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Comment by endymi0n | Hacker News Reader

I‘ve been an Elon fanboy since pre-Falcon 1 times and all the time I could simply follow his first principles to the core, be it the switch to electric cars, flight control using a quorum cluster of non-space-rated processors or the viability of methane and stainless steel for Starship against all previous failures.

With Twitter, I‘ve lost that feeling and I don‘t know how it would be possible: Free speech, happy advertisers, satisfied governments globally, increasing or just persisting audience. There‘s just no way he will keep all those targets at the same time.

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> satisfied governments globally

This is the easy part if he really wants to choose the free speech absolutist route. Close the European offices (which will probably happen anyways due to mass firings), bank accounts and move it all to America or other friendly jurisdiction if needed for tax purposes. They can sue all they want in Europe but American courts won't enforce a judgement that isn't compatible with American law. European governments can decide to block Twitter but then they'll have a bunch of unhappy voters. But this is unlikely.

The world is a much larger and diverse place than just America and Europe

Not in terms of CPMs.

You're worried about Europe, but how is the US a friendly jurisdiction for free speech? The Biden Admin targeted specific users on Twitter, and insisted those users were banned:

https://reclaimthenet.org/biden-admin-alex-berenson-twitter-...

What if Musk's Twitter doesn't listen to those requests? Don't you think the DOJ would apply pressure to Google/Apple to ban Twitter from the App Store? What happened to Parler? You can cherry-pick users "instigating violence" on any platform, including Facebook and reddit. The difference with those platforms is they censor who the government wants censored. It will be interesting to see Musk navigate both corporate media hit pieces and all political forces aligned against him.

Parler is back in the play store.

Yes, left wing parties are not particularly keen on free speech, but the difference is that in the EU they've placed themselves in an unassailable dictatorship which had just announced it will censor content with a China style system in which bureaucrats sure in dedicated committees inside the organization. The USA has a long way to go to match even a fraction of that level of censorship.

>happy advertisers

Why would we want this? I don't see this kind of pro-advertiser slant anywhere else but here. Is it because of the google/facebook employee presence here?

It is because twitter needs to earn money and the way they earn money is through advertisers.

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