get it to x wrote: ↑Sat Dec 03, 2022 10:39 am
All of this outrage against Musk is a result of leveling out a viewpoint imbalance and lack of transparency in what has become the digital "town square". Some people are either too soft for free speech or want a monopoly on viewpoint. Embrace the stupid person's ability to speak. It only buttresses your right to voice your own views, stupid or brilliant.
Musk's team deletes posts and suspends users, my man. Just like the old guys.
And it's not a digital town square. It's a firm that sells advertising space. where YOU are the product.
The fact that people don't understand this is the problem.....what twitter edits, regardless of who runs it, is about not spooking their advertisers, and maximizing profits. It has NOTHING to do with left/right/center. It's about MONEY. Like every advertiser, they look at their demographics, and cater their ads to who is using twitter. THAT is the "conspiracy" at twitter.....it's about $$$$.
This same exact pressure applies to ALL MEDIA, not just twitter.
Well......duhhh, it's almost always about money!
What is the reason that Musk will be charging to be 'certified'?
Maybe an added revenue stream to keep them afloat while they go through rough seas, maybe send a shot across the bow to combat advertisers, maybe a vision for something we are unaware of that will want users to pay a sub-fee...a new form of social media not dependent on advertising wouldn't that be great, no?, maybe something really devious that sucks everyone in and magnifies our digital fingerprint, maybe a new way towards a phone manufacturer (Twitter Phone) to compete with Apple and Android.....the point, is that we just do not know.
At a 50x multiple on forward earnings to get to a $44Bn valuation which would be no actual return on capital except the free cash flow yield at best, you’d need $2.2Bn in net income which lets generously assume a 40% net, not gross, margin would mean you’d need $5.5Bn in revenue. It had one quarter of $1.1Bn in NI but that was the creation of a deferred tax asset which was $1.05Bn and reflected the present value of net operating losses previously. It’s last four quarters it made around $900mm and that was by far a high water mark. With interest rates up a 50x multiple is beyond aspirational.
I KNOW he isn’t making an acceptable return on equity or capital on this investment over its lifetime under his ownership.
Let's take your word for it and those your trust.....so why did he intentionally crap away all the money he did? I am certainly not on your level of know, when it comes to financial issues...but you can't continually assume you KNOW it all when you are not playing in the same club as the 1%ers; not a slight at you, so please don't take it that way.
Based on your last sentence......my question has even more weight, so why did he buy Twitter? It's also why I asked why Trump would want to run a gain. Maybe the two are the same, maybe the two are in the 1% club and play by rules you and I will never learn about, maybe the gov't is in on the 'skins' game with the 1%ers....we just don't know, well...maybe we do, and we just can't prove it.
By the way in thinking about your comments I pictured you as Black Tony Blair: we just don’t knowwww
Last edited by Farfromgeneva on Sun Dec 04, 2022 1:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Now I love those cowboys, I love their gold
Love my uncle, God rest his soul
Taught me good, Lord, taught me all I know
Taught me so well, that I grabbed that gold
I left his dead ass there by the side of the road, yeah
I wanna know how the F you remember all these movie and show lines. Either you are blessed & cursed with a photographic memory...or you spend a sh1t ton of time watching the boob tube.
A fraudulent intent, however carefully concealed at the outset, will generally, in the end, betray itself.
~Livy
“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” -Soren Kierkegaard
I wanna know how the F you remember all these movie and show lines. Either you are blessed & cursed with a photographic memory...or you spend a sh1t ton of time watching the boob tube.
Not photographic but cursed with a loong and deep one, it’s a problem in most personal and professional relationships.
And then I end up like the guy Vernon in “when keeping it real goes wrong”. (But also very much similar in physical composition to part of the the dude Grandma is getting some from in the Darius part..)
Now I love those cowboys, I love their gold
Love my uncle, God rest his soul
Taught me good, Lord, taught me all I know
Taught me so well, that I grabbed that gold
I left his dead ass there by the side of the road, yeah
I wanna know how the F you remember all these movie and show lines. Either you are blessed & cursed with a photographic memory...or you spend a sh1t ton of time watching the boob tube.
Not photographic but cursed with a loong and deep one, it’s a problem in most personal and professional relationships.
And then I end up like the guy Vernon in “when keeping it real goes wrong”. (But also very much similar in physical composition to part of the the dude Grandma is getting some from in the Darius part..)
I wanna know how the F you remember all these movie and show lines. Either you are blessed & cursed with a photographic memory...or you spend a sh1t ton of time watching the boob tube.
Not photographic but cursed with a loong and deep one, it’s a problem in most personal and professional relationships.
And then I end up like the guy Vernon in “when keeping it real goes wrong”. (But also very much similar in physical composition to part of the the dude Grandma is getting some from in the Darius part..)
I have a very long memory. That is why I remember some things some folk here don’t remember or really had no reason to remember….but I do. Anonymity had its benefits.
RedFromMI wrote: ↑Tue Nov 01, 2022 3:46 pm
Actually the government effort to connect with social media companies was open and aboveboard, and most of what the Intercept published was available by searching websites.
The government was not trying to [censor or] "control" social media companies - it was trying to get those companies (who had to agree to cooperate) to better keep junk information off those sites.
But the stupid reporter from the Intercept tried to make this one look like a nefarious effort, when in fact it was not.
RedFromMI wrote: ↑Tue Nov 01, 2022 3:46 pm
Actually the government effort to connect with social media companies was open and aboveboard, and most of what the Intercept published was available by searching websites.
The government was not trying to [censor or] "control" social media companies - it was trying to get those companies (who had to agree to cooperate) to better keep junk information off those sites.
But the stupid reporter from the Intercept tried to make this one look like a nefarious effort, when in fact it was not.
This didn't age well.
It wasnt censorship. It was "handled."
care to explain?
Which government made a decision to try to "[censor or] "control" social media companies"???
The Trump government???
Last edited by MDlaxfan76 on Mon Dec 05, 2022 2:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Elon Musk and Matt Taibbi said the "Twitter Files" would show a political scandal, but the information itself did the opposite
Nicholas Grossman
Dec 4
It was hyped as a big revelation, proof of a political conspiracy. Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk gave journalist Matt Taibbi access to some of Twitter’s internal communications from before he took over, saying they would show “what really happened with the Hunter Biden story suppression,” referring to an October 2020 New York Post article about a laptop allegedly belonging to then presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son. Musk promised it’d be “awesome.” Conservative media figures, Elon Musk fans, and Biden opponents were excited.
In advance of the release, MIT computer scientist and Musk booster Lex Fridman called it “historic,” and claimed it will “strengthen our democracy” because “transparency helps keep people honest and minimize undue influence from politics and money.”
Selectively releasing internal information without external oversight is not transparency, especially not when attempting to support a preconceived narrative. The public knows this is a fraction of Twitter’s internal documentation, but doesn’t know what they chose to hold back, and for what purpose. Taibbi said he “had to agree to certain conditions” to review what Musk showed him, but didn’t say what those were.
The release was a marketing gimmick. The inaccurate claim of transparency is another.
But that doesn’t mean the information is devoid of value. No one who appears in the released communications is disputing their accuracy, so with proper caveats, we can learn things from them.
Anyone looking for more insight into how Twitter, and social media companies in general, deal with content moderation might learn something. Anyone looking for proof of a political conspiracy will find that even this information, selectively released by people trying to make it look like a big scandal, showed that it wasn’t.
The Big Hunter Biden Reveal
There were two revelations regarding Hunter Biden. The most relevant one is “no evidence” of “any government involvement in the laptop story.” Taibbi found that federal law enforcement had contacted Twitter months before the New York Post article with a “general” warning about “possible foreign hacks,” but nothing about Hunter Biden, let alone a specific story. Those nonspecific keep-an-eye-out warnings have been standard procedure for years, and issued to many companies—Facebook got one too—especially after North Korea hacked Sony in 2014 and Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee in 2016.
That’s right, the big reveal blindly hyped as evidence of a political scandal showed the opposite. Released communications feature senior Twitter officials—including then Head of Legal, Policy, and Trust Vijaya Gadde, and Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker—disagreeing about what to do and ultimately making a judgment call to block the Post story due to suspicion it contained hacked materials, a violation of established policy. Taibbi has been trying to spin Twitter and Facebook’s reactions to that Hunter Biden laptop story as a political scandal for more than two years. If there was even a hint of evidence implying government officials were involved, he would’ve highlighted it.
The other Hunter Biden revelation in the “Twitter Files” is that someone from the Biden campaign spotted naked pictures of Hunter and asked Twitter to take them down. And Twitter did.
When Taibbi posted evidence of that, Elon Musk rhetorically asked “if this isn’t a violation of the Constitution’s First Amendment, what is?” Following up, he explained that “Twitter acting by itself to suppress free speech is not a 1st amendment violation, but acting under orders from the government to suppress free speech, with no judicial review, is.”
In 2020, Joe Biden and his campaign officials didn’t hold government positions, so there’s no possible First Amendment violation. No one “ordered” Twitter to do anything. And even if Trump administration officials had been the ones to flag the photos, posting unauthorized pictures of someone else’s genitalia is clearly against Twitter policies. According to Taibbi, Twitter occasionally gets and acts on requests like this from both Democrats and Republicans.
Biden having someone flag unauthorized naked photos of his struggling-with-addiction son makes him sound more like a concerned parent than a government authoritarian, especially since Biden wasn’t in government, didn’t make any threats, and the request just asked Twitter to follow its own rules. And since Hunter didn’t post the photos himself, this does nothing to undermine the suspicion that material about him appearing on Twitter may have been illicitly acquired.
Reasonable Suspicion
Suspecting that the “Hunter Biden laptop” may have contained hacked material was reasonable in October 2020 when the story broke, and still is.
Earlier that year, cybersecurity researchers reported that Russian military intelligence had hacked Burisma, a Ukrainian company where Hunter Biden had worked. The laptop story came to the New York Post via Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s personal attorney, who had spent months trying to drum up dirt on the Bidens via Ukraine. That effort, which ultimately involved then-President Trump withholding legally-allocated military aid to extort Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky into manufacturing an investigation of the Bidens, prompted Trump’s first impeachment. Additionally, U.S. counterintelligence had warned the White House that Russian intelligence targeted Giuliani, trying to use him, with or without his knowledge, as a conduit for misinformation.
So a known target of a Russian influence operation is shopping around a story about a known target of Russian hacking, and his story of the laptop’s chain of custody has holes. This doesn’t prove the laptop held some information Russia hacked—it’s never been proven or disproven—but it does raise suspicion. The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Fox News, and other media outlets passed on the story, because they investigated and couldn’t verify it. That too doesn’t disprove it, but it shows that both mainstream and conservative media outlets were suspicious.
Multiple New York Post reporters turned it down too, for the same reason. The Post eventually ran it under the bylines of Gabrielle Fonrouge and Emma-Jo Morris. Fonrouge, a Post reporter since 2014, had little to do with the story and learned her name was on it only after it was published. Morris, who previously worked as an associate producer for Sean Hannity at Fox, was the Post’s deputy politics editor and it was her first byline. She wrote eleven New York Post stories, all but one of which are about Hunter Biden, and is now politics editor at Breitbart.
With all that, Twitter decided to treat the Post story as a potential violation of its hacked material policy, going so far as to prevent anyone from posting it. That’s fully within Twitter’s First Amendment rights, but I think it went too far. Big tech companies aren’t the government, but do exercise a degree of government-like control over swaths of public communication, and I don’t like the idea of Silicon Valley executives deciding which stories published by established media organizations users can share. Allowing people to post it but adding a warning label about the suspicion would’ve threaded the needle, with Twitter not complicit in laundering and disseminating potentially hacked material, and users not stopped from sharing a published piece.
Perhaps you disagree. But whatever your opinion about Twitter’s actions, we’re now in the weeds of content moderation judgment calls, a far cry from the alleged political conspiracies, let alone a First Amendment violation.
No subsequent information has changed that. Various media outlets have tried to verify all the alleged contents, and none have. For example, Washington Post investigators reviewed a copy of the laptop’s harddrive provided by Republican activist Jack Maxey and confirmed that some emails were really Hunter’s, but said “the vast majority of the data — and most of the nearly 129,000 emails it contained — could not be verified.” This doesn’t prove the info is fake either, it means we don’t know.
Verifying some does not verify all. And verifying any doesn’t address suspicion that the info was hacked.
The Hunter Fixation
Suspicion was reasonable, and Twitter reacting to that suspicion with internal debates focused on hacked material rules, not partisan politics, is a good thing. Matt Taibbi’s account of Twitter’s internal communications shows no government involvement, no pressure from the Biden campaign on any Hunter Biden content except nude photos, and senior Twitter officials disagreeing about what to do. No conspiracy.
But I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for people fixated on Hunter to accept that. They’re too invested in their narrative of Biden’s son—who, unlike Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, doesn’t work in his father’s administration or have any apparent influence over American policy—and too committed to feeling like aggrieved victims, to let a little thing like contrary evidence get in the way.
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By Berny Belvedere · Launched a year ago
A newsletter from Nicholas Grossman. Politics, national security, culture, and
RedFromMI wrote: ↑Tue Nov 01, 2022 3:46 pm
Actually the government effort to connect with social media companies was open and aboveboard, and most of what the Intercept published was available by searching websites.
The government was not trying to [censor or] "control" social media companies - it was trying to get those companies (who had to agree to cooperate) to better keep junk information off those sites.
But the stupid reporter from the Intercept tried to make this one look like a nefarious effort, when in fact it was not.
This didn't age well.
It wasnt censorship. It was "handled."
care to explain?
Which government made a decision to try to "[censor or] "control" social media companies"???
The Trump government???
Sure. As the Twitter files pretty plainly shows, Trump did it AND Biden's campaign was censoring politically troublesome Hunter news via Twitter employee back doors. Most certainly political censorship, rather than protecting the nation from Russian election misinformation.
RedFromMI wrote: ↑Tue Nov 01, 2022 3:46 pm
Actually the government effort to connect with social media companies was open and aboveboard, and most of what the Intercept published was available by searching websites.
The government was not trying to [censor or] "control" social media companies - it was trying to get those companies (who had to agree to cooperate) to better keep junk information off those sites.
But the stupid reporter from the Intercept tried to make this one look like a nefarious effort, when in fact it was not.
This didn't age well.
It wasnt censorship. It was "handled."
care to explain?
Which government made a decision to try to "[censor or] "control" social media companies"???
The Trump government???
Sure. As the Twitter files pretty plainly shows, Biden's campaign WAS just censoring politically troublesome Hunter news via Twitter employee back doors. Most certainly political censorship, rather than protecting the nation from Russian election misinformation.
Asking twitter to remove naked photos of your son is political censorship?
Copyright and revenge porn laws are a thing you know.
Trump's campaign also had Twitter remove content as well. Funny how that works.
RedFromMI wrote: ↑Tue Nov 01, 2022 3:46 pm
Actually the government effort to connect with social media companies was open and aboveboard, and most of what the Intercept published was available by searching websites.
The government was not trying to [censor or] "control" social media companies - it was trying to get those companies (who had to agree to cooperate) to better keep junk information off those sites.
But the stupid reporter from the Intercept tried to make this one look like a nefarious effort, when in fact it was not.
This didn't age well.
It wasnt censorship. It was "handled."
care to explain?
Which government made a decision to try to "[censor or] "control" social media companies"???
The Trump government???
Sure. As the Twitter files pretty plainly shows, Biden's campaign WAS just censoring politically troublesome Hunter news via Twitter employee back doors. Most certainly political censorship, rather than protecting the nation from Russian election misinformation.
Asking twitter to remove naked photos of your son is political censorship?
Copyright and revenge porn laws are a thing you know.
Trump's campaign also had Twitter remove content as well. Funny how that works.
Linking and discussing reported newspaper stories is not revenge pron.
RedFromMI wrote: ↑Tue Nov 01, 2022 3:46 pm
Actually the government effort to connect with social media companies was open and aboveboard, and most of what the Intercept published was available by searching websites.
The government was not trying to [censor or] "control" social media companies - it was trying to get those companies (who had to agree to cooperate) to better keep junk information off those sites.
But the stupid reporter from the Intercept tried to make this one look like a nefarious effort, when in fact it was not.
This didn't age well.
It wasnt censorship. It was "handled."
care to explain?
Which government made a decision to try to "[censor or] "control" social media companies"???
The Trump government???
Sure. As the Twitter files pretty plainly shows, Trump did it AND Biden's campaign was censoring politically troublesome Hunter news via Twitter employee back doors. Most certainly political censorship, rather than protecting the nation from Russian election misinformation.
Did you read the article immediately above?
If anything is "pretty plainly" shown, it's that the federal government had nothing to do with this particular decision among Twitter executives. Their warning was months earlier and nothing to do with this info. (Unless, there's something I haven't seen, that's the only reasonable conclusion).
The Biden folks did reach out about the nude photos, which is in policy...anyone can and should reach out to request such not be published and none of that was as a government.
so, a total nothing.
I think this is just more right wing clap trap.
Why give it oxygen, Kram?
You want to say the Twitter execs overreacted to the possibility that these were hacked materials ala the wiki dump by the Russians? fine.
Maybe so, maybe not.
But definitely not the government controlling a social media site.
The Russians, Trump, or someone out to damage Joe Biden hacked Hunter's laptop and uploaded the contents. They then found a laptop they thought they could pass off as Hunter's and downloaded the contents onto it. The cherry on top (they thought) was to slap a Beau Biden sticker on it.
They then salted the new "Hunter" laptop with all sorts of stuff, salacious and otherwise. At this point the laptop had some genuine content from Hunter's hacked computer plus a lot of other phony stuff mixed in so it was hard to tell what was real and what was fake.
Then they took the laptop to either an accomplice or a stooge at the Delaware "computer repair shop." And as any legit computer repair guy would do, the accomplice turned the laptop over to Rudy. At this point, anyone seriously reading this story would sign off and go get a sandwich from the fridge.
If this was really Hunter's laptop, why has no one ever said his fingerprints or DNA were found on it? Why would Hunter, who lived in California on the date the laptop was allegedly dropped off at the "repair shop," go to a shop in Delaware as opposed to one near where he lived? A pretty big oopsie on the part of the conspirators.
And, lastly, and most significantly (and most laughably), why would a real computer repair guy turn the laptop over to Rudy Colludy?
Oh, and about the alleged "suppression" of the story, you could go to the news stand and buy a copy of the NY Post. Or you could read it on the Post's website by doing a ten second search on the computer in your pocket or at your desk. So, yeah, the story was "censored" all right.
njbill wrote: ↑Mon Dec 05, 2022 2:55 pm
Then they took the laptop to either an accomplice or a stooge at the Delaware "computer repair shop." And as any legit computer repair guy would do, the accomplice turned the laptop over to Rudy. At this point, anyone seriously reading this story would sign off and go get a sandwich from the fridge.
Kram knows better. He's just complaining to complain.
There's NO WAY Kram would have run that story if he were editor. Not a chance.
How many people know that NYposts own writers REFUSED to sign their byline on the original piece, because there was NO WAY to fact check Giuliani's claims in 14 days (the election), and the whole story (you left out the computer store owner is legally blind) stinks to high heaven.
a fan wrote: ↑Mon Dec 05, 2022 3:01 pm
you left out the computer store owner is legally blind
Oh, yeah. I did. Good catch. Haha.
People bemoan the fall of journalism on one hand...and then totally ignore that there's NO WAY a respectable outfit would have run that Post story in the first place.
kramerica.inc wrote: ↑Mon Dec 05, 2022 2:22 pm
Sure. As the Twitter files pretty plainly shows, Biden's campaign WAS just censoring politically troublesome Hunter news via Twitter employee back doors. Most certainly political censorship, rather than protecting the nation from Russian election misinformation.
Asking twitter to remove naked photos of your son is political censorship?
Copyright and revenge porn laws are a thing you know.
Trump's campaign also had Twitter remove content as well. Funny how that works.
Linking and discussing reported newspaper stories is not revenge pron.
Nor is is misinformation
Posting naked photos of someone without their permission is potentially revenge porn depending on the state and circumstances. Also copyright infringement.
The naked photos that the Biden campaign was asking Twitter to remove.
RedFromMI wrote: ↑Tue Nov 01, 2022 3:46 pm
Actually the government effort to connect with social media companies was open and aboveboard, and most of what the Intercept published was available by searching websites.
The government was not trying to [censor or] "control" social media companies - it was trying to get those companies (who had to agree to cooperate) to better keep junk information off those sites.
But the stupid reporter from the Intercept tried to make this one look like a nefarious effort, when in fact it was not.
This didn't age well.
It wasnt censorship. It was "handled."
care to explain?
Which government made a decision to try to "[censor or] "control" social media companies"???
The Trump government???
Sure. As the Twitter files pretty plainly shows, Trump did it AND Biden's campaign was censoring politically troublesome Hunter news via Twitter employee back doors. Most certainly political censorship, rather than protecting the nation from Russian election misinformation.
Did you read the article immediately above?
If anything is "pretty plainly" shown, it's that the federal government had nothing to do with this particular decision among Twitter executives. Their warning was months earlier and nothing to do with this info. (Unless, there's something I haven't seen, that's the only reasonable conclusion).
The Biden folks did reach out about the nude photos, which is in policy...anyone can and should reach out to request such not be published and none of that was as a government.
so, a total nothing.
I think this is just more right wing clap trap.
Why give it oxygen, Kram?
You want to say the Twitter execs overreacted to the possibility that these were hacked materials ala the wiki dump by the Russians? fine.
Maybe so, maybe not.
But definitely not the government controlling a social media site.
These people are just upset that a story that may have influenced a Presidential election wasn’t run. It was Weiner laptop 2.0. Whether the story was true or not was irrelevant. Any clown that says otherwise here is a liar.
RedFromMI wrote: ↑Tue Nov 01, 2022 3:46 pm
Actually the government effort to connect with social media companies was open and aboveboard, and most of what the Intercept published was available by searching websites.
The government was not trying to [censor or] "control" social media companies - it was trying to get those companies (who had to agree to cooperate) to better keep junk information off those sites.
But the stupid reporter from the Intercept tried to make this one look like a nefarious effort, when in fact it was not.
This didn't age well.
It wasnt censorship. It was "handled."
care to explain?
Which government made a decision to try to "[censor or] "control" social media companies"???
The Trump government???
Sure. As the Twitter files pretty plainly shows, Trump did it AND Biden's campaign was censoring politically troublesome Hunter news via Twitter employee back doors. Most certainly political censorship, rather than protecting the nation from Russian election misinformation.
Did you read the article immediately above?
If anything is "pretty plainly" shown, it's that the federal government had nothing to do with this particular decision among Twitter executives. Their warning was months earlier and nothing to do with this info. (Unless, there's something I haven't seen, that's the only reasonable conclusion).
The Biden folks did reach out about the nude photos, which is in policy...anyone can and should reach out to request such not be published and none of that was as a government.
so, a total nothing.
I think this is just more right wing clap trap.
Why give it oxygen, Kram?
You want to say the Twitter execs overreacted to the possibility that these were hacked materials ala the wiki dump by the Russians? fine.
Maybe so, maybe not.
But definitely not the government controlling a social media site.
You have no problem with knowing Trump govt admin officials asking for items to be suppressed? We don’t know what those things were. That’s the next shoe to drop.
And we know that Biden people didn’t reach out about naked photos and him doing drugs and sex.
They reached out about the Post story and went through extreme measures to have a newspaper story suppressed and deny sharing it publicly OR privately.
