So "X" - nothing to see here. Elon's in control - Part XXX

The whole $8 story really is such a misstep by Musk you'd wonder how he ever had whatever success he had.

To be fighting such a battle a week in to owning the platform when so much of the conversation, from him as much as anyone, was about 'Free Speech' is 'fired on the second week of the Apprentice' territory.

The only unsurprising thing is seeing all the people who begged him to buy the platform on the basis that he was going to bring back free speech now pivot to justifying his cock up.

AOC summarized it perfectly.

Talk of 50% of staff getting let go today.

That's some cull.

California has a 'Warn' Law that if you have a company with over 75 staff, you have give 60 days notice of significant staff cuts to allow people to prepare.

Musk did not do this, a law suit as been filed already apparently.

Is it only US employees that will be dumped? How many employees in ireland? There would be 3 month notice periods surely for employees in Dublin.

Equality of opinion is a nonsense. Your opinion does not hold as much weight as everyone else on every subject. Claiming your opinion matters as much as an expert on a subject is frankly ridiculous.

Also ridiculous is the idea that Twitter is silencing a certain political slant, or that they’ve been enemies of free speech. Free speech does not mean you have a right to be heard, it just means you won’t be thrown in prison for airing your views.

If Twitter basically threw out their ToS in the name of absolute free speech it would be a worse place than it is right now. Anyone claiming absolute free speech is the ideal only does so to be allowed to debate or discuss in bad faith - to say whatever they want no matter how incendiary without a shred of evidence(e.g Hunter Bidens laptop).

Going back to Musk, it really seems like he hasnt a clue what he’s doing. Talk of mass firings, ridiculously long work weeks and half-arsed monetisation policies. Could be the end of Twitter as we know it.

Looks to me like he knows what he's doing. He's going to make Twitter far leaner than it is now - more flexible, agile and responsive to the market.

He knows that the 'libs' need his platform but also that there is the market on the right as well to be tapped.

The outrage etc is just free publicity from people who are hopelessly reliant and addicted to Twitter and will basically pay whatever they are told to pay.

He knows that.

Stick to the knitting.

An engineer and physics background of much success in state of the art technology has bought a website with a lot of issues that operates in a totally unrelated field for a lot of money.

To much ego me thinks, and while he is a smart man he wasnt smart enough to realize that this was a terrible idea.

I dont ever see him getting a ROI from this, and its going to become such a problem child for him that his other businesses will undoubtedly suffer.

If he knew what he was doing he wouldnt have spooked advertisers in pulling their spend, he would have made less public changes.

He has taken over and hit the nuclear button, he has overpaid and is going to have to manipulate the share price to get a return like we have seen from him in recent times in other areas.

I love how the clamour for 'free speech' has now become 'equal speech' and people are pretending that was the case all along.

What exactly is equal speech?

I am in favour of freedom of speech with consequences: say whatever you like but don't get your knickers in a knot if you get called up on it because you are threatening people or posting factless drivel. There may well be legal consequences or you may be banned from whatever site or, God forbid, people may not want anything to do with you if you say stuff that is particularly hateful.

The well has been poisoned enough in terms of disinformation so people should be held responsible when posting falsehoods and basing their arguments on them.

As for Musk, he's free to do what he likes with his new toy, as the previous owners of Twitter were able to. I'm still interested in seeing how it plays out for him. He seems to be rattling the cage but from what I can tell, and I'm not a big Twitter user, the content being posted doesn't seem to have changed.

Once things settle down and he actually begins to put his own moderation approach in place, I'll be wondering how much more 'equal' the speech on Twitter is and just what that entails. Actions speak louder than words and Musk loves to talk but his actions aren't always on the same wavelength.