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Notes -
https://www.independent.co.uk/space/elon-musk-russell-brand-caroline-dinenage-mps-twitter-b2415346.html
https://twitter.com/CountDankulaTV/status/1704607541852844072/photo/1
I think that it is important. But I am at loss of words so I am not even sure where to begin to make it effortpost. It is outrageous, indefensible and at first I though it was satire.
Do think this is rogue action? (my guess no), Will there be punishment for the MP for overstepping greatly any boundaries? (also no).
It's amazing that seemingly overnight, a norm was kayfabed into existence that people accused of sex pestery should be deplatformed/demonetized off all social media. Like this has always been the case, and has been applied in a politically neutral way. Despite, to my knowledge, this is literally the first time it's ever happened.
The political motivations for this are naked as can be. Even in the initial reporting, it was included in the article that none of the women chose to come forward, they were sought out by reporters. At least that's what I heard reported at The Hill, still can't read the initial article due to paywall and archive links not working for me for some reason.
It wasn't out of nowhere, I was telling everyone this would become standard fare to unperson dissidents after Alex Jones, and there we are.
I mean, yes and no. Yes, the fact that the rules were being made up as we went so that anybody against The Narrative could be unpersoned was plain as day for anyone with a functioning long or even short term memory. Or any actual principles at all, that weren't subject to immediate and thoughtless reversal when the next NPC update rolled out.
But no in that, the powers that be are pretending that isn't what they are up to, and that the "rule" being broken is some byzantine TOS violation about "harmful behavior off platform". As though that rule always existed, and was always enforced in this way. And, naturally, since they dictate the narrative, quibbling over whether Brand's behavior actually violates this rule is what has sucked all the air out of the room. Not discussion about how the rule is complete bullshit, when were the TOS updated to include it, and has it ever been invoked in this way before?
Maybe I'm in a bubble but it seems to me that at this point people can see right through the bullshit and focus is rather on how power is operating it's arbitrary than any discussion of legitimacy. Who even has the color of legitimacy?
My Twitter feed is full of the letter from that MP trying to give marching orders and the risible apparent defects in the evidence against Brand.
If feel as if we are way, way past the formal arguments about the law. Remember "it's a private company they can do what they want", or my favorite "free speech is entirely contained in the first amendment therefore private censorship is A-OK"? Venerable echoes of the ancient past by now.
Everyone knows and can plainly see they're making it up as they go along.
You're in a bubble. Roughly half the people I know in real life, through family, hobbies or the kid's school, swallow this shit hook line and sinker. Your twitter feed is not real life.
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I mean, yes, in the past, well-known rapists and sexual harassers faced little to no economic and social consequences if they had enough power or popularity to being with, and continued to rape and harass people throughout long and successful careers.
The new way is very far from perfect, and since it's new there's a lot of refinement still needed.
But it is definitely better than the old way.
Of all the new progressive-led 'ways of doing things', are there any examples of one that got 'refined' and dialed down a bit from its prior fervor?
Will this refinement entail not trying to cut off people from their income based on public accusations made under anonymity and that nobody attempted to bring to court?
I mean, basically all of them?
Look at the Black Panthers to MLK, look at the Stonewall Riots to Ellen. It always starts with militancy and fringe extremists bringing an issue to light, and then moderates and respectability politics processing it into something palatable over a decade or three.
The Black Panthers were literally founded after the March on Washington.
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Aren't you basically agreeing with the parent? The extreme elements interact with the mainstream and get some of what they want. The extreme stays extreme, but over time, the mainstream moves further and further to the left, even though they never adopt the extreme policies wholesale.
I don't think so? I though OP was implying that leftist movements never get moderated from the initial extreme agitator incarnations, and I disagree.
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I said 'new', as in recent. What does a 'refinement' of #metoo in regards to wrongfully accused men look like? What does a refinement of antiracism in regards to making the OK gesture look like? If we're already admitting that some of this stuff in the zeitgeist has gotten unreasonable in its zeal, what are the 'sane' rollbacks we can all soon expect? And do you honestly expect progressives to acquiesce and go along with them?
I also do not share your take on the historical progressive stances being moderated over time. I would say many of them started moderate, or at least had a prior moderate incarnation it eventually arrived at (gay people are normal folk just like me and you wouldn't even be able to tell, dont judge somebody by their skin) and only got more extreme with their ambitions once they settled in and enjoyed the comfort of their power (drag shows for children, venerating blackness as unique and special).
Perhaps this is the 'refinement' you gesture towards? They've certainly done a magnificent job of grabbing the reigns of media and ensuring their takes are the only acceptable ones. That is a success story, in a way. And yet it does nothing to address any of my concerns with the fundamentals of their arguments and ideologies. I want them turned back, not grandfathered into respectability they'll proceed to exploit.
I think we were more sane and moderate about these things in previous decades, and progressives ruined that. Why should I wait for them to sort themselves out again?
Oh, you mean what refinements have been made to things that are more recent than the timeframe in which refinements happen.
Ok, well, maybe my framing of the question reveals my answer here. But to play along...
People supporting Johnny Depp and Al Franken way more than they did Harvey Weinstein and bill Cosby?
Literally that meme dying out in the course of a few months and no one talking about it anymore?
Yes, that was my thesis statement.
Yeah this is just ahistoric as far as I can tell.
Like, how old were you in the 80s? Do you actually remember the sequence of events? 'Gay people are normal folk and you can't even tell' came after 'It's genetic and we can't help it, pity us instead of persecuting us' which came after drag queens and queer bars rioting in the street and warring with cops.
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Ah yes, the progressive supremacist "right side of history" argument. The perfect thought terminating cliche to sidestep any inconvenient facts, debate, concern, new ways to abuse the system, or the obvious political motivations of any egregious act.
I guess you get points for not literally saying "right side of history", even if your argument is little more than that.
Pretty funny to use the phrase 'thought-terminating cliche' in a short post where you offer no position or argument or evidence besides that phrase.
If you disagree with my position and have something to say about the topic, please go ahead.
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You omit one big fact though - Russel Brand has raped and harassed no one.
Q: What's the difference between Brand's punishment and Hester Prynne's from The Scarlet Letter?
A: Even Prynne, who was nursing physical evidence of her offense, got a trial first.
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Damn, I didn't know you had the ability to definitively tell who has or hasn't raped and harassed people at a distance, you should really get a job in the criminal justice system.
Anyway - yeah, I agree that consumers having imperfect information and mistaken beliefs is one of the many distortionary factors that make capitalism not work so well in practice. But hey what can you do, consumers are going to act on their beliefs, true or not..
with this do you mean that the government is the consumer of X?
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Call me old fashioned but I prefer innocent till proven guilty in a court of law when it comes to punitive actions like suspending someone's income
So you think that employers should not be allowed to fire people unless a court finds justifiable cause to do so?
That is frankly a little bit too communist for me, but I at least appreciate teh direction you're going.
(obviously all economic relationships under capitalism are voluntary and a platform can dump people for any reason they want)
I think employers should have the right to fire pretty much at will. I simply don't think they should do so. Much like parents in the West have the right to kick their kids out of the house or make them pay rent when they turn 18, but it's still a terrible decision all around.
Certainly I'd expect higher standards at play than what's been the case with Brand.
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The MP in question is a Conservative ex-Minister (under Cameron, May and Johnson) while Brand is an anti-establishment Marxist (to the extent he is anything). So if there is a political motivation it's might not map exactly to what people may think.
This is like Google confessing to the censorship of the World Socialist Website to prove how neutral they are. The UK conservatives in particular are an especially bad example of opposition to the woke establishment.
Conservatives (most of them at least) are the establishment, how "woke" they are varies. In many cases political stories in the UK are better explained by looking at establishment vs anti-establishment than left vs right.
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I get what you're saying, but in my perspective it's the same old story - establishment vs counter culture.
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The greatest Substack-era Yarvin piece is "Big Tech Has No Power At All". All of the hidden forces presumed to be exerting influence on Zuckerburg have been revealed in the open to be operating in the same way against Musk. It was only through sheer force of will that Elon was able to endure the onslaught -- at great personal cost. That 40 billion dollars is never coming back. Nobody who has to answer to shareholders could ever pull the moves Musk is making with X.
Never coming back? He has twitter. It's not like the $40 billion was put in a furnace. and also, Twitter Blue generates considerable revenue by now. same for Twitter Gold. People will willingly use big tech companies like Google and Facebook even when they know such companies willingly share private info with governments. I hope Musk succeeds in turning twitter into the much needed competition big tech is lacking.
Does it? Twitter Blue currently has around 700,000 subscribers, which means that Twitter Blue should be bringing in around $21m per quarter for Twitter. At this rate, it would take over 500 years for Twitter Blue revenues to cover the $44 billion acquisition cost. This doesn’t include advertising and other revenue, but it also doesn’t include operating costs either. Elon can probably get X running a profit, but he will never make back his initial investment.
https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/elon-musk-twitter-sharing-revenue-creators-ads-replies/652645/#:~:text=Based%20on%20current%20estimates%20(reduced,m%20per%20quarter%20for%20Twitter
This sounds like a very low estimate given that I have hundreds of checkmarked followers, yet my account is still very niche.
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how is this obtained? being private, twitter does not have to disclose this.
a valuation is a multiple of revenue . it's not like Elon needs to recoup the entire $44 billion with revenue. He can go public or resell it at some multiple ..maybe 30-50x or something if he can demonstrate rapid growth and profitability
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The ADL and its allies can keep the big advertisers away indefinitely. It's not quite clear why this is so, but I have two theories, lighter and darker:
Lighter: The entire advertising industry is ideologically captured and puts the desires of leftist ideological leaders over the well-being of their clients. Barriers to entry (in particular reputation and connections) are too high for any defector to take advantage.
Darker: This sort of advertising is worthless anyway, and the industry (though probably not all its clients) knows it. The whole thing is a transfer of consumer-products-company dollars to serve leftist ideological goals. There's no defectors because there's nothing to be gained by defecting.
I've always wanted to ask if your name is a futurama reference, because your black pills are so dense each pound of them weighs over ten thousand pounds.
My name is older than Futurama; it's a reference to Apple ][ nybble copy programs, and the tool used to cut a notch allowing you to use the back side of floppy disks (a 'nibbling tool').
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has there been any real research showing that ads being placed next to, say, fbi crime table tweets has any effect on anything?
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We have always been at war with eastasia ...
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