Twitter Lays Off Workers: it Faces Class Action Lawsuit.

There are some important developments in the Twitter drama. Some of this might have national security implications depending on how the collateral (Tesla) was put together. I will say it right now; he will regret not paying one billion to walk away from the deal.

The first thing to understand is that Musk does not understand free speech or commercial speech. But be as it may, Companies are fleeing. There is no other nice way to put it. This Politico story is but one example.

Companies do not want to be associated with hate speech. Yes, you can engage in QAnon-level speech. But in most of society, there are consequences to that. It’s not being woke. It is just not tolerated by most people. It is a nightmare, and the Verge put it well seven days ago:

Here are some examples: you can write as many polite letters to advertisers as you want, but you cannot reasonably expect to collect any meaningful advertising revenue if you do not promise those advertisers “brand safety.” That means you have to ban racism, sexism, transphobia, and all kinds of other speech that is totally legal in the United States but reveals people to be total assholes. So you can make all the promises about “free speech” you want, but the dull reality is that you still have to ban a bunch of legal speech if you want to make money…