[smcl]

Wait the suggestion is that billionaires/powerful people bought Twitter for nefarious purposes. Is it not worth more intact but surveilled and censored than utterly sabotaged with Elon graciously taking one for the team?

I’m not convinced, this is a bit complex, conspiratorial and nonsensical for me. When the simpler explanation is that Elon has just mismanaged the company.

[artsytrashcan]

The answer to that is simple: it was worth more to them destroyed than as an intelligence asset.

[smcl]

t h e m

[artsytrashcan]

*Elon and whoever he owes favors to and/or is influenced by. (Owing favors and being influenced by others is a normal human person trait thing.)

[smcl]

So they were so harmed by the newly censored and under-friendly-control-for-$44b Twitter that they decided to spike it altogether and presume no similar social network would ever pop up again?

This is qanon-level stuff man, come on.

[artsytrashcan]

It really isn't. State - really, conservative party - antipathy to Twitter is well-known. This antipathy was instigated by Twitter's role in incubating several large, progressive movements over the past decade: the Arab Spring, Black Lives Matter, the anti-TPP and anti-SOPA protests, the Umbrella Movement and its descendants, etc. We know this antipathy exists because many of the states vulnerable to similar movements and that have the power to ban Twitter have done so.

Twitter also allows for the real-time dissemination of information unfavorable to corporations, like during outages and accidents, and the widespread dissemination of less time-sensitive information by journalists who aren't beholden to corporate media gatekeepers.

Elon Musk's various ventures rely heavily on buy-in from the government - SpaceX relies on NASA's resources, Tesla has only been profitable because of generous renewable energy grants, and even Paypal benefited from lax oversight from financial regulators. That there is likely a relationship is less "Pizzagate" and more "Trump and Russian interference." And if you're going to pretend that that's not a damning analogy, all that does is expose how unserious you are about the matter.

All of that aside, there is also the matter of Musk 1) having had a checkered history with Twitter as it was, including its users, and 2) not having actually wanted to buy Twitter after his initial due diligence. Considering that his actions after completing the deal included firing most of the workforce, stripping users of multiple privileges, and stripping the company itself of its branding, it's not at all farfetched to conclude that he has no intention of simply renovating Twitter, but instead means to strip it down to studs or foundation and build a gaudy temple to his own warped sense of entrepreneurship. This is, after all, the man who insisted that the model names of his cars spell out "S3XY".