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Comment by snoot | Hacker News Reader

Why not? Twitter is now Elon’s private property, existing only to serve his personal interests. There is no reason for it to be given special treatment.

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I think the counter-argument is that if advertisers choose not to buy ads from him, it must be because something something woke activists.

The scary thing is, I think he really believes that.

I'm still not sure. Billionaire titan buys what he has called "the public square". I think it's safe to assume that he's more interested in the effect that his speech can have, not whether he buys into the meaning of any given utterance.

You think he really doesn’t care about ‘woke activists’?

I do, but I thought the question was whether or not he believed that woke activists are the proper blame for an advertiser not buying his services.

I wouldn't be surprised if he knows that advertisers have other valid reasons for not wanting to place their brands on his site, but that he's playing to the far-right base anyway.

For example, he used the number "88" in a hostile back-and-forth with Alex Vindeman yesterday, a pretty clear dog whistle.

Agreed - He is what he appears to be. Although I think the kind of doublethink you suggest he’s engaged in has a way of becoming one’s actual beliefs.

Do you have a link to the “88” tweet?

I don't. I left Twitter yesterday. I did find a tweet with a purported screenshot, though.

https://twitter.com/JustSchmeltzer/status/159723568323130982...

This is further confirming that big tech is all in on controlling the conversation and controlling who can participate or not. Why isn't Apple blocking the phones of those toxic users? Why aren't phone carriers like ATT blocking phone calls they deem problematic? This is only happening with social media and online communication, which is increasingly the main way to communicate.

> which is increasingly the main way to communicate.

It’s not. Twitter is a publishing medium. Let’s be real about that.

It's not just a publishing medium. You can use it privately as well. Social media is blurring those lines. People broadcast their messages daily to their own audience, whether it's family, group of friends, or the world. Eventually voice calls will just be another feature, and I guess providers will make a deal with the various apps like discord, whatsapp, etc., at that point these companies are effectively deciding what information people can consume.

> You can use it privately as well.

Yeah yeah. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a publishing platform. If you don’t think Twitter is about public conversation then you take a look at it for yourself some time.

Even if it is publishing, companies align in intent and wield incredible amounts of power with how information flows. They decide what is a legitimate story, and what is a conspiracy theory, and I personally don't trust large corporations to make these decisions. They are far from moral actors. Twitter is attempting to strip this power away from itself, and Apple does not like that.

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