Show me a law that says racism is illegal. Of course it's racist. Are you always this slow or do you just spend your evenings high/drunk and shitposting?
Conservatives are just trying to move the goalposts of free speech to mean free from accountability too. The fact Musk had a public temper tantrum and complained about free speech because companies exercised their freedom of where they wanted to spend their money on advertising was the quiet part out loud.
Musk said he only censors tweets or bans accounts when a law has been broken. However, that’s not true. He has censored and banned accounts that he doesn’t personally like.
Critics, supporters, or anyone, for that matter, should easily recognize that he's a blatant hypocrite and a liar when comparing his statements to his actual behaviors. Musk consistently claims to support free speech, despite evidences saying otherwise. It's weird why some people still insist or seem to believe that Musk advocates for free speech, except perhaps due to blindly trusting his words.
Again, this is you viewing him as a demigod. He lands Rockets and built one of the most successful car companies ... he must be perfect. The man is extremely flawed and is full of demons. But he says things that disagree with my political perspective so he must be the worst human ever? Meanwhile this is viewed as the equivalency of dozens of US agencies forcing social media to censor (and never head accountable) and thousands of politically charged employees upholding ToS to their own standard. The man isn't perfect. We are all wrong and can be hypocritical.
We are specifically discussing Musk’s claim of free speech here. The kind of politics he has or the accomplishments he’s achieved is entirely irrelevant to this analysis. No, in reality, most people do not blatantly lie or act as hypocritically as Musk does consistently. Very few individuals do it as persistently as he does, continually asserting support for free speech. While none of us are perfect, many have a sense of morality and shame that prevents us from consistently lying or being full-time hypocrites. Regarding your assumption or projection about how I see Musk, as a demigod, my only response is that you are mistaken. If I may project back, you are overly sensitive to criticism of Musk, not just based on facts but a fair and honest representation of them. You might want to reflect on why you are so sensitive to it.
A widespread prediction for 2023 was that the billionaire who bought Twitter would blow it up, but the only things Elon Musk exploded this year were two spaceships. While the bird app still hasn’t gone kaput like everyone thought it suddenly would… It also hasn’t become profitable like Musk and CEO Linda Yaccarino keep saying it soon could be. Instead, X has lost half its value since the acquisition, and ad revenue is down by more than 50% from last year. That’s partly because only about 5% of previously verified users paid to keep their badges, foiling Musk’s plan to profit off of blue checkmarks. Persistent glitches this year and technical difficulties during a much-hyped Ron DeSantis Twitter Spaces event poked holes in Musk’s dream to turn Twitter into a multifunctional “everything app” called X (half accomplished). https://www.morningbrew.com/daily/i...tm_medium=newsletter&utm_source=header_signup
Then why are you so determined to defend him? Musk made me money and still as I was an early buyer of Tesla. I also with his ideas that humanity needs to get colonize the solar system. I never considered him divine or infallible. Like everyone else he deserves praise and he deserves criticism. In how he’s run X and in his outrightly weird, self pitying and hypocritical behavior he deserves criticism.
I believe I pointed out his flaws. This is yet another example of when a person doesn't amplify their criticism over the accomplishments of someone they disagree with they are 'determined to defend him'. Yes, he went overboard with his whole Twitter acquisition. He is very passionate about his products that leads him to imply solutions are coming much sooner than they really are (or if ever on a couple of them). Call it over promising on a delivery if you want. He doesn't like the ultra left movement (which this is ultimately where most of his criticism comes from). But if most of his critics actually believe they are speaking from conviction, they are either FOS or live extremely miserable lives. Zuckerbergs products have been a massive net negative for our species...and that is the just the easiest product to pick on. But in the mean time, lets spread FUD about productive products for our planet because the mouthpiece of that product is picking on my political team. The Gen-Z term incel comes to mind.
So what you’re saying is you recognize he’s flawed like anyone else but you defend because you feel he is being picked on by ideological opponents.
In a sense, yes. I have stated in the past that I think he can be one of the most dangerous men of this century. He has an absurdly amount of power and leverage and he has a Jeckle/Hyde personality. However to date, most of his outbursts have been pretty childish and/or short sighted. How many other private citizens are going on world tours talking policy decision to head of states regarding future tech? The Biden administration continues to disrespect him. Meanwhile, he is making deals with the future power houses (China and India). This is less about who is right or wrong but more about the reality of the situation.
I think this is the side effect of the right trying to make everything political, aka circling the wagons.
He is not entitled to respect just because he’s the richest person in the world or has been very successful with Tesla, and a leading pusher of innovative manufacturing and products. People with his reach and power are exactly the individuals you want to subject to honest scrutiny and accountability. Too often, rich, famous, and powerful people receive preferential treatment or are expected to (entitled attitude). If you mean he has been unfairly excluded from government, that’s different—and Musk has complained about his satellite not being awarded by the federal government for expanding broadband services to rural areas. I believe the federal government made the right decision on that. As for Ukraine, the government exclusively used his satellite product (exclusive dependence in the military or any sector is not usually a good idea) in helping Ukraine defend.
He's quite the globalist…. And he’s involved in sectors (like space) that has national strategic importance while gobbling up US subsidies. China’s heavily subsidize EV industry is outpacing the rest of the world and Musk certainly received subsidies and preferential treatment in China. He has to pick a side…. US or China which is the actual reality.
X’s value has plunged 71.5% since Elon Musk bought it, Fidelity says. It’s a good thing that Musk still owns several other successful companies, because Fidelity believes that the social media platform is worth a lot less than when the billionaire bought it for $44 billion in October 2022, Axios reports. That includes a decision by Fidelity, which owns a stake in X, to cut its estimate of X’s value by 10.7% in November after Musk publicly suggested that advertisers fleeing the platform over concerns about antisemitic postings “go f**k” themselves. The investment firm’s most recent valuation would put X’s value at ~$12.5 billion.
It's boring to talk about Musk at this point, but it's important to point out what this says about the self-styled smartest guys in the room. Remember, back during the Twitter Litigation when Musk was trying to weasel out of it all of his communications with the Sand Hill Road VC set were diclosed, and these dudes who spend 99% of their free time trying to explain how much smarter and meritorious they are than everybody were literally falling all over themselves to hand Musk their money so he could destroy it: The texts also cast a harsh light on the investment tactics of Silicon Valley’s best and brightest. There’s Calacanis’s overeager angel-investing pitches, and then you have the more chill tactics of people like Andreessen, who in a tossed-off Twitter DM offered Musk “$250M with no additional work required.” “Thanks!” Musk responded. In a separate exchange, Musk asks Ellison if he’d like to invest in taking Twitter private. “Yes, of course,” Ellison replies. “A billion … or whatever you recommend.” Easy enough. “This is one of the most telling things I’ve ever seen about how investing works in Silicon Valley,” Jessica Lessin, the founder of the tech publication The Information, tweeted of the Andreessen exchange. Indeed, both examples from the document offer a look at the boys’ club and power networks of the tech world in action. Is it surprising that rich people (including one of the world’s 10 richest men) are throwing money at their friends the way you might on a low-stakes poker night? Not really—and especially not when that man is the richest man in the world. But the eagerness to pony up for Musk and the lazy quality of this dealmaking reveal something deeper about the brokenness of this investment ecosystem and the ways that it is driven more by vibes and grievances than due diligence. Looking at these texts, it seems much easier to understand Andreessen Horowitz’s recent $350 million investment in WeWork founder Adam Neumann’s new real-estate start-up, or Bankman-Fried’s admission that most venture-capitalist investments are not “the paragon of efficient markets” and driven primarily by FOMO and hype. “Like, all the models are made up, right?” he infamously told Bloomberg last April. https://www.theatlantic.com/technol...-musk-texts-twitter-trial-jack-dorsey/671619/ LIke, Larry Ellison's billion ("or whatever Elon recommended") would be $290 million right now, with not much long term hope of recovering that stake. Might as well just play slot machines, you get a better return! SOmebody save our idiot genius billionaires from themselves.
