Elon buys Twitter: Good! « Better in their words…

Elon buys Twitter: Good!

October 30 | Posted by mrossol | 1st Amendment, American Thought, Big Tech, Western Civilization

Yes, and good input from Mr. Prasad. mrossol

By Vinay Prasad, Source: Elon buys Twitter: Good!

Elon has bought twitter. I have a few thoughts

I admire Elon. In a world where many (most?) innovators create digital time sinks to build their fortune, Elon actually builds things. Things you can touch. You got to admire that. Tesla vehicles are fun to drive. I don’t own one, but I once floored a Tesla Plaid edition, and could not believe it. Unreal.
Twitter has challenges. It is a great medium to disseminate your message to a wide audience, but is probably the single most unpleasant social media platform to use. Nasty replies, ad hominem, fake accounts, bots, screenshots— and that’s just what other faculty members partake in!
There are 3 types of twitter users. People who say nothing or next to nothing or live mostly in replies. People who tweet banalities, and people who offer interesting and original content. The last category is tiny— microscopic.
Ironically, twitter benefits most from the last category, but cultivates an experience so odious it pushes them away. Elon has to tackle this. I recently heard one commenter say Twitter is pennywise, but pound-foolish. Meaning it amplifies outrage which gets clicks, but ultimately drives away the talented content creators.
Twitter has been censoring content, but unevenly. Far more on the right than the left. Twitter is Covidian in its thinking— it loves masking toddlers, lockdowns, shutdowns and endless boosters. Elon would say it is infected with the woke-mind virus; that is indeed the direction it censors content.
When I was growing up Liberals championed free speech. Now they fear it. So much so, many threaten to leave twitter! I simply don’t get it. I think Liberals should take ownership of both the first Amendment and the broader American culture of free speech.
Elon is right that twitter has potential, here is what he told advertisers, “The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner” – I agree with him. That is the potential.