Elon's Cleanup

Elon is making waves at Twitter. Firings galore. With no other context, that might sound terrifying. In this case? He's simply cleaning house. To the (now ex) CEO & the UN-backed 'human rights' team: good riddance.

Cleaning House

I think we can all agree that human rights are inalienable. Where the difference lies is in the definition. 'Human rights' is one of those phrases that means different things to different people. To me, it means various personal and individual freedoms, namely those protected by the United States Constitution. To UN globalists, however, that phrase means ... well, not those things. I'm not going to go there. I'm not even going to mention the specific issues that this 'human rights' group was silent on. That would be a distraction here. Suffice it to say that globalism, and the broad policies that typically accompany it, is bad. Therefore, firing the team responsible for implementing a policy of a globalist organization, is a good thing.

For these reasons, as well as a generally favorable view of Musk (caveats below), I was half-heartedly considering re-joining Twitter. However, a lingering concern was still present: it is still proprietary spyware. I'll pass.

Even ignoring the class of software that Twitter is, bringing headcount down to ~30-50% (not sure on the exact count) of what it was gives me pause. On the one hand, a not insignifant number of employees in an organization like Twitter are (were?) dedicated to extremist political activism, like thought policing ('moderation', 'fact checking'). I've written on the practice of fact checking before:

>If you disagree, they eat you immediately, either through outright censorship (backed up by independent 'fact checkers' -- who are incidentally paid by the same people who cite them as 'trustworthy', kind of like a doctor speaking on behalf of a tobacco company boldly proclaiming the miraculous health benefits of smoking ...

Non-Player Characters, source of the above quote

On the other, that amount of firings still seems a bit too far. Code takes lots of talent and skill to maintain. On the other hand (I've run out of hands...), what if he is intentionally trying to bankrupt Twitter in an attempt to cleanse the world of the leftist hellscape that it is (was)? He is certainly causing a resurgence of interest in open protocols, like Activity Pub.

The Return

That is not all that gives me pause. Elon's later actions, or rather, inactions, are troubling: selective resinstatements. He is a self-proclaimed free speech absolutist, even reinstating some accounts:

President Trump

Jordan Peterson

The Babylon Bee

Project Veritas

et al

These resinstatements of admirable people and organizations is itself admirable. To be absolutely clear, the previous sentence was not sarcasm; that can be hard to convey simply via text. Nonetheless, there is one key persona non grata missing from this list: Alex Jones. (I am aware of the current drama regarding him. I do not know enough on that drama to speak on, but to be perfectly clear, I began drafting this article well before that surfaced.)

When the term 'absolutist' is used to describe yourself, if you make exceptions you are by definition not an absolutist. Yet this 'absolutist' tweets screenshots of a presentation deck highlighting how 'hate speech' interactions are down. What a joke; both the term and the implications behind such a tweet. 'Hate speech' is simply an unpopular opinion relabeled by leftist fascists (many people today consider anything even remotely right of far left ideology to be 'fascism', hence the intentionally redundant adjective -- don't want to be misunderstood: fascism is back today, and it is from the left) to bludgeon their opponents into silence.

But I digress.

Closing

Is he making marvellous improvements? Absolutely. Has he done enough? I think not. Elon, I implore you, please reinstate Mr. Jones. Else prove yourself to be a damned liar, and a hypocrite.

This essay came out much rantier than I intended. Oh well. I should finish up my technical drafts, all the political writing is putting me in a sour mood.