Success or failure, Twitter at the hands of Elon Musk

Ahh, but you have to read Wil Wheaton's amazing take-down of a man in mid-lfe crisis...
Wil Wheaton
I can not fathom the emptiness, the insecurity, the insatiable need for attention and validation, the staggering arrogance, the malevolence and total void of human experience that is Elon Musk.
He's the richest man on the planet. You can't go anywhere or do anything without interacting with something he's part of in some way. There are literal millions of people who uncritically worship him, in spite of overwhelming evidence that he's a douchebag. Some number of them will come after me, as they come after anyone who points at their naked emperor. They'll spend entire days going after me and people like me, slavishly serving a man who does not even know they exist. They are his army of fools, uncritically serving his every whim. And it still isn't enough.
He can have any material thing he wants, and he will *never* be happy or satisfied. He has no real friends. Every single person around him is either a viper, a parasite, or both.
So what does he do? He bullies and threatens and harasses and trolls and behaves like the weak, scared, insecure child he has always been. That's a tragedy for him, but it's dangerous for us. He doesn't care what he destroys or who he hurts as he chases this existential thing he can not ever have.
You know the saying "hurt people hurt people"? He's a hurt person who is hurting our society, making people I care about less safe. The consequences of this one man's midlife crisis are global, and that terrifies me.

 

Next step, one which moderators everywhere are interested in seeing... mainly to see what happens next!!!

Elon Musk to launch new blue, gold and grey Twitter ticks

Twitter’s new owner said the platform would launch a new verification service next Friday, having pulled an earlier attempt at a revamp this month after it triggered a flood of impostor accounts.

Musk said verified accounts would carry a blue tick – or checkmark – for individuals, a grey tick for “government” and a gold tick for companies. The Tesla chief executive did not specify whether the government tick would apply also to state departments or state-owned entities.

 

Freedom of Speech is a technical term referring to Governmental Censorship. Nothing more.
Only your government can limit your Freedom of Speech like they do other freedoms.

You can post in a million places, so if one non-governmental place censors or bans, your freedom hasn't really been limited.

Corporations are private entities, in fact the US Supreme Court claims they have the rights of people, which means they get "freedom of speech". Which means they can say whatever they want OR NOT! So they are under no obligation to allow people to speak freely about anything.

So if Elon wants Twitter to be a Right-wing Cesspool of human excrement, he's perfectly in his rights as a private citizen and the owner of a company.

If we want to turn Hip Forums into a Left Wing social network that excludes rightwingnuts, we are within our rights and we are not abridging their freedom to speak cause they can go to twitter and tweet their hearts out, or any of the hundreds of right wing sites that exist only to propagandize the ignorant.

 

I actually enjoyed OLD TWITTER. But it's becoming something else deplorable (to quote Hillary).
For the latest news it's unbeatable because news often happens on Twitter itself.
Journalists and corporations use Twitter to reach a big audience.
Now if they just stuck to that, and maybe have a different app for social networking among nobodies, maybe they'd be worth saving.
But the mix of pure B.S., Bots, Nazis, assholes, etc. is very toxic for those who have real reputations to protect, including companies.

Time is right for some startup to steal the journalists and corporations so they don't have to worry about some rightwing assholes spontaneous whims.

I do like how so many news sources are able to embed the twitter posts in their stories, that is the ace in the hole for twitter.