You fucked up real good, kiddo.Actually, many absolute monarchs, even ones who've had a ruinous impact on their societies, die peacefully in their sleep. But go on.
... you are now the King of Twitter, and people think that you, personally, are responsible for everything that happens on Twitter now. It also turns out that absolute monarchs usually get murdered when shit goes sideways.
... you can write as many polite letters to advertisers as you want, but you cannot reasonably expect to collect any meaningful advertising revenue if you do not promise those advertisers “brand safety.” That means you have to ban racism, sexism, transphobia, and all kinds of other speech that is totally legal in the United States but reveals people to be total assholes. So you can make all the promises about “free speech” you want, but the dull reality is that you still have to ban a bunch of legal speech if you want to make money. And when you start doing that, your creepy new right-wing fanboys are going to viciously turn on you, just like they turn on every other social network that realizes the same essential truth.Do they? Do right-wingers turn on any right-wing site or media property that does even the slightest bit of censorship? If so, that would be news to Fox.
Nothing happened to Fox News a year ago when the channel decided that Lara Logan was unwelcome because she'd compared Dr. Anthony Fauci to Josef Mengele. Nothing happened because Fox "bravely" showcases other people the libs hate -- most of its hosts, obviously, but also people like Kyle Rittenhouse, who's been acquitted of homicide charges but is regarded by most liberals as a murderer. The crazies in the audience stay, as do most of the advertisers.
Now see how Elon Musk spent his first day as the owner of Twitter. The Daily Beast reports:
Elon Musk ascended the throne at Twitter on Thursday, and after swiftly axing the company’s top leadership, he tweeted, “the bird is freed.” His very next message: pledging to assist an account named @catturd2, which claimed to have been “shadowbanned, ghostbanned, [and] searchbanned” under the former regime.... Catturd2 ... previously made news when Donald Trump retweeted the account multiple after it broadcast election lies and tweets supporting the former president.Note that while Catturd was allegedly shadowbanned by the previous Twitter management, he was never actually banned banned. Catturd has more than 875,000 followers on Twitter. He's obnoxious, but he's been playing by the rules. If Musk proudly proclaims that he's removing a real or imaginary form of self-deplatforming from Catturd's account, the fanboys will be so pleased they won't notice when he bans randos with names like JewKillerOvenMaster666.
But if Musk can't find the right balance and advertisers flee Twitter, are we sure he'll care? Very rich people routinely conclude at some point in their lives that they've made enough money and they want to give back; what if Twitter is Musk's idea of that? What if he regards it as his version of the Gates Foundation or the Open Society Foundation? If Musk loses money, will he really lose far more than Bill Gates and George Soros give away?
Musk may see this as his way of making the world a better place, at a cost he's rich enough to afford. He wants to make the world a better place for the likes of Putin, Trump, Kanye, and Catturd. I assume he regards that as a moral, positive act, his version of Bill Gates working on sanitation projects in the developing world.
So maybe he's ready to lose money. It's for a good cause, right?
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