On the news that Elon Musk had put together a $44 billion package to buy Twitter and that the offer was accepted by the board, a lot of people there were reporting the loss of followers who were quitting the social media service. One person with a somewhat successful news-related site wrote – “I've lost 500 followers today. Famous accounts say they've lost thousands. If this is due to people deleting their accounts in protest of Elon Musk, DON'T. Twitter is the most powerful voice you have. Don't forfeit it. Stick around and use it to fight evil – at least for now.” I completely understand his comments, and there is a great deal of wisdom value to this advice. Here are also, however, problems. In fact, I’m not even sure yet how I’ll act once the sale goes through. (To be clear, it’s not a certainty the sale will be completed, though it’s likely.) At which point, Musk will take the company private. One problem for those staying at Twitter and continuing to participate in order to “fight evil” is that it gives approval to a site that will likely be a breeding ground of misinformation without oversight. Misinformation on Twitter with oversight is massive and a societal problem, a portal rife with foreign efforts to undermine democracy, let alone just basic conspiratorial lying, hate speech, bullying, racism and cruelty. Participating in such an environment without there being any official policy against it, just people telling each other off in growing anger, risks normalizing the overall activity. And thinking that such disinformation and hatred can be "fought off" seems dubious – akin to trying to catch a swarm of hornets one at a time. Worse, though, since a tweet can be multiplied by the thousands through retweeting. It’s like swatting one hornet – and then three dozen more see that and come to sting you. And if you block someone on Twitter, it doesn’t make them and what they say disappear. They can continue just as before -- it’s just that they can’t say it directly to you. So, staying might be Fighting the Good Fight, and might even have some small impact, but it also says – since there will likely be essentially no oversight that this is the standard by which I choose to communicate. By the way, I suspect there will be some oversight and some limits on what can’t be said. But then, that somewhat undercuts Elon Musk’s relentless cry for Free Speech. It’s not free speech he supports, just speech he personally is okay with. It’s also important to clarify that the First Amendment is not about being about to say whatever you want. It’s about – and only about – the government not being able to make laws prohibiting speech. But all private business have always had the right to restrict speech if they believe it’s harmful to their business. Moreover, there are laws that limit speech – you can’t libel someone, or slander them, or say something fraudulent, or have hate speech, or shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater. And more. So, “Free Speech” always sounds like a good and important banner to wave – and it is, of course, an important foundation. But it is not an absolute in a democracy. Which leads to understanding that, as much as he purports to the contrary, Elon Musk doesn’t have the credentials he wants to be seen as a flag-waver for free speech. Rather, he’s more of a “Good for me, but not for thee” kind of advocate. For instance, when a Tesla employee in the Autopilot division named John Bernal posted his personal reviews of Tesla’s Full Self Driving beta test system, and the beta software had a bit of a glitch on one of the videos, he was soon fired by the company. Further, Tesla then cut off his access to this beta system even though it was in his own personal car. Bernal says that managers told him he “broke Tesla policy” and that his YouTube channel was a “conflict of interest.” All well and good, but so much for being a champion of unfettered free speech. Unless it’s directed at me. Or the time in Musk Free Speech World when the National Labor Relations Board ruled that Tesla wrongly fired a union organizer and that a tweet CEO Musk wrote was threatening and ordered it be deleted. Tesla was required to rehire the fired employee and compensate him for his loss of earnings. Or when back in 2018, Musk wrote (on Twitter, of course…) that he was considering taking Tesla private. The thing is, that tweet – in which he said he had "funding secured" (which was not the case) was a fraud violation, and the SEC forced him to resign as chairman of Tesla, pay a $40 million fine, and agree that any of his tweets about Tesla that had material corporate information had to be reviewed by company executives. And yet four years later, in fact just barely over a month ago, Musk has filed to revoke this settlement and, among other things, get his full tweet-privileges back. In a filed response, the SEC said, "When it comes to civil settlements, a deal is a deal, absent far more compelling circumstances than are here presented." Or when Musk tried to shut down a Twitter account of a kid who’d developed a bot for tracking the movement of Musk’s private jet. (That was completely understandable of Musk. But you’re either for unfettered Free Speech for everyone and willing to spend $44 billion to ensure it -- or not. And besides, all phones with active GPS track our movements.) Or, as Bloomberg News reported, there’s the time when Tesla complained to the Chinese government about what it claimed were unfair attacks on social media, “and asked Beijing to use its censorship powers to block some of the posts.” To be fair, that wasn’t Musk asking – he was just the CEO and probably only had to approve it. Musk also is a bully, shaking down the State of California during the pandemic, getting them to lessen COVID restrictions so that he could keep his own factory open, threatening to move his company out of the state. Even though California acceded to his demands, Musk remained unhappy and later still did leave and resettled Tesla in Texas Moreover, he is also not the all-knowing wise visionary as he likes to position himself. For instance, in March, 2020, he wrote (on Twitter…), “Based on current trends, probably close to zero new cases in US too by end of April.” That was two years ago, and there have been about 930,000 deaths since his arrogant, ignorant, dangerous “end of April” line of demarcation. So, that – in very small part – is the free speech world and interests of visionary free speech advocate Elon Musk who wants to take Twitter private where not only will what you say have pretty much no oversight…but the vast medica communications company itself, being private, will have almost no SEC and government oversight. But there are other significant reasons why staying at Twitter to “fight evil” is problematic. And, for me, one of the most notable is that everyone participating in the service will be giving up their personal information to a private individual without any oversight. It’s not that I like giving personal information to Big Corporate America, but there are legal requirements they do have to follow and have limits, and watchdogs do their best to offer protection. And it’s also not like public corporations have many safeguards built in, since most security measures protect stockholders – though there is a responsibility within a company to those shareholders, which a private owner doesn’t have. And it’s also not like I believe that some big private conspiracy that Elon Musk will personally misuse private information for his dastardly means. But I think it’s a horrible standard to set. Giving one’s personal information to a private, $44 billion company that, on every level of its corporate structure, has the right to do almost whatever it wants with it without you having the right to know or find out is not only a very risky way to walk across a freeway with your eyes closed (even if you make it safely the first time, because the other cars thankfully stopped in time, albeit caused a 40-car pileup in the process) – but it’s the plot of most apocalyptic movies about corporations with a messianic leader. And it’s the plot for a good reason. By the way, though I have no reason to believe Elon Musk has even the slightest reason to misuse anyone’s private information (except for his corporate history of fraud, bullying and firing those he doesn’t like), I have no knowledge of who else will be working at a private Twitter company and what their personal goals and interests are, and what position they’ll be in to interact with the information. And, again, being a private company, there’s no way of most anyone knowing much of that either. And while relying on the plucky new secretary to uncover something on a spreadsheet that just seems wrong which starts the whole plot to unravel might be a great, exciting Hollywood resolution, it’s not the best form of oversight. And finally, I think it’s important to know who is helping fund Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter. It may all be perfectly above board. But details are non-existent at the moment, for free speech $44 billion private takeover of a major communications company it would be good to have an idea. What we know is that he has a $13 billion loan in debt financing from investment banks, $12.5 billion in loans against his Tesla stock – and that he would get another $21 billion in cash. How he would get that cash is unknown. Assumptions are that he would likely sell some Tesla stock – but up to now he has refused to sell any of his stock in Tesla. Now, certainly, he is worth $270 billion, so it’s not like this is a smoke-and-mirrors scam put together with chewing gum. But since I’m sure there are a great many people and even foreign governments who would love to have a stake in owning Twitter, the public should at least know. So, as much sense as it makes to keep your voice on Twitter and “Stick around and use it to fight evil,” there are many reasons to not lend your name to a service that appears will be an open land for misinformation without recrimination and help give it legitimacy. On a personal level, I don’t know what I’ll do. I’m leaning to keeping my account while not participating and keeping track of news stories for a few weeks to see what direction it’s taking. But the main alternative for me is not continuing to participate, but deleting my account. Just not wanting to be a part of a massive private company asking me for my personal information that’s run by the world’s richest man known for vindictiveness, bullying, and trying to limit people’s speech when it didn’t serve him – and having no oversight, responsible to no one. None of which even takes into consideration how the landscape may change, as people feel more free to spread misinformation, use hate speech, bully and make ad hominen attacks There are other possibilities of what to do when Elon Musk takes the company private, assuming it all gets approved, and we’ll see what ends up transpiring. Who knows, one option is maybe I'll stick around, albeit on my own terms, unwilling to accept even a word over the many lines I'd draw. In the end, even if one delete’s their account, and conditions change for the better, it’s not like you can’t back in. Updates as they occur...
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If you didn't see Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on Sunday, the Main Story was about Data Brokers. This is another way of saying the issue was privacy on the Internet, which basically borders on non-existent. It does, at least, open itself for some pretty good humor, though the "What can we do about it?" aspect has its deep limitations. They do come up with a pretty entertaining twist on the end, and it's well presented. It was time to finally upgrade from my old mobile phone, never a fun process – all the more so since the final decision included changing networks -- but less painful than it was years ago. But still an annoyance because I tend to use my phone less than the norm. (And far-less than heavy phone users.) Though for all that, I got a good “flagship” phone, the Pixel 6, that’s far-above my fairly-limited needs, but it was such a remarkable deal from T-Mobile that it would have idiotic to pass it up. The phone only cost just $99. The only “downside” was that you have to commit to sticking with them for two years, and that’s no problem at all. And besides, my oft-mentioned tech whiz guru Ed Bott has the Pixel 6 and recommended it. As I said, I it would have been idiotic to pass up.
This is about another matter related to getting the new phone, not a review, but it's still worth mentioning a few things about it first before getting to have the subject at hand fits into it all. I checked with people in my building and friends who have T-Mobile service, and everyone was very happy with their service. It subsequently turns out that I can’t get 5G from my apartment, though I can just a few blocks away – apparently there must be building that block the towers, though that could change if new towers are added. However this is pretty much a non-issue. People tend to be connected to Wi-Fi when in their apartment, not the 5G network – and besides, if I’m going to be streaming in my home, it’ll almost always been on my computer, not my phone. The new phone gets 5G perfectly when I’m out and about, and that’s where it counts. (What’s always intrigued me about Pixels is that they’re made by Google – and Google makes the Android operating system. So, Pixels not only have certain features that Google makes exclusive to the Pixel, but they're always modified with the latest updates as soon as they're available. That’s not generally the case with other phones, since updates are only offered when a network wants to make them available. And except for the highest-end phones, it’s often not worth the effort to do so on a regular basis, and so they don’t.) But as I said, this is about another matter. A minor issue, but I figured out an interesting way to resolve it, in case anyone else is having the same problem, one which I suspect is not terribly uncommon. I’ve grown to like fingerprint sensors, and the one on my old Motorola phone worked pretty well. The reviews of the Pixel 6 were all laudatory, but one of the few consistent negatives from reviews and user comments was that the finger sensory didn’t work great. And I found that to be the case. The fingerprint sensor is very inconsistent, I programmed four of my fingerprints and find it’s only working at first tap for any of them about 20% of the time, and even after multiple attempts, only about 65%. And after enough failed-tries, I get bumped to the keypad to use my PIN. Not a huge problems, but a disappointment. Especially for what’s otherwise such a good, flagship phone. In fairness, I’m sure that part of the issue is because (with all hand-washing everyone does these days) my fingertips are pretty dry -- when I wet them and then dry them off, the sensor seems to work better. Though my dry fingertips are the same condition as when I had the Motorola, and it did a better job with the sensor. Not a major deal, as I said, that’s why God created PINs, though a shame. Then, I had what I thought might be a brainstorm. I decided to redo my fingerprints for the sensor. But – rather than clean my hands and moisten the fingertips first so that they’d be clear of grime and make the best-possible print…I came up with a counter-intuitive theory – I decided to keep my fingertips dry and less than ideal when I re-programmed fingerprints, so that that would be what the sensor would initially register and then subsequently hopefully recognize each time when my fingers were their normally-dry selves. And…so far it’s working wonderfully! I re-did all four fingerprints and, bizarrely, my counter-productive idea to program my fingerprint sensor without cleaning my fingers first but using them dried out…has worked semi-impeccably! It isn’t 100%, but so far works about 85% first time. Which is excellent. And it’s worked on a second or third try another 10% of the time. So, only very, very rarely have I been bumped to the PIN keypad. O joy! So, if you find you’re having issues with the fingerprint sensor of your phone, it might be worth considering re-programming your fingerprints when they’re at their driest, but everyday-normal worst. As readers may have noticed, the Weebly service that operates this website had another of its meltdowns over the weekend. I wasn't able to post for a while, and once that got "fixed," some material was still missing. I've just noticed a new problem related to this "fix." The home blog page is working mostly-normally. (The background wallpaper is gone, but all the links are fine.) However, when you go to the bottom of the home blog page, and click the "Previous" link, that's where it all goes haywire. On that next page you've clicked through to, there are now no longer links for “Previous” page and “Next” page. So, there is now no way for a reader to keep scrolling there through the blog any further, but can only read that one, home page and whatever new material has been pushed over to the next page as new material is added. Moreover, other than on the home blog page, you'll notice on this "previous" page that there is now no longer the "hyperlink listing" on the right side that shows all the months the blog has been active, nor is there the hyperlink list of all the different categories that have been associated with each blog post – so there is no way there for a reader to jump to any other month and read anything else in the blog except from the one, home page. You used to be able to do this from every page. For that matter, other than on the home blog page, everything on the right side of the next page is missing, like my bio and a notice/link about Amazon Associates (and graphic links to my books for sale on Amazon, as well as links for following me on Twitter and Facebook ) – and additionally, there is nothing at the bottom of the page, like the copyright notice and personal page information. In other words, other than from the blog’s home page, everything else on the site is pretty much inaccessible. (Some material can be reached through links in the sections at the top of the "previous" page, but that’s it. ) And the background wallpaper has disappeared completely from every page. Happily, there is an odd semi-workaround for this. When you're on the home blog page (as you no doubt are now) and find that list of months on the right side of the page displayed under "Archives" -- I have a screenshot below -- and click on the previous month (or click on any month other than the current one of March), then the page for that month (or any month you choose to click on) will appear as normal along with "Next" and "Previous" at the bottom of the page and all the sidebar material! While this works perfectly, it is also not something I expect most people to try on their own as a whimsy guess. It also means that most of March's content is missing. Here's that graphic of the Archive list of hyperlinked months I referred to -- I hope that this is a “known bug,” and that it can be fixed incredibly soon. Although that hope is held on a gossamer wing. I say that because Weebly has had many big problems the last few years, like when the Search engine went out for a year, and also that I can no longer schedule a blog post that has embedded code in it (like the Piano Puzzlers and Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me! and Al Franken podcast audios), but can only post such articles at a "Immediately" moment. This has been a known-bug to Weebly engineers, but tech support says there are no plans to fix it, which is terribly inconvenient. (As is another long-standing issue that if you write an article and save it to post later, it won't appear when you post it, but will show up in the timeline when it was initially written and saved. Well...gee, that's really stupid and useless.) There are others, most of which have occurred after Weebly was sold to a company called Square. I've been told by Customer Support (when I can reach them...) that Weebly is phasing out tech support for the blog feature, and that they also may even phase out the blog feature entirely in 2-3 years, though nothing has been decided. I've been searching for ways to port my site here to another service, though I'm not 100% sure if that's even possible since Weebly uses proprietary coding, though I think I can and think I've found a good company that can do such a thing. But it's a convoluted process, not inexpensive, and they may only be able to port over just the blog, not the full site with all the various sections. I haven't figured out yet what I'll do, if anything even can be done, other than hope for the best. (By the way, if anyone in the West Los Angeles area knows of somebody who is expert at porting websites, all recommendations are welcome. There is a "Contact Us" link in the top menu bar and also at the bottom of the home page.) For now, the site is running and I can post new articles. Hopefully the "Previous" and "Next" links will return -- along with full access to the site and its several thousand articles over the past nine years. I know that that can be fixed. (Since it all exists when you click on links to other articles under the sections at the very top of the page under the "ELISBERG INDUSTRIES" banner.) Whether Weebly will fix them, or when...ah, that's the question. Hopefully very soon, but -- who knows? I certainly apologize for all these issues that are unfortunately beyond my control and have worked hard over time to keep them in the background as much as possible so that they are unnoticeable. That isn't always possible, but hopefully it's been kept to a minimum. Just keeping you all informed. Updates as they occur. Sorry, I'm having big problems with the Weebly service, and so I'm checking things out. I don't know if this will get posted -- and I can't guarantee I'll even be able to delete this if it does show up, so...we'll see.
If I can't get the problem resolved, I may not be posting here for a while until I hear back from Weebly tech support -- and they seem to be phasing out support for the blog feature. And perhaps the blog service itself. If that's the case, I'll keep trying to post updates on Facebook and maybe Twitter, and see about porting the entire site to another company, but that could take a while. Right now, I'm trying a different browser. Hopefully this will be resolved MUCH more easily. And soon. Sorry, I'm having big problems with the Weebly service, and so I'm checking things out. I don't know if this will get posted -- and I can't guarantee I'll even be able to delete this if it does show up, so...we'll see.
If I can't get the problem resolved, I may not be posting here for a while until I hear back from Weebly tech support -- and they seem to be phasing out support for the blog feature. And perhaps the blog service itself. If that's the case, I'll keep trying to post updates on Facebook and maybe Twitter, and see about porting the entire site to another company, but that could take a while. Right now, I'm trying a different browser. Hopefully this will be resolved MUCH more easily. And soon. |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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