1. Not So Fast, As Musk States His Plans, the Twitter Deal is Not Done Yet
   Yes, the Board of Twitter has given the green light to the deal – they are recommending the deal to shareholders. A big issue will be the shareholder vote, which is yet to be completed.
   Look out for the Twitter walkouts. We’ve seen the first stage of this but the gigantic woke beast is likely to fight for its life. They will do everything to prevent Twitter from becoming a free speech platform.
   Elon Musk has big plans for new features and ways to enhance trust in the platform for when the company had accepted his buyout offer.
   Twitter’s board of directors said on April 25 that it had approved Musk’s offer to buy Twitter for $54.20 per share in cash, in a deal worth around $44 billion.
   Parag Agrawal, CEO of Twitter, said that he believes the deal “is the best path forward for Twitter’s stockholders.”
   Musk laid out some details about what changes he would implement on the social media platform, whose commitment to free speech he has repeatedly called into question.
   “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Musk said. “Twitter functions as a “de facto town square” where important conversations should be able to take place with as few constraints as possible.”
   Even as Musk said on Monday, he wants to make the platform’s algorithms “open source to increase trust,” while “defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans.” The Twitter Algorithm repository on GitHub was deleted.
   How this will affect Musk’s desire to turn Twitter into a private company was to transform it into a bastion of free speech by opening its algorithm to public scrutiny and by making its moderation policies more transparent.
   At the TED conference, Musk said, “In my view, Twitter should match the laws of the country,” Musk said, acknowledging reasonable legal caps on free speech like direct incitement to violence or shouting “fire” in a crowded theater.
   “But going beyond that and having it be unclear who’s making what changes to where, having tweets mysteriously be promoted and demoted with no insight into what’s going on, having a black box algorithm promote some things and not other things, I think this can be quite dangerous,” Musk said.
   “My strong, intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization,” he added.
   “I’m not saying that I have all the answers here,” Musk said at the TED talk. But I do think that we want to be just very reluctant to delete things, just be very cautious with permanent bans. Timeouts I think are better than permanent bans.”
   “If in doubt, let the speech, let it exist,” Musk said. “If it’s a grey area, I would say let the tweet exist. But obviously in a case where there’s perhaps a lot of controversy, that you would not want to necessarily promote that tweet.”
   “A good sign as to whether there’s free speech is, is someone you don’t like allowed to say something you don’t like,” Musk said. “And if that is the case, then we have free speech.”
   In a series of tweets reacting to Musk’s takeover moves, Amnesty International expressed concern about the erosion of policies meant to protect users.
   “We are concerned with any steps that Twitter might take to erode enforcement of the policies and mechanisms designed to protect users,” Amnesty International wrote.
   “The last thing we need is a Twitter that willfully turns a blind eye to violent and abusive speech against users,” the group said.
   Nevertheless, the Tesla founder urged his “worst critics” to stay on the platform.
   “I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means,” he wrote in a Twitter post.
   Dan Ives, an analyst at investment firm Wedbush Securities, told the BBC that he expects most users will take a “wait-and-see approach” on whether they stay or leave the platform, based on the changes that take place.
   “Now it’s about courting new users and stopping defectors from the platform,” Ives told the outlet.
   We’ll just have to see what happens when Musk’s version of Twitter actually becomes a done deal.

   • If Amnesty International and the likes are so concerned about violent and abusive speech toward users, then let them voice even more concern about the terrorists who use twitter to promote mass terror.

2. Yep Democrats hate freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

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