This was easily predicted, all of it. Friday morning arrives. Elon Musk fired his executives yesterday afternoon and today is his first full day as owner of Twitter. It was expected that his first act would be to restore tweeting privileges to Donald Trump.
That hasn’t happened — yet. Trump has gone out of his way to say on Truth Social that he would not return to Twitter if asked and nobody believes that one. You could sell the Brooklyn Bridge easier than you’ll sell that fable.
And on that basis, of course all bets were on what you’re about to see taking place, and it did, like clockwork.
The comedic spin is that it’s the right wing who is pushing this fake news item.
Devin Nunes writes on Truth Social the fake Trump press release is “fakenews” and “left wing desperation for Donald Trump to go back to T[w]itter.” But, turns out it was mostly right-wingers: pic.twitter.com/2ITt4izE3b
— Zachary Petrizzo (@ZTPetrizzo) October 28, 2022
And there’s this.
Elon Musk taking over Twitter is bad news for Trump’s Truth Social platform, as Truth users say they’re returning to Twitter.
— Zachary Petrizzo (@ZTPetrizzo) October 28, 2022
That may or may not be the case. It is possible that Truth Social users believe that Twitter is once again fair game for things that were deemed to be forbidden. Maybe they will surge over to Twitter and pollute it, assuming they ever left. We should know that soon.
But the big question is, what will Musk do about Trump? Will he reinstate him? If he does, that would beg the obvious question, then what about Roger Stone, Mike Lindell, all of the Big Lie crowd? Would they get reinstated as well?
Because if there is one certitude of Trump’s being right now, it is that he is pushing the Big Lie and persuading his devotees to push it. You recall the Blake Masters debacle of a few days ago, where “mob boss Trump” told him, “don’t get soft,” and persuaded him to push the stolen election theme as vociferously as Kari Lake does. Ergo, if Trump returns, it’s going to be to push the Big Lie and make Twitter an instrument of spreading the Big Lie.
Musk has to know that. Therefore, whatever he does now vis a vis letting Trump back on the platform is going to reflect Musk’s own agenda regarding the Big Lie. Or, alternatively, Musk may not want to open up Pandora’s box and he may just leave things as they are and not reinstate Trump. After all, Trump has publicly stated he’s happy on his own platform, right?
Meanwhile, we sit and ponder and wait for the next shoe to drop.
Ahem! Musk didn’t “fire” anybody. The parties involved QUIT, as they have no intentions of hanging around so he CAN fire them. I fully expect our Discount Howard Hughes to utterly destroy the platform, based on recent actions.
His plan is to fire the majority of the twitter employees. The execs leaving will be a bad thing. The people who actually do the work? That will be catastrophic.
Dear God, I hope Musk doesn’t allow the Mango A-hole back on Twitter AND I hope he’s in Prison before the end of this year!! Let’s go DOJ, put his fat ass in Prison!!!!!
I swore all along I’d never stoop to signing up for twitter. I found myself in a situation where to meet a promise, to fulfill an obligation I had no choice. I’m not active, but only check on certain activity. But I broke a personal vow that I still believe I was justified in making in the first place. Twitter is even more destructive than FB and that’s saying a lot.
But the sickness inside I felt when I relented and created an account on twitter to do what I had to do has returned. I whored myself out. And if Musk does open up the Pandora’s box an already still foul platform will be so much worse and so much more destructive. I’m feeling sicker inside, and worse about myself and where our national discourse is headed than I can put into words.
I agree that if Trump’s account were to be unlocked he’d be back on Twitter in a heartbeat. He got his pile of cash from suckers that invested in Truth Social and he’ll do what he’s always done – walk away and leave a bankrupt entity with everyone but him holding the bag.
I have never (and will never!) use TWITter, Fakebook, or other “social media”! “Social media” actually means data mining! They all collect and sell personal data. Fakebook even collects and sells data on people who have not signed up and don’t use it! The others may do that too. “Social media” is detrimental to our Democracy, and society as a whole, and will be as long as it is able to be used to spread lies, disinformation and propaganda!
I have no social media accounts, even Facebook. I won’t give money to the capo that owns Facebook nor participate with a format that spreads lies & fascism. Boycott!!! It worked in Montgomery, it worked with lunch counters in 1960. Stop giving them money. If you participate then you are funding these assholes.
I dropped Facebook well over a year ago. The people I used to contact there either moved away or passed away. It took me quite some time to regroup; eventually, I found Twitter a few months ago! I’m enjoying it, but I don’t spend the time on Twitter that I did with Facebook. There are three folks on there that I really enjoy, and we’ve become buds. It’s a lot lighter than FB, shorter comments, no drama. If Musk injects a user fee or heavy rules, I’ll drop it. I still know how to write letters….
musk just flushed $44 B down the toilet and probably doesn’t even know it. All the execs who know what they’re doing left and the dumb-ass is in the process of firing the talent and firing 75% of the workforce will destroy twitter. He will bring back all the hate speech (he IS a white from south africa after all), disinformation and lies thereby losing all the advertisers. I don’t know how long it will take for twitter to tank but it is headed for the shitter in a big way. Saying it will shut down by the end of next year is being generous. Now, as he sees things tanking he could make changes to his policies and hire back the talent but that would be admitting he was a damned fool and I just don’t see that happening. He’d allow himself, or rather his tesla investors (this ain’t coming out of his pocket after all), to lose the $44B rather than admit he really doesn’t know what he’s doing.
Everyone seems to forget something: musk is a boy from a wealthy family who really doesn’t know his ass from his elbow. Tesla cars are not good cars. Don’t know how much he had to do with the design and all but he either designed P.O.S. cars or hired others to design P.O.S. cars. He has name/brand recognition in much the same way as trump does: by blowing his own horn. As every other auto manufacturer and as new ones are created make more e-cars musk’s autos will be seen for what they are, crap, and tesla will be headed for the shitter as well. I’ve put off purchasing a full on e-vehicle because teslas have occupied the bottom in every reliable auto ranking I’ve seen and every one of the the companies ranking them state the vehicles are unreliable and expensive.
I am pretty happy with hybrids but a hybrid+ might be my next purchase. I can tell you this much: it damned sure won’t be a tesla and after all the hate speech and the rest of the crap return to twitter, a lot of people who might have been tempted to purchase a tesla will be avoiding them much like we do to companies who support pols, etc. who exhibit hate speech, garbage laws, etc.
Most ordinary humans have ‘put off buying Tesla’ for one simple reason – they are too expensive for a normal purchaser. Now that others are producing E-cars we can all wait for the competition to reduce the prices. I still wonder how the long term picture looks because nobody knows how long those batteries last & how much replacements would cost – is the car business pricing itself out of normal human’s range? for me that answer is definitely YES – but then I remember when my first new Hyundai was in the $8000 price range & still can’t believe anybody pays $40,000+ for a new car ! I use my 10yr old car for getting from A to B & do not need any fancy sh*t to ‘enhance’ my experience. Good old basic functionality is what counts.