Abbott Laboratories, Allstate Corporation, AMC movie theaters, American Express and AT&T all left Twitter as advertisers after Elon Musk fired most of its gatekeepers and let (more) anti-Semites and conspiracy theorists in. And that’s only the “A”s. There’s the California Lottery, Chevrolet, CNN, Ford, Jeep, The Coca-Cola Co. and Wells Fargo, Media Matters reported in November 2022.
Joe Biden, Nikki Haley, Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney, the Ukraine government, Mary Trump, The Bulwark and Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) still use X to announce news and make comments.
“X” This
Musk paid $44 billion two years ago to buy Twitter and then promote it as an absolute outlet for uncensored free speech. It is a place where anyone can say anything they consider the “truth” or consider worth repeating, even “FIRE!” X’s owner, whose EV automaker Tesla years ago trashed its already minimalist public relations department will likely react to your questions and comments about the recklessness of the automaker’s “full self-driving” technology with, at best, a “poop” emoji and more likely with nothing but dead air.
This is absolute free speech, at least as practiced by billionaire libertarian tech moguls who as Adrienne LaFrance write in the March issue of The Atlantic are potentially as dangerous a group of authoritarians as, say, Hungary’s Viktor Örban.
Yes, This is Self-Promotion
A small, generous group of journalist friends and I launched The Hustings more than three years ago with the thought of providing an outlet with conservative and liberal commentary in the right and left columns, bookending a center column of political news and (mostly) news aggregate. We strive to use traditional newspaper standards to provide a safe webspace for civil discussion of diverse ideas and viewpoints. No Section 230 for us.
While it has not gone well from a financial point of view, or even in terms of building and keeping regular readership, we think the time is right to expand this idea and build a network of real news outlets consisting of local online newspapers and independent national outlets that would offer itself as an alternative to Facebook, Reddit, TikTok and, yes, X.
Civil media vs. social media.
Beware Moderate Democrats
The New York Times’ business section last Sunday profiled Garry Tan, a self-described “moderate Democrat” and chief executive for the tech startup Y Combinator, who wants to replace his hometown San Francisco’s far-left politicians with moderate liberals.
Just after midnight on Saturday, January 27, Tan posted on X “that seven left-leaning members of the city’s Board of Supervisors, listed by name, should ‘die slow', punctuated by an expletive,” according to the NYT’s Sunday’s biz page. “It was a subtle reference to the rap legend Tupac Shakur’s famous track ‘Hit ‘Em Up,’ released 28 years ago as an insult to his music rivals. But to some people, it sounded like a threat.”
Tan admitted he was drunk when he posted the above on X, and in a few hours deleted it and apologized for it, but of course by now it was all over X, having been retweeted (re-eXXed?) no doubt by many of those free-speechers on the site who have a more malevolent attitude toward the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
The Hustings Could Have Helped Mr. Tan
Like any respectable, self-respecting news media outlet, The Hustings would have rejected Mr. Tan’s comments had he sent them directly to us instead of Musk’s X, though obviously once it’s posted elsewhere first, it qualifies as potential center-column news, considering the tech billionaire’s prominence in business and politics. Had The Hustings received Mr. Tan’s message first, we would have replied with an email or message asking if he’d like to offer any civil, and not personal, thoughts about the SF supervisors.
Some 42 months after our shaky but enthusiastic launch as https://thehustings.news, we are still hoping there is ample space on the Internet for outlets like ours. Let us know your thoughts in an email to editors@thehustings.news.
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Because it is the only social network I currently use ... altho perhaps "we" could switch to Truth Social? 😉