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elm's avatar

¨Musk’s acquisition of Twitter should have been stopped on multiple grounds, foremost among them that in Musk’s hands, Twitter is a national security threat. (As far as we know, he’s already turned over all of Twitter’s user data to the CCP. If Beijing asked for it, does anyone doubt he’d do it, especially if they offered him a good price for it?)¨

Oh, there should be no doubt that he is a willing pawn of the neo-Axis - he obviously thinks he´s the one calling the shots, but Beijing has him by the balls because his Tesla plant is there, and my suspicion is that they´re pumping his in-China sales - and have made it clear they´ll cut him off if he gets out of line.

(The earnings calls he´s made since September have been wild, and it´s pretty obvious he´s inflating his numbers. The problem here is that, without Tesla, he´s the owner of three or four money losers, and has no profit centers. In the instance that his Tesla shares go in the toilet or the company implodes he would be very much worth negative dollars. A lot of negative dollars - absent subsidies, I am pretty sure SpaceX would go under, the Boring Company is a joke, and obviously, he paid 44 billion for Twitter and it is now worth maybe 4, if he were lucky and could find a buyer. That would pay as much as 4 billion. (For reference, Yahoo bought Tumblr, a going enterprise with buzz for a billion, and Yahoo wound up selling it off for 3 million. This is a comparable case, I believe.) The businessman con artist managing to just stay one step ahead of bankruptcy is a well-known figure: see one Donald John Trump for example.)

At any rate, I said they should conduct a national security investigation back in October, and that they should just park the acquisition, but the Blob´s ability to turn around the direction of their thought is about as quick as the Ever Given. (That DC is *right* *now* having a freakout about the CCP, 10 to 15 years after it should have been clear they needed to do so is an indication about how far behind the curve they are running.)

¨And he’s such a repellent specimen, too: a puerile, stammering creature who resembles some kind of pale, hairless mole and who is, despite all the riches in the world, unable to land a joke. (This is not strictly relevant to my argument, but it adds to my aggravation.)¨

I think it´s entirely relevant - the fact that he is such a disgusting specimen is why he fits in so well with the far right, which is all in on being pro-dictatorship. At any rate, it was clear to me (because they SAID SO) that the reason to target Twitter with an acquisition was to gain power over the lefto-communist elites, like, oh, I dunno, Claire Berlinski. That is obviously an entirely ridiculous thought, but they do think it and they do believe it. To go along with being puerile little men who are terrified of the ladies, they are also entirely clueless - WAY more money than brains.

So. Here we are. I´m not sure there´s much that the USG can do at this moment, and the GOP is practically ecstatic to back puerile little men, so they´re not going to sign on to anything aimed at Musk. All of this points to just watching Twitter burn and get on with finding alternatives.

elm

that´s not a satisfactory direction, but the situation is what it is

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David Eggleston's avatar

Claire, take a deep breath, count to ten, and move your publicity apparatus to MySpace. Sorry, not to be so glib, but I’m one of the 20% who’ve followed you since Ricochet (which is now a Teahadist/Trumpist cesspool) without ever setting foot on Twitter (besides a brief foray with a parody account). Look at the silver lining, and take this opportunity to diversify publicity. Maybe SubStack Notes will replace Twitter. Something like 70% of Twitter is left-leaning, and another 20% is hard right. Elon Musk, of whom I’m ambivalent, will probably end up with a rump Truth Social or Parler or name your failed fascist message board if he doesn’t wise up. Twitter was on the ropes financially under Jack Dorsey pandering to his progressive paladins. It’s even more threatened under Musk and his Alt Right fanbois.

And a small correction. Google and Facebook are (and Dorsey’s Twitter was) begging for stiff congressional regulations. You know why? To raise the barriers to entry so SubStack, SubStack Notes, and by extension the Cosmopolitan Globalists couldn’t break into the media space. Don’t go full WigWag trustbusting neo-progressive in a fit of pique. It’ll turn around and bite you. Now go have a nice tipple or three of Armagnac or Calvados and relax.

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