Billionaire Republican buys major Twitter stake, may oust CEO amid GOP concerns of bias, reports say

[Burnt Reynolds 5,058]

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A billionaire Republican megadonor has purchased a "sizable" stake in Twitter and "plans to push" to oust CEO Jack Dorsey among other changes, according to new reports, raising the prospect of a shocking election-year shakeup of the social media platform that conservatives have long accused of overt left-wing political bias.

Paul Singer’s Elliott Management Corp. has already nominated four directors to Twitter's board, Bloomberg News reported, citing several sources familiar with the arrangement. The outlet noted that unlike other prominent tech CEOs, Dorsey didn't have voting control over Twitter because the company had just one class of stock; and he has long been a target for removal given Twitter's struggling user growth numbers and stock performance.

Singer, who opposed President Trump's campaign in 2016, has since changed his tune, raising the prospect that some of the changes to Twitter could make the platform a friendlier place for pro-Trump users.  According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Singer donated $24 million to Republican and right-leaning groups in the 2016 election.

 

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/twitter-paul-singer-republican-jack-dorsey

 

What's really interesting to me is Twitter was once a platform friendly to all people. That's why it grew, under Jack Dorsey. Now, under the same Jack Dorsey, since 2016, and this new alienating style of business management led by politically alienating activism, it's only friendly to not merely the left, but the censorship happy left. Conservatives have indeed been the most numerable censored, but us independents have also been censored as a result. Open dialogue, and speech, general concepts, not merely "rights", have long been under attack, but its only recently that the left have seized on this. As a result, platforms like Twitter have not only been banning people in droves, but employing censorship tactics like "shadow banning". With this authoritarianism, there's no way better ideas win, only ideas the left agree with. It's telling that the left have tried this avenue, in lieu of being unable to simply throw out the first amendment, to use platforms like this as a springboard to compelling the populace to disregard free speech and having thick skin.

 

Notably, with this implement, it hasn't made Twitter more tolerant, or a "free market" platform (free market in quotes because the left like to try and suggest censorship is a free market concept, the same exact methodology used when they hijack any institution) for better ideas to succeed. Instead, it's reinforced what those of us who've been in internet communities for decades have come to realize. It's resulted in media personas that are losing ground in their domination to employ tactics of harassing Twitter staff to "take down" accounts. It's resulted in accounts registered to "monitor" other accounts with the sole purpose of weeding out undesired opinions -- they concoct arbitrary science-looking algorithms like "Bot Sentinel", or "Racism Watch". Accounts that increase how "sensitive" they are, and when they weed out the type of targeted sensitivity, they derive new ones. The realization is that catering to snowflakeism only creates systems where people become less tolerant, and moreover, weaponize "being offended" as a means of taking down opposing views and people. It's an appetite that's never satiated. It's toxic. It creates way too much babysitting, way too much big brotherism. And we've seen distinct examples of that here. I've seen it happen countless times in the 25 years I've been online back in the old Newsgroups, BBS', Compuserve (pre-AOL), Arcadium, and so on.

 

Where the Republicans have failed is in two distinct areas. First, you have a class of Republicans that complain, but do absolutely nothing. They basically help the social media platform. Second, you have a class of Republicans that abandon limited government philosophies, suggesting the government force Twitter, on its own platform, to be unbiased. This is, by design, a zero sum game. The obvious solution is for Republican voices to abandon Twitter to a platform that doesn't censor people. Instead, many of them, like the Charlie Kirks, monetize outrage for the right, simply complaining, and making money on clickbait to galvanize people to their cause. Of course, this is a losing methodology given so many of his own supporters wind up banned for wrongthink. There's also a third area, that involves people like Andrew Torba, who created Gab. It's a platform with good intentions, free speech et al. Unfortunately, rather than taking advantage of where Twitter failed and promoting an inclusive free speech platform, he's used it, and his own account, as an Alex Jones conspiracy spewing platform. Because his message is clearly so extensively focused in its methodology of differentiation, it's destined to be a niche platform, and he can't fathom why people don't want to go and can't shake the "right wing platform" identity. A platform isn't supposed to be politically biased, genius.

 

So the question becomes, what would this Republican megadonor change? The only thing he could do is wipe out the censorship mentality and get back to the roots of what made Twitter grow, which was thick skin. But the expectations driven over the last 3 years is appeasing the left. We also know what going back to normalcy means. Initially, chaos. Then when people realize that attention seeking gets them nowhere, they finally settle down and people get back to finding other means of implementing their censorship fetishes.

Edited March 1, 2020 by Burnt Reynolds

[TBoneTX 45,550]

10 hours ago, Burnt Reynolds said:

First, you have a class of Republicans that complain, but do absolutely nothing. They basically help the social media platform. Second, you have a class of Republicans that abandon limited government philosophies, suggesting the government force Twitter, on its own platform, to be unbiased.

Buncha twits.