At this point it seems like he’s dismantling Twitter on purpose. I can understand why the Saudis who lent him money would want it gone after the Arab spring.
Something that has become abundantly clear over the past few years is that all the supposed instances of "[my beloved idol] is actually playing 9-dimensional chess; their master plan will become clear soon" are wrong, and that in every case the idol in question is actually just an idiot. That's almost certainly what's happening again here.
I could understand this if it was acquired and then heavily censored or monitored. Or if something more obviously destructive was done. But if this is all part of a plan to ruin twitter, it relies on having an egotistical person very publicly take an enormous "L" and everyone involved keeping quiet about it. I'm still going with Elon biting off a bit more than he could chew.
Twitter has been complying with more government censorship demands since the takeover including pre election censorship demanded by government of Turkey and banning a BBC documentary about Indian PM Modi. Before Musk Twitter often fought such requests in courts. But he did ban some journalists after they reported on him banning the Musk flight tracker account
>I could understand this if it was acquired and then heavily censored
This has happened. Impression count has been decimated for anyone without a check. Bonus points if you've ever blocked Elon or posted with a sentiment he disagrees with.
Wait the suggestion is that billionaires/powerful people bought Twitter for nefarious purposes. Is it not worth more intact but surveilled and censored than utterly sabotaged with Elon graciously taking one for the team?
I’m not convinced, this is a bit complex, conspiratorial and nonsensical for me. When the simpler explanation is that Elon has just mismanaged the company.
So they were so harmed by the newly censored and under-friendly-control-for-$44b Twitter that they decided to spike it altogether and presume no similar social network would ever pop up again?
It really isn't. State - really, conservative party - antipathy to Twitter is well-known. This antipathy was instigated by Twitter's role in incubating several large, progressive movements over the past decade: the Arab Spring, Black Lives Matter, the anti-TPP and anti-SOPA protests, the Umbrella Movement and its descendants, etc. We know this antipathy exists because many of the states vulnerable to similar movements and that have the power to ban Twitter have done so.
Twitter also allows for the real-time dissemination of information unfavorable to corporations, like during outages and accidents, and the widespread dissemination of less time-sensitive information by journalists who aren't beholden to corporate media gatekeepers.
Elon Musk's various ventures rely heavily on buy-in from the government - SpaceX relies on NASA's resources, Tesla has only been profitable because of generous renewable energy grants, and even Paypal benefited from lax oversight from financial regulators. That there is likely a relationship is less "Pizzagate" and more "Trump and Russian interference." And if you're going to pretend that that's not a damning analogy, all that does is expose how unserious you are about the matter.
All of that aside, there is also the matter of Musk 1) having had a checkered history with Twitter as it was, including its users, and 2) not having actually wanted to buy Twitter after his initial due diligence. Considering that his actions after completing the deal included firing most of the workforce, stripping users of multiple privileges, and stripping the company itself of its branding, it's not at all farfetched to conclude that he has no intention of simply renovating Twitter, but instead means to strip it down to studs or foundation and build a gaudy temple to his own warped sense of entrepreneurship. This is, after all, the man who insisted that the model names of his cars spell out "S3XY".
Please give some concrete examples (which aren't a decade old) of twitter being the bane of billionaires and corrupt nation states, that would help a lot. For now my only reaction to your comment is 'huh?'
Elon himself didn't like that an account was tweeting the location of his private jet, generating bad publicity, going so far as paying for the owner of the account to stop.
Trivial, yes, but does show how it can be an annoyance even through simple things.
They didn't lend him money, they kept the stake they had before he bought twitter, both the Qatari and the saudi. Also I'm not sure why they would want it gone after the arab spring, given how the Persians only benefited from it and Qatar was pretty much a state instigator of it in other countries.
In any case, they would rather have a tool they can control (just get Twitter to shadowban tweets about democracy) that their population uses seems better than a void.
No the arab spring that is coming soon. Remember why it was there: because many countries could not pay for food anymore because of the high grain prices. And what is happening now in ukraine? Exactly: they cannot ship cheap grain anymore to the arab countries that need it the most.
