The Dolphins Make Me Cry.com - Forums

Looks like its a done deal. As usual I'm actually interested in your opinions of the whole thing because most likely it isn't the same as mine. 


https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10751017/Elon-Musk-seize-Twitter-TODAY-talks-reach-final-stages.html

So many categories to have opinions on regarding this issue. To be honest, this was a foregone conclusion once he made the offer, Twitter board had no choice or be sued. Zero chance of winning in court plus personal liability so they folded.

Two, the doomsayers are being stupid. No one is having Klan rallies and saying the N word all day. You act racist, you probably still get bounced. You threaten harm? Same thing. It's just going to go for both sides now.

Thirdly and most importantly, the algorithms to silence certain things or people will be removed and now it will truly be an open forum.

P.S. Trump says he wouldn't come back if offered, and he would definitely be offered, but we'll see if he holds true to that. I doubt he does. His own platform is still in it's infancy and not even on Android yet, I doubt he could resist coming back immediately to millions of followers with no censorship on what he wants to say.

I'm always for less censorship

/shrug

Be interesting to see if tweeting out "Telsas suck" gets you banned. 

Absolutely not. It's in his best financial and personal interest to get as many people on Twitter as possible. Twitter has suffered financially in recent times due to it's censorship. Frankly, this is how it all started. The Babylon Bee, a parody site tweeted out that Rachel Levine was their Man of the Year. Rachel is a biological male. Twitter suspended their account and Elon was pretty vocal about it. Not too long later, he owns the place.

Like I stated above, aside from outright racism and violent threats, there won't be censorship. Maybe doxxing too but we'll see on that.

I'm pretty sure it won't and that's the whole point. He's going to bring it back to where everyone can voice their opinion. Musk tweeted this today 'I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means.'

So you're saying Musk is going to unban ISIS from Twitter, right?  He's gonna let the marketplace of ideas ring free?

Of course not.  What we are going to get is a version of Twitter that gives a megaphone to neo-Nazis and other white supremacists, but not jihadists.
It's a direct value statement on what kinds of extremism are acceptable in our society.

P.S. All the nonsense about "free speech" and "less censorship" from the right is empty trolling, as usual.  Parler (https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/29/as-predicted-parler-is-banning-users-it-doesnt-like/), Gab (https://gizmodo.com/even-the-freest-free-speech-site-still-bans-people-1791178262), Gettr (https://www.thedailybeast.com/can-you-call-free-speech-gettrs-backer-guo-wengui-a-spy-on-the-app-we-tested-it), and Truth (https://mashable.com/article/trump-truth-social-free-speech-bans) Social (https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-truth-social-free-speech-app-terms-1245408/) are happy to issue bans just like the wokest Silicon Valley lib.

This is exactly why I posted this. There is no way I could have come up with this response from you. Actually I can't imagine anyone thinking that way. It doesn't look like that to me at all. 

I'll see how it goes.

I use twitter quite sparingly and I never have an active voice there -- I just use it to get info.

I'm not married to it either way.  I am not going to cancel in protest, but I'm also open to just not using it anymore if it fundamentally changes for the worst.

As for censorship, Spider is right -- if it truly is the wild west, that's probably bad.  It's not even a matter of free speech -- it's a matter of terms of service.  There are rules here at TDMMC.  It's not so that I can wag my dick around and get people to believe what I want.  It's because certain kinds of speech hurt the experience, so I don't allow it.  It's the same kind of thing.  I would expect there will still be censorship -- are you really gonna let ISIS tweet?  Doubtful.  But there may be an ease of general disinformation, which I think is a pretty big problem.

I do hope that Musk innovates and finds ways to verify uses as real people, as well as curb trolls and false information, incitements of violence, libel, etc.

You literally can't imagine someone asking, "Does this mean ISIS is going to be unbanned from Twitter?"
Like, it's so obvious to you that free speech applies to neo-Nazis, but not jihadists that you cannot even conceive that being an issue.

Listen, we can have a society where freedom of expression is defined as:
"speech I consider within the bounds of polite society" = "essential free speech"
"speech I fundamentally disagree with and completely reject" = "radicals ramming their values down my throat"

The problem is that the people banning books and insisting that adults in college should not be taught whatever some believe (that day) to be "critical race theory"... are the same people who insist that THEY are Champions of Free Speech.

I have no problem admitting that I believe there are types of speech that no private organization should be obligated to amplify, and other types of speech (e.g. incitement to violence, or extortion) that should be prosecuted by the state.  But I'm honest about my position; I don't pretend to be some sort of free speech absolutist as I cheer on crackdowns on speech I disagree with.

It's not.

Literally the only difference is that more conservatives will be allowed to harass people (doxxing etc.) and spread disinformation.
There will be no other change.  Everyone else who is banned will stay banned.

It's not that surprising to me. You'll see popular opinion treat "free speach" The same way people treat invocations conducted by members of the satanic temple.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1TVOS84X48 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1TVOS84X48)
First amendment only counts with people if they agree with the message.

Right.

If a law passed by Democrats violates some supposed Christian belief then it must be thrown out because it unconstitutionally violates freedom of religion, but if a law passed by Republicans violates some other religion's beliefs, then fuck off, this is a Judeo-Christian country.

No, its not.  It is a Christian country.  Period.  Full Stop.  Christmas is a legal holiday.  Yom Kipper is not. 

Claiming otherwise pretends the US is significantly more accepting multiculturalism than it is and pretends legal and systematic anti-semitism is not deeply rooted in US history. 

No, I did not. In my mind any organization designated as a "Terrorist Organization" by the State Department would be banned from not ony Twitter but doing business with any American company. This is one of those things that I see as a given although time has taught me there are different views. Again ... that's why I asked the question to you guys.  I honestly don't understand how allowing people who disagree with you to have a voice and the fact something I say may hurt your feelings ... aka refusing to refer to you as Mrs. when in fact you are a male does not change that. It goes both ways. You can call me a girl or refer to yourself as it if you want. Heck ... you are free to make fun of religion which in reality is about the worst personal insult you can do to anyone in my opinion.

On the flip side if I threaten you because you call yourself an it, girl, boy, etc .... then I need to be shown the door. At least that is how I see it working.   

So if Biden's State Department declares the Proud Boys a "terrorist organization," they can then be banned from Twitter.  And if President Alex Jones declares BLM a "terrorist organization," they can be banned.  Basically, you're just saying the government should be the one to decide who gets free speech on Twitter.

Side note:

Elon Musk is so rich that it's hard to understand motivations.  Normally, a business buyout is some kind of play to make money, but here, you just have no idea why he's doing it.

This is a symptom of a bigger problem.

In order to finance this purchase, Musk took on $25 billion in debt financing; debt that will require over $1 billion/year in interest alone.
Twitter's total revenue in 2020 (https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/twitter-announces-fourth-quarter-and-fiscal-year-2020-results-301225278.html) was $3.7 billion, but its operating income was only $27 million.  If a good chunk of Twitter's largely left-leaning staff moves on, and Twitter is already operating deep in the red on debt servicing alone, this would essentially be a fatal wound to the company.

Now, for decades we've been living in a world where companies like Mitt Romney's Bain Capital have made a very lucrative business out of "buying" a company with heavy debt financing, bleeding it dry by raiding company assets like pension funds, then leaving it to die in a ditch while the lifelong employees are thrown out on the street and lose their pensions they had been working for most of their lives.  But over the last ten years or so, we've seen a new development: a wave of libertarian techbro billionaires now have the power to simply erase large companies from existence.  Musk's former partner at PayPal, Peter Thiel, chose to erase Gawker from existence because they "outed" him as gay.  And now Musk has gotten mad at Twitter and decided to buy it on a whim.  If he ends up buying Twitter just to drag it behind a fence and slip a knife in its throat... then oh well, that money was nothing to him anyway; he still has hundreds of billions more.

Too bad that the inevitable Tesla stock crash hasn't happened yet.  Hopefully that day comes before Elon Musk trades in more of his fantasy Tesla stock for some real power.

Short answer is yes to using the terrorist list. No, I don't think the goverment should be the one who decides what gets posted on twitter including Trump, Biden, Obama, Reagan etc. I can't see an administration designatiing a group as terrorist just to keep them off of twitter but I don't really truth the government either.

I don't know Musk's intentions, like I said, but there's a reason these big tech companies put limitations and bans in place to begin with.   He's going to have to deal with that in some form, just like everyone did before.  When you just let whoever say whatever without consequence, the wheels fall off -- that could be that the platform is no longer interesting or viable, that sponsorships and ads dry up -- whatever.

Trump designated Antifa as a terrorist organization.  That was clearly just a political move as Antifa never engaged in anything remotely terror related.  Blocking traffic or defacing a monument to a confederate soldier is NOT terrorism.  Storming the US capital to reverse an election you are not happy with, IS TERRORISM. 

Trump was removed from Twitter after using Twitter to encourage a self-coup d'état. 

I am all for banning anyone who supported, participated or encouraged the overthrowing of the democratically elected government of the USA.  (That is a significant portion of the Republican party.) 

You try and make it sound so wholesome ... hahaha.  I get that it's an idea and NOT a complete organization but some members regularly wear black clothing, ski masks, scarves, sunglasses, and other crap to conceal their faces while they use improvised explosives and other homemade weapons against American citizens and police. I left out they also regularly use bricks, pipes, hammers, homemade bombs, chemical irritants, balloons filled with paint and ink, semi-automatic rifles, and one guy even attempted to ignite a 500-gallon propane tank on people. I'm not sure what you label that but I'll lose no sleep over them being labeled terrorist just as I wouldn't for the KKK.

Yes, on concealing themselves yes.  They have defended themselves against violent white supremist terrorist such as the ones who murdered Heather Heyer.  But as for the rest that is just Laura Ingram fiction. 

The KKK on the other hand has a history of terrorism going back over hundred years and including thousands of murders.  The KKK has murdered more Americans than Al-Qaeda, it is unquestionably a terrorist organization. 

Using "officially designated terrorist" is a convenient metric for conservatives, as the US establishment is terrified of labeling any domestic right-wing activity as "terrorism."  Somehow, they're always lone wolves with mental health issues.

Around 2009, DHS released a report warning that right-wing domestic terrorism was the biggest looming threat, and Republicans screamed so loudly that the Obama Administration walked it back.  And since that time, the biggest threat in this country has been... right-wing domestic terrorism.

So yeah, it's completely on brand for conservatives to cheer on Twitter bans for "terrorist organizations," as that label will never be officially applied to neo-Nazis, Proud Boys, QAnon, the Boogaloo Boys, etc.  Only brown groups will be labeled "terrorists."