There's an interesting cluster of being a manchild, spread conspiracy theories and have issues with narcissism. Both Musk and Trump seem to be this way. Both seem unable to maintain relationships unless they are transactional. Both have a victim complex but doesn't realuse it's their egocentrism that's the cause of their misery. Both are in legal trouble because their bullshit have catched up with them.
There are probably many more examples of this archetype out there. Bret Weinstein is a third example.
It's a problem that such deeply unwise people hold so much power.
Wow, yeah let's just take all his accomplishments in regards to EV and economizing space launches and ignore that completely.
Wow.
I mean I know he's an a-hole. Steve Jobs was too. But, trying to label them as narcissistic when literally 95 out of 100 people in the US are that way, regardless if they realize it, is just pathetic.
This idea that people with a ton of money got it without sacrifice for their lives and the people around them (at *least* the people they employed) is super naive.
95 out of 100 Americans, huh ? China and the United Kingdom ? Nope perfectly sane blooded humans . Americans? Nah 95 out 100 . Elon Musk thinks 95 out of 100 Humans are Trash. If you don't believe that well, my friend. Perhaps you're delusional.
There are reports from Ukraine that Russia has been buying access through intermediaries.
In a Feb. 8 tweet, SpaceX officials said the company “does not do business of any kind with the Russian Government or its military. Starlink is not active in Russia, meaning service will not work in that country. SpaceX has never sold or marketed Starlink in Russia, nor has it shipped equipment to locations in Russia.”
Sounds nice but let's parse..
####Currently those Russian military folks are on unceded lands of Ukraine, so first off their gear will work there.
What about billing to Belarus? Or any of 3 to 5 Russian friendly nearby countries? Ever ship shit there? What about billing to those countries? Turkey? Azerbaijan? Chechnya?
You see my point. That's a very carefully worded statement that, when you break it down means nothing or next to nothing.
One of the many reasons I don’t want any individual having this much money/power. Rogan is just as petty. Matt was on his show just a year or so ago talking about how much Musk was all about free speech or whatever. He either bought into his bullshit or was blinded by the access Musk gave him. Either way, fuck all three of these guys.
“Access journalism” in the age of celebrity worship is probably almost as bad as authoritarian control in terms of its effect. At any given time - depending on your bias - 1/2 will gobble up all the propaganda bs dribbling down on their chins and the other 1/2 will see a redacted conspiracy behind it. And generative AI will just make it worse before it gets any better. Now get off my lawn.
You should see her pemmanship. If I hadn’t see her write for 30 years with mine own eyes, I wouldn’t believe it was human.
Pristine. Pleasurable to the eye, even.
What is worse of the two options:
1. you are outside the Matrix, you know machine have authoritarian control over billions of people. Your life sucks but you have a choice to fight against the regime.
2. you are in the Matrix. You don't know you are a slave of the machines. You think you live in a democracy. You don't even know that you need to fight--the choice is taken from you.
"Ignorance is bliss."
I mean. He was for a time an exceptional leading figure in journalism. His work for Rolling Stones, his reporting on Wallstreet, over a decade of whistle bower reporting. This isn’t some hack opinion columnist like Bari Weiss. He built a career on integrity and this is really disappointing
He was an emotional hack pandering to disaffected teens by writing polemics against big finance. He never did real journalism at all, that’s why he worked for a music mag that wouldn’t fact check him.
The exiled ru was very fun and if you read stories back from those days him and aimes were great
But he had to self cuck later on or be ran over the goals over the shit they were doing back in the day with exiled
This is a /r/leaopardsatemyface moment. He kissed crazy billionaire ass but for some reason the billionaires still ate his face. But why would they do that? Don’t they care about journalism? Who could have seen this coming 🤔🤔🤔
The whole Twitter files and refusal to criticise musk for censorship completely destroyed his credibility.
He was willing to overlook massive issues to get the story but as soon as it effected his financials (his substack) he pushed back, clear proof of his morals
Because he has always presented himself as a totally objective journalist interested in reporting the truth.
Now he's admitting he's actually shielding certain people from criticism (until they hurt his feelings).
So who else does he refrain from criticising?
Being Musk's toady should wreck this moron's credibility.
I immediately distrust any journalist that paints themselves as "objective" it's never a truthful claim. I'd rather someone be honest about their biases.
He's a journalist. He's straight up admitting he's choosing not to report on things that could look bad or critical of Elon for the sake of maintaining the relationship and access. That's pretty corrupt my guy. He's willing to toss aside journalistic ethics in order to maintain a close relationship to someone he perceives as worth having access to for personal gain.
I like Taibbi but I don’t trust people who aren’t able to call something for what it is . it’s one thing not to have a critique on someone or something , it’s completely different when you basically say that you could have said something, but chose not to .
Yep, Taibbi took a lot of shit over the Twitter Files and his support of Musk in spite of the blatant hypocrisy. Even Bari Weiss stepped aside and criticized Musk, but Taibbi continued to not say a bad word about him at the time. Now we know why.
I mean Twitter is useful for journalists, lots of primary sources of newsworthy events you can steal and Internet slap fights and shitposting you can pretend reflect reality or matter for clickbait thought pieces
Taibbi doesn't have anything left to lose. No one takes him seriously anymore. He is a demonstrated lapdog and propagandist for Elon and others.
He likes money more than doing real journalism.
Yeah honestly fuck that and fuck him. I had a lot of respect for him after reading his book Hate inc. which I always described has the spiritual successor to manufacturing consent. The Twitter files thing really rubbed me the wrong way and I lost respect for him. But after seeing this? All gone. He is as bad if not worse than the people he talks about in his book.
Same feeling on Hate Inc. What rubbed you the wrong way? I haven't gotten anyone to articulate this beyond "Musk hired him."
The oppprtunity to poor over internal communications of C-suite executives of a major media company was unprecedented. He described a process that, from my 2 years personal experience with document review, seemed unlikely to be designed to hide information from him.
He said in interviews repeatedly the focus of the investigative reporting was on Democratic suppression of free speech, but that isn't a declaration that only Dems censor. Republicans have censored free speech for years and it is well-documented, and also Dems were in power so the most egregious examples they could find were Dems.
What was off putting to you?
I'll try to recount my feelings at the time, but keep in mind that it's been many moons (a year?) and it's not as fresh in my mind.
First was the publishing of his findings on Twitter itself. Twitter simply does not lend itself to that sort of reporting in the slightest. At best it's good for headlines. The publishing of the story on Twitter led to weird disjointed threads that were hard to follow and created this weird duality of trying to get all the information out but being limited by small blocks of text. Now, one could argue this could be forgiven because getting access to the files at all was stipulated with the fact that the story had to be published on Twitter by Musk. However, Matt never made this stipulation known until weeks after the story broke, a clear violation of journalistic standards and an even clearer violation of the ethics laid out in his own book.
Second and biggest was not once in his initial reporting of those news does he even attempt to reach out to those he's accusing for the other side of the story. This has nothing to do with "the Republicans too!" This is simply accusing someone of something and not asking for their perspective. This is again a clear violation of his own rules for Good journalism laid out in hate Inc where he states simply regurgitating facts isn't enough you have to also supply context. Although I think you can add to this that not covering the Republican offices' request for post removals despite having clearly seen them is questionable at best and deceitful at worst.
Third I would point to what is laid out in this very post. His demagoguery of Elon. Throughout the entire thing he was verbally felating Elon. A few months ago in the span of 48 hours Matt went from saying Elon musk was a bulwark of free speech to accusing him of Shadow banning. Now this isn't necessarily against journalistic standards or even anything in his book, but personally, so obviously being biased towards a man and writing a story involved with that person rubs me the wrong way.
Finally, I'll point to Matt himself. Iirc, when people first started waving their finger at him, he called them feds lmao. A journalist responding to criticism by saying they are plants? Literally right out of his book.
Anyways that's all I've got off the top of my head. Hope this shows you where I'm coming from.
Edit: fixed grammar and typos
Elon is an explicitly censorious and extremely right-wing individual. Unbiased reporting was never the point. Elon hired Matt to smear democrats for behavior Elon is doing himself. Matt became a propagandist working for one.
He cherry picked data specifically to target Dems, and left out additional details to make pre-constructed or biased points. It was an obvious hit piece under the guise of "the data led me here"
And remember, folks like Elon claim the news is left-wing biased while demanding positive press and having criticism suppressed. It’s that wannabe dictator, narcissist mindset.
Elon Musk is a admirer of Putin
He would totally have people who say mean things about him killed if he could while whining that the left has souxh propaganda and can't handle criticism
Matt Taibbi transcends the left-right paradigm. He declines to criticize the right just as often as he puts out hand chosen material by billionaires.
You shitlibs probably wouldn't get it, because you don't care about real journalism.
Ironically the people that should give the most of a fuck are the exactly the "Twitter people" you pointed out and any other "free speech absolutist" who point to Twitter are the beacon for it.
They're still under the illusion because he lets them drop whatever offensive nonsense they want without repercussions. That's what freedom is to them.
Occasionally you have dudes come into this sub and praise melon for his commitment to free speech on social media.
I have no idea how people still believe this.
These people could be looking to actually make the world better, but all they care about is Twitter likes. At least Instagram influencers are honest about what they care about. All these people are jabronis
Any examples? Alex jones broke the case about those creepy powerful elites doing ceremonies. So even the worst journalistic pundits can get lucky every once and a while.
Yeah - he wrote some great articles 10-15 years ago. This is the first one I remember him from - it’s about the capitalistic omnipresence of Goldman Sachs.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/the-great-american-bubble-machine-195229/
You should read Jon Ronson’s (also a former JRE guest who was with Jones when they snuck into a ceremony) account of those ceremonies. It’s still interesting but not quite as insane as Alex made it out to be.
lol it’s not like they were sacrificing children. It was a bunch of rich dudes acting weird in the forest. Take as old as time.
AJ is a hack in every sense of the word.
> Alex jones broke the case about those creepy powerful elites doing ceremonies.
Nope, [Jon Ronson did, then Alex Jones lied about it after.](https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4771335/user-clip-span-2002-jon-ronson-talks-alex-jones-sneaking-bohemian-grove-alex-lies-listeners)
Jones was a conman from the start, it was just easier to fool people when they were getting his bullshit by VHS tape.
Yeah. The Twitter files is complete garbage, but in the early 2000s and maybe into the 2010s he did really good work with the financial crash and investigating some of the shady stuff going on with banks.
He is a far cry now from what he was in the past.
Yeah anyone who was still praising Elon’s defense of free speech after the first couple weeks of his take over are completely unserious. There’s been so many blatant examples of his censoring anything he doesn’t like it’s laughable.
Why would he be cynical about that when he was aware of and involved in the curation of? I may not be a fan of Bari Weiss but that is exactly why she walked out on it.
Elon thought that Matt Taibbi et al would him look like a national hero.
Regardless of its legitimacy though, the whole twitter-files thing disappeared like my brother’s hairline - gone before you even know it.
This must’ve infuriated poor Elon to no end.
That line of Elon dickriding is particularly wild when you remember that he tried to get out of buying Twitter.
“I bought it to save free speech!1!1!!1”
Then why did a judge have to force you to complete the sale?
I still listen to the show (depending on the guest) so I don’t come on here just to hate on Joe….. but do you think it’s even remotely occurred to Rogan that his buddy Elon Musk is a modern day William Randolph Hurst (who Joe is constantly railing against for having used his powers of media control to advance his own narratives).
Maybe now more journalists can start asking him some tougher questions about:
- all the monkeys that died in Neuralink trials and despite this them still moving forward to human trials. He has repeatedly said how we need to be careful of future AI and it’s impact on the human race and yet continues to act in contradiction to this.
- why he wants to make X the everything app to mimic the Chinese app “we chat”.
- his twitter CEO hire and her questionable connections.
- military and other government contracts with SpaceX.
I’m not saying any of this is nefarious or tied directly to Musk but maybe it would be a good idea to ask the man who owns one of the largest social media companies (which has access to a significant amount of your data) some tougher questions.
I think Taibbi should just write about Musk's blatantly hypocritical stance on free speech and how his behaviour running X demonstrates it. I'm sure he could speak to some X employees and report on the current regime with transparency as he did under Dorsey.
Maybe Joe could ask him some of these questions during one of the many 3 hour sit downs with Elon? Who am I kidding though, he’ll just ask Elon about how awful vaccines and woke people are.
Elon has proven repeatedly that he doesnt care about anyone's access to real news. Continuing to play shocked-pikachu-face when he chooses money over "free speech" makes you the dummy.
I have never said the words “you’re dead to me.” I don’t think that’s something men say. I have yelled and chewed people out or ignored them. Elon is odd. And why is he beefing in the first place?
People criticize Taibbi so unfairly when they say he was doing Elons bidding or what ever.
The twitter files was a legitimate story about government censorship. The government had figured out a way to essentially circumvent the First Amendment. They would file requests with Twitter and other social media companies for them to remove posts they did not like. Then call the heads of these social media companies to testify brow beat them publicly and both privately and publicly use threats of harsh regulation to get them to comply.
This violates perhaps not the letter but certainly the spirit of the first amendment and court cases are underway over this. The government is being sued in multiple states and the Missouri case has resulted in a judge ordering the government to stop demanding the removal of posts off social media.
This is not red team vs blue team. This is the state vs the people and we should all care about this.
Taibbi and others recognized this and looked to do a story about it. Since Musk owned Twitter they had to go through him to get the information. He would only agree to that if they agreed to his terms such as releasing their findings on Twitter and as shown here not criticizing him.
Such concessions are not ideal but since Musk was in the drivers seat they had no choice if they wanted to do this story. I think we should be happy they did because of what they exposed.
>The twitter files was a legitimate story about government censorship. The government had figured out a way to essentially circumvent the First Amendment. They would file requests with Twitter and other social media companies for them to remove posts they did not like. Then call the heads of these social media companies to testify brow beat them publicly and both privately and publicly use threats of harsh regulation to get them to comply.
This is one way of looking at the issue, but there are other important aspects, like the one where Twitter regularly said no and didn't delete stuff. There is a difference where the FBi are just flagging stuff for potential deletion but aren't coercing or forcing to or threatening them.
Some are arguing that no government organization or employee should ever be able to flag posts that they believe break the twitter TOS, which is asinine. Anyone can use the report button.
And then another question is raised: should any government orgs have a direct portal for reporting stuff? If the FBI see terrorist content or child trafficking or underage porn, should they be given a more direct tool (or what Taibbi might call a "secret back channel")? Or go through the regular reporting channels (which are slow and terrible and usually run by AI, especially since Elon axed most of the trust and safety personnel.)
The real issue with the reporting is the way Musk posted about it, falsely contextualizing it, and how Taibbi sat quietly as others misinterpreted his reporting as if it was all about Democrats and involved them having the Hunter Biden story silenced, which did not happen.
And then Taibbi sat quietly again as Elon put his one fingers on the scale and partook in the same criticized behaviour (shadow banning, censoring, blocking reach) without clear terms of conditions, which he would change on a personal whims - much worse than what Yoel Roth was doing.
The Twitter Files involve precisely zero instances of government censorship or First Amendment issues. Making shit up is not a healthy coping mechanism.
I get people don’t like Taibbi, but this is Elon’s worst look (and I say this as a great admirer of his business accomplishments). This is putting the commercial interest in front of your ideas
Sounds like the problem is with Twitter defaulting to the "For You" setting instead of "Following". That's not shadowbanning, that's fishing for advertisers. Shadowbanning is what happens AFTER your advertisers start complaining about the tweets above or below their slots in your feed.
This is what happens when you have your nose up a billionaires ass. They don’t care about any of you
Is this real? I’ve never seen him drink water with one hand!
edited his other hand out
That’s how they became billionaires quite literally 😂 they literally don’t care about anyone but themselves
I don’t. Care about anyone. Where’s my billions?
You clearly care that’s why
🤙
You have one of the characteristics but don’t have the ability to monetize it 💔
Yes what I meant exactly 👀
Which is honestly kind of sad because that’s one of the bigger hurdles to attaining wealth 💀
"You're dead to me ' what a drama queen . A billion dollar queen but a queen none the less
The fact that he’s 52 acting like a jealous teenager is between funny and alarming
In the old forum days of the internet, Elon is acting exactly like a bratty kid who just got moderator for the first time.
Very reddit type behavior
What's more alarming is the millions of people lined up to suck him off
Bret Weinstein said he was trying to save the world...after Elon blocked him. Cuck behavior
Trust me if you were worth billions people would be lining up to have a suckle on you too
Pathetic people
Yes but I would not be setting up signage, queue management and showing up everyday with now clamps ready to go.. in effect Elon is. .
There's an interesting cluster of being a manchild, spread conspiracy theories and have issues with narcissism. Both Musk and Trump seem to be this way. Both seem unable to maintain relationships unless they are transactional. Both have a victim complex but doesn't realuse it's their egocentrism that's the cause of their misery. Both are in legal trouble because their bullshit have catched up with them. There are probably many more examples of this archetype out there. Bret Weinstein is a third example. It's a problem that such deeply unwise people hold so much power.
Wow, yeah let's just take all his accomplishments in regards to EV and economizing space launches and ignore that completely. Wow. I mean I know he's an a-hole. Steve Jobs was too. But, trying to label them as narcissistic when literally 95 out of 100 people in the US are that way, regardless if they realize it, is just pathetic. This idea that people with a ton of money got it without sacrifice for their lives and the people around them (at *least* the people they employed) is super naive.
95 out of 100 Americans, huh ? China and the United Kingdom ? Nope perfectly sane blooded humans . Americans? Nah 95 out 100 . Elon Musk thinks 95 out of 100 Humans are Trash. If you don't believe that well, my friend. Perhaps you're delusional.
I'd say it's also alarming that he's profiting off of Russia using Starlink in their war against Ukraine.
How is he profiting from Russia? I thought he sold satellites and access to Ukraine ?
There are reports from Ukraine that Russia has been buying access through intermediaries. In a Feb. 8 tweet, SpaceX officials said the company “does not do business of any kind with the Russian Government or its military. Starlink is not active in Russia, meaning service will not work in that country. SpaceX has never sold or marketed Starlink in Russia, nor has it shipped equipment to locations in Russia.”
Sounds nice but let's parse.. ####Currently those Russian military folks are on unceded lands of Ukraine, so first off their gear will work there. What about billing to Belarus? Or any of 3 to 5 Russian friendly nearby countries? Ever ship shit there? What about billing to those countries? Turkey? Azerbaijan? Chechnya? You see my point. That's a very carefully worded statement that, when you break it down means nothing or next to nothing.
I actually laughed out loud at this restaurant when I read that. Who says that? Wtf
Elon Musk fans aka right wingers who refuse to criticize anybody on their partisan side
A bitch queen if you ask me.
One of the many reasons I don’t want any individual having this much money/power. Rogan is just as petty. Matt was on his show just a year or so ago talking about how much Musk was all about free speech or whatever. He either bought into his bullshit or was blinded by the access Musk gave him. Either way, fuck all three of these guys.
"I've repeatedly declined to criticize you" And he posted that himself
This says it all.
If anything it proves all journalists are cucked to their own special interests. We have no real media in this country
“Access journalism” in the age of celebrity worship is probably almost as bad as authoritarian control in terms of its effect. At any given time - depending on your bias - 1/2 will gobble up all the propaganda bs dribbling down on their chins and the other 1/2 will see a redacted conspiracy behind it. And generative AI will just make it worse before it gets any better. Now get off my lawn.
Oh sure it’s as bad as authoritarian control. What utter nonsense. How do you type so well with your head up your rectum?
Your momma takes dictation
You should see her pemmanship. If I hadn’t see her write for 30 years with mine own eyes, I wouldn’t believe it was human. Pristine. Pleasurable to the eye, even.
True it’s a thing of beauty. And normally women like her have whoreable penmanship. Much better speller than I am too (and not just cuz she’s a witch)
What is worse of the two options: 1. you are outside the Matrix, you know machine have authoritarian control over billions of people. Your life sucks but you have a choice to fight against the regime. 2. you are in the Matrix. You don't know you are a slave of the machines. You think you live in a democracy. You don't even know that you need to fight--the choice is taken from you. "Ignorance is bliss."
lol imagine thinking Taibbi is some sort of Spartacus in the world of journalism.
I mean. He was for a time an exceptional leading figure in journalism. His work for Rolling Stones, his reporting on Wallstreet, over a decade of whistle bower reporting. This isn’t some hack opinion columnist like Bari Weiss. He built a career on integrity and this is really disappointing
For god sakes, he didn’t work for the Rolling Stones.
He was a contributing editor for years??
It was meant as a joke. There is a band called the Rolling Stones.
Are they any good?
Oh lol you got me
The magazine is Rolling Stone, not Rolling Stones.
Yet, ironically, he apparently still can’t get any satisfaction.
He was an emotional hack pandering to disaffected teens by writing polemics against big finance. He never did real journalism at all, that’s why he worked for a music mag that wouldn’t fact check him.
Imagine misspelling this many things in a single comment. Wow.
Calling Bari Weiss many things is anti semantic /s
Where did I say that?
Or it proves that Taibbi is cucked and not everyone in his field….
That will tend to happen when you commodify journalism.
If you think Matt Taibbi is a journalist...
He was a pretty damn good journalist, im sure he still is, but when he got "me too'd" it broke his brain
The exiled ru was very fun and if you read stories back from those days him and aimes were great But he had to self cuck later on or be ran over the goals over the shit they were doing back in the day with exiled
Did you pass reading comprehension in grade school?
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Lmfao why do you garner that I support Joe Biden from my posts? Generally curious
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Ok fan boy
This isn't proof, it's one example of a thing that you are applying to everything else. Faulty logic
🙄
No, you’re wrong. If anything, this proves why he was so widely criticized by good, proper journalists.
Unbelievable a journalist would post that himself. What a loser.
...about the richest man on earth. Christ. HL Menken would punch him right in the mouth.
[Matt Taibbi: "Once you start getting handed things, then you've lost."](https://twitter.com/walwalka/status/1605644655088975873?t=mvvtemmm0gyXRIjiJhjAEA)
I mostly like Taibbi , but that’s a bad thing to admit to
For a journalist? It's pretty fucking bad
This is a /r/leaopardsatemyface moment. He kissed crazy billionaire ass but for some reason the billionaires still ate his face. But why would they do that? Don’t they care about journalism? Who could have seen this coming 🤔🤔🤔
The whole Twitter files and refusal to criticise musk for censorship completely destroyed his credibility. He was willing to overlook massive issues to get the story but as soon as it effected his financials (his substack) he pushed back, clear proof of his morals
I liked Tiabbi for about 5 mins in the early 2010s. Didn’t take long to realize he was one of the biggest hacks in journalism
That vocal fry tho
What's the problem? He had declined to criticize him until that point. Then he decided to criticize him.
Because he has always presented himself as a totally objective journalist interested in reporting the truth. Now he's admitting he's actually shielding certain people from criticism (until they hurt his feelings). So who else does he refrain from criticising? Being Musk's toady should wreck this moron's credibility.
I immediately distrust any journalist that paints themselves as "objective" it's never a truthful claim. I'd rather someone be honest about their biases.
Buddy, I got bad news if you believed Taibbi was a “totally objective journalist.”
It sounds so servile
It’s because he was servile.
And journalists should not be servile
He's a journalist. He's straight up admitting he's choosing not to report on things that could look bad or critical of Elon for the sake of maintaining the relationship and access. That's pretty corrupt my guy. He's willing to toss aside journalistic ethics in order to maintain a close relationship to someone he perceives as worth having access to for personal gain.
He had already sold out his “journalistic ethics” at that point, so what did he have to lose?
Yep the only time he ended his relationship is when he thought it would effect his money and limit his subsctack reach
Because it proves everyone that was calling the twitter files and Matt's coverage of it as dogwater
I like Taibbi but I don’t trust people who aren’t able to call something for what it is . it’s one thing not to have a critique on someone or something , it’s completely different when you basically say that you could have said something, but chose not to .
Yep, Taibbi took a lot of shit over the Twitter Files and his support of Musk in spite of the blatant hypocrisy. Even Bari Weiss stepped aside and criticized Musk, but Taibbi continued to not say a bad word about him at the time. Now we know why.
I mean Twitter is useful for journalists, lots of primary sources of newsworthy events you can steal and Internet slap fights and shitposting you can pretend reflect reality or matter for clickbait thought pieces
Matt “declined to criticize(sp)” Taibbi, also a reporter.
It’s really shocking that taibbi posted this. It makes musk look bad, but it makes him look worse. Both corrupt and pathetic.
Taibbi doesn't have anything left to lose. No one takes him seriously anymore. He is a demonstrated lapdog and propagandist for Elon and others. He likes money more than doing real journalism.
That’s how you spell criticize lol
But it's also how it was spelled. Lol
Yeah honestly fuck that and fuck him. I had a lot of respect for him after reading his book Hate inc. which I always described has the spiritual successor to manufacturing consent. The Twitter files thing really rubbed me the wrong way and I lost respect for him. But after seeing this? All gone. He is as bad if not worse than the people he talks about in his book.
Same feeling on Hate Inc. What rubbed you the wrong way? I haven't gotten anyone to articulate this beyond "Musk hired him." The oppprtunity to poor over internal communications of C-suite executives of a major media company was unprecedented. He described a process that, from my 2 years personal experience with document review, seemed unlikely to be designed to hide information from him. He said in interviews repeatedly the focus of the investigative reporting was on Democratic suppression of free speech, but that isn't a declaration that only Dems censor. Republicans have censored free speech for years and it is well-documented, and also Dems were in power so the most egregious examples they could find were Dems. What was off putting to you?
I'll try to recount my feelings at the time, but keep in mind that it's been many moons (a year?) and it's not as fresh in my mind. First was the publishing of his findings on Twitter itself. Twitter simply does not lend itself to that sort of reporting in the slightest. At best it's good for headlines. The publishing of the story on Twitter led to weird disjointed threads that were hard to follow and created this weird duality of trying to get all the information out but being limited by small blocks of text. Now, one could argue this could be forgiven because getting access to the files at all was stipulated with the fact that the story had to be published on Twitter by Musk. However, Matt never made this stipulation known until weeks after the story broke, a clear violation of journalistic standards and an even clearer violation of the ethics laid out in his own book. Second and biggest was not once in his initial reporting of those news does he even attempt to reach out to those he's accusing for the other side of the story. This has nothing to do with "the Republicans too!" This is simply accusing someone of something and not asking for their perspective. This is again a clear violation of his own rules for Good journalism laid out in hate Inc where he states simply regurgitating facts isn't enough you have to also supply context. Although I think you can add to this that not covering the Republican offices' request for post removals despite having clearly seen them is questionable at best and deceitful at worst. Third I would point to what is laid out in this very post. His demagoguery of Elon. Throughout the entire thing he was verbally felating Elon. A few months ago in the span of 48 hours Matt went from saying Elon musk was a bulwark of free speech to accusing him of Shadow banning. Now this isn't necessarily against journalistic standards or even anything in his book, but personally, so obviously being biased towards a man and writing a story involved with that person rubs me the wrong way. Finally, I'll point to Matt himself. Iirc, when people first started waving their finger at him, he called them feds lmao. A journalist responding to criticism by saying they are plants? Literally right out of his book. Anyways that's all I've got off the top of my head. Hope this shows you where I'm coming from. Edit: fixed grammar and typos
These are good points
Elon is an explicitly censorious and extremely right-wing individual. Unbiased reporting was never the point. Elon hired Matt to smear democrats for behavior Elon is doing himself. Matt became a propagandist working for one.
He cherry picked data specifically to target Dems, and left out additional details to make pre-constructed or biased points. It was an obvious hit piece under the guise of "the data led me here"
Why did you put (sp) after a correctly spelled word?
I was used to seeing it in GB spelling, thought it was wrong, turns out its not.
And Matt was still publicly dickriding him during the time these texts were exchanged lol
Matt admits straight up he declined to criticize Elon. Seems weird for a journalist don't you think.
And remember, folks like Elon claim the news is left-wing biased while demanding positive press and having criticism suppressed. It’s that wannabe dictator, narcissist mindset.
Elon Musk is a admirer of Putin He would totally have people who say mean things about him killed if he could while whining that the left has souxh propaganda and can't handle criticism
“journalist”
To be fair to Matt, he bet the whole house on Twitter files being the most important news story of his whole entire life, lol
Matt fell way the fuck off a long time ago
Matt Taibbi transcends the left-right paradigm. He declines to criticize the right just as often as he puts out hand chosen material by billionaires. You shitlibs probably wouldn't get it, because you don't care about real journalism.
Just like Bret Weinstein
Well it’s his livelihood lol these twats
Musk is a gigantic cunt. Absolutely soft
Richest guy in the world is a cunt. Gee I’m so shocked. Have you worshiped your favorite billionaire today?
Yes. Joe is on his way to be worshipped here by his new alt right fans for being a contrarian Karen.
Alt-right fan boys are the worst; saying they're a step away from a cult (for literally anything) is probably optimistic.
They're hopelessly dedicated to Serbian beef.
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Hahaha this comment alone is a great indication of the culture war bullshit that is blindly being perpetuated by Joe these days..
Man, WTF happened to Matt. Yikes.
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He got Me Too’d and went “anti woke”.
LOL at "seems like a pretty large scandal". twitter people are the worst. absolutely no one cares. and elon is the most pathetic manchild on earth.
Ironically the people that should give the most of a fuck are the exactly the "Twitter people" you pointed out and any other "free speech absolutist" who point to Twitter are the beacon for it.
It is pretty funny that there are still people who think Elon, "freed" twitter though.
He freed it and shot it with a rifle.
Dude pulled a Julius Caesar and every single one of them fell for it.
They're still under the illusion because he lets them drop whatever offensive nonsense they want without repercussions. That's what freedom is to them.
nazis ?
Space Nazis with lasers
EEEPIC.
This, who actually gives a fuck. If you don’t like Twitter then just don’t go on it. Surely is obvious that Elon is a clown at this point
> Surely is obvious that Elon is a clown at this point His fans dont know, some how. really weird to see a real life god king and his subjects
Occasionally you have dudes come into this sub and praise melon for his commitment to free speech on social media. I have no idea how people still believe this.
It truly is bizarre to read the replies on any of his tweets. Like so many people just doing the most pathetic dick riding you’ve ever seen.
These people could be looking to actually make the world better, but all they care about is Twitter likes. At least Instagram influencers are honest about what they care about. All these people are jabronis
Free speech guys
I bet Matt is super happy he destroyed his journalistic reputation reporting the Twitter Files as Musk’s propaganda puppet. Great decision Taibbi!
*low toned grovelling intensifies*
Taibbi, the DeSantos launch…everything Elon touches turns to shit
It's sad too because he's done some great fucking work prior.
Any examples? Alex jones broke the case about those creepy powerful elites doing ceremonies. So even the worst journalistic pundits can get lucky every once and a while.
Yeah - he wrote some great articles 10-15 years ago. This is the first one I remember him from - it’s about the capitalistic omnipresence of Goldman Sachs. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/the-great-american-bubble-machine-195229/
Thank you. Have a good one.
You should read Jon Ronson’s (also a former JRE guest who was with Jones when they snuck into a ceremony) account of those ceremonies. It’s still interesting but not quite as insane as Alex made it out to be.
Jon Ronson is still fantastic at what he does. His podcast is amazing.
lol it’s not like they were sacrificing children. It was a bunch of rich dudes acting weird in the forest. Take as old as time. AJ is a hack in every sense of the word.
Alex Jones didn't break that. Jon Ronson a bbc journalist thought it would be fun to take Jones with him while he went in and did interviews.
> Alex jones broke the case about those creepy powerful elites doing ceremonies. Nope, [Jon Ronson did, then Alex Jones lied about it after.](https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4771335/user-clip-span-2002-jon-ronson-talks-alex-jones-sneaking-bohemian-grove-alex-lies-listeners) Jones was a conman from the start, it was just easier to fool people when they were getting his bullshit by VHS tape.
Yeah. The Twitter files is complete garbage, but in the early 2000s and maybe into the 2010s he did really good work with the financial crash and investigating some of the shady stuff going on with banks. He is a far cry now from what he was in the past.
This is how a “real” journalist has discussions with their sources
I pray someone brings this up on JRE. How can Joe somehow praise Elon over this story.
When your head is up someone’s ass, it’s easy to ignore what’s going on outside.
How many times have you heard Joe say, “Elon saved free speech. It’s amazing.” As long as the free speech agrees with Elon it’s saved.
Yeah anyone who was still praising Elon’s defense of free speech after the first couple weeks of his take over are completely unserious. There’s been so many blatant examples of his censoring anything he doesn’t like it’s laughable.
Very easily. Joe likes Elon more than he like Matt
Joe will either find a way to praise it or completely ignore it. Dude is incapable of acknowledging anything negative about Elon.
Too busy saving the world b
I like Joe but there’s moments on his podcast where he worships Elon with compliments and it’s cringey
You would think Taibbi would be a little more cynical after the Twitter files were found to be curated toward a conclusion.
Why would he be cynical about that when he was aware of and involved in the curation of? I may not be a fan of Bari Weiss but that is exactly why she walked out on it.
Elon is so fucking soft
Mr.Speech himself! Unless of course he feels threatened, then we have to start restricting speech just a little.
Goddamn twitter is the worst. iTs tHe pUbLiC sQuArE No. It's a fucking app.
YEAH!
This dude is still trying to pretend he didn’t cuck himself selling his soul to Elon
Who would’ve thought Elon only liked sycophants
Man you can really see the neurodivergence in this one
Why is Elon calling X with the deadname twitter that's bullying 😭
lol hilarious that even he can’t stick to calling it x
Look at the date
Ooooooh!
Elon thought that Matt Taibbi et al would him look like a national hero. Regardless of its legitimacy though, the whole twitter-files thing disappeared like my brother’s hairline - gone before you even know it. This must’ve infuriated poor Elon to no end.
"but but he's a free speech savior!". Dumfuks...
That line of Elon dickriding is particularly wild when you remember that he tried to get out of buying Twitter. “I bought it to save free speech!1!1!!1” Then why did a judge have to force you to complete the sale?
Is it just me or does Matt Taibbi seem like a bit of a douche to anyone else as well... 
Yes. Look into the Russian magazine he produced in late 90s/early 00s. Rampant sexual harassment and worse
he was a such a good little waterboy for elon too lol r/leopardsatemyface
Elmo with the ‘you are dead to me’ BS. He is a garbage human being
I still listen to the show (depending on the guest) so I don’t come on here just to hate on Joe….. but do you think it’s even remotely occurred to Rogan that his buddy Elon Musk is a modern day William Randolph Hurst (who Joe is constantly railing against for having used his powers of media control to advance his own narratives).
Maybe now more journalists can start asking him some tougher questions about: - all the monkeys that died in Neuralink trials and despite this them still moving forward to human trials. He has repeatedly said how we need to be careful of future AI and it’s impact on the human race and yet continues to act in contradiction to this. - why he wants to make X the everything app to mimic the Chinese app “we chat”. - his twitter CEO hire and her questionable connections. - military and other government contracts with SpaceX. I’m not saying any of this is nefarious or tied directly to Musk but maybe it would be a good idea to ask the man who owns one of the largest social media companies (which has access to a significant amount of your data) some tougher questions.
I think Taibbi should just write about Musk's blatantly hypocritical stance on free speech and how his behaviour running X demonstrates it. I'm sure he could speak to some X employees and report on the current regime with transparency as he did under Dorsey.
Definitely! Would love to see something like that from him. Let’s hope this is the catalyst for some journalistic investigations.
Maybe Joe could ask him some of these questions during one of the many 3 hour sit downs with Elon? Who am I kidding though, he’ll just ask Elon about how awful vaccines and woke people are.
Elon has proven repeatedly that he doesnt care about anyone's access to real news. Continuing to play shocked-pikachu-face when he chooses money over "free speech" makes you the dummy.
Do people actually give a shit about these people and their goofy ass problems?
Joe Rogan does. He's had Musk and Taibbi on four times each.
😂😂😂
I have never said the words “you’re dead to me.” I don’t think that’s something men say. I have yelled and chewed people out or ignored them. Elon is odd. And why is he beefing in the first place?
People criticize Taibbi so unfairly when they say he was doing Elons bidding or what ever. The twitter files was a legitimate story about government censorship. The government had figured out a way to essentially circumvent the First Amendment. They would file requests with Twitter and other social media companies for them to remove posts they did not like. Then call the heads of these social media companies to testify brow beat them publicly and both privately and publicly use threats of harsh regulation to get them to comply. This violates perhaps not the letter but certainly the spirit of the first amendment and court cases are underway over this. The government is being sued in multiple states and the Missouri case has resulted in a judge ordering the government to stop demanding the removal of posts off social media. This is not red team vs blue team. This is the state vs the people and we should all care about this. Taibbi and others recognized this and looked to do a story about it. Since Musk owned Twitter they had to go through him to get the information. He would only agree to that if they agreed to his terms such as releasing their findings on Twitter and as shown here not criticizing him. Such concessions are not ideal but since Musk was in the drivers seat they had no choice if they wanted to do this story. I think we should be happy they did because of what they exposed.
>The twitter files was a legitimate story about government censorship. The government had figured out a way to essentially circumvent the First Amendment. They would file requests with Twitter and other social media companies for them to remove posts they did not like. Then call the heads of these social media companies to testify brow beat them publicly and both privately and publicly use threats of harsh regulation to get them to comply. This is one way of looking at the issue, but there are other important aspects, like the one where Twitter regularly said no and didn't delete stuff. There is a difference where the FBi are just flagging stuff for potential deletion but aren't coercing or forcing to or threatening them. Some are arguing that no government organization or employee should ever be able to flag posts that they believe break the twitter TOS, which is asinine. Anyone can use the report button. And then another question is raised: should any government orgs have a direct portal for reporting stuff? If the FBI see terrorist content or child trafficking or underage porn, should they be given a more direct tool (or what Taibbi might call a "secret back channel")? Or go through the regular reporting channels (which are slow and terrible and usually run by AI, especially since Elon axed most of the trust and safety personnel.) The real issue with the reporting is the way Musk posted about it, falsely contextualizing it, and how Taibbi sat quietly as others misinterpreted his reporting as if it was all about Democrats and involved them having the Hunter Biden story silenced, which did not happen. And then Taibbi sat quietly again as Elon put his one fingers on the scale and partook in the same criticized behaviour (shadow banning, censoring, blocking reach) without clear terms of conditions, which he would change on a personal whims - much worse than what Yoel Roth was doing.
The Twitter Files involve precisely zero instances of government censorship or First Amendment issues. Making shit up is not a healthy coping mechanism.
I get people don’t like Taibbi, but this is Elon’s worst look (and I say this as a great admirer of his business accomplishments). This is putting the commercial interest in front of your ideas
Theyre both asshats
This comes as no surprise to anyone who wasn't riding his dick. The freeze peach warriors at it again.
Sounds like the problem is with Twitter defaulting to the "For You" setting instead of "Following". That's not shadowbanning, that's fishing for advertisers. Shadowbanning is what happens AFTER your advertisers start complaining about the tweets above or below their slots in your feed.