Octopus Overlords

Carpet_pissr wrote: ↑Thu Sep 07, 2023 9:18 am I can buy that instead of my "just wants to burn it to the ground" theory.

malchior wrote: ↑Thu Sep 07, 2023 9:19 am

Carpet_pissr wrote: ↑Thu Sep 07, 2023 9:18 am I can buy that instead of my "just wants to burn it to the ground" theory.

That theory makes some sense too. If it burned down, it'd be removing a valuable source of dissent. Twitter was a mess but it boosted a lot of dissent communications which authoritarians hated.

Unagi wrote: ↑Thu Sep 07, 2023 9:33 am Don't lose track of the fact that 'Woke' is complete bullshit-code for "Doesn't Hate Enough"

Carpet_pissr wrote: ↑Thu Sep 07, 2023 9:28 am

malchior wrote: ↑Thu Sep 07, 2023 9:19 am

Carpet_pissr wrote: ↑Thu Sep 07, 2023 9:18 am I can buy that instead of my "just wants to burn it to the ground" theory.

That theory makes some sense too. If it burned down, it'd be removing a valuable source of dissent. Twitter was a mess but it boosted a lot of dissent communications which authoritarians hated.

Elon might have sympathetic tendencies to some authoritarians, but he's not one (yet), so I don't see what it gets him. At least not a political authoritarian, unless you consider X to be a political...ugh, maybe we don't go down that path.

Carpet_pissr wrote: ↑Thu Sep 07, 2023 10:00 am I am personaly probably in the middle between Elon (hatesssss it, precioussss!!) and most (many?) people here. The core principles of the movement are ideals that I absolutely support, speak up for, more importantly VOTE for etc. But like the Me Too movement, has swung too far in the other direction, and is causing a lot of harm as a result. I see it in my middle kid (16 YO) in particular, and how super quick she is to judge someone and condemn them and she has no idea what she is talking about (one, very small anecdote). I hate to see liberal movements whose ideas that I fully support, turn into witch hunts which makes it FAR too easy for the right to point at and vilify as being out of control, wrong, etc. I guess that is just the nature of the beast though, and I assume it happens on the right with their championed movements as well.

Carpet_pissr wrote: ↑Thu Sep 07, 2023 10:00 am

Unagi wrote: ↑Thu Sep 07, 2023 9:33 am Don't lose track of the fact that 'Woke' is complete bullshit-code for "Doesn't Hate Enough"

Eh.
Whatever one's personal opinion of woke is, or its definition, is kind of irrelevant here. What matters is Elon's perception of it.

Unagi wrote: ↑Thu Sep 07, 2023 10:19 am

Carpet_pissr wrote: ↑Thu Sep 07, 2023 10:00 am

Unagi wrote: ↑Thu Sep 07, 2023 9:33 am Don't lose track of the fact that 'Woke' is complete bullshit-code for "Doesn't Hate Enough"

Eh.
Whatever one's personal opinion of woke is, or its definition, is kind of irrelevant here. What matters is Elon's perception of it.

I totally disagree. Completely.

That’s just it. It’s a shell game. There is no definition/opinion - the word itself is just code.

Elon Musk secretly ordered SpaceX engineers to switch off the Starlink satellite communications network near the coast of occupied Crimea in order to thwart a Ukrainian surprise attack on Russia’s naval fleet, according to a report. The incident last year is reported in Walter Isaacson’s upcoming biography of the billionaire titled Elon Musk. With the comms down, the Ukrainian submarine drones packed with explosives “lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly,” Isaacson writes, according to CNN. Musk was reportedly motivated to foil the attack out of concern that a strike on Crimea would constitute a “mini-Pearl Harbor” and lead to Russia retaliating with nuclear weapons.

“How am I in this war?” Musk asked Isaacson. “Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars. It was so people can watch Netflix and chill and get online for school and do good peaceful things, not drone strikes.”

malchior wrote: ↑Thu Sep 07, 2023 9:16 am
Just putting this here - Elon Musk just commenting on a post by a "reformed" red pill white supremacist. He didn't see a sick ideology that needed correct. He choose to boost an evil and sick ideology. These people are monsters and we need to utterly reject them before they become something worse. As an aside, the piece in the WSJ referenced here is unsurprisingly execrable.

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Wed Sep 06, 2023 4:03 pm Yeah, it's not for financial gain, it's for ideological gain.

Unagi wrote: ↑Thu Sep 07, 2023 10:19 am

Carpet_pissr wrote: ↑Thu Sep 07, 2023 10:00 am

Unagi wrote: ↑Thu Sep 07, 2023 9:33 am Don't lose track of the fact that 'Woke' is complete bullshit-code for "Doesn't Hate Enough"

Eh.
Whatever one's personal opinion of woke is, or its definition, is kind of irrelevant here. What matters is Elon's perception of it.

I totally disagree. Completely.

That’s just it. It’s a shell game. There is no definition/opinion - the word itself is just code.

“Elon is just hell bent against Woke “ is a joke.

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Fri Sep 08, 2023 7:19 am And third, he's made his fortune off of US government subsidies and tax breaks.

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Fri Sep 08, 2023 7:19 am Second, I don't see providing material of war hurting Boeing or Raytheon or Thales or Toyota. Or hell, even SpaceX when they put US military satellites in orbit. What a load of shit, the complicity excuse. For providing communications.

Carpet_pissr wrote: ↑Fri Sep 08, 2023 8:25 amI’m sure Boeing can’t sell weaponry (directly) to probably a long list of countries. I wonder if there’s a loophole with Starlink since it’s such a non-traditional product. But is he even selling access to Ukraine at this point? Not sure how that is currently working.

Hell, when I sold international trade and shipping data, we had firm reminders every quarter about which foreign governments we absolutely could not sell to.

Carpet_pissr wrote: ↑Fri Sep 08, 2023 8:25 am Just based off the Xhit he posted above, his argument seems to be wanting to avoid complicity, not (at all!) worried that it would hurt Xhitter.

Elon Musk’s social media platform formerly known as Twitter has sued the state of California over a law requiring social media companies to publish their policies for removing offending material such as hate speech, misinformation and harassment.

The first-of-its-kind legislation was signed into law a year ago by California Gov. Gavin Newsom. In a lawsuit filed Friday against state Attorney General Robert Bonta, X Corp. challenges the “constitutionality and legal validity” of the law, saying it violates the First Amendment.

The California law requires social media platforms to post their content moderation policies — which they already do — and twice a year submit a report to the state on how they address hate speech, racism, misinformation, foreign political interference and other issues.

The law, “compels companies to engage in speech against their will, impermissibly interferes with the constitutionally-protected editorial judgments of companies such as X Corp.” and has pressures companies to remove or demonetize “constitutionally-protected speech,” says the lawsuit, filed in federal court in California.

Hey, Techdirt haters: hold onto your hats, because I’m going to praise Elon Musk for doing the right thing, even though many of you insist that my complaints about him are motivated by personal dislike. But, as I’ve noted repeatedly, I’m happy to highlight when he does the right thing, such as here where he is (perhaps surprisingly) challenging a terrible internet law that the bigger internet companies refuse to challenge (because it helps them), and bringing in a big time 1st Amendment lawyer to do so. And, importantly, the challenge seems really well done.
Over the last few years we’ve been writing about a long list of awful internet laws in California. Last year, the one that got the most attention was AB 2273, or the Age Appropriate Design Code, which we’re still hoping a federal court will toss out as unconstitutional in the near future. However, there was another bill we wrote about that got a bit less attention: AB 587 which was pitched as a “transparency” bill.
As we’ve said many times in the past, more transparency is a very good and important goal, and one that people should demand of the companies whose products and services they use. But mandated transparency creates all sorts of problems. AB 587 creates oh so many problems. So, of course, Governor Gavin Newsom signed it into law.
For what it’s worth, I’ve heard from multiple sources that the big internet companies love AB 587. It creates another moat for them that harms smaller companies. It allows them to tell lawmakers that they’re happy to embrace some laws that those big companies can handle, even if they’re problematic.
But it’s a bad law. It limits the ability of companies to respond and adjust tactics against bad actors in real time. It assumes (incorrectly) that content moderation is a static thing. It also requires that companies have policies in place to deal with 1st Amendment protected content, even though the government can’t legislate that.

Michael Benz, a former Trump State Department official whose work has been cited in congressional hearings and promoted by Elon Musk, has become a go-to voice for Republican criticism of government and social media censorship in the past year.

But before his stints in government and as a pundit, Benz appears to have been a pseudonymous alt-right content creator who courted and interacted with white nationalists and posted videos espousing racist conspiracy theories, according to recordings, livestreams and blog posts reviewed by NBC News.

The pseudonym, Frame Game, posted videos and participated in podcasts and livestreams during the rise of the alt-right following Donald Trump’s election. Frame Game avoided showing his face in his videos or appearances, during which he pushed a variety of far-right narratives including the “Great Replacement Theory” that posits the white race is being eradicated in America for politics and profits. In others, Frame Game said he was a white identitarian, railed against the idea of diversity and made montages urging white viewers to unite under the banner of race.

...

Frame Game stopped posting in 2018. A review of his content revealed various details that match Benz’s appearance and life story. Benz, in his public posts and appearances, has not espoused the same racist views as Frame Game.

Frame Game went to some lengths to conceal his identity but inadvertent slips during several livestreams — in which he would often visit webpages and toggle between browser tabs — betrayed his anonymity. In one video, Frame Game brought up a website that automatically pulled a Facebook profile picture into its comments section. The picture appeared to be Benz with his then wife.

,,,

Benz and his organization were also cited in reports and witness testimony from the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, led by Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, as well as the Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs. Benz also amplified the “Twitter Files,” documents released by Musk that revealed internal debates about content moderation and communications with outside organizations, governments, journalists and researchers. For months, in videos and threads posted to Twitter, Benz has framed those internal debates as grand conspiracies and maligned the academic researchers and institutions involved as government spies and plants.

X CEO Linda Yaccarino has responded to European Union Commissioner Thierry Breton’s letter to her boss Elon Musk calling on him to act swiftly to remove posts from the platform spreading disinformation around the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Breton, who as E.U. Commissioner for the Internal Market has oversight on digital affairs in the 27-country political and economic bloc, had given Musk 24 hours to clean up the site in a letter posted on X on Tuesday at 7pm CET.

Failure to comply, he warned, would lead to sanctions under the rules of the E.U.’s Digital Services Act.

So, the sight of Elon Musk charging towards Wikipedia with his trademark guile and delicacy was so predictable that it was almost relaxing. He saw a collective resource that people prized and he wanted to hurt it. Why does Wales even need any money to run Wikipedia in the first place, he wondered on Sunday. You could fit the entire thing on your phone, he claimed. Eleven minutes later, he offered $1bn if it would change its name to Dickipedia.

After Musk’s adventures on X, formerly Twitter, his views on what things cost and the relevance of what you can fit on your phone mostly evoke the thought: “Wow, to think I once took as read that tech bro billionaires knew what they were talking about!” The rest just make you wince. We called Twitter a sink even before Musk bought it, but that misses one fact: there were people making dick jokes that were funny about a thousand times an hour. Of the many points Musk missed when he bought Twitter, one concerned the standard of content he was seeking to govern. It’s like watching a drunk frat boy bowl up and flash Dorothy Parker.

Wincing and scorn aside, Musk is after Wikipedia for a reason. The sight of something created socially that works is an insult to him. I would spend two quid a month, or more, just for that.