October is the month of ghouls and shocks, traditionally. We will see one monster return to Twitter, most likely, by All Hallows Eve. Elon Musk is eager to avoid a court trial and Twitter is holding him to his $44 billion buy out price. Ergo, Musk will own Twitter on October 28, barring any new and unforeseen developments in this case.
One former Twitter user who is jumping up and down with glee is Donald Trump. The timing could not be better. Truth Social is ready to go under and Trump doesn’t want to be a man without a platform. That’s not a good look when you’re the head of one of the two major political parties and planning a presidential run.
He’s grinning at the thought.
Trump says Twitter is no good without him: “It was one of the worst decisions made in all of business – taking me off – because they’ve become very boring. There’s no excitement, there’s nothing to talk about.” pic.twitter.com/5KUmapK5Be
— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) October 7, 2022
And of course if Trump comes back on, then who else would? NPR:
In May, Musk said that the ban [of Trump] “was a morally bad decision, to be clear, and foolish in the extreme” and pledged to reverse the ban.
But it’s not just Trump — Musk has been vocally skeptical of the notion that anyone should be permanently banned from Twitter, with few exceptions.
“Would be great to unwind permanent bans, except for spam accounts and those that explicitly advocate violence,” he texted Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal shortly after agreeing to join the company’s board (a decision he soon backtracked).
That could mean lifting bans on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who was kicked off for abusive behavior in 2018; Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., whose account was suspended in January for tweeting misleading and false claims about COVID-19 vaccines; and 2020 election deniers like Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell and Mike Lindell, who were all banned in early 2021.
One person who texted Musk in the days after his Twitter stake became public (whose name was redacted in court documents) advised the billionaire that “it will be a delicate game of letting right wingers back on Twitter and how to navigate that (especially the boss himself, if you’re up for that)” — an apparent reference to Trump.
The person urged Musk to hire “someone who has a savvy cultural/political view” to lead enforcement, suggesting “a Blake Masters type.” Masters is the Republican Senate candidate in Arizona who has been endorsed by Trump and has echoed his false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.
Allowing Trump and others to return could set a precedent for other social networks, including Meta-owned Facebook, which is considering whether to reinstate the former president when its own ban on him expires in January 2023.
“If Trump is replatformed on Twitter, it makes it easier for [Meta president of global affairs] Nick Clegg and [Meta CEO] Mark Zuckerberg to say, ‘Well, he’s already back on Twitter. We might as well let him back on Facebook,'” said Nicole Gill, executive director of Accountable Tech, a progressive advocacy group.
Current Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal is expected to leave. Maybe Musk would in fact hire Blake Masters to run the show. Why have a “type” when you can have the real thing? One idea that Musk has is to charge subscription fees to users. That ought to go over real well.
What’s done is done. We’ll start to see the fallout the end of this month. This could be one very chilling October, in several senses of the word.
Musk was I believe ready to pay his buyout fee (tip money to him) and maybe even more due to the loss of stock price twitter suffered when the deal went sideways. GOD DAMN EVERY MOTHER FUCKING GREEDY ASSHOLE ON TWITTER’S BOARD for their fucking GREED. They are willing to fuck social media via public discourse, our country and the free world by allowing people like Trump, Jones and outright anarchists like Bannon as well as fucking thugs back on to their platform, which Musk has said all along he wants to do. Short of saying “here’s where so and so lives and their schedule so someone out there go MURDER them” that filth, that vitriol, that dangerous disinformation will get the most prominent of platforms to infect humankind with a deadly virus.
For fucking money for some greedy ass fuckwads.
If there is a hell, there isn’t a circle of it anywhere near harsh enough that each and every one of these assholes shouldn’t have to suffer in it until the end of time.
You know how much I hate twitter. And I’ve just reiterated that hatred and it’s about so much more than the inanity of it all. It is fucking dangerous! And will become more so. If I get killed calling out Trump supporters when I go to vote it won’t matter, except to a very few people. But democracy itself (and not just in the U.S.) is in the ICU and this twitter business is an open invitation to allow a gang of assassins access to kill it off in the hospital bed. And they will flood that ICU like a horde.
I hope, I really do that every person at twitter who has pushed to make this deal go through CHOKES TO FUCKING DEATH as they roll around in a big pile of all that cash they’re getting and a balled up piece of it gets accidently inhaled and blocks off their airway. They deserve a worse death for what they are in the process of doing, and for all the suffering and ruin that will result from their greed.
Well, they do have an obligation to their stockholders. 44 billion is more than they could ever hope to get elsewhere.
But I am still not convinced the Musk wants to shell all that out. He may be just pulling a drumpf to try to make the suit go away.
I gather the financial backers aren’t sure he’s going to go through with it, even now.
Fuck all these greedy nazis. Hitler must be bitching in hell cuz he never had all these outlets plus 75 million privileged brain dead assholes. I often wondered what Jesus meant by reportedly saying the entrance to heaven was by a “narrow gate” & the road to hell was wide. I don’t wonder anymore.
Guess who else is not happy with Trump’s return to Twitter…Republicans. Trump will get revenge on them in the worst possible way and this will be his outlet to do it. Maybe GOP heads will roll with the revelation of this news. And the few Republicans that remain will be trying to do their jobs (Ha Ha LOL, the GOP congressmen trying to do their jobs), while Trump screams at them on Twitter.
I guess I will be the voice of dissent in this argument. In my opinion, putting Trump back on Twitter just before the midterms is the greatest gift that you could give to democratic candidates. People have short memories. Remind them of exactly what Trump is and what America will get with a Republican Congress. Then every time Trump says something bigoted or racist or evil, we need to tie every Republican candidate to him like a cinder block around the neck right up to election day.
Well, some of us are looking at the broader picture because if Trump *is* allowed back on, then all the others who’ve been legitimately banned by Twitter will be jumping right back on and not a one of them will have learned any kind of lesson about abusing the platform’s terms of service. No. They will, in fact, crow that THEY don’t have to be held accountable unlike the hundreds, even thousands, of “peons” who get kicked off for even mild violations of the TOS.
These blights on humanity need to realize that (A) the First Amendment does NOT apply to Twitter and (B) you DO have to accept the consequences of promoting lies and hate-filled speech. When I was growing up, some of my cousins were using profanity–in front of their parents–without the slightest reprisal. But me? Oh, MY parents would slap me six ways to Sunday if they heard *me* using that kind of language (even as they themselves would frequently drop some profanity in their conversations). I didn’t think it was fair but, you know, those were the rules I had to live by because they were the grown-ups. Unfortunately, Trump and the rest of the right-wing filth that have been rightfully banned from the service want to continue using the forum to spout their lies and hate–they’re doing it WITHOUT Twitter so just think how much more they’ll do WITH it.
On the plus side, it looks like Trump’s little toady’s trying to set up Masters to lose in November and getting him a new job. He wouldn’t very well be able to do his job as a Senator AND run Twitter as well (not saying he’d actually do any work in the Senate–probably wouldn’t really do anything at Twitter either beyond promoting “Impeach Hunter Biden” tags*) so why bring up Masters’ name at all? He could’ve just as easily offered up any number of other folks (Devin Nunes, anyone?) but a current Senate candidate who would be prevented from taking the job in the first place? Bizarre.
*I know what I wrote. Hunter’s not in any office but his name will be tied to every single GOP effort in impeaching Joe should the GOP retake either House of Congress so I just cut out the middleman.
And I thought we had dodged a bullet!
This is monumental death knell for democracy and America.
When you are richer than the devil, you can bask in endless impunity. And the rest of the world be damned.
I am so steamed, I’ve run out of words.