Some More News - SMN: The Talented Mr. Musk, Part 2: The Elon Files
Episode Date: January 18, 2023Hi. For Part 2, we look at how The Twitter Files don't show the kind of nefarious intent that Elon Musk hoped they would, and analyze why he bought Twitter in the first place (oth...er than being forced to). Please fill out our SURVEY: https://kastmedia.com/survey/ Support us on our PATREON: http://patreon.com/somemorenews Check out our MERCH STORE: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/somemorenews?ref_id=9949 SUBSCRIBE to SOME MORE NEWS: https://tinyurl.com/ybfx89rh  Subscribe to the Even More News and SMN audio podcasts here: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/some-more-news/id1364825229 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ebqegozpFt9hY2WJ7TDiA?si=5keGjCe5SxejFN1XkQlZ3w&dl_branch=1 Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/even-more-news Follow us on social media: Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomeMoreNews Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SomeMoreNews/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SomeMoreNews/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@somemorenews Sources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Yf91msiB6o8EvulJzU85DOopIFu4fTABQS6FvIVVYuE/edit?usp=sharing When you use ExpressVPN, ISPs cannot see your online activity; your identity is anonymized by a secure VPN server. Your data is also encrypted for maximum protection. Secure your online activity by visiting https://expressVPN.com/morenews TODAY! Stop throwing your money away. Cancel unwanted subscriptions - and manage your expenses the easy way - by going to https://rocketmoney.com/MORENEWS. MANSCAPED® Beard Hedger - one stroke, one guard, 20 lengths. So get 20% off and free shipping with the code MORENEWS at https://manscaped.com.Support the show!: http://patreon.com.com/somemorenewsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Choo-choo, honka-honka, all aboard the Musk train
as it loses control and explodes.
Also, it's a car, not a train,
because Elon Musk doesn't like public transportation.
Or people, it seems.
Oh, fucking boy, it is time for part two
of our totally flattering look
into Elon Musk's extremely not silly takeover of Twitter,
in which he was not a dumb shit.
And just to restate from the first video,
I hate this, I hate it.
I hate that we started the year with this subject.
I hate talking about Elon Musk and his tweets
and face and bad memes.
And with any hope,
we won't be talking about him much this year.
You know, unless we do a video about wealth
or class or transportation or politics.
Anyway, you should probably watch that first video
so you don't get confused about our intricate plot line.
Something about a cracker barrel waiter
and an insult jar of some kind.
I forget, or maybe I don't care.
We'll never know.
But to recap, in part one,
we explained how Musk had purchased Twitter for way,
way more than it was worth.
And as a result, put the company into massive debt.
He then fired most of everyone
and reduced the value of the site even more
before unbanning all of the ghouls and implementing,
and in some cases, almost immediately retracting
a confusing series of UI and policy changes.
He made the blue check mark purchasable for eight bucks,
then undid that when people were able
to easily imitate notable figures.
But now it's fixed.
But that's, obviously that's the wrong word.
It's still not fixed.
Also, a bunch of data got leaked.
Also, all of the advertisers left and he's Also a bunch of data got leaked. Also all of the advertisers left
and he's facing a ton of litigation
while Tesla stock plummets every day.
But at least child exploitation is down on the site.
So he says, which isn't actually true.
He did all of this in the name of free speech,
except all of his moderation decisions seemed to be based
on making sure people don't make fun of him specifically
and, you know, not doing things
that he personally doesn't like
because perhaps this was never about free speech.
And so now it's time to discuss
what it actually was about.
Title, please.
Elon Musk, Lord of the Memes.
Solid title.
Lots of letters.
That's good.
No wingdings.
Smart.
And so here's some news.
Despite being the most transparent baby shit King Joffrey type,
Musk continued to present himself as a cool disruptor and a savior of twitter.com.
Hated in his time, he will surely be vindicated
as having some kind of grand plan to save free speech.
Then it's off to Mars,
where he will save human consciousness
with his Neuralink army of robot hybrid Pepe frogs.
To his fans, he's like Ronnie Cox, you see.
More specifically, Ronnie Cox,
when he helmed the USS Enterprise NCC-1701D.
Not sure you realize this,
but with the exception of Patrick Stewart,
Ronald Coxer has the honor of being the captain
of the TNG era USS Enterprise
for more Star Trek episodes than anyone else.
Yes, even more than Riker,
who was only in command for the episode,
"'The Best of Both Worlds Part II'
and no you fool, the episode future imperfect doesn't count
because that was a simulation run by an alien child,
you fucking fool.
The point is that Ronnie Cox played Captain Edward Jellicoe
in the two part episode, Chain of Command.
And boy, the crew did not like the way he did things.
Well, now that the ranks are dropped, Captain, I don't like you either.
You are arrogant and closed-minded.
You need to control everything and everyone.
You don't provide an atmosphere of trust,
and you don't inspire these people to go out of their way for you.
You've got everybody wound up so tight.
There's no joy in anything.
I don't think you're a particularly good captain.
Yeah, you tell him, Riker, you bearded fuck dragon, you.
Captain Ronald Coxer was a hard ass.
He made everyone work long hours
and did not coddle his crew to the point of being cold
and borderline sociopathic.
But the twist of that episode was that in the end,
Captain Ronnie Cox actually averts a war
and saves Picard from capture.
In his coxy heart, Ron understood what it means
to be a starship captain.
And despite his unconventional ways,
he eventually pulled through.
He had a plan.
And I think that's probably what Elon Musk wants people
to think about the way he's operating things at Twitter.
Not a people person asking for long hours, et cetera,
but surely he knows what he's doing.
The problem is that unlike Ronnie Cox,
it's become very clear that Elon Musk hasn't the fart
of an idea
what he's doing with Twitter,
short of only slightly possibly buying Twitter
to completely change it into his everything app idea,
which he didn't want to make himself,
thus making Twitter unrecognizable
and laughing in the face of the version of Elon
who says he hates monopolies.
But it's become clear that Elon was less like Ronnie Cox, the Starship captain,
and more like Ronnie Cox, the mega corporation CEO
killed by his own hubris.
And so, faced with this reality, Musk's only hope
was to convince people that his ineptitude was still better
than what the old Twitter was like,
even though it really seemed like there was nothing
overtly wrong with the site before he purchased it.
He needed to justify this wailing clown show.
And this is where the Twitter files came into play.
In short, the Twitter files were, and I guess are,
a series of tweets by a small group of handpicked journalists
releasing internal emails and messages
that were supposed to prove, more big quotes, that before his takeover,
Twitter was secretly motivated by corrupt leftists
who hated free speech.
Elon has said that Twitter had a left-wing bias for a while,
despite there actually being no proof of that.
And in fact, by all other accounts,
Twitter's algorithm actually favored
the right wing in the past.
The closest to an anti-conservative bias is the fact
that most social media cracks down hard on misinformation.
And it turns out that conservatives are more likely
to post misinformation on social media.
Interesting detail there about how conservative ideology
is synonymous with universally accepted misinformation.
So the idea behind the Twitter files seem to be for him to justify his purchase to the world,
to show how he's saving free speech.
And also, in my opinion, to try and justify Twitter
as a place where news could break.
Something that didn't happen until now.
Elon's now claiming he invented the idea
that news can break and be reported on Twitter.
As you can expect from a billionaire known for,
to put it lightly,
not treating the employees that he has very nicely.
Musk isn't exactly a fan of the mainstream media.
And so an ongoing thread of his takeover
was that he was going to make the news open source.
Tech bro-ify the news, blockchain the info,
or FO for short.
News X, dog, yeah!
Get your crypto FO injected into that skull sphere.
It's clear that a big part of his blue check animosity
we mentioned in part one
was specifically toward journalists.
You can see this when he banned those journalists
for reporting on Elon
Jet. He was later confronted about it on Twitter Spaces, which is a live audio chat that anyone can
join. Look at all of this free speech. I just real quick, Elon, thank you for joining. I am
hoping that you can give a little more context about what has happened in the last few hours with a handful of journalists being banned.
Yeah. Well, as I'm sure everyone who's been doxing would agree, you know,
showing real time information about somebody's location is inappropriate, and I think everyone
on this call would not like that to be done to them.
Drew, I don't think you were posting the real-time information, right?
I mean, you're suggesting that we're sharing your address, which is not true.
And you're suggesting that we're posting...
I never posted your address.
You posted a link to the address.
We posted a link. In the course of reporting about Elon Jet, we posted links to Elon Jet,
which are now not online and now banned on Twitter.
And Twitter also, of course, marks even the Instagram and
Macedon accounts of Elon Jett as harmful. You get your docs, you get suspended and the story.
That's it. Elon, I have to ask. I mean, I think what everyone's wondering is it's highly unusual
for journalists at The Washington Post and The New York Times to be how their Twitter
accounts suspended. And it just so happens that it's the boss in charge. So what's the deal there?
I think Elon has left. Dude just kept repeating if you dox, you get banned like some kind of
awkward mantra as these very serious people asked him equally serious questions
about the inconsistencies in his banning
to the point that he not only stormed out of the call,
but then temporarily removed Twitter spaces
from the platform under the excuse
that it was undergoing maintenance.
And this is actually nothing unusual
as Musk has never been able to handle it
when people ask him tough questions.
He's hung up on regulators before
and has a long history of claiming
that the media is out to get him.
In 2018, when BuzzFeed interviewed nine people
who had previously worked with Musk,
they said this is how he's always been.
The difference is that the facade he had created
was starting to fall apart.
So of course he hates the press
because the press are the people chipping away
at this curated facade,
revealing him as the transparent man baby
that he really is.
And transparent is about to become an important word,
not just because he's the parent of a trans kid
who hates him,
but because along with claiming
that he would save free speech on the site,
Musk's Twitter files was an attempt
to defy the leftist mainstream media
by exposing Twitter's old fascist moderating machine
with the totally transparent release of communications
that went on behind the scenes before he took over.
Because Musk, he's doing free speech and transparency,
you see, that's why he's now threatening
to sue his own employees for leaking any information about Twitter. That's why he's now threatening to sue his own employees
for leaking any information about Twitter.
That's why he removed the labels showing what devices
a tweet was done on, something that actually had
a journalistic merit when tracking the tweets of politicians.
It's almost as if, and just stick with me here,
Elon Musk doesn't actually care about journalism.
He might even hate journalism.
And so while it's absolutely important
to hold the media accountable
because they quite often suck turds and or shits,
Musk doesn't actually want to do that.
And so the Twitter files really seem
to be a disinformation tactic,
disguised as a journalistic scoop,
one that would feed certain right wing circles so perfectly
that they'd forever join Elon's little online army.
It's propaganda that compounds itself
the moment any reporter points out
that they were a quote, nothing burger,
not a great word, but we're using it.
Because the true believers can dismiss that immediately
as yet another leftist media lie.
But the reality is that the Twitter files
contain very little proof of anything in terms of Twitter.
And don't get me wrong,
there's actually some pretty interesting shit in there
when it comes to the FBI and the government
and social media sites generally.
But for the most part, it was an illusion of transparency
hidden in a highly curated series of threads
done by a few misled journalists
who themselves admitted to getting the information
under specific conditions.
Condition number one, admit that Elon is a special boy.
And what they revealed in a nutshell is that Twitter
used to moderate their social media sites.
That's kind of it.
Additionally, they got a lot of government interference
in their moderation efforts,
which isn't to say that they followed orders
from the government,
but a pretty key detail is that despite a constant framing
that Twitter favorited the left in their moderation,
at no point do any of the Twitter files
release statistical proof of that.
The closest they get is showing that Twitter employees
donate more to Democrats,
which doesn't prove that they're moderating
in favor of the left.
Also, Tesla employees also donate more to Democrats.
There's Tesla with the long blue bar,
damned Musk and his cars left wing bias.
Instead, the Twitter files cherry picked specific cases
of moderation and then simply assured us
they were part of a larger pattern.
And in fact, there's evidence that the Twitter files
are purposefully misleading.
Often, they'll just make a statement without any evidence,
as if it's a universal truth.
Every single fact in the New York Post
Hunter Biden story was accurate,
or that instead of chasing child sex predators
or terrorists, the FBI was busy flagging social media posts.
Why couldn't they be doing both, Matt?
Was everyone in the FBI on Twitter emailing about tweets
in lieu of all the other stuff they normally do,
which Elon has said he loves, by the way?
Or for example, the first Twitter file
dropped by this Matt Taibbi fellow
was about how the Biden campaign requested
that Twitter pull tweets about Hunter Biden,
as well as Twitter moderating the Hunter laptop story.
The thread showed an internal email
with a series of tweet links that said,
more to review from the Biden team,
with the added context from Taibbi saying,
by 2020, requests from connected actors
"'to delete tweets were routine.'"
As if he was describing some really dirty crime syndicate
whose misdeeds had become standard practice.
What Taibbi didn't include, however,
was that the tweet links in that email
were nude images of Hunter Biden.
And so what he was actually describing
was the Biden campaign asking Twitter to remove tweets
containing private photos of drugged up naked man dick,
the worst kind of man dick,
and clearly not something that is allowed
on most mainstream social media.
And when you realize that,
it's a perfectly reasonable request.
In fact, at no point does Taibbi link the Biden campaign
or a government entity like the FBI
with any demand to remove the laptop story as a whole.
That central claim that the Biden campaign
asked for the New York Post story to be censored
is never shown.
The Twitter files skips that part
and assumes that you will fill in the blank yourself
with evidence that exists, even though nobody's seen it.
Instead, after completely skipping that part,
the files shows internal discussions by Twitter employees
grappling with whether or not the laptop story
was Russian misinformation,
a conversation that led to the mistake
that was banning people from sharing
the New York Post article about it.
It also shows that the FBI
would constantly pester Twitter and Facebook
to moderate what they saw
as potential threats and misinformation,
to which Twitter only sometimes agreed with them.
There's a lot of evidence of Twitter
refusing to do what the FBI wanted.
While that says a lot about the FBI,
it doesn't say that much about Twitter.
Of course, you can argue it was bad
that they pulled that Hunter laptop article
because it was bad,
but it also wasn't a big revelation
since many people working there
had already admitted to that being a mistake.
Also, wait a second.
So Twitter banned a news story before unbanning it.
Isn't that literally just what Elon did with the jet stuff? Care to comment, Mr. Musk?
And Twitter also, of course, marks even the Instagram and Macedon accounts of Elon jet as as harmful using, you know, we have to admit, acknowledge using the same exact link blocking technique that you have criticized as part of the Hunter Biden New York Post story in 2020. So that's unacceptable what you're doing? No, your docs, you get suspended, end of story.
So that's a no then.
Finally, and most telling,
the thing completely buried in the first Twitter files
is Taibbi casually dropping
that along with the Biden campaign making these requests,
the Trump White House could also ask for tweets to be pulled.
That seems like a much bigger deal.
And frankly, it's weird these files don't also go
into what the White House wanted to have moderated, isn't it?
They never show us those requests.
They don't care about that transparency,
which is arguably the bigger story.
It's weird that the Twitter files are so focused
on enforcing right-wing talking points
that they yada yada anything that seems to imply
the conservatives were also getting special treatment.
In a later thread about shadow banning, for example,
Barry Weiss posted this screenshot of libs of TikTok
being on a trends blacklist
without explaining any of the other contexts there.
She doesn't explain the context
of their recent abuse strikes listed,
or the fact that mods apparently aren't allowed
to take action on that account
without consulting a higher up,
which sure seems like Libs of TikTok
was being given special treatment over regular users.
I'm not gonna get into every detail,
but the Twitter files are all sort of like this.
A long series of tweets framed dramatically
that when you take the time to untangle them,
ultimately they say very little.
And in fact, make a case for Twitter
having gone out of its way to be thoughtful
in their moderation and fighting back
against outside government influences.
We're gonna do a little more Twitter files, okay?
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We loved that. We loved those ads. My Pleasure Center is engorged because of those ads that we love. And when we left off, we were talking about how the Twitter files had a lot of evidence that
the FBI and government were pestering Twitter to moderate based on their wishes,
but very little evidence that Twitter actually honored their requests.
And yet for some reason,
the narrative of these extremely curated leaks
seem to constantly try to frame old Twitter as a villain.
For example, in one of the more recent Twitter files,
Taibbi is describing how Twitter became overwhelmed
with requests from officials
to ban accounts they simply didn't like, such as Adam Sch requests from officials to ban accounts
they simply didn't like, such as Adam Schiff
asking them to ban a journalist, which would be bad.
Taibbi goes on to say,
"'Even Twitter declined to honor Schiff's request
"'at the time,' as if he's already established
"'that Twitter loves honoring all these ban requests,
"'but he doesn't actually show emails
"'or files that prove that.
"'We only see one side of the transaction, "'the government making requests, but he doesn't actually show emails or files that prove that. We only see one side of the transaction,
the government making requests, and none of the other side,
which is evidence that Twitter acted on those requests.
That's odd, right?
Why don't they show any evidence of that?
If Twitter was taking all of these moderation requests
from officials and acting on them in some unfair way,
wouldn't you want to show the emails demonstrating that?
You know, instead of the one email
where they declined an unfair request?
There's a lot of this in these Twitter files.
Here's the sixth installment that focuses on the FBI
sending moderation requests to Twitter.
Taibbi begins with an email from the FBI
wanting action about several accounts
they thought were spreading election misinformation. He then points out that a few of those
accounts were joking and the FBI were taking their jokes as a serious offense. He then concludes with
a tweet saying that all of these accounts were suspended except for the two accounts that were joking. He never reveals what the other actually suspended account said.
So the FBI contacted Twitter
and asked for a bunch of accounts
to be suspended for misinformation.
And Twitter banned some of the accounts,
but didn't ban the ones that were obviously joking.
And so they didn't do exactly what the FBI wanted them to do.
And in fact, moderated based on their own,
probably correct judgment.
Is that the big bombshell revealed there?
You see how mundane the actual information is.
Twitter was basically getting a lot of tips
from the government and then chose which ones to act on.
That's all the files say.
And if Elon Musk actually cared about transparency,
you'd think he'd just release all the Twitter files
to the press, just release all of it.
But he's not doing that, is he?
And by purposefully choosing incendiary topics
to quote, reveal, he guarantees that anyone who wants
to conclude something will conclude that,
despite there being no actual evidence of that.
No, what we learned on Friday is that big tech works aggressively and in secret with
government agencies to subvert the outcome of what the rest of us assumed were free and
fair elections.
Tucko Bum Bum is referring to the Twitter files that were specifically about the internal
conversation that led to Trump being banned on Twitter.
And if you actually read the thread, what you'll see is a group of serious people
grappling with the president of the United States
fart blasting out election misinformation
with his little liar thumbs,
leading to no real world event whatsoever, I guess.
Now you could of course argue
that they bent their moderation rules along the way,
which is often how content moderation works.
An example you never thought of comes up
and you consider how to address it.
You can even argue that Twitter made mistakes,
but that's in the face of a man wielding
the most powerful office on the planet,
purposefully spreading lies and inciting violence
to a group of cultist fans.
And you'll notice nothing has changed under Musk
in the sense that rules are just being made up on the fly.
It's just, it's only one guy now.
You can tweet at him with your moderation requests.
That's the new system.
And by acting like these files reveal anything,
especially sinister, is to feed that same far right fan base
to a dangerous degree.
It's wildly, wildly irresponsible of Elon Musk,
and he's either really bad at reading comprehension,
didn't read it, or just flat out lying.
Here he is tweeting, and I quote,
"'Government paid Twitter millions of dollars
"'to censor info from the public.'"
But the evidence he's referring to is the fact
that the FBI reimbursed Twitter
for processing their moderation requests,
something they are legally required to do.
And in fact, according to his own Twitter files,
they were probably underpaid.
So to say they were paid to censor info,
like this was a dirty deal, is purposefully misleading.
And so Elon is just lying about what the Twitter files say
in order to make them seem more important,
pretending he's at risk of being assassinated
for exposing the extremely boring truth.
And that lies passed on by grifters and or people
who don't bother to read the actual details.
They just see a lot of important looking texts
on these half blacked out emails
and figure it must be like really serious stuff.
But in the end, pretty much all the Twitter files
ultimately revealed, at least about Twitter,
is that a private social media company
was being bombarded by the White House government
and the Biden campaign,
but ultimately moderating based on their own discretion.
And again, I'm not sure if you noticed this yet,
but that's pretty much what Musk is also doing
and says he's doing it.
Quote, new Twitter policy is freedom of speech,
but not freedom of reach.
Negative slash hate tweets will be max de-boosted
and demonetized.
So no ads or other revenue to Twitter.
The new policy he's describing is just shadow banning
and blacklisting certain accounts,
also known as the exact same thing old Twitter was doing
as revealed in the Twitter files.
So why is the old Twitter moderation some kind of sin
while it's okay when he does it?
Especially since he's quite frankly, way worse about it.
There are no group emails debating it anymore, are there?
It's just him, one really rich guy.
He's pulling news reports and accounts he doesn't like,
shadow banning people who upset him
and making snap moderating decisions based around his whims.
You could say, well,
at least he's not working with the government,
except he is also doing that.
Musk works with the government on his projects
all the damn time. And also, you know, loves taking their money. except he is also doing that. Musk works with the government on his projects
all the damn time and also, you know,
loves taking their money.
Heck, he wants to be a government someday.
Dude and the Pentagon are tight.
The only difference is that Twitter's old moderation system
was run by a larger and more diverse group of people
and was at least aspiring to be as fair as they could.
I'm not saying they were fair, but like, for example,
the old blue check mark system was a lot more friendly
to free speech than having to pay money, right?
The old system allegedly gave higher visibility
to people who were verified as experts in their field.
And in the fabled marketplace of ideas or whatever,
doesn't that make more sense
than definitely giving visibility to anyone
who decides to pay a small fee?
Isn't it better for free speech to have a group
of people debate and discuss what to moderate
than a single billionaire taking a bunch of ketamine
and consulting his mind colors?
No offense to ketamine.
I'm sorry.
Sorry I lashed out at you.
I'm so sorry.
Also, sorry, I meant a single billionaire
and his gaggle of weird, rich, sycophantic,
and right-wing tech bro buddies.
Is gaggle the right word there?
A gaggle of tech bros?
I think it's technically called a campus.
That makes sense.
Because one thing we've yet to get into here
is who Elon Musk chose to take the place
of all of the executives he immediately fired.
Not necessarily as official employees of the company,
so much as a personal circle of all of his tech dude friends,
like David Sachs, a PayPal founder
and longtime friend of Musk,
as well as his partner, Jason Calacanis,
another rich computer boy.
One of the things we learned early on
was that Musk was basically surrounded
by the most embarrassing of yes-men
when he first began his acquisition of Twitter.
We know this because,
thanks to the litigation involved in the process,
a whole bunch of Musk's personal text exchanges
were released by the court.
And what was discovered in those texts
weren't sinister or evil per se,
except for the part about explicitly saying
they wanna purge all the blue check journalists or whatever,
so much as they were,
there's a way to say this nicely, dipshitted.
As in the ideas that Musk and his pals
were initially considering for Twitter were dipshitted,
also known as bad,
worse than a child's understanding of the site.
Jason Calacanis, one of the people who advised early on
in Musk's takeover was the MVP of embarrassment,
literally saying he'd pledge his sword to Musk.
At one point he's asked to dial it back and responds,
"'Only ever want to support you.'"
Like just the saddest little suck up in the teat farm.
Calacanis also proposes a new feature for Twitter
that would allow people to pay money
for the power to mass DM their followers,
essentially allowing even more
and precise spam messaging on the site.
Elon himself joins the fuckwad parade,
getting very excited about the idea
of creating a blockchain social media system
that would require people to pay a fraction
of a cryptocurrency to send a tweet.
Something he seemed convinced would solve free speech.
Again, it just seems like his awful everything app idea
more than how to improve
Twitter. There's a lot of broad text speak in the messages, often talking about how they need to
solve the free speech problem without giving any practical solutions. It's almost all crypto shit
and bro speak combined with a bunch of people doing their best to suck up to the billionaire.
It is to say the least extremely embarrassing stuff.
And these texts alone really paint a picture
of how completely unprepared Elon Musk was
to run a social media site.
He generally seems to gravitate
towards whoever compliments him the most,
no matter how horrifying those people are.
And while that used to be Democrats and the left,
lately, he's seen a lot of heat from that side,
a lot of pressure to, you know,
treat his employees right and all that pesky stuff.
And so as we covered in the past,
that of course led him in another direction.
The Democrat party is overly, overly controlled
by the unions and by the trial lawyers,
particularly the class action lawyers.
And generally, if you'll see something
that is not in the interest of the people,
on the Democrat side,
it's going to come because of the unions,
which is just another form of monopoly.
And the trial lawyers,
that's where actions will be happening
from the Democrats' side.
They're not in the interest of the people.
Notice how he always frames his obviously selfish choices
as in the interest of the people.
Power to the people by paying me money.
Unions are bad for the people.
Anywho, in theory, there's no reason to condemn a person
simply because they subscribe
to a different political party than me.
But as that clip demonstrated,
Elon's loyalties seem deeply dependent
on which side benefits him the most.
Much like how he moderates,
his principles appear to be entirely ego-driven.
And so what we've been seeing lately
is Elon Musk openly communicating with right-wing trolls
and absolute white fucking supremacists on Twitter.
Here he is, for example, replying to Paul Ray Ramsey,
a man who has openly denied the Holocaust
and said that women shouldn't be allowed to vote.
Here he is having a back and forth with Andy Ngo,
a provable liar and right-wing propagandist
with a weird fake British accent.
And he seems to be taking moderation advice from him,
literally banning anti-fascist accounts
based on what Ngo has claimed.
But at least it's not the FBI, I guess.
These are the new people that Musk
has chosen to surround himself with,
seemingly acting as a personal customer service representative
to the biggest right-wing trolls and liars on Twitter.
It's his whole image now, his little troll board of advisors.
Yes, Mr. Cat Turd, I'll get right on that.
No, Mr. Cat Turd, don't insult electric cars, sir.
Meanwhile, he's waging a full-blown war
on the leftist activists,
claiming they are to blame
for not moderating hate speech on the site,
sharing stay woke shirts he found at Twitter HQ,
like that's some kind of damning evidence.
Here he is tweeting that the hands up, don't shoot narrative
was a fiction based on a DOJ's report
on the shooting of Michael Brown.
Of course, that slogan was based on eyewitness accounts.
And despite whether it's accurate,
it became a rallying cry for a reason.
I wonder if Musk would also share this other DOJ report
about how the Ferguson Police Department
absolutely targeted black people
disproportionately to white people.
Speaking of Ferguson,
maybe Elon should have been on Twitter during that uprising
considering it was a good example
of Twitter being an alternative
to mainstream media narrative
and a great source of on the ground information.
Something Elon invented for Twitter.
Wow, news can break on Twitter.
Who would have thought?
For a man who claims to be a logical centrist,
wanting to host a platform of civil debate,
it's odd that every single thing he tweets and does
is unfairly favoring far-right misinformation.
Every person he associates with, every moderating choice,
it's all to help him personally
or to impress his weird troll friends
and his weird troll need for attention.
Because for years now,
pretty much every interaction he has on the site
has been through some sad attempt to be a troll.
And so going back to the question of why
Musk purchased Twitter and the idea that it was
some secret plan to destroy the site or 4D chess
or whatever, well frankly, I really think he might
just have
no fucking idea what he's doing.
I think he's extremely partisan, easily misled, a liar,
and just gloms onto whoever is stroking his ego the most.
He's known for completely winging it
and having a very insular bubble in other tech fields.
I would personally argue he's not good
at those other tech fields. I would personally argue he's not good at those other companies too.
I do have to say, I appreciate the idea of SpaceX,
not for the commercialization of space,
which is a gross phrase and idea,
but for the development of reusable rockets,
an idea Elon didn't come up with,
and a technology he personally did not invent.
And in fact, there's a video of him explaining
like a new technology for some of the rocket engines
or whatever, and the interviewer is like,
so do you use it for the other ones?
And then in real time, Elon slowly realizes,
oh yeah, we should do that, that makes obvious sense.
And then there's a video later, at a later date
of Elon telling that same interviewer
that it was his idea to use that tech on everything.
You already have hot gas,
but this is only for the booster, right?
Yes.
Although arguably, now you mentioned it,
it might be wise to do this for the ship too.
We're gonna fix that.
Jeez.
I'd say that's like one of the biggest improvements
that we've made.
It occurred to me while I was explaining it to you.
I was like, wait, what are we doing?
Also, while we're here, I like his alleged view of patents,
which are that they stop progress and stall innovation
and are for the weak.
Though that also might just be because
he can't invent stuff himself.
But anyway, no matter what you think about Elon Musk
up until his Twitter acquisition,
I think social media specifically has really thrown him off.
And I'm gonna explain why after we break.
For snacks?
No, we're breaking for ads.
About snacks?
Probably not, maybe.
You want us to hawk your snacks?
Get at us.
Email.
I'm gonna tweet at Elon and he'll get back to us about it.
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Okay, we're back.
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So now we've more than established Elon Musk
as an emotional partisan troll
who is basing all of his Twitter decisions
off of who sucks him off the hardest.
We've covered a lot, but I still think
there's one very key issue that we need to address.
It's the key to why, no matter what the conditions, Elon Musk is fundamentally unable to run a social
media site like Twitter. Are you ready? Of course you are. Close your eyes. Now, imagine you're an
aspiring stand-up comedian who frequents a weekly open mic night.
Now imagine that you're also very rich, or perhaps have famous parents,
or were given some other privilege that allows you to get up on stage anytime you want.
Now imagine that you're a bad stand-up comedian.
But despite that, you're surrounded by yes-men assuring you that you're actually really funny.
You know, because you fired all the people who might say otherwise.
And so even though you keep getting booed by the audience,
you are absolutely certain that you're actually funny and cool,
no matter how many comedians seem to mock you.
I mean, with the exception of Dave Chappelle, of course.
seem to mock you. I mean, with the exception of Dave Chappelle, of course. Hey, wait Those new boys
Tough on the head Woo!
Tough on the head, it sounds like.
But you know this one thing? All those people are booing,
and I'm just pointing out the obvious.
They have terrible seats.
I understand.
Oof.
Incredible.
I'm pretty sure my ancestors just cringed.
A cringe that transcends the dimensions
through time and space.
Cringe is the fifth dimension.
Seriously, imagine thinking that you,
the at the time richest person on the planet,
were like, cool or edgy.
To go on stage like that and yell,
I'm rich, bitch, in this weird way into the mic,
like the most awkward kid at the karaoke party.
What I'm getting at here is that Elon Musk, to be frank,
is extremely unselfaware and not at all charismatic.
He is after all a fancy little rich boy
whose dad owned an Emerald Mine
and has never had to earn his popularity.
I'm sorry, fact check, it's a share in an Emerald Mine.
Where'd that rumor come from?
Oh, I don't know.
It was you, Elon.
The rumor came from you, you liar.
Oh my God.
Okay, I don't think even Musk fans would disagree
that the dude is incredibly awkward,
to put it in the most gentle of terms.
However, in the least gentle of terms,
I'd argue that Elon Musk is an embarrassing edgelord
who is surrounded by sycophants
and posts pictures of replica video game guns by his bed
and has the sense of humor
of a grandma genetically merged with 4chan.
Here he is dressed like the Marquis de Sade,
a picture he himself proudly posted
that has now been mysteriously removed from his tweet.
Here he is pretending like he's too smart for chess,
like a 12 year old on Reddit.
And I would argue that he's progressively gotten worse.
As of recent, he's become full blown red pilled,
far beyond reasonable thinking.
I don't have to explain why having a QAnon style
conspiracy clown in charge of Twitter is a bad thing.
Also, you can open your eyes now.
I'm sorry for depriving you of this for so long.
But generally speaking,
he's also just painfully uninteresting as a person.
And outside of his ability to invest money,
he's not particularly creative.
His ideas are for the most part,
extremely boilerplate sci-fi.
Brain chips, automation, robots, going to Mars.
When you think about what he aspires for,
it's not especially unique or visionary.
And all he's really doing is throwing money at basic ideas.
Anyone can put a rocket into space and then land it
if they pay enough smart people to do it for them.
And to credit Musk for bankrolling these projects
would be like crediting the head of Paramount
for making the Godfather.
But more importantly to Twitter,
Musk isn't very funny or good with words.
Ironically, out of all the things he outsources to experts,
he seems to insist on doing his humor by himself.
And so his tweets are stolen memes,
stale right-wing rhetoric, misinformation,
anti-trans horse shit, and embarrassing attempts
to explain that no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
They weren't booing me after all.
My goodness, he tweeted that first thing in the morning.
I know I've made this comparison before,
but he really is Michael Scott from the office shouting,
"'That's what she said to a bunch of miserable employees.'"
Like, did you know that this was a feature on Teslas?
It's a fart balloon.
And fart on demand is what I like to have, obviously.
It literally has an I'm so random button.
That is no joke, a feature that would blast fart
or goat sounds outside of Teslas
that Elon clearly thought was super based
or whatever the ungodly fuck.
It was almost immediately recalled for safety reasons,
something he's very familiar with having to do,
before no one bothered to check the regulations.
And not to be a comedy snob,
but goat sounds are the least random way
to tell the world how random you are.
He's just copying forced random or absurdist ideas
from like eight years ago.
And you can just imagine the engineers
too afraid to speak up when Musk asked them
to work overnight to make the totally cool with the K fart speaker on his Radmobile.
It's just all like stale Reddit shit, the least creative or visionary attempts, much
like his ideas on car design or a tunnel with lights or his sci-fi aspirations.
You can just see how he's pulling from other sources
without a single original idea.
As we wrote this episode, news came out
that Twitter might implement Reddit style awards
with titles like Mind Blown and Super Like
and a gem that is quite hilariously an Emerald icon.
There's just nothing cutting edge there.
It's just like what Facebook did years ago
and something that would make the site worse
while maybe making Elon a little extra scratch.
It's the husk of an imaginationless brainstorming session
sharted out as a last ditch attempt
to make Elon's Twitter feel new and improved.
It's like even a basic misunderstanding of the site.
He wants to add a bookmark icon,
so you don't have to go through a menu
to choose add to bookmark,
which is a fine, slightly more convenient idea
than the current situation.
But he also claims that bookmarking
is a de facto like button, which no, it's not.
It's a bookmark button.
It's for bookmarking stuff.
The like button is to let people you know
that you like their tweet.
Bookmark is for bookmarking.
It's all just weird, all right?
And so I don't want to be insulting,
but there's no good way to say
that Elon Musk isn't exactly the hottest fire
in the Tesla dealership.
And in fact, I think we're learning more and more
just how little he knows,
how childlike his sensibilities are,
how he seems to like Star Trek
because of the little gizmos and gadgets,
not the underlying philosophy,
which is kind of in direct opposition
to his approach to pretty much everything.
How constantly wrong he is
and how bad he is at basic research.
For example, he seems to be a weird COVID truther now.
Here's a tweet where he appears to think
that Dr. Fauci's wife is the person
who oversees whether he's acting ethically.
His evidence is her wiki that says
she's the head
of the Department of Bioethics
at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center.
Except if you look closer, just a little bit closer,
you learn that the Department of Bioethics
is a training and research center
that doesn't oversee anything.
It's just, it's an office
with like a few dozen people working there and anyone with an academic
or science background, which Elon apparently doesn't have
and lied about having, could figure that out.
Hell, you just have to know how college departments work.
So this is like Facebook meme shit
that he just blindly fell for or started himself.
And so it really seems like Elon Musk might be
kind of a dipshit. A walking series of unironic drill tweets, the most transparent and easy to
dunk on human that ever lived. And the only reason he's notable is because he's so incredibly
fucking rich. And if he wasn't so incredibly fucking rich,
he would just be another clueless reply guy
posting bad memes.
He didn't earn his followers the way someone might
by being funny or interesting on Twitter.
He is, if you didn't already figure it out,
the failed standup comedian in my little analogy from before
when your eyes were closed and you couldn't see my face.
But now, imagine that this failed standup comedian
bought the comedy club.
That person would have exactly zero idea on how to run it,
even if they had business experience.
Because up until that moment,
their entire perspective on how the club ran
would be skewed and bitter and based on bad information.
He would have an animosity toward most of the people
in the club, along with everyone working behind the scenes.
That's why his takeover of Twitter was so weird and hostile
because Elon can't conceive that he might just
have bad opinions or shitty humor.
So he clearly grew resentful of Twitter,
to the point that he impulsively locked himself
into buying it for way too much money.
And it's not entirely his fault.
For starters, Twitter made him buy it.
But also, besides the brain disease
that comes with having so much money,
which we will do a solo video about in the future,
we as a society really did a number
on his ego.
Mr. Musk, how are you?
Congratulations on the promotion.
Thank you very much.
Those Merlin engines are fantastic.
Elon Tusk, listen, we need your help.
Rick, Morty, why me?
Did something happen to Elon Musk?
How do you want to be remembered in history?
Alongside the Wright brothers, Elon Musk,
Zephyr and Cochran?
The moon's coming with me like an hour.
What would Elon do?
Moonfall, how could you?
Remember that night we had together?
We made love.
See, there was that brief window of time
where the general public didn't know
that much about Elon Musk.
And because he ran these seemingly innovative companies,
people naturally assumed that he was also responsible
for the actual engineering behind SpaceX and Tesla.
We really liked that Iron Man fantasy so much
that we put him in Iron Man.
On top of that, electric cars were seen
as an especially good cause
in terms of mitigating climate change,
which honestly, I don't even know
if he even believes in anymore.
So Musk was embraced by a lot of the left,
but specifically wealthy liberals
who could actually afford his products.
And Musk ate up that praise and attention.
And with all of it, he became more of a public figure.
But the more we learned about Elon Musk,
the more it became clear that he was not the man
that Hollywood made him out to be.
And while this is for another video,
there's a case to be made that Elon Musk
has never been good,
and in fact is working to harm human progress.
Hey, did you know that in 2021,
Tesla made $1.5 billion just by selling regulatory credits to other car companies?
You see, governments award car companies these credits
when they make efforts to reduce carbon emissions.
And the car companies are required
to have a certain amount of these credits.
But instead of meeting those requirements,
they can just buy credits from Tesla instead.
And so Tesla is profiting off of these other car companies
not reducing their carbon emissions.
Also electric or not, manufacturing and disposing of cars
is extremely bad for the environment.
Electric is obviously better,
but what we should be leaning on is public transportation.
Trains, for example, are the most eco-friendly option,
far more than cars.
And yet Elon Musk has been specifically hijacking
any funding that could go to trains
for his boring tunnel project,
which amounts to people driving fucking Tesla cars
through death trap tunnels.
They took $48 million from Las Vegas
to drive Elon's cars 1.5 miles in a fucking tube.
He's had failed tunnel projects in California,
in Baltimore, in Chicago.
And I would argue the one in Vegas
counts as a failure as well.
He is quite literally Lyle Landly,
the monorail guy from the Simpsons.
And I would argue that much like free speech,
Elon Musk only cares about the environment
so long as it directly benefits him.
As long as his cars are used
and not some dirty commoner system.
Oh look, weird.
Twitter temporarily banned the DC bus system account
for literally no reason.
Probably an accident, but still, pretty funny.
Anyway, and over time, a lot of people realized what I'm saying and began to turn on him.
People that I think Musk was genuinely a fan of, who are now calling him a piece of shit.
And so things got a little sad for him. He became very divorced from both women and the comforts of
his previous fame, and by extension, divorced from reality.
And I think all he's really ever done since
is try to find that comfort again,
that pocket of praise that he can curl up in
like a warm Tesla fire.
Because one thing Elon himself has absolutely admitted to
is that he's not a guy who likes to be alone.
You said that you cannot be and don't want to be alone.
He can't even accept the idea
that a lot of people are perfectly fine being alone.
And while I'm not exactly crying
into my Patrick Wilson body pillow about this,
loneliness is a very common problem for the ultra rich.
After all, how could they possibly make friends?
They're surrounded by people
who want their sweet fuckable money.
And most of them just kind of generally suck.
And so now might be a good time to point out
that Elon Musk is known for forcing his employees
to have meetings at one in the morning.
He's done it at SpaceX and Twitter.
He's a big fan of making everyone physically come
into the office as well, even installing bedrooms
so he can have a big mandated sleepover if he wants.
And I really think that's just because he's,
you know, a sad and lonely guy.
Being wealthy is generally not good for the brain,
which is why it's not a good idea for rich people
to be in charge of something like a social network, you know?
So Musk, a man so very desperate to be loved,
could not understand why so many people
suddenly hated him on this social media platform.
And his conclusion was that there must be something wrong
with Twitter and not with him.
It's a mind virus that makes people not like me.
Again, see his tweet about how all the people booing him
were unhinged leftists.
Surely that's who to blame
because it was at this point
that Musk finally found a new pocket of praise.
And that was all the other people who were made bitter
by being ratioed or banned or mocked on Twitter,
otherwise known as racists and anti-vaxxers and trolls,
not to mention a large portion of conservatives convinced
that they were being censored for being right wing
as opposed to spreading election and COVID misinformation.
And so all their anger turned toward
the so-called blue check mark leftists and Twitter mods
that surely were the reason, a conspiracy perhaps,
but the reality of how Twitter worked
is actually pretty simple.
I'll even put it in big words on the screen
for the cheap seats.
You know, the only ones who booed Elon,
according to Dave Chappelle, those poor cheap fucks.
Twitter was a popularity contest.
That's it.
Twitter was fundamentally designed to reward people
who are more charismatic or funny
or smart or popular than other people.
The same way Reddit has an upvote and downvote system,
Twitter's entire deal is that the people
who have the best jokes or the most compelling information
or can lie the best or are simply the most famous
in real life, those were the people it rewarded.
Is that good?
Not really.
Dare I say, no.
It's the same social structure as high school,
and high school sucks unless you're high.
And while there was absolutely a subjective nature
to Twitter's old moderation,
and I would certainly believe even government interference,
especially if I saw some actual evidence,
the goal was to maintain the status quo.
Is that good?
Nah.
I think that's very important to say.
Twitter wasn't good before Elon Musk bought it.
It was just kowtowing to mainstream beliefs.
But I would argue that it was better than it is now,
being run by the world's richest or formerly richest
and most sensitive man and his army of bitter fans.
Because again, Elon Musk and his weird fans weren't popular.
They aren't very funny and have really bad opinions
and lean on the side of being trolls.
A troll of course, being someone who craves attention
in any way they can get it, even by acting like a jackass.
You know, malarkey dealers, if you'll pardon my harshness.
And everything Musk is now doing is designed
to reward that behavior as opposed to any kind of other merit.
I don't think he fully knows he's doing it,
but every decision he's made to try and game the system
to benefit himself is also making Twitter more
and more insular and toxic.
He broadened the recommendations,
forcing people to have to see more tweets of people
they don't follow lest they mute or block them and make an echo chamber again.
Or a better example is that he changed the UI
to include view counts along with likes,
because he personally thinks that liking a tweet
is less valuable than seeing a tweet.
Except Twitter literally boosts the visibility
of some tweets over others.
And now he's going to reward Twitter blue users,
otherwise known as his fans, with more visibility as well.
So it's going to be this feedback loop
where people will act like tweets
with high view counts are valuable,
even though they are being artificially boosted.
And quite obviously,
seeing something has nothing to do with liking it.
I see Elon's flaccid fucking tweets every day.
And I don't know if you know this,
but I'm not a fan of that guy.
But of course, Elon doesn't understand that
because his entire existence is based on attention.
No matter if that attention is good or bad,
a car making a fart sound, or just tweeting the word keck.
Again, just like Michael Scott,
he naturally thinks getting a reaction
is the same as being approved of.
So of course he would change Twitter
to value attention over likability.
And we're now seeing this very unpopular man,
amplified by toxic fandom, getting forced on everyone.
I think his fans like him
because they see themselves
in him.
Going back to Twitter as high school,
I think they're imagining Elon as like the nerdy kid
getting picked on, an underdog getting revenge.
Except the underdog can't buy the entire school.
An underdog doesn't treat their employees like trash.
I would argue that Musk is less like a heroic underdog,
a resistance fighter or whatever,
and more like, I don't know,
a rich guy trying to steal everyone's resources.
But in this case, it's attention.
Like the villain in Total Recall trying to steal the air,
who was played by Ronnie Cox.
Hey, hey, hey now, hey now.
Rich guy trying to rule Mars, robot, space captain.
Is that, did I just have a Ronnie Cox breakthrough?
Is this anything?
No.
That's fair, I just got excited.
But there's a reason I keep thinking
of Cox-like dystopian villains here.
As I said before, Musk's moderating decisions
favor the rich over anyone else.
Corporations and celebrities were the first entities
to get special check marks to mitigate the damage he did
with $8 verification.
His no private jet tracking rule also benefited
every rich ghoul with a private jet.
And like, of course, right?
The list of people who invested in Elon's Twitter
are all Saudi princes and tech billionaires.
And so I guess what I'm getting at here
is that Twitter was always a shithole.
But before Musk, it was our shithole.
Not liberals or celebrities,
but most people and most politics.
Everyone from Kathy Griffin to Randy Quaid,
the definitive political spectrum.
It mostly kept the really shitty,
hateful accounts
off the site and allowed the majority of users
to go about their terrible online existence unimpeded.
It was a site that aspired to allow complete nobodies
to be able to tell Taco Bell to eat their ass,
where people could speak up against powerful figures.
And most importantly, where hilariously ignorant babies
could embarrass themselves and get made fun of by everyone.
Was it free speech?
Absolutely not.
I would argue that literally no functioning
social media site is free speech,
but it certainly wasn't the play thing
for a single attention hungry billionaire,
so transparently desperate to be popular
that he paid $44 billion to hijack everyone's attention.
He knows that by tweeting shit like,
"'My pronouns are prosecute Fauci,"
he's guaranteed a reaction now.
Not because what he's saying is edgy or honest or funny,
but because he's the guy in charge.
I won't lie that it's been a gas to make fun of him
on his own website, but I'm a tad bit nervous about just how impulsive
the man can get.
After all, it's no revelation
that this all feels very Trumpy, right?
Like Musk, Trump seemed to run for president
as like a half joke brought on by spite
and got locked into it.
Originally, both Democrats, Musk and Trump waged a war
against experts and elitists
and somehow convinced an army of fans
that they were the underdog despite being tremendously rich
or rich-ish in Trump's case.
Their fans insist they are playing 4D chess
no matter how obviously bad their ideas are.
Meanwhile, most of the world is just disheartened
that someone so toxic could force their way into our attention by obtaining power.
Also, this.
Elon Musk is firing back on Twitter denying a sexual misconduct allegation by a flight attendant who worked on his private jet.
Right. Both Trump and Musk have accusations against them that they like to blame on the deep state or some garbage
because neither figure has an ego
that would ever allow them to accept mistakes or defeat.
And so everything that happens
will be blamed on a conspiracy of leftists
because the biggest enemy Elon Musk has at this point
is his completely demolished ego.
He's willing to risk it all to convince everyone or anyone
that he's actually very cool
and smart. The clearest example has to be when in the midst of massive Twitter layoffs, Elon tweeted,
and I quote, did it for the lulz before deleting the tweet two hours later to repeat, he did it
numeral four, the lulz with a Z.
Because Elon Musk in that moment would have rather people thought
he purposefully destroyed a company for the lulz
than accidentally destroyed a company
because of his incompetence and ego
to the point that he would legally implicate himself
to save face.
You know, because I'm pretty sure
purposefully trashing a bunch of jobs would get you sued into oblivion.
Again, even the self-destructive path feels very Trumpy.
But no matter what's going on in his head,
the damage is already done for the rest of us tweet folk.
He stole the microphone and is screeching hogwash in it,
and now everyone's leaving.
And if you're one of the many people who makes their living
from social media promotion
or work for Twitter, this shit is devastating to watch.
Believe me, I personally know what it's like
to see an industry completely collapse
because of a single rich guy making snap decisions.
It's just sad.
Social media sites come and go for sure.
And there's perhaps some hope in places like Post or Hive
or Mastodon or my news site, some more use.
Social media for you and also several investors
who reserve the right to viewing your personal information.
But there was nothing irreparable about Twitter
before Musk took over.
It had more time left, more years to watch people
get offended about which direction toilet paper goes
or see a celebrity embarrass themselves
by admitting they hunt drug addicts for sport.
Or this Lena Dunham one, where she tried to joke
that Asian men can't be rapists.
Jesus fucking Christ, Lena.
But now, thanks to a single rich weirdo,
the site is most likely tanking.
And I think the lesson to be had from all of this
is that perhaps, just perhaps,
we need to completely rethink the way we use social media.
And I don't know, the internet,
we're a long ways away from garage geniuses,
revolutionizing technology
and creating a digital anarchy of free thought, you know?
The internet is basically just five Walmarts
competing with each other now.
Because while we love the idea of everything
being under one roof, this futurist vision of convenience,
it also creates a system where too much power
is put into the hands of too few people.
Be that Elon Musk or Jack Dorsey or Mark Zuckerberg
or the FBI.
There was a time when people's livelihoods
weren't at the whim of a single fucking algorithm.
And that's what they're pushing for.
Zuckerberg and his metaverse,
or Elon with his X app idea that might just be
what Twitter will turn into.
There's this battle to monopolize
the entire fucking internet,
and we can't let anyone win.
Not some rich Saudi prince, not the government,
not even me, especially not even me,
but especially, especially not this guy.
not even me, but especially, especially not this guy.
Again, oof. It's hard, man, because there's literally no power
we can turn to here.
And failing a catastrophic event,
no way to put the genie back in the bottle.
And Musk knows that social media is kind of worrying
and he's using that to try and gain personal control
under the guise of being concerned about censorship
and government interference.
It's yet another comparison in that part of the reason
Donald Trump was elected was because people had lost
a lot of faith in the establishment.
And they weren't wrong to lose faith,
just like it isn't wrong to think the internet
is kind of terrible now.
But I can promise you, the same way Trump didn't care,
neither does Musk.
He just wants it for himself,
to get to do the censoring himself.
And his fans don't care because they want him
to be the big edge Lord of Twitter,
because he's Tony Stark or whatever.
And so the ends justified the means.
The means in this case was Musk and his fans
pretending like they were actually concerned
about free speech.
It's like if we built a Stargate, you know,
Twitter's kind of like a Stargate
in that it transports us to many different realities.
And there was this one Senator who acted like
it was a waste of money and opposed it.
But then we secretly learned that he actually
just wanted control over the Stargate
for his own personal gain.
That's what Elon is like.
This hypothetical Stargate thief perhaps,
played by Ronnie Cox.
Are we sure there's nothing to that?
We're completely sure I didn't just figure out
something amazing.
Anyone gonna answer me?
Yeah?
Okay, fine.
All right.
Deny my genius, if you have to.
I'll start my own show.
One without the elitist who don't like my Ronnie Cox thing.
Some more, more news.
Just you wait.
Eight bucks a minute.
Eight dollars, $11 dollars eleven dollars for apple users
and uh and maybe more later if i just want to change my mind because why not twelve dollars
okay bye $14.
$18.
$27.
Wait, wait, wait, hold on. Put my thinking cap on.
It's innovation time.
Okay, get this.
$34.
Okay.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, $52. comment. Okay. We got a merch store with merch to buy from the store.
We have a patreon.com slash some more news.
We have a podcast called Even More News
and this show,
Some More News as a podcast
if you hate my face.
Interesting fact,
this episode's script
now fits in one tweet
which is cool
we love our
30,000 word tweets
don't we folks
I
award that one
hilarious
for nine bitcoins
god
what a dumb piece of shit all right see you later