[Wulfschilde]

https://reason.com/2022/04/25/elon-musk ... melt-down/

Over the last week, SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk arranged $46.5 billion in financing to follow through on his unsolicited offer to Twitter's board to buy the social media site from them. This afternoon, the board accepted Musk's offer to buy the company for $54.20 a share.

Long a Twitter power user/troll/loudmouth, Musk bought a 9.2 percent stake in the company last month, becoming the largest shareholder, before deciding he'd rather have the whole thing.

Cue hysteria! Musk haters have taken to the site to declare that Donald Trump will now probably win the 2024 election, that Musk's bid is really about white power, that Section 230 must be reformed, and that, yes, Musk's new policies will be lethal. (Perhaps the death toll will be even larger than net neutrality's!)

So, for users of the platform, what's likely to change?

Musk has panned the site's existing content moderation policies, saying they are too restrictive and encroach on people's ability to speak freely without being censored. Some liberalization of these policies and the re-platforming of controversial figures like former President Donald Trump—who was banned in the wake of the January 6 riot for inciting violence among his fans—seems likely, though unpopular with droves of users.

Elon Musk is planning to remove Twitter's alleged bias by making the algorithms open source, to allow long-form posts (whatever those are), various small changes like an edit button and has even claimed that he will give the board of directors a $0 sallary.

It might be historic for us to lose Twitter as a cacophonous echo chamber of leftist grievances. Even former CEO Jack Dorsey has been critical of the company recently and they arguably had no choice but to accept a buyout offer for more money than the company is technically worth on the stock market because to do otherwise would not to be acting in the shareholders' best interests, so they have basically suffered a hostile takeover. Wow!

[Rancid]

I'm going to write a nicely worded letter to Musk. All I need from him is like 1 million dollars. That's change under the couch kind of money for him.

[Rich]

So this was my first reaction

This was my second

But on further reflection Jack Dorsey has done an immense amount of good in the world, the first large internet application to move to Scala. So perhaps a more nuanced and sombre response is in order.