All the infighting has exposed the truth about Elon Musk’s dedication to free speech. He has deprived a gang of right-wingers their little privileges and badges entirely because they have a political opinion that differs from his.
Several conservative critics of billionaire Trump surrogate Elon Musk were stripped of their verification badges on X, Thursday after publicly challenging Musk’s stance on immigration.
Trump ally Laura Loomer, New York Young Republican Club president Gavin Wax, InfoWars host Owen Shroyer, and the pro-Trump ConservativePAC were all stripped of their verification badges after criticizing Musk’s controversial remarks about American workers and foreign H-1B visa holders.
Their crime? They were too anti-immigrant. They opposed the use of H1-B visas to permit foreign tech workers to live and work in the US — Musk wants to keep a ‘loophole’ to allow some brown people to work for his companies. Musk is now using his power to silence critics. Is anyone surprised? I’m not.
I’m on Bluesky, but I’m not going to be smug about it — BlueSky also has the danger of centralized administration. They just haven’t flexed yet.
Interesting, considering how much Shroyer’s boss, Alex Jones, has been gargling Elon’s balls for the last couple of years. I wonder if this will come up on Knowledge Fight?
X is currently sanitising the account of the terrorist who killed 12 people at a Christmas market in Germany. The guy was an ex muslim atheist Saudi who supported the right wing AfD, whom Musk recently endorsed. Now they removed his little blue mark, scrubbing his account of all his AfD support, trying to make it look like an islamist terrorist attack, just because he is a Saudi.
I look forward to the next step, where MAGA calls for the deportation of Musk.
I’m sorry, but how do you get to be an atheist AND a fascist? I know that people are irrational, but fascism and religion are historically joined at the hip!
Maybe I should just ask Dawkins or Harris.
Sorry, my last post was refrencing Giliell @ 9.
The art-school reject murdered the one hundred most prominent members of the Sturm-Abteilung when they became potential rivals.
At least the Muskrat does not have the power to kill people. BTW I was suspicious about his fascination for WWII Germany. I mean, there is fascination and there is fascination.
Maybe we can do to them what Stewie Griffin did to Pakistan and India – spread a rumor that the other side has been talking sh*t about them.
Bub bub but isn’t it too early? DementoDon only gets to start on Jan 20, right?
Don’t tell me the knives are coming out already… they really should show some restraint. And not to show themselves as the deranged monkeys which, y’know, they truly are.
I’d say “grab the popcorn” but I fear the spectacle is going to be too thoroughly disgusting to get any enjoyment out of it.
I also wonder, will the DD clown car get its full four years or will something happen? A betting pool comes to mind, or at least a bingo poster.
Don’t they PAY for those verified badges? Is part of the TOS that they can be stripped at any whim of the billionaire man-boy?
As Beginyahu would say, I wish great success to both sides!
This is why I think some kinds of organized severe criticism of Musk and Xitter instead of just leaving could be useful. Combined with no use of the platform that benefits Musk. The beast can be bled and shown to be a massive source of bias like anyone else.
I could be wrong and don’t condemn those who just want the platform abandoned though.
I am ALL IN FAVOR of deporting Musk…from Earth.
Load him on a rocket, launch it into space. When he radios to ask “where are you sending me, Mars?”
Reply: “No. Uranus”.
Snarki @12
I have absolutely no problem in sending him to Mars. Currently, there is no practical way to live there for any substantial period of time, and no way to get back to earth from there.
Hi PZ. If you’re going to be focusing mostly on Bluesky going forward, I was wondering if you’d be willing to enable the Bluesky/Mastodon bridge so those of us on Mastodon could still follow you. To do so, just follow @ap.brid.gy on Bluesky. You can turn the bridge off by unfollowing.
Twitter has become something of a cesspool. Full of far right haters, MAGA jingoism, treacly Christian memes, and anti vaxxers. I have recently been posting memes that promote wall of separation quotes, fact checking lies, and reminding the Christians of the commands of Jesus the Christians do not want to read. Sell all you have and give to the poor. And Acts 4 and 2. God commands Christians become communists. Uhmmmm, no, our nation was not founded on Christian principles like Acts 4 commands. Acts 4 and 2 seem to not be read from this nation’s pulpits. Twitter can be right fun if you approach it in the right way.
Jim Brady @13
By all means send him to Mars. Make sure to use the Mars Polar Lander software.
Meanwhile fellow MAGAt Vivek Ramaswamy blames ‘jocks vs nerds’ mentality for the lack of American engineers. Instead of the Republicans war on education, cutting funding to schools, forcing teachers to work part time at Walmart in order to keep their heads above water, and forcing creationism and god bothering into science curriculum.
I recall reading in his first term something about Trump management by conflict. This may be it: Does Trump’s ‘management by conflict’ equal chaos?. And this is a more current version of the theme: We were warned: First term aides told us about Trump’s governing style. I would say that he’s such a mess that it’s difficult to describe him as having a “style”. But, he certainly seems to enjoy pitting people against each other, even his allies.
@ ^ robro : I think Trump is a bully who like many other bullies is a sadist who likes to get other people hurt and control their fate forcing them to fight each other for his benefit and pleasure and having him decide their fate.
@ drksky : “Don’t they PAY for those verified badges? Is part of the TOS that they can be stripped at any whim of the billionaire man-boy?”
Yes, I’m pretty sure they do have to pay for those blue check mark verification-y thingies.
See :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_verification
&
So, yeah, seems to me they are literally being denied what they paid for. Refunds? Lawyer-time?
@ 12. Snarki, child of Loki
How about Venus? Closer and much less survivable! Nothing like quickly making sure..
Or we could adopt Pink Floyd’s suggestion and Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun maybe?
StevoR–
We could probably just manage a manned expedition to Mars with current technology and a lack of concern for the long-term health of the crew. But Musk wants a settlement, and for that the survival probability is about the same as for Venus :-)
“Little by little the night turns around
Counting the leaves which tremble at dawn
Lotuses lean on each other in yearning
Under the eaves the swallow is resting
Set the controls for the heart of the sun
Over the mountain watching the watcher
Breaking the darkness waking the grapevine
One inch of love is one inch of shadow
Love is the shadow that ripens the wine
Set the controls for the heart of the sun”
[chrislawson, UAVs are uncrewed aerial vehicles]