Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter may soon go through

Thaluikhain

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It's about a lot more than that. We're seeing hints of a future that is in some ways full of possibilities but other possibilities of horrifying oppression.
Globalism and global trade are here and here to stay.
Global trade has been here for decades. Look at the Unitd Fruit Company or East Indian Company. Nothing new there. Horrifying oppression is always around, to a greater or lesser extent. People talking aobut the hypothetical oppression of the New World Order or whatever are generally quite happy ignoring the actual oppression going on now they are complicit it.
 

Trunkage

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When it's not enough for "those people" to be evil, when they have to be "super evil" for your scapegoating needs, accuse them of wanting to do bad things to your children.
Case in point, transgender people

Then you can Motte and Bailey it. The really crazy people say that the transgenders are committing genocide. A 'normal' person says 'oh, no. That's too far. But allowing children surgery is deforming children to the woke mindset.' This is quite clearly as ridiculous as the first comment, but the 'normal' person can pretend they are in the centre. Because that 'normal' person is still crazy
 
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Baffle

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Watching Silo and thinking 'why would you agree to live like that?' and realising it's an analogy for my life now really.
 
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gorfias

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Global trade has been here for decades. Look at the Unitd Fruit Company or East Indian Company. Nothing new there. Horrifying oppression is always around, to a greater or lesser extent. People talking aobut the hypothetical oppression of the New World Order or whatever are generally quite happy ignoring the actual oppression going on now they are complicit it.
I think advanced technology, such as Twitter, are putting a new spin on what this "great reset" or "4th Industrial Revolution" will bring. It will be different than anything global trade has been doing previously. Social credit scores, carbon use taxes, an advanced surveillance state and more. I don't think we're going to be bored over the next couple of decades. Kind of its own topic. I'll review our Tech forum to see if anyone has been talking about this.
 

Piscian

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Watching Silo and thinking 'why would you agree to live like that?' and realising it's an analogy for my life now really.
I haven't watched the show, but I read the first book a couple weeks ago. It's pretty solid if not a bit derivative. The usual 1984 stuff, big twist, the girl on fire, WHOS IN CHARGE OF THE SNOWPIERCER, whatever. "What if you knew the truth?!" Yeah yeah soilent green is people, blah blah. Fun though. Don't worry I'm not spoiling anything I'm just saying if you've read one of these dystopian books you've read them all, I liked the main character, curious to see how they adapt her on screen.

Regarding twitter it's so strange to have been here since bbs, aol chat, yahoo etc, every new social media platform most old people have expected to crash, but facebook and twitter have kind of stood the test of time...until now. I have a feeling some nice young person will do a new free platform lauded by cyber security professions for being more trustworthy and lacking the suckles of captialism, but I've noticed more and more grand parents and family have suckered us into just talking on the phone or texting. I suspect theres a cabal working in the dark preparing to bring back the yellow/white pages. The just need some "Youth" like billie elish to make it cool on tiktok or something.

The TLDR is even with this new muppet in charge I expect twitter is going the way of the yahoo chat. I give it three years at most before it's replaced.
 

Thaluikhain

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I think advanced technology, such as Twitter, are putting a new spin on what this "great reset" or "4th Industrial Revolution" will bring. It will be different than anything global trade has been doing previously. Social credit scores, carbon use taxes, an advanced surveillance state and more. I don't think we're going to be bored over the next couple of decades. Kind of its own topic. I'll review our Tech forum to see if anyone has been talking about this.
Well...yes...but then again that's also always been the case. The details change enormously, the broad scheme of things looks much the same.
 
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Bedinsis

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As far as modern tech actually being good for us I have my doubts. At least the ones that are in some way "fun", since calling it good seems to often come from a place of "I like this, of course it's good because, uhm.... *googles a bit* ...ah, apparently it [has minor benefit of dubious value]." Most of the time, they are only good in that they have some slight improvement of current technology that makes them more effective but not really something that makes them improving of humanity or otherwise worthy of much noise.

For example: the iPhone. While the hysteria at each new release is nowadays dead there was a time where that was a genuine event and when it came it fundamentally changed the cellphone market, but was it anything that improved the world other than being a more accessible way to reach the Internet? In that case I actually would argue yes, on account of its release meaning other cellphone manufacturers also focused more on Internet access, which in turn trickled down to developing countries in Africa so that farmers there had easier overview of where best to sell their crops. That I think is improvement for humanity.

I bring this up because one of the things that I think has been genuinely good with Twitter is that it's an effective way to bring a message to a large group of people outside of governmental channels, something we saw during the Arab spring where the authoritarian regime of Egypt blocked that website out of fear that it could help them organize.

So what Twitter has done now is to remove the Verified batch that had genuine use (not "fun use" or "status marker" use) to identify journalists and they have chosen to comply with Erdogan who already dominates governmental channels, thereby denying the Turks the opportunity to share alternative viewpoints effectively and undermine the democratic process.

What good is even Twitter for anymore?
 

BrawlMan

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For example: the iPhone. While the hysteria at each new release is nowadays dead
The the reason being when each new iPhone that came out and when earlier adopters bought one, they became glorified beta testers. The phone's got over expensive and started off worse each time.


What good is even Twitter for anymore?
Despite some of its uses, Twitter was never good to begin with. I've said this time again and again, this cesspool of a "website" was always and there's nothing more than a glorified chat room everyone can see. Like I said before, Twitter sure as hell did do a damn thing about most of the Neo-Nazis, the Trump supporters, and KKK because they were afraid of a backlash from them, if said people at the top removed "free speech" from the fuckers, and fearing their bottom line. Not to mention Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and many other social media sites doing nothing and sitting on their asses when these malcontents were all planning to overthrow the government and pulled a terrorist attack. The fact that they removed all of Trump's tweets, and then later banned the alt-right douchebags after the fact, showed none of the people at the top of Twitter had nothing to fear to begin with, and only did so at the last minute to save face to the actual victims or those trying to do the right thing. The ones they were happily to abandon our use as their shields. Those who used to own Twitter or had a high position of authority are just as responsible as Musk. Even more so than his pathetic formaldehyde!
 
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Silvanus

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As an aside, due to lack of regulations, people in the US end up with a lot of bugs in their food, compared to other western nations. Though, because of Breexit, the UK was considering scrapping a lot of its food regulations, so dunno if they are eating bug ridden US food yet.
Not yet. One of the pieces of withdrawal legislation moved all existing EU regulations, including food safety standards, into UK law automatically. This was entirely necessary for Brexit to be possible: the UK (like many European countries) hadn't bothered to make separate British legislation for things already covered by EU regulation, because it would have been redundant. So that meant there was a heap of EU regulations we did want, alongside the ones we theoretically didn't want. Hence: auto transfer it all into UK law, then the gov can take its time repealing just what it doesn't want. Almost sensible, insofar as Brexit can be sensible at all, which isn't much.

Of course, the Brexiter Tories don't like pragmatism, so they started agitating for all EU-originated legislation to expire automatically if the UK parliament didn't explicitly pass a vote to keep it. Individually.

This caused a bit of a fuss last week, when the gov was forced to postpone the supposed deadline, because the amount of work and time involved in sifting through it all to find the bits you want-- to an arbitrary deadline solely there to appease firebrands-- was untenable.

But postpone they did, because it's literally the only way to avoid a catastrophic lapse in law. Cue Suella Braverman pointlessly blaming civil servants, and Jacob Rees Mogg blaming the government for "betrayal". Because these are politicians who simply don't grasp their own jobs.


....sorry, that was a huge tangent. TLDR: We've not had a big lapse in food safety standards (yet) because existing EU regulations still apply, having been automatically transferred into UK law and not expiring.
 
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Thaluikhain

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That makes sense, and is oddly sensible. Wonder if that's an attempt of having cake and not letting the French provide it too.
 

Gordon_4

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What good is even Twitter for anymore?
This may come as a surprise to you, but businesses operate at the benevolence of the governments of countries outside the one they're founded in. Now this is not a defence of Edrogan or what he's doing but if a country says to Twitter that your operation is no longer welcome in our country without the following changes, then that business has two options: comply or leave. Its the way of things, and as we all know, businesses do not take (effective or genuine) moral stands.
 

crimson5pheonix

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This may come as a surprise to you, but businesses operate at the benevolence of the governments of countries outside the one they're founded in. Now this is not a defence of Edrogan or what he's doing but if a country says to Twitter that your operation is no longer welcome in our country without the following changes, then that business has two options: comply or leave. Its the way of things, and as we all know, businesses do not take (effective or genuine) moral stands.
While overall correct that companies don't take moral stands, this exact situation happened in 2014.


Twitter, instead of caving, challenged it in court and won. I don't know if Twitter 2020 would have done it again, but Twitter 2023 folded like a soggy napkin.
 

Gordon_4

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While overall correct that companies don't take moral stands, this exact situation happened in 2014.


Twitter, instead of caving, challenged it in court and won. I don't know if Twitter 2020 would have done it again, but Twitter 2023 folded like a soggy napkin.
Yes, and by my quick read that was a challenge heard in a Turkish court which means the government sent representatives and the courts agreed to hear the case. The government can simply decide it has no case to answer and instruct the court to refuse to hear the case and you can pick any number of nebulous law or policies tucked away in national security and related legislation for that.
 

crimson5pheonix

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Yes, and by my quick read that was a challenge heard in a Turkish court which means the government sent representatives and the courts agreed to hear the case. The government can simply decide it has no case to answer and instruct the court to refuse to hear the case and you can pick any number of nebulous law or policies tucked away in national security and related legislation for that.
On the one hand, not wrong, on the other, it was clearly unenforceable and wildly unpopular. And sufficiently unpopular sentiment can dislodge quite a bit of wrongdoing.

But the overall point here is that Musk is an anti-free speech bootlicker who pretends to be neither and we should laugh at him.
 
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Gordon_4

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On the one hand, not wrong, on the other, it was clearly unenforceable and wildly unpopular. And sufficiently unpopular sentiment can dislodge quite a bit of wrongdoing.
Correct; Twitter's continued operation is now incumbent on the people of Turkey holding their government to account.

But the overall point here is that Musk is an anti-free speech bootlicker who pretends to be neither and we should laugh at him.
Well, you'll get no argument from me on that one.
 
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Absent

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But the overall point here is that Musk is an anti-free speech bootlicker who pretends to be neither and we should laugh at him.
No we shouldn't.

Are you crazy? It's forbidden.