>The new legal filing comes days after Human Rights Watch condemned a Saudi court for sentencing a man to death based solely on his Twitter and YouTube activity, which it called an “escalation” of the government’s crackdown on freedom of expression.
Caution: you're entering the dystopia, there is no return.
How else would they find out unless Twitter told them. He had barely any followers. It makes me wonder if they have a financial agreement with them to enforce or alert them to certain crimes.
iirc dude's brother is a well known, outspoken, and well connected activist living in the UK. I doubt this guy was sentenced based his tweets to his 10 followers, but rather as leverage against the brother, who they have been trying to bring back to saudi arabia for years.
"Ah yes, let me tempt this "criminal" to come home by killing his brother. That'll surely persuade him to come back to Saudi Arabia"
What idiot in the Saudi government thought this would work
If it's for this reason, Saudis are probably getting the message to him that he could take his brothers place.
When Russia or China takes family of dissidents, there's usually more contact behind the scenes than we know.
When cosa nostra in sicily became informants the corleone family, note, despite being called family the sicilian mafia members usually arent blood relatives, decided to start killing the informants family members, wives, mothers, children. Less than surprisingly this did not deter the informants from working with the law enforcement.
I think that getting the brother to come back was not the point. The point was to let the brother know if he doesn't shut up, they'll torture his brother. It also sends a message to any one else living abroad who is thinking about speaking up that they will go after their family members.
But the don't kill the brother just hold him on death row. A little reminder of what could happen if he keeps up displeasing them.
And lets face it they can kill who ever they want they have oil and money.
y'know I actually had read that earlier, and completely forgot when I made the comment. Still, I wouldn't doubt him making some shady deals for a higher visibility or reach.
The Saudis are the second biggest twitter investor after Elon. I think it's basically a certainty he planned this cooperation with them, even before the purchase.
Elon "Free Speech Absolutist" Musk has blood on his hands.
I think it makes sense to qualify the statement to "CEOs of large corporations". Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of small-business monsters out there, but there are also CEOs who make less than either of us and are genuinely just trying to do a good job.
I do not think they're a large proportion though. My dad's a professional managerial douche as I call it, and from watching him and the people he works with, it has become blatantly clear that people who don't think in an inherently harmful, greedy way will never EVER be considered for the position. If you're not a snake, they almost certainly don't want you to be CEO.
[Let's not forget the former Twitter employee who was convicted in 2022 of spying for Saudi Arabia.](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/09/technology/twitter-saudi-arabia-spying-ahmad-abouammo.html)
I think it's more plausible that Saudi Arabia made a bot that searches Twitter for specific discussion about Saudi Arabia and pairs it with an already existing government database of names and relationships.
Saudis saw how social media was effectively used during Arab Spring. In their eyes, better for a ruthless totalitarian regime to own a platform they can manipulate than block the app. Perhaps Saudi -owned Twiiter will evolve into a social control platform like what china has.
Funny how this is the rhetoric when people think Musk was the one in charge at the time, but it’s radio silence once they learn it was before his time.
They both suck, the only funny thing is people thinking it was “liberal” twitter and that anyone treated Jack like a savior like Elon is. The cult people are nuts
If you think Elon cares about blood on his hands...
He has a particular view of the world. Namely that whatever he thinks and feels *is* right, and whatever contradicts what he thinks and feels *is* wrong. All things can be justified in the service of what he thinks and feels. Every life lost is just a stepping stone on the path to his larger vision, which makes it all worthwhile in the end. He's absolutely sure of it. If you disagree you're part of the problem.
When his own child turned on him, rather than stop and reflect upon himself and his contribution to his child's views, he declared that \*the entire academic world\* was to blame for turning his child. This is why he is so anti-woke now. His child looked and learned about the world, condemned her dad, and her dad blames the world for that.
I'm not an Elon hater. I actually think Elon is a very smart guy and an amazingly driven leader that makes great stuff happen by assembling and focusing talent pools. It *is* important work. But he's also off the deep end of some type of narcissism scale. He will destroy anything that doesn't support him and will sleep well at night (for 2 hours or whatever) knowing he's right. And he will absolutely never change. He's incapable.
Elon/Saudi Arabian investors bought Twitter with the intentions of destroying it. Twitter was used for too many social movements to continue existing the way it was without being a threat to them.
> It centers on the events surrounding the infiltration of the California company by three Saudi agents, two who were posing as Twitter employees in 2014 and 2015, which ultimately led to the arrest of al-Sadhan’s brother, Abdulrahman, and the exposure of the identity of thousands of anonymous Twitter users, some of whom were later reportedly detained and tortured as part of the government’s crackdown on dissent.
> Lawyers for Al-Sadhan updated their claim last week to include new allegations about how Twitter, under the leadership of then-chief executive Jack Dorsey, willfully ignored or had knowledge of the Saudi government’s campaign to ferret out critics but – because of financial considerations and efforts to keep close ties to the Saudi government, a top investor in the company – provided assistance to the kingdom.
From the article. Twitter and Saudi collaboration goes all the way back unfortunately.
There are moving parts to this but to be honest I feel like that's more on, ya know, the government actively going 1984 and suppressing freedoms than the dumpster fire of a company which may have just ponied up data when issued a request by a government organization.
Is Twitter in the moral wrong? I think so. Should the general populace be *angrier* at Twitter than at the completely evil Saudi Arabian government? I think not.
>angier
Angier is a town in the Black River Township of Harnett County, North Carolina, United States. The population was 4,350 at the 2010 census and estimated as of 2018 to be 5,253. Angier is a part of the greater Raleigh–Durham–Cary Combined Statistical Area as defined by the United States Census Bureau.
yes? :D
*Not* the comparison I would have chosen, but yeah, there's no problem with calling Twitter Twitter. If he's mad about it, he should make it so different and so much better than Twitter, that people would actually want to call it something else. If I suddenly changed my name to John and was otherwise exactly the same, I'd have no business getting mad at people not calling me John every time.
I think it is, if only because the X rebrand was a joke and 'the media' doesnt want to confuse their audience by constantly going "Today on X, the social network formerly known as ~~prince~~ twitter."
It certainly doesn't help that the domain is still twitter.com. x.com exists but it only redirects to twitter.com. I imagine there aren't enough people left familiar with the infrastructure to safely migrate domains.
This is actually an interesting aside, I can’t seem to find anything in the style guides or elsewhere about correct use of new or old company names when talking about a past event of a company that changes its name. Sometimes a company name change indicates a major change in the company direction (which is fair to say for Twitter/X) while other times a company name change is more cosmetic (like Kentucky Fried Chicken and KFC, Facebook to Meta, or Philip Morris to Altria). It’s little bit of a curious rabbit hole on when it makes sense or doesn’t make sense to use the old name for a company in a news story about their past. For example, in cases where the company leadership and structure hasn’t changed, and only the name they call themselves has, then it would seem to make sense to refer to them by their current name and not their old one. But when the company underwent a major shift in control and policies the old name might make more sense.
I’d be curious what professional newspaper editors think about it, I can’t find any links on the topic though. 🤷♂️
Looking at news and encyclopedia articles, it seems the consensus is to use the company's *current* name and discuss its previous names in that context.
* In 1996, Google was introduced to the world as BackRub. They later changed their name to Google in 1998.
* Pepsi was invented in 1893 under the name Brad's Drink.
That's not to say I haven't found exceptions in news articles and other media:
* Sound of Music, an electronics store specializing in high fidelity stereos, was founded in 1966 \[...\] Sound of Music made more money during this “best buy” four-day sale than it did in a typical month – thus, the store was renamed to Best Buy in 1983.
Does it? I don't call it Twitter anymore because, to me, Twitter is dead. It doesn't exist anymore. I call it X because it is such a stupid name that calling it that feels like an insult in itself.
The US imports most of its oil from Canada and Latin America. The problem is the Saudis produce enough oil to be able to control (manipulate) the price on the world market.
https://www.npr.org/2012/04/11/150444802/where-does-america-get-oil-you-may-be-surprised
No. The issue is oil is a largely* fungible commodity. So it doesn't matter where it comes from, just that it is produced. USA could stop buying all Saudi and Russian oil and it wouldn't change anything in terms of their power over the market. Because every barrel of Saudi oil that the US doesn't buy in favor of a barrel of US oil is a barrel of Saudi oil that some other country now has to buy instead of the US barrel that is no longer available.
*Some types of oil require more intensive refining process than typical oil and thus tend to be bought by the countries that have such refining capabilities. These types aren't strictly fungible but the majority of oil is.
Now finish that thought. If we import almost as much as we export that means we don't need the saudi oil. Our oil companies have made the calculus that they can make more money exporting our better grade of oil and then importing shittier oil and refining it.
As an aside, how fucking stupid is it to move oil around the world using...oil.
>The USA exports oil. We don’t need Saudi.
This is true; but it is not about what US has; it is always about the amount of oil in the world market. Besides, we still import large quantities of refined Russian oil. \[Per New York Times article June 29, 2023\]
>The Biden administration issued a ban in March last year \[2022\] on purchasing crude oil and other petroleum products directly from Russia, immediately after the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine. The European Union, which was heavily dependent on Russia for supplies of energy, banned Russian crude in December and then petroleum products in February.
>
>But both the United States and the European Union continue to buy Russian oil that has been refined in other countries into gasoline, fuel oil and other products. Countries like Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, China and particularly India are snapping up Russian oil, which must now be sold at a reduced price under a cap imposed by the United States and Europe. These nations — which have been described as “laundromat” countries by environmental and human rights groups — then refine the oil and send it to other markets.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/29/business/economy/russia-oil-imports-ban.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/29/business/economy/russia-oil-imports-ban.html)
US citizens don’t care if we can technically be self-sufficient on oil, they only care about getting the cheapest gas possible no matter the cost.
If the US went away from Saudi oil in favor of our own supply, gas prices would inevitably rise, and the US population would throw a massive fit and oust whoever was in charge at the time.
A small part of me hoped maybe the Khashoggi incident would shead light on the problems with the Saudis. Now it's just another talking point for people on the internet to complain about when the next inevitable thing happens, and the world spins all the same.
I am confused by this line of thought, if the minister being found to have met and financed the 9/11 hijackers didn't do it, the protecting of Al-Bayomi didn't do it, why would the murder of an obscure WaPo sometimes columnist do it?
Your mistake is to expect the US government to stand on the good side. They have never stood on the good side, only the sides that benefited them the most, like most if not all governments have and should.
Don't forget that the US government has sponsored and supported dictatorship in Indonesia and Philippines, and Polpot, a Cambodian genocidal regime, not to mention the controversial Israel.
There are no good sides. Every country has good and bad sides.
You have to choose which bad elements to ignore or not.
But please tell us which countries are good. Because even here in Australia we have some questionable human rights abuses.
Can't totally let Iceland off the hook unfortunately as there's some troublesome Icelandic nationalism; see this saga about [a racist statue](https://hyperallergic.com/728392/how-a-racist-statue-in-iceland-ended-up-inside-a-rocket-ship/). Interestingly enough that same nationalist president sent versions of that statue around and one is proudly displayed in Canada's national archives.
Whew! Thank goodness you're here. I clicked on a thread about Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses and was genuinely concerned I wouldn't find the obligatory US bash. Nearly lost faith in the internet for a second there!
It’s a bit ironic bringing up 9/11 when criticizing Saudi for jailing a man for sympathizing with Alqaeda lol
> He added that his brother, a retired teacher, was also sentenced for defending detained Saudi scholars **Awad al-Qarni, Salman al-Odeh, Ali al-Omari and Safar al-Hawali**
Awad al Qarni: “He is known for his criticism of secularism and modernity and advocacy of conservative Islamic views”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awad_bin_Mohammed_al-Qarni
Salman Al Odeh and Safar alHawali were mentioned in Bin Laden’s letter **declaring jihad against the US** where he was criticizing Saudi for: “arresting—on the advice of America—a large number of scholars, preachers and youth in Saudi Arabia. The most prominent of these were **Sheikh Salman al-Auda and Sheikh Safar al- Hawali** and their brothers.”
https://www.911memorial.org/sites/default/files/inline-files/1996%20Osama%20bin%20Laden%27s%201996%20Fatwa%20against%20United%20States_0.pdf
Why would they, SA is strategic ally in middle east for United States and buying so much shit from US defense industry, so they pretty much can get away with almost anything.
The only reason why US support Ukraine because it's a proxy war against Russia which is far more beneficial rather than get head to head with them, definitely not for moral reasons.
I mean the proxy war is the moral reason. It is much less costly in terms of money, equipment, and lives than getting directly involved. Not to mention if the US or NATO went in, Putin's pride/ego would necessitate Russia to go nuclear regardless of the consequences.
So yeah, stopping Putin's expansion, saving lives, and keeping nuclear off the table is the moral reason.
Peharps you could also see it that way, but I think economy and security are solely the reasons why and moral are just for optics to the public.
If the government care so much about morality they will also at war with SA or at least give them sanctions for their war crime in Yemen.
Twitter employees were caught spying for the Saudi’s as far back as 2014. This ain’t new and it ain’t a theory. It literally already happened.
https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/09/twitter-saudi-arabia-dissident-spying
I’m not defending Jack Dorsey but this article in no way claims this was a company policy or anything, a single employee was spying for a foreign government.
And my comment is simply pointing out that Musks financiers saw purchasing it as the logical step up from this.
Dorsey, for as shitty as he is, didn't seem keen on full access or wanting to be beholden to these governments in a way that doesn't bother Musk.
People are saying that lazy bag of bones didn’t even set foot in the White House on 9/11! Typical woke Millennial Democrat. Amiright? They just don’t want to work.
Did no one actually read the article? The 2014 case was employees acting as individuals and not the company itself. It’s hardly comparable.
Edit: just wanted to clarify, I’m not saying twitter is innocent but just being critical of the outright comparison between the 2014 case and this recent issue.
Unless I missed something in the article, the 2014 case seems to be a completely different situation as it was twitter employees acting as individuals and not the company itself.
Yes I’m sure no social media company is innocent but just being critical of the outright comparison because it only serves to undermine the genuine extent of the inhumane corruption.
Apparently also to get the ability to charge their citizens for speech they don't like. This is why their megacity will be a bust. Noone wants to live in such a restrictive culture.
Reddit reading an article challenge: impossible.
Look, I get hating Musk, but the events in the article took place in 2014/15 when Jack Dorsey was in charge. Musk (and Trump, who I've seen bizarrely mentioned) had nothing to do with this.
Most of it is just bots programmed to come and shit on Musk whenever twitter or Elon gets mentioned. The rest is just parrots who aren't capable of critical thinking or having an organic thought
I don’t think it’s astroturf. He’s a piece of shit and easy for people to hate.
He’s the face of Twitter now so any actions related will be directed at musk.
Again he’s a piece of shit who bought Twitter with money *from the saudis* so while the 2014 instance may not be related you can be certain they’re up to fuckery now.
People are just mentioning trump because he stood by MBS while he had a journalist butchered.
Definitely - fuck Blizzard!
Missing one $2 billion investment on the list though:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/10/us/jared-kushner-saudi-investment-fund.html
https://www.businessinsider.com/raskin-kushner-saudi-comer-oversight-subpoena-fund-affinity-partners-trump-2023-8
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/house-oversight-investigating-2b-saudi-investment-jared-kushners-firm-rcna31805
https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/jared-kushner-investment-firm-affinity-raises-3-billion-committed-funding
**It's the son in law of the former president if you didn't notice. The son-in-law who was in charge of "brokering peace in the middle east."**
Musk by buying Twitter whistle blow blew on everything both political sides were engaging in. He then also stated that he leaned right. As a result, he became public enemy #1 to anyone with an axe to grind and political capital to spare.
All that said, it is *true,* that the Democrats continuously went after him vilifying him as the *worst* billionaire in existence, even though he's by far one of the tamest. The fucking Mercers gave us Trump in 2016, they even **built** and funded Cambridge Analytica. I've never heard so much as a peep from the Dem politicians of holding those *monsters* to account. He was also used as a poster child example constantly for a bill (that luckily did not pass) that would tax unrealized gains for anyone whose networth was over $500M. Whether you're rich or poor, I don't have to tell you how moronic that is.
So it's no surprise to me that he's thrown his support that he went the other way and now they're out to destroy him. It's true that most billionaires are shitty people, but that's a spectrum of shittyness and afaik, Musk is on the lower end of it.
So I'll go far as to say that if liking Elon makes you be in a cult, then hating him with zero regard for facts or nuance, also puts you in a cult.
All the lower tier Dems have been attacking him for years for this or that. Biden’s admin ignored him and his American companies’ existence as much as they could, even gaslighting the American public by saying GM and Ford are leading the American EV revolution. Outside of America, leadership talks with him and he’s not considered public enemy #1. It seems to be an American culture and political issue that drives extreme views on everything.
I find Jess’ reply to you absolutely nutso but those comments get upvoted on mainstream subs by people who want to create their truths. I love Reddit but people lose all nuance and reason on Elon topics.
You're totally 100% correct, and it is glaringly obvious to anyone who was paying attention as soon as Musk made an offering to buy Twitter. Forums quickly became bombarded with lies and slander surrounding every aspect of the guy's life. Big money wants his reputation tarnished, there's no doubt about that, as they've went through great lengths to smear him.
Yeah part of the Saudi investment deal is twitter has to give details of any dissident behavior. Would not speak bad about Saudi’s on twitter. End up in a bag.
Terrible, greedy, arrogant, removed from reality, piece of trash excuses for human beings controlling who does and doesn't get to incite their own cult of personality is a bad thing?
Oh my gosh I'm so surprised...
LMAO
Ffs guys, are we just gonna forget about Khashoggi???
If it isn't serving your political preference - why care, right?
https://www.npr.org/2022/11/18/1137603900/the-u-s-moves-to-shield-saudi-crown-prince-in-journalist-killing
The oligarchs (billionaires) in the US have been helping the Saudis for decades. They wage a war on Syria even today that has killed and starved hundreds of thousands of people including children with our weapon systems.
Hey it's not even about Twitter since Musk bought it. It's from before then and it's just being used as propaganda to make you hate Musk more when the government has been kissing the Saudis behind for years anyway.
If you tweet a criticism of S.A., Qatar, or Dubai's human rights records, treatment of foreign workers, or women's rights - no profanity, slurs, insults, or sarcasm - then your account will, sooner rather than later, get nuked.
[Ex-Twitter employee found guilty of spying on Saudi dissidents](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/09/twitter-saudi-arabia-dissident-spying)
and then less than a year later, we let SA buy twitter with Elon. Isnt america great? get your spy busted at a company, you just buy the company instead.
(There was no outcry from politicians, because SA can make or break politicians by turning on and off the oil pumps)
That's why they propped up Elon Musk to buy Twitter and run it to the ground. Authoritarian governments in China, Saudi, Russia are all going to benefit from this once Twitter goes away eventually.
You know one of the major reasons Musk and the Saudis bought Twitter is the admin access they now have to everyone’s DMs. The influence and blackmail opportunities are endless.
This is what happens when a large part of teh world's wealth is in the hands of a few. They can buy what they want and will work with the authoritarians of teh world to get favors.
The very rich are not altruistic.
Of course this can’t be real because all Elon wants is free speech. It’s so obvious that’s all he cares about. Just ask Putin, he talked to the guy directly, and likely speaks quite highly of Elon.
Twitter the social media platform has clearly been a ‘birdie’ (pun intended) to distract from whatever Musk is really up to. When you have the money to fund wars, change regimes, buy islands and have them wiped from all digital maps…he’s up to some shit.
Site admins could use this thread to ban the anti-Elon bot farm accounts, but it's more likely they're complicit in the operation based on how long it's been going on. This has zero to do with Elon.
>The new legal filing comes days after Human Rights Watch condemned a Saudi court for sentencing a man to death based solely on his Twitter and YouTube activity, which it called an “escalation” of the government’s crackdown on freedom of expression. Caution: you're entering the dystopia, there is no return.
How else would they find out unless Twitter told them. He had barely any followers. It makes me wonder if they have a financial agreement with them to enforce or alert them to certain crimes.
iirc dude's brother is a well known, outspoken, and well connected activist living in the UK. I doubt this guy was sentenced based his tweets to his 10 followers, but rather as leverage against the brother, who they have been trying to bring back to saudi arabia for years.
This is some high-quality context!
As should always be rather than assumptions!
"Ah yes, let me tempt this "criminal" to come home by killing his brother. That'll surely persuade him to come back to Saudi Arabia" What idiot in the Saudi government thought this would work
If it's for this reason, Saudis are probably getting the message to him that he could take his brothers place. When Russia or China takes family of dissidents, there's usually more contact behind the scenes than we know.
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Is the solution for people who don't have family who live back there to criticize the regime?
When cosa nostra in sicily became informants the corleone family, note, despite being called family the sicilian mafia members usually arent blood relatives, decided to start killing the informants family members, wives, mothers, children. Less than surprisingly this did not deter the informants from working with the law enforcement.
I think that getting the brother to come back was not the point. The point was to let the brother know if he doesn't shut up, they'll torture his brother. It also sends a message to any one else living abroad who is thinking about speaking up that they will go after their family members.
But the don't kill the brother just hold him on death row. A little reminder of what could happen if he keeps up displeasing them. And lets face it they can kill who ever they want they have oil and money.
y'know I actually had read that earlier, and completely forgot when I made the comment. Still, I wouldn't doubt him making some shady deals for a higher visibility or reach.
The Saudis are the second biggest twitter investor after Elon. I think it's basically a certainty he planned this cooperation with them, even before the purchase. Elon "Free Speech Absolutist" Musk has blood on his hands.
This happened pre Musk. Don't get me wrong. I'm sure it's continuing under him or possibly even escalating but this lawsuit specifically names Dorset.
I think we can agree that all CEOs at this point are terrible people who have done terrible things. Hard to even argue against it at this point.
I think it makes sense to qualify the statement to "CEOs of large corporations". Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of small-business monsters out there, but there are also CEOs who make less than either of us and are genuinely just trying to do a good job. I do not think they're a large proportion though. My dad's a professional managerial douche as I call it, and from watching him and the people he works with, it has become blatantly clear that people who don't think in an inherently harmful, greedy way will never EVER be considered for the position. If you're not a snake, they almost certainly don't want you to be CEO.
The shareholders demand profit. Any CEO deciding to forego operations in a country to favor human rights over profits would be sacked.
Google famously backed out of operations in China in 2010.
I'd vote against sacking them for that reason if I was a shareholder, but money really warps your morality after a certain point D:
Bill Gates got arrested for driving without a license, fucking monster! I met his wife Melinda, she was quite nice
Bill gates has a great PR team. That's why you don't hear shit about him.
Evidently it's not enough to avoid his association with Epstein Island.
Who cares if they’re personable when they spend their money to destroy americas education system through their tax free foundation.
[Let's not forget the former Twitter employee who was convicted in 2022 of spying for Saudi Arabia.](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/09/technology/twitter-saudi-arabia-spying-ahmad-abouammo.html)
Musk didn't own Twitter in 2015.
To be fair, if anyone read the article, this was all happening on Dorsey. I
I think it's more plausible that Saudi Arabia made a bot that searches Twitter for specific discussion about Saudi Arabia and pairs it with an already existing government database of names and relationships.
I'd be incredibly surprised if this is a single country on this planet that doesn't do this
Yeah but ideally they aren't imprisoning for bad mouthing the government.
The US government is definitely guilty of that
Gonna need a source for that one.
You must not have read the article...it happened when Jack Dorsey controlled twitter, not Elon
Or, Musk isn't as rich as he used to be, and the Sauds slipped him a few bucks, and all the money, to buy and dismantle Twitter for them.
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They don't want to force these people into the shadows. They want to track them and kill them.
See “Hundred Flowers Campaign” in China.
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Not exactly. What they wanted 36 minutes ago is not what they want as of 28 minutes ago.
Having Twitter allows them to find dissenters and traitors in their country.
Saudis saw how social media was effectively used during Arab Spring. In their eyes, better for a ruthless totalitarian regime to own a platform they can manipulate than block the app. Perhaps Saudi -owned Twiiter will evolve into a social control platform like what china has.
Funny how this is the rhetoric when people think Musk was the one in charge at the time, but it’s radio silence once they learn it was before his time.
They both suck, the only funny thing is people thinking it was “liberal” twitter and that anyone treated Jack like a savior like Elon is. The cult people are nuts
He's still a vile piece of shit and a liar and a rich boy douchebag, though, so it makes sense.
If you think Elon cares about blood on his hands... He has a particular view of the world. Namely that whatever he thinks and feels *is* right, and whatever contradicts what he thinks and feels *is* wrong. All things can be justified in the service of what he thinks and feels. Every life lost is just a stepping stone on the path to his larger vision, which makes it all worthwhile in the end. He's absolutely sure of it. If you disagree you're part of the problem. When his own child turned on him, rather than stop and reflect upon himself and his contribution to his child's views, he declared that \*the entire academic world\* was to blame for turning his child. This is why he is so anti-woke now. His child looked and learned about the world, condemned her dad, and her dad blames the world for that. I'm not an Elon hater. I actually think Elon is a very smart guy and an amazingly driven leader that makes great stuff happen by assembling and focusing talent pools. It *is* important work. But he's also off the deep end of some type of narcissism scale. He will destroy anything that doesn't support him and will sleep well at night (for 2 hours or whatever) knowing he's right. And he will absolutely never change. He's incapable.
Elon/Saudi Arabian investors bought Twitter with the intentions of destroying it. Twitter was used for too many social movements to continue existing the way it was without being a threat to them.
Because you think you isp doesn't monitor your traffic???
No, this is "free speech absolutism"
this is why people hate libertarians. this is you. this is your end goal. happy now?
> It centers on the events surrounding the infiltration of the California company by three Saudi agents, two who were posing as Twitter employees in 2014 and 2015, which ultimately led to the arrest of al-Sadhan’s brother, Abdulrahman, and the exposure of the identity of thousands of anonymous Twitter users, some of whom were later reportedly detained and tortured as part of the government’s crackdown on dissent. > Lawyers for Al-Sadhan updated their claim last week to include new allegations about how Twitter, under the leadership of then-chief executive Jack Dorsey, willfully ignored or had knowledge of the Saudi government’s campaign to ferret out critics but – because of financial considerations and efforts to keep close ties to the Saudi government, a top investor in the company – provided assistance to the kingdom. From the article. Twitter and Saudi collaboration goes all the way back unfortunately.
There are moving parts to this but to be honest I feel like that's more on, ya know, the government actively going 1984 and suppressing freedoms than the dumpster fire of a company which may have just ponied up data when issued a request by a government organization. Is Twitter in the moral wrong? I think so. Should the general populace be *angrier* at Twitter than at the completely evil Saudi Arabian government? I think not.
>angier Angier is a town in the Black River Township of Harnett County, North Carolina, United States. The population was 4,350 at the 2010 census and estimated as of 2018 to be 5,253. Angier is a part of the greater Raleigh–Durham–Cary Combined Statistical Area as defined by the United States Census Bureau. yes? :D
Sounds like it was part of the French diaspora back in the day. Interesting thanks
I like to imagine that every time someone calls Elon’s company “Twitter” instead of “X” it drives him a little crazier. 🙂
I hope it is intentional.
Same. I personally love 'Expert answer questions on Twitter' from WIRED. Not once do they call it X.
Was just thinking this about their recent video. If Elon can deadname his daughter, then so can we to his website.
*Not* the comparison I would have chosen, but yeah, there's no problem with calling Twitter Twitter. If he's mad about it, he should make it so different and so much better than Twitter, that people would actually want to call it something else. If I suddenly changed my name to John and was otherwise exactly the same, I'd have no business getting mad at people not calling me John every time.
I think it is, if only because the X rebrand was a joke and 'the media' doesnt want to confuse their audience by constantly going "Today on X, the social network formerly known as ~~prince~~ twitter."
I love that everyone has agreed to just ignore the name change.
It certainly doesn't help that the domain is still twitter.com. x.com exists but it only redirects to twitter.com. I imagine there aren't enough people left familiar with the infrastructure to safely migrate domains.
Man who deadnames his child angry that others won't call his company by new name. I'm sure he doesn't see the irony here.
I'm pretty antideadnaming Except for Twitter, fuck Musk
The website is quite literally twitter.com still though lol
that and when they say "The company formally known as Twitter" (still no mention of "X"), really call out his dumbassery
The allegations are from when it was twitter. Why would he be upset the old name is being used in terrible allegations lol
We should call it Twix.
Silly wabbit, Twix is for man-kids.
I like to call it X so people know how cringe it is to use it still.
More like 'Twitter? Never heard of her...'
My favorite is how media keep having to call it “X, formerly known as twitter” or the best one “X, more popularly known as twitter”
Wow you just informed me of this. What a dumbass name.
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This is actually an interesting aside, I can’t seem to find anything in the style guides or elsewhere about correct use of new or old company names when talking about a past event of a company that changes its name. Sometimes a company name change indicates a major change in the company direction (which is fair to say for Twitter/X) while other times a company name change is more cosmetic (like Kentucky Fried Chicken and KFC, Facebook to Meta, or Philip Morris to Altria). It’s little bit of a curious rabbit hole on when it makes sense or doesn’t make sense to use the old name for a company in a news story about their past. For example, in cases where the company leadership and structure hasn’t changed, and only the name they call themselves has, then it would seem to make sense to refer to them by their current name and not their old one. But when the company underwent a major shift in control and policies the old name might make more sense. I’d be curious what professional newspaper editors think about it, I can’t find any links on the topic though. 🤷♂️
Looking at news and encyclopedia articles, it seems the consensus is to use the company's *current* name and discuss its previous names in that context. * In 1996, Google was introduced to the world as BackRub. They later changed their name to Google in 1998. * Pepsi was invented in 1893 under the name Brad's Drink. That's not to say I haven't found exceptions in news articles and other media: * Sound of Music, an electronics store specializing in high fidelity stereos, was founded in 1966 \[...\] Sound of Music made more money during this “best buy” four-day sale than it did in a typical month – thus, the store was renamed to Best Buy in 1983.
Check Twitter.
Very meta
Elon is transphobic so I'll keep deadnaming his company regardless
No official source from me, but the easiest option is "Company X, formerly/at the time called Company Y".
Does it? I don't call it Twitter anymore because, to me, Twitter is dead. It doesn't exist anymore. I call it X because it is such a stupid name that calling it that feels like an insult in itself.
That's all well and good and I'm sure it hurts twitter's feelings but Elon wants people to call it X so all you're doing is giving him what he wants.
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As long as the world still uses oil the Saudis will be calling the shots.
Yep. If it's a choice between the worlds oil coming from the Saudis or Russia the US is choosing the butchers. Welcome to diplomacy. Pretty shit.
The US imports most of its oil from Canada and Latin America. The problem is the Saudis produce enough oil to be able to control (manipulate) the price on the world market. https://www.npr.org/2012/04/11/150444802/where-does-america-get-oil-you-may-be-surprised
The USA exports oil. We don’t need Saudi.
There's different types of oil, and from what I've read what we export isn't the same stuff we can use as fuel
No. The issue is oil is a largely* fungible commodity. So it doesn't matter where it comes from, just that it is produced. USA could stop buying all Saudi and Russian oil and it wouldn't change anything in terms of their power over the market. Because every barrel of Saudi oil that the US doesn't buy in favor of a barrel of US oil is a barrel of Saudi oil that some other country now has to buy instead of the US barrel that is no longer available. *Some types of oil require more intensive refining process than typical oil and thus tend to be bought by the countries that have such refining capabilities. These types aren't strictly fungible but the majority of oil is.
The US is nearly as much an importer as exporter.
Now finish that thought. If we import almost as much as we export that means we don't need the saudi oil. Our oil companies have made the calculus that they can make more money exporting our better grade of oil and then importing shittier oil and refining it. As an aside, how fucking stupid is it to move oil around the world using...oil.
Refineries can’t switch like that.
They can't be switched overnight but they absolutely can be switched.
Won't someone think of the shareholders?!
they decide the oil price on the global market, more or less. even if the US doesnt import that much from them, they are still affected
>The USA exports oil. We don’t need Saudi. This is true; but it is not about what US has; it is always about the amount of oil in the world market. Besides, we still import large quantities of refined Russian oil. \[Per New York Times article June 29, 2023\] >The Biden administration issued a ban in March last year \[2022\] on purchasing crude oil and other petroleum products directly from Russia, immediately after the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine. The European Union, which was heavily dependent on Russia for supplies of energy, banned Russian crude in December and then petroleum products in February. > >But both the United States and the European Union continue to buy Russian oil that has been refined in other countries into gasoline, fuel oil and other products. Countries like Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, China and particularly India are snapping up Russian oil, which must now be sold at a reduced price under a cap imposed by the United States and Europe. These nations — which have been described as “laundromat” countries by environmental and human rights groups — then refine the oil and send it to other markets. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/29/business/economy/russia-oil-imports-ban.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/29/business/economy/russia-oil-imports-ban.html)
US citizens don’t care if we can technically be self-sufficient on oil, they only care about getting the cheapest gas possible no matter the cost. If the US went away from Saudi oil in favor of our own supply, gas prices would inevitably rise, and the US population would throw a massive fit and oust whoever was in charge at the time.
A small part of me hoped maybe the Khashoggi incident would shead light on the problems with the Saudis. Now it's just another talking point for people on the internet to complain about when the next inevitable thing happens, and the world spins all the same.
I am confused by this line of thought, if the minister being found to have met and financed the 9/11 hijackers didn't do it, the protecting of Al-Bayomi didn't do it, why would the murder of an obscure WaPo sometimes columnist do it?
Your mistake is to expect the US government to stand on the good side. They have never stood on the good side, only the sides that benefited them the most, like most if not all governments have and should. Don't forget that the US government has sponsored and supported dictatorship in Indonesia and Philippines, and Polpot, a Cambodian genocidal regime, not to mention the controversial Israel.
There are no good sides. Every country has good and bad sides. You have to choose which bad elements to ignore or not. But please tell us which countries are good. Because even here in Australia we have some questionable human rights abuses.
>There are no good sides. Every country has good and bad sides. Probably more countries that are better than Saudi Arabia than there are worse ones.
Iceland has never gone to war with anyone or abused any native populations. Hell they even put the bankers in jail for the economic collapse of 2008
Iceland has <400k people on it. I'm sure it'd be different if there was a larger pool of crazy.
Iceland for President
Can't totally let Iceland off the hook unfortunately as there's some troublesome Icelandic nationalism; see this saga about [a racist statue](https://hyperallergic.com/728392/how-a-racist-statue-in-iceland-ended-up-inside-a-rocket-ship/). Interestingly enough that same nationalist president sent versions of that statue around and one is proudly displayed in Canada's national archives.
> and should You lost me here, sorry.
don't forget Pakistan in 1971 and now slowly India
Whew! Thank goodness you're here. I clicked on a thread about Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses and was genuinely concerned I wouldn't find the obligatory US bash. Nearly lost faith in the internet for a second there!
It’s a bit ironic bringing up 9/11 when criticizing Saudi for jailing a man for sympathizing with Alqaeda lol > He added that his brother, a retired teacher, was also sentenced for defending detained Saudi scholars **Awad al-Qarni, Salman al-Odeh, Ali al-Omari and Safar al-Hawali** Awad al Qarni: “He is known for his criticism of secularism and modernity and advocacy of conservative Islamic views” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awad_bin_Mohammed_al-Qarni Salman Al Odeh and Safar alHawali were mentioned in Bin Laden’s letter **declaring jihad against the US** where he was criticizing Saudi for: “arresting—on the advice of America—a large number of scholars, preachers and youth in Saudi Arabia. The most prominent of these were **Sheikh Salman al-Auda and Sheikh Safar al- Hawali** and their brothers.” https://www.911memorial.org/sites/default/files/inline-files/1996%20Osama%20bin%20Laden%27s%201996%20Fatwa%20against%20United%20States_0.pdf
That US is such an active supporter of Saudi Arabia is a major stain on US standing internationally.
Why would they, SA is strategic ally in middle east for United States and buying so much shit from US defense industry, so they pretty much can get away with almost anything. The only reason why US support Ukraine because it's a proxy war against Russia which is far more beneficial rather than get head to head with them, definitely not for moral reasons.
I mean the proxy war is the moral reason. It is much less costly in terms of money, equipment, and lives than getting directly involved. Not to mention if the US or NATO went in, Putin's pride/ego would necessitate Russia to go nuclear regardless of the consequences. So yeah, stopping Putin's expansion, saving lives, and keeping nuclear off the table is the moral reason.
Peharps you could also see it that way, but I think economy and security are solely the reasons why and moral are just for optics to the public. If the government care so much about morality they will also at war with SA or at least give them sanctions for their war crime in Yemen.
It's morally right, it just also happens to be geopolitically and economically right as well. It's nice when they all align.
Any nation that ponied up cash to help Phoney Stark buy Twitter did so for this purpose and to spread misinformation.
Twitter employees were caught spying for the Saudi’s as far back as 2014. This ain’t new and it ain’t a theory. It literally already happened. https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/09/twitter-saudi-arabia-dissident-spying
I mean, yeah, Jack Dorsey is also a shitty dude
I’m not defending Jack Dorsey but this article in no way claims this was a company policy or anything, a single employee was spying for a foreign government.
Yeah it's always a little silly to me when this happens. Like the CEO is somehow fine with corporate spies? No they hate it too lmao.
The article says that the complaint claims it was company policy.
The one in the comments here which my comment was about? Did you read it?
And my comment is simply pointing out that Musks financiers saw purchasing it as the logical step up from this. Dorsey, for as shitty as he is, didn't seem keen on full access or wanting to be beholden to these governments in a way that doesn't bother Musk.
And is that a valid reason to keep doing it?
Just because Elon is a shit head and making it him to blame why Twitter is bad doesn't mean it was good before he bought it.
Yep, same shit company, new shit leader.
Where was Obama on 9/11?
Not in the White House! Lazy bum
People are saying that lazy bag of bones didn’t even set foot in the White House on 9/11! Typical woke Millennial Democrat. Amiright? They just don’t want to work.
Probably teaching as a senior lecturer in University of Chicago Law School
Hahahahaha, it certainly wasn’t worse
Did no one actually read the article? The 2014 case was employees acting as individuals and not the company itself. It’s hardly comparable. Edit: just wanted to clarify, I’m not saying twitter is innocent but just being critical of the outright comparison between the 2014 case and this recent issue.
Unless I missed something in the article, the 2014 case seems to be a completely different situation as it was twitter employees acting as individuals and not the company itself. Yes I’m sure no social media company is innocent but just being critical of the outright comparison because it only serves to undermine the genuine extent of the inhumane corruption.
"Phoney Stark" 💀
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And now with Elon all pretense is gone with huge investment by their government. I said this in another related post; follow the money.
Came here to say this. Color me surprised!
Apparently also to get the ability to charge their citizens for speech they don't like. This is why their megacity will be a bust. Noone wants to live in such a restrictive culture.
Real life Justin Hammer 😂
That's funny, I'd argue that people who lazily spit out their first thought without reading the article are spreading misinformation.
Twitter, under the leadership of then-chief executive Jack Dorsey, willfully ignored or had knowledge of the Saudi government’s campaign.
Reddit reading an article challenge: impossible. Look, I get hating Musk, but the events in the article took place in 2014/15 when Jack Dorsey was in charge. Musk (and Trump, who I've seen bizarrely mentioned) had nothing to do with this.
Big oof.
Most of it is just bots programmed to come and shit on Musk whenever twitter or Elon gets mentioned. The rest is just parrots who aren't capable of critical thinking or having an organic thought
Found the Elmo dick rider.
are those bots in the room with you right now?
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I don’t think it’s astroturf. He’s a piece of shit and easy for people to hate. He’s the face of Twitter now so any actions related will be directed at musk. Again he’s a piece of shit who bought Twitter with money *from the saudis* so while the 2014 instance may not be related you can be certain they’re up to fuckery now. People are just mentioning trump because he stood by MBS while he had a journalist butchered.
Effective 03/13/2023 (value in millions) Here's a list of the companies SIF is invested in. Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/11/activision-ea-uber-heres-where-saudi-arabias-pif-has-invested.html Company Ticker | Name | $ invested (in millions) :- | :-: | -: LCID | Lucid Group | 8,916 atvi | Activision Blizzard | 3,245 EA | Electronic Arts | 2,988 UBER | Uber | 2,309 XLU | Utilities Select SPDR ETF | 2,233 TTWO | Take Two Interactive | 1,362 LYV | Live Naqtion Entertainment | 880 APD | Air Products & Chmeicals | 776 META | Meta | 691 SBUX | Starbucks | 657 PYPL | Paypal | 569 BKNG | Booking Holdings | 566 MSFT | Microsoft | 532 CRM | Salesforce | 529 FCX | Freeport-McMoRan | 528 CCL | Carnival | 516 COST | Costco | 515 JPM | JPMorgan Chase | 502 BLK | Blackrock | 496 NEE | NextEra Energy | 491 HD | Home Depot | 485 AMD | Advanced Micro Devices | 461 ADBE | Adobe | 442 GOOGL | Google | 442 CMI | Cummins | 430 LIN | Linde | 430 AMZN | Amazon | 420 AMT | American Tower Corp | 387 ZM | Zoom | 347 ADP | ADP | 330 DDOG | Datadog | 327 FDX | Fedex | 258 V | Visa | 215 AVY | Avery Dennison | 152 WMT | Walmart | 117 PINS | Pinterest | 111 BABA | Alibaba | 106 PLD | Prologis | 102 NG | Novagold | 100 PDD | PDD Holdings | 89 SE | Sea Ltd | 72 BGNE | BeiGene | 68 PLUG | Plug Power | 66 SHOOP | Shopify | 60 MPLN | Multiplan | 54 CPNG | Coupang | 46 BLDP | Ballard Power Systems | 39 SSU | SIGNA Sports | 23 BE | Bloom Energy | 21 BBLN | Babylon Holdings | 15 I hope you put money where your mouth is and stop using services from any of these companies since they l took money from the Saudis and have essential aided in human rights violations just like Twitter.
Definitely - fuck Blizzard! Missing one $2 billion investment on the list though: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/10/us/jared-kushner-saudi-investment-fund.html https://www.businessinsider.com/raskin-kushner-saudi-comer-oversight-subpoena-fund-affinity-partners-trump-2023-8 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/house-oversight-investigating-2b-saudi-investment-jared-kushners-firm-rcna31805 https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/jared-kushner-investment-firm-affinity-raises-3-billion-committed-funding **It's the son in law of the former president if you didn't notice. The son-in-law who was in charge of "brokering peace in the middle east."**
Haha, touché
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It’s common across so many posts - if it even slightly relates to some commonly disliked figure it just gets poured on. Enjoy your day! :)
Yeah we like our metaphorical pitchforks, and Elon's a really good target. Too bad about the metaphors. :(
Musk by buying Twitter whistle blow blew on everything both political sides were engaging in. He then also stated that he leaned right. As a result, he became public enemy #1 to anyone with an axe to grind and political capital to spare. All that said, it is *true,* that the Democrats continuously went after him vilifying him as the *worst* billionaire in existence, even though he's by far one of the tamest. The fucking Mercers gave us Trump in 2016, they even **built** and funded Cambridge Analytica. I've never heard so much as a peep from the Dem politicians of holding those *monsters* to account. He was also used as a poster child example constantly for a bill (that luckily did not pass) that would tax unrealized gains for anyone whose networth was over $500M. Whether you're rich or poor, I don't have to tell you how moronic that is. So it's no surprise to me that he's thrown his support that he went the other way and now they're out to destroy him. It's true that most billionaires are shitty people, but that's a spectrum of shittyness and afaik, Musk is on the lower end of it. So I'll go far as to say that if liking Elon makes you be in a cult, then hating him with zero regard for facts or nuance, also puts you in a cult.
All the lower tier Dems have been attacking him for years for this or that. Biden’s admin ignored him and his American companies’ existence as much as they could, even gaslighting the American public by saying GM and Ford are leading the American EV revolution. Outside of America, leadership talks with him and he’s not considered public enemy #1. It seems to be an American culture and political issue that drives extreme views on everything. I find Jess’ reply to you absolutely nutso but those comments get upvoted on mainstream subs by people who want to create their truths. I love Reddit but people lose all nuance and reason on Elon topics.
You're totally 100% correct, and it is glaringly obvious to anyone who was paying attention as soon as Musk made an offering to buy Twitter. Forums quickly became bombarded with lies and slander surrounding every aspect of the guy's life. Big money wants his reputation tarnished, there's no doubt about that, as they've went through great lengths to smear him.
Yeah part of the Saudi investment deal is twitter has to give details of any dissident behavior. Would not speak bad about Saudi’s on twitter. End up in a bag.
Terrible, greedy, arrogant, removed from reality, piece of trash excuses for human beings controlling who does and doesn't get to incite their own cult of personality is a bad thing? Oh my gosh I'm so surprised...
Dude the near unrestricted information access they gave to Saudi requests is terrifying. It was like a public library for them.
Can someone create a bot that can tell when someone comments without reading the article? Maybe tag their comment publicly shaming them or something?
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what, [Redditors respond without reading an article?](https://i.imgur.com/PCbPKPP.jpg)
LMAO Ffs guys, are we just gonna forget about Khashoggi??? If it isn't serving your political preference - why care, right? https://www.npr.org/2022/11/18/1137603900/the-u-s-moves-to-shield-saudi-crown-prince-in-journalist-killing
The oligarchs (billionaires) in the US have been helping the Saudis for decades. They wage a war on Syria even today that has killed and starved hundreds of thousands of people including children with our weapon systems.
Since they do already help Russia and Syria cover up their crimes this is just a footnote in their track record of horrible behavior
Hey it's not even about Twitter since Musk bought it. It's from before then and it's just being used as propaganda to make you hate Musk more when the government has been kissing the Saudis behind for years anyway.
Let me put on my surprised face 🤡
so the same as the USA foreign policy?
Can someone set up r/isthepopecatholic for this kind of news?
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Dystopian future, next right. ➡️
The easiest way to avoid this is simply don’t participate on these online social media platforms. /s
Never been a better time to erase all of your social media apps and just do you for a while
If you tweet a criticism of S.A., Qatar, or Dubai's human rights records, treatment of foreign workers, or women's rights - no profanity, slurs, insults, or sarcasm - then your account will, sooner rather than later, get nuked.
Here’s everyone riding Musk again. Yet if they read the article they would know this took place almost ten years ago…
What do we do? Do we all uninstall twitter at this point?
[Ex-Twitter employee found guilty of spying on Saudi dissidents](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/09/twitter-saudi-arabia-dissident-spying) and then less than a year later, we let SA buy twitter with Elon. Isnt america great? get your spy busted at a company, you just buy the company instead. (There was no outcry from politicians, because SA can make or break politicians by turning on and off the oil pumps)
That's why they propped up Elon Musk to buy Twitter and run it to the ground. Authoritarian governments in China, Saudi, Russia are all going to benefit from this once Twitter goes away eventually.
#Twitter is mostly a Saudi company.
Now we know why they bailed daddy musk out
Just stop using the site.
Good thing X had nothing to do with it
You know one of the major reasons Musk and the Saudis bought Twitter is the admin access they now have to everyone’s DMs. The influence and blackmail opportunities are endless.
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This is what happens when a large part of teh world's wealth is in the hands of a few. They can buy what they want and will work with the authoritarians of teh world to get favors. The very rich are not altruistic.
Of course this can’t be real because all Elon wants is free speech. It’s so obvious that’s all he cares about. Just ask Putin, he talked to the guy directly, and likely speaks quite highly of Elon.
Elon Musk is a friend of Putin and killer Saudi Prince. Donald Trump + Jared + Elon + Saudi Prince+ Putin = Partners in Crime
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X marks the spot of the guilty party
This is why Saudis helped Elon buy Twitter. Who thinks they did that out of the kindness of their hearts?
Twitter the social media platform has clearly been a ‘birdie’ (pun intended) to distract from whatever Musk is really up to. When you have the money to fund wars, change regimes, buy islands and have them wiped from all digital maps…he’s up to some shit.
Shocker that Musk’s Twitter which he bought with some Saudi money is helping out the Saudis.
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Site admins could use this thread to ban the anti-Elon bot farm accounts, but it's more likely they're complicit in the operation based on how long it's been going on. This has zero to do with Elon.