BREAKING: Elon Musk offers to buy Twitter for $43 billion

Free speech used to be an American issue. Telling that you consider it to be a conservative issue now...

Every politician supports themselves staying in office. That’s like day one of Poli Sci 100

The guy is worth $265B and a Billion profit wouldn’t be worth his time. His story is that Twitter is currently being mismanaged and that under him, there could be a huge increase in value for the company.

Everyone has been trying to buy Twitter. I don't think they are going to be willing to sell.

If Musk bought twitter and got rid of all the moderation policies (save and except for really illegal stuff like child pornography, etc.), then no one would want to be on twitter anymore. The main attraction of twitter is spending half your time complaining about who got banned who shouldn't have been banned and who didn't get banned who should have. Take that away and people will quickly realize that it is actually a pretty stupid social media site.

Also, if you look at the trajectory of 4Chan, 8chan, 8kun, etc., you will see that a moderation free twitter would quickly be overrun with white supremacists, incels, and Pepe fanatics (sound familiar?). Any revenue twitter made from advertisers would dry up immediately as every other post would be lude harassment or Pepe memes, driving away users.

And that is the paradox of social media and free speech. If the social media site has to make money, it is going to have to have controls over content to keep it from turning into another 8chan and losing advertisers and users. And if the site doesn't care about making money and has minimal moderation, it will become such a cesspool that no one will want to use it. And the irony is that the real issue with twitter isn't free speech. It is about having access to the attention that twitter provides users. There have always been and always will be social media site that have extremely limited moderation. But they invariable get taken over by the worst of the worst and never get anywhere near the size of the sites that have very active moderation. So, Musk can buy up twitter and unleash the Pepes and incels and within six months everyone will flee the site and move to one that has lots of moderation.

I kinda want Twitter completely unlocked just to see what would happen. The flow of information has fundamentally changed to the point where free speech laws should be revisited. Most agree that you can’t yell fire in a crowded theater or tell someone “I’m going to kill you”, but censoring wacky conspiracy theories only fuels the wacky conspiracy theories.

I see that the OP was ill-equipped to answer.

Oh my god. The point, Mr. Adult, isn't that free speech doesn't matter; it's that your entire concept of free speech is completely f*cked in the head. You're celebrating a short term "owning the libs" win, despite the fact that this development is just a continuation of an ongoing trend towards the ultra-wealthy exercising near total control of the national discourse. It's not a victory for free speech.

There's only 1 party that has to lie about what it believes during election cycles...

Musk is pro-free speech. The ultra wealthy already own Twitter and they are decidedly anti-free speech.

The far left controls Facebook, YouTube, Google, Tik Tok, and Twitter. Having 1 owner in all of social media who isn't openly leftist isn't a "continuation" of anything.

He's trying to cash out some of his overvalued Tesla shares for less over valued Twitter shares.

The reason he wants to buy Twitter is so that he can cash in a lot of his Tesla stock that is severely over valued without being accused of dumping shares.

Well we could use the government to enforce free speech on social media. But you guys all said it's a private company so they can do what they want.

Elon might be engaging in some pump and dumping....

This should honestly be seen as a win for free speech more than anything. I definitely see myself as a moderate who agrees with a good amount of liberal ideas as far as social problems go.

You have to be blind to not realize how radically liberal leaning a lot of social media has become. Everyone should have a voice even if you disagree with it, and Musk pushes for that which I absolutely stand behind. I hate Twitter in the first place but this has the potential to be a step in the right direction. Hopefully it works out.

You do recognize that twitter engages in massive censorship?

And that Musk has claimed he would allow free speech?

Not real hard to follow

Agree, gov shouldn’t force free speech, because ironically that is also a form of government censorship.

Large corporations taking nearly every entity is concerning. The way I see it though, is that it’s better musk than anyone else. Maybe I’m trapped in the illusion but he seems to want to push the human race in a better direction with the wealth he’s gained. It could be a lot worse.

It doesn't matter whether we call Musk a Republican, Democrat or Independent. The point is, he is standing up to Twitter, or in a broader sense, Big Tech, which is part of a decidedly anti-free speech (leftist) axis of power including them, the Democrat party, and many if not most large corporations. Many establishment Republicans are also on board with this agenda. They are driven to consolidate money and power, and have done a fairly good job of it judging by world events these past few years. To the extent there is any resistance to this agenda, you can be assured it is NOT coming from Democrats.

How are they far-left? All apart of TikTok are bought and sold on the stock exchange. Private ownership isn't associated with the far-left.

Meanwhile, Parler hasn't disclosed who owns them.

All three of them downvoted you too!