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

[cactusflinthead 26794]

 

[Viking 295]

38 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

 

The remaining employees of Twitter are having a super fun time right now I'm sure. Every day they get a NEW PRIORITY! email at 5pm (including Sundays) with an expectation that they get it done by the next morning.

[Chopper 15904]

Quote

 

At home, he is an outspoken critic of the Biden administration and a self-proclaimed defender of free speech. With China, where the government holds greater power over the life or death of a private enterprise and the authorities don’t believe in free speech, Musk apparently perceives a need to ingratiate himself to his authoritarian hosts. On the centennial anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party last year, he tweeted that “the economic prosperity that China has achieved is truly amazing … I encourage people to visit and see for themselves.” At home, Musk has mocked Biden’s plan to aid the U.S. electric-vehicle industry, but he’s had nothing but praise for China’s support of new technologies. “My frank observation is that China spends a lot of resources and efforts applying the latest digital technologies in different industries, including the automobile industry, making China a global leader,” he said in a virtual appearance at a conference in the country last year.

___

Musk has also taken a pro-Beijing position on the contentious issue of Taiwan, which the Communist regime considers an integral part of China. His solution, he recently told the Financial Times, is “to figure out a special administrative zone for Taiwan that is reasonably palatable.” By this arrangement, he imagined that the residents of the island “could have an arrangement that’s more lenient than Hong Kong,” where Beijing has crushed a prodemocracy movement since the national security law came into effect in 2020. That controversial stance unsurprisingly drew ire from Taiwan advocates. But Ambassador Qin Gang thanked Musk and suggested that Musk’s proposal fit with Beijing’s own ideas on unification.

Such comments have left an impression that Musk could be susceptible to Chinese pressure. Authorities in China apparently believe he is, because they have no inhibition about making their wishes known to him—as he admitted in his Financial Times interview, Chinese officials expressed displeasure with his decision to use the Starlink satellite network to provide internet access to parts of Ukraine after Moscow had cut it off when it invaded. (Beijing has supported Russia’s position in the conflict.) Tesla did not respond to several requests for an interview with Musk, nor did the company respond to requests for comment on specific questions.

 

My feeling is that the same people who a couple years ago demanded Lebron James apologize for playing a basketball game in China are the same fan bois now riding Elon's dick.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2022/11/elon-musk-tesla-china-twitter/671982/

 

 

 

[SizzleChest 8032]

Is he still the single solution he trusts?

 

[Francisco 2.0 31580]

9 minutes ago, Humble Beast said:

’m guessing Elon’s buddy is advising him on this. In addition to tech VC, he’s yet another lawyer. 

Elon's buddy, an attorney apparently, is a fucking moron:

 

 

 

Edited November 7, 2022 by Francisco 2.0

[Nice Guy Eddie 13276]

Instead of Twitter content moderation looking for threats, hate speech, etc., their main focus now is protecting Elon? What a job.

if Elon thinks he can keep up and engage with the Twitter trolls, they’re going to annihilate him. It would be like going to a comedy show and thinking you can heckle an insult comic.

[Mole 4265]

41 minutes ago, Pods said:

 

Insert Dukes of Hazzard joke here, but with whatever the South African equivalent of Dixie is. 

 

39 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

The South African equivalent of Dixie is…South Africa?

 

[cactusflinthead 26794]

For 8 bucks a month you too can be a journalist or an epidemiologist or a rocket scientist or anything else you want to be!

[Humble Beast 258]

5 minutes ago, SizzleChest said:

Is he still the single solution he trusts?

 

That’s the Bitcoin coming out of Jack. 

[Chopper 15904]

 

PARODY

[SizzleChest 8032]

2 minutes ago, Humble Beast said:

That’s the Bitcoin coming out of Jack. 

Elon fashions himself as the authoritative ledger for all facts, truths, basically anything.  He's going to keep harping on the new blue check culture that will unwind all the bad journalism and replace it with......whatever suits Elon in the moment.

[cactusflinthead 26794]

Are you shitting me?

 

[atomheartbevo 88751]

16 minutes ago, Viking said:

The remaining employees of Twitter are having a super fun time right now I'm sure. Every day they get a NEW PRIORITY! email at 5pm (including Sundays) with an expectation that they get it done by the next morning.

It must be hell there right now, with him making up policies on the weekend, that will result in the permabanning of long-time users who are joking around,

It’ll be interesting to see what advertisers pause or drop their spending come Monday., and as the week progresses, because I bet we will get a new policy every day.

[Sawbonz 26736]

14 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

Elon's buddy, an attorney apparently, is a fucking moron:

 

 

 

 

[Francisco 2.0 31580]

2 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

It’ll be interesting to see what advertisers pause or drop their spending come Monday., and as the week progresses, because I bet we will get a new policy every day.

 

I'm guessing he will try to deal with advertisers directly.

"Hey, just call me and tell me what you want to do.  How about this?  2 years for the price of 1!  No?  3 for 1! What a bargain!  I'll make you a Verified Advertiser"  and so forth.

Because I'm sure the CMO for Wal-Mart wants to negotiate open and publicly on Twitter with the CEO of Twitter.

 

[Sawbonz 26736]

 

[Chopper 15904]

He thought he'd be adored because everyone he knows kisses his ass because he has a lot of money.

But nobody on twitter gives a fuck about his money. And they don't want anything from him.

Nobody on twitter even likes him.

No wonder he's having a nervous breakdown in public.

[TXSG8R 3325]

15 minutes ago, cactusflinthead said:

Are you shitting me?

 

Crowd sourced facts, what could possibly go wrong. 

[Hefeweizen 5210]

I have a feeling meta stock is going to do very well when this implodes.  Because we’re about to see one of the quickest failures in LBO history.  This is going to be a business school case study.  Obviously TWTR was not a 44 billion dollar concern.  Even with 30 billion in goodwill i think it’s overvalued.  
 

But his investors are looking at a minimum loss of 75 percent if he tried to get someone to take it over.  Anyone think it’s worth more than 10 to 12 billion right now?

Truly insane.  He needs to move HQ to Austin and hire Joe Rogan as COO and Alex Jones to  be  CTO.

[TXSG8R 3325]

Shit, missed the edit window.  Elon’s plan for verifying accuracy of information. 
 

[Firemans4Horn 16859]

 

 

 

[F250 28380]

6 minutes ago, Chopper said:

He thought he'd be adored because everyone he knows kisses his ass because he has a lot of money.

But nobody on twitter gives a fuck about his money. And they don't want anything from him.

Nobody on twitter even likes him.

No wonder he's having a nervous breakdown in public.

It seems he lacks that switch that Derka is missing the "Stahp!!!" switch.

['stache 21492]

I hope he keeps going. A true meltdown and tanking of a $44b deal in a matter of weeks would be a truly historical event. Something that will be taught hundreds of years from now about the bizarre nature of this civilization. Truly epic stuff, lol.

Edited November 7, 2022 by 'stache

[Goredho 17154]

3 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

O/U on how many hours Elon is sleeping* these days?

4?  

 

 

 

*I couldn't care less, and I'm sure there's some article somewhere that a fanboi can produce in an instant where Elon was interviewed and he said something like he sleeps 2-3 hours a day, and people clung to that like "Wow, sleep is so inefficient! Look at everything Elon can do by giving up sleep!" because Elon saying he gets by with as little sleep as possible is absolutely something that Elon would brag about.

 

**Seriously, I don't give a shit how much he sleeps a day.  For his sake, he needs a nice, healthy 8 hours or so. 

 

***Now this is something that, oh, I don't know, someone could tweet about.  Maybe they should.  Then again, it probably gets you the banhammer for talking about Dear Leader's sleep habits.

 

 

 

Please.  4 hours of sleep a night were plenty enough for John Gruden.

[elfenix 34001]

 

[Goredho 17154]

How valuable is Twitter's data?  What would someone pay to know what Twitter knows about its 450 million users habits, behaviors, predilections, biases and how to target them for influence?

Edited November 7, 2022 by Goredho

[Francisco 2.0 31580]

You know that feeling of buying a boat, and watching it depreciate half in a year or whatever?  Or that old thing about driving a new car off the lot, and it depreciating immediately?

Twitter wasn't worth the massive overpay that Elon proposed, but what's it worth today?  25% of what the purchase price was?  How much lower is its worth going to go?

 

Yeah, this meme totally fits:

 

 

 

[956 Worldwide 33958]

9 hours ago, Chopper said:

The thing about twitter is it became a place where you could find leading world experts in just about every subject matter. And you could hear their thoughts directly and maybe ask questions. US Attorneys. Scientists. Public health officials. Publishers. Serious journalists. Serious media critics. You could watch/read while those experts had public conversations among themselves. It's now rapidly morphing into a place that's inhospitable and incompatible for that type of person. They'll be replaced by scammers and people desperate for attention.

The situation is an amazing train wreck. But for the fact that Elo is beholden to the Saudis as his biggest backers in twitter, and the Chinese as his most significant financial partner in his car company, it would be total entertainment instead of the concerning tragedy that it's becoming.

I wish I could take credit for the thought, but I read it somewhere. It is truly astonishing how much of modern life involves warding off scams or being defrauded. Previously you got chain letters or let the wrong conman into your office or maybe got a fax. You had to plunge into the shittiest classified ads.  But now? 

Clickbait ads. Phishing emails. Phishing texts. Social media scams. Your car’s extended warranty calls. 
 

To make it especially toxic, these things pop up on news sites or social media interspersed with actual news and information. And the line between con and part of the economy is blurrier and blurrier. 
 

It’s no surprise that in this environment of being consistently conned, faith in institutions has collapsed and people have resorted to just believing what they want. 
 

If there is a future with history classes, we will learn about how the (till-then) wealthiest and most advanced set of societies in the world decided to just sit around and allow people to try and scam them dozens, if not hundreds of times a day. Because there are policy tools we could deploy (mainly fining the bejeezus out of any platform hosting scammers). 

[NoName 16197]

not having multiple verification checks is a huge mistake. they should have kept blue for people who need actual verification and then another color - LITERALLY ANY OTHER COLOR IN THE RAINBOW - for everyone else.

also, there is always an XKCD

alt text: "We TOLD you it was hard." "Yeah, but now that I'VE tried, we KNOW it's hard."

 

[Bateshorn 9483]

8 hours ago, Humble Beast said:

That’s the Bitcoin coming out of Jack. 

Say whatever you want about Jack Dorsey, but the man certainly knows how to stick his finger in the wind. 

[Neonmoon 38126]

I didn’t know Jack was a bitcoin nutter. That makes sense now. 

[Nice Guy Eddie 13276]

Twitter could have benefited from someone that would shake them up a bit. Set new priorities, hired new mgmt to execute the new strategies. Profit. Worst case is that the needle doesn’t move much.

instead elon tried to walk back the purchase until lawyers told him he was screwed. Elon spent the last 6 months proclaiming that Twitter lied about the bot problem. How do you process that info if you’re an advertiser? Maybe lower if not eliminate your spending.

And now he appears to be winging it with nightly new ideas. Advertisers really love chaos. It’s no surprise that many are pausing ads. And pausing in November isn’t saving that money for Twitter in March when things calm down. Instead pausing in November is spending that ad budget elsewhere before the end of the year.

Edited November 7, 2022 by Nice Guy Eddie

[956 Worldwide 33958]

8 hours ago, 'stache said:

I hope he keeps going. A true meltdown and tanking of a $44b deal in a matter of weeks would be a truly historical event. Something that will be taught hundreds of years from now about the bizarre nature of this civilization. Truly epic stuff, lol.

It’s only a meltdown if you think that he’s doing it to make money. If he’s doing it to create a platform so he and others he approves of can effectively disseminate disinformation to the most vulnerable AND get trustworthy voices to leave the arena, this this makes sense. I wonder how many Elon fans signed up for Twitter to follow his recent outbursts. 
 

Even the “I don’t really want to buy it” and driving away advertisers drama helps further that aim. If it’s his aim. 

[Humble Beast 258]

1 hour ago, Bateshorn said:

Say whatever you want about Jack Dorsey, but the man certainly knows how to stick his finger in the wind. 

What do you mean? Bitcoin is dead. 
 

47 minutes ago, Neonmoon said:

I didn’t know Jack was a bitcoin nutter. That makes sense now. 

It’s literally the only thing on his Twitter bio. 

[Bateshorn 9483]

22 minutes ago, Humble Beast said:

What do you mean? Bitcoin is dead. 
 

It’s literally the only thing on his Twitter bio. 

When you first meet Jack Dorsey in hatching Twitter, he’s a pretty stereotypical Birkenstock wearing SF hippy granola.  Focused on heathy lifestyle and progressive values.  By the end of the book, he’s a basically a Steve Jobs clone, complete with the turtle neck.  
 

now he’s an ascetic tech guru.  There is no core Jack Dorsey, only whatever he decides he needs to be in that moment. 

[Aqua Buddha 13909]

2 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

You know that feeling of buying a boat, and watching it depreciate half in a year or whatever?  Or that old thing about driving a new car off the lot, and it depreciating immediately?

Twitter wasn't worth the massive overpay that Elon proposed, but what's it worth today?  25% of what the purchase price was?  How much lower is its worth going to go?

 

Yeah, this meme totally fits:

 

 

 

He also has something like a $500M debt payment due in April.  Saw that this morning....

[Francisco 2.0 31580]

 

 

 

[chainsaw 9441]

17 minutes ago, Bateshorn said:

When you first meet Jack Dorsey in hatching Twitter, he’s a pretty stereotypical Birkenstock wearing SF hippy granola.  Focused on heathy lifestyle and progressive values.  By the end of the book, he’s a basically a Steve Jobs clone, complete with the turtle neck.  
 

now he’s an ascetic tech guru.  There is no core Jack Dorsey, only whatever he decides he needs to be in that moment. 

I think it's the natural trajectory of what happens when any hippy with a tech bent is given fuck you money.

[C-Man 26536]

I think it's certainly a commentary on our times when the richest man in the world is Elon Musk.

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

7 hours ago, Goredho said:

How valuable is Twitter's data?  What would someone pay to know what Twitter knows about its 450 million users habits, behaviors, predilections, biases and how to target them for influence?

I mentioned that a few pages back (included a link on that past regarding the Saudi issues going back to 2011) and it's a concern. He may be richy rich, but he's a narcissist and if he gets his back to the wall, he is ethically shady enough to consider offers of that I am sure. Plenty of people and foreign entities besides Saudi Arabia and China who would like the info.

Here is a link for you, I might have not included it in the original post:

https://www.courthousenews.com/man-accused-of-helping-saudi-arabia-spy-on-twitter-critics-pleads-not-guilty/

Edited November 7, 2022 by Mrs Whiggins
Memory fail

[Francisco 2.0 31580]

There's going to be a lot of entertainment in the coming days.  I'm glad I'm caught up at work, so I can effectively use the time so graciously given to me by my employer:

 

 

 

 

 

[MAUFRAIS 6539]

 
 
 

Better than the garage apartment in goodfellas.

[Francisco 2.0 31580]

 

 

 

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

3 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

There's going to be a lot of entertainment in the coming days.  I'm glad I'm caught up at work, so I can effectively use the time so graciously given to me by my employer:

 

 

 

 

 

Two ways to neutralize an adversary are indifference and humor. When the accounts are all suspended, then let indifference take over and leave the platform. The expertise accessibility will be missed, but eventually someone is likely to avail themselves of the opportunity.

[crash_davis 23038]

It's just a long game by Elon to try to get the roll coal bros to give up their brodozers and buy Teslas.

[Woodrow Call 493]

Now this fucker is asking some of the fired workers to return. What a noob. 

[Goredho 17154]

11 minutes ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

I mentioned that a few pages back (included a link on that past regarding the Saudi issues going back to 2011) and it's a concern. He may be richy rich, but he's a narcissist and if he gets his back to the wall, he is ethically shady enough to consider offers of that I am sure. Plenty of people and foreign entities besides Saudi Arabia and China who would like the info.

Here is a link for you, I might have not included it in the original post:

https://www.courthousenews.com/man-accused-of-helping-saudi-arabia-spy-on-twitter-critics-pleads-not-guilty/

Thanks.  Yeah, I missed your original post.  I just think if financial push comes to shove, non-exclusive access to the raw Twitter data might be a way for Elon to offset some of the losses.

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

1 minute ago, Goredho said:

Thanks.  Yeah, I missed your original post.  I just think if financial push comes to shove, non-exclusive access to the raw Twitter data might be a way for Elon to offset some of the losses.

I think it's a given. He makes everything about him and his image and he has never not done so throughout his career. Anything advantageous to him to avoid any appearance of a mistake (sound familiar?) will be done.

[NoName 16197]

Edited November 7, 2022 by NoName

[Nivek 16643]

^ Translation: he hired bot farms to increase the number of accounts.