Whatever the case, it's clear that Twitter is beyond the pale now. Our only option is building a better world, there's no hope in putting the pieces back together like they used to be.
Elon plays a mean game, but it's a board we built and he's using rules we made. IMO, the proper response is not to change the rules, but use powerful technology to make his control irrelevant. Writing bespoke legislation for Twitter is truly unthinkable, there are better ways to approach this.
The “big corporation-style” capitalism is definitely a new flavor, and unfortunately that’s seen as centrism today, adopted by moderates of all political sides across the western world and even beyond.
Maybe earlier in his life people could tell him to sit down and behave. But at a certain point of fame, you’ll have a set of loyal yes men in your circle independent of your actions who religiously validate everything you do and say. It’s a dream for narcissists, but also their demise. The danger of yes men is they lower the signal-to-noise ratio making it really difficult to orient yourself accurately in the outside world.
Since journalists are so overrepresented on twitter, I’ve been wondering if undermining them is a goal here? Business people and conservatives are generally pretty hostile to journalism. It would be a pretty big coup for them if the NYT, Wapo, etc lost eyeballs because Twitter went down the tubes.
Is that worth biting tens of billions on? Probably not. But I’m sure Elon and David Sacks wouldn’t shed any tears if all the preachy lib journalists just disappeared one day!