As for the fake user saga, my take is that it is a transparently weak reason to try to walk back from the deal. I think the real story was that after he lost some financial leverage with the crypto downturn he is no longer able to finance the deal without making significant tradeoffs and decided to walk it back. Everyone who knows the internet well (and Elon lives online 24/7) knows that all social media networks have lots of bots so it's impossible for me to think that this is some surprise to him.
He made a bet on the company that he clearly always and still does want. Then the price tanked so he made a gamble and used whatever he could to support his side.
From a purely business perspective it's not that big of a deal to risk some emails/messages leaking in discovery in exchange for a few billion dollars. And ultimately he gets what he wants regardless since it's as much a hobby as a business (like owning a sports team that loses money).
Musk might be crazy and disagreeable, but his craziness is the only possibility for something like this to happen. Whether it'll work is anyone's guess, but at least we might have an attempt.
I also have the feeling that he's bought this thing to stroke his own ego and have better control over his soapbox rather than a business purpose, therefore absolute profitability may not be his priority.
Furthermore, if he does this bet and it ends up proving that an ad-less business model makes more money in the long run, it may push the rest of the market out of the local maximum it's currently in and make them explore non-advertising monetization strategies.
Not because he necessarily likes Trump but because its the most controversial thing he could do and his new Republican fan base will love him for it.
There is no version of reality in which Twitter owned by Musk is better in any sense.
How is Trump far right? Has he ever advocated for a white ethnostate, rallied against Jews, gypsies and black people? Worn a swastika? Supported Hitler?
Please don't use words when you don't know the meaning of them. Trump is right wing (and fairly left of the right wing, he's socially liberal in many ways). He is not far right.
> Musk is a sociopathic pathological liar who's also conservative
What has Musk lied about? On what basis are you diagnosing him as a sociopath? How is Musk lowercase-c conservative?
Your entire post is full of severe assertions with no supporting arguments.
The current liberatarian = cultural-left ~10 years ago.
Or we suspected it, but just didn't want to admit it to ourselves.
But, yeah, still blame it on the programmability of the people. I guess, this is the testament to programmability of people to not look at real politik and sweep things under the rug.
We went from individual rights to mushy paper straws in less than 10 years. That's how far we've stooped.
> But, yeah, still blame it on the programmability of the people.
Yes indeed, because the people affected by those problems tend to vote for the side that, to a much more severe degree than its counterpart, doesn’t have any real vision for solving them, but instead makes its base feel good with populistic propaganda.
You’re basically just saying there are real issues that people care about. Yeah, absolutely. That doesn’t mean that we aren’t also being manipulated and that it’s not something worth trying to solve.
No, the Republicans went from a party that believed in free trade, free minds, freedom of conscience, and individual rights to a captive personality cult beholden to a New York real estate hustler who failed at selling steaks, booze, and gambling to Americans but who was strangely successful at selling real estate to Russians, and who promised to stack the courts with unqualified theocrats.
That's how far you've stooped.