Texas AG Opens Investigation of Twitter Over Bots (texastribune.org) 119
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said Monday he is investigating Twitter over its reporting of how many accounts on the platform are from bots and fake users, saying the company may be misrepresenting the number to inflate its value and raise its revenue. The Texas Tribune reports: Twitter has claimed in its financial regulatory filings that less than 5% of its daily active users are spam accounts. But Paxton on Monday alleged that spam accounts could make up as much as 20% of users or more. "Bot accounts can not only reduce the quality of users' experience on the platform but may also inflate the value of the company and the costs of doing business with it, thus directly harming Texas consumers and businesses," Paxton said.
False reporting of fake users could be considered "false, misleading, or deceptive" under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, he said. Paxton sent Twitter a civil investigative demand, requiring the social media company to turn over documents related to how it calculates and manages its user data.
False reporting of fake users could be considered "false, misleading, or deceptive" under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, he said. Paxton sent Twitter a civil investigative demand, requiring the social media company to turn over documents related to how it calculates and manages its user data.
Of course (Score:5, Insightful)
What could be more important to a state AG than how many fake accounts exist on Twitter. I guess when that number is more than 21, that's what's important.
Funny how the AG isn't investigating Abbott who told companies to charge as much as they could [newsweek.com] to the people of Texas when the electrical grid failed. This after he said customers shouldn't be stuck [reuters.com] with high bills.
Re:Of course (Score:5, Informative)
What could be more important to a state AG than how many fake accounts exist on Twitter.
Deflecting attention from all his many legal troubles: Texas AG Ken Paxton accused of breaking law (yes, again) [msnbc.com] (and many other sources):
If there were a competition for the most scandal-plagued elected official in the United States, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton would likely be leading the pack.
Paxton was already under indictment on felony securities fraud charges when, in October 2020, members of his own team made multiple criminal allegations against him. About a year ago, FBI agents arrived at Paxton's door — as a rule, that's not a good sign for any politician — and soon after, the Texas bar association launched an investigation into Paxton's alleged professional misconduct.
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Yeah I mean Texans buying ads on Twitter and getting defrauded, how could that concern the attorney general?
I mean just why would anyone care that a company is committing billions in fraud?
https://www.emarketer.com/cont... [emarketer.com]
I mean it's like the man is in law enforcement or something.
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What could be more important to a state AG than how many fake accounts exist on Twitter.
To be fair, distracting people from his indictments and the investigations into his various shady dealings is pretty darn important to him.
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Texas dirty power secret (Score:3)
Texas has a dirty secret when it comes to their power grid. They refuse to connect to the national grid for reasons? Well guess who they will buy power from? Yes, Mexico. The country they claim to be under invasion from.
https://www.ecmag.com/section/... [ecmag.com]
Re:So you think we're stupid? (Score:5, Insightful)
Former Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) CEO Bill Magness testified in court on Wednesday about the Republican governor's alleged role in allowing power prices to reach and remain at a maximum cap of $9,000 per megawatt hour, or 150 times the normal rate, according to the Houston Chronicle. More than 4.5 million Texans lost power during the February 2021 crisis, contributing to the deaths of at least 246 people.
To be fair, the fine people of Texas don't seem to care how poorly the people they elect are at managing the stuff every civilised place in the world has no problem managing, as they keep electing republicans.
Ted Cruz even went for a holiday to Cancun while Texans were dying of the cold, then he blamed his children for the idea. They re-elected him anyway so I maybe the standards they expect from their leaders are really low.
Re: So you think we're stupid? (Score:5, Insightful)
"first $950 of theft is jail free"
You say that like it's a bad thing. We really shouldn't be locking people up for minor shit. That's a recipe for disaster. See, the rest of the US prison population statistics. Punish them? Yes. With jail? Not so much. And that's the way it should be. We shouldn't default to throwing people in jail for minor crimes. We should default to figuring out what's going on with them and working with them solve those issues. That's why California is doing that.
The real question is where do you draw the line between minor enough for no jail and major enough for some jail. California said that's at $950. I could see how someone might think a lower number would be better, but the number needs to be somewhere. In Michigan, I believe it's $200, which is too low, in my opinion. But somewhere between $200 and $1000 sounds about right to me. Were I in charge, I'd probably go with $500. That sounds about right. But the cutoff needs to be somewhere. So where would you put it? Would you put it at $0.01 like Texas or would you be more reasonable?
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Gimme your address so that me and a bunch of randos I can collect from the internet can drop by and each steal 950 dollars of your shit.
That would be a conspiracy and you would all face felony charges for that. Not to mention being accessories to each others crimes. You personally would be liable for theft charges for the total amount stolen. Then there's organized crime statutes.
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D'oh
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California ... first $950 worth of thefts is jail free
Using the same criteria used there, in Texas, the first $2499 worth of thefts is jail free [findlaw.com].
That said, this criteria is wrong/has been misrepresented -- $950 is simply where theft goes from misdemeanor to felony in California, where the same thing happens in Texas at $2500, and jail is still an option in both states for smaller amounts.
That said, $950/California and $2500/Texas is where *prison* becomes an option. (Actually, to be more precise, in Texas theft of $2500 is a "state jail" felony, so you still
Oh they care all right (Score:2, Interesting)
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From a democrat shill that is mastered in the art of projection, I take that comment to mean that Texas takes measures to prevent Democrat gerrymandering and voter suppression.
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This is what happens when democrats take over. [wedrawthelinesca.org]
As an outsider, I think a nation of 320 million people ought to have more than two political parties, but then I live in a democracy where gerrymandering hasn't happened since the 19th century, because we decided on government by the people, for the people or whatever.
You should try it.
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Well congratulations on living in an obviously superior democratic system. Being a utopia, I'm sure you don't have to suffer a political faction that is full of ruthless sociopaths, that put forth narratives as easily as one might make a move on a chessboard. That's Democrats. Reps may or may not be guilty of the same crimes, the difference is that they are a bit less predictable in accusing others of what they're guilty of.
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I know its hard for you to imagine, but other countries don't have either.
Because you're American, you've never travelled outside your own tiny state, and you think the rest of the world is like Hollywood portrays it, but its not.
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Common it's Texas we're talking about. That's 246 people across the state, and not even kids specifically. Send them hopes and prayers, pass a law to remove unnecessary doors, put a police officer in the house to tell the cold to stay away, and problem solved.
Re:So you think we're stupid? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a feature not a bug.
The Republican party campaigns on a platform of being performatively bad at their jobs and people vote for them.
Remember every time a politician tells you the government is bad, they are telling you that they are incompetent.
Re: So you think we're stupid? (Score:1)
Youtube comment level intelligence.
Re:So you think we're stupid? (Score:5, Interesting)
Dealing with that sort of thing in the very short term is usually more of an executive function, so you have sort of a point. Emergencies that could kill hundreds or thousands of people statewide are usually considered all hands on deck sorts of emergencies though. Federal help is often used in emergencies and sometimes the clout of a Senator might be necessary. Now, up until Trump, I'm not aware of any executive branch administration that would play games with emergency funds like Trump tried to with California wildfires. Still, if a situation like that arises, Senators are powerful federal government representatives who can help get these things done faster and apply political pressure when needed. Let's not forget also that, when people need help, they may go to emergency services first, but when help is not forthcoming reaching out to government representatives can be the next step. Their Senator is one of the places they tend to reach out because, once again, power. That political power comes with responsibilities. True, there's nothing in the job description that says they won't go on vacation during an emergency. It's just a pretty bad look.
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"Please tell us what he should have been doing."
Not scapegoating his kids.
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I saw the director of IT get fired at a place I worked due to an outage he had no ability to resolve. We were working with the utility company to ensure we were prioritized in the repair of the cut fiber in a farm field (we also learned the only other ISP in the area used the same fiber so, screw redundancy right?).
It was also the birthday of an engineer and we were all sitting eating cake, waiting for the utility company to tell us the fiber was repaired went the president of the company walked in. He took
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Sounds like you work at really shitty place with really shitty management. Outages are high stress situations, that last thing smart management would do is force all the folks they WILL need to get systems back only into a state of panic so they can be already on frayed nerves before they can even start working because a provider has not got outside infrustructure back up.
If I was the CEO and heard a president did that - he'd have been in my office getting chewed out!
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Worked, key term, I worked there. I'm not in disagreement with you. Optics are optics though. I think he expected us to be at our desks heads down at least looking busy.
Moral of the story? Take your cake back to your desk! :-D
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They would find a way to level accusations at Cruz even if he stayed. "grandstanding" or "using an emergency to steal attention to himself when it wasn't his job", etc. etc.
It doesn't have to be reasonable, when there's mod points to min/max every discussion to meet the demands of their current narrative.
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See we can all tell your are just a Demorat shill when you post shit like that.
I don't live in the United States, although I have been there a couple times, so no, I'm not a democrat shill. If fact where I come from the democrats would be considered extremely right wing, even by the standards of our own right wing parties and would be mostly unelectable as a result.
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Ted Cruz even went for a holiday to Cancun while Texans were dying of the cold, then he blamed his children for the idea. They re-elected him anyway so I maybe the standards they expect from their leaders are really low.
Ted Cruz went to Cancun to avoid the blackouts in 2021.
Ted Cruz was last up for re-election in 2018 [ballotpedia.org]. so no, he hasn't been re-elected anyways -- because he hasn't been up for election again yet.
That said, Ted Cruz will be up for election again in 2024, and I fully expect that Texas will re-elect him at that time, but it hasn't happened yet.
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Point of order: Cruz has not been up for reelection since the Cancun incident. He comes up next in 2024.
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To be fair, the fine people of Texas don't seem to care how poorly the people they elect are at managing the stuff every civilised place in the world has no problem managing, as they keep electing republicans. Ted Cruz even went for a holiday to Cancun while Texans were dying of the cold, then he blamed his children for the idea. They re-elected him anyway so I maybe the standards they expect from their leaders are really low.
This. I keep hearing "Not all Texans are like this. "
But in the scale of things, yes. Texcas is as Texas does, and peopel like Cruz and Abbot and the exceptionally brave policemen who were utter cowards hanging around outside a school while a child shot up a school, and are now refusing to cooperate with an investigation - Sorry Texas - this is exactly what Texas represents, and therefore if you are a Texan, this is you.
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Neither is hypocrisy.
Wellll (Score:4, Insightful)
Someones sucking Elons dick, fer sure.
Re:Wellll (Score:5, Informative)
No, this is Texas trying to carry water for Musk after he signed a deal, now has buyer's remorse, and is trying to weasel out of paying a $1 billion breakup fee.
Musk agreed to buy Twitter and specifically waived due diligence [sec.gov]:
"Section 4.25 No Other Representations or Warranties. Except for the representations and warranties expressly set forth in this Article IV, neither the Company nor any other Person makes or has made any representation or warranty of any kind whatsoever, express or implied, at Law or in equity, with respect to the Company or any of its Subsidiaries or their respective business, operations, assets, liabilities, conditions (financial or otherwise), notwithstanding the delivery or disclosure to Parent and the Acquisition Sub or any of their Affiliates or Representatives of any documentation, forecasts or other information with respect to any one or more of the foregoing. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, neither the Company nor any other Person makes or has made any express or implied representation or warranty to Parent, Acquisition Sub or any of their respective Representatives with respect to (a) any financial projection, forecast, estimate or budget relating to the Company, any of its Subsidiaries or their respective businesses or, (b) except for the representations and warranties made by the Company in this Article IV, any oral or written information presented to Parent, Acquisition Sub or any of their respective Representatives in the course of their due diligence investigation of the Company, the negotiation of this Agreement or the course of the Merger, or the accuracy or completeness thereof. "
In other words, Musk bought a house for $46 billion dollars, sight unseen, from people who weren't looking to sell in the first place but agreed because he busted in like the Kool Aid Man and started shoveling money at them. Now that the market is falling out from under him he's complaining that he didn't get to inspect the house and is trying to back out of the deal by insisting on a thorough inspection
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Because there’s absolutely no evidence that the accusations are anything more than another Musk tantrum, hes offered no evidence or reasonable suspicion, just thrown his toys out of the pram as usual.
Since when does a state AG investigate temper tantrums from toddlers?
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the other option would be to investigate gun makers and thats not happening.
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There's empirical evidence if you're paying any attention. I've been paying attention for longer than Musk, and I've been saying this since it started. And it's not just Twitter, either. What I'm more curious about though is if they can distinguish between sincere users and the "Mechanical Turk" type of bot; actually a sweatshop of underpaid shills whose data-entry style job consists largely of copy&pasting the same spam that is sometimes spread more widely by scripts.
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In other words, Musk bought a house for $46 billion dollars, sight unseen, from people who weren't looking to sell in the first place but agreed because he busted in like the Kool Aid Man and started shoveling money at them. Now that the market is falling out from under him he's complaining that he didn't get to inspect the house and is trying to back out of the deal by insisting on a thorough inspection
Unless the SEC or stockholder filings referred to in 4.6 and 4.7 were inaccurate (ie: they said that they had 5% spam accounts and he has since learned that it had 20%):
Section 4.6 Company SEC Documents; Financial Statements.
(a) Since January 1, 2022, the Company has filed or furnished with the SEC all material forms, documents and reports required to be filed or furnished prior to the date of this Agreement by it with the SEC (such forms, documents and reports filed with the SEC, including any amendments or supplements thereto and any exhibits or other documents attached to or incorporated by reference therein, the “Company SEC Documents”). As of their respective dates, or, if amended or supplemented, as of the date of the last such amendment or supplement, the Company SEC Documents complied in all material respects with the requirements of the Securities Act and the Exchange Act, as the case may be, and the applicable rules and regulations promulgated thereunder, and none of the Company SEC Documents at the time it was filed (or, if amended or supplemented, as of the date of the last amendment or supplement) contained any untrue statement of a material fact or omitted to state any material fact required to be stated therein or necessary to make the statements therein, in light of the circumstances under which they were made, or are to be made, not misleading.
(b) The consolidated financial statements (including all related notes) of the Company included in the Company SEC Documents fairly present in all material respects the consolidated financial position of the Company and its consolidated Subsidiaries as at the respective dates thereof and its consolidated statements of operations and consolidated statements of cash flows for the respective periods then ended (subject, in the case of unaudited interim statements, to normal year-end audit adjustments, none of which would have a Company Material Adverse Effect, to the absence of notes and to any other adjustments described therein, including in any notes thereto) in conformity with GAAP (except, in the case of unaudited statements, as permitted by Form 10-Q, Form 8-K or any successor form or other rules under the Exchange Act).
Section 4.7 Information Supplied. None of the information supplied or to be supplied by or on behalf of the Company or any of its Subsidiaries expressly for inclusion or incorporation by reference in the proxy statement relating to the matters to be submitted to the Company’s stockholders at the Company Stockholders’ Meeting (such proxy statement and any amendments or supplements thereto, the “Proxy Statement”) shall, at the time the Proxy Statement is first mailed to the Company’s stockholders and at the time of the Company Stockholders’ Meeting to be held in connection with the Merger, contain any untrue statement of material fact or omit to state any material fact required to be stated therein or necessary to make the statements therein, in light of the circumstances under which they were made, not misleading at such applicable time, except that no representation or warranty is made by the Company with respect to statements made therein based on information supplied, or required to be supplied, by Parent or its Representatives in writing expressly for inclusion therein. The Proxy Statement will comply as to form in all material respects with the provisions of the Securities Act and the Exchange Act, and the rules and regulations promulgated thereunder.
Aaron Z
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Corrupt bastard (Score:3, Informative)
Let's not forget (Score:5, Funny)
Many of the users on Twitters are bots, but a lot more are tools.
Same AG that tried to overthrow election (Score:5, Informative)
Crook (Score:5, Interesting)
Pay no attention to his ongoing legal battles. https://www.texastribune.org/2... [texastribune.org]
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Why do advertisers tolerate this? (Score:2, Interesting)
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However, as an advertiser, I do care very much.
As an advertiser, no one here gives a fuck what you want, need, or care about.
We are all rooting for your demise to stop the all of the harm you do to society.
Cheers to your failure in life, with all of your cares ignored
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Without advertisers, you wouldn't know that things that can enhance your life exists. That's not to say every advertiser is good, certainly, there are a lot of ones who can't help but do bad. But calling all of them bad is stupid.
Re: Why do advertisers tolerate this? (Score:2)
It's like charging someone for premium single malt scotch but secretly diluting it with rubbing alcohol...then shrugging your shoulders like you have no ability to stop it.
Except it's Internet advertising, not scotch. So it's more like buying the cheapest dollar store non-concentrated dish detergent and being told it might be up to 20% water instead of 5% and shrugging our shoulders because it cost a buck and got some dishes clean. It's inefficient? Yah, I got it at the dollar store. I mean internet. Duh.
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This is not anything like fraud on Twitter's side; they've been using the same, SEC-accepted, methodology for measuring monetizable users for years. This is Texas trying to carry water for Musk after he signed a deal, now has buyer's remorse, and is trying to weasel out of paying a $1 billion breakup fee.
Musk agreed to buy Twitter and specifically waived due diligence [sec.gov]:
"Section 4.25 No Other Representations or Warranties. Except for the representations and warranties expressly set forth in this Article IV,
Re: Why do advertisers tolerate this? (Score:2)
This implies that the SEC was A) told the specifics of their methodology and B) gives a shit until someone brings a cause of action to them about it.
Texas is doing SECs job (Score:3)
First, I don't like the new post-carbon credit right-wing Musk: Proof: https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... [slashdot.org]
However, I have to agree with him on this. If Twitter makes a statement in an SEC filing, they have to be open to independent scrutiny as to how it came to that conclusion in good faith. The SEC, and shareholders, should be the ones asking though.
Now personally, I have believe that 5% is the right number. There are bots and the bots are very vocal but I still think they are under 5%. Then there are 90% of twitter users who are worse and dumber than the bots. If I was buying Twitter I would demand to know the median IQ of users.
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" If I was buying Twitter I would demand to know the median IQ of users."
If I was buying Twitter I'd do my DUE DILIGENCE before signing the purchase contract...
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Seriously, so if you buy an smartphone and it catches fire when you charge it .. the company is blameless because you should have X-rayed it to make sure the battery was safe?
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Twitter wasn't originally on the market, though. Musk busted in like the Kool Aid Man and started shoveling money at them, like those real estate agents that call at all hours of the day and night saying they'll buy your house, sight unseen, for 20% over market value. Twitter wasn't really interested, but Ego McBucks was so eager to buy that he was willing to get into a drawn-out proxy war, so they figured what the hell, we'll sell, but only if McBucks waived due diligence, so the merger talks don't go on f
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Publicly traded companies are always on the market.
I don't think he will actually try to walk away from the deal. He's probably just trying to get a lower price and/or embarrass the board.
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It's more like you signed a contract to buy a house you only saw outside pictures of on zillow with a clause that says if you back out you owe a bunch of money. You show up for closing and get a walkthrough to find a gutted mess that is half the value of what you agreed to pay.
In those cases, you pay the penalty or fight it in court. I bet the court case costs more than the billion in question here.
Re:Texas is doing SECs job (Score:5, Interesting)
If I was buying Twitter I'd do my DUE DILIGENCE before signing the purchase contract...
Musk apparently didn't put a whole lot of thought into the offer before actually making it:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/... [zdnet.com]
Seems likely the whole deal was mainly about feeding his own ego.
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Actually yes - due diligence is supposed to happen BEFORE you make a binding offer.
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Re: Texas is doing SECs job (Score:2)
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That may be the case, but it still isn't the Texas AG's job to go after Twitter. On what basis can he even initiate such an investigation?
Iâ(TM)ve got 250k myself (Score:2)
Re:Iâ(TM)ve got 250k myself (Score:5, Funny)
Hopefully the bots know how to set their font correctly.
Facism, among other things, is blurring the lines (Score:2, Informative)
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LOL leave it to you to complain about an AG investigating gross misrepresentation of data by a corporation as fascism. Who cares if he's doing Musk's dirty work? He certainly isn't doing any favors for the actual corporation in question here, e.g. Twitter!
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Leave it to you to complain about an AG investigating gross misrepresentation of data by a corporation as fascism.
It is admittedly funny to watch though.
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He certainly isn't doing any favors for the actual corporation in question here, e.g. Twitter!
The corporation(s) in question here are actually X Holdings I, X Holdings II, X Holdings III, and Twitter. Do you think any wealthy person makes any major transaction without forming a corporation? Their yachts and houses and artwork and cars, etc. are pretty much always technically owned by a corporation. It provides them a layer of both civil and criminal liability protection and opens up a lot of tax loophole opportunities. So this looks more like the AG doing favors for one set of privately held corpora
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It's clearly a political favor to Musk, a populist industrialist who operates a prestigious project in Boca Chica and who has taken up various right-wing talking points and agendas. "Cronyism" might me more apt than "fascism" though.
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Where is the evidence that Musk has anything to do with it?
Twitter is a tool leftists use to put pressure on corporations to enforce their own political will, even as they go around accusing everyone else of fascism. There's been plenty of discussion already of political motivated shadow banning and targeted censorship on Twitter against conservatives.
It's just as easy to imagine that with Twitter in the news, an attorney general who is in the camp of the political opposition is going to smell blood in the
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After most of the country has put up with Fux "News" for the last couple decades, I say it's about time somebody did something to really really irritate the so-called "Right". It's just pathetic to hear how outraged they are at others doing the *exact same shit*...
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"hurr durr Fox news" Sure, ok. It's a reminder that unless the actual fascists can control the narrative at every single source of corporate media, they will never be satisfied.
Everything's worse in Texas (Score:1)
Musk link? (Score:2)
I'm a SpaceX fanboi, but can't help but wonder if this is a backdoor effort initiated by Musk to help him get out of the Twitter deal without losing his shirt. Musk as a person and as a business owner has a lot of weight to throw around to compliant Texas politicians.
Separately, this whole states AG's going after individuals and firms will end badly. How about we leave the national stuff to the Feds, and the states (both red and blue states) , can start casting nets far and wide AFTER they have reduced c
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While I think it's reasonable to believe that Musk wants to air out the bots and it might have been his only real agenda from the start, I think owning Twitter would be a valuable enough power play for him that it's more likely he is just trying to force them to give him a discount. That said, whether the Texas AG got this idea from Musk directly or not is almost immaterial due to how very obviously needed and severely past due this investigation is. If you've been using the internet for a very long time as
Isn't the Texas AG an actual criminal himself? (Score:2)
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was indicted 5 years ago. He still hasn't gone to trial. [slashdot.org]
So, we have a state run by criminals, that can't keep its power on, that purposefully makes it difficult for its citizens to afford healthcare, that purposefully makes it extra difficult for women to get healthcare, and that freezes its citizens to death while its leaders go on vacations to Cancun, Mexico?
Nice. Good job, Murdoch and Putin
Could (Score:2)
Or they could make up 100%, or 0%. Usually, when starting an investigation, you'll want to have some evidence about what you're alleging. But we seem to be in a post-evidence country now; reality no longer has much bearing on the political process, much to our detriment.