Elon Musk offers $43 billion to buy Twitter

Ugh.

I don't think the world needs Musk any more. Dude needs to go away.

Would be nice to see him invest that money for something good. Could probably build some solid high-speed rail infrastructure in a lot of areas, using his money, connections, and even manufacturing.

I don't care. I'll just stop using it.

He's just pumping and dumping.

great news. No private company should have their mouth on the left wing KNOB all the time. Then again, the right is spreading a ton of bs and fake news. My opinion is that free speech even if its still lies, BS and smoke should still take precedent. End of the day, the truth always wins out.

I wanna see it just for the leftie meltdowns.

If this happens, it will be interesting to see what happens. How twitter changes. I am pretty sure the fairly decent balance of free speech and moderation is one of the reasons Twitter is so popular. Moderated enough that Mob Rule doesnt run the streets, but also open enough that conservatives keep going back to it instead of the likes of Parler.

However, I do agree with this. Investing in infrastructure could be great.

@rmpumper: I wonder if him constantly manipulating stocks will ever get him in trouble.

Oh no.

Is any media in US really leftist?

Yeah but you still get free speech without Twitter.

Twitter is essentially a microphone, that's it. Free speech is fine, doesn't mean everyone needs to hear it. I think we become so obsessed with the "right" of it all we forget that it isn't even the purpose of Twitter to begin with.

Jokes on us, Twitter benefits from this debate, we don't. Twitter has done nothing but add to the growing divide, make people feel more insecure, and more or less add fuel to the fire of all manner of debates.

Our right to free speech doesn't have anything to do with Twitter. Frankly I'd prefer it shut down but then people would just go to more radical outlets; best to go with the devil you know in this case, I guess.

I don't care enough about Twitter to care one way or another; I agree, it will be an interesting social experiment at the very least.

What I do care about is how much and how many other people care about Twitter.

The irony of course is that very few "regular" people actually have Twitter accounts; it's mostly public figures, journalists, and politicians. You know know, loud know-it-alls that want attention.

@horgen: Is that a serious question?

@sargentd:

You should have put a more moderate/commonsense poll answer - That It probably won't make that much of a difference. If this happens, It will probably be a few symbolic rules changes that don't do anything substantial more than anything. A lot of the censorship cons cry about (boohoo couldn't spam the N word or Anti-Vaxx) will probably stay.

Twitter is still very successful. Look at what happens when companies try to appease the right with "muh open square",

Harsh truth: Trump’s social media app follows long line of failed ventures | Donald Trump | The Guardian

Right-wing Twitter imitations don't work — and Trump desperately wants back on real social media | Salon.com

How much have you invested? In anything?

Agreed. And he'd probably ruin Twitter anyway.

Imagine how many fellow baldies could buy hair plugs for with that money.

Media seems corporate focused and friendly.

I don't believe the answer to that question matters in discussing the topic.

However, my personal answer is: $millions. How about you?

Regardless, I think the comment about infrastructure is misguided...as it implies only the physical aspect. In the modern world, infrastructure includes communications infrastructure and in that world the physical and the content delivered are often intermingled.

My attempt at a physical analogy is: the Golden Gate Bridge is not just a bridge. Like the Statue of Liberty is not just a statue.

To quote the late great Marshall McLuhan: 'The medium is the message.'

Which has never been more true in the internet/social media age. Do young people even use Facebook any more? Or the phrase: you get your news from Facebook?!!! That phrase is increasingly derogatory isn't it?

So my take is that whoever owns Twitter is material. And however it were to transform would be material.

Therefore this piece of communications infrastructure is material and the medium itself is a key part of its importance.

Good news. Won't make me create an account, but it simply can't be as bad as it currently is.

@horgen: Not serious, gotcha.

@SUD123456: yeah I only said infrastructure as a quick example. Honestly, anything would be better than just outright "buying" Twitter.

Buy pedicures for the homeless. Buy socks for a million cats and dogs.

Truth be told this is all bullshit anyway; dude buys like 10% of Twitter and the world freaks out, so naturally Musk tweets "Herp derp gonna buy majority of Twitter. AM I!?!?! OOOOOOOH LOOK AT ME!" and we all look at him like chumps. I'm ashamed to have even responded to the thread, frankly, as should we all.

Elon Musk does what all born-rich people do; they get richer. Sadly, unlike the rest of us, they also tend to fail upward instead of downward, and never really develop as people nor suffer their losses like the rest of us do when we fail at capitalism, which is probably why he is a crazy man-child that likes fucking with entire populations and livelihoods.

Is this?

By global standards, the US is very conservative. Including its media (on average).

Does that matter to you?

You OK, bud? You're coming off very snarky and passive-aggressive today.

You a fan of Elon? It's OK, he's fooled a lot of folks, you're not alone.

Nope, just getting a kick out of the hypocrites. The first guy who is never short on ideas on how to spend other people's money, and I doubt he's ever donated any of his own funds to any of these causes. It's always someone else's job to pay for it all.

As for the corporate interests in big media, I don't recall ever seeing him call out that close relationship whenever the topic of Pfizer came up. Seems media's close ties with corporate interests are only problematic when it is most convenient for them to be.

@eoten: Well I can't speak for him, but I'll have you know every year I spend 5 dollars to help save the otters in California.

Would be hilarious to see this play out.

I have had a lot of wells built, and a few other stuff in water infrastructure. Your attempt to call out hypocrisy failed.

And why are you using the "Have you made a game before defense?"?

Is this some faux pump and dump on his end? Musk seems like he just tries to troll the SEC at this point. He's rich enough at this point where there's little they'll probably enforce against him.

So what leftist media do you got? Or is the moving of the goalpost you admitting a loss?

its just hilarious that an "upset" is a problem, like they were doing a "good job" previously. laf.

tribalist bs continues.

@Maroxad: You fund wells? Wells are a way for Big Water to control the global population. Humans don't even need water.

To claim there is no leftist media in the US is being intentionally obtuse. You know damn well there is. Their political affiliations have been well known for decades. Just because they get their funding from corporate advertising doesn't make that any less true.

In its current form, Twitter is like Fight Club for people afraid to get punched. It's toxic in that there can only be one side to an argument so anyone that doesn't think like they're supposed to are welcome to talk to the thought police.

I always found it odd how some people assume you can't be right wing on Twitter and how conservatives are unfairly targetted. I see right wing rhetoric on twitter every day. Be it pro-capitalist, pro-cop, pro-establishment, anti-lgbtq, anti-vaccine and even white supremacist. The only times I see people get into trouble is when they are clearly saying some really yikesy stuff.

There are pro communist media in US?

That's what you get from Twitter's completely reasonable policies? It's a publicly traded company. Why in the world would it ever want to be associated with the things that violate its policies?

People today seem to be under the impression that the 1st amendment protects them from more than just government censorship. Really weird.

You're trolling.

Nah, I just don't call everything left of Fox news for leftist media.

You're making the claim the media has no leftwing bias. They clearly do by virtually every metric. Saying they're not, and then moving the goal posts to the extreme far left of communism is first, being obtuse, then doubling down on that, and then moving the goal posts once that doesn't pan out. You're either extremely ignorant, or trolling.

This is a pump and dump scheme. Nothing more nothing less.

Elon Musk is no friend of free speech and has had a history of trying to censor people with action.

It is pretty obvious, Horgen defines them in accord to what the left and right would be considered here in europe. Most likely Norway in his case.

Any media promoting health care for all or similar? How about improved benefits for the unemployed? Parental leave those who recently had a kid? Paid sick days? To mention some leftist view points.

You have failed to mention any leftwing media outlets.

In America politics is dominated by a two party system, the right wing version of which is almost purely reactionary. In that environment, anything that isn't consistently pro-right-wing-party is going to be seen as having a left wing bias by members of the reactionary party, and most mainstream outlets aren't going to be consistently pro-right-wing-party because the party's platform is so often flat out stupid.

Hence the Republican ridicule of "lamestream media."

You do understand the reason media promotes healthcare for all is because it's a huge financial boon to their corporate sponsors in big pharma, right? When patients are guaranteed funding for all drugs, guess what happens to the actual prices charged for those drugs and medications? Big pharma wants that crap, so media promotes it. Just because media has and supports corporate interests doesn't make them any less left leaning. Leftwing ideologies usually don't have a problem with corporations, so long as they can control them. China IS communist, and they still have corporations. They're controlled by the CCP, but they are there.

So corporate tie in means nothing for the left/right spectrum. If you believe it does, then you're confused. Yet, you actually think this excludes NBC, CNN, WaPo, NYT, from having that bias? Again, you are trolling, or you're trying, and failing, to use that whole "no true scots" fallacy to suggest these organizations aren't leftwing because they have corporate interests and aren't flagrantly preaching the word of Marx.

Elon Musk is just another rich asshole who thinks he's entitled to more.

Maybe if he focused on making his shitty cars work better he'd actually contribute something to society.

Profit per unit sold will go down drastically. Pharma might be big, but against federal government? Don't make me laugh.

Of course if Republicans get their say on it, then feds can not negotiate the price.

Yeah it makes no sense to the pharmaceutical companies would want less profit.

The buyer could more or less dictate the price. Even more so for everything where there is more than one supplier.

Pharmaceutical companies will rather take a hit in their profit than lose the whole US marked.

none of those things are inherently right leaning....

Pro-capitalist?? Pro-establishment?? lol

Its not up to us to decide what someone else should be investing in.

Id argue making social media more supportive of freedom of speech is a worthy cause. Especially since its such an important part in how we communicate today.

He could invest in your solid high speed rail infrastructure idea and somebody would probably still bitch about it and say it should have gone to cancer research or something else instead.

No matter what he invests in, somebody is going to say it should have gone towards X instead.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, those are centrist positions and Democrats are far left for supporting LGBTQ rights, promoting vaccines, and working for civil rights.

Pro-capitalist??? really?? you want to give capitalism to the right?

Wtf does the left believe in economically if not capitalism?

Pro-Establishment?? Leftists put Biden in power lmao a 40+ year career politician.