Comment by JumpCrisscross
5 days ago
> If I own a platform I’m not under any obligation to allow you to say whatever you like on that platform
This is complicated massively by Elon's role at DOGE.
Twitter has the right to block whomever they want (and always did). But given "multiple federal workers...said they’ve moved sensitive conversations from text messages and Facebook Messenger to the encrypted messaging app Signal" [1], it's unclear whether this is a private or public action.
(Folks in this thread are complaining about Musk's hypocrisy in criticizing pre-Muskian Twitter for blocking accounts and content when he's doing the same thing. But again, that is eclipsed in importance by the corruption and abuse of power questions.)
[1] https://www.theverge.com/news/610951/federal-workers-privacy...
Isn't it fucking crazy that the world's richest person is also moonlighting a public office with massive conflicts of interest and virtually zero oversight? What the fuck is this timeline, is nothing serious anymore?? It's really not so long ago that this would be considered completely bonkers and something you would see on a "banana republic".
> Isn't it fucking crazy that the world's richest person is also moonlighting a public office with massive conflicts of interest and virtually zero oversight?
Trump team has said that Musk will self-determine conflict of interest when gutting govt. agencies.
It is lost on them that self-determination of conflict of interest is itself a conflict of interest.
Mm.
On balance, I think you are correct. But: precisely because DOGE is a QUANGO* that's much harder to demonstrate, whereas the hypocrisy is very on-the-nose.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quango
The problem with hypocrisy is it's a milquetoast charge. Plenty of people, including very powerful people, are hypocrites and we tolerate them fine. Most of us--hopefully--don't know someone who's corrupt.
> Most of us--hopefully--don't know someone who's corrupt.
Unfortunately, I think this is just a comfortable illusion that most of us choose to believe.
Between https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/bribery-rates?tab=table&t... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index, I think it's fairly likely almost everyone both knows personally someone corrupt, and has done business with someone who is corrupt, even in the UK, Germany, and the USA.