By now, save for only the least informed gearheads, almost everyone has heard Elon Musk has been successful, at least to this point, in his quest to buy Twitter. This development has caused no shortage of natterings in all corners of the internet, with tech blogs suddenly discovering the unpredictable and sometime unfathomable morass that is Musk’s social media presence. Auto journalists have been dealing with such issues for years.
One surprising result of the Twitter buyout? Henrik Fisker, boss of an EV company which ostensibly competes with Tesla, has packed up camp and disappeared.
Apparently, Fisker is taking umbrage to the fact his communications could be actively managed or controlled by a competitor. After posting one final tweet in which he told followers to look for him on Instagram for future content, the @henrikfisker account vanished and was replaced by a ‘this account doesn’t exist’ message. In short order, a post showed up on Fisker’s IG profile with the following caption:
I believe 100% in free speech. But I do not want my free speech to be actively managed or controlled by a competitor. And I do not want a competitor to determine how my followers experience Fisker as we grow our company.
Very good, then. It can be argued he has a point, since the platform is now wholly under the eye of a major competitor. Some are suggesting it the situation would be like General Motors managing the email server used by Ford Motor Company, while others are dismissing it as a publicity stunt and took the man to task on topics ranging from the relevance of his cars to accusations of paranoia. Somehow, the phrase ‘toxic masculinity’ showed up in the comments, proving that feature of Instagram is no better than it is on YouTube or Facebook.
If anyone cares, Fisker had about 86,600 followers on Twitter when he departed the scene. Musk? A cool 84.6 million. It is worth noting the official account for the Fisker company itself is still live as of this writing. Other EV makers, such as Rivian and Lucid, still maintain active accounts on the platform.
Henrik Fisker and Elon Musk have been dueling for years, ever since the former launched his first electric car company in 2007 and beat Tesla to market with the Karma sedan. Of course, the Karma was a hybrid and the Model S an all-electric – and we only need look at history to learn which venture was the victor in that little tiff. Fisker left the company he founded in 2013 and the place went under soon after. His new company is busying itself readying the Ocean, an all-electric crossover vehicle with an available 80kWh battery pack, a reported 40,000 reservations to its name, and a starting price of $37,499.
[Image: Fisker]
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Fisker is a charlatan, but he should know that there is no such thing as 100% free speech.
Anyway, if Mr Musk bought Twitter to foster free speech, then Fisker should be happy about that. Does he really expect Musk to personally edit Fisker’s messaging?
So glad I’m not on social media.
In the end, it’s all cat pictures!
“In the end, it’s all cat pictures!”
The new: Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.
Fisker will come out with a competitor for Twitter, with financial backing from Kia, called “Cheeper”.
Musk is an advocate of free speech when it agrees with Musk, which he sees as free speech – a circular argument that cycles in his head, in as much as he has enough self awareness to recognize it. But he is a man of accomplishments, and Fisker – yeah – count the silverware.
Anyone that isn’t a fan of how Musk runs his private platform is free to start their own platform. It is private…nobody has a right to post their. Or so I have read over and over for years now whenever someone was banned. Has something changed?
Stop making sense.
What is supposed to happen is for people to start their own competing platforms, not buy an existing one. That’s not fair.
I would wait and see how Musk runs Twitter before quitting Twitter.
And, for that matter, how a number of countries that Twitter appears in allows Musk to run Twitter. I think anyone expecting Musk to run Twitter totally as a personal fiat is underestimating the situation.
ultimately, it’s lawyers that will run it. Libel a drug company online, then get sued. The vast majority of people are not anonymous online even though they think they are.
This is one of the few reactions to the buyout that seems somewhat reasonable. Though I’d argue that using a social media platform owned by one of your competitors for advertising would be pretty funny. Imagine seeing ads for the Fisker Ocean sandwiched between Tesla’s tweets.
Odd that he is so against the prospect of free speech that he would quit Twitter.
Personally, the $44 billion was worth it to get Shaun King to shut up…maybe the same can be said of this fool too.
Fisker as Tesla’s competitor? Ha, that is the best joke I heard for quite some time.
I have no idea what Twitter is but I expect huge workforce reduction. Because it is buyout and Twitter is not healthy company, they do much worse than other similar companies like Meta. And second – most of staff will openly resist reforms so many will just leave Twitter to less free speech friendly places. So expect the Great Resignation.
Great – another mouthpiece that the hyper wealthy can use to their advantage…at least I can say I’ve never tweeted and never will.
Yeah, ultimately, who cares? If the closest thing to “social media” I frequent are this site and a jeep forum, why would any of this interest me in the slightest? It’s not a question of free speech… that doesn’t even belong in the conversation. It’s more about influencing masses of idiots which is not something that I have any interest in devoting more mental energy towards than I did on this post.
TLDR: I don’t care about twitter, book of face, linked in, MySpace, etc.
I thought the marque was already gone, not seeing a loss here.
Fisker has no evidence that Musk is restricting his access to the platform.
And when is Fisker going to ship something?
“And when is Fisker going to ship something?”
To know what Fisker is planning to do follow him on Tweeter. Oh, wait…
It least on its face his reason makes sense. Better than the vapors the other libs are getting knowing that there is no longer a guarantee that conservative opinions and strait up facts will no longer be censored. Never tweeted, never will but this still sounds encouraging.
Lol. You don’t want completely un-factual ‘news’ banned? I do, regardless if it’s from the left or right.
I pray Jack Dorsey sets up shop elsewhere….
No I don’t. Because I understand that what happens in practice is only news that doesn’t follow the site moderators opinions gets stopped. For example. Hunter Biden’s laptop story. It was true. But the NY post got kicked off social media for reporting it. This happened before the election. So people who might have been influenced by the facts in the story never saw the story. And nearly all media outlets twisted the facts and reported bogus Russian Disinformation narratives. Only recently have rags like the NY Times admitted the Post story was accurate. So I prefer we let everyone speak and let people sort through lies, opinions, and facts for themselves. I don’t want Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk blocking dissenting opinions or facts.
kc, I’m with you.
The absence of weapons of mass destruction, lab leak theories, vaccine efficacy, bank fraud, our government’s warrantless wiretapping, undeclared wars but pretending they’re not wars and on and on and on…..
For people who still trust news, let me pose this thought experiment – Why are the people you used to completely distrust employed by the news organizations you implicitly trust? Ex-CIA and military officials and political appointees, sponsored news stories from Pfizer, Lockheed, Boeing, BlackRock, JPMorgan, etc. I missed the point in time when these hobgoblins won back trust.
It seems that those praying at the altar of experts in news want us skeptics to believe that the people who spent my lifetime (I’m 50) lying about everything to get what they want have now somehow found religion and are now ethical sentient beings.
Jkross22 – I watch six different news programs (in no particular order – CNN/FOX/MSNBC/Bloomberg/Euronews/network TV) and sometimes you’d be hard pressed to know that story X is in fact the same story as you go through the different media outlets. This is for actual news stories, not Carlson/Maddow and the like yapping their heads off at night. But the vast majority of folks head to the station that feeds them what they want to hear, not what might be the actual truth. And most consider those talking heads to be reporting on news and while the foundation of such programs is supposed to be based on factual news, what they cook the news into is nothing but opinion programming. Very few have the desire or time to watch that much news but it was quite eye-opening for sure. To say I’m disillusioned with the current state of affairs is an understatement.
goldenhusky,
I don’t know how much good it does watching any televised news. Look at their ‘experts’ that are there to support the ad revenue part of the business. It doesn’t matter which network – it’s all been corrupted.
The idea that you can triangulate between these channels and somehow extract the truth is a myth. It sounds good on paper, but to your point, it’s not possible to expect reality when each channel wants to sell you a story to keep you watching through commercials. Their business model IS the problem.
Independent online sources, Substack reporters… basically any news source reliant on its customers to directly support it has a much better chance of providing a complete picture as opposed to ad supported sites.
Not really a surprise that CNN+ failed. Why would anyone pay for news from a source now synonymous with dis/mis/malinformation, err, lying.
Try sourcing your news from international sources such as the BBC, Radio New Zealand and Radio Australia. They don’t have a dog in the political fight or advertisers to tailor their message and audience to.
“Lol. You don’t want completely un-factual ‘news’ banned? I do, regardless if it’s from the left or right.”
At this point, anything labeled fake news and banned is a actually truth. We’ve seen it time and time again. Look at all the stories that were labeled as false regarding the Covid cold. Ae you a conspiracy theorist when everything you say is proven true a year after you said it?
“I pray Jack Dorsey sets up shop elsewhere….”
Ah yes. Because what we need is more liberal suppression of stories and election interference. Dorsey is an awful human being. He’s an easily influenced puppet that will suppress anything that doesn’t fit the liberal narrative regardless of facts. He needs to go away.
“I pray Jack Dorsey sets up shop elsewhere…”
I read on Facebook that Donnie Trump hired him for some undisclosed project.
“I pray Jack Dorsey sets up shop elsewhere”
Mars sounds good.
QUADE, GET YOUR ASS TO MARS.
He’ll always be #PedoMusk to me. #Turdblossom
P.s. non-lib here, one of many who revile the twatwaffle.
I understand the distrust of Musk. He’s made an ass out of himself plenty of times un-ironically on the platform he just purchased.
But I’m also of the mind that we can’t keep throwing out people because they screwed up in the past. In this moment, Musk is playing the role of ally. Tesla still needs massive improvement on QC. SpaceX is pretty amazing. Boring Company – I have no idea.
Contradictory things call all be true at once. Musk is the most public example.
You forgot to mention Star Link which Russians were not able to jam in Ukraine and which will revolutionize Internet access on the planet.
Maybe the fix is to simply declare all digital communications platforms public utilities and make them subject to the same common carrier rules that other digital communications companies must abide by.
All of these services traverse public rights of way – the public should have a say in how those services operate.
Ah yes, let the government regulate it. That should result in free speech. s/ The secretary of homeland security just suggested the same thing. So did sleepy joe and lying if her lips are moving saki. The person the secretary has put in charge tweeted repeated lies and repeated the same lib bogus garbage as MSNBC and the NY times. But sure, lets have a bureau of truth be in charge of social discourse.
While gov’t regulation of the news is a bad idea, something has to be done about the continual stream of flat-out lies. Our government is failing, and so is our Democracy. The last five years have, if nothing else, proven that if you lie loud enough, long enough, and with conviction, the weak willed (or those who want the lies to be true) will repeat it as gospel. The idea of a “United” States is in danger of collapsing from within. We can’t run a country with a “Yankees vs Red Sox” mentality. And that is what we have now.
goldenhusky,
I agree with your conclusion, but you didn’t say that magic word – trust. Many don’t trust health authorities, pharma companies, banks, our corrupt government, news, etc.
We don’t need saints to keep the ships moving, but we do need better, more competent people in positions of leadership. That’s happening with news, but outside the existing broadcast news/newspaper model.
There is no such thing as “free speech” on any privately-owned platform. To be clear, privately-owned means any platform for which there is ownership. If TTAC decided that they didn’t like what I have to say, they are perfectly within their right to kick me off.
No one is obligated to provide the means on their platform to host any speech (or person) with which (or whom) they disagree. It is nothing less than a property-rights issue. I seriously doubt that any of the so-called “free-speech crusaders” would accept unsolicited signs on their lawns. This is no different.
As has been said many times before to those who have been “censored”, there is nothing to stop you from standing on a soapbox to express your opinions or starting your own platform.
If I were a Tesla investor right now, I would be deeply concerned about the wisdom of Elon Musk. He has done much be admired but buying a low-profit company (one with no real revenue-growth prospects at that) for $46 billion with the added risk that he could, conceivably, cause a serious drop in the user base looks, at least for now, to be a blunder of cosmic proportions.
Since Tweeter is private company Musk can do whatever he likes with it and establish whatever rules he wants without asking your opinion.
Sigh, Musk hasn’t bought it yet. There’s even speculation he’ll back out of the deal.
Yeah ok lol