How does he even do it? It’s like he’s on a zealous crusade to embarrass himself. I keep thinking “he can’t look any more foolish and shitty” and he fuckin KEEPS proving me wrong. It’s almost impressive at this point. He stays setting new PR for negative PR.
Imagine if you opened a restaurant, and I went around lying to everyone that you spit in the food. As a result, your restaurant loses business. Shouldn’t you have legal recourse to prevent me from spreading such lies about your business, and to recoup the losses you incurred?
I don’t mean to suggest that Musk has a valid case under the law, only to point out that the law in question is actually quite reasonable and necessary.
Whether the restaurant remains profitable is beside the point. If you can demonstrate that even one customer chose not to visit your restaurant as a result of my lies then I could be liable for defamation.
Suppose you were a business making, say, voting machines. It's a good business -- there are a lot of elections, they have to be tabulated, and you have a way of making that tabulation easier to do. You're not going to be Google or Microsoft, but you're in a comfortable niche.
Then comes a bunch of dumbfuck conspiracy theorists who accuse you of rigging the vote against their favored candidate. You're not happy about this, but this is just a bunch of nutjobs. To some extent, what can you do? Then this major news organization takes up what those conspiracy theorists are saying, and they're doing this to enrich themselves by putting out news that these dumbfucks like to hear. This amplification is damaging to your business (because it's costly to defend yourself and you're losing business anyway), and you can prove that this major news organization is doing this on purpose, for their own profit.
You sue that major news organization. Discovery is a delight, because these people really did know that there was no evidence for any of these conspiracy theories, but they kept repeating them over and over again, damaging your business.
Does this sound familiar? That's why we have laws so that victims of libel can recover some of those damages.
Now, I'm not saying Musk is justified. Musk can go threatening to sue, etc., and I'm sure ADL lawyers would be delighted to argue before a judge to tell Musk to fuck off, since he really doesn't have grounds to stand on.
Feel free to ignore news you aren’t interested in. The sad reality is that Elon Musk is relevant and his actions have real effects on people. Bury your head in the sand if you like but don’t expect me to join you.
I’m pretty sure that’s how it goes for most wealthy people. It’s all tied up in assets, not liquid cash. Investing your money is always better for growth in the long term.
He’s in the news because he’s become a laughingstock. All news isn’t good news. I certainly don’t think he wants news that continues to convince people that he’s an utter idiot and waste of space.
tying up in assets such as property, land, etc. has real value though. you can sell a huge amount of land without the land losing value because of the sale, but you can’t sell a huge amount of stock without the value collapsing while selling it off.
any exposure is good exposure. investors don’t normally run away just because you earn yourself notoriety, they usually do the opposite - because the market is entirely made of make belief and fairy dust.
He’s so wealthy he could personally go to your neighborhood and “Mansa Musa” your place into inflation. He could just drop $10,000,000 per person to get up and leave whatever square mile surrounding your residence right now.
Assuming avg population density for a city in the US that’s only $2.8billion (~280 ppl/mile in cities). Not even a scratch to his total net worth.
A single person with that much wealth and power doesn’t require any attention to retain it. He’ll keep coming out on top because it’s nearly impossible not to when you reach a large enough number.
he doesn’t actually have his wealth. it’s estimated stock value; which would cascade to nothing the minute he tries to extract it. all he can do is borrow with stock as leverage; which would net him a lot of money sure; but there is no way they would approve billions in a loan unless he is very very specific on the investment goal.
Okay we’re done here. You’re contributing nothing to the conversation and I wasted enough time arguing with fools on reddit, I’m not going to do it here.
Imagine thinking this is still (or ever was) just about twitter, or that if you simply starve the richest fascist on the planet of attention he will just go away.. 🤦♀️
It occurs to me that I’ve never heard of an absolutist that wasn’t a hypocrite in some way. They can excuse white supremacy and Nazis, but they draw the line at either being personally attacked or held accountable.
For context, this all started Thursday when the ADL xeeted that is had a “frank and productive” conversation with X’s CEO. She replied with some warm and fuzzy PR bullshit about working together to improve the platform blah blah blah. But the right wing nutjobs weren’t happy with the implication that X was in anyway cooperating with the ADL and there was immediate backlash. “Ban the ADL” became a trending hashtag, because, according to the racist majority on X, the ADL is the actual hate group and they pressure advertisers who in turn pressure platforms to “ban free speech.” Musk, always quick to undermine the sad sack holding the title “CEO” jumped on that bandwagon and been xeeting about it all weekend, threatening to ban them, generally talking trash, and now threatening to sue.
I almost feel bad for the new “CEO”. It really seems like she’s doing her best to give the impression that Twitter is still a sane company with reasonable business practices, only for Elon to completely disregard her messaging and do the exact opposite.
I would feel bad if it wasn’t obvious that Musk would do this. It is impossible for him to control himself. He can’t help to put his dumbass opinion in the mix, no matter how much it hurts him personally and professionally. It’s the reason he was forced to buy Twitter in the first place.
Drop me in her seat for 7 figures with a nice kick-out clause (no stock, please) and I’ll pretend Xitter is a wholesome, thoughtful, productive corporate citizen, too.
It’s a shitty position to be in so I almost feel bad as well, except literally everyone knew this was going to happen when she joined. But I doubt she thought, “What’s the worst that could happen? I have a bland conversation with the ADL, and Musk spends the weekend retweeting self deacribed antisemites and threatening to ban/sue the ADL?”
She is scheduled to be at the Code Conference hosted by the Verge/Vox at the end of September. I’m really interested in how she answers when asked about being undermined, especially now that the undermining has taken the form of her boss just being an outright antisemite.
they pressure advertisers who in turn pressure platforms to “ban free speech.”
This argument of theirs is so strange. Don’t advertisers too have free speech? Is the right wing arguing that advertisers shouldn’t be allowed to choose to stop advertising with Twitter? What “pressure” can ADL put on them? Does the ADL have legal authority to force advertisers to exit Twitter? No. Is the ADL holding private information about the CEOs of advertisers and extorting the advertisers to leave? Not likely.
Is the ADL communicating a position that the majority of the advertiser’s customers find the racist, fascist, and misogynistic content now omnipresent on Twitter distasteful, and therefore harmful to the advertisers’ brands and with negative impacts to future sales? Likely yes, but those statements are themselves free speech on the part of the ADL.
What the right wing seems to be arguing is that the definition of free speech should be the right to say whatever racist, fascist, and misogynistic comments they like without anyone making choices of their own to dissociate with the right wing. That’s not free speech that’s…fascism!
Perhaps ironically it is the ADLs free speech that allows them to show advertisers what is posted on elons website. Further irony can be found in the fact that a screenshot of elsons website showing bigoted posts is an example of fact and not of feelings. Moreover: crying about your lost ad revenue is feelings and blaming the ADL for it is not facts.
It’s never ok to hurt somebody’s business just because you disagree with them giving free speech to everybody. The ADL should pay Elon for the damage they did to his business
No, that’s not free speech. Free speech is supposed to be for protecting businesses, not for hurting them. If you hurt somebody’s business, you gotta pay for that. Freedom isn’t free.
I remember around 2020, a lot of freethinkers began spouting something about how Twitter is “a platform not a publisher” and therefore users are entitled to treat the website like a public meeting place and protected by first amendment rights, etc.
It was basically a Soverign Citizen argument about how Section 230 means websites don’t have the authority to moderate content at all, and it died down after Trump stopped preaching it after he launched Truth
I remember around 2020, a lot of freethinkers began spouting something about how Twitter is “a platform not a publisher” and therefore users are entitled to treat the website like a public meeting place and protected by first amendment rights, etc.
I think you’re taking that quote of mine with an unintended meaning. I didn’t mean to suggest advertisers have right to post what they want, rather they have the choice to NOT post if they don’t want to. The right-wing argument appears to suggest that advertisers should be powerless to choose or not choose to advertise. Suggesting they are wheat to be harvested. A resource owned by the company they are purchasing advertising from; its a bizarre notion.
I'm actually surprised he's not crossed that bridge. I do find it interesting to have a billionaire that doesn't even bother to pay lip service to being a civil human being but is just a massive racist tool.
But you know what if he met these people irl he'd get along fine with them I bet and there wouldn't be these unhinged outbursts. He's a complete paper tiger suffering a case of being terminally online because he thinks it's his job (it isn't).
Maybe he's taking something either prescribed or recreationally that has him perpetually on a knife edge like this.
That’s because he’s not and never was a businessman. He’s a tech guy who got super lucky and became filthy rich. Musk builds and designs shit, he doesn’t know squat about running a company. He should stick to playing with his rockets and making new roadsters. This whole CEO foray has turned out real bad.
He’s not even a tech guy. He inherited his money, and then lucked into a couple jobs with actual tech guys that he could take the credit for. His entire career has been built around buying other tech companies that were just taking off, pushing the original founders out, and then taking credit for everything everyone else did.
He’s a tech guy who got super lucky and became filthy rich.
Not even that…
He was (at best) an average coder decades ago who used family money to buy lots of startups and a few made a lot of money.
He was a gambler, not a businessman. It’s just when you start out wealthy you can keep buying lottery tickets till you win. It doesn’t even mean he was good at picking lottery numbers, he could just afford to buy more tickets than other people.
Not mine but… Entrepreneurship is like one of those carnival games where you throw darts or something. Middle class kids can afford one throw. Most miss. A few hit the target and get a small prize. A very few hit the center bullseye and get a bigger prize. Rags to riches! The American Dream lives on.
Rich kids can afford many throws. If they want to, they can try over and over and over again until they hit something and feel good about themselves. Some keep going until they hit the center bullseye, then they give speeches or write blog posts about “meritocracy” and the salutary effects of hard work.
Poor kids aren’t visiting the carnival. They’re the ones working it.
Also, we are all looking at this backwards. The very definition of survivorship bias.
We always only see the luckiest people. All the richest people have been super lucky, because if they weren’t, they wouldn’t be the richest. And also the most ruthless for the same reasons.
If you look at all the lottery winners, then by definition you will see people who gambled and won. Because someone has to win. That doesn’t mean the lottery winners have some better skillets or are smarter at picking numbers than those who didn’t win.
What’s crazy is that he had fooled a lot of people into thinking he was a tech guy with a very carefully crafted image, but he threw it all away to help the alt right
Lucky timing is: being a white guy growing up in the 70s/80s America.
Besides that, if you look at the company he started. It started selling books, but he always wanted to sell other stuff. His shareholder letters describe his vision from the very first one and it is consistent. It didn’t change over time. They company got lucky, they talk about prime being a fluke all the time. But on the other hand, the culture in the company was something that supported a fluke like that to bubble up through the idea pond.
Any who, yea. I don’t care for the person that the media portrays him as today. But for his initial years I absolutely give him a lot of credit.
I haven’t heard off Amazon being built on stolen ideas or usurping someone else’s company or being born with a silver spoon.
Yes he was a white male in America in the 70s and has all the privilege associated with that, but there were like another 50 million in that category.
It’s more about launching a company right when internet purchases took off. People tried before, but the timing wasn’t right. He had the right skill set, at the right time, and it took off.
The thing is the added complexity that the plaintiff is adding is just going to extend out the entire process. The filing indicates something like a 60% loss of ad revenue. Even if the case runs smooth as butter, there's no way Musk can get access to the money he's seeking in time to cover the massive loss plus the huge debt obligations he's sacked the company with already.
There's zero ways restitution from this case would ever give the company enough head above water quick enough to prevent drowning in debt.
He may not know much, but he knows the difference between a taped performance where the producers are trying to make him look good, and a live performance where he’ll be seen exactly as he is.
Yep. For all the people saying “but trump is great on camera”. You’ve been suckered too. When he can’t control the narrative or immediately discredit the evidence against him he is largely powerless and looks like the common crook he is.
Considering he can’t keep his mouth shut I think there’s a very real chance we see him slapped with contempt and tossed in the clink.
Oh how glorious it would be to see him in an orange jumpsuit.
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