https://twitter.com/mtracey/status/1515056609625616406?s=20&t=Tc3c6G3NNP8NcNjtdtNVyg
Glenn Greenwald
Who was in greater pain during this amazing 1:02 of television?The thousands of employees who work at CNN or the hundreds of people in the audience watching? https://t.co/Mrqr8VU7np
Kekkity
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1515078624696799235?s=20&t=Tc3c6G3NNP8NcNjtdtNVyg
https://twitter.com/brad_polumbo/status/1514981590488825857?s=20&t=Tc3c6G3NNP8NcNjtdtNVyg
From the article
More than a few conservatives and civil libertarians, right and left, have noted that support for free speech as a central principle among American liberals has sharply declined in recent years.
This week, we saw these illiberal views unleashed full force in real-time. The unhinged reaction by lefties on social media to Thursday’s news that billionaire Elon Musk had offered to buy Twitter included dire warnings about the supposed negative “impact on society” and democracy-damaging* effects free and open debate would bring.
(*Author’s note: This might sound controversial, but historically, freedom of expression has been central to free societies).
But as I continued to see tweet after tweet after tweet from lefties digitally writhing in pain over “free-for-all” speech and the damnation and darkness it would bring, I had mainly one thought.
These people sound like Robert Bork.
For those unfamiliar, the late Bork was a federal judge nominated for the Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan in 1987. The Senate denied his confirmation.
But for our purposes, Bork also wrote a best-selling book that advocated using censorship as a way of promoting a healthier society.
Bork’s 1996 work Slouching Toward Gomorrah was controversial at the time because a general consensus existed on both the Right and Left that free speech was sacrosanct in the United States. Back then, you could find social conservatives who were more comfortable with using state power to suppress speech and behavior while the American Left often stood as a bulwark against those tendencies.
Socially conservative Bork did not subscribe to this consensus.
https://www.based-politics.com/2022/04/15/robert-bork-and-how-the-left-is-embracing-old-school-conservative-censorship/
Great, the democrat party used to be anti-war party, they are not only pro-war now, they want nuclear war. If they can’t depopulate through lockdowns, fake vaccines, turning children trans, etc, etc. etc. and ruining America, its got to be Armegeddon now!
Once again it’s Trump’s fault! This is so old.
https://twitter.com/RichardGrenell/status/1515319470323118092?s=20&t=71xmVtCg8vWIkcxZtBK-RQ
Wow people still wear masks?Unbelievable and they are still pathetically non thinking creatures.
https://twitter.com/RichardGrenell/status/1515321543466778624?s=20&t=71xmVtCg8vWIkcxZtBK-RQ
Told you so, he always had partners waiting in the wings, anyone that didn’t think that doesnt understand the planning that went onto this!
https://twitter.com/DavidSacks/status/1515111349633761280?s=20&t=71xmVtCg8vWIkcxZtBK-RQ
I wonder if she slept with all the board too?
https://twitter.com/RichardGrenell/status/1515106596308852740?s=20&t=71xmVtCg8vWIkcxZtBK-RQ
Overheard in the Boardroom of Twitter. Kek
Perpetua Hughes@PerpetuaHughes
Thank you everyone for coming in at such an ungodly hour. The folks at Blackrock have informed me that we need the collective brain trust here urgently to deal with this Elon offer. So - why doesn’t someone tell me what they think is going on here?
Over the last 5 years, Twitter has engaged in a process of what we used to call “denazification” - removal of any accounts pushing uncomfortable narratives; amplification of those voices committed to advancing what we like to call Real Change™️
This has allowed us to get away with suppression of uncomfortable stories like the Hunter Biden laptop, for example, without raising any red flags. As a result, Twitter has built close working partnerships with legacy media outlets and intelligence agencies.
But Musk’s offer of $54.20 a share is so valuable that if Twitter were nothing more than what the average person thinks it is - a run-of-the-mill social media company - we would be required to sell to maximise value for our shareholders.
So you’re telling me - Elon will buy Twitter, and remove the various censorship mechanisms we have in place. The music is about to stop, and we will be exposed for having run the greatest propaganda operation in the history of…capitalism.
Do you care to know why I’m in this chair? I’m here for one reason, and one reason alone. To ensure the narrative remains controlled. To ensure we keep making money while our populations remain distracted. To ensure the “normies” know what to think and when to think it.
Tell me, then - what are we to do with this…bid.
> Poison pill. Dilute the value of the shares owned by everyday investors, sell more to those we can trust.
Is that even possible?
Yes. But who are we selling to?
> The people we have always relied on to control the narrative that makes us money - Morgan Stanley, Saudi Arabia, Vanguard Group…
If you do this, you will expose how corrupt the system is. No one will ever trust you, ever.
You think they’ll trust us if Musk gives them MORE access to information about how we operate? Give any Tom, Dick, or Harry access to a free marketplace of ideas? Let them speak openly about any issue, at any time? Are you aware of just how damaging that could be to all of us?
Luckily, my friends at the SEC - or as Musk calls it, “the short selling enrichment commission” - have informed me they have a few surprises in store for Mr. Musk. By the time they’re through with him, he’ll be ready to send himself to Mars in one of those spaceships of his.
https://twitter.com/PerpetuaHughes/status/1515108596375248898?s=20&t=9D3lfQFuZPo3uhIfFvAROg
Alternatieve
https://twitter.com/DavidSacks/status/1515119312553459712?s=20&t=9D3lfQFuZPo3uhIfFvAROg
Do these people ever get embarrassed, at this point, even the left knows he shook hands with thin air (or his dead dad).
Hey is that a goid movie, I’ll watch of so, need some time off
Yishan
@yishan
I've now been asked multiple times for my take on Elon's offer for Twitter.
So fine, this is what I think about that. I will assume the takeover succeeds, and he takes Twitter private. (I have little knowledge/insight into how actual takeover battles work or play out)
I think if Elon takes over Twitter, he is in for a world of pain. He has no idea.
There is this old culture of the internet, roughly Web 1.0 (late 90s) and early Web 2.0, pre-Facebook (pre-2005), that had a very strong free speech culture.
This free speech idea arose out of a culture of late-90s America where the main people who were interested in censorship were religious conservatives. In practical terms, this meant that they would try to ban porn (or other imagined moral degeneracy) on the internet.
(Remember when it seemed very important to certain people that we ban things like this?)
Insert photo dummy
Many of the older tech leaders today (
@elonmusk
,
@pmarca
, etc, GenXers basically) grew up with that internet. To them, the internet represented freedom, a new frontier, a flowering of the human spirit, and a great optimism that technology could birth a new golden age of mankind.
I believe that too.
But I also ran Reddit.
Reddit was born in the last years of the "old internet" when free speech meant "freedom from religious conservatives trying to take down porn and sometimes first-person shooters." And so we tried to preserve that ideal.
That is not what free speech is about today.
It's not that the principle is no longer valid (it is), it's that the practical issues around upholding that principle are different, because the world has changed.
The internet is not a "frontier" where people can go "to be free," it's where the entire world is now, and every culture war is being fought on it.
It's the MAIN battlefield for our culture wars.
OMG it goes on and on and on, no wonder Elon tweeted the attached comment…kek
https://twitter.com/yishan/status/1514939157931454466?s=20&t=9D3lfQFuZPo3uhIfFvAROg
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1515080561643208710?s=20&t=9D3lfQFuZPo3uhIfFvAROg