- cross-posted to:
- enoughmuskspam@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- enoughmuskspam@lemmy.world
It’s unlikely that Elon Musk has ever heard of Southport, far less visited it. He has five or six companies to run, after all, and has been busy this week sounding off about Venezuela, Kamala Harris, puberty blockers, and why the legacy media lie to you.
So it’s probable that some ugly riots in a seaside town somewhere in northwest England will not have registered with the strange genius who may well be the richest man in the world.
And it’s equally probable that, if you told Musk that he was in some way responsible for these riots, 5,000 miles away from the seven homes he owns/owned in California, he would scoff.
But that’s how it is. When Musk decided to splash out $44bn (£35bn) to buy what was then called Twitter, he took ultimate responsibility for the speech of 350 million-odd users of the platform. And Twitter – now called X – is where a foul virus spread in the wake of the horrendous stabbings of numerous children in Southport on Monday. That virus led to the rioting the very next day – and since. And Musk enabled it.
…
Musk, whatever else he is, is not a stupid man, so maybe one shouldn’t take him too literally when he proclaims Twitter to be a truth engine and the MSM a swill of lies. But I think it’s possible he is an unthinking and arrogant man who would simply shrug at what happened on his platform – and elsewhere – this week.
This is what happened: within hours of a local 17-year-old boy being arrested for the mass stabbings, untrue narratives started circulating on social media naming him as “Ali al-Shakati” – a Muslim migrant to the UK – alleging that he was on an MI6 watchlist, and that he was an asylum seeker who was known to the Liverpool mental health services.
None of this was true, but research by Dr Marc Owen Jones, an expert in digital authoritarianism, has traced how this kind of speculation rapidly notched up 27 million impressions on social media.
The self-proclaimed misogynist and alleged rapist Andrew Tate, who has nearly 10 million followers on X, posted a false image of the supposed attacker, claiming he was “straight off a boat” – even though by then the police had told us he had been born in Cardiff 17 years ago. But that, according to Tate, was a lie promoted by what he calls “the Matrix”.
One of the most prominent amplifiers of this untrue information was a shadowy organisation calling itself Channel3 Now. Quite who is behind this outfit is unclear. Investigative journalists soon found that it had started life as a place for Russian car rally videos. It may now be run from an address in Pakistan or the US. That’s the joy of Musk’s beloved “independent media” – you haven’t got a clue who half of the fabulists are.
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He also tried to permanently delete this image forever
I can’t blame him for that.
Interestingly I am having this pushed by Ground News as a “blindspot” article for the left:
All the outlets are Russian or Infowars:
This is the more blatant side of the Russian disinformation campaign to destabilise the UK.
Ground News is a bunch of bullshit where everyone who isn’t a foaming at the mouth fascist is somehow “left-leaning”.
Welcome to American politics. Where the right is an open facist and the left is “hey at least I’m not that openly facist guy.”
To attempt to be fair to it, I have seen “blindspots” for the right but, even then, they tend to be a lot more centrist media rather than anything I’d consider properly left wing.
But I think it’s possible he is an unthinking and arrogant man who would simply shrug at what happened on his platform
Dog dammit, liberal pundits, stop effing white-washing Musk and his beliefs. He is a fascist. Don’t make effing excuses for him when the guy is pining for a civil war.
Can we revoke his government contracts?
Are there any?
In the US, SpaceX has lots. Not sure about UK.
Government might be running some Twitter ads?
Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure NASA can’t afford to terminate those contracts. They’re incredibly reliant on SpaceX at this point.
Government might be running some Twitter ads?
Oh, almost definitely.
I had a look around and the best I could find was British Telecom in talks to use Starlink to connect remote communities. The initial Phase was a “government trial” in three areas. I’m not sure Starlink has many competitors in that field.
There are two things you need to know about Musk before we delve into the events of those two days. The first is that he is as close to a free-speech absolutist as it’s possible to find.
Lol. Lmao, even
If free speech only means saying the n word, then yes, this is correct.
I tend to assume that the accounts that spread the deliberately false rumor that led to this are Russian propaganda.
The account that was spreading the rumor looked to me more or less exactly like some that I think are clear Russian propaganda, and they got caught doing the same thing in the US (deliberately trying to bring anti-Muslim and Muslim demonstrators together so they would fight, in one case), and I would assume that for every time they get caught there are probably many many more where they didn’t.
