[aiwv]

The key to understanding Musk is that he truly believes that he will be the most powerful person in the world (see https://web.archive.org/web/20200725103243/https://www.nytim... for his friend's take) and that he is utterly shameless and will do whatever he thinks is best in service of that destiny.

One cannot take anything that he says at face value. He is a repeated and proven liar (fully self driving cars in 6 months!). When he says he wants more free speech on twitter, I think it's fair to assume the opposite. Whatever the true Elon may be, his public persona has become that of a megalomaniacal bully, not unlike the ousted troll in chief. Whether this is cynical or authentic, I want no part of any organization with him at the top.

My personal theory is that he bought twitter specifically to make it his private megaphone. Owning the platform will prevent him from being turned off ala Trump. It also will allow him to silence his critics. He won't outright ban them, but by removing content moderation, he will allow those who criticize him to be harassed by his human army of troll bots until the platform becomes so toxic that they all leave.

The bankers love this because twitter is also the platform where the most people are directly criticizing corporate capitalism and challenging its bedrock assumptions. They win no matter what Musk does. In silencing his critics, he will also be silencing their critics. If driving them off of twitter somehow is good for business, then they get a return on their investment. If instead it kills the platform, they can just write off their losses on their taxes. The financiers are very unlikely to actually lose any money on the deal, but the silencing of their own critics would almost certainly be worth $40B to them anyway.

Now that the deal has closed, twitter is in a liminal state between life and death. Its demise has been pretty much written into the terms of the acquisition.

One question that I'd pose to everyone is do you want to live in a world in which Elon Musk is the most powerful person? Do you really believe in his vision? Is it a positive vision for the world or a dystopian one? Does it reflect the worst of us or the best of us?

[Rapzid]

Musk bought Twitter as a bad deal. He's way upside down on the worth vs the debt to investors and bankers. He needs to squeeze blood from a stone.

The end.