Musk

[capcom]

Unfortunately "Free Speech" is more often used as a cover for hate speech, it's the old game that has been played out since pre-WWII.

AGAIN, who is the final arbiter on that?  Just subjective.  And we see growing censorship everywhere, especially from governments, something I passionately hate regardless of left or right.  Like it or not, you CANNOT control thought.  And no, I don't use social media

[Mav]

As well as favouring unregulated freedom of speech on Twitter, Musk also wants to limit Twitter to authenticated users. This, he believes, will lessen the extreme rhetoric as users won't be able to hide behind anonymous accounts. He also says he wants to rid Twitter of spam accounts and bots.

Interestingly, his commitment to free speech isn't absolute. He's quite happy to enforce the restrictions on free speech imposed by authorities around the world.

The ball isn't only in Musk's court though. There's a legislative provision in the US which gives internet providers immunity from litigation over posts on their systems. In Congressional hearings, various politicians in the US have threatened to repeal that protection. If that ever happened, Twitter might then be on the hook for allowing defamatory posts or other objectionable posts to remain. To avoid liability, Twitter might have to put in place a system for moderating its content and that would see it back where it is now. Rather than actually repealing that protection, the threat of that repeal may be used to pressure Musk to moderate Twitter.

[Mav]

AGAIN, who is the final arbiter on that?  Just subjective.  And we see growing censorship everywhere, especially from governments, something I passionately hate regardless of left or right.  Like it or not, you CANNOT control thought.  And no, I don't use social media

As noted in my last post, free speech doesn't mean there are no consequences. It's hard to sue an anonymous poster for defamation, but if you can identify the poster then that's a different matter. Up in Sydney, a cosmetic surgeon has been awarded $450,000 in damages against another cosmetic surgeon who posted false bad reviews while posing as a dissatisfied customer.

If Musk does bring in a requirement that users authenticate their identities, that will be a pretty major curb on "free speech". It will also mean dissent in more brutal political systems will be much more dangerous.

If we want to allow anonymous posting and shield those users from any blowback for their online behaviour, there needs to be some way of limiting the malicious falsehoods. 

[LP]

To avoid liability, Twitter might have to put in place a system for moderating its content and that would see it back where it is now. Rather than actually repealing that protection, the threat of that repeal may be used to pressure Musk to moderate Twitter.

Musk would then just threaten to do for Twitter what he threatened to do for Tesla, and take it offshore!

I suspect the USA is so paranoid about losing the appearance of control over this techno stuff they'll fold like a house of cards, like they did when he threatened to move all of Tesla to China! The USA makes a big noise, but it is only about 8% of the affluent global market, or 3% of the global population, the global population is probably more important to Twitter than the affluence level.

I've also heard Musk will initiate some sort of paid version that is Ad limited or Ad free, and extend the current Ad supported model for the free versions. I note Microsoft has recently had a lot of success doing something similar for LinkedIn.

[Mav]

He's only able to run free like King Kong until they trap him on top of the Empire State Building.

[LP]

Some might think Musk sees himself as the real world Elliott Carver!

Quite hard to control an organisation that controls the satellites, and he's got about 10K of them up there already, buying Twitter is the ultimate vertical integration.

[LP]

AGAIN, who is the final arbiter on that? 

Society, it puts all the haters against the wall eventually.

[capcom]

Society, it puts all the haters against the wall eventually.

Not always LP ... not always. 

[Mav]

By the way, why is there a tendency to put our faith in billionaires to be altruistic? Even the philanthropic ones donate only a portion of the tax they're able to save through one dodge or another. Musk is going to expect a payoff for his $61b investment and I doubt he gives a rat's arse about the public good.

I would have thought the so-called billionaire Donald J. Trump would have opened everyone's eyes. Unlike in the "What have the Romans ever done for us?" sketch, I'm pretty confident that "What has Trump ever done for the battlers?" wouldn't elicit a string of achievements. But the richest did pretty well out of him. And Jared Kushner even scored a $2b dollar investment out of the Saudis after Trump sent him there as the emissary for world peace. 

[ElwoodBlues1]

By the way, why is there a tendency to put our faith in billionaires to be altruistic? Even the philanthropic ones donate only a portion of the tax they're able to save through one dodge or another. Musk is going to expect a payoff for his $61b investment and I doubt he gives a rat's arse about the public good.

I would have thought the so-called billionaire Donald J. Trump would have opened everyone's eyes. Unlike in the "What have the Romans ever done for us?" sketch, I'm pretty confident that "What has Trump ever done for the battlers?" wouldn't elicit a string of achievements. But the richest did pretty well out of him. And Jared Kushner even scored a $2b dollar investment out of the Saudis after Trump sent him there as the emissary for world peace. 

Share price has already climbed and he can claim on that margin loan, plus he funded the cash component from his Tesla shareholdings.
He wont be losing and like Tesla run at a loss and still make money on his shares.