The new owner of Twitter steps up.
Three days after Elon Musk purchased Twitter, the billionaire posted a tweet that advanced baseless allegations about the recent attack on the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
What could possibly go wrong??
On Saturday, Hillary Clinton, the former first lady and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, posted a tweet assailing Republicans for spreading “hate and deranged conspiracy theories” that she said had emboldened the man who attacked Ms. Pelosi’s husband, Paul, inside the couple’s home in San Francisco early Friday.
Mr. Musk’s tweet was later deleted, and it was not immediately clear who had deleted it.
In a reply to Mrs. Clinton’s tweet, Mr. Musk wrote, “There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye” and then shared a link to an article in the Santa Monica Observer. The article alleges that Mr. Pelosi was drunk and in a fight with a male prostitute.
A 2021 editorial in The Los Angeles Times about websites that “masquerade as legitimate local newspapers” noted that the Santa Monica Observer, “owned by onetime City Council candidate David Ganezer, is notorious for publishing false news.” In 2016, for example, the publication advanced a claim that Mrs. Clinton had died and that a body double was sent to debate the Republican presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump.
Not even so much false news as grotesque absurd fantasizing. (We get fantasies from all directions these days – men fantasizing they are sexy sexy ladeez, and Magas fantasizing drunken brawls with male prostitutes.)
Comments
5 responses to “The billionaire posted a tweet”
I mean, the possibility of quantum tunneling through my chair is also tiny. Tiny is kinda vague.
I see a future in which Twitter becomes as polluted with garbage like this, and is no better than GETTr, or Truth Social.
It’s been bad enough with its dominance in favor of transactivists, but at least there was some fact checking. If that’s discarded, I’ll just go on a long Twitter retreat.
It’d be nice if everyone dropped Twitter, especially those in positions of power and those with influence over them. The platform’s mechanics lead inevitably to bad outcomes at every scale. Of course, I’m becoming more and more certain that there’s no way, even in principle, to implement something recognizable as social media without ruining into social harms that outstrip any social benefits.
Great idea. I’ll rush off and do that right away. I’ll have to set up a Twitter account first, though. Can anyone tell me how to do that? (rhetorical!)
I would agree with this. I think the problem is several fold, starting with anonymity, but it doesn’t seem to get better when they require names on profiles.
Of course, a lot of the problem is in what we call “society”, which is misogyny, racism, and other nasty things all the way down. The only way to prevent “social” media from devolving into “antisocial” media is to change us…humans…the perpetrators of the horrible behaviors. Changing expectations based on sex, race, sexual orientation, religions, etc.
I saw a great quote from Tom Waits this morning:
The one thing that can be said about mankind is that there is nothing kind about man. (I didn’t put it in quotes because I’m not sure I have it exact; I might be paraphrasing).
iknklast
Your quote is almost correct. The exact wording is:
Waits has tons of great quotes like that. Another favorite of mine from the same song is: