Mike Masnick ✅Okay, next prediction: his best buddies will be making "obviously it's not against free speech to block links to competitors. Why should anyone be forced to help its competitors" arguments all day...
Michael@mmasnick I've already had at least 20 people DM me with this exact nonsense.
E.G. Phillips@mmasnick “This would be like allowing Tesla drivers to see other makes of cars through their windshields!”
Jasmine Diaz
ExtremelyBitter@mmasnick Musk is just recreating the public town square complete with time-honored tradition of jailing anyone who mentions the public square in the next town over. Or talks about an atlas listing all kinds of town squares. As one does.
mmalc“But but monopolies, App Store, walled garden bad”
🌲🧿 "Max"t💽d🏵️n 🔎🍄@mmasnick Twitter links work on Mastodon.
James Dallas@mmasnick "are Democrats even really people?" ~ Elon in about two weeks
Ethan Kaplan@mmasnick oh for sure. Calacanis is made of pretzel knots
Jason Shellen
Diogo Constantino@mmasnick That's so obvious that doesn't graduate as a prediction.
joy larkin 🌺✨@mmasnick A number of the usual suspect VC thought leaders this morning are calling it dumb and bad policy.
Robert A. Hill@mmasnick Pretty solid foresight, I am already seeing these dweebs compare it to allowing Burger King to advertise in a McDonald’s which is also very funny considering the brain trusts making the arguments.
braddyg ❎@robert @mmasnick more accurately this is like kicking people out of a McDonalds for mentioning BK #censorship
ScreamsInternally@mmasnick do EV manufacturers advertise on Twitter or have Twitter accounts?
pedatn@mmasnick im sure the EU will answer that question an addendum to a billion dollar fine
thomas@mmasnick unfortunately his “competitors” at NASA may have a different prospective.
VierLeger@mmasnick I wonder if advertisers love it when the platform they’re buying ads on is publicly and loudly implementing extraordinary policies to keep people from leaving.
@VierLeger @mmasnick Twitter still has advertisers?
David Wasman💫@mmasnick My prediction is that he's going to start banning links to specific news organizations that have been critical of him both in the past and recently. I'm betting on it.
Jake@mmasnick I'm a firm believer that people "flagship" the things they struggle with. Anyone who tells me "I'm a chill person," I immediately assume they've lit a bear on fire at 2 AM and threw a midget at it because the party was dying down.
Dave Lee@mmasnick hasn’t taken long for this prediction to come true
Christopher Sly@mmasnick hang on I know this answer. I have seen this categorized as unfair business practices. However precedent has already been set. Which one should we discuss? Internet Explorer and other browsers in Windows? Amazon and any other streaming device? Google and mail services?
There is also the whole possible misrepresentation of business practices to regulators who approved the transaction.
I also think his friends might not want to risk the public opinion backlash.
There is also the whole possible misrepresentation of business practices to regulators who approved the transaction.
I also think his friends might not want to risk the public opinion backlash.
Dan@mmasnick
He must be hemmoraging users so badly that it is showing up on even their blatantly manipulated and faked internal dashboard charts.
My prediction is that This backfires so spectacularly that Musk reverses the entire policy later this afternoon and claims that "this was only intended to stop bot accounts" or some other BS.
Kathryn Tewson@kathryntewson @mmasnick (worst guy meme)
but seriously. I wonder how many people inside Twitter told him this exact thing.
But only once a misogynistic alt-right arse says it, suddenly Musk listens.
but seriously. I wonder how many people inside Twitter told him this exact thing.
But only once a misogynistic alt-right arse says it, suddenly Musk listens.
@mmasnick Next the auto industry will disable your car when you pull into a competitors dealership. 😆 "obviously it's not against our freedoms to block access to a competitor."
Drew Mochak@mmasnick I think they've abandoned the free speech argument in lieu of owning the libs.
MB@mmasnick At some point they’ll block links to news sites they don’t like. I noticed the story from WSJ about mastodon is shadowbanned now.
Christine (Bitsie)@mmasnick I’ve also seen a lot of “You can’t work at McDonalds and tell everyone to go to Burger King! Har har!”
Riley S. Faelan@mmasnick: Incidentally, EU being fiercely about competition, and having universal rules about phone number mobility, including working towards a regime that will soon allow EU citizens to move their cellphone numbers between EU member countries while even keeping the old country prefixes, it might quite likely be that either at the EU level, or in some European country, an explicitly anticompetitive prohibition like this is a violation of law. If I cared enough, I would start by closely reading the Digital Services Act.
JenX@mmasnick Nah, his best buddies will continue to be allowed those links. https://journa.host/@juddlegum/109536096071268282
Judd Legum (@[email protected])
Attached: 3 images Hi @[email protected] You have banned linking to your social media competitors, including via link aggregators I'd like to report that @[email protected] is in direct violation of this policy Or is this rule only going to be applied against your ideological enemies? Thanks, Judd
hopeless wanderer@mmasnick its violation of free speech to host x
Brendon@mmasnick I've already seen it
marktaylor@mmasnick My prediction: Trump flees to Saudi on his jet. Saudi buy Tesla and Twitter and all the alt right troll social media combine into one big fascist hate site that attacks democratic Americans.
Stu Duerson, machina exo deusWell, Musk paid big money to fail, so I'll recognize his free speech to grump, all the way to his crater.
As far as I can tell, he started removing accounts with mastodon links just days after he took over. That's when he banned me, and my link (& lip).
I think he's going to burn up, on re-entry to reality.
Smellbringer@mmasnick They already are making that point.
@cundravy@mmasnick my suspicion is they are just going to stick with: "I thought private companies could do whatever they wanted"
Not worth even asking them about it. The true test of this is to ignore them and their clique of red pilled billionaires as they've self selected themselves into a place on the web.
Ignore, don't create value for them and let them continue their masturbatory talk!
@mmasnick also i wouldn't be surprised if they add a pedo dog whistle to all these networks.
sorrykb@mmasnick He’s going to briefly change his mind and rescind the policy, saying it had been a deliberate test to give those woke mind cancel cultures a taste of their own medicine.
Then people will make fun of him again and he’ll put the policy back in.
Then people will make fun of him again and he’ll put the policy back in.
Dan@mmasnick that would hold water if it weren't for the fact that Twitter relies on selling our data, we aren't the customers we are the commodity (well not me, I'm banned)
Losing money whilst telling users whose data and presence you plan on pitching to advertisers what they can promote in the "town square" makes no sense
Pedro Silva@mmasnick already happened, I've seen: "promoting other platforms is spamming, if someone wants to promote then pay for ads"
Aditya Sher@mmasnick
and it has begun 😂
and it has begun 😂
Gojira1000@mmasnick That whole crew exemplifies many of the reasons I cannot take Libertarians seriously.
azeem@mmasnick Paging Sacks
enmodo ⚛️ 🧬 🇺🇦 🍉@mmasnick next up he'll be doing the Truth Social thing and banning any posts critical of Twitter.
First they ignore you,
then they laugh at you,
then they fight you,
then you win.
@mmasnick I guess all the people with insta and TikTok links in their profile are subject to bans as well?
Joseph@mmasnick Surely free speech protects offensive and unprofitable speech? Inoffensive and profitable speech requires no protection. So if Elon is a free speech absolutist...
Dan Davis@mmasnick Already seeing it from multiple sock puppets.
Sten@mmasnick "Free speech is speech I approve of, and the more I approve of it the more free speechy it is"
Steve Peers@mmasnick saw someone claiming that corporations can't be regulated at all. err...
Damion Schubert@mmasnick LOL his MOM is already carrying that water.
Bob Wyman@mmasnick
Corporations are created by the government and given special privileges such as limited liability, special tax treatment, etc. which are not available to unincorporated individuals.
Congress should be free to impose responsibilities on corporations -- as fair exchange for the privileges granted to them. Those not wiling to accept those responsibilities are free to dissolve their corporations and continue operating with business structures not granted any special privileges.
Takel 
@mmasnick he already yelled at his mom until she did just that https://twitter.com/mayemusk/status/1604550452447690752
Raindrop Works@mmasnick His mom is apparently
@mmasnick he’s just trying to make other platforms pay him just to be mentioned. Poor Elon.
Aneela Mirchandani@mmasnick Surprisingly Paul Graham uttered some critical words https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1604556563338887168
Chris Owens@mmasnick oh god, yeah, I saw someone post a “Dems are afraid of Elon wielding free speech” meme in response to someone calling Twitter “fucking losers”. Like … you’ve only got two arguments (“free speech” and “he can do what he wants”), and yet you still applied the wrong one.