[RickFLM4]

^ Perfect illustration of how one man’s speech garbage can be another man’s speech treasure.

[gatorfast]

Originally Posted by Sedan_Clan

I'm not misconstruing anything. These days "hate speech" and censorship over a disagreement of opinion/philosophy/ideals/etc. are used interchangeably by many. Hate speech is about as useless a term as racism.

I thought we were talking about the Kanye comments here, not general opinion on what some agree or disagree with. I can only assume you and various others on here are not Jewish and likely don't have many Jewish friends and therefore discount the gravity of how messages like this impact the community.

This seems to have become another binary argument where people dig into one side no matter what and will defend it to no end. I see it as multifaceted. On one hand free speech is certainly the cornerstone of our society and even aholes like Kanye are certainly free to espouse their bigoted views. But as a business with ultimate responsibility of what is allowed on their platform, I am not surprised and am glad that Twitter would seek to remove public messages promoting Adolf Hitler and violence against Jews. Why can't you agree with this?

Another scenario I'll throw out just for fun - let's say someone put up a giant billboard in your town with a swastika and heil Hitler on it. Would you want it taken down or would you want it to remain up?

[gatorfast]

Originally Posted by dreamingat30fps

Ok let's forget the whole assaulting protestors in a town square and focus on the anonymity aspect. If you look at any of the big controversial censoring that was going on at twitter... these are not anonymous people in their grandmas basement... it was the potus, world famous celebrities, journalists etc.

Because I'm an adult. I was taught from a young age sticks and stone may break my bones but words will never hurt me. I want to know if Kanye is an anti semite, I want to know if the potus is "inciting violence", I want to know if the next potential potus has a crackhead son. I don't feel the need to close my eyes and stick my head in the sand when confronted with something I don't like or agree with. However even if I was that sensitive and could not handle conflicting views.... unlike an actual town square... you can block people. You can not follow them etc.

If we cannot agree that I can be against what Kayne said, but still be for his right to say it, then I doubt we can agree on much.

No one is arguing Kanye doesn't have a right to say what he said. I am simply saying I am happy that a business, Twitter, decided it did not want to allow that content on its site.

[CTinline-six]

FWIW I'm more of a middle of the road guy politically, but the issue with a lot of these social media sites is when they start censoring one group more than another, since it then starts to limit their audience to those who agree with them. News media does the same thing, I mean why do people either gravitate towards Fox or CNN, even though both of them are equally terrible and full of misinformation? It's because one of them happens to agree more with their ideas.

I'm not a big Elon fan, but you can't deny he knows how to make money. Look at all the attention Twitter has received because of this. The Kardashians are proof that even negative attention still makes money.

[DETRoadster]

Originally Posted by ryan stewart

So being pro-antifacist is garbage to you? Interesting take.

Fair play calling me out on that. When I said it I was picturing the factions within ANTIFA that use violence and property destruction as a vehicle for communicating their message. The message in and of itself (anti-fascism, anti-racism) is one that of course I don't disagree with. But as a decentralized group of loosely affiliated activists, of course you'll have your good ones and your bad ones. It was a sloppy example on my part. I should have selected a different example like "Going to Truth Social and espousing the virtues of HRC."

Anyway, we are veering very close to politics now. I hope my position is clearer.

[minn19]

Originally Posted by CTinline-six

FWIW I'm more of a middle of the road guy politically, but the issue with a lot of these social media sites is when they start censoring one group more than another, since it then starts to limit their audience to those who agree with them. News media does the same thing, I mean why do people either gravitate towards Fox or CNN, even though both of them are equally terrible and full of misinformation? It's because one of them happens to agree more with their ideas.

I'm not a big Elon fan, but you can't deny he knows how to make money. Look at all the attention Twitter has received because of this. The Kardashians are proof that even negative attention still makes money.

Still a big we will see (so far yes with Tesla) on the money making part. Here is an interesting article in the financials of Twitter and Musk’s other companies/business dealings.

https://news.yahoo.com/twitter-colla...110300652.html

[ryan stewart]

Originally Posted by DETRoadster

Fair play calling me out on that. When I said it I was picturing the factions within ANTIFA that use violence and property destruction as a vehicle for communicating their message. The message in and of itself (anti-fascism, anti-racism) is one that of course I don't disagree with. But as a decentralized group of loosely affiliated activists, of course you'll have your good ones and your bad ones. It was a sloppy example on my part. I should have selected a different example like "Going to Truth Social and espousing the virtues of HRC."

Anyway, we are veering very close to politics now. I hope my position is clearer.

Weve been in politics for a while now. The very issue, by nature, is political since it was effectively musks whole *claimed* point of taking over twitter (when it was likely dodging yet another hand slapping by the SEC for stock manipulation).

And it just became more and more of it since people started repeating musks BS here, like the one cop who claims to KNOW everything but quickly moved on from the much hyped laptop "story" that ended up being a request to remove revenge porn and showing that trump (the actual govt at the time) made the same type of requests, that were honored, as the biden (not the actual govt at the time) made.

All anyone who is sane and rational is finding out is twitter was a private company doing what it thought it needed to in order to protect its self-interests and keep its customers (which were always advertisers, only morons think they are the customers on social media).

And, of course, we get the entertainment of watching this guy flounder and his worshippers increasingly twist logic into a pretzel to somehow prove that every move is some sort of 5d genius chess we just arent smart enough to understand. Something that was clear to be BS the moment the deets of that horrible, horrible contract got released and musk clamored in increasingly pathetic ways to torpedo the deal.

[ryan stewart]

Originally Posted by CTinline-six

I'm not a big Elon fan, but you can't deny he knows how to make money. Look at all the attention Twitter has received because of this. The Kardashians are proof that even negative attention still makes money.

LOL, this is hilarious. Yeah, negative attention CAN make money, but when youre dependent on advertisers with trillion $ market caps it doesnt, so you end up having to fleece those who seek out the negative attention.

Twitter will still "make money," selling mypillow, reverse mortgage, patriot mobile, etc ads just like newsmax and whatever network bannon is running. But it will be a drop in the bucket compared to the money they could have made courting mainstream advertisers, its called opportunity cost.

And whatever they make isnt going to save him from the $900 million/year debt repayment plan he signed up for and secured with tesla stock. Twitter couldnt pay that even before it started shedding advertisers.

[TXSTYLE]

Originally Posted by DocOfTheDead

Trevor Noah also promised to be funny. When he calls himself out for breaking that promise I’ll take him seriously.

Oh he's plenty hilarious alright. It's that "Funny kinda of Truth" that some don't take very well.

[G35POPPEDMYCHERRY]

mods please dont ban me. This is legit education

[ryan stewart]

Originally Posted by minn19

Still a big we will see (so far yes with Tesla) on the money making part. Here is an interesting article in the financials of Twitter and Musk’s other companies/business dealings.

https://news.yahoo.com/twitter-colla...110300652.html

I doubt we would see a true collapse, more than likely the issue is he is going to have to liquidate stock to cover his debts if he bankrupts twitter (which only looks like a matter of time at this point). He could lose enough equity to maintain his voting provisions and be ousted.

Were already seeing the impact of the emperor having no clothes. The PE on tesla has always been absurd, based on their valuation they aren't even a car company, they are a hype company (pretty common among tech). But once the hype wanes they will continue to move towards a real honest evaluation as a car company, which will look like a collapse. If it happens prior to bankruptcy proceedings that debt could really crush him, as the valuation of the debt isn't tied to the value of the stock, so if the stock keeps dropping (its more than halved its YTD high) the amount of stock he is on the hook for just keeps increasing. Most realists put it more like $50/share on an intrinsic value of about $15/share. No matter who is running it teslas future is going to look horrible just because its valuation was always a lie. It was always absurd with these claims it was going to be $4t in 10 years under an assumption of unchecked growth, as if the big players were not moving into the game.

Boring company is a ghost now, operating one test tunnel that is slower than the vegas monorail, they paved over their one in california for a parking lot, and they cancelled all of their projects.

Spacex is basically a company for mining IP from JPL and turning it into contracts and grants, they are almost wholly dependent on the fed at this moment, having your CEO go nuts and look like a foreign asset does not bode well for that.

Being said I think all but Boring will survive musk in some way, but they will have to jettison him. Twitters platform has value and will live on, even if someone else's product. SpaceX honestly has the best long term prospects once they ditch him, they have smart functional leadership otherwise and very little competition. Tesla will survive, but man its going to look bad in the meantime, and I wouldn't be shocked if a consortium picks it up once its down to a realistic value for the established charger network (to open it up to other makers on license).

Then its just a matter of seeing if he goes full howard hughes, pissing in jars.

[CTinline-six]

Originally Posted by ryan stewart

LOL, this is hilarious. Yeah, negative attention CAN make money, but when youre dependent on advertisers with trillion $ market caps it doesnt, so you end up having to fleece those who seek out the negative attention.

Twitter will still "make money," selling mypillow, reverse mortgage, patriot mobile, etc ads just like newsmax and whatever network bannon is running. But it will be a drop in the bucket compared to the money they could have made courting mainstream advertisers, its called opportunity cost.

And whatever they make isnt going to save him from the $900 million/year debt repayment plan he signed up for and secured with tesla stock. Twitter couldnt pay that even before it started shedding advertisers.

You can laugh all you want, but ad revenue is all about clicks these days. Those advertisers left in the name of making a political statement, but you can bet if things pick up they will quietly be back in the game, it's just how it works. Some of the wealthiest Youtubers aren't necessarily liked. Many of the same advertisers that are on CNN are also on Fox.

For the record I've never had a Twitter account, and never plan to.

[ryan stewart]

Originally Posted by CTinline-six

You can laugh all you want, but ad revenue is all about clicks these days. Those advertisers left in the name of making a political statement, but you can bet if things pick up they will quietly be back in the game, it's just how it works. Some of the wealthiest Youtubers aren't necessarily liked. Many of the same advertisers that are on CNN are also on Fox.

For the record I've never had a Twitter account, and never plan to.

Ok, so youre claiming on conjecture while mine is based on the current reality.

Also, hate to tell you this but there is no such thing as woke, publicly traded corporation. What you might see as a "political statement" is a carefully calculated decision to maximize shareholder value. Again, that basic principle of opportunity cost. If they see their relationship with twitter being more costly in other areas of business than its benefit then they will flush it.

These are pretty simple concepts, its amazing to see people with so little knowledge being so sure of themselves. I keep getting told "you'll see" in the face of this guy fucking up constantly, tesla losing $700bil in cap, and him having to shed billions in stock just to cover margin. But I guess its no different than people insisting someone who inherited a family empire who underperformed the S&P over the same period and having 6 bankruptcies is a "good businessman."

[minn19]

Originally Posted by ryan stewart

Ok, so youre claiming on conjecture while mine is based on the current reality.

Also, hate to tell you this but there is no such thing as woke, publicly traded corporation. What you might see as a "political statement" is a carefully calculated decision to maximize shareholder value. Again, that basic principle of opportunity cost. If they see their relationship with twitter being more costly in other areas of business than its benefit then they will flush it.

These are pretty simple concepts, its amazing to see people with so little knowledge being so sure of themselves. I keep getting told "you'll see" in the face of this guy fucking up constantly, tesla losing $700bil in cap, and him having to shed billions in stock just to cover margin. But I guess its no different than people insisting someone who inherited a family empire who underperformed the S&P over the same period and having 6 bankruptcies is a "good businessman."

Agreed, very few companies are going to want to be advertising on a platform with swastikas and anti semantic propaganda all over the place, plus the rest that goes with like minded people. Thankfully the majority of US consumers don’t want to wade through or see that crap. If that changes than maybe it will be a winning strategy and mainstream companies will come back, obviously doubtful.

I’m not going to pretend to understand finance and economics on this level. But even a layman could see Tesla was propped up by direct and indirect government subsidies. That and as the article points out, they had almost zero competition for over a decade and yet it took them that long to finally turn a profit? They have competition now and it’s growing everyday. Meanwhile people still complain of reliability/build quality issues and their model lineup has grown stale. Not good obviously. He’d be smart not to raid Tesla for money black hole that Twitter will be, we obviously know he won’t/can’t do that.

Add on he’s burning bridges with nearly everyone that got him here (banks, governments, investors) is also obviously not good.

As we keep saying, let’s see how it turns out. I think you are right that he will get ousted sooner probably rather than later from some of his companies. But, I’ll also admit, I don’t understand how that works either or if he has sufficiently protected himself from that possibility.

[OkieSnuffBox]

Originally Posted by ryan stewart

All anyone who is sane and rational is finding out is twitter was a private company doing what it thought it needed to in order to protect its self-interests and keep its customers (which were always advertisers, only morons think they are the customers on social media).

Yep. It's a pretty simple.

"If you don't pay for the product, you are the product."

Side note, which is why all the TikTok user's crack me up. They have publicly admitted that their app has a keystroke logger baked into the JaveScript coding, but insist that "we don't actually use it."

[ryan stewart]

Originally Posted by minn19

As we keep saying, let’s see how it turns out. I think you are right that he will get ousted sooner probably rather than later from some of his companies. But, I’ll also admit, I don’t understand how that works either or if he has sufficiently protected himself from that possibility.

When he restructured tesla to make him the founder (he wasn't) he had full control like he did tesla and they created a supermajority provision in the charter. It requires a greater than 67% supermajority for corporate action, meaning 67% of voting shares would need to vote. I don't know his current stake but it was something like 22-24% prior to all of this stuff, its certainly lower now. Firing him or even removing the provision would require all but 11% (including him) to vote for something, about impossible to pull off.

Its not uncommon with founder led companies, its pretty much how all publicly traded but autocratically lead companies work. You put it in the charter before the IPO so you can gain capital without risking a hostile takeover.

But if he needs to keep liquidating shares to cover margin on debt and/or to support his other boondoggles (which he has done before) he could continue to dilute his ownership, making it more and more likely they could get enough votes to fire him.

Everything else he has is basically propped up on teslas valuation and his stake, its how most of these billionaires live and its how they never pay taxes. They never actually own anything, they just take out a lifetime of loans against their equity, then use the returns to pay the debt. That way they get a credit at the same time they would be having to pay the tax.

If tesla goes the loans dry up. He wont be poor but he also won't be living like a demigod. And its going to "go" or crash as people say because of what I was saying about its valuation, it had no busiess being a trillion $ company, nothing intrinsically supported it. It was just hype. Yes their profits were higher as a percentage than TM but it was on drop in the bucket of volume and everyone was just making the asinine assumption it was going to maintain as they endlessly increased volume and nobody else was going to enter the space. Shit happens ALL THE TIME with tech stocks, its like betting on a single number in roulette. Sure, if you get in on the ground floor on the next google/facebook/whatever then you 100x your investment. But we are past that, all tech stocks come back down to earth, everyone left is a bag holder.

[TR930]

How about we find out just how rich the Biden family got selling out America to the highest foreign bidder?

That laptop isn't just full of degenerate "dick pics"......

[TXSTYLE]

Originally Posted by TR930

How about we find out just how rich the Biden family got selling out America to the highest foreign bidder?

That laptop isn't just full of degenerate "dick pics"......

Alex Jones, is that you???

[M3WC]

Originally Posted by TR930

How about we find out just how rich the Biden family got selling out America to the highest foreign bidder?

That laptop isn't just full of degenerate "dick pics"......

Come on...that is Russian propaganda.

[DETRoadster]

Gang, can we drop the overt politics, please. Anyone who wants to discuss the last few posts above can feel free to DM eachother and discuss away to your heart's content.

[cotmfk]

Originally Posted by DETRoadster

Gang, can we drop the overt politics, please. Anyone who wants to discuss the last few posts above can feel free to DM eachother and discuss away to your heart's content.

By that rationale, this whole thread should be closed.

[minn19]

Originally Posted by cotmfk

By that rationale, this whole thread should be closed.

True, but this is the stuff that really gets the party started and closes threads.