@mcnees Slow-boating his way through the moderation learning curve, I see.

Yes, national governments have leverage over your service. Good to see you noticed, there, Musk.

@mcnees This boils down to 2 fairly objective factual realities: 1) Musk leveraged himself to the eyeballs to buy twitter, and 2) Contrary to the hype, he is not particularly bright.

Fact 1 meant that he had to cut costs right away, but Fact 2 meant that he did so by firing people at twitter who carried whatever "social intelligence" the Twitter enterprise had managed to accumulate. For instance: legal experts whose job it was to know the law in various countries, and therefore allow the company to buy time before compliance by resisting censorship orders as long as possible.

Musk is an powerful idiot, chose to lobotomize Twitter, market it using an entirely bogus "free speech ideology", while simultaneously rendering it unable to defend actual free speech. Consequently, he instantaneously rolled over for Erdogan the day before an election because Painting Themselves Into Corners is what idiots like Musk often do.

Not painting one's self into corners is literally "not rocket science". Sadly, Musk is an idiot, and will keep doing dumb and harmful crap like this as long as people continue to bankroll him with social capital, as well as mountains of real capital.

And I do mean "sadly", because a "not idiot" in his position could do some real good in the world.

@mcnees Image description:
Tweet by Matthew Yglesias:
The Turkish government asked Twitter to censor its opponents right before an election and @elonmusk complied - should generate some interesting Twitter Files reporting.

Elon Musk:
Did your brain fall out of your head, Yglesias?
The choice is have Twitter throttled in its entirety or limit access to some tweets. Which one do you want?

@mcnees Is Musk being paid to be a tool, or is he spreading his cheeks and throwing his Turkish user base under the bus because he's a friend of fascism?

It would be interesting to look at the ad revenue numbers from Turkey in the next quarterly report, and how it compared to the last few quarters. Might be worth asking at the next shareholder's meeting.

@mcnees "We can have free speech or Turkish ad revenue. Which do you want?"

Um, sir? Who do you want to be?

The company that refuses to censor its customers at the behest of governments during elections or the government that cuts off their citizens communication platform during elections?

E: "I see a middle ground"

@mcnees

"The choice is have twitter say nothing or only spread fascist propaganda. Which one do you want?"

@mcnees

Erdogan and Musk - would love some "follow the money" reporting about these two.

@mcnees

Musk is doing Putin's dirty work via Erdogan.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-asks-gop-senators-flexibility-turkey-sanctions-n1033571

https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/14/politics/trump-gop-senators-erdogan/index.html

Trump withdrew from Syria after talking to Erdogan, letting Prigozhin have a free hand in a genocide upon the Kurds.

https://www.npr.org/2019/10/11/769049036/trumps-fights-with-gop-over-syria-come-at-the-worst-possible-moment

What is going on between Trump Republicans and Erdogan?
https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/13/politics/trump-erdogan-republican-senators/index.html