Elon Musk

I follow some of the news journalists on Twitter, especially the conservative ones. Fresh information about news often shows up on Twitter immediately when it happens, because people nearby are reporting it.
As an example, information about one of the food processing plants that burned down a while back was on Twitter immediately because people who lived there were posting pictures of what was happening, literally as soon as it caught on fire. It is faster than even internet news websites can post things.
If there is an active shooter, people on scene are reporting it.
I LOVE getting news that fast ! !

Another interesting thing that I like is that many law enforcement departments, as well as federal ones, have twitter pages, so there is news from that right away, too.
An example would be the police chatter from the Pelosi incident, where you can actually hear them saying that Pelosi reported the guy as a friend and his name was David.

The neighbor of Pelosi said that Pelosi security is tied into the PD, so if anything triggers the alarm, police swarm to the house right away, and they said that no alarms went off that night.
Still other people reported seeing Pelosi leaving the gay bar earlier that evening with a person (possibly the suspect?); so there is just a lot of good information to be found if you pick and choose who you follow on Twitter.

I could care less about celebrities and sports figures, but I do like reading about what is happening all over the world. Musk is talking about bringing back Vine, which is similar to Tic-Tok, but will be an American version, where people can post the short videos.
There is another application Musk is considering (I think from Japan?) that I read about yesterday, and forgot what it is, but it looks like it would be another good addition to Twitter. When I find it again, I will post what it is.

 

Business as usual then. Same thing, different owner.

 

He seems to have an excellent sense of humor. I look forward to reading his tweets. When he first took over, he had a picture of himself carrying in a sink, and posted “let this sink in”.
He set his title as “Chief Twit” at first, but has since changed it.
“Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator” is what his title shows now, and it has the cutest picture of a Little Elon with his toy telephone.

 

If you believe some of the articles on what's happening at Twitter...

A legacy manager (Yoel) is showing Musk where all the bodies are buried. The most important nugget is direct documented evidence that Twitter's legal counsel and the Board of Directors intentionally misled the court with false metrics during the takeover battle. Yoel is not doing this out of a sense of ethics or allegiance to Musk, he is fighting off the criticism of Musk putting him in the position of Twitter's Head of Safety and Integrity in spite of Yoel's long history of putting forth his hard-left positions and called Trump a Nazi.

Musk personally addressed the criticism of the appointment: We’ve all made some questionable tweets, me more than most, but I want to be clear that I support Yoel. My sense is that he has high integrity, and we are all entitled to our political beliefs.

Musk is also changing the way that users and publishers interact...for some reason his solution has drawn criticism. Here's an explanation from one article I read: Instead of having users clicking on headlines that lead them to frustrating paywalls and leaving the site without reading the article or buying a subscription, which on the Twitter platform often motivates users to unfollow the publisher’s account altogether, Musk wants to set up a micro-transaction economy wherein users would have the option to pay as little as ten cents to read a single article. These minuscule transactions might be conducted using DogeCoin, Musk's crypto-currency of choice. Publishers would get a small fee, possibly more traffic on their site in general, and users would get access to the desired content for a relatively small price. Musk believes this business model will transform how users and publishers interact and eventually spread to other platforms as well.

 

Elon Musk has made a success of just about everything he has done, it seems like. He was responsible for Paypal becoming such a huge success, and has gone on from there.
He has already talked about several ways of making Twitter a financial success, and I believe that he will accomplish that, too.

There is a program similar to the Chinese Tic-Tok app called Vine, and Elon wants to bring the Vine option back to Twitter, and maybe other places (I am not familiar with exactly how the app works).
He is changing the Twitter verification program to the $8 monthly payment, and available to anyone once they have verified that they are a human, not a bot, and are actually the person that they say that they are, and not an imposter (which is common on Twitter unverified people ).

There is also something that Musk calls “the everything app”, which will be based on another Asian app called “we chat “, which is apparently kind of an all-purpose social media app.
He is working on developing that and once it comes out, that will provide even more income; so Twitter is not as dependent on advertising income.

Some of the “woke” companies have already pulled (or threatening to) their ads from Twitter; but once conservative businesses, like My Pillow and Goya, are allowed to advertise, and people will support those businesses, this should resolve itself.
Conservative voices on Twitter were objecting to Elon keeping Yoel, because of his extreme dislike of President Trump; but in my opinion, it is no different to get rid of someone simply because they are a Trump supporter, or a Trump hater.

Yoel was doing what he was told to do before, and now that there is a new owner, he should be doing what he is told to do by that person. If he does not perform his job duties correctly, then he can be fired for good reason. If he can do his job as he is supposed to do it, and not let his personal feelings be involved, then he should keep his job.
Elon Musk has said that he believes that Yoel is a person of integrity, and I think that he should be given a chance.

 

PayPal is going "Woke." I don't know if Musk's fingerprints are still on it.

Here's a comment from another forum. I've read this elsewhere.

*********************************************************​

"The story was shocking: As PJM’s Rick Moran stated Saturday, “The financial services company PayPal announced a controversial policy to deduct up to $2,500 from the accounts of users who spread ‘misinformation.’” But as the news of this astonishing plan circulated far and wide, PayPal experienced a swift backlash in the form of a blizzard of account cancellations, and quickly backed down, claiming that the announcement went out “in error” and adding: “PayPal is not fining people for misinformation and this language was never intended to be inserted in our policy.” That’s terrific, or would be if it weren’t for the fact that PayPal’s current Acceptable Use Policy still threatens $2,500 fines per infraction for promoting “hate” and “intolerance” — language the Left regularly uses to characterize (and demonize) speech that is critical of its insane policies..."

*********************************************************​

There is no formal process to this...PayPal just steals $2,500 out of accounts. I read of some folks trying to cancel their accounts and take possession of their funds so that they are not at risk of capricious seizure, and PayPal is denying requests to cancel accounts.

Sorry for going off-topic if Musk is no longer involved.

 

I believe that Musk has been out of Paypal for quite a while now, and it also split with eBay a few years back. Paypal started not letting conservative companies (small businesses, etc) receive paypal payments several years ago also.
The GoFundMe website did pretty much the same thing, as we saw when the truckers went on strike and drove their trucks around in Canada, and GFM would not allow anyone to start a support account for the truckers.

Now, paypal added the policy to be able to fine people whom they believe are spreading misinformation. When it was announced on Twitter, people were cancelling their Paypal accounts like crazy.
Paypal was losing so much money that they then announced that it was a “mistake” and said they were not going to fine anyone.
Once all of the discussion died down, paypal quietly added the fines back into their policies.

Since people have their bank account linked with paypal, I wondered if they could just attach a person’s bank account and take the money out, or whether you have to actually have to have the money in your paypal account.
I seldom use mine anymore, but keep it for ebay just in case a seller only takes paypal as a payment.

 

After you've established a PayPal account, you can disconnect your bank account from it.