Looks like we're only days away from full self-driving Twitter. Guess we'll see how that works out.

He'd run a poll on whether the US should strip him of his US Citizenship & deport him back to South Africa.

Where the 'bots are in charge of the asylum

"On Wednesday, Musk told a Delaware court his reorganization of Twitter was almost complete"

You mean he's close to the point where there'll be no staff left apart from himself?

Best documentary on Musk, narrated by William Shatner.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6gy5P45hEN4

An excellent 8 and a half minutes.

What else can be said

It looks like a rejected design for William S. Burrough’s Steely Dan.

That "goat" is shaped like a dachshund.

I like it, I think it sums Space Karen up perfectly.

Reminds me of some of the covers for this book TBH

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Emperor_of_Dune

Frankly if it is supposed to be a goat the design is about as ill conceived as a Twiiter buyout.

Buy twitter, decimate the workforce, see a mass exodus of users and employees, lift some bans, decimate the workforce further, and hey look! We're in the run up to the 2024 US Elections! Twitter runs, but barely, as most staff have quit or been shown the door. Now anyone can attack or abuse or even take over Twitter. It will be a dumpster fire...

It's wrong to think that this is about anything other than money. If Musk can bankrupt Twitter, he can walk away from the debts incurred to buy it. The rest is about just about keeping himself in the headlines.

Is that the way it works? I can understand a company's debts effectively disappearing when it goes bankrupt, but I would have thought that the $x billions of debt raised to buy Twitter would be Musk's personal debt, not Twitter's.

...or maybe it doesn't work like that over in the States?

You mean just like his boss - Donald J Trump

I guess that musk wants to be Trump Mk2 for all the good that will do him. He can't run for POTUS and anyway, Ron Desantimonious is lined up to get that job so what?

anything that will allow him to buy whole countries. Where else does the richest man in the world go?

Don't say Mars unless he goes with Trump on a one-way ticket.

Great Lord Musk is using the 'Truth Social' system as a model for the new Twitter.

- No expensive premises to run

- HQ is a PO Box Number

- Zero staff or the appearance of that.

Then

- banning anyone who dares criticise the dear leader (Trump for Truth Social, Muck for Twitter)

Funny, I replied to a tweet to describe Musk using one word, and I used the word C U Next Tuesday, and didn't get banned...

Maybe their AI was looking for Thursday?

Even if the vote was fully legitimate, there's still the very strong likelihood that 50% is not an adequate enough result to justify the action. Yes, there was a small majority in favour, but surely the barrier should be higher, especially considering the quite appallingly obvious pretensions.

It reminds me of another, similar, close to 50/50 vote that had disastrous consequences and left strongly divided opinions in the UK's recent history.

Especially when you consider what the constitution says about publicity stunt votes inside a privately held corporation.

I believe it was settled in the case of "8 out of 10 cats vs the supreme court"

Another way to look at this is that only 51.8% of those polled think that the former president should be allowed to talk.

Another way to look at this is that only 51.8% of those polled think that the former president should be allowed to talk.

Do you honestly think nobody has heard a single word from Trump since he was booted off Twitter?

[1]ObXkcd .

[1] https://xkcd.com/1357

Yes, clearly that is what I meant.

That's xkcd is a bit of a paper tiger. People like Kathleen Stock OBE have essentially been "cancelled" for saying things that upset a very small number of very loud people. It's happening all over the place.

It's not a case of "nobody hearing a single word", it's more a case that he's not allowed to speak in many of the modern day public squares of the internet, Twitter being a quite important one. Therefore quite a lot of people are not hearing some of the words he has to say.

This is not to say I'm a fan of trump, as I think a large proportion of what he says is total rubbish. However I will defend his right to say that total rubbish.

And to all those people who were saying "It's a private platform, they can do what they like"... well, what's changed? They can do what they like, as long as it's what YOU like? Now you don't like it, they shouldn't be able to do what they like?

However, if he's only allowed to say those things on Truth Social, then he's really only going to be speaking to his own people. Preaching to the choir. And that choir is going to get very angry because they believe their man is being suppressed. Better to let him say what he wants to say, and let others openly debate that. And if he spreads misinformation, then by all means highlight that.

OTOH, I think it's a bit much to allow people like Kanye (or Ye) on there after the things he's said, which are actual calls for violence.

You have a right to speak, you don't have a right to be listened to.

…and nor do you have the right to use someone else’s megaphone if they’d prefer you not to.

What about if that megaphone is essentially the only way of hearing somebody?

Suppose twitter dropped all democrat candidates a month before the election? Suppose Google decided not to return any search results for Republicans or had Chrome block all Republican candidates sites?

Suppose the credit card companies and banks decided they would only process donations for their preferred candidate

At some point these monopolies have to be regulated in a different way from a bakery not making a gay wedding cake.

It's a fair point (though it hardly applies to Twitter), but those sorts of restrictions already do apply. The UK doesn't allow polling the day before the election and only allows campaigning in the month before an election (officially anyway).

> Yes, there was a small majority in favour, but surely the barrier should be higher, especially considering the quite appallingly obvious pretensions

Anecdotally, pretty much everyone I know with any form of left-wing leanings has left Twitter. So I suspect that the platform as a whole has taken a lurch to the right, even before you consider the possibility that the recent chaos and gutting of Twitter's content monitoring teams has probably caused lots of trolls and the like to flock to the platform.

All in all, I'm somewhat surprised the vote was that close!

Good job this voting and unbanning was decided by recommendations from Twitter's moderation council and advisory groups just the way that Musk announced a month ago.

And then when Trump said he was bigly fine where he was he unbanned Kanye West and Andrew Tate, again in line with Twitter's non-existent moderation council and advisory groups' recommendations.

And let's not talking about breaking down Twitter and rebuilding it in his image. It's almost as if Musk is a chronic narcissist who needs everyone's appreciation or something.

Many of the decent rational people that might have voted no are on Mastodon by now. It's just the crazies who see it as a free speech (*) free for all lingering around the place now.

* just don't criticise the manbaby

It's just the crazies who see it as a free speech free for all lingering around the place now.

Nope. It's a lot of minorities who've been made unwelcome and/or feel unprotected from harassment on places like Mastodon. It's people from the global south who know Twitter has a far greater reach and visibility than other social media. It's people who favour the serendipity of Twitter(*). It's people like me watching the car crash through their fingers for shits and giggles but also with a professional interest in how it's actually going to fail. Oh, and "free speech"(**) nuts and anti-vaxxers and conspiracy loons, but they were always there, long before Melon Usk took over.

(*) I've seen comments like "On Mastodon you find people you know. On Twitter you find people you didn't know you needed to know."

(**) Quoted because it's religious dogma, not reasoned philosophy, for them.

" It's a lot of minorities who've been made unwelcome and/or feel unprotected from harassment on places like Mastodon."

That's a pretty clear indication that you've never used Mastodon. The place is pretty aggressively accommodating. Maybe you've been hearing about other platforms that are based on Mastodon (it's open source), but Mastodon's most populated servers have pretty clear guidelines and moderation.

If anyone accepts the validity of the "Poll", well . . .

I thought it was dangerous for democracy to question the results of polls. Unless it's dangerous to have them in the first place, which this might be. Also, if the results show some things, then it's dangerous to not question them.

It's all rather confusing.

51.8%... Truxit means Truxit... erm, Tre-enter means Tre-enter

I didn’t think Republicans accepted poll outcomes?

Oh, they do, only when they “win”

I wonder what archeologists will make of that when they dig it out of the sand in 5000 years time?

Well I was disappointed. Was expecting a clever visual pun alluding to "world's biggest a**hole" but it's just a fanboi Frankentribute. Goats need horns, for a start, and the strapon is far too big for the body. And I fully expect the smoke and flames will come out entirely the wrong end. Not even good enough for a cheesy Hammer Horror reboot!

Musk is a loose cannon. I wont buy a Tesla due to way they hold an owner to ransom and the only thing I can do is close the account... sheesh what a W%$nk$$%r !

I'm with you brother! (on the Tesla thing)

I also won't buy a Tesla, but my reasons are mortgage, heating bills and ski holidays, which are far more important than a stupid go cart (and the "cheap" ones don't even look very good - a more shite Mondeo anyone?)

I won't be closing my Twitter account any time soon, it's far too entertaining. (and no more toxic than it was 2 months ago really)

I bought a eGolf instead - I liked their founder's political views and their corporate honesty.

Eat your own arm so you have enough energy to fight.

Eat your own leg so you have enough energy to run away.

Isn't he going to have to hire some more people to be able do that?

While it may be unintentional, Musk running polls from his personal account means people who take Twitter far too seriously will be forced read his every tweet. If they don't, they might miss the opportunity to vote against the next undesirable.

Sorry, missed the edit window, I should have said the half of the people who take Twitter far too seriously who also dislike Musk. The other half were already following him.

The comment about remote procedure calls in Elon's architecture diagram brought up memories of Trump's sharpie modified hurricane path visual aide.

Will the last engineer leaving the building please remember to switch the lights off.