this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
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Remember: the real reason Elon Musk bought Twitter was to influence the 2024 election & stop any kind of leftist organizing on the site (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 1 year ago by demesisx@infosec.pub to c/leftism@lemmy.world
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This comment hit the nail on the head. I feel like I played right into his hands. But what is a person to do?

remember the real reason he bought Twitter was to influence the 2024 election and stop any kind of leftist organizing on the site

all 48 comments
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[–] arquebus_x@kbin.social 64 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

The reply to that comment is much more likely to be true, though. Elon Musk is not playing 26-D chess. He's not playing 4D chess. He's not playing chess. He's not playing checkers, or even Chutes & Ladders. He's playing Candyland. He's not thinking more than 1/10th of a move ahead, and more often than not, he's thinking 2 moves behind.

His consistency in his behavior with Twitter (in terms of left/right bias) is not down to any kind of planning or forethought, it's just that he behaves in ways that conform to his worldview whenever the opportunity presents itself. It looks like planning because it's consistent and because there's no friction involved in implementing his desires (since he's the final arbiter of what happens at Twitter, and he has no one around him willing to tell him he's making bad decisions).

Elon Musk is an emotionally dysregulated rich man whose college level education did not actually stick. That's all. There's nothing more nefarious or supervillainous about it. He's just a lonely moron with money.

[–] Serinus@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Yes, but I think the nefarious part is that he's surrounded himself with grifters and yes-men. He might not see it if they're not directly grifting money and are just turning him to their own causes.

You don't need to take his money if you can just get him to spend it where you want.

He literally needs a court jester to bring him down to Earth.

[–] JoJoGAH@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I listened to a book recently that has this comment being closest to the actual truth. Survival of the Richest by Douglas Rushkoff It is an eye opener

[–] JulesWinnfield@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

There may be a lot of truth to that.... but I find it hard not to counter such thoughts against his achievements with Tesla and SpaceX. The man gets shit done (and is late for a lot of other stuff too, granted). Still, there are not many other CEOs of recent times with such drive and such vision that have been able to execute on such grand schemes, and actually, for the most part, succeed.

[–] brimnac@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You’re prolly going to get shit on here if you think Tesla is “his” achievement.

I didn’t downvote but a lot of people think he bought clout with his Founder title after investing in the company.

Since, you know… he wasn’t a founder.

Edit: yes, I know the argument of his contributions being in the marketing, and and and…. that still doesn’t make him a Founder.

[–] JulesWinnfield@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

Not saying I think he did it alone, but he has been the driving force in the ultimate success of both endeavours.

[–] masquenox@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

TIL... there are still people around who think Phony Stark has ever "achieved" anything.

[–] Prior_Industry@lemmy.world 33 points 1 year ago

Has he even given a reason for why the ad is banned? He was quick to give a debrief regarding the CP posting guys reinstatement.

[–] Roundcat@kbin.social 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Twitter is proof that so many people, no matter how well intentioned they claim to be, will sacrifice their principles and integrity for the sake of convenience.

[–] Neato@kbin.social 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

TBF, if I had an extra 6 hours in my day I'd be doing a lot more inconvenient stuff that was better overall. Keeping everyone working continuously just to survive is the strategy of the leech class. I don't blame people for taking the easy way out and the simple pleasures in life even if they are ultimately not ideal. People only have so much toil and fight in them.

[–] Roundcat@kbin.social 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You're leaving twitter, not closing a bank account. You could do it right now if you wanted, and hell you don't even have to formally close your account. For 90 percent of users, it's simply making the choice to spend your time elsewhere. That's what most of us here chose to do with reddit.

I can give a little more slack to content creators, celebrities, journalists, and politicians because they have more invested in the site, but it doesn't disprove my statement. They are still making the decision to stick around despite their principles because they have deemed the sacrifice too great. and thus the people who follow them stick around too.

It's not like it's an impossible choice to make. Plenty of creators, celebrities, and journalists have permanently left twitter, and these are the people I have respect for, because they stuck to their guns. They didn't try to justify sticking around, they took the hit in engagement, but they did the right thing.

Anyone can leave twitter if they want. Not everyone who left had a choice in the matter. Many marginalized people have left the site because it was too dangerous for them to stick around. Many of them are here and on Mastodon. Others are trying to build or salvage what they can on what is becoming an increasingly dangerous web for them.

On the other hand, why I respect many of the users here is we want to build something better than what we left behind. Many of us gave up our communities, our subreddits, and our followers to try to make something better. Whether we achieve that here on fediverse still remains to be seen, but I respect everyone of you here much more than any outspoken celebrity or leftist youtuber who doesn't want to let go.

edit: So I had a chance to cool down a bit, and actually talked to an artist who made their livelyhood on twitter. I will say I retract some of what I said above. The truth of the matter is the situation just sucks, and there is no easy way out for a lot of people. Sure it is super bad ass of some people who are still willing to stick to their principles despite everything, but ultimately I can't put the burden on everyone to do the same thing, especially when such sacrifices clearly hurt some people more than others.

My apologies to people who see themselves trapped there. I had no right to be so judgemental.

[–] ExRedditor1928@sh.itjust.works 27 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I don't know, I think it makes a lot more sense to assume that he's a dysfunctional fuck-up who's spending his mid-life crisis taking on a project he clearly can't handle.

I could see many billionaires doing that. But Musk is the same guy who built high speed one-way underground car tunnel with no room for emergency services instead of a fucking train. He doesn't have the capacity for such schemes.

[–] Shikadi@lemmy.sdf.org 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

He did that to convince the government not to build more trains which would compete with cars actually, and it worked.

[–] ExRedditor1928@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh. Well fuck.

[–] OwenEverbinde@lemmy.myserv.one 3 points 1 year ago

Even got Vegas to spend millions of dollars of transit money on a single, super-slow, underground, extra lane of backed up traffic.

Imagine what they could have built with that money.

[–] polymorphist_neuroid@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Elon Musk: Schrodinger's dipshit.

[–] Saneless@sh.itjust.works 24 points 1 year ago

And if you don't agree with Musk or the right nutters, yet continue to use the site, which pumps up users and engagements, and gives users on his side someone to interact with...

You're part of the problem. Stop going. It will not get advertisers and it will fold. Do it

[–] Arotrios@kbin.social 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Remember the real reason ~~Elon Musk~~ the Saudis and Russians bought Twitter for Musk was to influence the 2024 election and stop any sort of leftist organizing or media on the site.

FTFY

[–] arquebus_x@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think people have a very skewed understanding of how much influence Twitter has on elections. Facebook, yes. Google, sure. But Twitter? Twitter is tiny.

Twitter, as of last year, had about 238 million daily active users, or roughly 3% of the total world population.

Facebook had 3 billion. That's more than 1/3 the population of the planet.

TikTok is roughly 1 billion. Instagram, 500M. Hell, even Snapchat is higher, at around 380-400M.

[–] skellener@kbin.social 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Doubt many leftists use Twitter/X anymore anyway. Too much fascism and enshittification. Much better alternatives that are decentralized with the fediverse.

[–] CoderKat@lemm.ee 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

But that's kinda the problem, isn't it? They lost their platform. Sure, alternatives like Mastodon are cool in their own ways, but we lost a lot of reach. Twitter was utterly massive in terms of reach (and that's why there's some people on the left who still haven't left it yet). At its peak, it had something like 400M monthly users. Mastodon has like 2.5M monthly users and Mastodon has been repeatedly criticized for being difficult to discover people, so who knows how many of those users you can reach even if you manage to get something to go viral.

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah, that's the real issue and I didn't think of it until you pointed it out. I don't think he bought it to meddle with the election. I think he got forced into something that he'd changed his mind about. He'll still meddle, because he's an asshole, but that's a product of his broken brain rather than a predetermined plan.

[–] skellener@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

Broadcast television used to be the platform with reach. Social media is fickle. Remember MySpace? Friendster? If it didn’t implode from Musk now, it would have at some point anyway. I think things will get better being decentralized myself instead of one entity controlling everything. Technology doesn’t sit still. Just because it might be hard for discovery for some right now, doesn’t mean it will always be the case.

[–] demesisx@infosec.pub 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That’s the point, I think. I heard someone else say somewhere that he’s hoping to silo Twitter to the point where it becomes this echo chamber of his right wing tech bro bullshit.

I think, us, with our integrity might have played right into the hands of fascists. I just hope that enough people wake up to the fediverse because it might be what the world needs if enough people catch on to it.

[–] skellener@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

For Shitter💩, it really comes down to advertising. If they can generate revenue with it they’ll survive. If not, it’s gone. It’s still bleeding millions from what I understand.

[–] Cheers@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 year ago

Also remember, Musk served under Trump for a bit. They had differing ideas, and he eventually left, but we already knew who Trump was when he left.

I can imagine him sticking around if Trump wasn't such a cluster.

[–] kitonthenet@kbin.social 10 points 1 year ago

The conservative right to post: they get to post and you get to listen

[–] UmbrellAssassin@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

Implying Twitter wasn't a cesspool since it was created.

[–] randon31415@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

I doubt even Musk knows why he bought it, and like Trump and the presidency, he has been doing everything in his power to get out of it by thrashing about trying to destroy it.

[–] jaywalker@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Ehh? Will he do it now that he can? Probably. Did he have any plan for anything before he bought Twitter? Probably not.

[–] Rolder@reddthat.com 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Destroying the site and pushing people to use other platforms like mastodon or threads doesn’t seem particularly smart then

[–] PostmodernPythia@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

One can be evil and stupid.

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 year ago

Destroying the site and pushing people to use other platforms like mastodon or threads doesn’t seem particularly smart then

Muskrat must not be particularly smart, then. He shows us every day.

[–] blazera@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Im still on the conspiracy train of him buying Twitter after meeting with Putin to weaken Ukraine support.

But Republicans are also working for Putin so they might be one and the same motivation.

[–] Neato@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I thought it was the Saudis or similar nations that helped him fund the purchase. I saw speculation that they'd want him to torpedo the site to stop dissenters from organizing. Very much a conspiracy theory but Musk has been slowly destroying the site through bad moves instead of trying to take it offline from day 1, which makes more sense if this is what they wanted: destruction of the site.

[–] blazera@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

it aint even slow, he immediately laid off 80% of staff

[–] SirSimonSpamalot@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Y'all are giving him too much credit! Do you really think he knows what he's doing?

[–] Lemmylaugh@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Same with meddling with reddit

[–] Bonehead@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago

But if he makes it so bad that people populate other alternatives, than leftist organization will still occur and Twitter/X will be so tainted that only the ultra hardcore right wing will be oblivious. Once again, just like with bringing "S3XY" back, he wants to pull something off so badly that he trips over himself getting to the goal.

[–] FarceMultiplier@lemmy.ca -1 points 1 year ago

If it wasn't for his long obsession with the letter X, he would have named it Q.

[–] gaybear@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago

we are at tumblr shit head