this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2024
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Unfortunately that was his task. Twitter was a pivotal tool in the Arab spring, second largest investor in Twitter after musk were the Saudis. Musk is such a try hard wannabe goon that when the "real" money told him they'd think he was cool if he bought and fucked up Twitter (and they would totally let him ride dirtbikes with them when he was done!) he jumped at the chance.
I don't buy this conspiracy theory at all, 1) twitter is disinformation heaven, which is very useful to authoritarian regimes and 2) Musky would never intentionally do anything to harm his public image, he's a textbook narcissist after all.
Don't agree with your premise, and think maybe you're conflating Twitter today with Twitter back then for the most part...
Twitter USED to be... a place where you could get a decent idea of the zeitgeist and verification actually meant something. By no means ideal on any count, but it was the closest thing we had to the world's unified quick communications platform. And yes, some missinfo anywhere, but generally you could get to a lot of usable info and communicate with people more directly.
To your second point, you're missing SO MUCH OF the nuance of how desperate and out of touch this chud is. Go watch musk on stage with Dave Chapelle and then go see how Peter thiel is the senior class man to elon's freshman - thiel is always giving him swirleys and calling musk names, but elon follows like a kicked puppy hoping for approval.
Fair point, but I would argue that if you had that kind of experience on twitter, you're weren't really the target demographic.
Desperate and out of touch, yes, but deliberately fucking up a platform and ruining his "Iron Man" persona? He's too stupid and too invested in what people think of him.
There's a version of this conspiracy I could buy though: the Saudis gave him money and stroked his ego knowing that there was no way he wouldn't fuck the whole thing up. Everyone except him knew how this was going to end. That conspiracy I could get behind.
Yeah, you're closer on the last part.
With the "target demographic" comment though, you're conflating business motivation with political/cultural... You can be concerned with selling the most hammers at your hardware store, or you can be afraid that a smaller percentage of your customers will then use their purchased hammers to come break your windows and your legs.
"Gave" like Trump and the Russians.