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Notes -
Would you mind giving me confidence levels on your predictions of:
Prediction market links:
First one seems pretty unlikely*; what's the lizardman's constant for Manifold?
The second one... well, the obvious motivation for somebody (not necessarily the USA) to arrest him would be "to get enough leverage on him to get him to sell/give Twitter to someone more pliable" (this being akin to rubber-hose cryptanalysis or the Pierre-sur-Haute fiasco, and lawfare without custody being insufficient to the task due to his fuck-you money), although that would be such a huge heel move that I couldn't even begin to guess at the repercussions.
*The problem is that to resolve positive, the SCOTUS has to rule him disqualified, and that means they have to pack the court in less than three months (because this SCOTUS won't do that unless he commits obvious treason, which he has no reason to do as President-elect, and if Trump takes office the court can't be packed against him).
For Twitter? Not his immensely valuable, industry leading industrial and tech companies? The one that isn't making any money, that's hemorrhaging users, that runs off advertising that's in steep decline?
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And this is different that the situation all legacy media finds itself in... how, exactly?
Twitter is the Voice of America. Owning it is a big deal, because "allowed to run C&C servers for your human botnets" is what the First Amendment is designed to let you do, just like how the Second is there to make sure you always have the ability to kill your fellow citizens, the Fourth is so that your fellow citizens' ability to discover and prosecute crimes against them is severely curtailed, the Fifth is so that even if they don't find shit they can't torture you into confessing, etc.
Elon Musk has the Voice of America, a fleet of privately-owned ICBMs (and the only company with the ability to produce them these days), and the infrastructure for a parallel worldwide communications network with extremely limited 'lawful intercept' [read: end-run around 4A] capability that is relatively easy for individuals to access yet very hard for any state actor to destroy.
The Constitution, and the human rights it enumerates, are really fucking extreme when you think about them for more than 5 seconds. It is good to possess those rights.
And yet at any time, ten police officers can walk into the SpaceX headquarters, have him arrested with evidence the CIA can fake, and that’s that. And there’s nothing Musk could do about it. So where does the real power lie?
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Look at how much of a change to the tone of politics buying Twitter had compared to starting Truth Social. Controlling the moderation strategy of the world’s most important social media company is (for short term politics at least) vastly more important than rockets or electric cars. Actual monetary profit is irrelevant.
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