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Elon Musk: Officially a fraud and piece of shit. Official or unofficial war criminal?

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Hotez is far from bulletproof.       

MissingInAction
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Absolutely.    Would you like other guys pointing out Hotez deficiencies?   It was actually more about Hotez but whatever? Why stick around? All the constructive back and forth

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Vegas64

Vegas64 673

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, 52-80 said:

Shaggy experts told me it would never happen

What do we know? Though I never thought it was realistically a pump-and-dump as some did; way too much visibility and too big a scheme.

From NYT:

What seemed highly improbable a week and a half ago is now looking a lot more real: Twitter is in advanced talks to sell itself to Elon Musk. The company’s 11-member board was negotiating with Musk into the early hours of the morning over his offer to buy the social networking service and take it private, DealBook’s Lauren Hirsch and The Times’s Mike Isaac report.

The two sides have been discussing details, including a timeline to close any potential deal and any fees that would be paid if an agreement were signed and then fell apart, according to two people with knowledge of the situation. The negotiations followed a board meeting yesterday morning to discuss the offer. No deal is certain, and it remains entirely possible that the talks will break down. It is rare for a board to try to hammer through a deal as quickly as this.

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Neonmoon

Neonmoon 38129

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Posted
3 minutes ago, Vegas64 said:

Eccentric billionaire with a pest personality is divisive; more news at 9!

I was laughing at the hypocrisy of 52-80 calling out people for saying this would fail on a thread where 52-80 said Musk was a Fraud and argued Tesla would fail. 

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Laxtonto

Laxtonto 12078

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, ChickenSandwich said:

Q1 earnings report due 4/27

 

Must look like shit. 

It puts the board in a hard spot. If you know Q1 earnings have way missed, you cant really reject this deal and use the argument that you expect a higher deal in the future.

No rational buyer is going to step up between now and Thursday without seeing the impact of the earnings report.  If the report is poor, which the board should already know, the dip is stock price driven by the report plus Musk then pulling out would would crater the stock.

If there is no plausible reason to expect other bidders to come in over the top and the board walks away, the lawsuits will start about the boards fiduciary duty. 

 

I am curious if Musk planned the timing of this to use the earnings report as an impromptu deadline knowing that it will limit all the other potential bidders until it came out.

 

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Vegas64

Vegas64 673

Posted
Posted
10 minutes ago, Moby Ric said:

Elon Musk purchases twitter:

200.gif

This is great.

I guess the Q1 earnings report had to be pretty bad as others have said and when the world's richest man is the suitor a deal like this can move faster than it ever has and so, here we are.

No pump and dump, but just a modern day Howard Hughes eccentric who is in love with a toy. 

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Laxtonto

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Posted
10 minutes ago, Immaculate Vibes said:

Also, let’s move Twitter to Texas Elon. Kthx 

Moving out of California and doing a massive internal structure and policy remake would be the first changes is my guess.

 

Simplifying content moderation and instead use that manpower to cleanup the bots would be an easy first step. I am still a fan of doing a cheap annual subscriber fee and verifying everyone that does so and only count verified subscribers in the user follower count. That would in essence make unverified bots worthless and the price per verified bot cost-prohibitive to starve off most of the bot farms.

From there, you can then focus on tracking and eliminating the new paid bot farms and ignore the non-subscribed ones.

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wildcat09

wildcat09 29346

Posted
Posted
Just now, Vegas64 said:

It's not a temper tantrum. You can admit you were wrong.

I was clearly wrong about the pump and dump. But a few weeks ago he was ready to take a board seat. I'm still curious about why that was and my best guess is that he hadn't immediately considered the possibility that they wanted him on the board to shut him up. 

One thing I'm sure about is that this has nothing to do with a commitment to fostering free speech.

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Vegas64

Vegas64 673

Posted
Posted
Just now, wildcat09 said:

I was clearly wrong about the pump and dump. But a few weeks ago he was ready to take a board seat. I'm still curious about why that was and my best guess is that he hadn't immediately considered the possibility that they wanted him on the board to shut him up. 

One thing I'm sure about is that this has nothing to do with a commitment to fostering free speech.

Here is an interesting stab at what Elon Twitter might look like. He's mentioned transparency in source code, algo's, etc.

https://builtformars.com/case-studies/elons-twitter

I don't think anyone really knows fully what this is all about, to your point, but one thing I'm pretty sure of is Twitter can't do any worse (Q1 earning pending) as a business tasked to return shareholder value and grow and operate as an ongoing concern, then they have been given their mindshare in the attention based economy. Elon will unlock business value.

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52-80

52-80 19147

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Posted
44 minutes ago, Neonmoon said:

I was laughing at the hypocrisy of 52-80 calling out people for saying this would fail on a thread where 52-80 said Musk was a Fraud and argued Tesla would fail. 

receipts.  the 13th post in this thread, from 4 fucking years ago, in which i said:

* he's ineloquent (yup, he stutters, with admitted aspergers)

* he's good fund-raiser (shown just again)

* he's a good business leader (unquestionably)

* he's an absolute shitstirrer (a sentiment i maintain to this day)

 

On 7/14/2018 at 4:04 PM, 52-80 said:

never paid that much attention.  its amazing for his lack of eloquence that he seems to be such a good fund-raiser and business leader.  dont know about his engineering chops though but the whole thai cave debacle is hilariously embarassing.   

and the 33th post is in response to the tesla Flamethrower.  which has sold how much?

Quote

i think he hit a few home runs and then started to drink too much of his own koolaid

 

In that summer of 2018, this was their earnings profile.  Musk himself admits the company was on the brink of bankruptcy.

image.png.3d7ee8a1f414632925506c2250da415c.png

 

 

In the winter of 2020, their financials turned a corner.  and simultaneously i took ownership of a Tesla vehicle.

image.png.9fc068cb7c2981423ccb6978b90d20b4.png

 

And since then, i've also been a shareholder.

 

When the facts change, my opinions change.  I'm not sorry if you find that problematic.

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Neonmoon

Neonmoon 38129

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Posted
On 7/14/2018 at 5:22 PM, 52-80 said:

i think he hit a few home runs and then started to drink too much of his own koolaid

 

On 7/14/2018 at 5:44 PM, 52-80 said:

by the way, tesla just hit the threshold for the US to start cutting the tax credit on EVs.  

 

and maybe theyre overlooking the europe market, since the supercharger network is ultra sparse there, and the cars are not a hit -- too large and/or expensive.  nissan-renault is owning that market, and bmw is putting huge investments in it as well 

 

Arguing against Tesla

On 7/15/2018 at 10:10 AM, 52-80 said:

Yeap.  Anyone can engineer anything given enough resources.  (Except if that anyone is the government.)  But doing it within resource constraint (time, money, manpower) is the real hurdle.

For SpaceX, I suppose his advantage is that the competing parties are....the government.  The Lockheeds and Northrupps of the world (and their investors) arent willing to take such risks.  

So Musk: 

bold?  yes.  assured?  certainty.  visionary? i guess.  fraud?  why not. 

genius?  well that would be an absolute insult to the actual Tesla

Stated he is a Fraud

So when you stated "but shaggy experts told me this would not happen"

and I say it's hilarious considering you did the same thing at the beginning of this thread. Since he's not a fraud and Tesla is doing well

 

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wildcat09

wildcat09 29346

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Posted

I don't think there's any connection in the modern world between financial success and NOT being a fraud. In many cases, massive fraud seems to be a major cause of a person's financial success.  Elon's a talented self promoter who occasionally (but not as often as advertised) actually follows through on some impulsive decisions and has, because of his resources, gotten away with a whole lot of shit (both just risky business-wise and stuff that is probably crimes) that other people never would've gotten away with. IS he a fraud? If you think someone is the worst that they do, the answer is obviously yes. If you think it's some balance between the worst they do and the best they do, maybe not. 

If he does buy Twitter, I need to find a book that will take bets on how long before he either implements a "no criticizing Elon or his companies" rule or charges extra for the right to do so.

 

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Immaculate Vibes

Immaculate Vibes 114

Posted
Posted
13 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

It's cool for anyone to think what they want, but the Elon white knights is a weird development.

I think a certain subset of people like the idea of a billionaire that’s bucking conventional wisdom. They will get burned at times because they’ll disagree strongly with something he says/pushes though. 
 

7 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

I still think we're going to find out some day about a shitload of accounting fraud at Tesla.

It’s possible, but at this point Tesla is too big to fail in that the US gov/DoD needs its work on EVs and AI etc to continue.  It’s the tech equivalent of a systemically important institution. 

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Immaculate Vibes

Immaculate Vibes 114

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Posted
2 minutes ago, Neonmoon said:

I think Elon is a visionary and a great business man. I love what he has done with Tesla and SpaceX. I hope he does more cool shit with Twitter. But yeah, I think he doesn't understand anything about free speech. 

He’s been pretty clear he thinks there’s too much censorship on Twitter. Or the cynic would say he thinks there’s the wrong kind of censorship. 

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MonkeyDoughnut

MonkeyDoughnut 10229

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Posted

If you take out the settlement payment for the 2014 shareholder class action that they paid last year Twitter was profitable company.  You layoff the 2,000 employees that were hired in 2021 for some reason (or wait for all the employees saying they will quit if Musk takes over... sure.. busily scrubbing their tweets now) the company can definitely be profitably as is, let alone if Musk does even some of the proposals he has made.

 

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52-80

52-80 19147

Posted
Posted
5 minutes ago, Neonmoon said:

Arguing against Tesla

literally a direct quote-response to wally bringing up the Flamethrower, commenting that it is (and still to this day) a musk Lark

 

5 minutes ago, Neonmoon said:

Stated he is a Fraud

a soft acquiescence, after 3 complements on his boldness, confidence, visionary.

nevermind at the time of posting, TSLA was teetering on insolvency.  and Musk's response to that was a questionable go-private pronouncement on twitter.

how questionable?  the company is in fucking courts over the legality of that episode, some details of which *I* posted literally 1 page again.

 

5 minutes ago, Neonmoon said:

and I say it's hilarious considering you did the same thing at the beginning of this thread. Since he's not a fraud and Tesla is doing well

the receipt's all there.  it's sad you can't fathom someone possibly holding multi-faceted opinion of something.  it's hilarious you think that can be used against me, because of your personal vendetta.  suck it long and suck it hard, buddy.

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Brisketexan

Brisketexan 105071

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Posted

If he decides to tackle "censorship," I think it will be fascinating to watch how Twitter handles the return/influx of the voices on Gettr and Gab, and the shit they spew (I'm not talking about bots, I'm talking about the shitload of actual human beings who do this).  "Free speech!  No censorship!" is an easy slogan/ideal, until you run into the wall of reality that is scat pics all over Shaggy (metaphorically speaking).  The problem is that functionally EVERYONE, including Elon, agrees that SOME content moderation is necessary for a successful, mainstream social media platform......but some people think that drawing the line and executing on that vision is super-easy.  It's not.  It's actually quite challenging, and takes a shitload of manpower.

If that's the task Elon wants to tackle, I'm quite interested to see how he plans to do so.  Hell, I'm going to be interested how someone who is championing Ukraine by sending them Starlink assets is going to handle an onslaught of Russian disinformation on the platform (a known thing that is a key tool of the Putin regime).  If Elon figures out some way to handle that challenge, hats off to him.  I'm suspecting that if he tackles it, it's going to prove a shitload more difficult than he presently thinks it will be.

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Laxtonto

Laxtonto 12078

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Posted
11 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

If he decides to tackle "censorship," I think it will be fascinating to watch how Twitter handles the return/influx of the voices on Gettr and Gab, and the shit they spew (I'm not talking about bots, I'm talking about the shitload of actual human beings who do this).  "Free speech!  No censorship!" is an easy slogan/ideal, until you run into the wall of reality that is scat pics all over Shaggy (metaphorically speaking).  The problem is that functionally EVERYONE, including Elon, agrees that SOME content moderation is necessary for a successful, mainstream social media platform......but some people think that drawing the line and executing on that vision is super-easy.  It's not.  It's actually quite challenging, and takes a shitload of manpower.

If that's the task Elon wants to tackle, I'm quite interested to see how he plans to do so.  Hell, I'm going to be interested how someone who is championing Ukraine by sending them Starlink assets is going to handle an onslaught of Russian disinformation on the platform (a known thing that is a key tool of the Putin regime).  If Elon figures out some way to handle that challenge, hats off to him.  I'm suspecting that if he tackles it, it's going to prove a shitload more difficult than he presently thinks it will be.

I think part of the concern for Musk should be does this makes Twitter more of a target for the arguments of Platform vs. Publisher if he acquires it, or can he use Twitter to force that onus upon his direct competitors. It might just be my cynical nature in all of this, but wholesale changes in content moderation with a detailed open-sourced algorithm for content flagging may force an additional review regarding the platform/publisher nature of online communities, including Twitter. I am not sure which side these changes would land Twitter on this argument, but it will have a cascading impact on the other major online platforms.

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wildcat09

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Posted
Posted
12 minutes ago, Laxtonto said:

I think part of the concern for Musk should be does this makes Twitter more of a target for the arguments of Platform vs. Publisher if he acquires it, or can he use Twitter to force that onus upon his direct competitors. It might just be my cynical nature in all of this, but wholesale changes in content moderation with a detailed open-sourced algorithm for content flagging may force an additional review regarding the platform/publisher nature of online communities, including Twitter. I am not sure which side these changes would land Twitter on this argument, but it will have a cascading impact on the other major online platforms.

...what?

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MonkeyDoughnut

MonkeyDoughnut 10229

Posted
Posted
33 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

If he decides to tackle "censorship," I think it will be fascinating to watch how Twitter handles the return/influx of the voices on Gettr and Gab, and the shit they spew (I'm not talking about bots, I'm talking about the shitload of actual human beings who do this).  "Free speech!  No censorship!" is an easy slogan/ideal, until you run into the wall of reality that is scat pics all over Shaggy (metaphorically speaking).  The problem is that functionally EVERYONE, including Elon, agrees that SOME content moderation is necessary for a successful, mainstream social media platform......but some people think that drawing the line and executing on that vision is super-easy.  It's not.  It's actually quite challenging, and takes a shitload of manpower.

If that's the task Elon wants to tackle, I'm quite interested to see how he plans to do so.  Hell, I'm going to be interested how someone who is championing Ukraine by sending them Starlink assets is going to handle an onslaught of Russian disinformation on the platform (a known thing that is a key tool of the Putin regime).  If Elon figures out some way to handle that challenge, hats off to him.  I'm suspecting that if he tackles it, it's going to prove a shitload more difficult than he presently thinks it will be.

Agreed will be really interesting. Definitely plays into his wanting to have a charge for "spewing" or anything else. All kinds of disinformation and content is on there now, but it's not like everyone sees it. I mean everything is on the "Internet" so to speak but it's not like I can sue the "Internet" itself. It gets real tricky deciding who carries fault. If Twitter is just a digital megaphone for speech, could a physical megaphone maker be sued for someone at an in person rally using their physical megaphone spewing hate??  Lots of interesting angles to online "free" speech debate. (especially if he wants to charge for that umm "free" speech)

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Laxtonto

Laxtonto 12078

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Posted
1 minute ago, wildcat09 said:

...what?

Section 230 and the arguments regarding the shield for criminal and copyright/intellectual property lawsuits for providers/platforms instead of publishers.

At some point, this distinction is going to get rethought by the supreme court and the the potential liability of being on the wrong side of the platform vs. publisher line is something that no tech company wants to deal with.

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gsoda3

gsoda3 3246

Posted
Posted
44 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

If he decides to tackle "censorship," I think it will be fascinating to watch how Twitter handles the return/influx of the voices on Gettr and Gab, and the shit they spew (I'm not talking about bots, I'm talking about the shitload of actual human beings who do this).  "Free speech!  No censorship!" is an easy slogan/ideal, until you run into the wall of reality that is scat pics all over Shaggy (metaphorically speaking).  The problem is that functionally EVERYONE, including Elon, agrees that SOME content moderation is necessary for a successful, mainstream social media platform......but some people think that drawing the line and executing on that vision is super-easy.  It's not.  It's actually quite challenging, and takes a shitload of manpower.

If that's the task Elon wants to tackle, I'm quite interested to see how he plans to do so.  Hell, I'm going to be interested how someone who is championing Ukraine by sending them Starlink assets is going to handle an onslaught of Russian disinformation on the platform (a known thing that is a key tool of the Putin regime).  If Elon figures out some way to handle that challenge, hats off to him.  I'm suspecting that if he tackles it, it's going to prove a shitload more difficult than he presently thinks it will be.

i think for elon he thinks it's as simple as "eliminate the bots and the crazies fade away".  that's what i've been told anyway.  

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Nice Guy Eddie

Nice Guy Eddie 13509

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Posted

Outside of trolls, I don't think anyone wants absolute free speech on Twitter.  This is why those types of social media sites have failed. The bad actors end up overwhelming people that don't want to see that behavior and those people eventually give up.  Twitter would become a race to the bottom.

Has Twitter taken their moderation too far? I'm sure there are cases where that is the situation as well as situations where they didn't take moderation far enough. 

I do like the idea that Elon wants to find methods to ban the twitter bots. The common thought is that Twitter has been slow to remove the bots because it would result in lower activity which would impact the stock price.

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wildcat09

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1 minute ago, Laxtonto said:

Section 230 and the arguments regarding the shield for criminal and copyright/intellectual property lawsuits for providers/platforms instead of publishers.

At some point, this distinction is going to get rethought by the supreme court and the the potential liability of being on the wrong side of the platform vs. publisher line is something that no tech company wants to deal with.

This misunderstands how that distinction came about, the import of that distinction, and what Section 230 does. Here's a good explainer:

Quote

“You have to choose: are you a platform or a publisher?”

It’s the question that makes us pull out our hair and roll our eyes. It’s the question that makes us want to shout from the rooftops “IT DOESN’T MATTER. YOU DON’T HAVE TO CHOOSE”

We’ll say it plainly here: there is no legal significance to labeling an online service a “platform” as opposed to a “publisher.” Yes. That’s right. There is no legal significance to labeling an online service a “platform.” Nor does the law treat online services differently based on their ideological “neutrality” or lack thereof.

There is no common law or statutory significance to the word “platform.” It is not found in Section 230 at all.

Some of the “You’re a platform!” mania is likely the fault of the companies themselves. Some have used the word “platform” to distinguish themselves, who primarily published user-generated content, from those who primarily published their own content, and/or actively edit and curate the content of others. They self-identified as “platforms” mostly to justify what was perceived as their hands-off approach to content moderation, particularly with respect to decisions not to remove hateful and harassing speech from their sites.

It’s fair to call out the big social media companies for holding themselves out as purely passive conduits (which is what some seem to mean when they call themselves “platforms”) when they actually moderate a ton of user content every day, and pretty much always have. Our work on the Santa Clara Principles reflects the human rights implications of content moderation, even though we support the First Amendment right of intermediaries to curate their sites.

But as a legal cudgel against perceived political bias, which is how the “admit it you’re a publisher not a platform” screed has most frequently been used, it is a meaningless distinction.

When politicians like Sen. Ted Cruz demand that Twitter identify itself as either a “publisher” or a “platform,” they usually make this false distinction in the entirely erroneous context of 47 U.S.C. § 230, the provision of U.S. law that grants broad immunity from liability to online intermediaries when such liability would be based on the speech of others. Rather than enshrine some significance between online “platforms” and “publishers,” Section 230 intentionally nullifies any distinction that might have existed. Contrary to popular misconception, immunity is not a reward for intermediaries that choose the path of total neutrality (whatever that means); nor did Congress enact Section 230 with an expectation that Internet services were or would become completely neutral. Section 230 explicitly grants immunity to all intermediaries, both the “neutral” and the proudly biased. It treats them exactly the same, and does so on purpose.

That’s a feature of Section 230, not a bug.

So online services did not self-identify as “platforms” to mythically gain Section 230 protection—they had that already.

Unlike “publisher” (more on that below), there is no common law or statutory significance to the word “platform.” It is not found in Section 230 at all. The word “platform” doesn’t even appear in any published Section 230 judicial opinions until 2004, and there and in most subsequent cases, the court simply quoted the descriptive language from the parties’ briefs in which it was used mostly as a synonym for “website.” Starting around 2010, courts did start using the word “platform” to describe internet services through which users interacted, much like courts used the terms “portal” or “website” previously and thereafter.

Moreover, regardless of Section 230, it is completely common to be both a “publisher” and a “platform” at the same time—a publisher of your own content and a platform for the content of others. Newspapers have historically done this and continue to do so—a publisher of the articles they write themselves and a platform for the content they publish but did not write themselves—letters to the editor, wire service articles, advertisements, op-eds, etc. And online publications and websites continue to do so now, mixing their own content with that generated by users.

In fact, it is really difficult to find any online service close to the user end, that is services like social media and email clients with which the user directly and openly interacts, that is solely a conduit for user speech, without any speech of its own. One doesn’t really find pure conduits like this until quite deep in the infrastructure layer of the Internet—like ISPs, domain name services, content delivery networks (CDNs), and email servers. And even that at depth, takedowns are not uncommon.

The specious publisher-platform argument is also historically off-base. Historically, there is some legal distinction between “publishers” and more passive “distributors” of others’ speech, and “distributors” is perhaps what those who yearn for “neutral platforms” are referring to. But “distributors” was just a subcategory of “publishers” and both bore liability.

So, what is the legal difference between “publishers” and “distributors”?

One is always a “publisher” of their own words, the stuff they write and say themselves. That is completely uncontroversial. The controversy and confusion arise around republication liability, the idea that you are legally a “publisher” of all statements of others that you republish even if you accurately quote the original speaker and attribute the statement to them. So, if you accurately and directly quote someone in an article you have written, and the quoted statements defame someone, you can be liable for defamation for republishing those statements. This applies to any content in your publication that you did not write yourself, like letters to the editor, advertisements, outside editorial, wire service stories, etc. Legally, you are responsible for all of these statements as if they were your own creations.

This legal concept of republication liability is an old concept inherited from English common law. But it appears that up until 1824, accurate attribution was a full defense.

A subcategory of these “publishers” are “distributors.” Since at least 1837, republication liability has extended also to mere distributors of speech—the 1837 case Day v. Bream dealt with a courier who had delivered a box of libelous handbills—if it could be proved that they knew or should have known about the illegal or tortious content. This “distributor” liability was widely applied to newsstands, booksellers, and libraries. The American version of this knowledge-based “distributor” liability is commonly associated with the US Supreme Court’s 1959 decision in Smith v. California, which found that a bookseller could not be convicted of peddling obscene material unless it could be proven that the bookseller knew of the obscene contents of the book. Outside of criminal law, US courts imposed liability on distributors who simply should have known that they were distributing actionable content.

So “distributor liability” applied to those like booksellers, newsstands, and couriers who merely served as fairly passive conduits for others’ speech, and “publisher liability” applied to those who engaged with the other person’s speech in some way, whether by editing it, modifying it, affirmatively endorsing it, or including it as part of larger original reporting. For the former, group, the passive distributors, there could be no liability unless they knew, or should have known, of the libelous material. For the latter group, the publishers, they were treated the same as the original speakers they quoted.

Because one was treated a bit better if they were a passive distributor, the law actually disincentivized editing, curation, or reviewing content for any reason.

One of the primary purposes of Section 230 was to remove this disincentive and encourage online intermediaries to actively curate and edit their sites without being so penalized. Former Rep. Chris Cox, one of the co-authors of Section 230, recalls finding it “surpassingly stupid” that before Section 230, courts effectively disincentivized platforms from engaging in any speech moderation. And Congress recognized that even the notice-based liability that attached to distributors created the prospect of the “heckler’s veto,” whereby one who wants the speech censored tells the distributor about it and the distributor removes the speech without devoting any resources to investigating whether the objection had any merit. As we have written (PDF), notice-based liability systems are subject to great abuse and have serious human rights implications.

Congress resolved this problem by getting rid of republication liability altogether. That is the significance of the phrase “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” And the very first federal appellate court to interpret Section 230 made clear that Section 230 got rid of both republisher liability and its subset, distributor liability.

So the very purpose of section 230 was to eliminate any distinction between those who actively select, curate, and edit the speech before distributing it and those who are merely passive conduits for it. For the purpose of Section 230, the only relevant distinction is between an “interactive computer service” and an “information content provider.”

But what about “neutrality”? It’s a bit more confusing, but there has never been any requirement that publishers be politically neutral or otherwise speak, edit, or curate without such decisions reflecting their own beliefs. And “neutrality” certainly doesn’t mean “ideological neutrality”—indeed, the First Amendment protects the right of any speaker to express their ideological and political viewpoints , whether through their own speech, or by choosing to serve as an intermediary for the ideological speech of others—that is by actively curating the user-generated speech on their sites.

With respect to republication liability, a few courts recognize a “neutral reportage” privilege to republish statements made by reliable speakers about a public controversy. In that context “neutral” means the that the statement is reported without any implication that it is true, but simply reporting that the statement was made. But the neutral reportage privilege has mostly been rejected by U.S. courts.

With respect to Section 230, the Ninth Circuit, gave the provision of “neutral tools” to users as one example of engagement with user speech that would preserve Section 230 protection. That is, one did not become the creator of content by providing “neutral tools” to help a speaker speak. The court did not explain what tools are in fact “neutral” and there remains confusion as to exactly what “neutral tools” are. But it seems the court meant that the service did not materially contribute to the illegality of the speech. Merely having a viewpoint or taking sides in a controversy would thus not negate Section 230 protection.

Section 230 aside, both “publishers” and “distributors” are liable only when the speech they disseminate is independently illegal or tortious. The mere act of editing or curating your users’ speech is not actionable.

To the contrary, curation and editing is itself speech protected by the First Amendment, as the Supreme Court has held with respect to platforms ranging from newspapers to St. Patrick’s Day parades. And at the center of this constitutional protection is the right to express one’s political views through the curation of others’ speech. As the Supreme Court stated, “the expression of editorial opinion […] lies at the heart of First Amendment protection.”

 

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10 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Has Twitter taken their moderation too far? I'm sure there are cases where that is the situation as well as situations where they didn't take moderation far enough. 

I do like the idea that Elon wants to find methods to ban the twitter bots. The common thought is that Twitter has been slow to remove the bots because it would result in lower activity which would impact the stock price.

you hit on a good point.  elon doesn't want complete anarchy on twitter, his beef has been their random and arbitrary enforcement of opaque guidelines.  he wants a clear set of rules with a defined list of consequences.  

 

re: the bots-  TWTR is slow to get rid of bots b/c they're unable to in an efficient way but also b/c they BENEFIT from them.  elon thinks he can monetize tweets so that tweets with higher interactions generate more revenue than low-touch tweets.  he's thrown around ideas of paid accounts for businesses (think customer service) and incentivized tweets per impression (youtube model).  

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4 minutes ago, gsoda3 said:

elon doesn't want complete anarchy on twitter, his beef has been their random and arbitrary enforcement of opaque guidelines.  he wants a clear set of rules with a defined list of consequences.  

There was a thread a few weeks ago by the guy that used to run Reddit. He basically said social media platform moderation will always appear arbitrary because sometimes it is arbitrary regardless of the guidelines. The issue is that social media is full of assholes and assholes cause chaos and are a threat to a platforms community. Sometimes the assholes need to be dealt with before the platform sinks regardless of the guidelines.

People are assholes and will exploit every loophole just to see the world burn. You can't stop that without changing how you moderate on a frequent basis without appearing arbitrary.

 

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15 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

Twitter's moderation guidelines aren't really opaque or confusing, they just suck at enforcing them. Unless he wants to hire a lot more human moderators, I don't see a way to improve that.

the guidelines have changed over time esp since 2016 resulting in more moderation and that's the scab elon's picking at.  

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12 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

 

When you're so rich nobody has ever called you on your dumbest shit.

elon caught a lot of flak for getting involved with the stuck miners in thailand.  looks like he wants to explore submersible technology again...

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