Who would have guessed that a social media platform owned by an apartheid-loving fascist would trend right wing? I mean, Musk is such a stable genius.
/s just in case.
And all he had to do was act like he wanted to back track on the offer and the courts forced the sale through quickly rather than slow things down and consider whether social media should even be a privately owned thing run at the whims of a guy that used that same platform to try to ruin someone’s life with a baseless pedophilia accusation because they hurt he’s feelings when telling him his sub idea wouldn’t work and he was just getting in the way rather than helping anything.
I just wonder if the courts fell for his ploy or if they just played the part they were supposed to and the whole thing was an act.
Also, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he spent 44 billion on Twitter and then, after pretty much ruining it, for some reason Tesla shareholders (which are majority institutional shareholders) vote through a 50 billion compensation package for him.
I love how, despite Musk’s best efforts, 3/4 of the internet still calls the site Twitter.
I also like Xitter, because in my head that can only be pronounced Shitter, which is a good name for it.
My association with X is “Not Wayland”.
“They call it deadnaming because it’s dead. My [Twitter] is dead.”
We were going to keep calling it Twitter no matter what, but it feels even better knowing how much he loves deadnaming.
Musk is learning the lesson Google and Youtube learned years ago with the “adpocalypse”. If the whole house of cards depends on ad dollars you have to keep them happy.
Unless Musk is going to take X (Twitter) completely subscription only, or fund it exclusively out of his own pocket, he is not going to get that “anything I want goes” utopia he keeps crowing about.
fund it exclusively out of his own pocket
That’s how newspapers got started - they were propaganda organs of the rich and existed exclusively to manipulate public opinion. Things really haven’t changed that much, but somewhere along the way people were tricked into paying for them.
Except that libel laws and regulations exist to regulate things like newspapers, not things like random comments by random users you may not even know is a bot account. At the very worst, they can only report on what people are saying and ignore the counterarguments, not present lies as truth. Not that it hasn’t been eroded, but it’s at least much more costly to attempt to use newspapers for disinformation.
Pretty sure Russia’s owners of Twitter really intend it just to be used as a propaganda backwagon platform, like China’s TikTok, so the funding does not need to be self-sufficient. As long as they get a critical userbase where they can move their propaganda, nerf the criticism, and can’t be taken down because of the ensuing backlash, that’s good enough for them.
Good. Kill the Twitter.
When an organization as problematic as the world Bank won’t work with you…
Context below for anyone curious about how shitty the World Bank and IMF are
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/14/business/world-bank-kenya-schools.html
https://medium.com/@IndependentAcademy/introduction-ad7d83489f1e
https://positivemoney.org/update/modern-day-colonialism-debt-crisis-in-the-global-south/
Capitalism: free markets are the only way if you dont like Nazi shit go somewhere else librulz
Also capitalism: Its literally illegal to not give us money and if you take your money elsewhere we’ll sue you!
Twitter isn’t capitalism, nor is Elon Musk. He says “I love capitalism” in the same way as Emperor Palpatine says “I love democracy!”
It is though - this is what capitalism invariably becomes. Musky Twitter is a symptom of late stage capitalism. This is why so many people say capitalism is bad and doesn’t work as advertised.
The golden age of classical liberalism, when capitalism actually worked, the 1700-1800’s, more closely resembles what we would today call market socialism.
Once the agglomerations of capital became large enough to impose irresistible anti-competitive force, the days of capitalism’s beneficial functionality ended. They say “the freer the market the freer the people”, but an unregulated market isn’t free - it invariably trends toward monopoly and irrationally assigned concentrations of wealth and power, eg Musk, Bezos, DuPont, Sackler, etc…
Capitalism supports, rather than resists, the anti-competitive influence of capital. A truly free market requires the intervention of powers other than capital - eg, democratic governance imposing something akin to Market Socialism against the wishes of those anti-competitive agglomerations of capital.
The golden age of classical liberalism, when capitalism actually worked, the 1700-1800’s, more closely resembles what we would today call market socialism.
I don’t think that’s a valid historical claim. 1700s and 1800s were largely influenced by Adam Smith, with a limited level of governmental intervention and high amount of private liberties.
What western countries currently have is much more like market socialism than classical liberalism. If we take Elon Musk as an example, a large part of his success comes from governmental corruption: direct financial assistance (multiple billions of dollars), tax breaks and subsidies, and several government contracts. Even fucking Ayn Rand would call him a parasite.
I think the proper fix would be to return to actual classical liberalism and reject or at least limit the amount of market socialism. No idea how that could be done now that the problem has become so bad. A neoliberal revolution? lol.
The market didn’t need regulations to maintain its freeness back then because the vast majority of transactions were made with small businesses. The limited technological capabilities in transport and communication also decreased the need for government regulation by decreasing the ability of the largest concentrations of capital to succeed at implementing global anti-competitive strategies.
To achieve the same degree of market freedom today, in the era of omni-national mega-corporations wielding monopoly influence, requires utilizing levers of power outside of the market those mega-corps dominate. The intervention of democratic governments to enforce anti-monopoly laws and prohibit other kinds of anti-competitive behavior is a necessary component of any plan to transform today’s marketplace into one that looks more similar to the market of Adam Smith’s day.
More liberalism would just create more corruption especially with the current amount megacorpos, external government intervention & its existing corruption to start.
What is needed is less corruption & a destruction of large corporations. Removing corruption requires the current corruption to be stopped by legislation & public pressure.
That tweet is so racist that I’m surprised Elon didn’t tweet a thinking face emoji reacting to it.
Hmmm. Which organization actually empowers the march to fascism globally more? The neo liberal loan sharks or digital Der Stürmer.
What the fuck does the world bank need to advertise for?
There are some countries in Africa that isn’t impoverished enough yet.
Trust us, we are printing all this money for your own good.
Your. Own. Good.
Something like that I assume.
The world bank isn’t involved so much in printing money - that’s central banks like the US Federal Reserve or European Central Bank.
They do love to force developing nations to adopt US-style capitalism by withholding loans for needed development projects. They also focus far too much on increasing GDP at all costs and do not give really any weight to increasing living standards or reducing inequality. Basically, think loans to institute Reaganomics and you won’t be too far off.
The loans pay for large capital projects (power plants, large-scale irrigation, etc) that are built by the state and then mandated to he handed over to private entities that then charge rents and extract wealth. Not every loan and program is bad, but there’s plenty to give pause when they are involved in a project.
lol who would downvote this?
The - I’m pro World Bank and I’m on Lemmy guy?
Is it so hard to believe some people worship power and wealth beyond ethics and social cohesion?
This is also the way of the UN in general oftentimes. Trump’s PPP plan came right from the UN playbook with a few tweaks so that even more of his pals could get money.
Musk will continue being upset with institutions for pulling ads over his favorite content
So Apartheid Boy just said the quiet part out loud?
Color me surprised.
Taking bets on how long before Musk sues them.
I dare Elon to sue World Bank.
Am i the only one confused about what they thought would happen? Have they not been following the news about twitter for the past year or so? Or were they fine with twitter being covered in nazi stuff until their ad appeared next to one and someone notified them?
They were fine until they specifically were called out on it.
