• TWeaK@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      Stop X permanently. The lawsuits are massing up, and the value of the business has nearly dropped such that the $13bn debt is bigger than it. They had little hope of paying even the interest before Musk started intentionally tanking their revenue. He knows that the business will never have to pay up, hell they’re not even paying rent on their offices, and he’ll get away with the crime Scott free because it’s a limited liability company.

      And make no mistake, that was the plan all along. Destroy a private business cum public forum that served the public good, and on the way out see what controversial actions they can get away with. That way any site that comes to fill the void can do the same. His old mate Peter Thiel will likely be pleased, along with a bunch of other unscrupulous people.

      • thecrotch@sh.itjust.works
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        9 months ago

        Destroy a private business cum public forum that served the public

        It’s amazing to me how much people have rewritten history since musk took over. Twitter was always shit. It’s worse now, yeah. A lot worse. But it’s like taking a shit on a smaller pile of shit. All this talk about how it was a real boon for humanity and so important it should be regulated as a utility is equal parts idiotic and hilarious.

        • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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          9 months ago

          It’s shit, but it had significant uses. Namely, getting breaking news from trusted journalists, and speaking directly to businesses for consumer support when other methods typically went unanswered.

          That’s not to mention the Arab Spring. Sure, significant change that people had hoped for didn’t follow through, but it still spooked them enough that one of the incumbent leaders helped buy the website to undermine it.

          Also, when you compare it to Facebook it certainly was better. Even reddit was better, then followed it down the drain.

          • Sage the Lawyer@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            I get the feeling (I wouldn’t really know, haven’t been there in months) that Reddit is still significantly better. Sure, it’s worse now, but it still has active communities on pretty much any topic imaginable. Lemmy is on its way, but won’t be there for a few years I think.

            • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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              9 months ago

              There’s some genuine communities lingering on, but almost all of the larger communities have become part of the power mods’ “projects”.

              • Daft_ish@lemmy.world
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                9 months ago

                I was shook the other day when I stopped by reddit and saw, “just a normal day in russia” at the top of the front page. As Americans we need to give up on the idea of a non-political social media because it always gets co-optd into some psy-ops bullshit.

        • Daft_ish@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          I 100% agree it was shit. Sometimes though, that shit fertilized real growth.

          That said, lesson shouldn’t be, “we need twitter.” It should be, let’s populate similar platforms so we can have this resource in the future.

      • antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        9 months ago

        served the public good

        Yeah, nah. For a start, if one website could be singled out for bringing Trump into power, it wasn’t any of those icky extremist places such as 4chan, 8chan, r/trump - it was Twitter where he posted his garbage for literal years with no interruption and thus gained a massive following. The site practically lived off his controversial diarrhea.

        • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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          9 months ago

          You could say the same about reddit in a large part. 4chan was a free home, Twitter was a megaphone, but reddit really encouraged the infestation to gestate.

          Also it wasn’t r/trump, but r/the_Donald, as well as all the spin off astroturfed subs.

      • archomrade [he/him]@midwest.social
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        9 months ago

        I don’t disagree this is a possibility, but I have yet to hear someone clearly articulate why poopoobrain over there would do something so dumb intentionally.

        I find it so much more compelling that he’s just a divorce-brained middle-aged dumbass with a megaphone and billions to dig his own grave. That he was forced to buy Twitter after waving his dick around in public and has been trying to save his reputation ever since by pretending that it’s all a part of his plan to amplify the right voices to ‘save humanity’.

        I’m not saying he isn’t brain-broken enough to believe it himself, but I don’t think he ever really had a plan. I think he’s a sad, lonely billionaire going through the worlds biggest mid-life crisis.