Some More News - SMN: The Talented Mr. Musk, Part 1: Free Speech

Episode Date: January 11, 2023

Hi. Elon Musk was forced to buy Twitter a few months ago. Despite his claims of being a "free speech absolutist," his actions since buying Twitter show that he's a liar and hypocrite who readily censors speech that doesn't personally benefit him. Please fill out our SURVEY: https://kastmedia.com/survey/ Support us on our PATREON: http://patreon.com/somemorenews Check out our MERCH STORE: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/somemorenews?ref_id=9949 SUBSCRIBE to SOME MORE NEWS: https://tinyurl.com/ybfx89rh   Subscribe to the Even More News and SMN audio podcasts here: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/some-more-news/id1364825229 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ebqegozpFt9hY2WJ7TDiA?si=5keGjCe5SxejFN1XkQlZ3w&dl_branch=1 Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/even-more-news  Follow us on social media: Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomeMoreNews Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SomeMoreNews/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SomeMoreNews/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@somemorenews  SOURCES: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vEOJuyqPYGb8baBTNv-_TpGUEWUKgyJMRpV2B1_PjAk/edit?usp=sharing If you're looking for an easier way to take supplements, Athletic Greens is giving you a FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D AND 5 free travel packs with your first purchase. Go to https://athleticgreens.com/MORENEWS. Stop throwing your money away. Cancel unwanted subscriptions - and manage your expenses the easy way - by going to https://RocketMoney.com/MORENEWS. Bombas makes the perfect items for staying comfy during winter - whether you're relaxing inside or getting active. Go to https://Bombas.com/morenews and use code "morenews" for twenty percent off your first purchase.Support the show!: http://patreon.com.com/somemorenewsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Oh, hello there. Welcome, hi. Did you have a nice holiday? Mine was fine. Saw some family, did gifts and such and so forth. Went out to eat, et cetera, and what have you. Only got in one fist fight, so not bad. See, I sorta maybe called the Cracker Barrel waiter

a real piece of work who just is a so-and-so and so on. And he hit me with a 19th century turnip pick. And so that's what this jar is all about. I have decided that for the new year, I will be less insulting to people and junk. That means no talking smack and or jive in both family restaurants and on this show. Katie bet me I couldn't do it.

So every time I say something mean about someone, I have to put a dollar in the jar and give it to her at the end of the week. Don't get excited. All right. This isn't a wacky sitcom premise. It's real life. Okay. So it's time to start our year with a video about. Oh. So it's time to start our year with a video about, huh, oh.

Elon Musk, free speech savior. Well, so it is a fun sitcom bit after all. I see that now. I'm just gonna put five in the jar preemptively and now we can begin. Does sarcasm count? Like if I call Musk, America's modern Einstein, but put a lot of stink on it, does that, I'm being told that would count.

Elon Musk, America's modern Einstein. Okay, four insults left, until I have to start adding more dollars. Because as you already suspected, we're not just talking about Elon Musk broadly as like a rich dipshit, three more insults, but specifically about his extremely boneheaded, two insults, acquisition of Twitter,

a website that Musk has famously been really bad at using on account of having all the charisma of a wet mop, one more insult, and the comedic sensibilities of a wet carcass. Okay, getting another fiver. Actually, you know what? Hang on. You know what?

Can someone just, we're just gonna keep a tally and we will settle up at the end. Now, you're probably wondering why we gave this video a really complimentary title towards Elon Musk. Well, that's so you can share this freely on Twitter without being banned, assuming sharing YouTube links is still allowed on there when this comes out. If so, you could probably even tweet the video

with something like, quote, "'Very nice episode about America's modern Einstein, "'Elon Musk, who single-handedly saved Twitter "'from pedophiles. "'Hashtag digital Jesus, hashtag pickle Rick, "'cry laugh emoji, cry laugh emoji, cry laugh emoji, cry laugh emoji. Also, you probably noticed that this is part one. That's because we're just, we're just trying to get as much as we can out about this guy so that we hopefully don't have to talk about him

in the future. Because honestly, I hate that I have to talk about Elon Musk at all so much. He is unremarkable and I hate that he has stolen our attention. Musk at all, so much. He is unremarkable, and I hate that he has stolen our attention. Just a real boring dildo he is, I do say. A stale piece of toast, dry dildo toast. And every day he tweets another boring, attention-seeking slice of trash that forces us to update our scripts about him. He's exhausting.

So hopefully these two videos will cover most of it. Anyway, stay tuned for part two. Get your watching eyes all lubed up. It's double stuff Musk. Both eyes get stuffed with Musk. So last time we checked in, Elon Musk was in a legal battle where he was being forced to buy Twitter,

a site he didn't want to buy despite acting like he really wanted to buy it. It was a $44 billion game of chicken he played with himself. And right at the end of Spooky's season, the Mustriant reluctantly completed his massive deal to purchase the social media site. It was, to say the least, way too much money to pay for Twitter,

which before the deal even closed was losing a lot of their more active users. At that time, Twitter had roughly 238 million daily active users. And sure, that's a lot of numbers, but for reference, Instagram has 500 million daily users and TikTok is nearing a billion. In 2021, Twitter made about 5 billion in annual revenue,

while Instagram made 26 billion. Despite what people on Twitter and the guy forced to buy it might think, Twitter is not the center of the universe. That's why stuff like Avatar 2 will kill it in the box office, despite what seems like very little online buzz, and why Morbius will not do that

despite being memed to death. It's actually kind of small compared to other social media sites. But to people like Musk, it probably felt bigger. And when we look at the political turmoil that surrounded it and that Donald Trump chap, you might recall, well, it's easy to think that Twitter is more popular than it is.

The reality is that most Americans don't care about Twitter, you might recall, well, it's easy to think that Twitter is more popular than it is. The reality is that most Americans don't care about Twitter, which quite frankly is good. That's excellent. Again, I don't expect everyone to realize that. But if I were, say, purchasing Twitter, I might want to check to see how valuable Twitter actually was before paying $44 billion for it. The entire rights to Star Wars was sold

for $40 billion less than that. And according to surveys, way more Americans have seen the original Star Wars than go on Twitter. But in fairness, and we're all about fairness, if you ask Musk, it's not about the money at all. The self-described free speech absolutist insists that owning Twitter, which now has 229 million daily users, is not about the cash

flow. My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization. But you've described yourself. I don't care about the economics at all. Instead, his focus is on what he calls free speech, saying it's the bedrock of a functioning democracy and Twitter is the digital town square. Well, I think it's very important for there to be an inclusive arena for free speech. See, you can't say Twitter isn't valuable. It holds a lot of value, just not financially speaking. Political discourse on the site gets amplified because it's often relayed by the mainstream media. And if you're an activist or journalist,

it was a really important tool to get news directly to the people. And of course, any artist who needs to promote their work or their patreon.com slash some more news finds a lot of value in Twitter. And to Musk, it was apparently important to make sure that such a hub stays true to the values of free speech.

Dude wouldn't shut up about being a free speech absolutist. And his main promise seemed to be that he would have zero exceptions when it came to protecting it, even for his biggest critics. For example, he promised not to ban an account that tracked his private jet, since that legally counted as free speech.

And boy, more about that later. Also, he was really obsessed with bots until he was suddenly not obsessed with them right when he took over and seems to only be concerned with bots when one of his Twitter polls doesn't go his way. So he got rid of the bots, but also there's all these bots and also he deleted that tweet. So maybe he remembered that he is supposed to have gotten rid of the bots. I think it might have to do with the fact that half of his followers appear to be bots.

And if he actually got rid of bots, people would notice that. Man, I wish I were a bot because I'm already very tired. And this is how we're starting 2023 then? Fun. Okay, anyway, on its face, free speech is a good thing to want to protect. If you didn't know that Musk was an egomaniacal

corporate wraith whose presence sucks the life out of any employee while squashing any dissent and criticism and busting unions, you might think his intentions here were noble. He was claiming that his purchase wasn't about making money, which is good because I really can't stress enough how bad of a purchase it is. Of course, if it wasn't about the money

and instead about the cause, then it's pretty odd he was fighting the purchase right up until being forced into it. It's also odd that in the immediate aftermath of his forced purchase, Elon seemed mainly concerned with all the money he just lost, to the point that he was willing to charge people money for more free speech and influence

and to destroy the so-called digital town square he claimed to support. Because here's some news, Elon Musk took on $13 billion in debt to purchase Twitter, a site that only makes 5 billion a year. What's worse is that unlike a company with physical assets, Twitter doesn't have much to offer lenders in terms of collateral.

You can't exactly sell off James Woods' bad tweets to the bank. Also, it's not exactly like social media sites have a long shelf life to begin with. So it is a huge financial risk, even if you bought it for a reasonable price, which Elon did not. This is all to say that it would be wise then

if you were in this position to ease into the acquisition, lube up a bit, perhaps learn how Twitter functions and why it does the things that it does. Except Musk did not do that and instead immediately fired the CEO, CFO and general counsel that worked at Twitter. Sorry, the first thing he did was carry a sink into the building because of a meme or something.

Then he fired all the higher up people who could possibly know how to actually run the company that he didn't want to buy. Cool sink stunt, bro. Very relatable, that Elon. Did you make an assistant run to Home Depot and buy a sink for that totally cool meme you did? Did you have them pick up a single plank of wood while they were there too? What did you do with it afterwards? Just dump it in the alleyway? Is it still there? Do you think that's cool of you?

Is it sitting underneath your framed tweet about buying Coca-Cola and putting the cocaine back in? Yes, like all people aching for love, Elon can't shut up about his well-liked tweet. That is literally the most popular tweet of any living human. Incidentally, the most popular tweet with nearly double the likes of Elon's

is from Chadwick Boseman's family announcing his passing. So any living human is, well, it's still inaccurate since his family wrote the tweet and maybe it's not a lie, but it is definitely dishonest. If you wanna check out a lie from Elon, maybe read him claiming there's no evidence his father had any connection to an emerald mine and then check out this now scrubbed

from the internet interview from 2014 where Musk himself literally talks about his father's share in an emerald mine and then check out this now scrubbed from the internet interview from 2014 where Musk himself literally talks about his father's share in an emerald mine. Anyway, at this sync point, we could already tell who this dishonest person desperate for admiration was trying to court with this takeover. Which you can sum up with the phrase, sad reply guys. The sync bit is a shout out to all of his weird fans

and bots replying to him with this specific pun. Tons of them below every one of his tweets. It's like a dad pun, which is I guess funny because it's bad and he seems like not a very good dad. But because, and more on this later, Elon doesn't really seem to have a good sense of humor, it's this surreal combination of jokes you'd see on the side of coffee mugs

mixed with horrendous transphobia and conspiracy mongering. Like if Charlie Manson made motivational break room posters. Anywho, at this point, Musco began carrying himself like the new teacher who tells his class to throw out their textbooks, a revolutionary figure looking to shake up the old system

with some kind of, you'd assume, plan. He declared comedy to be legal again, as if I guess it wasn't before, or maybe he just didn't like that the jokes were about him. And all of his fans rejoiced that he was going to make Twitter freer than ever. The mostest, freest speech. All holes filled with hot, thick speech.

But going back to that teacher analogy, Elon didn't just throw out the textbooks. He also tossed the desks and class equipment and even most of the students because the next thing Musk did was fire roughly half of all Twitter employees. Boy, he must certainly have a plan in motion considering how bold these moves are, right?

We'll get to that. But to continue the timeline on the business side, Elon made it painfully clear that he thought that the old Twitter was some kind of coddling nanny state that didn't work their employees hard enough. Nevermind that the company was, before he came along, more or less doing fine as a business.

Before the takeover, Twitter had about 600 million in net debt, but after the acquisition, it was now facing a $13 billion tab. And so Musk was, among other things, cutting jobs to pay for this ridiculous debt that he himself had created. Again, can't stress enough how bad of a business strategy this is. It's like if you purchased a $12 million Rolls Royce to become an Uber driver. Not to mention that he really seemed to have an immediate adversarial relationship and position to the very people he should have been consulting. And instead of getting to know the inner workings

of the company, Musk began claiming very wrong things about the website that several engineers then had to publicly correct him on. And so Elon did what any genius tech pioneer who was totally into free speech would do and fired those people who corrected him about the thing he knew nothing about. This would become a running gag of Elon's rule in that he had clearly learned a few buzzwords, but simply knew nothing about the technical side of the website, despite really wanting us to think

that he did. I mean, I think, frankly, if you want to have a really high velocity of features, I think that we'll just need to do a total rewrite of the whole thing. You know. Wait, seriously, a total rewrite. That's your prediction for velocity? Yeah. Well, when you say a total rewrite,

do you mean starting with the skeleton or a bunch of engineers sit down with a whiteboard and say, what is Twitter? Revolutionary form. I mean, I just mean like literally like this, like you could either try to amend the crazy stack that exists or rewrite it. When you say crazy stack, what do rewrite it. When you, when you say, when you say crazy stack, what do you mean? Like break it down.

Have you seen, have you seen Georgia's like diagram? No, no, no. I mean like, what do you mean? No,

no, seriously. Come on, buddy. Come on. Who are you? What do you mean? Who am I? Take it, take me from top to bottom. buddy. Come on. Who are you? What do you mean, who am I?

Take me from top to bottom. What does the stack look like right now? What's so crazy about it? What's so abnormal about this stack versus every other large-scale system on the planet, buddy? Come on. Give it to me. All right, so first off. Amazing.

Wow, you're a jackass. Okay. Oof. Amazing. Wow. You're a jackass. Okay. Oof. To answer Musk's question, that jackass was a software performance engineer at Netflix who worked for eight years at, um, it says here, twitter.com, a site that Elon loves. So having successfully alienated and demoralized everyone working for him, Elon's next big move was to put out a mass email

telling the remaining staff that Twitter was shifting to an engineer-driven operation, and he would expect everyone to be, quote, working long hours at high intensity. It was an ultimatum, one where employees could click a button to either agree to these, quote, hardcore conditions,

or leave the company with severance pay, which ex-employees have apparently still heard nothing about litigation pending, one assumes. And boy, people did not click that button that he thought that they would click. After heroically drawing this line in the sand, at least 1,200 employees quit and Twitter was forced to close its offices

in order to get their shit together. Wow, these folks must really be a bunch of lib cucks who hate Elon for no good reason. Or maybe they're a bunch of lazy millennials who don't wanna work for a living. Or maybe it's a third thing. But the result of such a decrease of staff, of course, led to some very serious security concerns.

Twitter, a website that keeps a lot of personal information was suddenly very vulnerable. It also created a lot of questions about regulatory compliance. You see, it turns out that all those people that Twitter employed were kind of, perhaps, maybe sort of there for a reason. For the same reason you can't just go around

disconnecting servers, you shouldn't just fire people blindly. Fun fact, at the same time when he tweeted about how Twitter could still work if he unplugged stuff, there was a massive spike in Twitter outages. Also, when you dump a lot of your security and compliance people, it opens you up to a bunch of fines and lawsuits.

That's on top of the fines and lawsuits Twitter already dealt with when it had its full staff. Not to mention that you can't just fire your top executives without a generous payout, which Twitter is required to pay them. So just to recap, Musk is now billions in debt, has absolutely no idea what he's doing. He is fired and alienated his own employees.

And because of his firings and staff cuts, he's opened Twitter up to even more debt and even more lawsuits. Now, what can he do to reverse this situation? Well, we'll find out after these ads. Mm, the first ads of 2023. They taste great. Hi, it's Katie.

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by going to rocketmoney.com slash more news. That to rocketmoney.com slash more news. That's rocketmoney.com slash more news. In fact, third time, rocketmoney.com slash more news. Those didn't taste great at all, but chewy, except for whatever edible product we were promoting. Mmm, delicious. That one is. So if you recall before we were so rudely interrupted by me, So if you recall, before we were so rudely interrupted by me, we were asking what Elon Musk's big plan was to save Twitter, a website that wasn't broken until he broke it. Still, there was room for improvement, right?

So what was the plan, Muskie? Lay it on us. God, yes, that'll help. Elon held a Twitter poll and used the results as an excuse to reinstate Donald looking pretty old there, bud, Trump. A thing he probably already planned on doing because it would generate traffic, as well as every other prominently banned figure on the site. People known for everything from anti-Semitism to COVID disinformation were allowed back on. Flat out Nazis like Richard Spencer and Andrew Anglin

had their accounts restored, as did a lot of prominent QAnon freaks and of course, libs of TikTok, an account run by a fanatic that's solely devoted to harassing LGBTQ people, who she's referred to as poisonous and cockroaches. This sudden change in policy, along with all the firings, created a mass exodus of advertisers.

Major brands are now very nervous about associating with a website with such an unsure future. And according to Twitter's own documents from 2021, ads make up about 89% of their revenue. But it wasn't about the money, remember? It's about free speech. Elon should have expected this, right? Except internally, Elon was practically begging

these advertisers to stay, promising that Twitter wouldn't devolve into a quote, free-for-all wasteland. Externally, Musk blamed this on activist groups, pressuring advertisers to leave and threatened to name and shame the advertisers who were backing out. And by name and shame, I guess he means offering advertisers incredible discounts and matching their spending in order to desperately keep them on the site, which again is what was happening behind the scenes. Also, quite hilariously, Trump wasn't coming back.

Truth Social has been very, very powerful, very, very strong, and I'll be staying there, but I hear we're getting a big vote to also go back on Twitter. I don't see it because I don't see any reason for it. Seriously, you look tired, man. So at this point, it's worth noting the extreme difference between what Twitter and Musk were claiming

and what was actually going on. Because while Elon claimed that this was all about free speech, he suddenly became extremely concerned about making sure that the site was well-moderated so it could make a profit. And he did this by making claims that were, as far as anyone can tell, untrue. For example, Twitter safety recently boasted, using this MythBusters-ass graph, that child sexual exploitation was down on the site, which unhelpful graph aside would be a great thing. Meanwhile, however, people couldn't help but notice

that Musk had disbanded Twitter's entire trust and safety council, the group specifically in charge of tracking child exploitation. Musk also tweeted another super scientific graph saying that hate speech was down on the site, but he gave no real data on the matter. Just this graph that he super swears is real. This of course, once again,

goes directly against the news that the layoffs have basically pulverized Twitter's moderation team, forcing them to lean on automation. The result, as discovered by external researchers, is a rise in hate speech, not a decline. According to one study, looking at the first few weeks after Musk's takeover, racial slurs were three times higher

than average, anti-trans slurs were up 53%, and slurs against gay men were up 39%. And like, no shit. That's what happens when you say you're going to unban everyone who got banned for hate speech and then fire your mods. There's basically no humans to reach out to in terms of moderation or even public relations anymore, aside from Musk himself.

You don't even have to trust the liberal news studies to think logically about the outcome of what Musk did. And so, along with advertisers, Twitter is now hemorrhaging users. By one forecast, they are set to lose 32 million users in the next two years, along with pretty much all of their revenue. Twitter has now stopped paying rent for its offices

and is considering pulling their severance from fired employees, which would no doubt create a cascade of lawsuits. Those offices, which people are now required to work from, despite him also cutting commuter benefits, now also smell like shit, by the way, because Musk fired the janitorial staff and employees are having to bring

their own toilet paper to work. There's a constant outage problem as Musk keeps trying to fix, big quotes, the site. Meanwhile, in order to try and even bigger quotes, save the site, Elon has sold off a bunch of Tesla stock multiple times. And in fact, because of this weird focus on Twitter, Tesla stock has plummeted.

And I mean, plummeted. Elon Musk, it seems, is no longer the richest person in the world. And in fact, has broken records for the most net worth lost in a short amount of time. All because of this seemingly squirrel shit purchase of a website for way more money than it's worth.

It appears that the teacher that told everyone to throw out their textbooks is now desperately digging them out of the trash and living in his car. And of course, this all led to Musk holding a Twitter poll asking people if he should step down and the poll not going in his car. And of course, this all led to Musk holding a Twitter poll, asking people if he should step down and the poll not going in his favor. And while that seems like a big deal, he was saying he would find a new CEO long before this poll came out. It's a PR tactic he has used in the past. And frankly, he will still own Twitter regardless of who is the face of it. And Lord knows if he'll actually step down because he constantly changes his mind.

In fact, the tweet where he said that is now long deleted. Much like $200 billion of his net worth. So at this point, how was Musk going to save Twitter? What exactly was the next step here? What bold ideas, I assume free speech themed, would he whip out? Remember, the financial failure of Twitter is secondary for Musk, because according to him,

this is all about preserving free speech and expanding human consciousness by making people pay for it. Because despite being a vocal advocate for it, he really, really appeared to have no idea what free speech actually is. And this is where we talk about the $8 blue checkmark. Now, for the statistically most of you who don't use Twitter,

I want to quickly explain what the old Twitter checkmark verification system was. Basically, if you were a member of a specific industry, you could submit your ID along with other verification requirements in order to get a little blue icon next to your name that would signify that you are, in fact, who you claim to be. That's it. It was a way to distinguish a parody or fake account

from a real person. And this was available specifically to anyone in the government, corporate, news, entertainment, sports, or political activism circles. For example, I have a blue check mark because I worked at an internet comedy site for years. I think it was College Humor? It doesn't matter, they're all dead.

The point is that the blue checkmark was basically just a way to verify your identity as someone who was an expert in your field or had some relevance or notability. Having one meant that people could filter your tweets over others, and so there was an element of preferential treatment. But at least that preferential treatment was designed

to be around boosting people who were confirmed to be who they say they are. Still not perfect. And in fact, the boosting is actually hearsay and unnecessary. At its core, it shouldn't function as an algorithm amplifier or dampener, but rather simply prove

that a real person is behind the account. And if I were, say, a free speech absolutist, perhaps that blue check mark verification could have been expanded to everyone willing to prove their identity and not just the so-called notable people. But that's not quite what Elon did. See, because having a blue checkmark made

you more visible, a pocket of Twitter started making it out to be an elite class, often associated with the left. It became a weird insular right-wing insult like snowflake or cuck that was more confusing than offensive. Because very often, the people shaking their fist at blue check marks were people who also had blue check marks. Like for comparison, imagine if Republicans started talking about the elite leftists and their driver's licenses as if that was some kind of political status symbol.

That's what we're dealing with here. It was for the most part bizarre and kind of sad. The people whining about this so-called leftist elite seemed to fundamentally misunderstand how Twitter verification worked. Because again, the blue check marks were just a utility to prevent legal issues. They weren't that hard to obtain.

And while there are rumors slash conspiracies that some people who didn't deserve them paid tens of thousands of dollars to secretly obtain a check mark from Twitter employees. Rumors that Elon seems to believe and or confirm. You'd think he'd show an ounce of evidence about that. But the point is anyone who treated these blue check marks like a special status symbol were generally regarded as silly people. Easy for you to say, you blue check mark elite. So imagine how weird it was

when one of Elon Musk's first orders of business, his big plan on how to make money at Twitter was to sell subscriptions to blue check marks for $8 as part of Twitter blue without verifying anyone's actual identity. It was one of the more confusing moments on the internet as of recent, because going back to the driver's license analogy,

this would be very similar to if the DMV suddenly sold licenses to anyone, regardless of whether or not they could drive. Elon had apparently bought into the idea that the check mark was an elite status symbol, and without thinking about why they exist in the first place, thought it was a good idea to make the identity verification system available

to anyone for a price because free speech to Elon was apparently paying money to have your tweets visibility boosted. Again, it was very confusing. As the long Musk announced this decision by saying exact quote, "'Twitter's current lords and peasants system for who has or doesn't have a blue check mark is bullshit.

Power to the people, blue for $8 a month.'" The complete detachment from logic is a lot to wrap your head around. So it's not a lords and peasants system when you literally reward people with money. On top of this, $8 Blue was being pushed on Twitter's app as a way to be just like the celebrities, also known as the lords that Musk seemed to be fighting

so hard to defy. Again, it's this constant battle between what Elon claimed he was doing and what Twitter was actually doing. And in theory, I have no issue with Twitter blue. Longer videos, an edit button, folders for bookmarks, various extras to the UI that aren't necessary to enjoy the site, but are good things to have.

Bonus features for a subscription service. But when you tie that to identification, money, and power in the town square, well that's when you tie that to identification, money, and power in the town square, well, that's when you lose me. And when it makes me think you don't care about free speech, Elon has said several times that if you pay $8 a month, your tweets will be boosted and your blocks and mutes will affect the algorithm and you will be boosted in search and replies.

In other words, the free speech town square fostering dialogue will cost you. Anyway, once this $8 check mark rolled out, almost immediately the system broke down. Countless parody accounts with verification tags popped up, making it really hard for people to tell who was actually who they claimed to be. Hilariously, several major corporations lost billions

as randos imitated them and sunk their stock prices. World's smallest violin there. But yeah, this obviously bad idea turned out to be obviously bad. And so in just a few days after his brilliant plan, Musk very quickly removed the $8 check mark, but not before making an embarrassing $488,000 from it, and not before setting the scene

for how Twitter would be run from then on. Because during this glorious few days of Twitter blue, a whole lot of people began imitating Musk himself to point out how bad letting anyone have a check mark was. In response, Musk hilariously and frantically created a new rule specifically saying that he would ban anyone impersonating a famous person without properly labeling themselves as a parody. It appeared that comedy was legal and free speech was back on Twitter again, so long as you paid money and didn't make fun of Elon Musk specifically.

Eventually, he did re-release the service, finally landing on a three-tiered verification system that would require all accounts to be verified along with paying $8. In other words, just the verification process that existed before he took over, but now it costs money. Also, square affiliation badges the verification process that existed before he took over. But now it costs money.

Also, square affiliation badges for select companies for some reason? Which companies get that? Also, why? Also, I continue to be tired. And as I mentioned, he then added that Twitter blue users, but not legacy blue check marks, will have the power to have their muting and blocking affect the visibility of people for everyone.

Essentially, that gives the people who pay for it the power to dictate what everyone else can see on the site. Also known as free speech, according to Elon Musk, a man who hates censorship, creating a system that allows the paying customers to censor anyone for everyone. Similarly, he is now saying that only people who pay for the check marks will be allowed to vote in polls.

You know, like a real super good democracy would function. What's a poll tax? Should I Google poll tax? This was floated right after everyone voted for him to step down by the way. Because again, the very transparent pattern that was forming was that all of his sudden new rules were clearly made to specifically help his personal account. Because here's some news. Elon Musk didn't actually care about free speech at all. In fact, it's very clear that his plan was always to pull a complete 180 and start acting like Daenerys

at the end of Game of Thrones. And just like that ending, this seems to be poorly written and boring. This is what we'll dig into next. The realization that what Elon Musk defined as free speech was basically just a cry baby's attempt to make everyone love him and stop making fun of him. He didn't like the rules until they affected him,

and now nom nom nom nom nom, give me them rules. Anyway, it's gonna be a lot of fun, which is why you should sit through these ads, despite how the ads taste. I'm sorry about the taste. Boy, I sure love the winter. Every year, me and my family sit around and watch the holiday classic about the snowman before going outside and building our own snowmen. Sometimes 40, even 60 snowmen we build. It gets very cold. Luckily, I got my Bombas. Winter is simply better with Bombas. They have socks, underwear, and t-shirts that are as warm and soft as my heart. Whenever I watch that snowman film, Michael Fassbender is incredible in it.

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Okay, we got through those ads together as a family. And we were just about to discuss how Musk, despite talking a big game, almost immediately became mad with power as the new CEO of Twitter. He started implementing rules that were either only beneficial to him and other rich people, or just downright confusing. He's toying with extending tweet lengths to thousands of characters, and has even proposed putting the entire site behind a paywall. The UI's been redesigned and now looks like shit. He briefly said he was banning Twitter users from posting links to their other social media accounts before everyone pointed out how silly that was. It was

something so bizarrely and arbitrarily oppressive that it seems designed by someone who doesn't understand social media and designed to make Twitter fail as a site. Is he worried about people leaving Twitter and thinks this would somehow stop them? Is this just about how mad he is that Ken Klippenstein keeps linking his sub stack? Probably.

Is that why he wants to buy sub stack? Probably. And of course, like a lot of his new decisions, you can easily find a previous tweet of Musk supporting the exact opposite. Because in terms of free speech, it seems that Musk is not a fan after all. And from the start has decided to moderate Twitter solely based on his own personal feelings.

For example, despite unbanning pretty much everyone, Elon refused to unban Alex Jones because he was personally bothered by what Jones represented. He doesn't like people lying and using the death of children for their purposes, as he himself held his dying child and felt their last heartbeat. Incidentally, according to Musk's first wife, this was a lie. Now, while I don't disagree with Musk not letting Jones back on Twitter, it very clearly shows that Musk isn't moderating

based on free speech absolutism. As he himself said, in conflict with what he said other times, freedom of speech does not equal freedom of reach. Hey, remember that account that tracked Elon Musk's jet from before? Well, you probably already know that Musk eventually made up an excuse to ban that account,

completely redefining the term doxing in order to justify the suspension that he swore he wouldn't do. For context, in the past, Musk actually offered that account money to stop tracking his jet and carbon emissions. It's extremely obvious that account bothered him for a long time. And I'm almost certain that Musk was looking

for a reason to ban him the moment he took over. And Musk got his excuse in mid-December when he tweeted that a stalker had targeted a car with his kid inside of it. He used this event to go full Reddit and post a stranger's face and license plate and decide that any account tracking flight information should be banned.

So sorry to the Santa tracker, you're banned. And like sure, even though flight info is public information, I do get why a social media website might ban such a thing as part of a consistent moderation policy. Except for Musk, this only happened because he was personally affected. It's not a consistent policy or an empathetic policy

that takes users' experiences into account. It's just his personal preference. And in fact, there was no evidence at the time showing that this car incident had anything to do with the account tweeting his flight information, nor was a police report filed about the incident. It later came out that the event was nowhere near an airport and might have been the fault

of one of Musk's security officers who allegedly hit a guy with their car, otherwise known as Tesla-ing somebody. In other words, he just lied to justify banning an account that he didn't like, and then suspended any reporter who started asking questions about it. Hey, you know what did have a police report filed about it? There will be classes tomorrow at Francis Parker School in Lincoln Park after a bomb threat cut

classes short today. Security at the school had already been increased after a right-wing activist group secretly recorded a dean at the school had already been increased after a right-wing activist group secretly recorded a dean at the school discussing elements of sex education classes taught at the school. That's the story, also from mid-December, of a private school in Chicago receiving bomb threats after Project Veritas released a heavily edited, one could say bullshit, video about their sex education program. If you don't know Project Veritas, I'm not about to explain it here. I'll explain it elsewhere in the past.

In short, they're a very scummy group who constantly posts misleading partisan propaganda and as a result have been sued into the ground and were banned from Twitter for releasing private information in the past. But they are now back on Twitter thanks to Elon and drumming up harassment campaigns aimed at LGBTQ people and schools.

Does this not count toward Elon Musk's sudden concern toward doxing or endangering people? Does libs of TikTok, another person that Elon unbanned, not also post real-time assassination coordinates about drag events? How is this tweet of theirs targeting a drag show with the exact date and address different from an account showing where a rich guy's jet is?

What about this tweet showing that Elon Musk is at the World Cup in real time, his exact location? This is all public information, mind you. The only difference is that one of them targets a bunch of people and the other targets Elon Musk specifically and in a way that he doesn't like. Musk would go on to act like he's pro-democracy by holding a vote about whether or not

he should unban the private jet account, or rather just about how long it should stay banned for. Wasn't even a, did I mistakenly ban them poll. Very sneaky guy, this Musk, it should stay banned for. Wasn't even a, did I mistakenly ban them poll. Very sneaky guy, this Musk, who would go on to declare a do-over when the vote didn't go in his favor. He then held a second poll that once again,

did not go in his favor. Also the first poll, which had an unbanned now as an option, only lasted a few hours. His second poll, which also had a now option, didn't close for 24 hours. So maybe now wasn't actually an option? Sneaky guy, that Musk, who then announced that he would unban the account before not doing that.

That said, you can now follow a new account that tracks his jet with a 24 hour delay, which I'm sure Musk will find a reason to ban down the line. And in fact, doesn't show up in searches. Hey, isn't that a shadow ban? The thing Elon Musk said he was going to expose and fix once he took over and then said he would still do it, but his way is good actually, and it costs $8. And of course, Libs of TikTok is still doing fine

because Musk isn't bothered about trans people being targeted, but is bothered by his rich guy plane being tracked. Also, you may have noticed that the aforementioned poll refers to multiple accounts that he claimed doxxed him. That's because Elon Musk also temporarily banned a bunch of reporters for literally just reporting on the story.

So to recap for just a moment, free speech and comedy are back on Elon Musk's Twitter, provided that you pay a subscription fee and then don't parody Musk himself, or tweet about public information about Elon's jet, or tweet about other social media sites you're on or cover any news stories that Elon Musk doesn't like or are in any way a left-wing activist apparently because along with allowing a bunch of right-wing hate

and disinformation accounts back on the site, Twitter has been quietly banning accounts that coincidentally used to fire back at fascists. It's weird. Some apparently banned via direct Musk order. It seems like people didn't have a problem with content moderation. They just wanted one extremely insecure

and impulsive rich guy to do it instead of a bunch of people who put thought into it and talk to experts and stuff. Seems like the only free speech that is back on Twitter is exclusive to anything that mocks the disenfranchised or LGBTQ communities that are actually targeted in real life. So what I sure feel like we've established here

is that along with being a lot of things, Elon Musk is a hypocrite and a liar. He claims that this was about, it was about free speech absolutism, while cracking down on free speech just as much, if not more than Twitter did before him. And this biggest difference is that new Twitter seems almost designed to favor rich people and bullies.

Tracking a rich person's jet, well, that's out. Mocking or targeting trans people, that's totally fine. Wanna have your opinion matter? Pay the rich guy. Are you a journalist or expert? Well, that makes you an elitist. And what makes Musk a double hypocrite is that while he was making these changes,

it was the same time that he was boosting the so-called Twitter files. And oh boy, we are going to get into those in the second video. Aren't you excited? No, please stop. I will not stop because neither will Elon. He's like a self-important cracker barrel waiter

lording over his table section. And to be fair and balanced, there are, I'm sure, some positive things that he will do with Twitter. Encrypting DMs, possible video monetization, just sort of basic stuff that's overshadowed by all of his other worse ideas that seem to come exclusively

from other rich dweebs and reactionaries. He's so very obviously a man who just hated that he was made fun of and had to follow a few rules on Twitter and took over under this fake concern for free speech. He couldn't effectively shape the discourse and the direction he thinks things should go, which we will get into next time.

So he made a joke about buying the discourse machine and then was forced to do that. And it doesn't matter how much you point this out or show the hypocrisy, because this is what he and his fans actually wanted. Not a free speech absolutist haven, but for Twitter to be reshaped to reward their behavior. And if you've bought into what he's saying about old Twitter being some dystopian anti-free speech

regime, you might accidentally think that this is a good thing, that the ends justify the means. After all, according to the Twitter files, it's better to have a single rich man and contractor for the Pentagon moderating free speech than a council of people consulting with the FBI, right? But that's what we're gonna get into for part two. The idea that before Musk, Twitter was some kind of left-wing favoring 1984 Hitlerberg that silenced poor conservative voices. We're also going to ask what the Twitter files actually say

and who Elon Musk really is, who his pals are, and most importantly, why did he really buy Twitter? Was it just out of ego? Was it a mistake? Maybe he had a good reason after all. Am I going to pay Katie all of the money I owe her for the insult jar? Ooh, the cliffhanger of it all! Ugh, hell yeah. New Year's.

Whoa, hey. Are you okay? Ugh, I'm wiped. Chugged an entire bottle of Goldschlager right when the ball dropped. Are you talking about New Year's? Katie, that was like ten days ago. No shit. Well, not my longest bender, but close. Hey, did I make any, like, fun bets with you over the last week that I should know about? Oh. No. Okay, I guess that answers the insult jar cliffhanger, but still, lots of questions to answer about Musk in the next video. You mean how he clearly bought Twitter out of impulse and ego and then couldn't back out of it and is now desperately trying to justify his purchase by pretending that old Twitter was bad for free speech?

Yes, that's one way to interpret it, but perhaps in part two we'll learn something even more revealing. Are you sure? Maybe it's just like the Twitter files where when you actually look through them it's just really uneventful and shows that- Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Can you stop stepping on my cliffhanger? Wow, you sent me a lot of text messages last week. Banned from Cracker Barrel in Tears RN.

That's... Forget all that. That was a joke. Let's just do the credits. All my texts are jokes. The ones that say, I'm crying, and the ones that say, please respond. Your lack of response is making me sadder and crying harder. I would never, uh, I would not, I'm not gonna cry after this, and I'm not starting to now. Bye! Thanks for watching the video, and make sure, make sure to like and subscribe,

and leave a comment that's nice, please. And check out our Patreon.com slash SomeMoreNews and our podcast called Even More News, where all the podcasts are, including this podcast, which is a YouTube show. You watched it. You're watching it now. But you can listen to it as a podcast instead

of what you just did, which is watch it on YouTube. And you know what? We got merch with, you know, there's stuff on it. And I was crying. So that's brutal honesty for you. Some vulnerability.