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What is the real argument in favor of Musk buying Twitter? – TechCrunch


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Elon Musk’s move to try and buy twitter proved polarizing. Not that we should be surprised; Big deals always clarify moments. But the Musk-Twitter story has also provided enough circumstantial that the discussion of the proposed transaction can be a bit difficult to analyze.

Perhaps there is no funnier commentary than Marc Andreessen’s recent series of tweets on the subject, featuring text and visual memes. It seems Andreessen has decided that Twitter is too strict and that if Musk buys out the company, it will become the land of freer speech.

That is a concept.

We don’t have time to wade through all of Andreessen’s elliptical political twists. Maybe another time. A sample of the more clearly written tasks:

There seems to be a sort of assemblage of adventurers gathering in Florida with some sort of philosophical bent worth examining. What I’m beginning to see as Thiel-Musk-Andreessen’s view is a bit simple: Anything that gets in the way of a select group of billionaires’ ability to do whatever they want is tyranny.

This means that Twitter – which has a long history of making mistakes but is moving towards a platform that is also quite open and non-toxic to the point of becoming unusable – has come into their sights. How free Twitter is in your opinion will depend in part on your establishment; mostly I think the service has done a pretty good job of balancing things out over time.

So what is the criticism? I think I’ll take a look. Some notes from the field:

  • Substack, powered by Andreessen’s venture capital firmpartially strict set of content guidelines – things that you are not authorized to say or publish on its service. Most of it is pretty standard. Not inciting hatred against protected classes? Reasonable. A ban on porn? Honestly, that’s much more serious than Twitter. You can post all the visualizations you want on Twitter.com, to pick an example.
  • ram, powered by Thielonly one many content notes as well as. Indeed, the right-wing advocates, Soon-to-go-public-via-SPAC The service states that its users “must not post or transmit any messages that are abusive, inciting violence, harassing, harmful, hateful, anti-signal, racist, or threatening in nature.” .” I mean, that’s pretty broad and doesn’t go against the notion that free speech is something you can’t enjoy on Twitter!
  • Facebook is the final piece of data for this conversation. Marc Andreessen is on Facebook’s board. And while Facebook’s terms are countlessIts views on the keynote are somewhat limited – put a pacifier on Instagram and see what happens – but Andreessen has remained content with monetizing Facebook’s checks since the olden days.

How could the Miami venture team get so upset with Twitter when they are advocating or helping run services with similar or stricter terms of service? Aside from the fact that they probably don’t care about being hypocritical, I think they’re just worried about something else instead. they want to say become censored.

Musk doesn’t stop tweeting and there seems to be no censorship. (Is this all about bringing Trump back to Twitter? Recall that the former president was also banned from Facebook, where Andreessen now works part-time.)

Part of me wants Musk to buy out Twitter so he can try to work through the complex social dynamics of content moderation. It is not easy or simple. And it’s not something you can do right all the time – all you can hope for is a balance between open conversation and the bare minimum of regulations needed to keep communities out of reach. most forms of abuse. This means you can’t threaten to kill people on Twitter, but you can IMMEDIATELY all you want.

I don’t think what the rich tech collection wants is really free speech. I think, instead, they want to be able to express their views without being opposed by the public. I’m reading between the lines, but after following the people in question through countless news cycles and reading their quests, I keep wondering if freedom of speech For them it simply means not being forced to absorb feedback on their provincial ideas.

None of those mentioned need extra money. And they do not lack faith in their beliefs. So why not just say all the things? That would be using their own freedom of speech – the government can’t say something damn about their point of view, so let’s pop, right? Let’s see what happens. I doubt their views will get them kicked out of Twitter. They might cause some disgust from those who disagree, but, well, so what?

Remember when Andreessen defended colonialism and then have to eat crows openly? I doubt he’ll be back now. So, if people are too worried about being censored, let’s put some speech cards on the table. Let it tear!





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