What Musk is doing at Twitter right now is clearly a demonstration of power -- that is, his ability to be a capricious dictator of the platform he controls. He is the opposite of a benevolent dictator. He is fomenting extremism and hatred, and mocking his always obvious lie about believing in freedom of expression. He and Twitter are a clear and present danger to the rest of us.
Friends should be telling friends to stop supporting this increasingly evil man and company. Now.
Tried to update my Twitter profile (which already says to find me here) to be clear that I'm done posting and reading there.
Update was rejected because Musk and his minions now want you to believe mentioning and/or linking to my Mastodon account constitutes "malware".
He's panicking, which is good.
He still controls one of the most important media companies in the world, which is bad.
NASA and other government agencies doing business with Musk should be thinking hard, right now, about what kind of person they're doing the public's business with.
Meanwhile, anyone who bought stock in Tesla during the past year should be cursing the name Musk.
Any journalist or news organization remaining on Twitter is now participating in Musk's mockery of free speech.
You cannot have this one both ways, journalists. You are with him, and his rancid extremism, or you are not.
Please choose to do the right thing for yourselves, if no one else.
Similarly, government agencies that remain on Twitter are endorsing a company that increasingly promotes extremism and demonstrates contempt for fundamental principles of democracy.
Maybe that's fine for Florida's regime. It should not be for most governments, especailly the federal government.
@jimrutt @dangillmor The problem is not "new" ideas. It's that he's been actively bringing back promoters of racism, anti-trans and anti-lgbt bigotry and outright fascism.
My goto for comments like yours is to point to Popper's Paradox of Intolerance - tolerating the intolerant is the surest way to destroy tolerance.
@jimrutt @dangillmor Yes, I am sure, and I am also sure that equivocating on opposition to bigotry itself is vile.
That you only "strongly suspect" they are wrong to me is the kind of moral relativism which has time and time again allowed oppressors to flourish.
It's only marginally better than support for the bigotry.
@jimrutt @dangillmor I don't need "reproducible data" to decide that oppression and discrimination and harming other people is bad. I only need to see the harm.
That you're trying to "both sides" bigotry and harm to other people as something to dispassionately analyse from the distance makes you a nasty apologist for bigotry.
Dan Gillmor
Jim Rutt
Vidar Hokstad / Galaxy Bound