this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
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Are we at the point that we can admit ElMo is doing this on purpose to shut down free speech that stands in opposition to wealthy authoritarian regimes?
https://gizmodo.com/twitter-saudi-arabia-x-jack-dorsey-areej-al-sadhan-abdu-1850805085
I'm not going to pretend I have absolute proof, nor that I am an expert on the subject matter. I do believe it stands to reason that he isn't an idiot (nor as intelligent as he portrays himself for that matter) - not enough of an idiot to actively degrade a prominent social media platform to the tune of tens of billions of dollars without a goal in mind.
He's still an idiot, in my opinion. Money isn't worth a damn if there aren't peasants. He might have to wipe his own ass at this rate.
I hope he becomes irrelevant. I'll do my part moving forward.
This "he isn't an idiot" or "not enough of an idiot" is the wrong way to think about things. Smart people believe all sorts of dumb things, and plenty of smart people can delude themselves, especially when they surround themselves with "yes men".
The other thing is X isn't the only social media platform, nor was ever a particularly large one as users go. Getting rid of Twitter just pushes people to threads, mastodon, bluesky and others. It doesn't actually shut down much speech at all.
I think the non-conspiracy thinking is just - Musk was addicted to twitter, liked saying edgy and engaging stuff and because of what was more of a boast but legally was a binding sort of offer to buy ended up forced to buy Twitter. The legal forces were well documented at the time. Now that Musk has Twitter, he decided to make it into what he always professed it should be, along with his egomania has made it more and more like any number of "free speech absolutest" spin offs that turned into right wing cesspools that regular people find less and less appealing, and advertisers really find concerning.
Agreed. That’s why I really dislike the theory it’s some 4D chess. More prof of that is if he wanted it to burn he wouldn’t have renamed it his precious X.com. He wants to still show the world what PayPal would have been if they hadn’t removed him. The same reason he wanted to review all of the code and be in charge of development at X, he still is holding onto the image he’s a rockstar dev and everyone else just doesn’t know what they’re doing.
The sad fact is he may be intelligent in some stuff, but he also lucked out. And as you said he’s increasingly got surrounded by “yes men”, and let go of the people that had tried to mitigate some of tendencies. Not realizing they helped get him to where he was. Even in the original x.com days he had someone help manage and buffer him because he had the tendency to scare off investors.