My highschool days. Wouldn’t change a thing either, except I wouldn’t start smoking cigarettes.

Removing his ability to play stocks at all is removing his ability to earn money. His investors will leave him and the interest on his loans will liquidate him. We’ve seen more than a few of his type flash up and fade away. Milken. Pickens. Belfort. And of course, Madoff. Just to name a few we know by a single name.

He would still be wealthier than 99.99% of people but then so are a lot of folks on the planet. That’s 80 million people left over in that .01%. That’s not all that powerful at all. It’s removing him from the .00001% thats the goal. And killing his stock market abilities would do that over-night. It’s why he bought Twitter, he had to because this was the alternative.

Kinda… depends on how things got him there. The thing Elon can’t lose without really going off the rails is his ability to play the markets. Once the SEC kicks him out you’ll see him legitimately calling for open revolt.

Twitter was purchased at 44 billion in late 2022. It did not cost Twitter 44 billion to run for the years prior. That is very much profit for those shareholders considering especially that 44 billion was a significant percentage higher than the value at the time. It cost less than half a billion to keep Twitter’s lights on every quarter. They started in 2006. So assuming from the get go it cost half a billion a quarter (and you know it didn’t right?) … that’s 32 billion to run Twitter the years it was open. And they sold for 44 billion, meaning 12 billion in profit in a windfall.

Still following?

And for a social media company’s primary shareholders, selling that company is the ultimate goal and only way to realize true profits. That’s the social media scam. Zuckerberg right? You think he wants to run Facebook? He has to, he’s an employee at this rate. Well compensated sure but he doesn’t pull the strings.

What’s hilarious is Elon didn’t understand all that. He bought Twitter for cash money. There is no way on God’s green earth he manages to turn a profit with it because no social media company has been able to either - not with an entire board and public stock, so certainly not with a private company either. All the profit mechanisms they had before were contingent on the stock market, on speculation. That’s all gone now. It’s private. There is no public stock price to affect.

Twitter made 44 billion dollars. Pretty sure it didn’t cost that much to run. Ergo Twitter made money.

That’s the big hurdle. That’s the big catch. Social media companies are contingent on speculation to drive profits. Facebook isn’t worth what it is without speculative buying in the markets. Twitter, same story. That’s where reddit is at, they want a payday and to move on. The funny thing is this same reasoning exposes just how awful a businessman Elon Musk is. Twitter is going to literally drive him from the top ten richest in the world list all on its own. Give it time.

TIL Voat shut down. Shocker.

The thing is that corporations already can’t sell that data … unless you give them permission to … which you do just that explicitly when you agree to the EULAs.

That’s the legal basis. No one absolutely must use these platforms, legally. Practically they must in many cases but that’s the catch 22. The platforms literally came up on intelligence community funding. Facebook was propped up by’em for this exact reason.

And you can’t make an inalienable right to privacy such that companies can’t ever sell personal data but still allow people themselves to do so, and you can’t stop me from selling my data myself. That would be a much bigger breach of the contract of regulatory power that defends citizens.

Privacy isn’t something anyone can reasonably force you to keep. I can’t go showing my dick to everyone and then scold them for checking out my package, and still maintain my honesty. If I didn’t want people looking at my wangstick, I wouldn’t show it to them.

Yeah people who say shit like that have never been to jail or prison. Cause you wouldn’t. Isolation is fantastic when you’re home and you can lounge and play video games. Not so great in an empty 6 ft box.

Thing is the next guy can’t actually invigorate them because it’s DeSantis. Or Ted Cruz, whom I suspect will actually end up with the nomination. DeSantis is a shitbag but he’s entirely lacking in the crowd pleasing department. MAGA diehards are all that’s left and they hate him already. Then there’s Cruz, who will be a direct opposite to that brand - trying to sell himself as a moderate. Real hard to get people excited about that, and they’ve spent a decade or more undercutting that exact platform. Plus he’s Ted Cruz. Dude is a total loser to every side.

The brand of ego maniac that creates a Trump isn’t common enough for Republicans to just spin up a new one. We’ve watched them try time and again the last 8 years and it’s laughable how badly it goes for them. I disdain Trump but I can recognize that aspect clearly. The guy was massively and mainstream popular for decades prior to his presidency across multiple, huge platforms. He was already a household name, no one had to ask who he was. That’s what it took.

Republicans know it too, it’s why they’ve still been backing him and not going on the direct offensive - yet.

It’s okay, they shamelessly stole it from Twitter where it originated. [Deep breath] the circle of liiiiifffffeeeeeeee…

What we outside fail to realize is these people live in a wholly different reality.

I haven’t watched television with any ads in years. So when I go to a hotel and I’m lounging watching cable and seeing commercials it is jarring just what a different world it is from what I remember before. And for people who never left it, it isn’t jarring at all. It’s their normal.

Now imagine you only watched Fox or OANN. It’s your very reality that’s twisted all askew. It’s hard to hold that against many of the MAGA crowd and speaks to just how influential misinformation campaigns can be.

1 9 90 rule applies quite well, only a limited number of users ever interact with anything at all, and no one interacts with everything.

mugshot will not be made public

But it will be made. Wonder who gets that honor.

I think at this stage removing it would be equivalent to tattooing “assassinate me” on his forehead.

Look I hate the guy too and he doesn’t deserve his freedom, but there’s a large number of people in this world who would love to merc a former POTUS regardless of who that POTUS is or what they did. And frankly Trump is more dangerous as a martyr than he is alive and alone on house arrest for the rest of his life.

Edit, dead he can’t speak for himself anymore, alive all he does is bury himself further every time he opens his mouth. Let him. Let him babble incoherently into obscurity. My father in law was full on MAGA and just last week he called Trump “fucking retarded” off-handedly. My wife and I both felt relief instantly. The dude is losing all but the extreme fringe.

Most human like thing about it yet, in fact.

He’s already overridden people blocking him. You still see his posts.

He’s just trying to make sure it stays useful as a weapon for fascists like himself is all.

Not those of us who exclusively used the 3rd party apps. Former RiF user here, reddit for 12 years. Not doing it on their app, you couldn’t pay me to tolerate that experience. Using Jerboa right now and with a couple tiny improvements, I got no problem switching.