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

[Saul Goodman]

The two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive

They're definitely not.

 

[Rob Ray]

He comes across as being so heavily embedded in always-online political memeing and far-right echo chamber norms that he's lost touch with what everyday normal looks like. A lot of that type behave similarly.

I wouldn't be surprised if he's clinically depressed while also being the sort of personality that is completely unwilling to address the root causes and toxic effect of falling into addictive, self-sabotaging behaviours.

 

[two sheds]

Brazilian court orders suspension of Elon Musk’s X after it missed deadline

Social media platform to be blocked by ISPs because it did not appoint legal representative in allotted time

www.theguardian.com

The Brazilian supreme court has ordered that X be suspended in the country after the social media platform failed to meet a deadline to appoint a legal representative in the country.

Late on Friday afternoon, Justice Alexandre de Moraes – who has been engaged in a dispute with X’s owner, Elon Musk, since April – ordered the “immediate, complete and total suspension of X’s operations” in the country, “until all court orders … are complied with, fines are duly paid, and a new legal representative for the company is appointed in the country”.

He gave Brazil’s National Telecommunications Agency 24 hours to enforce the decision. Once notified, the agency must pass the order on to the more than 20,000 broadband internet providers in the country, each of which must block X.

The value of not being part (I don't think) of a trade agreement where a company can take a country to a court with tame judges to claim for losses to their operations.

 

[gosub]

I used to think that Branston was an overrated braggart, but Musk has his own space programme his overrated motor cars, his giant solar powered shed and now has visions of drilling tunnels at minimal cost and great speed under Los Angeles. Investors seem to love him and throw money at his projects. I think it will all end in tears.

Good call.

 

[BigMoaner]

He comes across as being so heavily embedded in always-online political memeing and far-right echo chamber norms that he's lost touch with what everyday normal looks like. A lot of that type behave similarly.

I wouldn't be surprised if he's clinically depressed while also being the sort of personality that is completely unwilling to address the root causes and toxic effect of falling into addictive, self-sabotaging behaviours.

It’s not just “oh he’s forever online” and then roll eyes, tut tut silly him. As if it’s all just a bit of fun.

It’s more literally he is forever online like it and his psyche are one, over and over, and he hasn’t, like huge swaths of people, have seen the danger in it. Whole decades pass, staring at a screen, fighting wars with pixels. He probably thinks in memes. He is a meme.

 

[BigMoaner]

…. he's lost touch with what everyday normal looks like.

Some would say that above is the essence of social media, little or small doses. Communication is not reality. I would argue the further in your are with social media the father away you are from everyday reality. Like newspapers, just a report of reality. But newspapers didn’t have that compulsive addictive quality. But then can you imagine you’re addicted to reading newspapers, all day every day. You’d forget who you are and what other people are too. It’s fascinating cos he just can’t resist.

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

It’s not just “oh he’s forever online” roll eyes.

It’s more literally he is forever online like it and his psyche are one, over and over, and he hasn’t, like huge swaths of people, have seen the danger in it. Whole decades pass, staring at a screen, fighting wars with pixels. He probably thinks in memes. He is a meme.

The inside of his head is just the lawnmower man film.

 

[BigMoaner]

Fortunately I'm sure an astute buisnessman like Musk will respond reasonably and prompty to avoid losing access to half of South America's population.

Oh wait, he threatend a Brazilian Supreme Court judge instead:

View attachment 440255

Thing is he’s not even evil in a kind of mundane way. He’s evil in a crap way.

 

[BigMoaner]

He's just a fucking dick.

I think this is the final analysis.

 

[BigMoaner]

If I were his therapist I would say walk away into the sunset and never be seen or heard from again in ten years. Run things privately.

But luckily for us he does it public and he’s doing a great job at deconstructing certain capitalist myths such as those at the top are masters of the #logic and #facts.

 

[Humberto]

As someone who doesn't follow it that closely, I mainly just follow this thread to keep up, he seems like a would be oligarch. And very needy of attention and public adulation. That's going to eat away at you when you constantly embarrass yourself publicly, but enough people glorify his exploits within his bubble that he still thinks he's a genius polymath and oh so cool with it.

 

[BigMoaner]

Whats needed is some real tangible nails in the coffin, such as X going bankrupt. This would be good. Social media moguls have had it all their way for a drcade or two

 

[BigMoaner]

As someone who doesn't follow it that closely, I mainly just follow this thread to keep up, he seems like a would be oligarch. And very needy of attention and public adulation. That's going to eat away at you when you constantly embarrass yourself publicly, but enough people glorify his exploits within his bubble that he still thinks he's a genius polymath and oh so cool with it.

Yep, it probably barely touches him. He just looks the other direction at the tidal wave of adulation. That’s why them going bankrupt, a real absolute failure, would be good.

 

[gosub]

If I were his therapist I would say walk away into the sunset and never be seen or heard from again in ten years. Run things privately.

But luckily for us he does it public and he’s doing a great job at deconstructing certain capitalist myths such as those at the top are masters of the #logic and #facts.

You can't do that level of capitalism privately...you have shareholders and creditors

 

[BigMoaner]

You can't do that level of capitalism privately...you have shareholders and creditors

I get you but you can do it without seeming like a 14 year old edgelord all day.

 

[gosub]

I get you but you can do it without seeming like a 14 year old edgelord all day.

It's more surprising that it can be done whilst seeming a 14 year old

 

[two sheds]

Unmerited criticism - designers can hardly be faulted for not predicting that they'd get wet ever

 

[MrCurry]

View attachment 440534

Unmerited criticism - designers can hardly be faulted for not predicting that they'd get wet ever :rolleyes;

I’m not sure I can take seriously an article from someone called Victor Tangermann. All I see is this…

 

[two sheds]

He may be disguised as the fire hydrant in that photo

 

[MrCurry]

He may be disguised as the fire hydrant in that photo

He may very well be! That happy slapper gets everywhere.

 

[two sheds]

and the case from the free speech absolutist against Media Matters for pointing out facts goes ahead

Judge who owns Tesla stock greenlights X lawsuit against critics

Elon Musk successfully punishes speech.

www.theverge.com

Unlike your standard libel lawsuit, X doesn’t say MMFA made a factually incorrect claim; it outright admits that X served ads against racist or otherwise offensive content. Instead, it argues that this situation is rare and the authors “deliberately misused the X platform to induce the algorithm to pair racist content with popular advertisers’ brands.” What constitutes misuse of a platform? Using accounts that had been active for more than a month, following the accounts of racists and major brands, and “endlessly scrolling and refreshing” to get new ads. In other words, X isn’t suing MMFA for lying — it’s suing them for seeking out bad things about a business and not reporting those things in a sufficiently positive light.

This is a painfully tortured argument aimed at establishing that private citizens pushing private businesses to avoid buying ads on a website is illegal censorship. Contra numerous promises that Musk is a “free speech absolutist,” it’s leaning on the legal system to shut down criticism instead of simply answering it with more facts. The ruling doesn’t technically agree with X’s claims; it says MMFA presents a “compelling alternative version” of events by pointing out it’s not lying. But O’Connor says it’s not his job to “choose among competing inferences,” so both versions can get argued at a later stage. MMFA declined to comment on the ruling.

 

[BigMoaner]

Just leave this here as a superb introduction lecture to Baudrillard which musk fits into perfectly. See musk through his filter just for fun.

“We’ve begun to disappear”.

 

[pseudonarcissus]

Brazilian court orders suspension of Elon Musk’s X after it missed deadline

Social media platform to be blocked by ISPs because it did not appoint legal representative in allotted time

www.theguardian.com

The value of not being part (I don't think) of a trade agreement where a company can take a country to a court with tame judges to claim for losses to their operations.

Twitter’s not working for me this morning , it looks like the plug has been pulled. It’s a bit of a relief as Twitter was getting increasingly toxic and I was having to devote increasing amounts of time to blocking unsavoury types.

 

[pseudonarcissus]

Twitter’s not working for me this morning , it looks like the plug has been pulled. It’s a bit of a relief as Twitter was getting increasingly toxic and I was having to devote increasing amounts of time to blocking unsavoury types.

If there’s a similar threat to U75, what would I do? Would I offer to be Editor’s legal representative in Brazil? Could I take responsibility for you lot in front of this guy?

 

[MrCurry]

If there’s a similar threat to U75, what would I do? Would I offer to be Editor’s legal representative in Brazil? Could I take responsibility for you lot in front of this guy?

View attachment 440579

He looks like a man easily persuaded that it should in fact be cheese then beans.

 

[pseudonarcissus]

He looks like a man easily persuaded that it should in fact be cheese then beans.

Here the question is whether it’s rice or beans first..with farofa on top

 

[two sheds]

Bluesky tops app charts and sees 'all-time-highs' after Brazil bans X | TechCrunch

A Brazilian court's decision to ban X (formerly Twitter) seems to be benefiting its rivals, especially Bluesky. The microblogging platform announced late

techcrunch.com

The microblogging platform announced late Friday that it was seeing “all-time-highs for activity” with 500,000 new users joining in the previous two days. It’s also number one on the free iPhone app chart in Brazil today, ranking just ahead of Meta’s Threads at number two.

 

[Rob Ray]

If it lasts any length of time they'll not come back. Twitter's sole strength these days is that people have already built audiences on it, but once that's replaced ...

 

[pseudonarcissus]

If it lasts any length of time they'll not come back. Twitter's sole strength these days is that people have already built audiences on it, but once that's replaced ...

Yes. Most discussion seemed to be if it was time to leave anyway.
Interesting times in social media..this, and the plea bargain being begin france to open Telegram to law enforcement..

 

[teuchter]

If it lasts any length of time they'll not come back. Twitter's sole strength these days is that people have already built audiences on it, but once that's replaced ...

I wonder what the length of time is, that it takes for this to happen. Audiences are slow to build, plus at the moment it's quite a gamble on where to build them on the multiple alternatives.

I remember the brief excitement a year or two ago that everyone was going to move to mastodon. But most people just didn't.

It was something similar when WhatsApp changed their t&cs and it briefly seemed like lots of people might move to signal or telegram. But again, they didn't. The inertia of these things is considerable and my guess is that most Twitter users don't really know much about Elon Musk or hid politics.