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... and when you say "the people that were hurt"... If you leave your wallet on the street, it might be stolen and you might be hurt. I'm not blaming the victim; someone stealing your wallet is wrong even though you left it on the street. It's not your fault, I'm not blaming you, I blame the thief for the theft. On the other hand there's something that you could've done that would've avoided it - don't leave your wallet on the street.
No one is trying to "steal" twitter in this thread, we are saying he used his "property rights" to unnecessarily hurt others.
You're the one who is saying this is just peachy keen and "that's on you".
You're defending the harm.
That said Elon is not doing this to anyone. He is not attacking anyone. He simply made a business decision. This happens all the time. Companies let suppliers go for financial reasons, they let staff go for similar reasons. People invest their lives into helping these businesses only to find they were let go for a few dollars. It sucks and it's can be super painful. Businesses mostly exist to make money and people should avoid investing their identity and loyalty into businesses as they probably won't reciprocate.
I mean, you are presenting something as inevitable, I just don’t understand why.
It's just that we need to see business as business. You make relationships with people and put your trust and faith in people not in businesses. They're entities that can be bought and sold and exist purely to make a profit. They have their place and offer huge value to society but they are not people.
E.g., being rude isn't forbidden, the freedom of speech is important, so is the right to express your personality. But lecturing the affected person about these rights may not be the best reaction when they have been insulted by someone.
I think the main point to discuss is not the rights, but whether the owner of a company should act more responsible, even if he is within his rights. And that's also the point of the OP.
Taking a poorly run site that had such a great influence in society and somehow running it even worse so that it loses its influence and revenue capability is breathtaking. It’s a lesson on how the modern hands off approach to corporate governance puts society at risk and is a lesson for limiting the rights of property owners.
Just because Musk has the power to do things like this doesn't absolve him from the absolute shittiness of his behaviour. He doesn't get a free ride because he's the owner, quite the opposite. People who wield power should act responsibly with it. Musk hasn't heard of the concept because he's so self absorbed and insecure he has no room for any sort of basic human empathy.
Obnoxious people
And I'm not defending Elon Musk here. I don't care about him one way or another. This isn't an issue that rational, educated people should get agitated about.
The idea that what happens on the internet is unimportant compared to what happens "in real life" hadn't made sense for over a decade now.
The internet is real life.
It matters.
We are literally talking about a posting from the CEO of a company that has been essentially shutdown by this change. Other companies have also been placed in this predicament. People will probably lose jobs, at least, and these companies may go bankrupt.
In return for this value, the users got a social ”backyard”.
We like to say that there is no such thing as a free lunch, but it’s also true that the free lunch is an exchange.
ISTM Elon is breaking this agreement.
Just because it’s a company doesn’t mean they get to behave like assholes and then put the blame on their users for being gullible or ignorant.
Bank deposits are yours! If the bank collapses and can't give them to you, there's FDIC insurance so the government will get you that money.
This is nothing at all like Twitter and only weakens your argument.
Your property after the deposit is the IOU, not the money (you gave the money away in exchange for the IOU!).
There is contract + law that governs how the IOU can be redeemed for money (up to a limit the federal government guarantees some kinds of IOUs via FDIC/etc).
Once the bank has your money (for which they gave you the IOU), they in fact can use the money at their own discretion (it is their money!) subject to some legal limitations. Those limitations are not about how banks use other people’s money (because normal banks aren’t custodial), they are limitations based on risk and collaterization of IOUs (the bank’s liabilities).
These limitations are not expression of your property rights, they are in fact limitations on bank’s property rights (their freedom to deploy capital) since historically banks were not very responsible and blew up (in which case they failed to cover their liabilities, so IOUs were redeemed for less than their face value).
Edit: as an aside, this
money => money + IOU + IOU short
Is exactly how most of “money” in circulation is produced. People take the IOU and spend it like money, banks take the money and lend it collaterized by houses/factories/etc. So you get people spending more than total cash in circulation (because they spend IOUs), while banks accumulate large IOU short position (again, collaterized through stuff like houses, factories, etc).
Nothing bad about this, this is in fact working as intended.