this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2024
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[–] nikita@sh.itjust.works 144 points 8 months ago (11 children)

This seems like further confirmation of that theory that I saw posted on here that the Saudi oil barons funded Elon’s purchase of Twitter for the sole purpose of destroying it. They want to silence online discussions of climate change and other left wing topics.

Combined with Reddit being owned by Tencent, Facebook being eternally evil, and TikTok being unconducive to any form of coherent dialogue, there are not many places for left wing discourse on the internet anymore.

[–] exscape@kbin.social 214 points 8 months ago (8 children)

"climate change and other left wing topics"... I know that's basically how it works in some countries, but it's insane to consider certain scientific facts left wing, and we really shouldn't support such statements.

[–] nikita@sh.itjust.works 83 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Thanks for pointing that out. It’s just so normal to think that way here that they’ve even corrupted me into framing climate change that way. It’s not a left wing topic; it’s a reality.

I just hope young people who are thinking of voting conservative here keep in mind that those assholes literally don’t believe in climate change and by extension science and facts. That alone should automatically disqualify conservatives from anyone’s consideration.

[–] reev@sh.itjust.works 35 points 8 months ago

It's not a lack of belief, it's just an abundance of "fuck you, I got mine".

[–] stellargmite@lemmy.world 34 points 8 months ago

Politicising climate change was yet another distraction from dealing with it in a cohesive and unified manner. Divide and conquer.

[–] Justas@sh.itjust.works 33 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yes, in Europe, most political parties, both left and right, have their own climate change mitigation policies, because if they don't, they risk just not being elected.

[–] Tja@programming.dev 14 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Also no mainstream political party in Europe dares to touch Universal Healthcare.

[–] Amaltheamannen@lemmy.ml 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Well, they have privatised it and made it worse and worse, with longer queues and worse quality of care.

[–] Tja@programming.dev 9 points 8 months ago (1 children)

That strongly depends on your country.

[–] Amaltheamannen@lemmy.ml -3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The access is universal, but its run by private companies now.

[–] Tja@programming.dev 7 points 8 months ago

That strongly depends on your country.

[–] Hackerman_uwu@lemmy.world 21 points 8 months ago

Found the round-earther.

[–] WhatsThePoint@lemmy.world 13 points 8 months ago (3 children)

The reason it’s overwhelmingly called “climate change” instead of global warming now is because of language change pushed by billionaire foundations. The Koch network specifically focus grouped and created the term change. Whether we want it considered left wing or not, the billionaire backed right has made such statements left wing.

[–] loobkoob@kbin.social 15 points 8 months ago

The reason it’s overwhelmingly called “climate change” instead of global warming now is because of language change pushed by billionaire foundations.

I do think "global warming" struggles to convince some more simple people anyway, unfortunately. Because while the average temperature of the globe is increasing and causing the changes in climate that we're seeing, I've come across far too many comments from people saying things like "global warming must be a myth because it snows more than it used to" and things themselves smarter than all climate scientists combined for that observation.

Of course, those same people probably think global warming is good because they like their summer holidays so perhaps their opinions shouldn't matter much either way!

[–] TWeaK@lemm.ee 12 points 8 months ago

Climate change was adopted because global warming doesn't intuitively line up with winters being much colder on top of the average temperature being higher.

[–] fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Is this really true?

Idiots would walk around on cold days saying "see - this global warming stuff is bullshit".

Climate change describes the danger much more aptly.

[–] WhatsThePoint@lemmy.world 6 points 8 months ago

You should read “Dark Money” by Jane Mayer. Goes into it and a lot of other very eye opening stuff about how the billionaire foundations changed this country.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27833494-dark-money

[–] PiratePanPan@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 8 months ago

In 2024, anything that makes sense is un-conservative.

[–] TWeaK@lemm.ee 2 points 8 months ago

Reality has a left-wing bias.

[–] WhatsHerBucket@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago

And yet, here we are :/

[–] WhatsThePoint@lemmy.world 23 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I’ve had the same theory for a while. They saw the Arab Spring and other populist movements. With their vast oil wealth, tanking Twitter was a small price to pay to re-fracture descent and silence the left. The concentration of wealth has given insane power to wealthy who skew overwhelmingly on the side of themselves. The rise of the right is a direct result of billionaires funding across numerous avenues. The right aligns best with their self interest. They played the long game because they only have to pay people and let them do it for them. Regular folks have to stay engaged in the battle after working to support themselves. Billionaires are the matastasized cancer of capitalism.

[–] TWeaK@lemm.ee 16 points 8 months ago

The purchase itself was a leveraged buyout, they didn't pay the entire $44bn as Twitter took out a loan to cover $13bn. Like all leveraged buyouts (eg Toys R Us) the purchase itself is meant to kill the business. Even before Musk started screwing the revenue there was little hope Twitter could pay the interest, let along the principle. Now, Twitter is worth less than the debt, by some estimates.

[–] Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Twitter is really big there. It's basically the most used social media by a vast majority compared to other ones. It's way more plausible that some 'too much rich to know what to do with all the money' Saudi princes decided something like a few percent of their wealth to own the biggest social media on their country for bragging rights and admin privilege to be worth it. Plus, they probably thought Twitter was too big to fail and die, They didn't expect Elon would fuck it up so bad. I don't think anybody expected Elon to fuck it up so bad.

[–] nikita@sh.itjust.works 2 points 8 months ago

Yeah that’s possible too. It’s all speculation until the Netflix documentary comes out years later lol

[–] baru@lemmy.world 10 points 8 months ago (1 children)

This seems like further confirmation of that theory that I saw posted on here that the Saudi oil barons funded Elon’s purchase of Twitter for the sole purpose of destroying it.

Then why did Twitter needed to sue him to get him to abide by the deal? Musk often promotes stuff in a pump and dump scheme. One of the many examples is when he briefly promoted bitcoin. He made loads of money off that.

I'm guessing he thought he could make a lot of money quickly in some way. But then interest rates rose quickly and whatever he was planning fell through.

[–] nikita@sh.itjust.works 2 points 8 months ago

It’s possible it was a initially pump and dump that turned into a Saudi funded venture. He’s a useful idiot from the Arabs’ perspective.

[–] PiratePanPan@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 8 months ago

Holy shit you might be right

[–] Larry@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago

Conservatives are desperately trying to force TikTok to sell because even though its format is garbage, it's gathered a large leftwing userbase

[–] Syntha@sh.itjust.works 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

This seems like further confirmation of that theory that I saw posted on here that the Saudi oil barons funded Elon’s purchase of Twitter for the sole purpose of destroying it.

Then why does it still exist? Musk took Twitter private, they could've just pulled the plug if they wanted to.

[–] NeptuneOrbit@lemmy.world 9 points 8 months ago

That terse action would have made mastodon flourish. It had to be gradual.

[–] moup@lemm.ee 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Why would they spend billions for this when they could (and still can) just block the website? It’s not like you can sue the King in Saudi Arabia (lest you think you have too many heads)

[–] Kalysta@lemm.ee 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Reddit’s owned by tencent now? When did this happen?

[–] nikita@sh.itjust.works 2 points 8 months ago

My bad, Reddit is still owned by an American company but Tencent has a large stake in it since 2019, at least enough to influence the platform into complying with pro-CCP censorship and etc