The Ballad of Twitter and that Billionaire Bumpkin, Elon Musk

Musk issues ultimatum to staff:
Commit to ‘hardcore’ Twitter or take severance

Twitter is shifting to an engineer-driven operation — one that “will need to be extremely hardcore”
going forward, according to the midnight email, which was obtained by The Washington Post.
Employees were asked to click an icon and respond by Thursday if they wanted to stay.

“This will mean working long hours at high intensity,” he said. “Only exceptional performance
will constitute a passing grade.”

By mid-Wednesday, members of Twitter’s Trust and Safety team — who are responsible for keeping
hate speech and misinformation off the site — were discussing a mass resignation, according to
three current employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

How to download your Twitter archive

After a mass exodus of “critical” workers at Twitter, raising fears that the site might not continue to operate reliably, some users might be thinking it’s a good time to preserve years of tweets and other data.

Twitter provides a method to download your data that is, in theory, not difficult. It depends on the service functioning, and as of Friday, there were already visible cracks in the infrastructure.

But if all goes well, here’s how you can download your data from Twitter, including your tweets, attached photos and videos, direct messages, likes, lists and Moments.

On Desktop

While logged into your account, Click “More” in the left column. Then select “Settings and Support,” then “Settings and privacy.”

Under “Your account,” select “Download an archive of your data.”

You will have to input your Twitter password, and it will then email or text you a verification code that also needs to be entered. As of Friday, there were widespread reports of the text option not working, but the email option appeared to work.

After submitting your password and the verification code, hit the big, blue button that says “Request archive.”

Once you’ve requested your data, it’s time to sit back and hope. Twitter says “it can take 24 hours or longer for your data to be ready,” but that’s in the best of times. Good luck.

On iOS and Android

Tap on your profile photo in the top-left corner, scroll down to “Settings and Support,” and then select “Settings and privacy.” Tap on “Your account,” then “Download an archive of your data.” You will be asked to sign into Twitter. Then follow the steps from above.

In that case, the problem would be that a person was preaching at all, not the content of what he was preaching. If I owned a restaurant and people were having ordinary conversations with each other at reasonable volume levels, I would not tell the people I disagreed with that they had to stop talking.

While it is not hilarious for those impacted, it is amusing that Musk is firing anyone who disagrees with him in any way. The slightest criticism results in termination. We could ask Twitter to comment on this policy, but all their public relations people have been laid off.

Elon Musk has said he will not reinstate the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on Twitter, saying he has “no mercy” for people who capitalize on the deaths of children for personal fame.

Brandon9000 wrote:

In that case, the problem would be that a person was preaching at all, not the content of what he was preaching. If I owned a restaurant and people were having ordinary conversations with each other at reasonable volume levels, I would not tell the people I disagreed with that they had to stop talking.

So, you don't believe in unfettered free speech, you have rules, just like Twitter. On Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc people get to have ordinary conversations with each other at reasonable volume levels. When you start doing things that disturb their customers (advertisers), then they act. That's what private companies do.

You are advocating yelling "fire" is a crowded building. After all, that's not a clear invocation to violence, right? (Also, while that example is commonly used, I think most legal scholars would tell you that the government could not prosecute you for saying it because of, you know, free speech.) You would not allow someone to walk into your living room and start spouting their opinion. For that matter, you would not allow them to do it in your yard. No business would allow someone to enter their property and use their resources for a purpose they did not condone. When the NY Times (or any other newspaper) does not print every letter they receive, that is not a restriction of free speech. They are under no obligation to print what you send them because of "free speech". Likewise, Twitter is under no obligation to post whatever someone thinks is of value. It's a business and the purpose of a business is to make money by pleasing their customers. If you are saying that if you owned a business, you would open up your resources to whoever wants to use them to promote their position, you are simply lying. Elon Musk has fired people specifically for speaking out about him. He has refused to reinstate some accounts (Alex Jones for example). That's what private businesses do; they make decisions about to make their businesses profitable.

If I owned a public facility the purpose of which included speech, I would not censor it based on content, except as already noted.

What I said is that if they believed in freedom of speech, they would choose to allow opinions that they didn't like.