Elon & Twitter

[DarkandStormy]

Buncha form 4s just dropped, confirming Elon sold billions of dollars of Tesla stock this week.

Claims he's done selling now.

But of course he previously claimed only time he sells shares is when forced to for covering taxes on expiring options, and that's clearly not what he did here.

He previously claimed:
-his money would be "last out" of Tesla
-he'd only sell if necessary to colonize Mars
-he'd only sell when forced to cover taxes on expiring options
-he was done selling in December for previously discussed taxes

He has no coherent story on when or why he'll sell. He'll do it whenever he wants, which is fine. Just makes all his previous statements on it look dumb.

As for the left/right extreme discussion...66% of Republicans believe the 2020 election was "stolen." What is a comparable majoritarian position among the left?

 

[EVNow]

2008 Dem nominee: I believe a marriage is between a man and a woman. I am not in favor of gay marriage.

Absolutely - that is a big shift. That is why I want people to come out and say what is it they oppose - instead of just opposing "woke". Just say you are opposed to gay marriage.

On the subject of gay marriage - there is a reason even Romney didn't bring it up in the campaign. That is because it wasn't just Obama that changed but the whole country. If you didn't change, then you were left behind. The whole country moved left on the issue. Now a majority of Republicans support Gay marriage. This is the reason on the right they concentrate on trans issues rather than gay marriage. They think trans issues will help them win elections, not gay marriage.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1519770518924242944

https://twitter.com/x/status/1519774734589648897

 

[Southpasfan]

With respect to Twitter, liberals haven't changed their positions on virtually anything for the fifty or so years I have been following such positions, and I am as liberal as you can get without being so naieve as to be irrelevant.

US society, and First World societies, have slowly agreed with many liberal speech positions. The casual racism my parents, two of the nicest people ever as far as anyone knows, used routinely was so out there now its funny. I remember the first time I pointed out to my dad that "Oriental" was a type of furniture, not a type of person from Asia. It was if someone accidentally took a dump on his birthday cake.

But I don't see calling Asians Asians, or acknowledging the existence of LGBBTQ people, as liberals "moving left," its more like society agreeing with long held positions.

Conservatives haven't moved much either, except for the fact that on social issues they are no longer conservatives, they are losers. They don't like it, understandably, and so now you have people asking with a straight face why offensive speech is not OK on Twitter.

And, astonishingly, Musk thinks taking it private will have some effect one way or the other. I don't get it. Compared to what Tesla is accomplishing for humanity Twitter is the biggest nothingburger in human history. But I suppose someone else knows

 

[EVNow]

"The Court used a two-pronged test to evaluate laws affecting speech acts: 1. speech can be prohibited if its purpose is to incite or produce imminent lawless action; and 2. doing so is likely to incite or produce such an action. Additionally, the Court found that abstract discussions are not the same as actually preparing or inciting individuals to engage in illegal acts."

This is the so called Brandenburg test. So some random guy with 3 followers on Twitter calling for the overthrow of the government is going to fail this test, even if his intentions are to do so with force and power.

So, Trump calling on supporters to march on the Capitol is not protected free speech. Nor are his tweets about the subject ?

If that is the case, Twitter is correct in banning him ?

 

[rjack1282]

So, Trump calling on supporters to march on the Capitol is not protected free speech. Nor are his tweets about the subject ?

If that is the case, Twitter is correct in banning him ?

I don't know what his exact words were but if they were calling for imminent lawless action then I would say yes to both points. Doing so at that location and time was likely to produce the action.

 

[EVNow]

With respect to Twitter, liberals haven't changed their positions on virtually anything for the fifty or so years I have been following such positions, and I am as liberal as you can get without being so naieve as to be irrelevant.

Conservatives haven't moved much either, except for the fact that on social issues they are no longer conservatives, they are losers. They don't like it, understandably, and so now you have people asking with a straight face why offensive speech is not OK on Twitter.

Both are not correct.

Some of the ideas that were in the fringe of left (like racial justice etc) are more mainstream now. Both liberals and conservatives have moved to the left on those issues.

- There are still a lot of conservatives who haven't moved or have moved slower than the median person. They think the world is falling apart (or that they have been left behind)
- There is a reactionary right ("alt-right") that wants to push back very hard on the cultural issues and indeed want to go back to pre-civil rights days. Infact an exit poll during '16 primary found 1 in 5 Trump supporters opposed emaciation proclamation
- A progressives have pressed for many left leaning economic ideas for sometime now but have gone nowhere. Including ideas like single payer healthcare that is what ALL the other industrialized countries have. Many on the right claim single payer is "socialist" / "commie".

 

[EVNow]

I don't know what his exact words were but if they were calling for imminent lawless action then I would say yes to both points. Doing so at that location and time was likely to produce the action.

We know it produced action. You can see all of Trump's tweets on the 6th here. You should probably see all the tweets leading up to 6th (continuous stream of "rigged" election etc) too.

Tweets of January 6, 2021 | The American Presidency Project

www.presidency.ucsb.edu

Twitter banned him not because of these - but because they feared he would cause further violence.

Permanent suspension of @realDonaldTrump

Suspension of @realDonaldTrump

blog.twitter.com

 

[Electroman]

The right has moved further to right only on a few issues like Climate Change, but the left has moved further to the left enormously on many social issues. The term SJW was created specifically to represent these lefties. I don't need no stinkin data. I can see the shift myself.

The enormous deafening din they create on:
- Transgender, LGBTQ movement
- Gay rights
- BLM
- taxing and punishing the rich
- social programs and freebies
- defund the police movement

All of these are sure indicators, this is not the liberal left I signed up and voted for Obama twice. To the extent I am now in the never-again-Democrat camp

 

[RSpanner]

People on the right (I have no idea what the Republican Party official stance is, but I doubt it is what you said it was) generally believe that fossil fuels do cause warming. BUT they generally don’t believe this will cause catastrophic, positive feedback loop warming which will destroy life on earth.

Elons stance is similar to that actually, with a twist. He says it is unlikely fossil fuels will cause catastrophic global warming in the next century, but we don’t actually know. Therefore we should wean ourselves off fossil fuels in an organized and sane manner. He most recently said in a Ted interview that he thinks the path we are on now, with our current incremental movement towards solar, wind, hydro and nuclear energy and away from fossil fuels, is sufficient to generate a good outcome.

Just an aside, but did you happen to watch the series that Frontline is showing.. The Power of Big Oil...very very interesting>

 

[RSpanner]

The right has moved further to right only on a few issues like Climate Change, but the left has moved further to the left enormously on many social issues. The term SJW was created specifically to represent these lefties. I don't need no stinkin data. I can see the shift myself.

The enormous deafening din they create on:
- Transgender, LGBTQ movement
- Gay rights
- BLM
- taxing and punishing the rich
- social programs and freebies
- defund the police movement

All of these are sure indicators, this is not the liberal left I signed up and voted for Obama twice. To the extent I am now in the never-again-Democrat camp

You may have listened to some invalid info. First, defund was a very bad word to use..I have seen it as putting money into other groups ( Cahoots, etc) to take some of the burden OFF of the police. Mental Health issues should be on a different dept, and that is what the Defund movement was originally all about. The R's did a good job with false info to make it into the opposite
Punishing the Rich? Why..most dems I know just want equality. Freebies? Is that part of the great so called "communist" movement afoot, this country went through that in the 1950's with Joe McCarthy. Were do you get your information?

 

[rjack1282]

We know it produced action. You can see all of Trump's tweets on the 6th here. You should probably see all the tweets leading up to 6th (continuous stream of "rigged" election etc) too.

Tweets of January 6, 2021 | The American Presidency Project

www.presidency.ucsb.edu

Twitter banned him not because of these - but because they feared he would cause further violence.

Permanent suspension of @realDonaldTrump

Suspension of @realDonaldTrump

blog.twitter.com

The tweets are irresponsible and dumb but I don't think they pass the test. We would need to look at his words at that rally that got his supporters riled up to march on the capital (I've never seen it or read a transcript). The last couple of tweets were obvious damage control.

 

[Southpasfan]

Both are not correct.

Some of the ideas that were in the fringe of left (like racial justice etc) are more mainstream now. Both liberals and conservatives have moved to the left on those issues.

- There are still a lot of conservatives who haven't moved or have moved slower than the median person. They think the world is falling apart (or that they have been left behind)
- There is a reactionary right ("alt-right") that wants to push back very hard on the cultural issues and indeed want to go back to pre-civil rights days. Infact an exit poll during '16 primary found 1 in 5 Trump supporters opposed emaciation proclamation
- A progressives have pressed for many left leaning economic ideas for sometime now but have gone nowhere. Including ideas like single payer healthcare that is what ALL the other industrialized countries have. Many on the right claim single payer is "socialist" / "commie".

You have to really go issue by issue. I think we agree but are just saying it differently, for example, when you said:

"There are still a lot of conservatives who haven't moved or have moved slower than the median person. They think the world is falling apart (or that they have been left behind)" (emphasis added)

Look if you would rather have LGBTQ people stay in the closet, or sort of liked a "don't ask don't tell" policy, my point was society at large has agreed with the left's long standing position that merely tolerating such people is not enough, you need the first openly gay general or whatever.

Now, what I often tell my liberal friends is that I see no logical reason to assume anyone would be evolving or changing their mind on one or more of these social issues. So, I would say, not only would such a person "think" their world is falling apart IT IS FALLING APART.

If you never imagined having to even discuss gay marriage, and the next thing you know you are a baker and you have to make a gay wedding cake, look YOUR WORLD IS FALLING APART.

So I see what many here have labeled as conservatives "moving right" is sort of the natural reaction of the side where their view on a particular issue now seems to be in the dustbin of history.

As for Twitter, this boils down to what appears to be not just free speech, but the continued right to offensive speech, or, to put it another way "allowing the speaker to determine whether or not something is offensive." On super free speech Twitter, the Washington Redskins are still the Washington Redskins, for example, and there is no fallout from making such a reference.

I mean, in a way this is the only forum where you can have these discussions logically, but I never imagined I would be having them with respect to Musk buying Twitter. Sheesh.

 

[RSpanner]

What Musk appears to believe is quite interesting actually. By suggesting that the left has moved far radically away from center and adopted violence as a way of countering (allegedly and apparently) a reasonably slightly right of center right wing, he (along with the ultra radical right wing) has invented a villain in the left. And what do we do with villains? Well we have to fight them. And in order to successfully fight those villains, we have to be more villainous than they.

This is actually some seriously dangerous stuff. Germany did that same thing in the mid 1930's. The political leaders of the time invented, through dishonest propoganda, a violent left that must be stopped at all costs. An extremely violent right ideology emerged, and was quite successfull at doing what they were intended to do (Nazis, the holocaust, and all that).

Not to suggest that Musk is a Nazi, but rather that he, as well as far right thinkers are using the same strategy. Musk, through his own tweets, the Q Anon movement that brands the entirety of the left as violent pedophiles, the right wing branding of BLM and ANTIFA as domestic terrorists (despite that fact that both would dissappear if fascism also did so), and the acceptance of Critical Race Theory as the downfall of society, all point to the invention of a left wing that must be battled.

I find it kind of terrifying that less than 100 years later, we could allow, and some of us seemingly desire, the events of 1930's Germany to repeat themselves.

 

[Electroman]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1519805231948652544

"Why would a liberal leave the Left? Because the Left isn't liberal at all"

 

[EVNow]

The tweets are irresponsible and dumb but I don't think they pass the test. We would need to look at his words at that rally that got his supporters riled up to march on the capital (I've never seen it or read a transcript). The last couple of tweets were obvious damage control.

But all this didn't start on that day and can't be taken in isolation. He had been riling up his supporters for weeks. There was a plan to storm the capital and force Pence to declare Trump the winner. After that they would hang Pence and Palosi. Nooses don't appear out of nowhere.

Anyway - back on topic of free speech, misinformation and violence. It can get very sticky. For eg. in India if a leader tweets that "Muslims are killing cows in city X" - it will likely lead to violence. One could argue its just misinformation and shouldn't be banned - but also that it should be because it is likely to lead to violence. If someone with 3 followers tweets it - it will probably go nowhere. But if someone with 1 M followers does, it could have repercussions (though the preferred method of Modi supporters in India is to use Whatsapp instead of Twitter).

 

[EVNow]

I don't need no stinkin data. I can see the shift myself.

When you stop looking at data you have crossed over to the conspiracy theory mindset.

 

[RSpanner]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1519805231948652544

"Why would a liberal leave the Left? Because the Left isn't liberal at all"

really twisted view of things to fit a right wing view..wow, He had to work quite hard to come up with that scenario. Being a Dem for over 50 years, whomever he is talking about could most likely fit into one small room. Not like any of the Democrats I know...

 

[FlatSix911]

The graphic from Elon deserves a repost... it shows his position has not changed, but the political landscape certainly has.

"Billionaire Elon Musk insists he is a liberal — but is viewed as a far-right “bigot” because “woke progressives” are pushing the left to extremes.
The world’s richest man used his new $44 billion purchase, Twitter, to share a simple stick-figure illustration Thursday highlighting his position in the dramatically shifting political landscape over the last 14 years."

 

[Knightshade]

The graphic from Elon deserves a repost... it shows his position has not changed, but the political landscape certainly has.

This claim was debunked with multiple sources pages ago when Elon originally tweeted it. I'd encourage you to scroll back and look at the data doing so.

 

[heltok]

I think a lot of center/right people are fed up with the woke culture, some of their favourite tv-shows are being totally ruined. I used to be a Star Trek fan, but I seriously cannot watch the latest woke version of it. It has turned into minority women humiliating white men over and over again:

A lot of us just want to focus on doing a good job, being a decent parent, watching some decent movie, eat our favorite meal in peace etc:

Not all the time be bombarded with woke messages in every context from schools, movies, news, protests etc. Maybe the left is not as woke as we believe, but it sure seems like that a lot of the time.