I agree.
Musk said he wants to introduce a paid model for Twitter. I might pay a small fee if President Trump was on the platform 
The Twitter case has other ramifications. Most of the buyers of Tesla cars are suburban, left wing college graduates. The left already seems to have it in for Tesla. IIRC they were not invited to a conference on electric cars run by the Democrats.
if Musk gets associated with President Trump, it could cause trouble for Tesla.
It is very difficult to start charging for a service that was previously free. There is a large difference between something being desirable and something people will pay for. You have to prove added value worth the cost.
How would he justify the premium if all he changed was simply allow everyone on the platform and reduce moderation? On the flip side, for casual users (myself included), any cost would make them instantly leave the platform.
If he introduced premium users you’d have to pay to see the tweets from, I think it’d be extremely poorly received. It could be popular with some prolific/popular tweet spammers but on the flip side, it’d also limit their reach to people willing to pay for it, basically people who are already supporting them.
Btw, Twitter already has a paid premium service (Twitter Blue) which, to be charitable, is not very successful. The added “undo send” feature (IMO the best of what it gets you) is not something most users care to pay $3/month for. Maybe for himself and politicians who spend their lives on it, but then they may want more than 60 s current max (long enough for lawyers and aides to chime in lol). It’s already a small price point and yet it’s added only $180k of app revenues since last summer. Proof that if the premium features suck, nobody is willing to pay for them, no matter how low the premium.
Bottom line, I’m skeptical of what he could change much that’d significantly bump Twitter profitability.
I think it’s more nuanced. A lot of them are also the wealthy environmentally-conscious folks who bought Teslas to start with. I think the green aspect is something that resonates well with the left, more so than with the right.
So I think while they may be exasperated by Musk (I think he’s an arrogant ahole with disproportionate ego) but they have far from written off the Tesla brand. Now with more EV competition from other manufacturers, some may want to punish the brand for his close association to Trump but I doubt it’d be that many. Surely not just for allowing Trump back on the platform. (to be fair I’ve underestimated the commercial impact of cancel culture before so who knows)
That said, if they did, it’d be a prime example of politics seriously impacting business and personal finance.
LOL The stores are going to sell out of popcorn 
Alternatively, Musk can take his appeal directly to his 82 million twitter followers (a quarter of Twitter’s total 217 million global Daily Active Users) and have them all buy several shares, then pledge them for Elon during the next proxy vote. Because as much as Twitter wants to reject any buyout offer that will prevent it from imposing the censorship its liberal board and employees love so much, there is only so much it can do.
In the end, however, the only question is how dedicated is Musk to control Twitter, because if he really wants it, he will get it.
Social media - worth a read, some excepts below but there are a lot.
three major forces that collectively bind together successful democracies: social capital (extensive social networks with high levels of trust), strong institutions, and shared stories. Social media has weakened all three. To see how, we must understand how social media changed over time—and especially in the several years following 2009.
Shortly after its “Like” button began to produce data about what best “engaged” its users, Facebook developed algorithms to bring each user the content most likely to generate a “like” or some other interaction, eventually including the “share” as well. Later research showed that posts that trigger emotions––especially anger at out-groups––are the most likely to be shared.
being online did not make most people more aggressive or hostile; rather, it allowed a small number of aggressive people to attack a much larger set of victims. Even a small number of jerks were able to dominate discussion forums
American politics is getting ever more ridiculous and dysfunctional not because Americans are getting less intelligent. The problem is structural. Thanks to enhanced-virality social media, dissent is punished within many of our institutions, which means that bad ideas get elevated into official policy.
The liberals don’t really have anything to say because Trump is gone and there aren’t any Republicans in power in DC for them to complain about. Since they don’t have anything to tout that the current regime is successfully doing, they would have to spend all their time defending the indefensible. While several of us conservatives on here disliked Trump, we could see that a lot of what his administration did was defensible and good even while he was saying/tweeting the wrong thing, so we gladly participated in politics threads while liberals were happy to post about all the terrible things that the mainstream media was regurgitating about Trump. Plus, so many of them were exaggerations or lies that there was plenty of actual facts for us to use to rebut those posts.
There may be a lot, but I don’t think that makes the number significant.
What close association?
I can’t believe that came out of your keyboard. I presumed that your hatred of Russia included hatred of Communism/Socialism. Was I ever wrong.
Freedom of speech, or lack thereof, is tested every day in courtrooms from sea to shining sea. Not too many years ago, you couldn’t call a cop a pig, you couldn’t burn the flag, you couldn’t walk down the street shouting MF this or MF that (with possibly some exceptions for this last example). Liberalism fought these limitations, frequently under the banner “free speech” through the ACLU.
I find it amazing that Liberalism now howls, loudly, to limit freedom of speech for anything not kosher in their Koran.’
For the same reason that 9/11 was a “hoax/Jewish scam/CIA plot” links persist. There will always be a certain percentage of the population that feels they are victims and that bogeymen are constantly thwarting their success - whether that be on Barksdale’s corners, the hollows of Appalachia, or Main street. Sadly, that percentage has grown mightily during my lifetime. It has also gotten pretty loud through the use of social media, particularly Twitland.
ETA: I must admit that a huge chunk of people may have always claimed victimhood for their perceived lack of success. Unsocial media allows them to say it without feeling like whiney crybabies.
[Sorry for responding to different posts in the same message, but am trying to prevent the dreaded consecutive reply limit.]
I am convinced that the diagnosis of ADHD, autism, and the next “big” thing are influenced more by big pharma than the medical community. Thank goodness ADHD was not around when I was a kid. I was tied to a desk on multiple occasions and had my mouth Scotch-taped once. Amazingly, WITHOUT the medications of the day, I did well on standardized and other tests, got a scholarship to a fancy school, married (twice) way out of my league, had a successful career, and run my own business.
Sadly, big pharma’s cure for ADHD was not around at the time. If it had been, I might be on disability and volunteering for Joseph Biden. … a long rant has to end in a joke. 
I was not aware that he and Trump are buddies. Maybe big media has ignored/downplayed/hidden the relationship due to the aneurysm it would give many greenies if they thought their dollars were going to a friend of Donald Trump.
These days, the left seems to go with a strategy of name calling as an acceptable “fact based” argument.
Hey, we each got a shot in, and solved world peace at the same time. 
H-o-l-l-e-e C-o-w! I think this is two months in a row that I’ve read, or will read, an article from the Atlantic. From the first couple of pages, it seems like a well thought out piece, and engagingly written. Thanks for the link.
Goose assistance. He is having a good night. 
As is his bartender.
And note that when you don’t moderate you get a hate-fest that drives off most people.
We don’t need big accomplishments from Washington! The manager that keeps changing things is rarely as effective as the quiet one that just keeps things working.
Besides, what the Republicans actually accomplish is mostly graft or give money to the rich.
In the hypothetical where Musk controls Twitter, re-allows Trump on and thus looks like he’s Trump new BFF. I don’t think there’s any strong association yet but in this day and age of Dems trying to tie many bad things to Trump as diversion tactics to avoid having people look at how incompetent they’ve been in the last 15 months in power, I wouldn’t rule out that any tenuous indirect favor done to Trump would be called support or complicity.
Correct. And that’s why platforms like 4chan are a cesspool most decent human beings stay away from. Anonymity and zero accountability will always brings the worst in many people.
And you see where these unmoderated hate-fests lead to like the killing mobs in India roused by fake Whatsapp viral messages. It was no coincidence that it happened in countries where Facebook did not have capabilities to moderate content due to language barrier.
Interesting to see all the hand wringing by the legacy media over Musk trying to buy or influence Twitter. I guess they don’t mind all the billionaire owners of other big media paying their salary (Bezos, Murdoch, etc), but this guy, he trolls too much.
Hallelujah! I recall your articulate objections to Obamacare and President Joseph Biden’s attempts to:
I look forward to your further loud and proud opinions on limited government.
Sorry … I couldn’t resist. Please point out my errors, even of omission, as 'tis the season.
Finally, a little sanity prevails…
I don’t know if it’s truly over. In the workplace, consistently and intentionally using the wrong pronoun after being told what an employee prefers amounts to workplace harassment. The only exception is when using preferred pronouns would violate sincere religious beliefs protected by the First Amendment. However, employers are not required to provide accommodation that would violate state or federal law so in this case (in this case Title VII of Civil Rights Act of 1964).
This seems very close to the Southern District of Indiana case of Kluge v. Brownsburg Community School Corporation. Teacher there was punished by his school for refusing to use preferred pronouns for students and sued the school for failing to accommodate his religious beliefs. The court dismissed the lawsuit because the employee’s requested accommodation would result in an "increased risk of liability which in turn constituted an undue hardship” that employers need not bear.
I’m not sure why the Ohio university settled considering that precedent. The appeals court only ruled that professor could proceed with his lawsuit but not on the merits of the lawsuit itself. Maybe because $400k was less than the attorney fees they were going to face but I doubt that sanity will prevail until people realize that using preferred pronouns is a requirement to avoid getting sued for gender discrimination. Besides, what are they gonna do next time the same sequence of events happens? Get sued by the professor whom they let boss them around or get sued by student for allowing the gender discrimination to proceed.
If I were the injured student, I’d sue the university for encouraging gender discrimination, especially since the university seemed like they just capitulated and threw money at the professor to make it all go away.
