope as well. The belief that everyone should be on the same social network is misguided, naive, and renders us too prone to manipulation and misinformation. I look forward to social networks splintering and their cultural influence beginning to wane.
Hoping they end up as footnote in history textbooks of a weird time when people worried about checkmarks and follower counts, and it all amounted to nothing.
Twitter is a big place. I follow a lot of reporters, policy analysts, space entrepreneur, etc and don't get much toxicity. There are some people whose long form writing I really enjoy but who are just too negative on Twitter for me to follow them there, I just hope that other people will retweet their good stuff.
Lol what? We're social animals. You realize that forums were also social media? Just because the term didn't exist 20 years ago doesn't mean it wasn't a thing.
Twitter was dying anyway and it needed to be saved from itself. With Jack leaving, earnings around the corner and with this final offer. It was exactly what they needed as if they rejected this only offer, it will certainly crash the stock anyway with little room to recover.
As much as the rats don't know where to jump for alternatives perhaps it's better to just sit on the sinking boat to see how far it goes before it has completely sunk or whatever refloats their boat.
I feel for the employees of Twitter. Years with a part time CEO whose time was dedicated elsewhere… now they’ll have a new part time owner whose time will be dedicated elsewhere and has a propensity to do weird things for the online lulz.
which means the employees aren't monitored closely by upper management then? I don't see why it's "bad".
The only thing i can think of being bad is micromanagement, and inadequate compensation. I dont know how twitter compensates their employees, but i'm sure it's not inadequate.
I've was at a company that had an absentee CEO. One who would swoop in every few months and make strong declarations about direction, product, and so on; but was otherwise never there. It was a nightmare. We suffered constantly from his eccentrics, it constantly hurt our product, and destroyed morale and the ability to feel like you had no power over your work.
Its legendary because everybody who hates Musk has spend the last 5 years attributing all success of SpaceX to Shotwell in order to keep claiming that Musk is useless.
She is certainty great, but Musk still has to (and wants to) spend a huge amount of time working on SpaceX.
Musk for sure will hire a CEO, I can't imagine that he will spend more than a few hours a week a month on Twitter (once the deal has closed and he hired a new management).
But what kind of CEO will he hire? One that broadly shares his views, and will not push back in the slightest when he (inevitably) interferes from his board seat. What he'll really hire is a COO, regardless of the actual title.
Not that musk considers those titles of any value. He can have a CEO and still be running the company. Not from a board seat. Because CEO as a title is just a title.
I'm imagining an NFL owner situation. Most owners were already wealthy from other businesses when they bought a team. They always hire executives to run the business. But they also spend an inordinate amount of time sticking their nose into team business because it's fun and exciting and glamorous. Musk isn't doing this because it's fiscally sensible. He's doing it because he wants to own a popular social network and exploit it for his own ego. He will name a CEO but he will keep them on a short leash and assert his own ideas whenever he has them.
> Using it for hours a week sounds to me like he’s a fairly normal person, at least with regard to social media use.
What does that have to do with my comment? I was just saying that he won't be hands-off as CEO of Twitter because he isn't hands-off even as a user.
Also, if using Twitter that much were "normal" then Twitter wouldn't be struggling as much as it is.
Even if it were normal, Musk is not a "normal" user (he gets armies of worshippers responding to every tweet) and he is the CEO of at least two other large companies, in addition to being a father of 7 children. He shouldn't even have time to eat or sleep, let alone troll people on Twitter on a regular basis.
Oh ok — I thought you were saying his pattern of usage of the platform indicated narcissism, and I was disagreeing with that. That you’re saying here “he gets armies of worshippers responding to every tweet” still gives me this impression about what you’re trying to communicate, FWIW.
> Also, if using Twitter that much were "normal" then Twitter wouldn't be struggling as much as it is.
I think they’re struggling financially (if you can call a multi billion dollar profit “struggling”) because the money people make from advertising on Twitter isn’t that related to how much any given person uses it, as they’re mostly competing with each other for a fixed quantity of disposable income. (Number of users seems too large to count as a struggle, not sure what else you might mean).
Obligatory reminder that SpaceX has its own CEO, think the other companies do too. Think Musk actually staffs the orgs pretty well other than Tesla the other companies seem like they’d do fine without him, but him pushing seems to help.
Living in America entails your daily expenses and significant portions of your tax money go to China and other dystopian dictatorships around the world. It's implausible to live ethically - like the meme of personal recycling, the problem is corporations and regulatory capture. Citizens don't make a dent.
True, but just because I'm typing this on a machine made in Chinese sweatshops doesn't mean that I have to spend my days actively making their government more money. We can solve problems a little bit at a time even if bigger problems exist elsewhere, after all.
Right, but at some point it's like trying to keep back the tide with a pushbroom. If you're Elon, maybe you can get a big enough broom, or build a sea wall, but a million individuals with brooms are just going to be wasting their energy.
The effort has to go towards corporate regulations and culture change. Ending slavery within the US took a civil war and we're still decades away (at least) from fixing the legislative echoes and civil rights issues. Influencing China to end their own slavery and civil rights abuses isn't feasible at an individual level, except through correcting the allowed business behaviors and relationships by imposing laws and changing the culture. America is incentivizing human rights abuses under its current system.
We have an obligation to correct our behavior at the nation state level. Voting with wallets is no better than brooms on a beach. We need to vote for representatives that will fix the issue through international trade regulation.
Yeah certainly why should they? After all Saudi's regime only does mass executions on it's own territory and only rarely kill opposition inside it's own embassy.
I wouldn't be surprised if he gave himself the CEO title, but actually had a president take on almost all normal CEO duties. Eg, as far as I can tell with SpaceX from interviews and such, Gwynne Shotwell really runs SpaceX. Elon jumps between whatever he thinks needs his attention most at the moment, rooting out problems.
As for what he'll do with Twitter.... I don't think anyone really knows how it will turn out. He's proven to be pretty self obsessed (canceling critic's Tesla orders), so maybe he'll use his power to knock down stuff he personally doesn't like (his private jet tracker). Or maybe his talk about free speech is real and he has good ideas on how to actually make social media a benefit to society. I think in his companies' software has been his weakest area (still thinking cameras are enough to do full self driving, which I think out of any project has most failed to materialize his promises?), so maybe he won't understand how to mold a fully software based company. However, maybe he'll just want Twitter to work the way he thinks Twitter should work as a user, knock down a bunch of unnecessary BS (eg the insistent push towards algorithm timeline) and force his hand on features people really want (eg, the ability to edit Tweets.)
It’s interesting to me because someone like Trump gets frustrated with Twitter, and the best he can do is raise capital for a social network which seems doomed to fail. Musk can just buy twitter. Trump was the president and one of the most influential political figures in the world, but in this regard Musk dwarfs him in terms of power.
The poison pill prevents Musk from taking over by simply buying 51% of stock, and allows him to proceed only by giving the board an offer they agree to, in which case they'll remove the poison pill.
I'm so confused why people think this. There are countless things I could put as a direct response to you that would have Dang letting me know my behaviour is uncalled for, and I would agree that they are, but uncalled for speech is still speech. If you have to choose your words is it really speaking freely?
That's true that HN is moderated, but when people complain about free speech, they care more about banning content that's inconvenient vs content that's off topic or in a bad tone.
I feel like people have invested in Elon in large part because of his alignment with i) moving humanity away from fossil fuels and ii) making life multi planetary. He is obviously free to do as he pleases with this new wealth but I cant help but feel this as a huge redirection of resources (in terms of both capital and focus) from those goals
This is perhaps true at a cursory glance, but this will allow him to make even more funny posts on the internet, arguably a more important goal than decarbonization or martian habitation.
Exactly zero of the people I know who are into Musk are into him because of these reasons. Granted, this is a very very very tiny corner of Musk's fans but the people I know are into him because he is "badass" and "sticks it to the man" and things like this.
I think that Musk has an evolved version of Jobs' reality distortion field. The cult of personality is more important than the actual output and he is definitionally "cool" to his followers.
He has to keep acting out to maintain the image of coolness to his followers and he appears to be hooked on the likes. It's a cycle that escalates which is why he's gone off the deep end at this point imo.
That literally the exact opposite of people I know.
Pretty much everybody I know loves SpaceX and the technology and doesn't give a shit about US politics or the SEC or whatever other crap people in the US get worked up about.
To add to this, almost every conversation I have (I am in the US so that may be part of it) includes "Elon is cringe but..." and likely followed by SpaceX is doing fantastic work.
He's an interesting guy who seems straight out of a science fiction show. Can't nerds like me just think it's kind of cool that someone is actively trying to expand humanity to multiple planets?
My read is people find reasons to hate him due to ego, they see someone running like 6+ successful companies when their lives aren't going so well, and go looking for all the moralistic things he must be doing wrong.
I don't think there is anything wrong with that, I will be the first to give him a lot of credit for the companies he has started. Especially Space and Tesla. There is no doubt that both of those have pushed forward both industries in series ways.
I don't think it is all just ego or jealousy. He has made some questionable comments in the past. He keeps going on that this particular purchase is about free speech. He consciously has chosen to be very public with some of his more questionable opinions (especially regarding Covid) on his Twitter.
Yes I am very glad that he has started SpaceX and Tesla. I despise the criticisms of billionaires "Wasting" their money on Space. But that does not absolve him of criticisms of him personally outside of those companies.
Musk has some interesting goals and amazing accomplishments. But I'd also argue he isn't necessarily genuine or correct about electric vehicles/batteries helping the environment. Now a ton of resources and effort get allocated to it and potentially away from things that might be more helpful.
What other theortical things could save humanity doesn't matter. Unless you can make the argument that these things CREDIBLY WOULD HAPPEN without Tesla or EVs then its pointless.
I would much prefer nuclear over wind/solar/battery. But I know if I argue against wind/solar nuclear isn't magically gone happen.
So its fine if you want to argue that US shoud invest 100+ billion in public transport or bikes or whatever. Those things are not gone happen just because EVs don't happen. You are probably right, but EVs are not preventing that from happening.
EV are absoulty 100% a huge improvement over other cars and its not close. Even outside of the environment it would have eventually happened, they are just better cars.
>> My read is people find reasons to hate him due to ego, they see someone running like 6+ successful companies when their lives aren't going so well, and go looking for all the moralistic things he must be doing wrong.
He’s doing cool things, it’s impossible to deny that (especially with SpaceX). But you only need to look at his Bill Gates related tweets this weekend to see why people think he’s an asshole and it’s nothing to do with jealousy. He acts like an edgy 14 year old and it’s really cringey.
I think when you care enough to say those things - and frankly when you care that people are saying those things - you care too much about the person. Focus on the cool techy stuff rather than Musk.
I mean the fact is he is this centuries entrepreneur as Schumpeter defines it. If you compare what he has done versus the rest of his class he's mopped the floor. So in terms of accomplishments he is in his own realm.
I agree I do have concerns that things may be changing and his original goals of humanitarian goals (EVs, solar, storage, space travel) are now getting caught up with straight power plays (twitter). I wonder if he has been caught by the twitter validation loop.
But yet, that other stuff matters much more than some dick measuring contest about going to Mars. Musk has shown time and time again that his ideals of climate change or whatever are not genuine. He wants to get to play with cool toys, make bold but undeliverable promises, and get as much attention as possible. And yet, people look up to him as if he’s some saint bestowed upon us. I truly feel letting a billionaire like him take one of the biggest megaphones in the world private as a personal playground is one of the worst things that could have happened. And it’s all because he wants to say what he wants to say when he wants to say it, even though he has a history of bullying and trying to shut up people who disagree with him.
> letting a billionaire like him take one of the biggest megaphones in the world private as a personal playground is one of the worst things that could have happened
I don't really have an opinion about mr Musk or his intentions, but I truly fail to see any downside with this deal.
Either he does in fact make the twitter platform a generally more positive/useful/pleasant/... experience, or twitter's function will eventually be filled by other apps, maybe even new ideas.
Musk does not have a history of acting like a grownup and has used Twitter to defame, bully, argue, get involved in foreign wars, manipulate markets, etc. all because of greed, ego, or because someone disagreed with him. I sincerely don’t understand how him taking over Twitter can be viewed as a good thing. I could be here all day listing the people he has publicly insulted on Twitter. He has attacked people, often experts in their field like Noam Chomsky or the cave rescuer, because they held positions that disagreed with his usually amateur and attention hogging takes.
For one, Trump seems to finally be receding into the background, and I can guarantee he gets his account back when Musk takes over. That alone is enough to view this as a net negative.
I have a tough time imagining the other worst case not prompting regulation.
Maybe it overthrows our political system! I don’t know, there are certainly some politicians who command from Twitter and will be hurt or helped by Musk. (Probably, invariably, helped.) But that seems less likely than Congress creating a rule book and regulator for social media.
> or twitter's function will eventually be filled by other apps, maybe even new ideas
Why would it? People have been complaining about facebook/twitter/etc for ages and competitors haven't turned out to be less harmful. Why is the idea that Musk forces his values into Twitter and that this makes the platform worse not a possibility?
> has shown time and time again that his ideals of climate change or whatever are not genuine
Who cares. He delivers.
I’ll take the guy who delivers, with possible ulterior motives, over someone who really cares, but uselessly. The latter describes most of our leadership to date on EVs and Mars.
Would it be nice if the genius came without the bullshit? Sure. Am I convinced those are inseparable? No. Is this relevant if you don’t care about EVs or Mars? No. But a lot of people do, and for us, he’s worth the tradeoff.
You act like Musk is some kind of genocide dictator. Oh my god, he fights with the SEC therefore he must be shot in the head.
> Musk has shown time and time again that his ideals of climate change or whatever are not genuine.
Literally based on what? He has been consistent for 20+ years. Given tons of talks and has literally changed one of the most conservatives industry in the world to a much, much greener industry.
Why did he do Tesla? Do you think he thought 'What a great businesses idea?'.
> He wants to get to play with cool toys, make bold but undeliverable promises, and get as much attention as possible.
When he started SpaceX he was not famous. You can go back to inteview where he was a mostly unknown (at least by people who don't follow Silicon Vally startups). And he already talks about all those things.
The idea that he build a rocket company because he wants to 'play with toys' is just nonsense.
And even if it was, so what? SpaceX achieved what it did, no matter the reason.
> And yet, people look up to him as if he’s some saint bestowed upon us.
He is a successful entrepreneur and engineer. I defend him from people who just make up a bunch of nonsense because they don't like him as a person.
> I truly feel letting a billionaire like him take one of the biggest megaphones in the world private as a personal playground is one of the worst things that could have happened.
Sound like you lived a really privileged life if you think that.
And he already did use it as a megaphone, that is literally what Twitter is.
What exactly are you suggesting would happen?
> And it’s all because he wants to say what he wants to say when he wants to say it, even though he has a history of bullying and trying to shut up people who disagree with him.
Twitter not being owned by him has not prevented him from saying anything. The SEC doesn't care who owns twitter.
> doesn't give a shit about US politics or the SEC or whatever other crap people in the US get worked up about
They give a shit about a lifestyle brand they are emotionally invested in. It's no different than buying a Gucci handbag or a Bulgari bracelet. They believe purchasing the right brands will give them the social status they crave.
The parent comment is why we need someone to start a movement making social media algorithms more transparent. The person you are responding to is misinformed about Tesla fans because he has been the victim of a social media algorithm generated echo chamber. He isn't unique, we all are victims of echo chambers and filter bubbles to some degree. The only way to fix that is to allow people to control their own feeds and disable echo chambers if they wish to.
Yes, the moment I heard Musk say 'open-source the algorithm' I was onboard, although that needs to be watched carefully. The algorithmic structure itself is one thing and the kind of data that is fed to it to train it is another. In particular, how it learns what is an 'authoritative source' and what isn't needs to be made clear.
Yes but that is because in a Musk company you actually get to build rockets, blow them and iterate quickly.
As Eric Berger states in his book. Engineers don't want to spend 10 years being responsible for the quality control of a single screw on the F-35 program.
At SpaceX you are producing rocket faster then anywhere and you always develop next generation technology.
Do you know people who work or have worked for him? I work in the clean tech industry and know several people who work(ed) for solar city or Tesla. Musk is, I hear, a great recruiter, but then overworks his talent and eventually they burn out.
Thats part of the sell. Tesla originally gave really low comp packages and had super long hard hours for employees under the mission status and working for Elon. For a long time it really looked like a bad deal but in the end it paid out well for employees who held onto their options, the long hour were already spent.
As for the mission - seems mostly legit though I don't think Elon is motivated by climate change otherwise he wouldn't be using Natural Gas for fueling his rockets more for ability to create self sustaining energy off planet.
In the Big 4 I worked with a guy who was once a project manager at Tesla. The guy wasn't super talented, but mentioned that it would ruin your week if Elon came over to you because he had a bad habit of micromanaging people. And yeah, he agreed that Elon isn't necessarily super smart but is brilliant at finding brilliant people and convincing them to work themselves half to death. Which, incidentally, is basically the main job of a startup CEO so props to him for that.
There is a sizeable contingent who are into him because they are terribly ignorant of the history of our efforts in space and the relationship between NASA and SpaceX, and think he has stuck it to the crusty old government man and "disrupted" the entire endeavor.
I'm very reluctant to call myself "a Musk fan" (and I've never met anyone like you describe, though no doubt they're out there somewhere), but I have to admit that the things he's done are remarkable: building several large companies which are not only commercially successful but advance the public interest with much more ambition than any other companies I've seen in my lifetime. Previously, accomplishments like those of SpaceX were only feasible in a Cold War context. I also think he has good political instincts (pushing back against regressive leftism without indulging in unsavory elements of the right), and I can even appreciate the occasional shitpost; however, I think he often goes too far and veers into immaturity. But expecting someone to accomplish what he has while also having perfect social grace is unrealistic; if his critics really want to put him in his place, they should do so by example--do something to significantly advance the public interest without social foibles.
> The cult of personality is more important than the actual output
There is a quite interesting inverse effect too, though. Musk's actual output is undeniably pretty impressive (I challenge you to watch a rocket land on a drone ship and tell me otherwise!), yet there is a veritable army of people online waiting to suggest in the comments on stories like this that he's just all about memes and personality. Maybe two opposing reality distortion fields with Musk suspended somewhere in the middle?
Jobs' output was impressive too! The reality distortion field enables Musk to hire extremely effectively. I know some really really strong engineers who chose SpaceX because Musk is there, despite having higher paying offers elsewhere.
A big challenge is that Twitter's problems aren't engineering problems. They are sociology problems. Musk has demonstrated that he can hire engineers to solve engineering problems. How well will that translate into sociology problems?
> Musk has demonstrated that he can hire engineers to solve engineering problems. How well will that translate into sociology problems?
I can't wait to see!
Either he improves Twitter, which is great because it's in really bad shape, or he destroys it, which is great because something else can fill the void.
Twitter really is the broadcasting social network for the intellectual elite, so in that way its an extremely important piece of society, however toxic it is right now. Because of that I absolutely agree that it's undervalued and under-utilised for what it's become.
Many many people on twitter would happily pay for it. It's not like Facebook where you have to rely on ads because 90% of users would never pay, and the ones who would you don't want to charge bcause you make $200+ per year off them.
I think Elon understand both these things because of the way he says it's become the defacto public square. It really has for thought leaders. But thought leaders are a completely different market to most social networks.
snapchat has more monthly active users than twitter does. tiktok is over 2x as big as twitter, soon to be 3x. if an intelligent person wanted to own the public square, they would buy tiktok
This may seem like a wild take, but perhaps it's worth entertaining that social media moderation as it exists today could be a significant impediment to the realization of those goals.
Status quo moderation also ignores spam, and I'd expect that aspect to change in the direction of more moderation under Musk. "0 moderation" was never on the table.
He's definitely going to minimal moderation. It lines with his stance and it lines with the business cost. The risk is people turn off the service because it becomes even worse than it's current state.
Let me know when you find evidence of some valuable piece of climate, energy, or astronautics research that was kept under wraps due to the Twitter police.
Censorship is a very real threat to scientific research but it tends to manifest as the state restricting research or pulling funding from politically unfavourable topics like climate change, as is seen in many American state governments and on a federal level under the previous administration. Scientific publication isn't exactly known for going through the channels of mass social media.
I never mentioned censorship, which is a loaded and mostly useless (because agonizing and polarizing) term.
I talked about flow of information. Science isn’t done on twitter, and twitter is not for scientists or those able and willing to read papers. Twitter is for the 90% who rely on groups, and the more tooling we implement that incentivizes those groups to devalue intellectual depth, the more we restrict the flow of actual information at scale. Policing who is able to distribute which data is, simply put, harmful to the organism.
Filtering can improve the signal-to-noise ratio dramatically. We have always had some moderation/editing on books, newspapers, scientific papers and many other forums of meaningful exchange for centuries, and we progressed just fine. I
Look, this started with a claim that Twitter moderation policies are blocking us from addressing climate change. Then a separate claim, that any sort of moderation is harmful, was made and I challenged it. Now you are coming with a third position, which is that sometimes moderation is indeed bad. Which is true, but the real question is whether current moderation practices in Twitter are blocking us from meaningful discussion, in particular in regards to climate change.
Indeed. The window of opinion that is allowed on twitter is anti space exploration and frankly anti-human. Elon needs a way to sway public opinion to allow mars settlement. Twitter might be that.
Currently, SpaceX is blocked from doing the first starship orbital test. Not for technical reasons, but for frankly totally bullshit bureaucratic reasons. A free speech twitter might be the right way to fight back against this government overreach.
A necessary one. The ideologues among the Tw leadership were doing a lot of harm to Western society (and therefore more generally to democracy and the rule of law). I hope Musk will be able to fix it now.
One would think that you, having made the claim, could provide supporting evidence of said claim.
He didn't make speech more open and free when he canceled a car order because someone pissed him off nor when he tried to get that flight tracker shut down.
He is building Starlink and refuses any form of censorship on there.
He sent several containers full of terminals to Ukraine (responding within hours to request for help from the Ukrainian government) to restore connectivity as the country is being attacked by Russia.
If you really believe those “he didn’t give one guy a car because he was pissed” propaganda stories, go ahead. People are easy to program.
You mean the Elon Musk who just publicly body shamed someone because that person did something he didn’t like? Get ready for a wild ride where Twitter gets even worse, giving a megaphone to everyone like himself who wants attention.
This is an interesting take because it seems to prefer either A) publicly visible attributes like weight should be ignored when giving your personal opinion on someone or B) you should not be allowed to give your personal opinion on someone. Regardless of his motivations for pointing it out, neglecting one’s health is entirely a personal choice. Are you advocating for less personal responsibility or less freedom to express one’s opinions?
Let us take it for granted that people will disagree with us regardless of what we say, and let us also take for granted that we cannot control or take responsibility for the emotional stability of others. A disposition toward trying to control the emotions of others is not something I want to promote in the world.
He will change it to let all the toxic people back on. It will become worse and less pleasant and he will likely lose investors money ultimately but maybe not before he exits. We shall see.
How about pivoting away from a system where shouting “toxic” is a means to silence uncomfortable speech, and to a system that gives users better tools to focus on what they’re looking for?
As a person, I really don't care about his personal opinion on most things. I really don't want him in charge of Twitter especially since I can see the first thing he does is unban Trump. So I am hoping if this does go through an alternative quickly springs up and gains dominance.
But when it comes to Space... I am a strong believer in SpaceX. The facts with how they are performing. Especially after how bad the SLS is going. We basically needed SpaceX.
Tesla? I mean I am glad he did it when he did it. Thankfully we are now seeing most (if not all?) car companies working on electric and I don't think that would have happened without Tesla.
Regardless of what you think of Trump, it is absurd that a major medium of public communication has banned a former president. I'll concede that a big part of the absurdity is the fact that Trump was president, but the idea that people need protecting from someone's words, and that Twitter's leadership are the appropriate people to make that call, really doesn't sit right with me.
I wish Twitter would ban more people and stop being so hesitant. I don't care that Trump is no longer president, he continuously took actions that would have banned him many times over if he had not been president. He then tried to circumvent those bans. Anyone else would be banned for life.
Twitter is a private company and do whatever they want to do. It is their platform.
> Twitter is a private company and do whatever they want to do. It is their platform.
They actually aren't a private company, yet, but it sounds like they probably will be soon.
Just because they can do something doesn't mean they should. A huge amount of our public discourse flows through platforms controlled by companies. If you want those platforms to start to ban everyone who disobeys some set of rules, who would you like writing those rules? Are you comfortable with them making them up as they go along?
Splitting hairs, I will assume you knew what I meant because them being public as far as having shares out does not change anything about this argument. They are not a government system.
To answer your question, yes. Rules (like laws in government) change overtime. Twitter helpfully has a section outlining their rules https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-rules . It also clearly states that they can update these rules at any point.
As far as who sets the rules, Twitter. It is their platform. How is that a question?
The point is that when a social network is large enough to become significant in the way people communicate, the way thought evolves in society, etc, it becomes a societal issue that the owners of that network can (and, as you keep pointing out, are completely within their rights to) arbitrarily restrict what people can say.
In case it's not clear, I don't claim that Twitter doesn't have the legal right to moderate their platform. I claim that it is a problem for society that more and more of our public discourse happens on platforms with this type of arbitrary moderation.
You don't have to use twitter, Facebook, or any other platform. If you are dissatisfied with the rules then make your own.
Just because something has become a major player in communication, doesn't meant these companies should be obligated to turn a blind eye to content that they find disagreeable.
Also, I have yet to see a case where anyone has been "arbitrarily" restricted. They conform to the rules as clearly stated on their website. If anything I have seen that they are not doing as well as I wish they were at enforcing their rules. But it largely makes sense that the bigger you are the more scrutiny you will have on your tweets.
It isn't like just because you have an account on twitter you can't have an account on some alternative.
I've tried twice to make it clear that I'm talking about the wider societal issue of the growing importance of these platforms in public discourse combined with their moderation policies (and the arbitrariness of those policies — since they can change at any time without notice).
Since each of your replies ignores this and focuses on individual issues — unrelated to my comment and uninteresting to me — like which platform(s) a person chooses to use, whether Twitter has the right to moderate, or whether they have historically used their arbitrary moderation power in a way that you find acceptable, I'm going to disengage from this thread at this point since I don't think we can enlighten each other in any meaningful way.
> I don't think that would have happened without Tesla.
why? what would the other car manufacturers do when there is no more oil to put into the combustion engines? just lie down and die? everybody can see the writing on the wall. sure, tesla might have sped it up a bit. but to be solely responsible for that? tesla is not even the first EV company or the first prototype.
I more meant the timing of it, I think if it wasn't for Tesla we may be looking at another 5-10 years for electric vehicles.
It is entirely possible another company would have come out and taken Tesla's place. But I just don't see the main car companies having tried it yet if it wasn't for Tesla (or another well funded EV that was that bullish).
Convincing people he’s actually interested in those goals (moving humanity of fossil fuels and earth) is going to get harder and harder to do. Buying twitter might be a good way for Musk to continue to shape the narrative around his businesses as they fail to deliver.
What are you referring to? Even his lamest company (TBC) has delivered some stuff. When it comes to reducing fossil fuel use Tesla has achieved more than the USA Green Party, and with regard to expanding space access SpaceX is beating most national space agencies combined.
This is what I'm worried about. Owning/running Twitter sounds like a huge distraction from SpaceX, which is the most important way he can make an impact in my view. His involvement in Twitter up until now has consisted of relentless culture war shit posting that hasn't added any real value to society, and I hate to see him going farther down that road.
Having met Elon, I can tell you that he is not into anything for the fame, fortune, or glory. Those are secondary.
He genuinely wants to make a difference to humanity.
A lot of us who agree with him, do so in alignment, because as individuals we also want to make a difference to humanity, and .. in so doing: we see the problem with the commons.
If we do not fix the commons, it will be weaponised against us all, and that is in fact the situation.
So, from a fanboix perspective, in all honesty, this seems like Elon has added a 3rd option to his list: iii) stop humans from killing each other in the meantime.
On the contrary, I'm not ignoring what Elon has done. He's done a lot.
As for what he has to say, for every one of your tabloid moral arguments .. there are at least 25 things Elon has said, with which I would completely agree.
This ideology of moral superlativity is taxing. It doesn't actually get things done. Maybe the reason Elon gets things done, is he is fine with saying stupid shit, but doing very, very good things.
I mean, where does this argument lead? Does taking Elon down at a character level, produce some vital substance or circumstance, for the species?
I couldn't care less what happened with the Thai submarine. And, neither should you.
There is a frickin' viable space age about to happen. Can we stop killing each other so easily - and maybe just get on with bringing a peaceful resolution to the worlds resource problems?
Because that's what the space dream is really all about.
Infinite sky. Narcissism and Delusion don't get us there. Like, seriously.
So I should just ignore as irrelevant the Twitter feed of the person who is currently attempting to buy Twitter? I'm sorry, but that's just doesn't make sense to me.
Well, it remains to be understood just what will happen to Twitter, once it has been de-weaponised. (Twitter is already in the hands of the bad guys, btw. Everything people are worried that Elon will do to Twitter, has already happened.)
So .. are you seriously saying you don't think Elon is going to improve Twitter?
Because, factually he has already done so, just by making us have this conversation.
I can jump in here for the delusions part. My knowledge of Musk comes only from watching every video and reading anything he said until about a year ago.
A) FSD has been coming for a while now. The historical record seems to indicate that he was either delusional by at least years, or knowingly lying. I would bet on the prior.
B) he stood in front of everyone at Boca Chica and with a straight face said that the very early Starship prototype behind him was going to orbit. Again, I actually believe maybe he thought it. Which is kinda weird/scary?
To be fair, it is arguable that Musk has accomplished more good-for-the-species stuff than any one human, ever.
There are exactly zero examples through human history, of individuals who did enormous things for the species, although they had their extraordinary or even mundane faults.
This is not to excuse Elon - or indeed any of us. The expectation that any human being is free of these kinds of moral sins, is unreasonable. And such parody is exactly why, indeed, [1] the imperative to make humans multi-planetary - i.e. with strategically enhanced survival potential, is important.
Unless of course you are in the 'humans are dumb and must perish' camp. Jump you to [1], human!
> To be fair, it is arguable that Musk has accomplished more good-for-the-species stuff than any one human, ever.
Is this a serious take? He has worked in EV cars and rockets. Cars are something we should be moving away from and not towards. How have those things benefited even a fraction of the global population? Even in the U.S., inequality has continued to rise, poverty has risen, education has decreased, and several other poor indicators. Musk has used a huge portion of public funds in his companies, funds that could be used to solve these very real problems, and he’s done nothing to return value back to the general public.
> cars are something we should be moving away from…
Well there are lots of things humans should be doing, and never do. But I do believe Musk already did accomplish Tesla’s goal of accelerating electrification of the planet. Combustion is just less efficient. The ball is now rolling. Resistance is futile.
I believe it is arguable that some of the more damaging climate change scenarios are possible. So anyone moving the needle there could be extremely beneficial in the long run. Musk moved the needle more than anyone in modern history, hasn’t he?
I also do buy into the long-term goal of making Earth’s life spread beyond Earth. I happen to believe that complex lifeforms are extremely rare volumetrically. It does seem worth it to me, and I truly cannot think of a greater goal. SpaceX has revolutionized orbital boosters with F9 and FH already dropping costs by at least half. If/when Starship and Superheavy are up and running, then the economics of getting to space may be 10x better.
On the other hand Musk is not omniscient and scares the crap out of me sometimes.
The boring company plan for West LA didn’t make sense beyond paper and pencil prototyping.
I got banned from multiple Tesla forums for being upset about Tesla’s proof of work crypto investment. Eventually Musk came around on that too, but why did it take so long? How did this even pass muster?
The scariest thing is Neuralink though. The goal is to give humans a fighting chance to compete with a possible future AGI by greatly increasing our i/o bandwidth. Ok, but assuming AGI is created, then it’s fair to assume that it will be possible to increase the AGIs speed using various methods. Maybe we will have a chance to compete up to some point, but that time will pass as AGI develops further.
We are trading a fleeting advantage against a possible future threat in exchange for giving read/write access to our brains to the governments, corporations, and NSO Groups who we all know and trust. Would love to be talked down from that one because this appears to be monumentally dumb to me right now.
Because what has Musk done for the "good of the species"?
I mean you have guys like Fritz Haber, whose Haber-Bosch process is responsible for the production of nearly two-thirds of the world's foodstuffs and literally feeds half the world.
Or Stanley Norman Cohen, father of genetic modification. Whose patents touch nearly every other biological field today. You literally cannot calculate the number of lives he has potentially saved.
Those are great examples which are certainly currently higher-ranked. I suppose the argument for Musk would only make sense in a few decades, if climate change was catastrophic and he could be credited with something like advancing electrification by 10 years, and a Mars settlement was bustling. Then maybe he could be up there with the greats.
In topic of "getting things done", how are Teslas ventillators? How is his submarine for Thai boys? How is his moon tourism which he according to him should've started 4 years ago? How's his "fixxed" traffic with undedground tunnels? How is full self driving ready in two months?
Elon is telling lots and lots of bullshit, but his worshippers are still telling that his different and he meant something different.
The overall quality of the detractor comments says a lot too. There are a lot of generic hater comments. There are others that make no sense at all… like, Musk not wanting a PR department in his company being anti-speech. Wh… wha?? I’m still waiting for a serious and honest reason to shit on the guy.
I think this is already pretty clear from his work. Nobody builds Tesla or SpaceX to get famous or rich - there are much easier ways. He is truly a nerd's nerd.
Dude your timeline is so incredibly off which seriously invalidates your comment - not to mention your fundamental understanding of the human condition. Not even Elon has put anything out there and his timelines are more aggressive than reality (see almost all his product roll-outs).
The odds of succeeding with Tesla or SpaceX were extremely low. That’s not the kind of company you build if you want to become rich. There are much safer options.
and he did that with paypal. not everybody wants to stay with safe and boring stuff.
everybody knows that sooner or later the combustion engine goes the way of the dodo, cause there won't be anything to put inside it...
the odds of succeeding with an EV company are not extremely low but exactly the opposite, it's the future, guaranteed. but of course it's not an overnight project and one needs to do better than introducing models 5 years ago that are still not being manufactured (roadster).
I mean, the facts on the ground are pretty real. If the bootlicking warmongers don't start WW3 in the meantime, we very much may make it to Mars in time to watch the shit-show from a distance.
If that's not okay with you, I understand. But nobody is fixin' for some poison.
We want to stay free. You know, as a species.
There are zero good reasons not to put all our industry into building things in space, and returning Earth to a garden.
BTW I'm thinking that, with the cost of transporting a ton of cargo in space, interplanetary invasions might be impractical because it will be extremely expensive to transport any kind of military force. That does not preclude a conflict between the local colonies though.
I'm thinking it'll be more like, once there's a viable colony on 16 Psyche, it'll spend its time transmitting F/OSS designs to the universe.
It'll be pretty hard for Earth beligerents to be genociding when there are Starships dropping in on the starving villages and keeping them alive.
Yes yes, there is still a lot to be done before we can manufacture a Tesla on an asteroid, and land it back on Earth wherever its needed.
But, if you think about it, its definitely a better way forward than to just stay here and keep killing ourselves over what is .. admittedly .. a pretty small planet.
I haven't met Elon, so I dunno if I buy your view. But I do thank you for articulating it so clearly.
we've got this cultural veil of cynical nihilism that keeps us from thinking people could think like that. You're suggesting that someone is a good person? OMG no way. and he's some rich arsehole? can't be
Terry Pratchett called it "crab bucket" thinking.
It may be worth the risk of buying into some Musk hagiography just to have a break from the common popular despair.
I hate Tesla, it is the Apple of Car Companies, and I hate Apple. Their draconian business practices, anti-repair stance, and several other things keep me from buying a Tesla the same way i will never own an Apple Product.
SpaceX is cool...
Gotta love any company that has a banded Flame Thrower --- the Borning Company....
All of that said, I follow Musk because he He does what he wants, public perception be damned, Media be damned....
I am tried of Political Correctness, anyone that stands in the face of that has my support, even if I disagree with them politically as I often do with Musk.
For context, Musk's net worth is the same amount of value that the world produces every 32 hours. So him directing all his wealth towards those goals would be a huge redirection of resources, but not necessarily significant on a global scale.
personally, i wish he would log out and focus on starship. Let me touch the third rail real fast, i felt the same way about Trump. Just logout of twitter and focus on the country.
I've said it before but Twitter is like a cancer, it begins to grow in some poor unfortunate souls irrespective of wealth, knowledge, or privilege, and slowly overtakes their whole being.
People invest with Elon because he has, objectively, an extraordinary track record of success.
- SpaceX's market capitalization has surpassed $100 billion [1].
- Tesla's market cap has topped $1 trillion, eclipsing the combined value of all other automakers [2].
- Elon's latest venture, The Boring Company, is currently valued at $5.7 billion [3].
I feel that most people have invested in Elon because he knows how to make a lot of money and they want to be part of it.
Investors are here for the money. While some will favor some companies over others for ethical reasons, no one invests to lose money. In the case of, for example, Tesla, the reasoning is usually that governments all around the world want to move away from fossil fuels and because Tesla is in that market, it will eventually make shittons of money.
That Elon Musk wants to buy Twitter shouldn't have an impact on the potential profits Tesla can make, Elon or not, Tesla will continue making electric cars in a world that demands electric cars to move away from fossil fuels. As for SpaceX (the "interplanetary" side), it is private, so you can't invest.
He's already said that he'd follow all local laws so it would be interesting to see if he can find the elusive path of maintaining free speech, following the law and not having Twitter being a toxic cesspool used mainly to shout down those not our your "side".
Personally my reservations are because I think running a social media site is a lot about understanding people and defining a healthy culture for your elusive market place of ideas. Musk has admitted he doesn't understand people, is a self-confessed troll & edgelord and and Tesla's culture seems less than ideal. So lacks any of the qualifications I see as being needed to run something like Twitter. Maybe there's some other Musk magic that will do what so many others have failed to do.
>> He's already said that he'd follow all local laws
Is Twitter available in on of the following countries? China, Saudi-Arabia, Russia, Turkey? Since we know the answer I'm looking forward to see how helping those local governments go after "dissidents" will be aligned with Musk's high ideals of free speech.
Exactly! And in Turkey people get charged with supporting terrorism by tweeting negative stuff about Erdogan. On the surface of it, Musk should be against that, free speech and all that. Supporting local law would mean supporting authorities in finding those users. One way out would be to just retreat from, in this example, Turkey.
But since this whole affaire started with "ElonsJet" refusing to shut down, and Musks reaction was a teenagers "Then I'll buy this company and fire you", I'm inclined to believe free speech is going to be ok as long Musk is criticized.
Certainly he could retreat from places like Turkey and China. Alas, increasingly there is nowhere left to run. You can be inclined to believe what you want, we can just wait and see what happens no?
In Canada, protestors had their bank accounts frozen for saying mean things about Trudeau. It's not exactly the same as your example but it does rhyme.
That is incorrect. ~200 bank accounts were frozen for refusing to follow police orders to clear illegal blockades. Accounts were not frozen for speech, but for unlawful actions.
I am not Canadian and you're going to have to do your own fact checking but here is a post from an MP (whom I know nothing about but can assume you absolutely hate, try to put that aside):
https://twitter.com/markstrahl/status/1495472037438967808
Briane is a single mom from Chilliwack working a minimum wage job. She gave $50 to the convoy when it was 100% legal. She hasn’t participated in any other way. Her bank account has now been frozen.
I think regardless of your political affiliation freezing bank accounts and invoking emergency powers is controversial for obvious reasons. It is not a good precedent. Try to think ahead to a time when your political opponents are in power.
Sworn testimony in parliament makes it seem as if Mr Strahl’s story is either wholly or partially manufactured. No accounts were frozen for donating when the protest was still allowed.
Additionally there is no evidence that a person by the name of “Briane” lives in that town, and no one with that name was listed as a donor to the protest.
If you read more carefully (I can not stress enough that I am not Canadian, if you ask me the protests were dumb 'etc) that does not at all refute the point I am making.
One day Mark Strahl or somebody like him will be in power and the shoe will be on the other foot. If you start banning people you don't like (from twitter, bank accounts, whatever) left and right you will end up in a very dark place by setting that precedent.
There were ~200 accounts frozen affecting less than that number of people (some people had multiple accounts frozen). The claim is that these accounts were the ones directly supporting the protest. This was after the courts had declared many aspects of the protest unlawful. The accounts were mostly unfrozen after the protest broke up. The mechanism that was used to freeze their accounts allows them to sue for compensation
As much as the process for the emergencies act has been painted as absolute power. It very much isn’t. It is subject to quite a bit of oversight from the legislative and judicial.
I understand what your point is, but Canada has a history of going after left leaning protesters in FAR more concerning ways than this. As far as I can tell this was way more preferable to the usual tactics that the RCMP used to enforce injunctions.
For example, the military was used to clear native peoples off their land to build a golf course. A child was bayoneted. In 1990.
The RCMP broke into a cabin with a chainsaw and axe where indigenous elders were praying to stop oil and gas construction. That was last year.
Temporarily freezing funds of enablers seems like a pretty reasonable solution to an unlawful protest, all things considered.
Besides all that, at the time it was VERY clear that this political action was funded from unknown sources outside the country. I don’t think that money is speech. And I really don’t think that political destabilization should be funded by anonymous overseas donors.
Fine. Ignore that part. But feel free to address the actual argument:
Temporarily freezing the banking privileges of people involved in the perpetuation of 1. A crime 2. while acting against an injunction 3. after being authorized to use that power by a majority of elected representatives is a pretty acceptable use of government. Regardless of who in power does it.
You said you don’t like people in power arbitrarily freezing accounts of people they don’t like, and cited what appears to be a completely made up story from a fringe candidate.
I’m pointing out that this was not arbitrary, and it was used in a very specific and limited manner, as authorized by law, to accomplish a very specific goal. The goal was accomplished with, as far as has been actually proven, an absolute minimum of harm caused, even to the perpetrators themselves.
The protest is still allowed, there are still people protesting in my town. Just saw ‘em this weekend. What they aren’t allowed to do is use money from unknown international sources to shut down cities and infrastructure
> You said you don’t like people in power arbitrarily freezing accounts of people they don’t like, and cited what appears to be a completely made up story from a fringe candidate.
What are we discussing here? Because your response to me was that "the other side is much worse" and you cited the military bayoneted a child in 1990.
This Mark Stahl fellow is a sitting MP not a fringe candidate.
> Temporarily freezing funds of enablers seems like a pretty reasonable solution to an unlawful protest, all things considered.
Well, if they are willing to bayonet children to build golf courses imagine the pandoras box you've now opened for when they get back in power. Won't seem so reasonable when they freeze your bank account in turn. Not a hard concept to grasp.
Try to imagine a carbon copy of yourself who fell into the other echo chamber and has similarly low opinions of your politics. There will be no shortage of justifications for why you must be punished.
Sorry, he’s not a candidate. He’s an elected rep who has been thoroughly hung out to dry for making shit up. There is no evidence from reliable sources besides this tweet that donors faced any consequences or had their accounts frozen. There is sworn testimony indicating that didn’t happen. Marjory Taylor Greene is an elected rep too, but many would agree that she’s not someone to cite.
You seem to be seeing this through the lens of “two sides”. There are more than two major political parties in Canada. And the East/West/French divide is as important as the left/right divide.
I’m seeing this through the lens of government quelling illegal protest, regardless of what is being protested. I see what happened in Ottawa as a restrained response that I wish was used more, rather than the violent response that is so common.
At the time temporary asset freezes we’re used, military force was authorized by the legislature. They could have dragged the trucks out using military recovery equipment, instead they made it so they couldn’t buy diesel and propane with money from unknown sources.
> Try to imagine a carbon copy of yourself who fell into the other echo chamber and has similarly low opinions of your politics. There will be no shortage of justifications for why you must be punished.
If I fall down some conspiracy rabbit hole, protest by unlawfully shutting down a city for a month, ignore an injunction, and encourage others to do the same while ignoring warnings about the consequences, I sure as hell expect that the government will come after me.
There was no “pandoras box” opened. The legislature authorized the PM to act in a limited way to end an unlawful protest. Those powers have expired, and could have been rescinded at any time.
The people weren’t “punished”. Organizers had money frozen for about a week until it could be seen that it wouldn’t be used to support more activity deemed to be an emergency.
The dangerous precedent isn’t the seizure of money. It’s using foreign bankrolls to pay for a destabilizing protest movement to use industrial equipment to shut down major infrastructure and cities while ignoring the rule of law.
> Marjory Taylor Greene is an elected rep too, but many would agree that she’s not someone to cite.
Many people are childish and it is now fashionable to stick your fingers in your ears and try to make the thing you don't like disappear instead of dealing with it. Once upon a time citing did not imply agreement. Sometimes reality is icky.
> You seem to be seeing this through the lens of “two sides”.
I'm seeing it through the lens of "no sides". Try putting politics aside.
> If I fall down some conspiracy rabbit hole, protest by unlawfully shutting down a city for a month, ignore an injunction, and encourage others to do the same while ignoring warnings about the consequences, I sure as hell expect that the government will come after me.
I wonder why you think only people with politics that differ from yours (and therefore are clearly wrong) are susceptible to this behavior and members of your tribe are somehow immune.
> There was no “pandoras box” opened. The legislature authorized the PM to act in a limited way to end an unlawful protest. Those powers have expired, and could have been rescinded at any time.
It seems you are under the impression you need to convince me.
Many people would say otherwise, to use your parlance. Alas, Mark Strahl is still an MP, even if he spreads lies. Marjory Taylor Greene somehow got elected. They have supporters. You need to convince them.
Is it getting easier or harder? What will happen when they regain power? Something to ruminate on.
And not only the "fringe" or conservatives but even people who might agree with your politics directionally might disagree with the heavy handedness and perceived slide into authoritarianism. It is as if your perceptions are not the only ones that matter even if undoubtably you're right of course.
> The dangerous precedent isn’t the seizure of money. It’s using foreign bankrolls to pay for a destabilizing protest movement to use industrial equipment to shut down major infrastructure and cities while ignoring the rule of law.
Presumably it could be both. You could have multiple ongoing problems. And in a heavy handed attempt to solve one exacerbate others. I really hope it sinks in but I'm quite afraid you'll just reply again about how bad the people you don't like are.
It's not even REMOTELY close. They didn't have their bank accounts frozen for saying mean things, they were frozen because they were blocking roadways, damaging property, and making life in general more difficult for innocent citizens. You may not agree that they should have been frozen but it's absolutely not about saying mean things.
No-one got their bank accounts frozen for "saying mean things".
People did get their bank accounts frozen for playing key roles in protests that shut down critical infrastructure for a prolonged period. Protests that were at least partially funded by foreign interests. Protests that cost Canadians millions of dollars and posed a safety risk for many people.
Whether you like JT or not, at least on the surface the government had justification to do <<something>> to stop the protests after so many weeks. Some governments would have gone in with clubs, rubber bullets and teargas. Ours elected to shut off the funding tap. And it worked.
Whether the emergencies act should have been used here is definitely up for debate. For what it's worth, an independent inquiry has been established to look into this. I for one hope they recognize the slippery slope that such a blunt tool represents and put in better controls and oversight.
> Some governments would have gone in with clubs, rubber bullets and teargas. Ours elected to shut off the funding tap. And it worked.
Sure, one can’t survive without money. And they shut that dissent down real quick. Like they controlled speech quite well. Now that they’ve found the button, I wonder how many times in the future they’ll push it. You’re basically bragging about your loss of dissent.
I definitely do not think it's something to brag about - in the very next paragraph I point out that I believe this was too blunt an instrument. I do think it's worth contrasting with other recent responses to dissent, though, if anything to think about what and when would be appropriate.
Also, the government did not "shut down the dissent real quick". The protests went on for weeks without any reprisal. The shouts were shouted, the horns honked, the memes posted, the swastikas flown. The protesters got their fifteen minutes of fame and more. We all heard them speak, unfortunately it turned out they didn't have anything interesting to say.
In England recently there was a teenager that quoted a snoop song on her instagram got threatened with an ankle bracelet and a $1000 fine for using a slur - post was not even directed at anyone in particular but rather in memory of her friend that died in a car crash.
"Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!!"
Chambers was arrested by anti-terror police at his office, his house was searched and his mobile phone, laptop and desktop hard drive were confiscated. ..was found guilty at Doncaster Magistrates' Court, fined £385 and ordered to pay £600 costs. As a consequence he lost his job as an administrative and financial supervisor at a car parts company.
if they quoted Erdogan, I might give it to you, but 2Pac is too far removed. not everyone has to know all the lyrics to every rap song to distinguish between participating in pop culture and bomb threats by the way
Two separate cases. The "bomb threat" I quoted here in full, it is right in front of your eyes. Make of it what you will of course.
You're welcome to explain to me how a teenager quoting snoop on her instagram is deserving of a court case whether somebody is familiar with the quote or not as opposed to Ahmadinejad quoting 2pac.
You can now meme yourself to jail now. No need to even go so far as the head of state, any random individual can feign offense at you to land you in legal trouble.
UK had draconian libel laws used to silence inconvenient messages since for all intents and purposes forever, though.
English defamation law puts the burden of proof on the defendant, and does not require the plaintiff to prove falsehood. For that reason, it has been considered an impediment to free speech in much of the developed world.
Libel laws are at least about false statements. The difference is now you can still get in legal trouble for speaking the truth or making jokes, just as long as somebody was "offended".
> These laws have been abolished as of January 1, 2020. Insulting the King, the Royal Consort, the heir apparent or their consort, or the Regent, is now punishable on the same level as public officials in their official capacity, which adds one third to the maximum severity of the punishment for regular criminalisation of insulting of three months in prison (maximum) and/or a fine.
that's your army and police forces failing to protect your citizens from a turkish bodyguard on your own soil. nothing to do with persecuting Erdogan's critics
> 'It had to do with an American and a Russian arguing about their two countries,' Reagan said Monday, relating the story he told Gorbachev. 'And the American in the story said, 'I can walk into the Oval Office, I can pound the president's desk, and I can say, Mr. President, I don't like the way you're running our country.'
> 'And the Soviet citizen said, 'I can do that.' The American said, 'You can?' He says, 'Yes. I can go into the Kremlin to the general secretary's office, I can pound his desk and say, Mr. General Secretary, I don't like the way President Reagan's running his country.''
> The Böhmermann affair (also known as Erdogate[1]) was a political affair following an experimental poem on German satirist Jan Böhmermann's satire show Neo Magazin Royale in late March 2016 that deliberately insulted Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan using profane language.
...
After the show was aired on German public television channel ZDFneo, the Turkish government released a verbal note demanding that the German government begin criminal prosecution of Böhmermann. German Chancellor Angela Merkel further escalated the situation by apologizing for Böhmermann's "intentionally hurtful" poem – later she called this "a mistake".[2] On 15 April Merkel announced in a press conference that the German government had approved Böhmermann's criminal prosecution, but would abolish the respective paragraph 103 of the German penal code before 2018. Intense criticism followed the Chancellor's decision, with speculation that she decided to allow the prosecution in order to protect Germany's refugee deal with Turkey.[3] The case was dropped in October 2016
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Böhmermann_affair
You can get locked up for very mild 'hate speech' in the UK. And I don't even mean hate speech, but posting "I hate these people and this is why", not "violent acts towards so and so!"
It's better to stick to local rules than getting a clique in silicon valley to decide what they think should be acceptable to say. He said he wants more free speech, not to break the laws of foreign countries. If twitter was already doing just the minimum required by law, and Elon said he still wanted more free speech you'd have a point. But they go far beyond that!
This has nothing to do with elonjets btw and if that's the worst example you can come up with... you'd be just convincing those who think that Twitter's moderation policy is horrible. Because for them, a dude censoring people who track him (which won't happen anyways imo) is still insanely better than the current policy that they deem is used to supress entire ideas/events.
Agreed. I'm not saying they should, just that they have to follow the laws. But they don't have to police their platform according to what an extremely sheltered SV-adjacent elite thinks should be okay. It's not an either/or question, they can not bend down to police states and also not let that minority have the last say over what is okay or not across the entire globe.
What is your solution then? If twitter weren’t available, do you think you’d see more or less people speaking against their gov? You’ll also see some people in this thread asking for identity verification. Which shows the value of anonymous posting. Perhaps we should make twitter much like HN and not require identifiable information that links to a real person?
> It's better to stick to local rules than getting a clique in silicon valley to decide
My point was that I'd prefer companies to stick to their principles, and if that means they can't do business in certain countries, so be it.
Saying that you'll follow local rules if that means abuse of human rights is not something I agree with.
In this context 'human rights' is used as a personal definition rather than some sort of legal one, as local rules allow abuse in some places.
The entire point is that the _platform_ should not be doing the censoring. The local government can legally, according to their bogus laws, jail and censor their own population, but the platform should allow those posts to appear in the first place. So stuff like "hate speech" (what exactly does Twitter define as hate speech?) should not be censored.
it really doesn't require such extreme examples. The EU will also ask for all kinds of censorship. Germany just made wearing the 'Z' illegal, meaning that any kind of pro-russian viewpoint will have to be censored.
There is only one country on earth that has decent free speech and it's the US
I hope nobody listens to the German government on speech rules and nobody should. There should be a rule that you have to make it through 1 century without creating 2 dictatorships before you can even say anything about allowed or forbidden speech. And no, none of these dictatorships had anything close to free expression like some people hilariously and tragically suggested.
Which are the two dictatorships you are thinking about?
Your proposed rule might be unpractical, since it would disallow the U.S. government from from saying anything about free speech for at least 30 more years (see [1] and [2]).
It's a sliver over a hundred years ago now, but Germany was also under a military dictatorship lead by Hindenburg and Ludendorff from 1916 through 1918.
Free speech was all but dead between 1914 and 1918 everywhere. Not saying Luddendorff wasn't defacto military dictator, he was, just pointing out that this had no additional negative impact on free speech during this time.
I was talking about the Nazi and the GDR regime. I am aware that US foreign policy is controversial, but never did the US murder people on a comparable scale.
The current set of German speech rules were specifically designed to keep one of those two dictatorships from reasserting control once the Americans and Soviets stopped looking. They didn't write the rules themselves; the Allies did.
Before Hitler came to power laws against "hate speech" were already in place from the century before. He used the fact to depict himself as an outcast until he came to power and curbed freedom of speech to a far more significant degree.
Suffice to say that censorship was pretty prevalent through the history of Germany and it did not provide the advantages some had hoped.
And the allies did censor speech that is true.
> The representative of the Allied forces admitted that the order in principle was no different from the Nazi book burnings, although unlike the burnings, the measure was seen as a temporary part of the denazification program.
In that case the measure can be understood as the country was full of Nazi propaganda and alternative media was more or less dead. But it was indeed temporary and the Allies also wrote Germany's constitution, which explicitly forbid censorship.
> There should be a rule that you have to make it through 1 century without creating 2 dictatorships before you can even say anything about allowed or forbidden speech.
Lies and incitements to violence were a significant factor in Hitler being able to assume emergency powers, so you could argue that Germany learned a valuable lesson from one of its dictators.
Technically true, but without context, easily misunderstood. It's illegal in Germany to promote or advocate for illegal acts. Since Russia attack on Ukraine is an illegal act, it's illegal to promote or advocate for the war, and this includes the Z symbol.
Also "incitement to illegal conduct and imminent lawless action" is also illegal in the U.S. it just gets interpreted a little different.
> There is only one country on earth that has decent free speech and it's the US
Except for nearly all the other countries in Europe, Canade etc.
>Also "incitement to illegal conduct and imminent lawless action" is also illegal in the U.S. it just gets interpreted a little different.
I'd say its more than a little different. The US definition is pretty narrow and immediate. You can't get on a megaphone and tell a crowd to go kill some guy right now.
>Except for nearly all the other countries in Europe, Canada etc.
It's all down to opinion of course but those nations do not have sensible freedom of speech. They pay lip service to the idea but will gladly jail people for saying things the government doesn't like but otherwise harmless or victim less.
Based on what I'm reading here, U.S. law more than just a "little" different from German law in this regard. The word "imminent" in the U.S. standard does a huge amount of work, restricting liability to things like direct incitement (e.g., "Get him!"). And the "Z" itself is a perfect example, since it would almost certainly be considered protected speech in the U.S.
I'm not trying to say there are no differences, but I find the exaggerations tiresome. When companies or people are muzzled by National Security Letters, whistleblowers jailed and companies bankrupt people with SLAP suits for saying something they don't like, that's somehow not a restriction on free speech in the U.S.
However, when a country doesn't allow you to promote or advocate for war crimes, then it's "only the U.S. has free speech", go figure.
For better or worse, free-speech ideology in the U.S. is very focused on avoiding 1) prior restraint and 2) content/viewpoint discrimination by the government. So a lot of the things you identified tend not to strike people steeped in American legal thinking as free speech problems on the same order as categorically banning certain symbols or messages. I happen to think that this focus is correct, but I could be convinced otherwise. I don't think its at all obvious what the best approach is.
But I agree with your more general point that Americans should be a bit less smug about the superiority of their free-speech rules.
I agree with you (and thanks for the nice discussion) and think it's really a different cultural interpretation. I would say that most Germans would say free speech is a value in general, which should be upheld by the government and for example the work place (and there are laws to protect people there) whereas the U.S. is more focus on the government part (just an observation).
I think both have their historic reasons, place and differences.
> Technically true, but without context, easily misunderstood.
It's practically true, and there is nothing to "misunderstand" there, unless you try to create such a misunderstanding by claiming this comes out of some kind of "general ban", when it's actually a very specific ban German states started putting in place [0].
Case in point;
> Since Russia attack on Ukraine is an illegal act, it's illegal to promote or advocate for the war, and this includes the Z symbol.
The US attack on Iraq was also illegal, yet that didn't lead to German states banning the V symbol for Victory or any other US symbols, or US media, getting banned.
Which is not the only example of how most about this is purely political and not in any way based on impartial interpretation and application of laws for human rights and "justice" [1].
> some kind of "general ban", when it's actually a very specific ban German states started putting in place [0].
But it does, it's just that to prevent a misuse, any ban on symbols (which are used to advocate or promote something criminal) a separate law is needed to prevent misuse and allow judiciary overview. That's an additional protection.
> US attack on Iraq was also illegal
That's a fair point (and I agree on the illegality), and I would actually like this to be challenged in the court and see a decision. However, the Russian flag is not banned, just the Z symbol as a symbol for this war. If there was a symbol for U.S. drone strike or the invasion of Iraq we could be talking about something more concrete.
> However, the Russian flag is not banned, just the Z symbol as a symbol for this war.
The Z symbol exists for the same reason why the V symbol existed on US military vehicles in Iraq; It's mainly a friendly fire and unit identifier as Russia and Ukraine use a lot of the same mechanized equipment.
While the Anglo V also stands for V as in "Victory" and even has a hand sign associated with it, it's a whole campaign dating back to WWII and Winston Churchill [0].
Me and many of my schoolmates would flash it at US military convoys passing our bus at school trips in the 90s. The soldiers were always super happy about it, while we thought we were signaling "peace" to them.
Ultimately the V would morph into a Chevron with different orientations to distinguish what military group a vehicle belongs to [0], but there is a whole propagandist history behind the Anglo use of V, overlapping very much in the same ways of military necessity as the Russian Z does.
> Technically true, but without context, easily misunderstood.
It's practically true, and there is nothing to "misunderstand" there, unless you try to create such a misunderstanding by claiming this comes out of some kind of "general ban", when it's actually a very specific ban German states started putting in place only recently [0].
Case in point;
> Since Russia attack on Ukraine is an illegal act, it's illegal to promote or advocate for the war, and this includes the Z symbol.
The US attack on Iraq was also illegal, yet that didn't lead to German states banning the V symbol for Victory or any other US symbols, or US state media getting banned.
Which is not the only example of how most about this is purely political and not in any way based on impartial interpretation and application of laws for "human rights and justice" [1].
Okay, so imagine Germany does not allow gay marriage (not so hard, considering it did not do that until 2017, and had no legal recognition of same sex partnership at all before 2001). This would make gay marriage an illegal act. Do you think Germany then should be allowed to criminally prosecute people for advocating for the illegal act of gay marriage?
Ability to advocate for illegal, repugnant, or offensive ideas or acts is in fact the entire point of free speech, so being able to do it is an essential right.
That's a very good observation. I should've made sure to say that not all illegal acts are created equal, and those which are illegal to advocate for, are specially listed [1].
In summary, those basically are high treason, murder/manslaughter, assault, robbery, counterfeiting, creating fire/explosions/radiation, destroying/interference in infrastructure (planes etc.).
Back in the day, noone prevented same-sex partners to marry in Germany in front of a religious congregation which allowed that according to their rules. They just couldn't get the marriage certificate from the State.
As for the illegality: it would make gay marriage an impossible act, because the legal framework to marry two men (or two women) from a legal standpoint (which includes the marriage certificates and the rights and responsibilities associated with it) would not exist. A public official who wrote a marriage certificate for a same-sex couple in 1999 would not have committed a crime, he or she would just have written an invalid form which would have had no legal bearing (and the public official would probably have been reprimanded).
Something you cannot do by definition cannot be illegal.
As a counter point, and a more accurate apples comparison, it’s not illegal to wear a swastika in the US. Nor promote support for what Russia is currently doing. You’ve pointed out that Germany can make something illegal to control speech, which is not the same as promoting riots or planning the demise of the gov.
> Except for nearly all the other countries in Europe, Canade etc.
None of them has free speech. Free speech is a binary thing - either speech is free, or it isn't. The moment you face criminal lawsuits for saying the wrong things, you do not live under a Free Speech regime. To my knowledge, the only country which does this correctly is the US.
Many countries claim to have Freedom of Opinion - which is a different concept from Freedom of Speech. Under a "Freedom of Opinion" regime, you can hold any opinion that you like - but some you need to keep to yourself.
He'll do both. Free speech in countries that have laws that allow/support it.
But the thing everyone forgets is that he has very strong ties to the US government. From a free speech perspective, this is as good as the government taking over twitter, but much better PR
Aside from the 15minutes when it was just developers and tech dorks, was it ever non-toxic? I love how “free speech” comes up when these assholes limit what you can say to a tiny few bytes, it’s fundamentally limited to name calling, slogans, sound bites and head lines rather than actual real discourse and content.
I think he already explained the mindset here by differentiating between moderating speech, and moderating behavior. So people who say certain things might still be banned or violate guidelines because of how they say it, but the event would probably be misrepresented as infringing on the right to free speech.
> Musk has admitted he doesn't understand people, is a self-confessed troll & edgelord and and Tesla's culture seems less than ideal. So lacks any of the qualifications I see as being needed to run something like Twitter.
That's why he's perfect for this task. Most decision-makers feel intense scrutiny and tip toe around things that cause backlash, especially things that threaten the status quo.
When you're oblivious to how people will react to your vision, you're more able to follow through and make it to the other side.
This sort of thinking is how wars and genocides get started. Being decisive and following through on execution is an important skill, but ignoring other stakeholders’ opinions has downsides that are best not ignored.
Just glancing at his feed, Elon seems to talk about spam bots, free speech, making the extreme left and extreme right equally unhappy, and shadow banning. Sounds like he wants more fairness and transparency in how Twitter moderates content.
They should all be looking for choice B companies. I suspect there will be a mass firing/exodus for anything involving security or feed algorithm teams.
> In 2018, he came under fire after tweeting that he was considering taking Tesla private, and the SEC charged him with fraud. Musk agreed to a court-approved deal in order to settle the charges, which required that Tesla lawyers review any social media posts containing information "material" to shareholders. Months later, after he was called out for defying the order, the settlement was amended to include a specific list of topics Musk needs permission to tweet about. The list includes tweets about the company's financial condition, production numbers or new business lines.
> The SEC notified Tesla that two of Musk's tweets from 2019 and 2020 — one about Tesla's solar roof production volumes and one about the company's stock price — hadn't received the required pre-approval, the Journal's Dave Michaels and Rebecca Elliott reported.
I find it hard to overlook that at least one thing that might be motivating him to buy Twitter is to tweet however he wants to tweet, regardless of US law.
I'm not saying he would be able to tweet however he wants, but perhaps a desire to do so, aka, to not have the SEC tell him how to communicate on a platform he bought for ~$43B. I just see it as a potential escalating standoff between the SEC and Musk.
Perhaps I'm looking too deep into this and he really does care a lot about other people having freedom to tweet whatever they want. I think there's just a good chance that the SEC ruling telling him he needs to have his Tesla tweets reviewed before sending them could also be motivating him to buy Twitter.
I can't see any connection with the SEC issue. Nothing would change. Doesn't matter whether he owns the platform or not, he's not supposed to tweet market manipulating lies or exaggerations, which is why he has to run them by legal first.
I agree he's not supposed to. Maybe I just think that since the SEC thinks he has already broken that rule, that if he were to own the platform, he might break that rule even more.
Yes, I imagine it would have been the same on Instagram. And yet he posted it on Twitter and they put a ruling on how he had to get approval before tweeting specifically. I imagine that ruling would still apply if he were to own Twitter but I see it as a potential escalation: "You're telling me I can't say whatever I want on my own platform that I just bought with ~$40B?"
Maybe I'm wrong and he'll still abide by the law (which, apparently he wasn't doing very well anyways), I just see it as possible escalating conflict between a private business and a government agency.
I don't think he's that incomprehensibly stupid, really. The only question is whether the SEC has the authority to actually create pain for someone whose wealth is so outside of the norm.
I don't think he'd be as bold-faced about it, however, he does have a tendency to mock people on Twitter, including his tweet of "SEC, three letter acronym, middle word is Elon’s."
> The only question is whether the SEC has the authority to actually create pain for someone whose wealth is so outside of the norm.
I assume they should have the authority to make such rulings regardless of how wealthy someone is. Now, will they actually enforce those rulings to create that realized pain? Maybe that depends on how much regulatory capture one can muster.
Actually yes, it doesn't matter if he paid $50B for Twitter. It's still a violation of SEC rules regardless of whether he owns the platform or not. This argument makes no sense.
I'm not saying it wouldn't be a violation of the SEC rules. I'm saying that if he is alleged to have violated them already when he didn't own the platform, there may be a chance he violates them more if he does own it.
> I find it hard to overlook that at least one thing that might be motivating him to buy Twitter is to tweet however he wants to tweet, regardless of US law.
This doesn't really track. First of all he already tweets however he wants. Secondly what difference would it make to the SEC if he owns Twitter here?
> find the elusive path of maintaining free speech, following the law and not having Twitter being a toxic cesspool used mainly to shout down those not our your "side".
Verified, real people will change the dynamic.
> Admitted he doesn't understand people, is a self-confessed troll & edgelord and and Tesla's culture seems less than ideal.
He got all those self-confessed trolls & edgelords together, created companies in hard sciences and made everyone rich in the process. I worked at Tesla, it was a good time.
> interesting to see if he can find the elusive path of maintaining free speech
I am also utterly gobsmacked how people here jump to the defense of billionaires.
> Taking a moment to think about how utterly crazy it is that in 2022 a company with a significant dataset of private and public communications, that has municipalities, companies and governments on the platform, can switch ownership with pretty much zero scrutiny -- https://twitter.com/emilybell/status/1518580094649966592
Whatever laws protect that data or communications will continue to exist. And if you're just taking it on good faith that the current ownership won't do anything shady even if there's no laws preventing it, that's a much bigger problem to address.
"Public" only adds accountability benefits for protecting public investors to ensure they're not robbed. There's little more accountability benefiting any other outsider.
> Taking a moment to think about how utterly crazy it is that in 2022 a company with a significant dataset of private and public communications, that has municipalities, companies and governments on the platform, can switch ownership with pretty much zero scrutiny
What you're saying is why do regulations allow for this? Idk, but this is a regulatory question, and therefore it should be directed at the government not at the billionaire in question.
spoken like a true fanboi of a person whose family comes from a mining background in apartheid South Africa. and who has never been back to the place ever since apartheid was abolished. Musk like Thiel is a racist and people who support him are also likely fans of Ayn Rand. But you know all that. Personally I think we should strive to live in a society where those type of people do not feel safe (but you knew that too).
Entirely different. Oligarchs are individuals who personally own and control obscene amounts of a country's infrastructure, through backdoor deals.
American Business Titans are individuals who personally own and control obscene amounts of a country's infrastructure, through outsized stock ownership. And they wear fitted t-shirts instead of creepy euro-suits.
Billionaires are the celebrities and royalty for tech folks. Human beings thrive on hierarchy and we need to have people above us and below us in order to know where we stand in society.
Often people look up the ladder in awe and respect because we all want to move up and be there ourselves one day, so it makes sense to venerate that position in order to justify it within ourselves subconsciously.
Trolls, disinformation spreaders, and "free reach absolutists" are going to be thrilled with the megaphone Musk will provide them to drown out their enemies.
Maybe so! There were big followings for /r/CreepShots and /r/rapingwomen. And lots of free-reachers who were apoplectic when Reddit at least tried to do something about it.
If Musk can dial up the abuse on Twitter, Reddit 1.0 can live again.
Then Reddit slowly had its commitment to free speech chipped away, starting innocently with banning things like /r/jailbait and then abhorrent stuff like /r/coontown and then some time passed and they banned /r/chapotraphouse for being edgy and to prove they were cool because they banned left wingers.
I don't see how twitter changing ownership will change anything structurally at Twitter. Jack Dorsey started out as a free speech champion many years ago. The things people say cause real problems for real people and at some point the rubber meets the road. A large site like Twitter is at the mercy of the politics of the world.
Even stuff like "Twitter will comply with local laws" is a subtle concession to local censorship laws. Cracks in the facade are already appearing before Musk even owns twitter.
And yet stuff like /r/BlackPeopleTwitter exists where if you don't "prove" you're black you're not allowed to post. There's a fundamental difference between being required to comply with a legal order to take something down and taking down content because you decided someone _might_ not like it.
> if you don't "prove" you're black you're not allowed to post.
They do not.
They lock down specific, controversial threads in this manner when outsiders start making confrontational comments. AFAIK this was done because the racist vitriol proved impossible to moderate.
It's still censorship, yet I'm not convinced censorship is a bad thing. Rather censorship is inevitable because the amount of peoples who want to speak is greater than peoples collective capacity to listen, so some sort of filtering process will and must take place.
Reddit has huge "tyranny of the majority" problems and many communities spring up to essentially censor the speech of people outside of that community so people in that community can speak their mind without getting downvoted (I.E. censored) by the masses of Reddit. BlackPeopleTwitter has a system where all users that are not verified black users will be censored if the moderators deem it appropriate, which is perfectly reasonable. Is this racist censorship? Absolutely and yet it turns out that's not always a bad thing.
I find much of the discourse on free speech to be an oversimplification to the point of self-parody. I support the intentions of free speech but not a literal interpretation of what it means, which is just never censor anybody ever. That literally doesn't work and can't work, it's not a thing that's possible outside of a thought experiment, you'll end up getting DDOSed by speech.
Not even close. Reddit 1.0 was an era where the trolls didn't know what was possible. It was a pleasant era where extreme events that necessitated the subsequent rules/bans didn't yet occur.
No? The entire purpose of reddit was to scale bans and site moderation by offloading that responsibility to the users rather than the site administrators.
For years, they tolerated the existence of subreddits with names to heinous for me too even dare mention. Numerous r/[racial slur]s. Numerous subreddits dedicated to sexual violence and harassment. You know what I'm talking about, don't try to gaslight me.
>> Trolls, disinformation spreaders, and "free reach absolutists" are going to be thrilled with the megaphone Musk will provide them to drown out their enemies.
Just remember, twitter does not give those people a megaphone. It's the media that report on their stupid shit that gives them an audience. Otherwise nobody would know what they're saying - especially the people who don't like them - and yet everyone knows who some of those people are.
Impeding unlimited harassment is anti-free-reach. Trolls won't get banned under Musk — they're his soul mates. They will have free rein to brigade the posts of their enemies and will use massive replying at scale as a megaphone to scream others down.
I think many people have made assumptions about what Musk means when he talks about free speech. I don’t think (and greatly hope) it’s going to be an uncensored free for all, which typically leads to a toxic nightmare. Fingers crossed!
Let's be absolutely clear, Musk does not care about your free speech. He has a history of shutting down speech he doesn't like and will continue to do so.
> defining a healthy culture for your elusive market place of ideas
After taking part in the "DevOps" cultural revolution, I feel that there is no path to mandating culture. Culture is the summation of ideas, practices, and values of all parts that participate in a system. If you try to discriminate against participants in order to get "the culture you want" then you'll end up doing some nasty discrimination along the way. That practice is also, ime, heavily correlated with ideological hell holes that lose relevancy the minute they gain relevancy because they're frozen in time along the timeline of acceptable ideas.
The bit about "following the law" was so poorly thought out. Musk's comments at TED made it seem like he both:
(1) confused Bill of Rights guarantee that the government won't censor speech with some law that prohibits private companies from moderating speech on their platforms (not a thing)
(2) failed to consider what it means to "follow the law" when your platform operates in multiple countries with incompatible laws. Do you comply with an authoritarian regime that demands you take down tweets (https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/24/22451271/police-india-rai...)? How about content that is specifically banned in some countries but not others, like Germany's strict hate speech laws (https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/twitter-germany-nazis/)? These are actual problems Twitter has had to deal with, and I don't get the impression that Musk realizes how complicated it it is.
Noone could have known social media moderation could be hard! Just like in 2017 he had no way of knowing his cars wouldn't drive themselves cross country by 2018
Do you mean the one that attempted a coup and utterly failed, like all the things in his life?
I don’t think there is another person in the entire world that managed to bankrupt not one but TWO casinos.
And I think that you guys are very lucky that he didn’t succeed in his half-assed coup, otherwise you would help Russia instead of Ukraine, and would have become soon after that a bankrupt state with all the world against, same as Putin current track record.
Who would be “the left”?
I’m not even American, in the last decade I never voted for “the left”, but I can see clearly that there was a failed coup in the US on the 6th of January.
What is your proof that it wasn’t a failed coup when all the world could see a criminal president incite a mob to attack the Capitol to stop the process to transfer the power to the new president?
There were people with weapons and with zip ties ready to subdue and kidnap elected officials to keep that criminal clown in power.
Or do you need proof of all the failures of that incompetent individual in life, the only person in the world to bankrupt THREE (not two as I remembered) casinos?
Yay, more people not from this country telling us about our business.
All Trump said was “give them hell”, which is the same thing the leftist say when they lose. Anybody that knows the American left knows this is purely political. They’re trying to smear him, charge him with a felony, so he can’t run again. That’s all this is.
Tell me this, had they succeeded in delaying the vote, then what?
But for you obviously Reuters is part of the left and fake news.
Only Fox News, OAN and Russia Tv are the harbinger of “Truth”, better known in Russian as “Pravda”.
I bet that you also approve of him congratulating Putin for his invasion and subsequent genocide…
“Trump said he saw the escalation of the Ukrainian crisis on TV “and I said: ‘This is genius.’ Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine … Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful.”
The former US president said that the Russian president had made a “smart move” by sending “the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen” to the area.”
You are incredibly lucky that he still doesn’t have power, otherwise the US would have helped Russia instead of Ukraine.
Hopefully all the traitors and Putin puppets will get what they deserve at some point, after this genocide is concluded.
> “Had the rioters succeeded in preventing the certification, Raskin said, Trump "was prepared to seize the presidency" and likely declare martial law”
Yes a democrat saying Trump was prepared to enact martial law. They’re clearly not biased.
> You are incredibly lucky that he still doesn’t have power, otherwise the US would have helped Russia instead of Ukraine.
How do you draw this conclusion? You know there’s a difference between saying someone’s smart and liking what they do? Here I’ll do it now: Biden’s request for a ministry of truth is genius. It’ll squash dissent and any non left leaning counter narrative.
American here. President Trump lied about winning the election and upended our tradition of peaceful transitions of power. If he hadn't done that, there would have been no January 6 attack.
I didn’t see Trump fighting the transition. I saw a bunch of people pissed off at the lack of voter IDs expressing their point and taking it too far.
Now since you’re American, let’s play hypothetical. Had they destroyed the case, then what? If you actually think on the topic you’d realize a coup isn’t possible as you’d need some military force to provide law enforcement. So all this coup talk is just meaningless searching for a reason to ban him from elections. Given that it’s only one side that wants him out, this makes it very curious.
Look, there are lots of things you can say about Rep. Cheney (R-WY), but that she is part of “the left” isn't even remotely one of the credible options.
What if a US politician purposely uses Twitter to incite an angry mob to commit a lynching? These are not just hypotheticals, internet platforms have driven mob violence at various scales in several countries.
"Just don't ban US politicians" seems like an unworkable solution.
You are right, he did not directly "cause" it in the strictest sense. Never did he say "storm the capitol" however. as a smart person. you should understand implications and metaphors and that many people know how to tiptoe the line between plausible deniability. and some can even dance on it. if you want to ignore this, then its fine.
I purposely did not mention Trump because I was not talking about Trump. I was referring to anti-muslim violence in BJP regions of India, and anti-Rohynga violence in Myanmar.
He personally considers Twitter to be an extension of the "town square", so he wants to apply the laws of the government and turn them into the operational bylaws of Twitter. If the US government allows it in a "town square" then it's automatically allowed on Twitter.
Musk had no qualifications to run a rocket company. He didn't have much qualifications to run a car or solar company either. But he has done well by any measure of success. The only qualification that he seems to need is clear thinking based on first principles and genuine conviction and perseverance at super hard problems even while facing total personal destruction. And total personal destruction is always a real possibility with him – as he always seems to be all-in betting everything every time. So, if he fails spectacularly at his stated goal for twitter, I wouldn't be surprised (and neither will he be, I bet), but it would be sad to see that.
there are tons of known problems with their hardware and engineering. plus lawsuits from employees, etc. stock price covers a lot of things up, but "well run" can still be evaluated
That's a definitive 'yes'. He is extremely good at finding great and very qualified people, placing them in the right positions and getting 110% out of them.
To me this is the fascinating thing about Musk that really sets him apart: He has succeeded at building several companies that make real stuff and tackle hard engineering challenges. And it's not just having money to throw at the problem, we know that because Bezos also wanted a Rocket company and threw tons of Cash at it.
Hard to say from the outside what it is exactly that allows him to do that. It makes sense that its hard to say what it is, because if it was easy to describe, chances are it wouldn't be what sets him apart (the other option being that it's hard to emulate).
There's a short list of people who can start a rocket company and want to: Bezos, Branson and Musk. I think it is fair to say that starting a rocket company is hard. The small sample size of people trying doesn't really let us learn anything from the success or failures.
The fact that there are so few examples doesn’t tell me its hard, it just tells me its unprofitable. Look at these examples, primarily bankrolled by the megalomaniac billionaire themselves vs the value investors who dollar cost average into lockheed martin et al.
Must wasn't a billionaire when he started his rocket company. He had in the ballpark of 100 million. There are thousands and thousands of people that could start a rocket company. And he did it when no private entity had ever even reached orbit with a liquid fuel rocket.
He's also the Techno-King of Tesla. If you think he's actually doing any of the real science behind rocket design, I have a bridge I'd love to sell you.
As influential as Musk is, he's not a real world Tony Stark.
I think he's more likely to be involved in relatively high-level (but still critically important) engineering decisions rather than "science". That distinction aside, I really wonder what makes people so sure he isn't involved, when every indication (interviews, etc.) is that he actually has a pretty good understanding of the principles SpaceX's rockets are built on, and the reasons they're designed the way they are.
Can you enlighten me? Why is this such a common refrain?
While he obviously isn't a real world Tony Stark, other people who were very definitely involved in the nitty gritty have said that he's involved in the design. While he likely isn't doing the simulations or directly working on the hardware, it's pretty obvious that he participates in the design at a high level at minimum https://twitter.com/lrocket/status/1512919230689148929
Like at any company, the people at the top aren't the ones who do the work. They need to have a broad understanding of the problem space, business opportunities, challenges and risk. They need to be able to understand what work is being done and understand the message that comes up to them. With that they can make high level decisions. From what I have seen, Musk deeply understands the problem space and can suggest engineers do low level stuff. I bet he suggests lots of stuff that the engineers go "erm no that is not possible". Those suggestions will never be seen by us. We will see the suggestions that happen like a rocket ship nose being changed by Musk.
I'm not sure if he meant that literally. I've heard him say everyone working there should consider themselves the lead designer (or something to that effect).
Shotwell doesn't "run" it. She is president and COO, sure. The vision, strategy and engineering is all Musk. Read the book Liftoff. Musk doesn't get much credit for his engineering work and often gets written off as just "investor" type.
I'm quite sure that Musk understands the engineering totally and makes important contributions. Plus, his instincts in providing direction as a CEO are excellent. Very few CEOs understand tech like Musk does.
At least during initial days, Musk spent 90% of time on engineering at SpaceX. He self-thought in rocket engineering and can easily match knowledge of many experts in the field. Many of big engineering decisions were done by Musk, at least until Falcon 9.
He's certainly involved enough in the development process to be able to talk about technical details at length with even some of his previous top employees confirming that he's been heavily involved in development: https://twitter.com/lrocket/status/1512919230689148929 (Tom Mueller is one of the leading experts in the world on rocket engines due to his work on SpaceX's engines), which is a lot more than most of the other big competitors (the only exception is ULA's Tory Bruno since he too has a strong engineering background).
Shotwell is an excellent president and pretty much directly responsible for many of SpaceX's prominent contracts (as well as their survival in the early days), but she handles the 'business' side of things (although, since she has a mechanical engineering background I assume she also keeps up with the technical side), while Elon mainly deals with the technical side.
I have an MechE background from a bay area school and honestly you don't learn a thing about anything that could really help you with this. You either have an incredible passion for learning on your own or you are more clueless about engineering than a guy welding rollcages into a racecar with his highschool diploma.
She does have experience doing actual technical work and anyway, at her level I expect her knowledge to be more high level.
To take your example, she doesn't need to be able to weld rollcages into racecars, but she may be able to understand that a rollcage can only be expected to be useful in X cases or that a good rollcage should have Y features.
Similar to how Elon most likely isn't telling people to change X flange into a weld by adjusting the pipe by Y mm, but rather asking his engineers what they would adjust to achieve Z and the technical tradeoffs, then stating what he thinks is acceptable and what isn't.
I agree, hence the mechanic engineering degree is basically worthless IMO.
Even in your example, any person with a functioning brain would understand your X and Y examples. So what exactly to mechanical engineers learn? As someone that went through it, I can assure you it's almost nothing. It's just a 4 year grinder so they can put a stamp on who can do medium level math and put up with the grind. The learning is up to you after.
Yeah, that's a good point. When I was talking about her background I was mainly trying to emphasize how she differs to the business leaders of other big space companies. Since I think that a big reason for the utter stagnation of the previous rocketry giants has been the systemic dominance of non-technical penny pinchers over engineers with a business lean. But yes, it does come down to the desire to learn rather than what degree they hold.
Tesla and SpaceX are technology/engineering problems. This is what Musk is good at and can take huge risks to go after it. Twitter is NOT engineering or technology problem. The politics and policies are not Musk's forte, at least not yet. However, the more concerning part is his continued defragmentation of attention. Tesla is now genuinly falling behind with massive new competitions rising up. New models haven't been on market for a while. Previously announced models aren't getting delievered. Pace of growth of superchargers is not keeping up. There is a lot at stack where Musk can make huge difference.
Beg to disagree, other manufacturers are catching up but Musk's playbook since Tesla's inception has been to consistently overpromise to the nth degree, so it's not anything new. Remember it took 2-3 years from the Model 3 announcement for them to ship in any meaningful number (2015 -> 2019). Same thing currently happening for the Cybertruck, Roadster, Semi, etc. Are they being too ambitious? Certainly. But it's not really anything new for Tesla. If anything having Musk's attention being frayed to various companies is probably a benefit, from my anecdotal personal interactions with top employees at SpaceX and Tesla. A lot of employees left because Elon is a great figurehead and product leader but an annoying micromanager.
SpaceX is not just a technology problem. It's a sales and marketing problem. You're not selling to the mass market, you're selling to a government. You need to convince people with power to buy your product. If they don't, your business can't get off the ground.
If you're interested in the realitiesof running a modern rocket company, I highly recommend the book "Financing the New Space Industry." It talks about marketing and other aspects.
> Tesla is now genuinly falling behind with massive new competitions rising up.
I think you still being too generous. Other than Teslas which starting to get large amount of competitors who were late to EVs market, and SpaceX, which won't have many competitors because we still kind of figuring out what the heck we need to fly in space for (at this price points), Musk's basket is full of terrible failures.
The most shocking to me is a Boring company. What was promised - vast network of 3D tunnels where cars will move at 150mph speeds. Eventually trip from New York to Shanghai will take less than 2 hours.
What was delivered? A short tunnel with absolutely zero safety features, no ventilation, no exit points, build with state-of-the-art technology that turned out to be 3 times slower (per mile) than 30 years old boring machine that dug La-Manche, and Teslas are driving in that tunnel at... 35mph.
And Musk as we could all predicted came out in defense of all this tweeting that "We made the whole thing much simpler" - no elevator ramps, no high speeds, simple one-lane tunnel. And his base ate it up like some sort of genius he is that he invented moving traffic in one lane underground at bicycle-ride speed.
I say the same thing will happen to twitter. Initially it will be: - open algorithms (99.9% people would not understand what they looking at, at probably 80% of engineers wouldn't either - as an ex-Googler, I can tell you these algorithms are like rings inside a tree - hundreds of layers amassed on the top of each other over the years; - allow full free speech (so no control over even nastier language) - fight with bots.
Fast forward 5 years from now, the only people who understand the algorythms will be large bot farms and they will game the system to get throw to the top before anyone elses tweets. Just like there is reason Google is hiding their algo instead of f.e. patent those, they do that because they don't want smart people to game the system. Full free speech will bring even more maneuver to the site, and at the end of the day its impossible to remove bots. In China for 5 cents you can get someone's real ID. For 10 cents they provide you photo of ID with todays date. For 15 cents they will show up on any video call to provide they are who they are. So at the end of the day small trolls and insignificant bot farms will get wiped out, but the big players who make decent buck by trolling, they will continue undisputed. In a few years Musk will abandon Twitter to focus momentarily on another shiny object. "in fight for humanity freedom", like he couldn't do that when he proposed to solve world's hunger.
On the top of that, isn't his involvement in another project just a big fuck-you to everyone still waiting for:
- Solar City - roof shingles that will revolutionized electricity and actually will make you the homeowner to sell electricity to the power plant.
- Tesla trucks and semi trucks - nothing new on that?
- Boring company - no new progress after years of LV "loop".
- Flying to Mars (many things changed now - from fancy trip sort of Cruise Trip with fun games etc, now the word is that many people will die during the trip and it wont be fun)
Seriously if all these projects would run full speed ahead on all cylinders, I would be happy Musk is taking over another project. But they are not. Most are terrible failures and Musk is still in hot water re: Solar City buyout. I'm starting to think all these projects were just temporary scams to boost Tesla stock value (which Musk succeed with 20 x P/E), and that's about it.
- You can buy a solar roof from Tesla right now, and they are by far the sexiest way you can introduce solar to your home.
- The Tesla Cybertruck and Semi are going to be manufactured in the Austin, TX factory, which literally just opened after only 2 years of construction (mid-pandemic) – seems like progress to be.
- Who said the initial crewed missions to Mars would be a fancy sort of cruise trip?
Oh right because tech people just assume that sexy is an adjective that makes everything better. I remember hearing this associated with Ruby on Rails at one point and realizing I might not fit in with this whole scene.
I won't argue about sexiest way but sure the most expensive. Some assessment broke down you need some 30 years of continues use to break even, that is excluding cost of battery and other accessories, so assuming nothing ever breaks in 30 years.
Good luck with that, because at this rate you can literally sell snakesoil and claim it works. Take any group of say 10,000 people, have them use it for the rest of their lives, I guarantee you find few people who miraculously got some sort of disease cured.
- Who said the initial crewed missions to Mars would be a fancy sort of cruise trip?
Musk said that during the first presentation regarding the trip.
> open algorithms (99.9% people would not understand what they looking at, at probably 80% of engineers wouldn't either
100% of engineers won't either. These algorithms are all going to be neural net based, which means they need the data (which will be private) to even know what outputs will be for a given input. And why the output is such for a given input? No way to know - basically a black box.
I like Elon, too, but "no qualifications to run a rocket company" is simply delusional. He majored in physics at Penn and econ at Wharton and went to grad school at Stanford studying material science (for two days, just enough to get to signal being smart). I have a harder time imagining what kind of background would be better being CEO of a rocket company.
If he runs Twitter like 4chan, it will surely fail, but I think he has more to his plan than he is willing to share publicly at this time.
But what exactly is “the law?” It’s not like this stuff is cut and dried even within the US. Posted this elsewhere, but free speech laws are some of the trickiest legal issues we grapple with in the US, and many statues hinge on the intent behind the speech. How is Twitter supposed to implement this (hypothetical) new policy? Do they always give posters the benefit of the doubt? Seems ripe for abuse. Assume the worst? Probably more censorious than it is today. Punt to the courts? Great, moderation now takes years and costs thousands of dollars. What is the standard of proof to take down a tweet? Preponderance of the evidence? What evidence is admissible? Does Twitter just internally recreate the US trial court system to manage this? What about cross-border disputes? What about laws that directly conflict? What about international law? Treaties to which the US is not a party (eg Protocols I & II of the Geneva Convention)? If “following the law” were easy we wouldn’t have so many layers and judges
It’s fair to assume any substantial site with user created content has some significant agreements/settlements with attorneys general in various jurisdictions. Those will likely be the stickiest, outside of ones with direct judicial determination.
To be fair, 'free speech' isn't even something a company can force themselves to follow. Short of selling to the US Government (who would have to explicitly accept such an offering), being bound by free speech isn't possible without making your own rules for what qualifies as free speech and what happens when the platform 'violates' it - ie. you can't say "take all matters of violating your first amendment to civil court" since corporations, by design, cannot violate your first amendment rights.
What's so elusive about it? Let people say what they want and give users a robust word and account filtering system.
If you think your ideas and values won't stand up to public scrutiny, then perhaps you should do some self-reflection. If it's just a matter of your own comfort, use the block/mute/blacklist controls.
The full quote is “ elusive path of maintaining free speech, following the law and not having Twitter being a toxic cesspool used mainly to shout down those not our your "side".”
The path is balancing all that. It’s not just about people being “uncomfortable”, there is very real & hurtful abuse on social media, some of which breaks laws that Twitter will also need to respect. Just adding more filters does nothing to build the open public square that Musk seems to want to curate. More filters & blocks just creates smaller echo chambers.
> The full quote is “ elusive path of maintaining free speech, following the law and not having Twitter being a toxic cesspool used mainly to shout down those not our your "side".”
Frankly, I didn't think the rest of your quote added anything meaningful to the first part. Rather than being rude I was just going to leave that out and hope you picked up on it.
My reasoning was as follows: Twitter is already forced to follow US laws where the legal system is willing to enforce them, and "toxic cesspool" is highly subjective. When it comes to handling the mob mentality, I've already offered my thoughts and suggestions in my previous comment.
>Just adding more filters does nothing to build the open public square that Musk seems to want to curate.
So, which is it then? Is it a public platform, or a publisher curating content? Either way, Twitter couldn't exist without the taxpayer footing the bill for ARPANET, which is why I think they should be forced to allow all legal speech on their platform.
>More filters & blocks just creates smaller echo chambers.
Explain why it's bad for "echo chambers" to exist. Why shouldn't people be allowed to mind their own business and tend to their own spaces? I do this daily by choosing to not use 90% of the modern web.
> He's already said that he'd follow all local laws so it would be interesting to see if he can find the elusive path of maintaining free speech, following the law and not having Twitter being a toxic cesspool used mainly to shout down those not our your "side".
At least in the US, there is no law that says non-government things have to offer "free speech" to customers. Womp womp.
The number one thing Elon Musk does well is deploying the right people who will get the job done.
He solves very few problems himself, personally, with ideas from his own mind. He just recognizes the people who will be able to solve the problems and brings problem and problem solver together.
There's no reason that should be less effective with Twitter than anything else.
Less than three years ago, Mark Zuckerberg was giving speeches[0] on the importance of freedom of speech on social media. I like Elon but don’t think this will end well.
Kind of weird to sink such a significant chunk of his wealth into a toy for his libertarian whims (where it's hard to tell how serious he even is about them), but I such squandering of wealth is nothing new for billionaires.
Guess this will put a dent into the whole "limit fake news on social media" push we've had recently, at least in the US (which some people will of course argue was ill-fated to begin with).
How long before Trump is allowed back? I'm not joking. Elon has said several times his "line" for what is acceptable speech is different than what Twitter has now. My guess is it will be timed to happen after the "dust settles" but within a few months of the US 2022 midterms. This will give Trump enough time to gain followers back, and start to use the platform (again) to regain power. Thoughts? Anyone else on the shortlist for re-instatement?
I think it would spur a revolt. Too many users were begging for it. This would confirm their worst fears about what Musk wants for the platform and take it as a sign to leave. Related note, Truth Social (Trump's semi-abandoned competitor) is rumored to be merging with Rumble. Rumble being a more established social network with Trump-friendly content. Trump going back to Twitter would also mean he admits defeat on his attempt to defeat it.
> Trump going back to Twitter would also mean he admits defeat on his attempt to defeat it.
Trump has only ever posted a single time on Truth Social, a generic coming soon message, and it probably wasn't even him. He doesn't give a shit about it. He doesn't even know its name, apparently: https://www.businessinsider.com/video-shows-trump-struggling... It's best to think of Trump's role with Truth Social as a disinterested mascot. Even your basic paid shill would be doing a much better job of promoting/using it.
Trump loves Twitter, and would be back on it in a flash if allowed to do so.
Maybe, but I kind of doubt it. Trump is a black hole of attention. He warps the discourse around himself. If he's on Twitter, people have to go there to find out what he says. Moreover, Musk is a bit more immune to public outcry on the Trump axis than previous owners, in my opinion. It doesn't seem hard to brand it as a triumphant return, and distance himself from Truth Social. His fans will happily eat that up, the people who hated him will keep hating him, and Musk will enjoy making people mad. He's coming back for sure, if only because it's going to juice Twitter's numbers.
There's no leaving Twitter, in my opinion. Its the only game in town. That said, I sincerely hope there is a fracture here. An ecosystem with many smaller platforms seems far healthier to me.
I'm not sure. For one, it's not Musk whose reputation is on the line, it's Twitter. Secondly I think their position isn't as strong as it seems. They own a few niches but don't have nearly the same stickiness that FB/Insta/TikTok have right now. Competitors are going to smell blood and try to steal their market share the first chance they get.
My conspiracy theory is that Musk is buying Twitter mainly so he can extort Trump for something in exchange for readmitting him. Like telling his base to buy Teslas.
> My conspiracy theory is that Musk is buying Twitter mainly so he can extort Trump for something in exchange for readmitting him. Like telling his base to buy Teslas.
I don't think it will be that obvious/simple. Tax breaks, anti-union laws, incentives to build new plants in red states... or something even smaller will be all it takes.
In related news, there is a rumor that Truth Social is "merging" at some level with Rumble. How Musk's Twitter responds to that will be, uh, interesting.
Elon already is a big shit poster himself. You think he's gonna make this better? I think a lot of people will follow the owner's example and make things worse.
Given that bots and anonymous shitposting would both fit the ideals of free speech, why would a champion of said free speech do anything to make it better?
Since he is using a chunk of Tesla stock to secure loans to fund a large portion of this deal what happens when, not if, Tesla stock falls to more rational levels?
Presumably this possibility is part of the risk the lenders are taking into account and charging for. If loan collateral was subject to constantly being marked-to-market and lenders could “margin call” to get more in scenarios like this, lending would be quite a bit safer.
In very hot markets such as the one we are currently in rational long term thinking is brushed aside rather more often then is responsible so the assumption they correctly quantified the risk in this transaction isn't fully supported by their past history of actions.
I wish him and the team the very best. Social media is an incredibly hard problem that by no means has been solved. I raise a glass to a man who has successfully tackled hard problems and seeks to make the future better.
Define success? I think he will help twitter a lot cause they have been suffering from a leadership void for years. I don't think Twitter will become a trillion dollar company but they will be around a long time and be profitable, and there's a decent chance Musk could go public again and recoup some of the acquistion price and remain in control.
that's an optimistic take, as much as I dislike Musk it would be nice if he managed to make Twitter a better experience for the average user. given that social media is more of a people problem than a engineering problem, I'm not as hopeful
The idea that a social media company is capable of making a dent in "making the future better" is kind of laughable if you have any sort of rational ideas for what makes a good life...
I think that saying social media can't make the future better is like saying the internet itself can't make the future better. It seems obvious to me that both can improve humanity.
I'll show you are wrong by showing that your ideas aren't consistent. I'll show your ideas aren't consistent by showing your ideas are self-refuting. Your post denies its own utility. Observe: Lets say you are correct. As a direct result of being on a social media product you are claiming that it is "kind of laughable" that anyone with "rational ideas" would think your comment is "capable" of "making a dent" in "making the future better." Your polemic against the conceptual framework of socially derived value is self refuting in that it attacks itself. It can't stand.
Now lets approach refuting your claim a different way, not of itself, but instead by providing a rational idea which is compatible with the idea of a good life and is a byproduct of social media. Social isolation is known to create extremely negative well being consequences in social actors. Pandemics encourage physical isolation. Social media provides a mechanism for social interaction despite physical isolation. Yet your claim is so strong that you accidentally imply that even the idea that a large segment of the population avoiding fractured sanity might be of benefit to our future is laughable and has no rational bearing.
Self-refuting, inconsistent with observation. But why? How do you get there? I think you get there because you are an intelligent observer. Game theoretic tit for tat consequences of defection take time to play out and produce a bubble of observation from your perspective which misinform your beliefs. Defection in game theoretic terms is truly laughable, though rational in zero sum games; it is obviously inferior to policies rooted in love which don't degenerate into tit for tat destruction of value. We're in such a time and in such a bubble and so there are many which draw the obvious conclusions. It looks different over larger time slices and so different people come to different conclusions on the value of social utility. Ultimately, this results in them not only valuing social utility, but valuing it even to the extent of free speech to those they vehemently disagree with. Going into why leads to arguments rooted in information theory, ensemble models, and shared values; yet with literal and without any hyperbole war occurring even as we speak and one of the battlefields being social media, this isn't currently a compelling thing. Self-preservation instincts are strong enough that even near certain victory doesn't dispel them. Anyone who goes cliff diving into water will have sensed this. Jumping is hard, even if the action is safe, it doesn't feel that way. And we think fast and with feeling because reality is so complicated that to do anything else would be paralysis.
Free speech is probably safe. Social media probably does have value. Yet it is hard to see it, because society is still learning and part of that learning process is punishing defectors in our shared cooperative game which demands love above all else.
Your argument comes down to getting rid of current revenue and let Elon come with an unknown magic replacement, and solving an intractable problem (solving 90% of bots for Twitter is like solving Google Search's spam issues) on the side.
I wouldn't disagree, it just feels more like a wishlist that anything.
flood of "what will/should happen to twitter now?" bloviation incoming.
So here's mine: Musk should make Twitter a public utility. Nominal fee for an account, anyone can have one (or many!); they can be removed for actual illegal behavior (with reference to some government authority for redress) or technical TOS reasons, and thats it. Let the 4chan bloom.
God if I could pay $2/m for Twitter with an option to only see tweets from people who pay. Twitter would be the best social media experience by a long shot.
I m a Musk fan boy, but I feel Twitter should remain public and not under Musk. He's brilliant but a private company cannot be claimed as a bastion of free speech. Even if it's my idol Musk.
This, holy shit. I only click on a Twitter post like once a month, but every time I have in recent months, I usually X right out of it because of the login prompts. I despise this walled garden bullshit.
I honestly can’t believe how bad the experience is. I click a link and can’t read the tweet without logging in. So they’re making it difficult for end users to view content. But on the flip side it’s so easy to make an account that there’s bots and spam everywhere. Twitter is literally designed to make it hard to consume, easy to pump in crap.
Incidentally, I'm guessing this will cause a rise in Trump's popularity again. There's a decent chance he gets unbanned by Musk (who is strongly in favor of unregulated speech on social media), and Twitter was how Trump garnered much of his base.
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 554 ms ] threadBecause whenever Tesla has a huge accomplishment, people always come out of the woodwork and claim Elon is Not the founder and all he does is take credit for everyone else’s work.
I personally wouldn't give him credit for the great engineering done at tesla. It seems like he is good at hiring decent people, and when he gets out of their way, great things happen. When he gets involved (like with the absurd touchscreen console, no-LIDAR self-driving, and the "lights-off" factory idea) it goes wrong. Musk is an amazing marketer and he deserves credit for that, but not for engineering work.
This is not really the case at all. Why are you just making stuff up?
Go look at between 2016 and 2018, by far the closest Tesla came to bankruptcy then at any time sine 2008.
So I'm looking at that data and there is no magical 200% stock price raise based on media.
What actually happened it Tesla managed to execute and bring a mass market vehicle market successfully.
> like with the absurd touchscreen console
Man somebody should have told the 1.5 million vehicles they will sell this year for 30% magin how stupid that is.
> no-LIDAR self-driving
That's why you can now anywhere in the US can jump on a self-driving LIDAR tax and buy a LIDAR self-driving car at your local dealer.
> and the "lights-off" factory idea
And now Tesla has some of the most advanced factories in the car industry where literally the CEO of VW said that VW was not able to produce vehicles as fast. What an idiot he is ...
> Musk is an amazing marketer and he deserves credit for that, but not for engineering work.
That is literally the opposite impression you get when you actually investigate anything other then twitter opinion.
Pretty much everybody who got to spend any time at Tesla or SpaceX comes away with the opposite impression. Musk literally spends the waste majority of his time in detailed engineering review meetings.
Tesla had a gigantic amount of negative press, more then any other company I can think of. But Musk made the company successful with marketing?
What are you even talking about, what marketing? His twitter account and a TED interview or something every could of months? The viewer numbers on those things are far to low to explain Tesla value.
Source for that? And not the drone footage of one of Tesla's factories please.
>> Tesla had a gigantic amount of negative press
But this is still press, isn't it? And it is Musk that gets the negative press, not Tesla.
A lot of people are spouting short-seller crap from 2018. I suggest that they honestly look at where tesla is now, not when they last paid attention.
At the nearby Gruenheide factory outside of Berlin, Tesla is currently trucking along and set to achieve the goal of making an electric vehicle in under 10 hours. At this time, Volkswagen’s main Zwickau plant requires 30 hours per vehicle. Diess hopes to reduce that to 20 hours per vehicle by next year.
Conclusion: Neither Tesla nor VW are producing EVs in ten hours. And Zwickau is not a dedicated EV plant and needs rebuilding to become one. Interesting that we only get concrete numbers from VW, so. I have to admit, it is funny to see VW, which was the most marketing dependent car maker I know up until Tesla showed up, and Tesla to slug it out in a PR and marketing war!
EDIT: Zwickau wasn't a EV plant until 2020.
Tesla went from a company who had never manufactures anything in large quantity, 5 years later they are seriously comparing to VW a company that has been a globally dominate automaker for decades.
So look at Tesla in 2017 and say 'Musk is an idiot he thinks he can automate production' and then look at how Tesla produces cars in 2022 and tell me he is an idiot.
From publicly available footage, a Tesla factory looks not any more impressive, even less so from commentary that knows much about automotive manufacturing than I do, than state of the art factories from legacy coomoanues.
Tesla and SpaceX are impressive feats, I don't get the urge to pass Tesla and Musk as all encompassing geniusus that know everything better than encumbents.
You may want to true up your perceptions.
On Ford - "The Detroit automaker sold 1,905,955 vehicles in 2021, ending up behind new U.S. leader Toyota Motor Corp (7203. T) and rival General Motors Co (GM. N). Ford had sold 2,044,744 vehicles a year earlier.Jan 5, 2022"
VW (not including sub-brands, which are managed and mostly built separately): 4,896,900
It's worth noting both of those companies production is failing, while Tesla is increasing 50% YoY.
https://www.hotcars.com/largest-car-manufacturers/
Statista has similar numbers.
Edit: Turned out it was more like 2017 numbers... This source here has 9.5 million units for Toyota, 8.8 million for VW, both after steep drops in 2020. Ford is down to 3.9 million, I am honestly surprised by this. But then I undersetimated the drop in car deliveries in 2020.
https://www.factorywarrantylist.com/car-sales-by-manufacture...
We will have a few really large groups, VW, Toyota, Stellantis, Renault–Nissan–Mitsubishi alliance. GM has also lost a gigantic amount of vehicle volume in the last 10 years. There will likely be even more consolidation.
In general volume is going down and because of supply issues its not going up as much as people thought this year.
> Because he gives a fuck about first pass yield and those things.
Do you mean he doesn't? Anyway whatever you are trying to say, fact is Tesla is producing a lot of vehicles, they are a major automaker, they are growing fast, and they have industry leading margins.
> Plus, Tesla is still almost a factor 10 away from production volumes of VW, Toyota and the like.
What an absurd argument is that? So do you think BMW, Daimler and co are also all shit at manufacturing? Because they don't make as many cars as VW either.
So in your mind, only if Tesla creates the largest car company in the world he can be considered good at manufacturing? You realize that is a totally absurd position right?
Tesla went from selling a few 100 vehicles 10 years ago to likely outproducing BMW and Geely in 2023. That means they had continues massive growth curve for 10+ years straight.
If you compare the output of individual plants, Tesla plant in Shanghai is easily one of the most productive car plants in the world and that is the first plant that Tesla ever even built.
> I don't get the urge to pass Tesla and Musk as all encompassing geniusus that know everything better than encumbents.
That not the argument anybody made. Tesla is not better at everything. But they are actually very good and anybody that still thinks of Tesla in 2017 is just stuck in time. In some important they are actually better, body structure, electronics, battery integration is just ahead of everybody else.
If you want to dislike Tesla and Musk that's fine, but your arguments about him being and idiot and Tesla being depended on marketing just don't have a bases in reality.
- 2016 - model 3 preorders with no backing except a drawing.
- 2018 - cybertruck, semi, and full-self-driving preorders with one single prototype of the vehicles.
- And after each one of these, there is a huge bump in stock price. 200% is hyperbole.
These are feats of marketing, not feats of engineering. A CEO spending a lot of time in detailed engineering reviews doesn't make you an engineer, it means you enjoy doing detailed engineering reviews.
It is undeniable that Tesla is successful in large part because of the cult of personality that Musk has built, largely on Twitter. That has bought his company the good grace to do preorders with ridiculous turnaround times and to lose money year over year on the stock market while keeping an astronomical valuation.
The rest of Tesla-the actual car making thing-is something that an organization of several thousand engineers could have certainly done without Elon Musk given the amount of cash they had, and probably could have done better without Elon Musk. They just needed Elon Musk to raise the cash.
He is exactly like Steve Jobs: a briliant marketer with a cult of personality, who people think of as an "inventor" because he likes to spend time doing that.
Its not hyperbool is literally just false.
The stock price in 2018 was essentially flat.
The stock price in 2016 is flat.
You made an argument about 200% and at best its like a few %, meaning your argument is total nonsense. Literally made up with nothing to back it up.
And even if the stock went up a bit based on announcement, that doesn't even remotely prove that that stock raised 'saved' the company.
> These are feats of marketing, not feats of engineering.
No what are actually feats of engineering, and actually had impact on the stock price is when Tesla from 2017 to 2018 made the first EV that was produced over 5000 times a weak and had significantly possessive margin. And when they turned a mud field in China in to a working factory in about a year.
That is when the stock ACTUALLY started to go up. When Tesla proved they could produce cars at very high volume and good margin.
So you are just flat out factually wrong on this and I don't know why you are trying to hold on to your take. The data is right their anybody can look up the data and instantly know that you are wrong about this.
> It is undeniable that Tesla is successful in large part because of the cult of personality that Musk has built, largely on Twitter.
That is just total nonsense. Tesla successful brought the first modern Li-Ion EV to market before Musk was famous. Even when the Model S came out Musk was not very well known. Actually releasing the Model S successfully and getting car of the year is part of why Musk did get more famous.
So Tesla already had like 5 years of growth before Musk got all that well known. Also, you vastly overrated, twitter, far fewer user, use it then you might think.
People were attacked to Tesla because they made actual real EV that you could buy, that had a charging network. Tesla had a message about EV saving the environment and that message reached 100x wider then Musk twitter. People don't spend 50k+ on items because of a guy on twitter.
> That has bought his company the good grace to do preorders with ridiculous turnaround times and to lose money year over year on the stock market while keeping an astronomical valuation.
Well turns out they very actually undervalued not overvalued. And they didn't actually lose that much money, and didn't raise that much money.
They showed they were profitable with the Model S and they were a sustainable company. Then they went into Model 3 and everybody knew this was capital intensive and they guided for loses for a few years.
Do yourself a favor and compare how much money Tesla raised and what their evaluation is compared to companies that are in this space now, Rivian, Lucid and so on.
Tesla actually operated handled their cash very well and did a lot with not that much money.
> The rest of Tesla-the actual car making thing-is something that an organization of several thousand engineers could have certainly done without Elon Musk given the amount of cash they had, and probably could have done better without Elon Musk. They just needed Elon Musk to raise the cash.
And who heirs the engineers? Who defines strategy? Who decides what people should have leadership positions and so on. Tesla was not a company with 1000s of engineers when Tesla became CEO, its was a company about to go bust who had not delivered a single car.
This is HN, building a company from tiny to gigantic is a huge achievement that doesn't just 'happen'.
There were Tesla competitors many had just as much or more cash then Tesla, but they failed. Why? I thought if company just had money they would magically start mass produce cars.
> He is exactly like Steve Jobs: a briliant marketer with a cult of personality, who people think of as an "inventor" because he likes to spend time doing that.
That you think they are the same just proves that you have not really been paying attention beyond surface level....
Being an "engineer at heart" is part of his marketing game, just like it was for Elizabeth Holmes and Steve Jobs. Also, being an engineer at heart doesn't make someone a good engineer. Tesla has accomplished incredible feats of engineering, but that doesn't mean that _Elon Musk_ has accomplished them. Also, the fact that Elon Musk is an incredible marketer shouldn't be taken as a dig: he is clearly the best marketer of his generation and Tesla undeniably would have failed without him. It's when he or his followers get fantasies about Elon Musk being brilliant at everything that I get upset.
As to credibility as an engineer, let's look at the other examples of Musk's engineering work (the ones we know _Elon Musk himself_ was responsible for):
* The hyperloop is a ridiculous concept that defies physics and engineering. Musk personally wrote the "white paper" for it. He wrote that white paper because the California legislature was proposing high speed rail from LA to SF (that would be a ridiculous waste of money), and he didn't like their proposal.
* The boring company makes tunnels. They are not particularly cheap or fast to dig, unless you compare their tunnels to tunnels several times the diameter (as Elon Musk does in his marketing material).
I have no problem with Tesla and I hope they become a successful car company. There is a good chance that my next car 3-5 years from now will be a Tesla if the company proves itself capable of surviving a bear market and the quality issues go away. Musk has been great for Tesla in the growth phase, but they may need a new CEO for the next stage of life.
This old sad meme again.
Do you mean he is not a technically certified engineer? Because a lot of people are not that but go into engineering, specially in software.
What would you suggest qualifies somebody as an engineer?
Musk studied physics and was was accepted as PhD student for material science at Standford. Many people from that path go into engineering fields. Musk didn't finish his work on ultracaps and instead created a software company where he was the main software engineer. He actually wrote the code and lead the team of coders at a company that sold for 20+ million. Does that not count as engineering?
And Elon did actually work on the actual Falcon 1 rocket. Both on design and on the actual hardware.
He is not the Chief Engineer in name only. He does what a Chief Engineer does. He is in every technical review meeting with senior engineering leaders and make top level decisions, he defines the strategy and direction of the engineering work. He fundamentally makes a the choice of material/manufacturing process and so on, and takes responsibility if it doesn't work out.
There are plenty of domain experts who have interacted with Elon who have talked about how he actually has the knowlage to talk with all the engineers about domain specific details in those peoples field. And those people were not working at Musk companies.
> * The hyperloop is a ridiculous concept that defies physics and engineering.
Funny then as it was validated by engineering teams of both Tesla and SpaceX with the best simulation tools available in the industry at the time. Please tell me what defies physics.
> * The boring company makes tunnels. They are not particularly cheap or fast to dig, unless you compare their tunnels to tunnels several times the diameter (as Elon Musk does in his marketing material).
Well the bought a commercial tunnel boring machine to start of at. So of course those are not faster. But the point of the company is to make it faster. Are you suggesting that they have made their next generation tunnel boring machines slower then currently commercially available designs?
Where do you get your knowlage about tunneling prices and speed? Do you have some sort of internal knowlage about cost from the boring company?
The Boring Company just raised 600M$ but so I guess at least some investors who look at the tech don't think its trash.
Musk's RDF in full effect here.
That quotation was about quality control - and Tesla's relatively abysmal QC compared to other production lines.
VW's CEO said that an average VW took nearly 30 hours to come off the line, versus approximately 10 for Tesla.
He also said that they're targetting 20 hours in the next decade. Huh. They're not even trying to beat Tesla, there. Wonder why? Maybe it's so they don't deliver cars with mismatched tires, leaking sunroofs, _missing brakepads_, and so on.
I think it's hilarious that people like you believe with a straight face that a $250B/year production line hasn't fired up a spreadsheet and done the numbers on costs of "implement another line, so we can spend more time on each car and push more out in parallel" (VAG manufactured 8.4M vehicles in 2021 versus 900K for TMC), than "hey, if we just cut some more corners, and deal with things after the fact, it'll be cheaper".
And the claim that you need 10h for quality control is utterly ridiculous. The reason they likely are not targeting a lower number is because their production centers are far more distrusted and they don't have full vertical integration from battery cells to cars in one building.
There are other possible explanation. You can't just assert whatever you want without any evidence at all.
If VW has a higher quality standard then Tesla (questionable) then that fine. That literally changes nothing about my argument about production argument.
And Tesla quality issues have been far less in Shanghai were they have faster production then in Fremont. We have yet to see if Berlin will have production issues.
And outside of VW or whatever. Its unquestionable that Tesla made major gains in manufcaturing that is a competitive advantage. So the claim that Musk is dumb because he wanted to increase automation or simply wrong.
The idea that they cut 20h of production by 'cutting corners' is just a delusional take. Sorry. If that was possible do you think GM would not have done that in the 2000s. Do you think Nissan wouldn't have done it?
Tesla first attempt at that automation was wrong, but they adjusted and actually did make real innovations. Denying that is just making you look silly and uninformed.
I think we're approaching a point in the lifespan of Tesla where is can stand on its own merit and no longer requires Musk to continue making a ridiculous amount of money. However, Musk is integral to the continued innovation and success, the same as Steve Jobs was to Apple. Under Tim Cook, Apple continued to thrive, albeit in a different way.
Regardless, no way will Musk run Twitter on a day-to-day basis, he'll remove the board, replace the CEO with someone he trusts, likely get Jack involved again, and a lot of developers will leave, leaving the company in a better position financially. Musk will likely just guide functionality and policy decisions from afar.
I don’t eat at McDonalds, but that doesn’t make me think they’re going to collapse. In fact they’re likely successful for precisely for the reasons I don’t eat there.
Define "worst tendencies", because most people agree that "doxxing" and calls to violence are unacceptable but the left has just labeled all speech that they disagree with as "violence" or "misinformation" and just banned it all. I think musk has a good pulse on the dividing line that is most appropriate and that having the wrong opinion on the definition of a man, who won the last presidential election, and whether or not a vaccine is "safe or effective" have no business being censored by the cretins currently running twitter.
Literally what is this based on.
Tesla was going straight into the shitter, Musk took over and now its a trillion $ company. How do you explain that?
Fundamentally, his beef with Twitter seems to be around their speech policies and maybe some missing site features. He doesn't need to be even close to full time to resolve those. He just has to find a tech CEO who agrees with his values and who can execute when given a clear mission. There are plenty of those kicking around the Bay Area.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robyn_Denholm
They also have over 100,000 employees. How much can Musk really be involved in?
Tesla is pretty much on full self driving now, it's basically blue chip and not going anywhere. Yes the trillion $ market cap is due in large part to him.
>Musk is already spread thin, now he’s so unfocused and undisciplined that he’s unable to stop himself from buying an irrelevant social media company as an expensive hobby. It’s the height of hubris.
I couldn't disagree more. He's the richest person in the world, he's so tremendously successful whatever attributes that you want to apply to him is literally only something to learn from. Hubris? Overconfidence? He's basically the world's first trillionaire. He has had how many doubters along the way and he's right every time?
I get why he's buying twitter and it's not about it being a hobby. Sure babylon bee was a catalyst but basically he sees the societal value of twitter. He sees the damage that twitter is doing through their political censorship. By fixing these problems it will provide tremendous value to twitter. He's going to benefit greatly with the purchase.
What?
That figure doesn't include spacex/starlink, boring company, etc.
Spacex has gross revenues in the billions, 12,000 employees. Not to mention... ISS basically is Russian or Spacex launches to get there and back. With Ukraine... that makes Spacex the only option? What's the intrinsic value there?
What valuation would you give SpaceX? Their only real competitor right now is Russia and people dislike them.
Lets say you're right. How did you come to a $80 billion valuation for spacex? The last valuation in 2021 was $100 billion. So spacex has lost value in your eyes? Starlink has happened since. Ukraine happened since.
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy."
What he really did say is a bit more complicated:
> "The people flatter themselves that they have the sovereign power. These are, in fact, words without meaning. It is true they elected governors; but how are these elections brought about? In every instance of election by the mass of a people—through the influence of those governors themselves, and by means the most opposite to a free and disinterested choice, by the basest corruption and bribery. But those governors once selected, where is the boasted freedom of the people? They must submit to their rule and control, with the same abandonment of their natural liberty, the freedom of their will, and the command of their actions, as if they were under the rule of a monarch"
The irony is modern democracy with free speech, where the scale of your wealth directly transfers to the scale of your speech, makes the wealthy just as powerful as they would be in any standard oligarchy.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Fraser_Tytler,_Lord_...
Is it the goal ? To be the richest ? Amazing perspective for our world ahead, let people amass cash, it's going to go _great_
>he's right every time
Except when he bets on camera only FSD, causes deaths, pushes the Hyperloop, does the Vegas Loop, calls people who reject him pedophiles, pushes Starship, pushes absolutely terrible working conditions for both factory workers and engineers, and an unending list of Elon bullshit. In the same way, is he "right" when Tesla only exists because of credits from the state (which he then complains about when the state asks him to respect the law), when SpaceX only exists because the US has kept it afloat, when he was kicked out of Paypal for being a dumbass, when he threatens our spacefaring possibilities with bullshit pride projects such as Starlink, when his stocks are propped up with his lies and just his personality ? Sure. Must be nice to live in the Musk Reality Distortion Field. Be real. He's not a hero.
No, Elon understands money unlike most people. Money is not a thing to anyone except the poor. Money is not a measurement of being able or not to do anything. In understanding that you generate wealth that is beyond money.
>Except when he bets on camera only FSD, causes deaths, pushes the Hyperloop, does the Vegas Loop, calls people who reject him pedophiles, pushes Starship, pushes absolutely terrible working conditions for both factory workers and engineers, and an unending list of Elon bullshit.
Controversial guy eh. Crazy how much society is rewarding him so much.
>n the same way, is he "right" when Tesla only exists because of credits from the state (which he then complains about when the state asks him to respect the law), when SpaceX only exists because the US has kept it afloat, when he was kicked out of Paypal for being a dumbass, when he threatens our spacefaring possibilities with bullshit pride projects such as Starlink, when his stocks are propped up with his lies and just his personality ? Sure. Must be nice to live in the Musk Reality Distortion Field. Be real. He's not a hero.
I agree, a certain political persuasion really dislikes him.
Ah. The red pill argument. I’m surprised I didn’t connect these dots more clearly until now.
You worship a false god.
They didn't "come off", they absolutely are. Don't really care about being downvoted.
Am I right to say that Elon is not going to dinner with you?
> He has had how many doubters along the way and he's right every time?
So the robo-taxis have released on time as promised at the end of 2020 then as he suggested.
I think this is hilarious.
"I can't run my company because a lawyer is meant to review my tweets so that I don't commit securities violations".
"I can't be involved with my company because the SEC is investigating my brother and I for insider trading".
This is horseshit. If this is the case, and I doubt it, it's entirely because he is trying to martyr himself, not because of any actuality of the "fight with the SEC". The SEC doesn't give two shits about the efficiency of his production lines, his plans to open a new battery production facility, or whatever. Let's stop the narrative that the evil bad SEC is stopping Musk from innovating to move humanity forward.
A guy who has managed to lead multiple startup companies to huge companies for literally decades threw multiple economic crisis. He is one of the longest running CEO in the auto industry.
Its just amazing to me how people focus so much on 'omg look at how he manages social media' compared to 'simple looking at the actual record of the companies he leads'.
People said the same thing about Neurolink and the Boring Company. And yet neither SpaceX nor Tesla have suffered.
That said, I'm against it too. I just think that the idea that this will collapse Tesla is not realistic.
And both failed.
Risky businesses are risky.
How has Boring Company failed? They've successfully opened the Vegas loop, have a pitch to open a similar project in (I believe) Miami? And now they're looking at building a Hyperloop 'in the coming years'.
Like who are you convincing with this nonsense?
It literally takes 5s of googling to show that you are totally full of shit.
Boring Company just raised 600$+ million $. And is hiring lots of new engineers. They have multiple projects in the pipeline.
So we have a company that is growing and has costumers in the pipeline. Their first costumer is so happy that they want to extend the system considerably.
But that I guess is not enough either?
What more do you want other then happy costumers, new costumers and the ability to raise money on the bases of those things?
This is a company that builds actual machines. They make their own tunnel boring equipment. That is a capital intensive businesses not a software startup. They need to raise money to expand production.
Yes, Tesla bought SolarCity, the rest is just a bunch of nonsense. One can argue that, this sale didn't work out as well expected.
But if that is really the worst think you can come of with, it pretty sad.
Musk got rich off of PayPal. But lets be clear, he "lead" it for less than four months before being fired as the CEO for gross incompetence.
He was fired because he wanted to keep it and had a very aggressive growth plan.
The other people just wanted to cash out.
He was not fired about incompetence, he was fired because of disagreements about strategy.
So maybe it was more about Elon.
And if you invest your money into Musk companies you would now be far, far, far, far richer then anything you would have invested into any of the other PayPal founders companies (or Ebay or PayPal).
Revenue will continue to increase, but at a slowing rate.
Stock price correction != company collapse.
And that's good, I think - a better investment direction than NFT avatars.
> “I go like, Oh my gosh, Elon Musk just DM’d me: ‘Can you take this down? It’s a security risk,’” Mr. Sweeney said. “Then he offered me $5,000 to take it down and help him make it slightly harder for ‘crazy people to track me.’”
[...]
> Mr. Sweeney made a counteroffer to Mr. Musk, according to the screenshots of the exchange, saying that he would abandon the account if Mr. Musk upped the ante to $50,000. He said that he would also accept a Tesla Model 3, an electric car that costs more than $38,000, adding that he was joking.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/03/technology/elon-musk-jet-...
He received an offer to shut it down, then countered the offer. Then said he was joking. You're not a lawyer, by chance?
However, Karen’s car is not required to have a transponder, so the location of it isn’t public information. Therefore, it’s actually nothing like the Elon Musk plane situation. Hope this helps!
Aircraft transponders, which are legally required to broadcast on public frequencies, aren't remotely similar to whatever cell based surveillance trickery you're thinking of.
> The owner of the account is a stalker attempting to extort his victim.
Extortion is a criminal offense and stalking can also be one, depending on its severity. So that means you're the one who brought crime into the discussion (with wrongful accusations, in my view).
Reality is, governments and the airline industry could make this system be sufficiently private if they wanted, or at least a lot harder to abuse. There's no particular reason personal details of jet owners have to be linked to the radio transponders.
He's not tracking a person's movement. He's tracking a vehicle, via public information, traveling through public airspace.
With opinions like these coming from the Elon army, Twitter is going to get worse.
Elon army? Where did you get that from?
I'm psyched either way. Instead of a faceless organisation with a CEO who can justify anything as his duty to the shareholders, now we will have a directly responsible figure. If Musk fails to deliver on free speech, his persona will be on stake.
His past actions show he isn't a believer in free speech and that almost all his principles are transactional. An example of this transactional behavior is calling out Saudi Arabia for lack of free speech while owning twitter which is interesting because he didn't have much problem with SA when they held 4.x percent of Tesla a few years back.
His beliefs appear to be built on a sand, not rock.
what are you even expecting here? he should've called them out for lack of free speech when they owned tesla? was there some instigating event during that time period which he ignored more than every other public figure? (i don't think we expect all public figures to make annual condemnations of every nation that does anything we consider appropriate. do we?)
as far as i know, he was snarking at saudia arabia's involvement in twitter because they commented negatively on his buyout proposal.
I expect them to also live under the same sort of rules and regulations they would have the rest of us live under.
Being honest and not lying often would be nice too.
>The economic prosperity that China has achieved is truly amazing, especially in infrastructure! I encourage people to visit and see for themselves.
Source: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1410413958805270533
And never, ever a word about freedom of speech issues in China. We all know why.
He is praising the economic growth of China, which is a fact. It did grow a lot.
What would he say?
"The economic prosperity that China has achieved is truly amazing, despite lacking freedom of speech"??
If he has offered any criticisms of the CCP's relationship with free speech, I apologize for missing it. Otherwise, it's hard not to be cynical about people like him that claim to care deeply about freedom of expression while playing up business interests in countries that do not share such a value.
If he added "free speech", it would've meant that you could achieve good economic growth even without free speech.
I'm sure that's not the narrative anyone in the western world wants to go with.
Tesla is a public company and anyone can buy stock. What did you expect Elon Musk to do if Saudi billionaires buy stock?
Hardly; nothing Elon Musk does will turn his fanboys off, and everybody else already has a "meh" opinion of him. There is no risk for him.
He says Netflix is woke without any citations but just had two kids with Grimes.
Elon is about making money and good at building support.
I don’t mind him buying Twitter per se but I do believe it will distract from his noble pursuits. The former Reddit CEO’s thread nailed it.
It doesn’t make any sense on its face other than as a way to con certain ideologies.
I have Netflix and I consume Black Mirror, Stranger Things, Squid Game, Bojack, etc. Calling Netflix woke is pure virtue signaling.
Maybe he’s planning to run for President?
I think it’s either that he’s upset with Grimes for leaving him and is being anti-woke in response OR he’s up to something else that’s yet to be revealed. I don’t think this virtue signaling matters to getting state legislatures to allow direct Tesla sales. Maybe it does in his mind?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/danidiplacido/2021/10/03/follow...
Making theories about the private lives of celebrities and what they demonstrate about what they really are like or are motivated by... seems pretty much like fanfic to me. Fun game if you're into it, but I wouldn't base my worldview on it.
That would be incredibly ambitious; getting 40 states to agree to that seems exceedingly unlikely.
I don't like to take chances in politics these days...
Who says that the richest man on the planet can't set up a lobbying/propaganda operation to secure him a shot at Presidency too? Especially a man who has a lot of very vocal, very dedicated fans all over the US? Have them e-mail and call bomb enough representatives and he'll get his will.
Meh, Netflix does produce a lot of low-effort woke content: Sense8 and the one where they stopped a school shooting through interpretive dance comes to mind.
I'd love to watch more high budget series where diversity is achieved without it being shoved in your face (all female Ghostbusters / all female oceans). They come across as pandering to their audiences instead of progressing societal views elegantly - hence why people say Netflix produces woke content and loses subscribers.
The goal should be subtlety and not wokeness. So far the only show (of Netflix) I've seen that hit these tones was Altered Carbon and it was aided a lot by the fact that it's set in a futuristic society where bodies are viewed as disposable sleeves.
> When Elon Musk Tried to Destroy a Tesla Whistleblower
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-13/when-elon...
Depending on where you stand, either will be bad to you and should be stopped. If you are building a company that moderates content, then you have to choose to be neutral, left leaning, or right leaning. Twitter started as neutral, arguably started to lean left, and under Musk many assume will start leaning right, or at least move more back towards neutral. We will have to wait and see.
IIRC when conservatives were complaining that twitter was reducing their reach, the refrain from the left was that twitter is a private company and can do what it wants. With Musk taking it over and taking it private, it is an even more private company, and if it becomes less obviously supportive of left-leaning thought and more tolerant of right-leaning thought, then the same argument applies, its a private company and it can do what it wants.
Maybe this will be the opportunity for a twitter competitor to pop up and vacuum up all of the disgruntled left. It would be interesting to see how an explicitly left-wing version of twitter would faire compared to the right-wing versions that have not been able to land.
Conservatives were only getting their reach reduced because they were being banned for posting racist content. Them screaming "shadowbanning" isn't a real thing.
There have been reports that US GOP politicians have been exempted from the algorithmic moderation because too many of their accounts are posting content indistinguishable from white supremest talking points such that they would get banned too.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/a3xgq5/why-wont-twitter-trea...
https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-algorithm-crackdown-...
People don't do citations in casual conversations.
Everyone agrees that Netflix is woke, the disagreement is weather wokeness is good or bad.
Netflix produces a lot of content. I would venture a guess that 99% of it isn't woke or anti-woke.
I thought conservatives preferred facts to feelings? This doesn't seem to be an opinion based on facts.
Do they? I don't. Mainly because I don't even know what that phrase means anymore. Any meaning the word "woke" HAD has been thoroughly lost as it has now become a stand-in word for any position some conservatives don't like.
This is factually wrong. I never even knew that there was a conversation about wokeness and Netflix. And I still don't understand why. Netflix just streams videos? Is this about the content they make/license or about their corporate/employee culture?
People who are pro/anti wokeness I think spend a lot more time thinking about this stuff than everyone else does.
They make a lot of content too
It'd pretty obvious Netflix is woke by their original content. It also tends to be boring now.
Sen..si..tive.
Netflix is extremely woke. If you doubt this, go watch Bridgerton (playing on my TV right now) and observe how half the people in regency England, including the Queen, are now black. Then go watch Manifest, and observe that in the final episodes one of the characters suddenly starts talking about how the government is "putting people in cages", quite out of the blue.
That's just the last two shows watched in my household. Manifest isn't as woke as Bridgerton but ... let's just say none of the characters are suddenly espousing the wisdom of Adam Smith.
Do you also get mad when the characters speak in modern english, or is that just fine?
Is it woke, or are you sensitive to race?
in the history of England, the United Kingdom and the whole Commonwealth there has not been a single instance of a king or queen being anything other than - here comes the dreaded word - white.
what's the point of making them black?
coming from Eastern Europe, it's like you made John Paul II black - or any of the patriarchs of Eastern Christian Churches. you can do it, but it's so far offbeat it isn't even funny.
in the US, I guess you could make Lincoln, Washington and Reagan black. they just weren't.
This is, in fact, (while completely beside the point) wrong. There are several non-white Kings and Queens in the history of the Commonwealth; e.g., Mswati III of the Kingdom of Eswatini.
> what's the point of making them black?
What's the point of alternate history and historically-inspired fantasy? That's a kind of big question. Do you literally think every film or show should simply depict life literally exactly how it actually occurred at some time in the past?
> in the US, I guess you could make Lincoln, Washington and Reagan black.
Or make Lincoln a vampire hunter.
(Of course, there isn't a long history of rumors that Lincoln actually was a vampire hunter taking as their starting point a too-literal reading of contemporary descriptions probably meant as throw-away insults.)
The complaints about Bridgerton seem to be highly-selective blindness to the entire concept that overtly fictional entertainment is typically something other than an exact recreation of history. (And/or assertion that race is somehow a uniquely unacceptable thing to fictionalize for unspecified reasons.)
“Woke” racists are the usual source of such race-swapping, because they’re obsessed with race and can’t simply tell a story as it makes sense.
The period in question isn't medieval England.
> can’t simply tell a story as it makes sense.
Using a literal historical setting unchanged doesn't make sense when the central premise of a story is taking a particular ahistorical (though historically rumored) fact proposition and dialing it to 11.
It's like making a complaint about the political intent of the X-Files because it shows unrealistic FBI procedures rather than telling the “story as it makes sense”.
This is so far out of touch it's unreal.
Woke people are currently trying to claim that maths education is racist because too many famous mathematicians are white. And you're claiming those same people would have no issue whatsoever with making a TV show about the history of Africa in which the Africans were all depicted by white people? It's hilarious and sad that people are actually reduced to trying to claim that.
And no, Bridgerton is not some fantasy or alternate reality. For goodness sake. Absolutely nothing in it is out of place in any way for the time except the races of all the actors.
> Woke people are currently trying to claim that maths education is racist because too many famous mathematicians are white.
I'm in the middle of "Woke America" and work on math curricula, and I've NEVER heard anyone assert this in one of the most liberal public school districts in the US. Is there someone that has said this before? I'm sure there is. Just like there are people on the right who believe Blacks don't have the intellect to learn math - neither represent the majority of these groups.
Now if someone tried to pass off white Africans as real history -- yes, you'd have complaints. But a fantasy story about it I think could be absolutely fascinating. Spoken from someone who self-identifies as "woke". Just in case you're keeping count.
You're statements would be funny, if they weren't so scary.
Is there someone that has said this before?
Oh boy, yes. Just search for 'racist maths' to find endless discussion of it. For instance here's Ontario editing maths textbooks to put woke nonsense at the start:
https://www.tvo.org/article/what-does-an-anti-racist-math-cl...
And California:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/focusing-on-the-correct-a...
Here's a British university jumping on the bandwagon:
https://jonathanturley.org/2022/04/11/decolonising-math-durh...
These are just random examples. There are many more.
Bridgerton is not a documentary, or even historical fiction, it's a romance set in a fantasy setting largely spun off of an extended what-iffing of a long-standing popular (but rejected by all current serious sources) rumor about Queen Charlotte.
Not sure how it's existence supports claims that Netflix is “woke”; sounds a lot like the fringe Christian Right descriptions of any fiction including magical elements (but not exclusively explicitly Christian miracles) as satanic.
Bridgerton is "woke" for two reasons: 1. Like the extremely lucrative romance novels it is adapting, it doesn't care what men think of it & the female characters are the protagonists 2. It includes interracial relationships
That's it. To the anti-woke crowd celebrating Musk's purchase of Twitter, romance = bad, racism = good and any media that disagrees is "woke".
All streaming platforms are first of all streaming capitalism.
Netflix funds content. Netflix licenses content and has a say on how future content from that IP is produced. They are not just a streaming platform. When you look at every new show as of late you see themes commonly associated with wokeness. Replacing characters with "BIPOC" (I hate this term) when adapting from source material when it clearly seems out of place. Mixing in subtle commentary about immigration, healthcare, "hate" speech, etc. Women are always the strong saviors, men are always the aggressive out of control beasts or they're docile homemakers.
You can see it in pretty much every show. Witcher Season 1/2 (immigration, replacing characters, men/women tropes), House of Cards Season 6 (all of the above), Altered Carbon, etc.
Unless they were only going to adapt actual fascists like Campbell, it is impossible to create science fiction without questioning the premises our society is based on. That's sort of the whole point of the genre. If one considers science fiction "woke" that says more about the person watching than it does about the company making Hillbilly Elegy and Cobra Kai and The Crown.
> questioning the premises our society is based on
There's a difference between doing this in a way that also tells a coherent story and one that just forces themes that don't exist into the story. One of those things is woke and the other one is not.
What Netflix experiencing is very similar to communist economy. Producers don't get paid for views hey generate and they have no market incentive. Unlike cinematic releases, you cannot go in loss on Netflix because deals are made upfront. There is no cost of failure to you. There is no real economic award or punishment from the market. So people just come in and slap whatever content they can to spend the available money.
It is misleading to state this in present tense.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1392602041025843203
Haha. He falsely accused british diver of being a pedophile on Twitter.
Musk doesn't care much about his persona.
This was crystalized for me when I came across an article detailing what they found from dumpster diving through Mark Zuckerberg's garbage. I mean, really?
https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/a-professional-trash-pick...
Who writes the rules about "public sphere"? If I donate to a cause that hopes to influence public policy, should I be doxxed? How much money? Does it depend on the cause I'm donating to?
If I buy a [legal private means of transportation] to travel, people should be able to track my whereabouts.
Is this limited to private jets? How about private boats? Single engine airplanes? Or is there a price cap? Is a $50k plane allow you to maintain privacy? 100k? What's the cutoff? Should it be inflation adjusted?
I'm just trying to understand
I recommend that you read this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loki%27s_Wager
One does not need to answer literally every single edge case or scenario, to answer other more obvious questions.
Elon Musk is a public figure. A random person driving a car is not. And everything in between is a spectrum, and we don't need to know the exact specific cutoff point to know the obvious answers here.
Should spaceship flights be private? :)
What exactly a 'public figure' is depends on the given legal system. But its pretty clear that is a public figure, by any definition. He's among the most wealthy (some might say; obscenely wealthy) persons on the planet and thus enjoys outrages amounts of social and political leverage.
Of course he doesn't enjoy the same rights to privacy as you and me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_figure
so yeah. you can't buy that kind of privacy unless you want a nation state air force on your six, or some kind of a patrol boat in case of a yacht.
Yeah probably. Publicly elected official is pretty up there on it being important to have transparency.
> If I donate to a cause that hopes to influence public policy, should I be doxxed?
No, you shouldn't.
> the rules about "public sphere"?
The rules are a spectrum. Someone can both believe that it is important for very large public figures to be transparent, and also believe that it goes to far to dox anyone who has donated 1$ to a political cause.
And there is no contradiction here. And if you are to imply that there is a contradiction, then you are engaging in Loki's fallacy.
No I don't know the exact specific point where someone becomes a public figure. But I do know that Elon Musk is a public figure, and a random person who donated 1$ to the ACLU is not a public figure.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_figure
You can search for people on google and get literally all of their information. Address, phone number, job, family, friends, and anything else that is public knowledge. Presented in a very easy to read format.
Why should the wealthy be special? Just because they have the money to stop it? I didn't opt in to having my information packaged nicely and presented to anyone who cares to search for me.
There are only a handful of ADS-B tracking networks out there. Most of them filter out certain airplanes if requested/paid by the owner (FR24, FlightAware). ElonJet exists solely at the mercy of ADSBExchange.com at this time.
No. You have a responsibility to be private, which can easily be neglected by underpaying the wrong people. C'est la vie!
In fact, once you have a jet you can strategically use it to deceive your movements.
And maybe you can hire people to protect your garbage, I dunno.
Interestingly, the courts have ruled that the ultra wealthy are "public figures" whether they act so or not, because of their "undue/oversized influence on public and social policy".
Honestly? Maybe not. He's the richest person in the world, and as such he's incredibly influential (and unelected). It's absolutely in the public's interest to know what he's using all that money and influence on, in a way that isn't relevant for your average median-earning Joe Schmoe. Once you get that rich you become more influential than a senator, and senators certainly don't have a right to privacy for their constituents to not know what they're up to.
On the private jet front, airplanes don't have privacy, necessarily so, because you need to know where they all are at all times to prevent collisions, protect airspaces, etc. So if you don't want people to know where you're traveling, don't use an airplane that has a 1-to-1 correspondence to you.
Do you believe privacy is a right?
Do you think we should broadcast the location and movement of sitting judges and politicians? They're certainly "public figures"
I’d subscribe to an SMS or email feed of @ElonsJet if it was deplatformed. Higher level, I try to get any info available on Twitter in my email instead; it’s just a shitty message bus for my purposes.
It doesn't seem impractical that the government needs that data to operate effectively, but to require that a person (or plane) broadcast their information to a registry that is public seems to be the crux of the issue here.
The system fundamentally doesn't work if you try to make it non-public. The end result might end up being more privacy for Elon's jet, sure, but also way more mid-air collisions, as it would no longer be able to serve its function of letting a plane tell other planes where it is.
I suppose a decent, easy system for evading its tracking would just be for rich people to swap keys to their private jets. Or chartering. Or flying commercial. Etc.
I guess you don't believe free speech is a right since you don't think people should be able to speak about Musk's travel location?
"If you cross a certain threshold and lose your rights then they are not rights."
People cross thresholds and lose rights all the time. We put them in a right-less place called jail. I guess you think nobody has rights then?
I think it's a bit of a pointless concern to think about the equal privacy rights of a man who's worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
The whole "privacy is a human right" shtick is a virtue-signally scam. Privacy is your duty, nobody will give it to you for free. Complaining that the rest of the world won't ignore you after writing a Tweet that 500 thousand people liked is absurd. Musk had his chance to live a private life. He threw it away, and now he lives the consequences. Defending some multi-billionaire because he can't have his cake and eat it too is just ridiculous. I say that as someone with neutral feelings towards Musk overall.
Or consider someone pointing binoculars into our window from a a high vantage point so that he can watch my partner undress. If privacy is "our duty", should we be required to use closed blackout curtains on all windows at all times, or else it should legally be our own fault for being watched? My vitamin D is already low enough.
I absolutely agree that you give up certain aspects of privacy when you accept the privilege of being extremely wealthy. No argument from me there. But I still think Musk should enjoy the right of showering without someone selling uncensored photos of the event.
From a legal perspective, this depends on the country you're in. In the US where Musk lives things like Article 8 do not apply. Also, public figures in general are considered differently under various legal tests than private figures.
But tracking where he goes on vacation is really not relevant.
(Yes, the point about airplanes not having privacy stands, so the kid is obviously on the clear. It's just not a worthy social service.)
True, and he has also not passed a single law or regulation.
Rachel Maddow is also unelected, and likely has more influence than Musk does. Oprah also had tremendous influence, though she seems to have stepped away from the limelight recently.
Posting his airplane's position on twitter has nothing to do with aviation safety and everything to do with doxxing and harassment.
Actually, that's not true: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/09/elon-musk-tesla-spacex-spend...
In fact, a large corporation must make political contributions, otherwise they'll be targeted by the politicians (as Microsoft discovered in the 90's.) Large corporations are expected to pay tribute.
Microsoft overreached significantly and the US government 30 years ago gave them a slap on the wrist.
Corporations are creatures of law and exist and are structured solely at the discretion of government, except to the extent government delegates power to other entities.
So, yes, they are at the whim of politicians.
Politicians may be at the whim of the haut bourgeoisie as a class, and those are the same class of people who the joint stock corporation as a form disproportionately serves, but there aren't the same thing as corporations.
Not if you are deliberately aim to be a person of public interest.
Multi-Billionaires are persons of public interest by the power they wield given their wealth.
So; you probably don't have a right to privacy if you are as obscenely wealthy as Musk or Zuckerberg.
Most of these people have public itineraries...
FOIA wasn’t meant to make every record the government has public, it was meant to prevent the government from hiding things from the people. I can’t FOIA your social security number. I probably shouldn’t be able to FOIA the cell phone tracking data firehose that the FBI has, either. What I should be able to FOIA is the fact that the FBI has such a firehose.
If you're a public figure want to project a certain image of yourself, it hurts to be exposed as being the opposite of that.
[0] - not least because the source of the data is his own plane broadcasting its position
Would you like it if there is a twitter account that tweets everywhere you visit?
Elon can totally hire private investigators to follow the family members of a journalist just to prove that nobody would like this kind of accounts when they are the targets.
I say this as a twitter addict and prolific poster over more than a decade.
We also still have billions addicted to the new digital crack / cocaine called TikTok. So this is far from 'the end' of social media.
In fact, it is the start of the increasing echo chambers and the ills of social media being used for disinformation campaigns.
Now I exfiltrate the good stuff with Nitter RSS feeds, and that way I get the experience you say you like about Twitter.
The only sane way to use Twitter is through a 3rd-party client: no ads, none of that Notifications spam and other recommendations
Being bought by Musk ought to bring about an end to any such perception. It’s going to be a rich man’s plaything (nothing new there, billionaires used to buy newspapers instead!) and who knows if it’ll be a success or not, but it has no higher calling and we’re probably all better off for recognising it.
> I say this as a twitter addict and prolific poster over more than a decade.
It's possible Twitter(and Social media in general) is as not as toxic you feel. I spend more time on LinkedIn than other sites and I feel it's more toxic than others. SM sites do feel less toxic if you tune up your feed, mute people and spend a little less time on them.
Twitter underwent a change over the last ~4 years where it went from having its own, weird "extremely online" culture to being a battleground. You really can't avoid the mess unless you put in an extreme amount of effort.
99% of the stuff I see is interesting technical content
Hoping they end up as footnote in history textbooks of a weird time when people worried about checkmarks and follower counts, and it all amounted to nothing.
Now you know how the old school Useneters feel. Welcome to Eternal September.
As much as the rats don't know where to jump for alternatives perhaps it's better to just sit on the sinking boat to see how far it goes before it has completely sunk or whatever refloats their boat.
The only thing i can think of being bad is micromanagement, and inadequate compensation. I dont know how twitter compensates their employees, but i'm sure it's not inadequate.
She is certainty great, but Musk still has to (and wants to) spend a huge amount of time working on SpaceX.
I think he's obsessed with his growing celebrity and Twitter is his megaphone.
(20 years ago I’d have said the same about watching “hours” of TV each week).
What does that have to do with my comment? I was just saying that he won't be hands-off as CEO of Twitter because he isn't hands-off even as a user.
Also, if using Twitter that much were "normal" then Twitter wouldn't be struggling as much as it is.
Even if it were normal, Musk is not a "normal" user (he gets armies of worshippers responding to every tweet) and he is the CEO of at least two other large companies, in addition to being a father of 7 children. He shouldn't even have time to eat or sleep, let alone troll people on Twitter on a regular basis.
> Also, if using Twitter that much were "normal" then Twitter wouldn't be struggling as much as it is.
I think they’re struggling financially (if you can call a multi billion dollar profit “struggling”) because the money people make from advertising on Twitter isn’t that related to how much any given person uses it, as they’re mostly competing with each other for a fixed quantity of disposable income. (Number of users seems too large to count as a struggle, not sure what else you might mean).
(That’s my guess, at least).
Also, If they didn't feel bad about creating value for Saudi royalty shareholders they probably won't feel bad about doing random stuff for the lulz
https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/saudi-arabia-invests-2b-...
The effort has to go towards corporate regulations and culture change. Ending slavery within the US took a civil war and we're still decades away (at least) from fixing the legislative echoes and civil rights issues. Influencing China to end their own slavery and civil rights abuses isn't feasible at an individual level, except through correcting the allowed business behaviors and relationships by imposing laws and changing the culture. America is incentivizing human rights abuses under its current system.
We have an obligation to correct our behavior at the nation state level. Voting with wallets is no better than brooms on a beach. We need to vote for representatives that will fix the issue through international trade regulation.
As for what he'll do with Twitter.... I don't think anyone really knows how it will turn out. He's proven to be pretty self obsessed (canceling critic's Tesla orders), so maybe he'll use his power to knock down stuff he personally doesn't like (his private jet tracker). Or maybe his talk about free speech is real and he has good ideas on how to actually make social media a benefit to society. I think in his companies' software has been his weakest area (still thinking cameras are enough to do full self driving, which I think out of any project has most failed to materialize his promises?), so maybe he won't understand how to mold a fully software based company. However, maybe he'll just want Twitter to work the way he thinks Twitter should work as a user, knock down a bunch of unnecessary BS (eg the insistent push towards algorithm timeline) and force his hand on features people really want (eg, the ability to edit Tweets.)
Ideally, he'll move to mars and take twitter with him.
How so? I hadn't heard of Twitter, or any media (social or not), preventing him doing exactly that already? Quite the opposite.
I think that Musk has an evolved version of Jobs' reality distortion field. The cult of personality is more important than the actual output and he is definitionally "cool" to his followers.
Pretty much everybody I know loves SpaceX and the technology and doesn't give a shit about US politics or the SEC or whatever other crap people in the US get worked up about.
My read is people find reasons to hate him due to ego, they see someone running like 6+ successful companies when their lives aren't going so well, and go looking for all the moralistic things he must be doing wrong.
I don't think it is all just ego or jealousy. He has made some questionable comments in the past. He keeps going on that this particular purchase is about free speech. He consciously has chosen to be very public with some of his more questionable opinions (especially regarding Covid) on his Twitter.
Yes I am very glad that he has started SpaceX and Tesla. I despise the criticisms of billionaires "Wasting" their money on Space. But that does not absolve him of criticisms of him personally outside of those companies.
I would much prefer nuclear over wind/solar/battery. But I know if I argue against wind/solar nuclear isn't magically gone happen.
So its fine if you want to argue that US shoud invest 100+ billion in public transport or bikes or whatever. Those things are not gone happen just because EVs don't happen. You are probably right, but EVs are not preventing that from happening.
EV are absoulty 100% a huge improvement over other cars and its not close. Even outside of the environment it would have eventually happened, they are just better cars.
He’s doing cool things, it’s impossible to deny that (especially with SpaceX). But you only need to look at his Bill Gates related tweets this weekend to see why people think he’s an asshole and it’s nothing to do with jealousy. He acts like an edgy 14 year old and it’s really cringey.
I really don't care if people think he is an ass.
But what happens is that people think he is an ass and then they adopt this culture of downplaying everything and making shit up.
'Rockets landed in the 70s', 'He is just a marketing guy', 'Tesla is fake company that is doomed' blablabla
I will never disagree with people who don't like Musk, only people who then start to make dumb arguments about him.
I agree I do have concerns that things may be changing and his original goals of humanitarian goals (EVs, solar, storage, space travel) are now getting caught up with straight power plays (twitter). I wonder if he has been caught by the twitter validation loop.
I don't really have an opinion about mr Musk or his intentions, but I truly fail to see any downside with this deal. Either he does in fact make the twitter platform a generally more positive/useful/pleasant/... experience, or twitter's function will eventually be filled by other apps, maybe even new ideas.
For one, Trump seems to finally be receding into the background, and I can guarantee he gets his account back when Musk takes over. That alone is enough to view this as a net negative.
Worst case, he runs it into the ground and we live in a world without Twitter. Win win.
I have a tough time imagining the other worst case not prompting regulation.
Maybe it overthrows our political system! I don’t know, there are certainly some politicians who command from Twitter and will be hurt or helped by Musk. (Probably, invariably, helped.) But that seems less likely than Congress creating a rule book and regulator for social media.
Why would it? People have been complaining about facebook/twitter/etc for ages and competitors haven't turned out to be less harmful. Why is the idea that Musk forces his values into Twitter and that this makes the platform worse not a possibility?
Who cares. He delivers.
I’ll take the guy who delivers, with possible ulterior motives, over someone who really cares, but uselessly. The latter describes most of our leadership to date on EVs and Mars.
Would it be nice if the genius came without the bullshit? Sure. Am I convinced those are inseparable? No. Is this relevant if you don’t care about EVs or Mars? No. But a lot of people do, and for us, he’s worth the tradeoff.
You act like Musk is some kind of genocide dictator. Oh my god, he fights with the SEC therefore he must be shot in the head.
> Musk has shown time and time again that his ideals of climate change or whatever are not genuine.
Literally based on what? He has been consistent for 20+ years. Given tons of talks and has literally changed one of the most conservatives industry in the world to a much, much greener industry.
Why did he do Tesla? Do you think he thought 'What a great businesses idea?'.
> He wants to get to play with cool toys, make bold but undeliverable promises, and get as much attention as possible.
When he started SpaceX he was not famous. You can go back to inteview where he was a mostly unknown (at least by people who don't follow Silicon Vally startups). And he already talks about all those things.
The idea that he build a rocket company because he wants to 'play with toys' is just nonsense.
And even if it was, so what? SpaceX achieved what it did, no matter the reason.
> And yet, people look up to him as if he’s some saint bestowed upon us.
He is a successful entrepreneur and engineer. I defend him from people who just make up a bunch of nonsense because they don't like him as a person.
> I truly feel letting a billionaire like him take one of the biggest megaphones in the world private as a personal playground is one of the worst things that could have happened.
Sound like you lived a really privileged life if you think that.
And he already did use it as a megaphone, that is literally what Twitter is.
What exactly are you suggesting would happen?
> And it’s all because he wants to say what he wants to say when he wants to say it, even though he has a history of bullying and trying to shut up people who disagree with him.
Twitter not being owned by him has not prevented him from saying anything. The SEC doesn't care who owns twitter.
They give a shit about a lifestyle brand they are emotionally invested in. It's no different than buying a Gucci handbag or a Bulgari bracelet. They believe purchasing the right brands will give them the social status they crave.
But even among the people I know who work at SpaceX, the draw was "I want to work with Musk" rather than "I want to work on rockets."
As Eric Berger states in his book. Engineers don't want to spend 10 years being responsible for the quality control of a single screw on the F-35 program.
At SpaceX you are producing rocket faster then anywhere and you always develop next generation technology.
That is why engineers want to work there.
As for the mission - seems mostly legit though I don't think Elon is motivated by climate change otherwise he wouldn't be using Natural Gas for fueling his rockets more for ability to create self sustaining energy off planet.
There is a quite interesting inverse effect too, though. Musk's actual output is undeniably pretty impressive (I challenge you to watch a rocket land on a drone ship and tell me otherwise!), yet there is a veritable army of people online waiting to suggest in the comments on stories like this that he's just all about memes and personality. Maybe two opposing reality distortion fields with Musk suspended somewhere in the middle?
A big challenge is that Twitter's problems aren't engineering problems. They are sociology problems. Musk has demonstrated that he can hire engineers to solve engineering problems. How well will that translate into sociology problems?
I can't wait to see!
Either he improves Twitter, which is great because it's in really bad shape, or he destroys it, which is great because something else can fill the void.
Good luck to twitter I guess.
Many many people on twitter would happily pay for it. It's not like Facebook where you have to rely on ads because 90% of users would never pay, and the ones who would you don't want to charge bcause you make $200+ per year off them.
I think Elon understand both these things because of the way he says it's become the defacto public square. It really has for thought leaders. But thought leaders are a completely different market to most social networks.
maybe that's the key. $15/month subscription to post, free to read.
The only "legitimate" alternative is the legal process and that's too slow.
Personally, my lack of imagination makes me say we don't have an alternative right now.
I don't know how to interpret this, in that case.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1507259709224632344
But it might also be much, much smaller.
Censorship is a very real threat to scientific research but it tends to manifest as the state restricting research or pulling funding from politically unfavourable topics like climate change, as is seen in many American state governments and on a federal level under the previous administration. Scientific publication isn't exactly known for going through the channels of mass social media.
I talked about flow of information. Science isn’t done on twitter, and twitter is not for scientists or those able and willing to read papers. Twitter is for the 90% who rely on groups, and the more tooling we implement that incentivizes those groups to devalue intellectual depth, the more we restrict the flow of actual information at scale. Policing who is able to distribute which data is, simply put, harmful to the organism.
Improving signal quality != fire walling signals as a whole.
And that question is another one than "does twitter censor climate change-discussions?", right? My point was: yes, it does.
I would argue the opposite: moderation reduces paid corporate shills (when done correctly).
Currently, SpaceX is blocked from doing the first starship orbital test. Not for technical reasons, but for frankly totally bullshit bureaucratic reasons. A free speech twitter might be the right way to fight back against this government overreach.
He didn't make speech more open and free when he canceled a car order because someone pissed him off nor when he tried to get that flight tracker shut down.
He is building Starlink and refuses any form of censorship on there.
He sent several containers full of terminals to Ukraine (responding within hours to request for help from the Ukrainian government) to restore connectivity as the country is being attacked by Russia.
If you really believe those “he didn’t give one guy a car because he was pissed” propaganda stories, go ahead. People are easy to program.
He said Starlink had been jammed in Ukraine then a few weeks later said it had never been jammed.
Enlighten me, why did he cancel that car order?
Let us take it for granted that people will disagree with us regardless of what we say, and let us also take for granted that we cannot control or take responsibility for the emotional stability of others. A disposition toward trying to control the emotions of others is not something I want to promote in the world.
How about pivoting away from a system where shouting “toxic” is a means to silence uncomfortable speech, and to a system that gives users better tools to focus on what they’re looking for?
As a person, I really don't care about his personal opinion on most things. I really don't want him in charge of Twitter especially since I can see the first thing he does is unban Trump. So I am hoping if this does go through an alternative quickly springs up and gains dominance.
But when it comes to Space... I am a strong believer in SpaceX. The facts with how they are performing. Especially after how bad the SLS is going. We basically needed SpaceX.
Tesla? I mean I am glad he did it when he did it. Thankfully we are now seeing most (if not all?) car companies working on electric and I don't think that would have happened without Tesla.
Twitter is a private company and do whatever they want to do. It is their platform.
They actually aren't a private company, yet, but it sounds like they probably will be soon.
Just because they can do something doesn't mean they should. A huge amount of our public discourse flows through platforms controlled by companies. If you want those platforms to start to ban everyone who disobeys some set of rules, who would you like writing those rules? Are you comfortable with them making them up as they go along?
To answer your question, yes. Rules (like laws in government) change overtime. Twitter helpfully has a section outlining their rules https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-rules . It also clearly states that they can update these rules at any point.
As far as who sets the rules, Twitter. It is their platform. How is that a question?
In case it's not clear, I don't claim that Twitter doesn't have the legal right to moderate their platform. I claim that it is a problem for society that more and more of our public discourse happens on platforms with this type of arbitrary moderation.
Just because something has become a major player in communication, doesn't meant these companies should be obligated to turn a blind eye to content that they find disagreeable.
Also, I have yet to see a case where anyone has been "arbitrarily" restricted. They conform to the rules as clearly stated on their website. If anything I have seen that they are not doing as well as I wish they were at enforcing their rules. But it largely makes sense that the bigger you are the more scrutiny you will have on your tweets.
It isn't like just because you have an account on twitter you can't have an account on some alternative.
Since each of your replies ignores this and focuses on individual issues — unrelated to my comment and uninteresting to me — like which platform(s) a person chooses to use, whether Twitter has the right to moderate, or whether they have historically used their arbitrary moderation power in a way that you find acceptable, I'm going to disengage from this thread at this point since I don't think we can enlighten each other in any meaningful way.
why? what would the other car manufacturers do when there is no more oil to put into the combustion engines? just lie down and die? everybody can see the writing on the wall. sure, tesla might have sped it up a bit. but to be solely responsible for that? tesla is not even the first EV company or the first prototype.
I more meant the timing of it, I think if it wasn't for Tesla we may be looking at another 5-10 years for electric vehicles.
It is entirely possible another company would have come out and taken Tesla's place. But I just don't see the main car companies having tried it yet if it wasn't for Tesla (or another well funded EV that was that bullish).
What are you referring to? Even his lamest company (TBC) has delivered some stuff. When it comes to reducing fossil fuel use Tesla has achieved more than the USA Green Party, and with regard to expanding space access SpaceX is beating most national space agencies combined.
He genuinely wants to make a difference to humanity.
A lot of us who agree with him, do so in alignment, because as individuals we also want to make a difference to humanity, and .. in so doing: we see the problem with the commons.
If we do not fix the commons, it will be weaponised against us all, and that is in fact the situation.
So, from a fanboix perspective, in all honesty, this seems like Elon has added a 3rd option to his list: iii) stop humans from killing each other in the meantime.
Delusion and narcissism don't get things done.
The rapid and visible progress towards the construction of a viable space age, not so much.
As for what he has to say, for every one of your tabloid moral arguments .. there are at least 25 things Elon has said, with which I would completely agree.
This ideology of moral superlativity is taxing. It doesn't actually get things done. Maybe the reason Elon gets things done, is he is fine with saying stupid shit, but doing very, very good things.
I mean, where does this argument lead? Does taking Elon down at a character level, produce some vital substance or circumstance, for the species?
I couldn't care less what happened with the Thai submarine. And, neither should you.
There is a frickin' viable space age about to happen. Can we stop killing each other so easily - and maybe just get on with bringing a peaceful resolution to the worlds resource problems?
Because that's what the space dream is really all about.
Infinite sky. Narcissism and Delusion don't get us there. Like, seriously.
So I should just ignore as irrelevant the Twitter feed of the person who is currently attempting to buy Twitter? I'm sorry, but that's just doesn't make sense to me.
So .. are you seriously saying you don't think Elon is going to improve Twitter?
Because, factually he has already done so, just by making us have this conversation.
That's simply not a statement of fact. It's a subjective opinion.
> are you seriously saying you don't think Elon is going to improve Twitter?
Yes. In my opinion, Elon Musk's ownership could conceivably make Twitter worse.
> Everything people are worried that Elon will do to Twitter, has already happened.
This seems, honestly, like a ludicrous claim. _Everything_ that _everyone_ is worried about has already happened? Come on now...
A) FSD has been coming for a while now. The historical record seems to indicate that he was either delusional by at least years, or knowingly lying. I would bet on the prior.
B) he stood in front of everyone at Boca Chica and with a straight face said that the very early Starship prototype behind him was going to orbit. Again, I actually believe maybe he thought it. Which is kinda weird/scary?
To be fair, it is arguable that Musk has accomplished more good-for-the-species stuff than any one human, ever.
This is not to excuse Elon - or indeed any of us. The expectation that any human being is free of these kinds of moral sins, is unreasonable. And such parody is exactly why, indeed, [1] the imperative to make humans multi-planetary - i.e. with strategically enhanced survival potential, is important.
Unless of course you are in the 'humans are dumb and must perish' camp. Jump you to [1], human!
Is this a serious take? He has worked in EV cars and rockets. Cars are something we should be moving away from and not towards. How have those things benefited even a fraction of the global population? Even in the U.S., inequality has continued to rise, poverty has risen, education has decreased, and several other poor indicators. Musk has used a huge portion of public funds in his companies, funds that could be used to solve these very real problems, and he’s done nothing to return value back to the general public.
Well there are lots of things humans should be doing, and never do. But I do believe Musk already did accomplish Tesla’s goal of accelerating electrification of the planet. Combustion is just less efficient. The ball is now rolling. Resistance is futile.
I believe it is arguable that some of the more damaging climate change scenarios are possible. So anyone moving the needle there could be extremely beneficial in the long run. Musk moved the needle more than anyone in modern history, hasn’t he?
I also do buy into the long-term goal of making Earth’s life spread beyond Earth. I happen to believe that complex lifeforms are extremely rare volumetrically. It does seem worth it to me, and I truly cannot think of a greater goal. SpaceX has revolutionized orbital boosters with F9 and FH already dropping costs by at least half. If/when Starship and Superheavy are up and running, then the economics of getting to space may be 10x better.
On the other hand Musk is not omniscient and scares the crap out of me sometimes.
The boring company plan for West LA didn’t make sense beyond paper and pencil prototyping.
I got banned from multiple Tesla forums for being upset about Tesla’s proof of work crypto investment. Eventually Musk came around on that too, but why did it take so long? How did this even pass muster?
The scariest thing is Neuralink though. The goal is to give humans a fighting chance to compete with a possible future AGI by greatly increasing our i/o bandwidth. Ok, but assuming AGI is created, then it’s fair to assume that it will be possible to increase the AGIs speed using various methods. Maybe we will have a chance to compete up to some point, but that time will pass as AGI develops further.
We are trading a fleeting advantage against a possible future threat in exchange for giving read/write access to our brains to the governments, corporations, and NSO Groups who we all know and trust. Would love to be talked down from that one because this appears to be monumentally dumb to me right now.
Because what has Musk done for the "good of the species"?
I mean you have guys like Fritz Haber, whose Haber-Bosch process is responsible for the production of nearly two-thirds of the world's foodstuffs and literally feeds half the world.
Or Stanley Norman Cohen, father of genetic modification. Whose patents touch nearly every other biological field today. You literally cannot calculate the number of lives he has potentially saved.
Elon is telling lots and lots of bullshit, but his worshippers are still telling that his different and he meant something different.
16 Psyche HQ is established, and humans are engaged in a pact of cooperation and union, against all elements, against all odds, to end all wealth.
Starships drop from the sky with supplies. The whole planet is growing, there are no more reasons for the borders.
We have instead, the infinite sky.
We could get way, way more from it than SpaceX and Tesla.
Dreamy fantasies are the only reasonable response in such circumstances.
My understanding of the human condition, led me to exactly this moment, 'mmkay?
How can you look at his compensation package at Tesla that he negotiated and claim it was not to "get rich"? It's not like he did it for free.
and he did that with paypal. not everybody wants to stay with safe and boring stuff.
everybody knows that sooner or later the combustion engine goes the way of the dodo, cause there won't be anything to put inside it...
the odds of succeeding with an EV company are not extremely low but exactly the opposite, it's the future, guaranteed. but of course it's not an overnight project and one needs to do better than introducing models 5 years ago that are still not being manufactured (roadster).
If that's not okay with you, I understand. But nobody is fixin' for some poison.
We want to stay free. You know, as a species.
There are zero good reasons not to put all our industry into building things in space, and returning Earth to a garden.
I mean, if you wanna get weird about it...
Pretty interesting subject though, eh? Hope the first colony isn't "USA™", you know what I mean?
It'll be pretty hard for Earth beligerents to be genociding when there are Starships dropping in on the starving villages and keeping them alive.
Yes yes, there is still a lot to be done before we can manufacture a Tesla on an asteroid, and land it back on Earth wherever its needed.
But, if you think about it, its definitely a better way forward than to just stay here and keep killing ourselves over what is .. admittedly .. a pretty small planet.
we've got this cultural veil of cynical nihilism that keeps us from thinking people could think like that. You're suggesting that someone is a good person? OMG no way. and he's some rich arsehole? can't be
Terry Pratchett called it "crab bucket" thinking.
It may be worth the risk of buying into some Musk hagiography just to have a break from the common popular despair.
SpaceX is cool...
Gotta love any company that has a banded Flame Thrower --- the Borning Company....
All of that said, I follow Musk because he He does what he wants, public perception be damned, Media be damned....
I am tried of Political Correctness, anyone that stands in the face of that has my support, even if I disagree with them politically as I often do with Musk.
I've said it before but Twitter is like a cancer, it begins to grow in some poor unfortunate souls irrespective of wealth, knowledge, or privilege, and slowly overtakes their whole being.
People invest with Elon because he has, objectively, an extraordinary track record of success.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/08/elon-musks-spacex-valuation-...[2] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/tsla/key-statistics/
[3] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/21/elon-musks-boring-company-hi...
Investors are here for the money. While some will favor some companies over others for ethical reasons, no one invests to lose money. In the case of, for example, Tesla, the reasoning is usually that governments all around the world want to move away from fossil fuels and because Tesla is in that market, it will eventually make shittons of money.
That Elon Musk wants to buy Twitter shouldn't have an impact on the potential profits Tesla can make, Elon or not, Tesla will continue making electric cars in a world that demands electric cars to move away from fossil fuels. As for SpaceX (the "interplanetary" side), it is private, so you can't invest.
Personally my reservations are because I think running a social media site is a lot about understanding people and defining a healthy culture for your elusive market place of ideas. Musk has admitted he doesn't understand people, is a self-confessed troll & edgelord and and Tesla's culture seems less than ideal. So lacks any of the qualifications I see as being needed to run something like Twitter. Maybe there's some other Musk magic that will do what so many others have failed to do.
Is Twitter available in on of the following countries? China, Saudi-Arabia, Russia, Turkey? Since we know the answer I'm looking forward to see how helping those local governments go after "dissidents" will be aligned with Musk's high ideals of free speech.
But since this whole affaire started with "ElonsJet" refusing to shut down, and Musks reaction was a teenagers "Then I'll buy this company and fire you", I'm inclined to believe free speech is going to be ok as long Musk is criticized.
Sadly, not just in Turkey but increasingly in what you'd consider developed "western" countries. This is concerning.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2021/14/introduction/enac...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country
Certainly he could retreat from places like Turkey and China. Alas, increasingly there is nowhere left to run. You can be inclined to believe what you want, we can just wait and see what happens no?
Bullsh*t alert! Name one western country that charges people for terrorism for criticizing Erdogan.
Sworn testimony in parliament makes it seem as if Mr Strahl’s story is either wholly or partially manufactured. No accounts were frozen for donating when the protest was still allowed.
Additionally there is no evidence that a person by the name of “Briane” lives in that town, and no one with that name was listed as a donor to the protest.
One day Mark Strahl or somebody like him will be in power and the shoe will be on the other foot. If you start banning people you don't like (from twitter, bank accounts, whatever) left and right you will end up in a very dark place by setting that precedent.
There were ~200 accounts frozen affecting less than that number of people (some people had multiple accounts frozen). The claim is that these accounts were the ones directly supporting the protest. This was after the courts had declared many aspects of the protest unlawful. The accounts were mostly unfrozen after the protest broke up. The mechanism that was used to freeze their accounts allows them to sue for compensation
As much as the process for the emergencies act has been painted as absolute power. It very much isn’t. It is subject to quite a bit of oversight from the legislative and judicial.
I understand what your point is, but Canada has a history of going after left leaning protesters in FAR more concerning ways than this. As far as I can tell this was way more preferable to the usual tactics that the RCMP used to enforce injunctions.
For example, the military was used to clear native peoples off their land to build a golf course. A child was bayoneted. In 1990.
The RCMP broke into a cabin with a chainsaw and axe where indigenous elders were praying to stop oil and gas construction. That was last year.
Temporarily freezing funds of enablers seems like a pretty reasonable solution to an unlawful protest, all things considered.
Besides all that, at the time it was VERY clear that this political action was funded from unknown sources outside the country. I don’t think that money is speech. And I really don’t think that political destabilization should be funded by anonymous overseas donors.
Yay
> but Canada has a history of going after left leaning protesters in FAR more concerning ways than this
Sigh
Temporarily freezing the banking privileges of people involved in the perpetuation of 1. A crime 2. while acting against an injunction 3. after being authorized to use that power by a majority of elected representatives is a pretty acceptable use of government. Regardless of who in power does it.
You said you don’t like people in power arbitrarily freezing accounts of people they don’t like, and cited what appears to be a completely made up story from a fringe candidate.
I’m pointing out that this was not arbitrary, and it was used in a very specific and limited manner, as authorized by law, to accomplish a very specific goal. The goal was accomplished with, as far as has been actually proven, an absolute minimum of harm caused, even to the perpetrators themselves.
The protest is still allowed, there are still people protesting in my town. Just saw ‘em this weekend. What they aren’t allowed to do is use money from unknown international sources to shut down cities and infrastructure
What are we discussing here? Because your response to me was that "the other side is much worse" and you cited the military bayoneted a child in 1990.
This Mark Stahl fellow is a sitting MP not a fringe candidate.
> Temporarily freezing funds of enablers seems like a pretty reasonable solution to an unlawful protest, all things considered.
Well, if they are willing to bayonet children to build golf courses imagine the pandoras box you've now opened for when they get back in power. Won't seem so reasonable when they freeze your bank account in turn. Not a hard concept to grasp.
Try to imagine a carbon copy of yourself who fell into the other echo chamber and has similarly low opinions of your politics. There will be no shortage of justifications for why you must be punished.
You seem to be seeing this through the lens of “two sides”. There are more than two major political parties in Canada. And the East/West/French divide is as important as the left/right divide.
I’m seeing this through the lens of government quelling illegal protest, regardless of what is being protested. I see what happened in Ottawa as a restrained response that I wish was used more, rather than the violent response that is so common.
At the time temporary asset freezes we’re used, military force was authorized by the legislature. They could have dragged the trucks out using military recovery equipment, instead they made it so they couldn’t buy diesel and propane with money from unknown sources.
> Try to imagine a carbon copy of yourself who fell into the other echo chamber and has similarly low opinions of your politics. There will be no shortage of justifications for why you must be punished.
If I fall down some conspiracy rabbit hole, protest by unlawfully shutting down a city for a month, ignore an injunction, and encourage others to do the same while ignoring warnings about the consequences, I sure as hell expect that the government will come after me.
There was no “pandoras box” opened. The legislature authorized the PM to act in a limited way to end an unlawful protest. Those powers have expired, and could have been rescinded at any time.
The people weren’t “punished”. Organizers had money frozen for about a week until it could be seen that it wouldn’t be used to support more activity deemed to be an emergency.
The dangerous precedent isn’t the seizure of money. It’s using foreign bankrolls to pay for a destabilizing protest movement to use industrial equipment to shut down major infrastructure and cities while ignoring the rule of law.
Many people are childish and it is now fashionable to stick your fingers in your ears and try to make the thing you don't like disappear instead of dealing with it. Once upon a time citing did not imply agreement. Sometimes reality is icky.
> You seem to be seeing this through the lens of “two sides”.
I'm seeing it through the lens of "no sides". Try putting politics aside.
> If I fall down some conspiracy rabbit hole, protest by unlawfully shutting down a city for a month, ignore an injunction, and encourage others to do the same while ignoring warnings about the consequences, I sure as hell expect that the government will come after me.
I wonder why you think only people with politics that differ from yours (and therefore are clearly wrong) are susceptible to this behavior and members of your tribe are somehow immune.
> There was no “pandoras box” opened. The legislature authorized the PM to act in a limited way to end an unlawful protest. Those powers have expired, and could have been rescinded at any time.
It seems you are under the impression you need to convince me.
Many people would say otherwise, to use your parlance. Alas, Mark Strahl is still an MP, even if he spreads lies. Marjory Taylor Greene somehow got elected. They have supporters. You need to convince them.
Is it getting easier or harder? What will happen when they regain power? Something to ruminate on.
And not only the "fringe" or conservatives but even people who might agree with your politics directionally might disagree with the heavy handedness and perceived slide into authoritarianism. It is as if your perceptions are not the only ones that matter even if undoubtably you're right of course.
> The dangerous precedent isn’t the seizure of money. It’s using foreign bankrolls to pay for a destabilizing protest movement to use industrial equipment to shut down major infrastructure and cities while ignoring the rule of law.
Presumably it could be both. You could have multiple ongoing problems. And in a heavy handed attempt to solve one exacerbate others. I really hope it sinks in but I'm quite afraid you'll just reply again about how bad the people you don't like are.
Nobody had their bank account frozen for "saying mean things about Trudeau."
People did get their bank accounts frozen for playing key roles in protests that shut down critical infrastructure for a prolonged period. Protests that were at least partially funded by foreign interests. Protests that cost Canadians millions of dollars and posed a safety risk for many people.
Whether you like JT or not, at least on the surface the government had justification to do <<something>> to stop the protests after so many weeks. Some governments would have gone in with clubs, rubber bullets and teargas. Ours elected to shut off the funding tap. And it worked.
Whether the emergencies act should have been used here is definitely up for debate. For what it's worth, an independent inquiry has been established to look into this. I for one hope they recognize the slippery slope that such a blunt tool represents and put in better controls and oversight.
Sure, one can’t survive without money. And they shut that dissent down real quick. Like they controlled speech quite well. Now that they’ve found the button, I wonder how many times in the future they’ll push it. You’re basically bragging about your loss of dissent.
Also, the government did not "shut down the dissent real quick". The protests went on for weeks without any reprisal. The shouts were shouted, the horns honked, the memes posted, the swastikas flown. The protesters got their fifteen minutes of fame and more. We all heard them speak, unfortunately it turned out they didn't have anything interesting to say.
So they let it take it’s natural course? Or did they force it to stop by using power wielded only by a gov?
Incidentally, Ahmadinejad is quoting 2pac on twitter: https://twitter.com/Ahmadinejad1956/status/10519371063927521...
Of course this is nothing new, the slippery slope in the UK started over a decade ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Joke_Trial
You're welcome to explain to me how a teenager quoting snoop on her instagram is deserving of a court case whether somebody is familiar with the quote or not as opposed to Ahmadinejad quoting 2pac.
Or the Taliban being explicitly allowed to stay on the platform for that matter: https://www.mediaite.com/news/twitter-says-taliban-spokesman...
how do you think this is on par with Turkey consistently persecuting ---dissidents---?
Scotland is a small place so can't find much for you other than this one local explaining it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvmF1peteGE
You can now meme yourself to jail now. No need to even go so far as the head of state, any random individual can feign offense at you to land you in legal trouble.
> The Netherlands' lese majeste law dates from 1881 and carries sentences of up to five years jail or a fine of 20,000 euros ($22,200; £16,700).
Not really abolished, just a lower punishment.
> 'It had to do with an American and a Russian arguing about their two countries,' Reagan said Monday, relating the story he told Gorbachev. 'And the American in the story said, 'I can walk into the Oval Office, I can pound the president's desk, and I can say, Mr. President, I don't like the way you're running our country.'
> 'And the Soviet citizen said, 'I can do that.' The American said, 'You can?' He says, 'Yes. I can go into the Kremlin to the general secretary's office, I can pound his desk and say, Mr. General Secretary, I don't like the way President Reagan's running his country.''
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1987/11/18/Reagans-jokes-draw-S...
> The Böhmermann affair (also known as Erdogate[1]) was a political affair following an experimental poem on German satirist Jan Böhmermann's satire show Neo Magazin Royale in late March 2016 that deliberately insulted Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan using profane language. ... After the show was aired on German public television channel ZDFneo, the Turkish government released a verbal note demanding that the German government begin criminal prosecution of Böhmermann. German Chancellor Angela Merkel further escalated the situation by apologizing for Böhmermann's "intentionally hurtful" poem – later she called this "a mistake".[2] On 15 April Merkel announced in a press conference that the German government had approved Böhmermann's criminal prosecution, but would abolish the respective paragraph 103 of the German penal code before 2018. Intense criticism followed the Chancellor's decision, with speculation that she decided to allow the prosecution in order to protect Germany's refugee deal with Turkey.[3] The case was dropped in October 2016 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Böhmermann_affair
This has nothing to do with elonjets btw and if that's the worst example you can come up with... you'd be just convincing those who think that Twitter's moderation policy is horrible. Because for them, a dude censoring people who track him (which won't happen anyways imo) is still insanely better than the current policy that they deem is used to supress entire ideas/events.
In SV you don’t get locked up or suicided if you say the wrong thing.
Following the law in some of the places listed above would have Musk help identify those breaking local laws.
My point was that I'd prefer companies to stick to their principles, and if that means they can't do business in certain countries, so be it. Saying that you'll follow local rules if that means abuse of human rights is not something I agree with. In this context 'human rights' is used as a personal definition rather than some sort of legal one, as local rules allow abuse in some places.
Do you believe it’s a win for human rights to allow dissent whilst also helping governments identify dissenters?
Your proposed rule might be unpractical, since it would disallow the U.S. government from from saying anything about free speech for at least 30 more years (see [1] and [2]).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A...
Suffice to say that censorship was pretty prevalent through the history of Germany and it did not provide the advantages some had hoped.
And the allies did censor speech that is true.
> The representative of the Allied forces admitted that the order in principle was no different from the Nazi book burnings, although unlike the burnings, the measure was seen as a temporary part of the denazification program.
In that case the measure can be understood as the country was full of Nazi propaganda and alternative media was more or less dead. But it was indeed temporary and the Allies also wrote Germany's constitution, which explicitly forbid censorship.
Lies and incitements to violence were a significant factor in Hitler being able to assume emergency powers, so you could argue that Germany learned a valuable lesson from one of its dictators.
Technically true, but without context, easily misunderstood. It's illegal in Germany to promote or advocate for illegal acts. Since Russia attack on Ukraine is an illegal act, it's illegal to promote or advocate for the war, and this includes the Z symbol.
Also "incitement to illegal conduct and imminent lawless action" is also illegal in the U.S. it just gets interpreted a little different.
> There is only one country on earth that has decent free speech and it's the US
Except for nearly all the other countries in Europe, Canade etc.
I'd say its more than a little different. The US definition is pretty narrow and immediate. You can't get on a megaphone and tell a crowd to go kill some guy right now.
>Except for nearly all the other countries in Europe, Canada etc.
It's all down to opinion of course but those nations do not have sensible freedom of speech. They pay lip service to the idea but will gladly jail people for saying things the government doesn't like but otherwise harmless or victim less.
Except for exceptions, such like making some kind of threat against the president.
> will gladly jail people for saying things the government doesn't like but otherwise harmless or victim less.
Can you show me such examples for lets say Germany?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/15/angela-merkel-...
However, when a country doesn't allow you to promote or advocate for war crimes, then it's "only the U.S. has free speech", go figure.
But I agree with your more general point that Americans should be a bit less smug about the superiority of their free-speech rules.
I think both have their historic reasons, place and differences.
It's practically true, and there is nothing to "misunderstand" there, unless you try to create such a misunderstanding by claiming this comes out of some kind of "general ban", when it's actually a very specific ban German states started putting in place [0].
Case in point;
> Since Russia attack on Ukraine is an illegal act, it's illegal to promote or advocate for the war, and this includes the Z symbol.
The US attack on Iraq was also illegal, yet that didn't lead to German states banning the V symbol for Victory or any other US symbols, or US media, getting banned.
Which is not the only example of how most about this is purely political and not in any way based on impartial interpretation and application of laws for human rights and "justice" [1].
[0] https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2022-03/z-symbol-rus...
[1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/08/germany-could-have-deli...
But it does, it's just that to prevent a misuse, any ban on symbols (which are used to advocate or promote something criminal) a separate law is needed to prevent misuse and allow judiciary overview. That's an additional protection.
> US attack on Iraq was also illegal
That's a fair point (and I agree on the illegality), and I would actually like this to be challenged in the court and see a decision. However, the Russian flag is not banned, just the Z symbol as a symbol for this war. If there was a symbol for U.S. drone strike or the invasion of Iraq we could be talking about something more concrete.
The Z symbol exists for the same reason why the V symbol existed on US military vehicles in Iraq; It's mainly a friendly fire and unit identifier as Russia and Ukraine use a lot of the same mechanized equipment.
While the Anglo V also stands for V as in "Victory" and even has a hand sign associated with it, it's a whole campaign dating back to WWII and Winston Churchill [0].
Me and many of my schoolmates would flash it at US military convoys passing our bus at school trips in the 90s. The soldiers were always super happy about it, while we thought we were signaling "peace" to them.
Ultimately the V would morph into a Chevron with different orientations to distinguish what military group a vehicle belongs to [0], but there is a whole propagandist history behind the Anglo use of V, overlapping very much in the same ways of military necessity as the Russian Z does.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20150708011459/https://time.com/...
[1] https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-significance-of-the-invert...
It's practically true, and there is nothing to "misunderstand" there, unless you try to create such a misunderstanding by claiming this comes out of some kind of "general ban", when it's actually a very specific ban German states started putting in place only recently [0].
Case in point;
> Since Russia attack on Ukraine is an illegal act, it's illegal to promote or advocate for the war, and this includes the Z symbol.
The US attack on Iraq was also illegal, yet that didn't lead to German states banning the V symbol for Victory or any other US symbols, or US state media getting banned.
Which is not the only example of how most about this is purely political and not in any way based on impartial interpretation and application of laws for "human rights and justice" [1].
[0] https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2022-03/z-symbol-rus...
[1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/08/germany-could-have-deli...
Ability to advocate for illegal, repugnant, or offensive ideas or acts is in fact the entire point of free speech, so being able to do it is an essential right.
In summary, those basically are high treason, murder/manslaughter, assault, robbery, counterfeiting, creating fire/explosions/radiation, destroying/interference in infrastructure (planes etc.).
[1] https://dejure.org/gesetze/StGB/138.html
Back in the day, noone prevented same-sex partners to marry in Germany in front of a religious congregation which allowed that according to their rules. They just couldn't get the marriage certificate from the State.
As for the illegality: it would make gay marriage an impossible act, because the legal framework to marry two men (or two women) from a legal standpoint (which includes the marriage certificates and the rights and responsibilities associated with it) would not exist. A public official who wrote a marriage certificate for a same-sex couple in 1999 would not have committed a crime, he or she would just have written an invalid form which would have had no legal bearing (and the public official would probably have been reprimanded).
Something you cannot do by definition cannot be illegal.
None of them has free speech. Free speech is a binary thing - either speech is free, or it isn't. The moment you face criminal lawsuits for saying the wrong things, you do not live under a Free Speech regime. To my knowledge, the only country which does this correctly is the US.
Many countries claim to have Freedom of Opinion - which is a different concept from Freedom of Speech. Under a "Freedom of Opinion" regime, you can hold any opinion that you like - but some you need to keep to yourself.
But the thing everyone forgets is that he has very strong ties to the US government. From a free speech perspective, this is as good as the government taking over twitter, but much better PR
That's why he's perfect for this task. Most decision-makers feel intense scrutiny and tip toe around things that cause backlash, especially things that threaten the status quo.
When you're oblivious to how people will react to your vision, you're more able to follow through and make it to the other side.
I'm all for a good damning with faint praise, and this definitely put a smile on my face.
I'm still convinced this is just the Twitter board calling Musk's bluff.
Lets say this does fall through, the SEC, Tesla, and SpaceX fall out could be REALLY bad.
> In 2018, he came under fire after tweeting that he was considering taking Tesla private, and the SEC charged him with fraud. Musk agreed to a court-approved deal in order to settle the charges, which required that Tesla lawyers review any social media posts containing information "material" to shareholders. Months later, after he was called out for defying the order, the settlement was amended to include a specific list of topics Musk needs permission to tweet about. The list includes tweets about the company's financial condition, production numbers or new business lines.
> The SEC notified Tesla that two of Musk's tweets from 2019 and 2020 — one about Tesla's solar roof production volumes and one about the company's stock price — hadn't received the required pre-approval, the Journal's Dave Michaels and Rebecca Elliott reported.
I find it hard to overlook that at least one thing that might be motivating him to buy Twitter is to tweet however he wants to tweet, regardless of US law.
[0]: https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/01/tech/elon-musk-tesla-sec-twee...
Perhaps I'm looking too deep into this and he really does care a lot about other people having freedom to tweet whatever they want. I think there's just a good chance that the SEC ruling telling him he needs to have his Tesla tweets reviewed before sending them could also be motivating him to buy Twitter.
He got in trouble because of what he said given his responsibilities to Tesla and the market in general, not where he said it.
He'd have gotten in just as much trouble had he posted on Instagram.
Maybe I'm wrong and he'll still abide by the law (which, apparently he wasn't doing very well anyways), I just see it as possible escalating conflict between a private business and a government agency.
> The only question is whether the SEC has the authority to actually create pain for someone whose wealth is so outside of the norm.
I assume they should have the authority to make such rulings regardless of how wealthy someone is. Now, will they actually enforce those rulings to create that realized pain? Maybe that depends on how much regulatory capture one can muster.
This doesn't really track. First of all he already tweets however he wants. Secondly what difference would it make to the SEC if he owns Twitter here?
https://youtu.be/cdZZpaB2kDM
Also highly recommended for anyone curious about what he wants to do with Twitter.
Verified, real people will change the dynamic.
> Admitted he doesn't understand people, is a self-confessed troll & edgelord and and Tesla's culture seems less than ideal.
He got all those self-confessed trolls & edgelords together, created companies in hard sciences and made everyone rich in the process. I worked at Tesla, it was a good time.
I am also utterly gobsmacked how people here jump to the defense of billionaires.
> Taking a moment to think about how utterly crazy it is that in 2022 a company with a significant dataset of private and public communications, that has municipalities, companies and governments on the platform, can switch ownership with pretty much zero scrutiny -- https://twitter.com/emilybell/status/1518580094649966592
The discussion forums hosted by a startup accelerator are friendly to major capitalists? Who would have expected it?
Whatever laws protect that data or communications will continue to exist. And if you're just taking it on good faith that the current ownership won't do anything shady even if there's no laws preventing it, that's a much bigger problem to address.
If this dataset is dangerous, regulation is the way to solve that, not relying on the benevolence of corporate boards and shareholders.
What you're saying is why do regulations allow for this? Idk, but this is a regulatory question, and therefore it should be directed at the government not at the billionaire in question.
Call them Oligarchs like we have been taught to do for their commie counterparts.
American Business Titans are individuals who personally own and control obscene amounts of a country's infrastructure, through outsized stock ownership. And they wear fitted t-shirts instead of creepy euro-suits.
Often people look up the ladder in awe and respect because we all want to move up and be there ourselves one day, so it makes sense to venerate that position in order to justify it within ourselves subconsciously.
Welcome to Voat 2.0.
Or Reddit 1.0? That's what reddit used to be, and reddit got quite popular when it was like that.
If Musk can dial up the abuse on Twitter, Reddit 1.0 can live again.
I don't see how twitter changing ownership will change anything structurally at Twitter. Jack Dorsey started out as a free speech champion many years ago. The things people say cause real problems for real people and at some point the rubber meets the road. A large site like Twitter is at the mercy of the politics of the world.
Even stuff like "Twitter will comply with local laws" is a subtle concession to local censorship laws. Cracks in the facade are already appearing before Musk even owns twitter.
They do not.
They lock down specific, controversial threads in this manner when outsiders start making confrontational comments. AFAIK this was done because the racist vitriol proved impossible to moderate.
Reddit has huge "tyranny of the majority" problems and many communities spring up to essentially censor the speech of people outside of that community so people in that community can speak their mind without getting downvoted (I.E. censored) by the masses of Reddit. BlackPeopleTwitter has a system where all users that are not verified black users will be censored if the moderators deem it appropriate, which is perfectly reasonable. Is this racist censorship? Absolutely and yet it turns out that's not always a bad thing.
I find much of the discourse on free speech to be an oversimplification to the point of self-parody. I support the intentions of free speech but not a literal interpretation of what it means, which is just never censor anybody ever. That literally doesn't work and can't work, it's not a thing that's possible outside of a thought experiment, you'll end up getting DDOSed by speech.
Just remember, twitter does not give those people a megaphone. It's the media that report on their stupid shit that gives them an audience. Otherwise nobody would know what they're saying - especially the people who don't like them - and yet everyone knows who some of those people are.
I foresee measures coming to prevent coordinated attacks too large for simple blocking, but that will take some time.
After taking part in the "DevOps" cultural revolution, I feel that there is no path to mandating culture. Culture is the summation of ideas, practices, and values of all parts that participate in a system. If you try to discriminate against participants in order to get "the culture you want" then you'll end up doing some nasty discrimination along the way. That practice is also, ime, heavily correlated with ideological hell holes that lose relevancy the minute they gain relevancy because they're frozen in time along the timeline of acceptable ideas.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Entertainment_Resorts
All Trump said was “give them hell”, which is the same thing the leftist say when they lose. Anybody that knows the American left knows this is purely political. They’re trying to smear him, charge him with a felony, so he can’t run again. That’s all this is.
Tell me this, had they succeeded in delaying the vote, then what?
“Had the rioters succeeded in preventing the certification, Raskin said, Trump "was prepared to seize the presidency" and likely declare martial law”
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-attempt-coup-be-focus...
But for you obviously Reuters is part of the left and fake news. Only Fox News, OAN and Russia Tv are the harbinger of “Truth”, better known in Russian as “Pravda”. I bet that you also approve of him congratulating Putin for his invasion and subsequent genocide…
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/23/trump-putin-...
“Trump said he saw the escalation of the Ukrainian crisis on TV “and I said: ‘This is genius.’ Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine … Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful.”
The former US president said that the Russian president had made a “smart move” by sending “the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen” to the area.”
You are incredibly lucky that he still doesn’t have power, otherwise the US would have helped Russia instead of Ukraine.
Hopefully all the traitors and Putin puppets will get what they deserve at some point, after this genocide is concluded.
Yes a democrat saying Trump was prepared to enact martial law. They’re clearly not biased.
> You are incredibly lucky that he still doesn’t have power, otherwise the US would have helped Russia instead of Ukraine.
How do you draw this conclusion? You know there’s a difference between saying someone’s smart and liking what they do? Here I’ll do it now: Biden’s request for a ministry of truth is genius. It’ll squash dissent and any non left leaning counter narrative.
Now since you’re American, let’s play hypothetical. Had they destroyed the case, then what? If you actually think on the topic you’d realize a coup isn’t possible as you’d need some military force to provide law enforcement. So all this coup talk is just meaningless searching for a reason to ban him from elections. Given that it’s only one side that wants him out, this makes it very curious.
Donald Trump incited a group of people to launch a violent attack against the United States Capitol. That's not acceptable behavior.
Look, there are lots of things you can say about Rep. Cheney (R-WY), but that she is part of “the left” isn't even remotely one of the credible options.
"Just don't ban US politicians" seems like an unworkable solution.
As a smart person you should realize this is insane.
Also, yes. That sounds incredibly sane. Especially if they say "Lets have trial by combat" and other such calls to violence.
We can quibble over details but it's far from being a "lie".
Seems well run enough to pull that off.
Hard to say from the outside what it is exactly that allows him to do that. It makes sense that its hard to say what it is, because if it was easy to describe, chances are it wouldn't be what sets him apart (the other option being that it's hard to emulate).
As influential as Musk is, he's not a real world Tony Stark.
It's clear he knows a thing or two about rockets. Obv no single person is designing the thing, but it's clear he's highly involved.
Can you enlighten me? Why is this such a common refrain?
Musk is not a rocket scientist.
I'm quite sure that Musk understands the engineering totally and makes important contributions. Plus, his instincts in providing direction as a CEO are excellent. Very few CEOs understand tech like Musk does.
Shotwell is an excellent president and pretty much directly responsible for many of SpaceX's prominent contracts (as well as their survival in the early days), but she handles the 'business' side of things (although, since she has a mechanical engineering background I assume she also keeps up with the technical side), while Elon mainly deals with the technical side.
To take your example, she doesn't need to be able to weld rollcages into racecars, but she may be able to understand that a rollcage can only be expected to be useful in X cases or that a good rollcage should have Y features.
Similar to how Elon most likely isn't telling people to change X flange into a weld by adjusting the pipe by Y mm, but rather asking his engineers what they would adjust to achieve Z and the technical tradeoffs, then stating what he thinks is acceptable and what isn't.
I think you still being too generous. Other than Teslas which starting to get large amount of competitors who were late to EVs market, and SpaceX, which won't have many competitors because we still kind of figuring out what the heck we need to fly in space for (at this price points), Musk's basket is full of terrible failures.
The most shocking to me is a Boring company. What was promised - vast network of 3D tunnels where cars will move at 150mph speeds. Eventually trip from New York to Shanghai will take less than 2 hours.
What was delivered? A short tunnel with absolutely zero safety features, no ventilation, no exit points, build with state-of-the-art technology that turned out to be 3 times slower (per mile) than 30 years old boring machine that dug La-Manche, and Teslas are driving in that tunnel at... 35mph.
And Musk as we could all predicted came out in defense of all this tweeting that "We made the whole thing much simpler" - no elevator ramps, no high speeds, simple one-lane tunnel. And his base ate it up like some sort of genius he is that he invented moving traffic in one lane underground at bicycle-ride speed.
I say the same thing will happen to twitter. Initially it will be: - open algorithms (99.9% people would not understand what they looking at, at probably 80% of engineers wouldn't either - as an ex-Googler, I can tell you these algorithms are like rings inside a tree - hundreds of layers amassed on the top of each other over the years; - allow full free speech (so no control over even nastier language) - fight with bots.
Fast forward 5 years from now, the only people who understand the algorythms will be large bot farms and they will game the system to get throw to the top before anyone elses tweets. Just like there is reason Google is hiding their algo instead of f.e. patent those, they do that because they don't want smart people to game the system. Full free speech will bring even more maneuver to the site, and at the end of the day its impossible to remove bots. In China for 5 cents you can get someone's real ID. For 10 cents they provide you photo of ID with todays date. For 15 cents they will show up on any video call to provide they are who they are. So at the end of the day small trolls and insignificant bot farms will get wiped out, but the big players who make decent buck by trolling, they will continue undisputed. In a few years Musk will abandon Twitter to focus momentarily on another shiny object. "in fight for humanity freedom", like he couldn't do that when he proposed to solve world's hunger.
On the top of that, isn't his involvement in another project just a big fuck-you to everyone still waiting for:
- Solar City - roof shingles that will revolutionized electricity and actually will make you the homeowner to sell electricity to the power plant. - Tesla trucks and semi trucks - nothing new on that? - Boring company - no new progress after years of LV "loop". - Flying to Mars (many things changed now - from fancy trip sort of Cruise Trip with fun games etc, now the word is that many people will die during the trip and it wont be fun)
Seriously if all these projects would run full speed ahead on all cylinders, I would be happy Musk is taking over another project. But they are not. Most are terrible failures and Musk is still in hot water re: Solar City buyout. I'm starting to think all these projects were just temporary scams to boost Tesla stock value (which Musk succeed with 20 x P/E), and that's about it.
- The Tesla Cybertruck and Semi are going to be manufactured in the Austin, TX factory, which literally just opened after only 2 years of construction (mid-pandemic) – seems like progress to be.
- Who said the initial crewed missions to Mars would be a fancy sort of cruise trip?
"Why would I want my kitchen to be sexy?"
"Why would I want my car to be sexy?"
Good luck with that, because at this rate you can literally sell snakesoil and claim it works. Take any group of say 10,000 people, have them use it for the rest of their lives, I guarantee you find few people who miraculously got some sort of disease cured.
- Who said the initial crewed missions to Mars would be a fancy sort of cruise trip?
Musk said that during the first presentation regarding the trip.
100% of engineers won't either. These algorithms are all going to be neural net based, which means they need the data (which will be private) to even know what outputs will be for a given input. And why the output is such for a given input? No way to know - basically a black box.
It absolutely is an engineering and technology problem.
If he runs Twitter like 4chan, it will surely fail, but I think he has more to his plan than he is willing to share publicly at this time.
Well, from that perspective I don't think it can get any worse.
What's so elusive about it? Let people say what they want and give users a robust word and account filtering system.
If you think your ideas and values won't stand up to public scrutiny, then perhaps you should do some self-reflection. If it's just a matter of your own comfort, use the block/mute/blacklist controls.
The path is balancing all that. It’s not just about people being “uncomfortable”, there is very real & hurtful abuse on social media, some of which breaks laws that Twitter will also need to respect. Just adding more filters does nothing to build the open public square that Musk seems to want to curate. More filters & blocks just creates smaller echo chambers.
Frankly, I didn't think the rest of your quote added anything meaningful to the first part. Rather than being rude I was just going to leave that out and hope you picked up on it.
My reasoning was as follows: Twitter is already forced to follow US laws where the legal system is willing to enforce them, and "toxic cesspool" is highly subjective. When it comes to handling the mob mentality, I've already offered my thoughts and suggestions in my previous comment.
>Just adding more filters does nothing to build the open public square that Musk seems to want to curate.
So, which is it then? Is it a public platform, or a publisher curating content? Either way, Twitter couldn't exist without the taxpayer footing the bill for ARPANET, which is why I think they should be forced to allow all legal speech on their platform.
>More filters & blocks just creates smaller echo chambers.
Explain why it's bad for "echo chambers" to exist. Why shouldn't people be allowed to mind their own business and tend to their own spaces? I do this daily by choosing to not use 90% of the modern web.
At least in the US, there is no law that says non-government things have to offer "free speech" to customers. Womp womp.
He solves very few problems himself, personally, with ideas from his own mind. He just recognizes the people who will be able to solve the problems and brings problem and problem solver together.
There's no reason that should be less effective with Twitter than anything else.
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/10/17/zuckerb...
Guess this will put a dent into the whole "limit fake news on social media" push we've had recently, at least in the US (which some people will of course argue was ill-fated to begin with).
That could be the end of Twitter.
On that note excited to see if ads go away.
Trump has only ever posted a single time on Truth Social, a generic coming soon message, and it probably wasn't even him. He doesn't give a shit about it. He doesn't even know its name, apparently: https://www.businessinsider.com/video-shows-trump-struggling... It's best to think of Trump's role with Truth Social as a disinterested mascot. Even your basic paid shill would be doing a much better job of promoting/using it.
Trump loves Twitter, and would be back on it in a flash if allowed to do so.
There's no leaving Twitter, in my opinion. Its the only game in town. That said, I sincerely hope there is a fracture here. An ecosystem with many smaller platforms seems far healthier to me.
My conspiracy theory is that Musk is buying Twitter mainly so he can extort Trump for something in exchange for readmitting him. Like telling his base to buy Teslas.
I don't think it will be that obvious/simple. Tax breaks, anti-union laws, incentives to build new plants in red states... or something even smaller will be all it takes.
(Just turning the thing off would do that)
Now lets approach refuting your claim a different way, not of itself, but instead by providing a rational idea which is compatible with the idea of a good life and is a byproduct of social media. Social isolation is known to create extremely negative well being consequences in social actors. Pandemics encourage physical isolation. Social media provides a mechanism for social interaction despite physical isolation. Yet your claim is so strong that you accidentally imply that even the idea that a large segment of the population avoiding fractured sanity might be of benefit to our future is laughable and has no rational bearing.
Self-refuting, inconsistent with observation. But why? How do you get there? I think you get there because you are an intelligent observer. Game theoretic tit for tat consequences of defection take time to play out and produce a bubble of observation from your perspective which misinform your beliefs. Defection in game theoretic terms is truly laughable, though rational in zero sum games; it is obviously inferior to policies rooted in love which don't degenerate into tit for tat destruction of value. We're in such a time and in such a bubble and so there are many which draw the obvious conclusions. It looks different over larger time slices and so different people come to different conclusions on the value of social utility. Ultimately, this results in them not only valuing social utility, but valuing it even to the extent of free speech to those they vehemently disagree with. Going into why leads to arguments rooted in information theory, ensemble models, and shared values; yet with literal and without any hyperbole war occurring even as we speak and one of the battlefields being social media, this isn't currently a compelling thing. Self-preservation instincts are strong enough that even near certain victory doesn't dispel them. Anyone who goes cliff diving into water will have sensed this. Jumping is hard, even if the action is safe, it doesn't feel that way. And we think fast and with feeling because reality is so complicated that to do anything else would be paralysis.
Free speech is probably safe. Social media probably does have value. Yet it is hard to see it, because society is still learning and part of that learning process is punishing defectors in our shared cooperative game which demands love above all else.
I know they need to find other revenue other than ads, Elon might be able to find a replacement once it's a private company.
I wouldn't disagree, it just feels more like a wishlist that anything.
But what is your comment on billionaire Elon Musk buying Twitter.com?
So here's mine: Musk should make Twitter a public utility. Nominal fee for an account, anyone can have one (or many!); they can be removed for actual illegal behavior (with reference to some government authority for redress) or technical TOS reasons, and thats it. Let the 4chan bloom.