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Is Elon Musk the greatest visionary or the greatest snake oil salesman of our age?

My favourite thing about this is that she clearly did this video normally to begin with, but was told to do it again and again until she did the gestures right.

You can actually see her contempt almost boil over at the systematic bit.

in post-grad psychology courses when they come to the section "cognitive dissonance" they should start the course with that video.
 
It looks like another frivolous Musk lawsuit, there's no violation of antitrust law when advertisers choose what platforms they want to advertise on, especially not when a platform they avoid is run by a raging bigot for the purpose of spreading his raging bigotry - Musk might just be trying to get advertisers back, though it's unlikely to work

“To the extent that Elon hadn’t already burned all bridges and ties with the entire advertising community, I don’t see how this will get any advertisers to come back to X,” said Ruben Schreurs, the chief strategy officer at Ebiquity, a marketing and media consulting firm. “It’s a last-ditch effort to force brands who don’t want to be in the cross hairs of this kind of legal action to return to the platform.”

 
has he got a case do people think?
Tbh he just sues everybody. He's suing OpenAI (again) atm and probably lots of others that don't even make the news.

It seems to be piggybacking off the Judiciary Committee investigation so I guess that is its one hope.
 

IANAL but it would seem a pretty straightforward case to make that they're not doing it to damage him, they're doing it because he's essentially offering a substandard product.

I think he's just throwing his weight around like the big rich bully that he is but ultimately you can't bully Unilever can you? They can afford just as much expensive legal advice as he can.
 
I’m no lawyer, but I find it hard to see his case. The anti-trust laws are about the rights of the consumer, and the fact that you can’t act collectively to deny that. But the advertisers are the consumer, here. They’re not selling, they’re buying. And Refusal to Deal laws depend on the country — in the US, they are again focused on refusal to supply rather than refusal to buy.

The FTC have a useful set of webpages.


In today's marketplace, competitors interact in many ways, through trade associations, professional groups, joint ventures, standard-setting organizations, and other industry groups. Such dealings often are not only competitively benign but procompetitive. But there are antitrust risks when competitors interact to such a degree that they are no longer acting independently, or when collaborating gives competitors the ability to wield market power together.

For the most blatant agreements not to compete, such as price fixing, bid rigging, and market division, the rules are clear. The courts decided many years ago that these practices are so inherently harmful to consumers that they are always illegal, so-called per se violations. For other dealings among competitors, the rules are not as clear-cut and often require fact-intensive inquiry into the purpose and effect of the collaboration, including any business justifications. Enforcers must ask: what is the purpose and effect of dealings among competitors? Do they restrict competition or promote efficiency?


Section 3.2:

Agreements of a type that always or almost always tends to raise price or reduce output are per se illegal.1
OK, so it’s not that. So he’ll be relying on this:

Agreements not challenged as per se illegal are analyzed under the rule of reason. Rule of reason analysis focuses on the state of competition with, as compared to without, the relevant agreement. Under the rule of reason, the central question is whether the relevant agreement likely harms competition by increasing the ability or incentive profitably to raise price above or reduce output, quality, service, or innovation below what likely would prevail in the absence of the relevant agreement. Given the great variety of competitor collaborations, rule of reason analysis entails a flexible inquiry and varies in focus and detail depending on the nature of the agreement and market circumstances. Rule of reason analysis focuses on only those factors, and undertakes only the degree of factual inquiry, necessary to assess accurately the overall competitive effect of the relevant agreement

But it’s established in that initial bit I quoted that you can set up trade associations, so the fact that GARM exists is not inherently problematic. I struggle to see that it is undertaking harms as defined here and elsewhere by the FTC.
 
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The fact that they can’t guarantee their ads aren’t going to end up next to offensive content is a big point on the advertisers side.

With MSM the ads they take are generally highly vetted, and in the UK TV ads have to go through clearcast for regulatory approval before they can you be aired. Depending on the brand and product all kinds of substantiation can be required.

Advertisers can also chose programmes they want to be next to, or avoid.

Twatter is hopefully fucked
 
I guess she’s coming to terms with the grim reality that she was hired to regain the trust of the big advertising brands to Twitter and instead she’s starring into the lens slagging them off in a way that could only appeal to such luminaries as @tommy4evah, @MAGA_INCEL666, and @hornyracistteenfuckyou.

That's giving Yaccarino far more credit than she deserves. Only a total fucking stooge would have accepted the position she's in. I think she's fully aware of what she went in for and what she's doing.

Ironically enough, posted on X. It's about time all reasonable people got off there and encouraged others to do the same. (I've never been on Twitter/X.)

I fucked off using Twitter before Musk took over, something about the way that place is structured absolutely encourages bad faith engagement, plus I was getting that same sense that it was hooking into my dopamine receptors like Facebook, which I also fucked off previously.
 
IANAL but it would seem a pretty straightforward case to make that they're not doing it to damage him, they're doing it because he's essentially offering a substandard product.

I think he's just throwing his weight around like the big rich bully that he is but ultimately you can't bully Unilever can you? They can afford just as much expensive legal advice as he can.
I imagine Unilever will have the advantage in that they’re a huge company run by a large group of people who will likely think things through, rather than by a petulant man child who isn’t getting his own way.
 
I fucked off using Twitter before Musk took over, something about the way that place is structured absolutely encourages bad faith engagement, plus I was getting that same sense that it was hooking into my dopamine receptors like Facebook, which I also fucked off previously.

yes, every empty bit of space and time - scroll, scroll. made me feel intensley uncomfortable, which is why i fucked it off, not so much abotu teh content though. this was years ago. i can get in that habit with reddit too, so only go on that on a desk top and very occasionally.
 
has anyone got that meme where he is looking up from a desk whilst leaning across two people. it's so hillarious even without any texts. never managed to find it
 
To think the right and other conspiracy types see Bill Gates as the anti-Christ while seemingly worshipping this dude.
or that the journalists on say the guardian or the atlantic or washington post are the opitome of deep state evil, being told this by a massive eco system of monitised, charlatan, lunatic grifters.
 
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