And promoting disinfo. The blue checkmarks are basically just a way to pay for prioritized disinformation-spreading.

Please tell me that, as someone outside the EU, I also reap the benefits of this spicy awesomeness.

Also, he just says he's autistic. As far as is known, he's never actually gotten an evaluation.

So he's not just using autism as an excuse, he might not even have autism. And he wouldn't, sadly, be the first to pretend he did to excuse his behavior.

The Autistic Community doesn't deserve to mentioned in the same sentence as his.

Win win?

I think his main motivation for continuing to run the company is to spread his agenda. If it only costs him a small percent of revenue to keep pushing Nazi taking points, thenbi think he'll just pay the fines.

As someone who works in the field, DSA-like regulation is coming to many countries over the next couple years. We also have regulations on political ads that are similar to DSA already in many countries already. Mega platforms like X have little choice but to get compliant

A lot of companies that loudly "pulled out of Russia" are still working in Russia.

It's 6% of revenue, not profit. So it cuts even more into profits as it doesn't allow a company in breach of regulations to reduce the impact of the fine by adding expenses that will temporarily lower their profit.

Even more spicy, they can also impose periodic penalties up to 5% of the average daily worldwide turnover for each day of delay in complying. That shit can bankrupt you.

That could realistically be around 1/3 yearly profit in a reasonable company (18% operating margin is common). No idea whether Twitter is currently profitable (it wasn't when he bought it).

When the vast majority spreads on several platforms, you can very much beat it by blocking it. We're not doing it not because we can't but because letting it spread is profitable. Prior to the invention of modern social media the problem of misinformation was much smaller. Yes of course it will never disappear but we don't need it to disappear.

You're also not going to beat it by not trying to deal with it. The transition from twitter being an unreliable source to becoming an unbridled dumpster fire of disinformation and hate campaigns has a direct correlation with Musk taking specific steps to cater to those audiences while ripping out any facilities to filter it.

It's not all or nothing, like basically everything else in life, it requires balance. Just like you don't have to "beat" drugs to help drug users find a better path, you don't have to "beat" disinformation in order to help stop it from spreading. You can take steps when/where they make sense to limit the damage and give people a chance to pull their head out of the cesspool to get enough air that society can function in a manner in tune with reality to some degree.

No, but he is finding out why twitter had all of its policies on combatting misinformation before he took over and gutted the staff… to prevent getting sued. You can say anything you want in America and the government can’t tell you that you aren’t allowed to say it, but you are still accountable for the damages caused by what you say… just ask Alex Jones.

But operating in other countries doesn’t afford the same protections from government scrutiny.

Disinformation campaigns are part of the reason social media is causing as much social strife in the world. It is not outside a logical line of thought that governments are going to attempt to minimize the damages from platforms like Twitter when they can. You may not beat misinformation, but you can minimize the financial incentive to promote it if you fine the fuck out of it when you find it.