[Thanos]

Rick likes yelling at people.

[DrCaleb]

No, he's not yelling. He does the equivalent of "U-S-A! U-S-A!", but falls a little short because he doesn't realize the things he's cheering are also the things that create such a vast wealth gap between the lowest income and people like Musk or Bezos.

Musk shouldn't decide what 'truth' is. Just look at Bollea v. Gawker, where Peter Thiel (the guy who bought PayPal off of Musk) decided what reality was going to be, and ended a news organization because it outed him as gay.

Twitter and many other social media platforms are not required to protect anyone's free speech, and they are also responsible for the huge divide we see in politics right now. And reality in general. I'm glad they decided to take a small sliver of responsibility for that, and put limits on the speech they will support.

[Thanos]

The Gawker case was a bad one. I respected what they did sometimes but they also went way too far too much. Every single story they did was an overwhelming overdose of absolutist Manichean good vs evil, as in that everyone they reported on in their view was a 100% pure monster. It was gotcha journalism at it's ultimate extent. They were doomed to lose that case to Hogan simply because they didn't believe there is such a thing as invasion of privacy for any public figure. All Thiel did was pay the lawyers to ensure that the case didn't get dropped because Hogan couldn't afford to cover the legal costs by himself.

Look at it this way too - Gawker's chief editor got on the stand in that trial and basically said that they'd show videos and pictures of literally anything short of a child being raped. With that kind of self-destructive mentality running the place Gawker was never going to win, not when the hill they chose to die on was all about a video of a jerk like Hulk Hogan fucking his friend's wife. Know what Gawker's real legacy in the end turned out to be? They were the progenitor of cancel culture because their entire journalistic philosophy was doing everything they could to obliterate anyone who fell into their crosshairs. They were quite literally the modern-day equivalent of a street pamphlet from the French Revolution constantly demanding the destruction of their enemies.

[DrCaleb]

That the problem with speech. As the saying goes, the only truly free speech is speech that you despise. And the other part of the USs' Second Amendment is the right to a free press. So it would follow, the only free press is the one you despise.

Gawker was free to be as sleazy as they wanted. They had that right. Blame the people who sopped it up for the market for such journalistic integrity. But the one thing they didn't do was make shit up. Something that seems to be ever present nowadays. FOX even stated in court that no reasonable person would take Tucker Carlson seriously, it's all entertainment.

That's where Twitter will go, under Musk's absolute freedom of speech. Not that it's very far from it now.

[Thanos]

Pretty sure that the existence of slander, defamation, and libel laws, all of which get confirm thousands of times every year in the courts our countries, are proof that you can't say what you want when you want regardless of who you hurt. If those laws were unconstitutional then Ezra Levant would be around a million dollars richer from lying as freely as he wants instead of having to have paid out to the multiple targets he went out of his way to torment.

Life isn't a free-for-all. Things get bad enough with laws already in place that simply get ignored by the psychopaths who do what they want whenever they want. It would be multiple times worse without those laws in place. Without them we'd probably be walking through a world no different than a Bosch painting. This is why these free speech "absolutists" are such scum - they have no regard at all for when the malignant personalities (which typically includes themselves, despite their high & might tone of nobility) run amok. They're no different at all from the sovereign citizen types at the trucker convoys.

The last thing we need is for the world to be run by the sort of people who are mentally & emotionally identical to the sort of "imma do what I want!" ratchet ghetto bitches who show up on Maury Povich or Dr. Phil. I have no idea what's gone so badly fucking wrong in our collective mentality that getting rid of our already minimal limits on the absolute worst personalities among us has somehow become the the definition of what real freedom is supposed to be.

[DrCaleb]

Slander, defamation etc. are the result of consequences to free speech. Just because you may slander, doesn't mean you don't have a right to. You just have to own your words.

But here on the open plains of the internet, you don't have to. You can say whatever, and there are no consequences. Or rather, few.

Gawker, as far as I know, never posted anything that wasn't true. They were shitbags, and they did whatever they wanted to get eyeballs, but it was always factual. That was always Ezras problem, he would make up whatever, and call it 'speech', even though he knew the difference between speech and slander or libel. But rich people still have no right to piss on the rest of us and call it rain. Gawker did have the right to call Peter Thiel 'gay', because it was true. It was not their thing to reveal, but it was still speech.

Yea, I don't know where we are going with this, other than to say that if Musk controls Twitter, he will intend to make things better because 'freedom', but he will end up making things worse. Because there are no consequences.

[Scape]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kj2u8DKXZbY

[Tricks]

rickc rickc:

The fact that the left is shitting their pants over this tells me all I need to know. The right has been bitching about censorship on Twitter for years. The left states that Twitter is a private company, and can do as they please. If the right does not like it than they should get their own platform. It looks like Elon took their advice. He is getting his own platform. Thanks for the advice lefties. The best part is that Elon is using the thing that lefties hate most and that is good old fashioned capitalism. Money talks and bullshit walks.

Its been a while since I have seen such a vulgar display of throwing money around to make your opponents simply disappear. Its quite refreshing actually. I wish he would buy up all the social media platforms and fire the asshats that are currently running them. No golden parachute, simply fired. You know the way that Trump used to fire people on that tv show. Yeah just like that.

Elon Musk and the U.S.A. Sounds like a match made in heaven to me. A great man doing great things in a great country. You see these are the types of immigrants the U.S. gets. People with great visions who want to be free to pursue their dreams. They do not want to be handcuffed by big government stealing the fruits of their labors to hand out to a bunch of deadbeat losers sitting around with their hands out. You know the type. Our immigrants flee those shitholes. Everyone from the illegal from Mexico who started off with one taco stand,and now owns a chain of high end Mexican restaurants all the way up to Elon Musk who employees over 100,000 people in good paying jobs in high tech industries. Dreamers who believe in hard work and capitalism make this country great. Elon Musk was working on a farm and a lumber mill in Canada. He moves to the U.S. and he becomes the richest person on the entire planet. All that talent and unrealized potential moved to the U.S. to fulfill his dreams, put thousands of people to work, and make the world a better place. The last thing we need right now is for ANY Canadian attempting to tell Mr. Musk what he can or cannot do. The ball was in your court and you dropped it BIG TIME!!!

If you don't like canadians talking about world events, why are you here?

[Tricks]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

No, he's not yelling. He does the equivalent of "U-S-A! U-S-A!", but falls a little short because he doesn't realize the things he's cheering are also the things that create such a vast wealth gap between the lowest income and people like Musk or Bezos.

Or he does and he just doesn't care

[bootlegga]

rickc rickc:

Elon Musk and the U.S.A. Sounds like a match made in heaven to me. A great man doing great things in a great country. You see these are the types of immigrants the U.S. gets. People with great visions who want to be free to pursue their dreams. They do not want to be handcuffed by big government stealing the fruits of their labors to hand out to a bunch of deadbeat losers sitting around with their hands out. You know the type. Our immigrants flee those shitholes. Everyone from the illegal from Mexico who started off with one taco stand,and now owns a chain of high end Mexican restaurants all the way up to Elon Musk who employees over 100,000 people in good paying jobs in high tech industries. Dreamers who believe in hard work and capitalism make this country great. Elon Musk was working on a farm and a lumber mill in Canada. He moves to the U.S. and he becomes the richest person on the entire planet. All that talent and unrealized potential moved to the U.S. to fulfill his dreams, put thousands of people to work, and make the world a better place. The last thing we need right now is for ANY Canadian attempting to tell Mr. Musk what he can or cannot do. The ball was in your court and you dropped it BIG TIME!!!

From what I've seen so far, Musk is an opportunist and goes wherever he can deal with the fewest regulations and treat his workers like garbage. First that was California, then it was Texas. Now he's got a huge footprint in China and it wouldn't surprise me to see him leave the US in a few years/decade after he's wrung every concession he can out of your country.

It seemes like Americans like robber barons - just look at 'success stories' the Walton family, Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and John D. Rockefeller, all the way up to Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos today.

In the meantime, you're welcome to anyone like him who indulges in predatory business practices.

[Tricks]

Because having money > ethics to your average republican. Which Rick is.

[Zipperfish]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

I have always given Elon credit, he's a very smart man, and very driven. Doesn't mean he's not an asshole from time to time though. But unlike the Oligarchs, he's earned his place at the top of the Tower of Commerce.

Everything he's done, he's done it inside the rules, more or less. And his play on things makes me laugh. Big 'Falcon' rocket. Cars models, S3XY. 'Plaid Edition'. Boring company.

"Driven" is highly overrated. Myself, I avoid driven people like the plague.

That said, I've nothing against Elon. I'm against the idea of ultra-wealthy billionaires in general, especially since so few of them seem to pay much in the way of tax.

[Zipperfish]

Thanos Thanos:

Pretty sure that the existence of slander, defamation, and libel laws, all of which get confirm thousands of times every year in the courts our countries, are proof that you can't say what you want when you want regardless of who you hurt. If those laws were unconstitutional then Ezra Levant would be around a million dollars richer from lying as freely as he wants instead of having to have paid out to the multiple targets he went out of his way to torment.

Life isn't a free-for-all. Things get bad enough with laws already in place that simply get ignored by the psychopaths who do what they want whenever they want. It would be multiple times worse without those laws in place. Without them we'd probably be walking through a world no different than a Bosch painting. This is why these free speech "absolutists" are such scum - they have no regard at all for when the malignant personalities (which typically includes themselves, despite their high & might tone of nobility) run amok. They're no different at all from the sovereign citizen types at the trucker convoys.

The last thing we need is for the world to be run by the sort of people who are mentally & emotionally identical to the sort of "imma do what I want!" ratchet ghetto bitches who show up on Maury Povich or Dr. Phil. I have no idea what's gone so badly fucking wrong in our collective mentality that getting rid of our already minimal limits on the absolute worst personalities among us has somehow become the the definition of what real freedom is supposed to be.

Funny thing is that these guys pounding the table about free speech seem to envision some past time when everyone wore tri-cornered hats and free speeched all day long with no interference. That never existed. People are actually freer now (last 50 years) than they ever were before in the west. Ever heard of Lord Haw Haw exercising his freedom of speech to support the Nazis in WWII?--he swung at the end of a rope. Any Black man or native that stood up in 1955 and said "Hey this ain't right"? Properly dealt with--if lucky, by the courts. Show up at a rally to protest working conditions in the 20s--good chance you'd end up dead or missing.

These freedom convoy yahoos with their "Canada is a police state" over getting chucked unceremoniously out of Ottawa--they never ben to a protest before, or they'd know if you protest long enough and loud enough you are get a shit-kicking by the cops. been there, done that.

[DrCaleb]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

I have always given Elon credit, he's a very smart man, and very driven. Doesn't mean he's not an asshole from time to time though. But unlike the Oligarchs, he's earned his place at the top of the Tower of Commerce.

Everything he's done, he's done it inside the rules, more or less. And his play on things makes me laugh. Big 'Falcon' rocket. Cars models, S3XY. 'Plaid Edition'. Boring company.

"Driven" is highly overrated. Myself, I avoid driven people like the plague.

That said, I've nothing against Elon. I'm against the idea of ultra-wealthy billionaires in general, especially since so few of them seem to pay much in the way of tax.

I can appreciate someone who sees a problem, and fights hard to fix what they see is the problem.

And I agree, there should be some sort of maximum to assets, even that goes against my free capitalist side. There is just no way you could ever spend $300 Billion, and how many other people would that keep employed if spent?

[DrCaleb]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

Thanos Thanos:

Pretty sure that the existence of slander, defamation, and libel laws, all of which get confirm thousands of times every year in the courts our countries, are proof that you can't say what you want when you want regardless of who you hurt. If those laws were unconstitutional then Ezra Levant would be around a million dollars richer from lying as freely as he wants instead of having to have paid out to the multiple targets he went out of his way to torment.

Life isn't a free-for-all. Things get bad enough with laws already in place that simply get ignored by the psychopaths who do what they want whenever they want. It would be multiple times worse without those laws in place. Without them we'd probably be walking through a world no different than a Bosch painting. This is why these free speech "absolutists" are such scum - they have no regard at all for when the malignant personalities (which typically includes themselves, despite their high & might tone of nobility) run amok. They're no different at all from the sovereign citizen types at the trucker convoys.

The last thing we need is for the world to be run by the sort of people who are mentally & emotionally identical to the sort of "imma do what I want!" ratchet ghetto bitches who show up on Maury Povich or Dr. Phil. I have no idea what's gone so badly fucking wrong in our collective mentality that getting rid of our already minimal limits on the absolute worst personalities among us has somehow become the the definition of what real freedom is supposed to be.

Funny thing is that these guys pounding the table about free speech seem to envision some past time when everyone wore tri-cornered hats and free speeched all day long with no interference. That never existed. People are actually freer now (last 50 years) than they ever were before in the west. Ever heard of Lord Haw Haw exercising his freedom of speech to support the Nazis in WWII?--he swung at the end of a rope. Any Black man or native that stood up in 1955 and said "Hey this ain't right"? Properly dealt with--if lucky, by the courts. Show up at a rally to protest working conditions in the 20s--good chance you'd end up dead or missing.

These freedom convoy yahoos with their "Canada is a police state" over getting chucked unceremoniously out of Ottawa--they never ben to a protest before, or they'd know if you protest long enough and loud enough you are get a shit-kicking by the cops. been there, done that.

Another +5, if your rep was on.

'The good old days' is a trap that people fall into, and never seem to fall out of. Which is why politicians use it.