The Good Guys Want Your Data, Too

Also, Musk takes a stake in Twitter and a bunch of kids are pretending to be the cops.

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Happy Thursday, everyone. Tomorrow, we celebrate the birth of the Internet! Below, I briefly touch on two current events and then provide a longer follow-up to last week’s newsletter. 

What Is Elon Musk Up to With Twitter? 

On Monday, Elon Musk revealed he has bought 9.2 percent of Twitter, making him the platform’s largest outside shareholder. The eccentric billionaire is also joining Twitter’s board and its stock has already spiked 27 percent.

Musk has more than 80 million followers on Twitter, and he regularly complains about the platform’s business model and content moderation policies. It’s not clear if Musk has a larger plan to buyout the company in the future, but this type of move would certainly set up an acquisition. Or, he could simply be trolling them (and making bank while doing so). 

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  1. E. Ross

    always insightful. Keep up the good work.

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    Ben Connelly

    Once again, Klon pens a newsletter (or types it) that causes some internal conflict between my hawkish side and my libertarian side. But, on the whole, I think that while I respect the need for the IC to do it’s job, the IC as an institution (or a set of institutions) first owes the American people a concerted effort to earn our trust. The widespread institutional failure that plagues our society includes the IC. One need not endorse Snowden-style cowardly traitors, nor Alex Jones level conspiracists, to have some reservations about the organizations responsible for MK Ultra and spying on MLK having access to the data that Klon reminds us translates into power (the libertarian in me thought that line made the opposite case to the one Klon is trying to make).

    Power can be abused. I’d rather have the US IC have it than the CCP, but I’d really rather nobody have the power. Or, that such a wide variety of private individuals and institutions had it that there was an effective check on any single entity aggregating too much of it.

    Maybe the safest thing to do is to pull a Ron Swanson and toss my computer in the dumpster (along with my phone).

    Finally, to take the two examples. The famine strikes me as something where the data in question is impersonal and is collectible without major invasions of privacy. It’s an eminent example of what we should be doing. The facial recognition example is problematic because facial recognition algorithms are imperfect and there have been cases of people wrongfully accused/indicted on the basis of “evidence” that came from face matching algorithms. Any program has an error rate. I confess I felt that that example had echoes of Minority Report in it.

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  3. Mathew A

    Sorry, but if government would normally neeca warrant to get the data, they shouldn't be able to turn around and buy it from data brokers.

    This especially includes facial recognition data.

    If they have probable cause get a warrant. But no fishing expeditions

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  4. Jack Zentrist

    Well as I read this brilliant piece and some equally apt comments I understand better: There are truly no secrets anymore, for beings-in-the-world.

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  5. James Bussey

    Love your additions to The Dispatch

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  6. Stephen Nielson

    I think Musk is trying to get around SEC sanctions with his current restrictions on commenting on twitter about TSLA. The fact that he filed as a passive investor and then the very next day was appointed to the board of TSLA just rings of more SEC investigations. The man has brilliant vision but he gives the finger to pretty much any law he doesn't like.

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    CynthiaW

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/twitters-edit-button-isnt-just-a-simple-fix-it-could-be-a-mistake-11649309719?mod=tech_lead_pos5

    Here's what WSJ says about the potential for a Twitter edit function. They bring up many of the same points that have been discussed regarding Substack's edit function or National Review's.

    In the cast of Twitspace, I get the feeling that the edit history, if that is part of the functionality, could be very revealing.

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      Victor Clairmont

      An edit history actually sounds amazing.

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        CynthiaW

        Sometimes people editing comments on The Dispatch explain why: fix typos, elaborate, etc. Having the system save an edit history would use a lot of memory.

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    Frank Lee

    I suspect that Musk did his homework and knows that with his near 10% he has at least another 40% of board members supportive of the types of reforms he wants to see Twitter make. And it might include firing of the current woke CEO... assuming the bylaws are that this can be done by majority.

    The main problem he will have is the Twitter employees that are a majority of campus programed critical theory bots. They are already probably organizing protests if Twitter makes changes they won't like.

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    Paul Hoover

    Another very interesting and thought-provoking article. Thank you, Mr. Kitchen.

    My uninformed opinion is that Mr. Musk is trolling the Twitterians to see what kind of shrieking and weeping he can incite. One could have all kinds of fun with that much money, particularly when one could make a tidy profit at the same time.

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    CynthiaW

    That was very informative.

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About Klon Kitchen

Klon Kitchen is a managing director at Beacon Global Strategies and a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
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