Musk now wants people to pay for their little blue “verified” check marks. AOC and Stephen King and many others have said they won’t pay for that. SK responded with:
”$20 a month to keep my blue check? Fuck that, they should pay me. If that gets instituted, I’m gone like Enron.”
Musk tried to publicly haggle with SK which was stupid:
”We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?”
Anyone who has read SK’s books knows that dickering is a huge part of New England culture, where he lives and is from. SK has said refusing to pay is less about him, as he can afford it, but more about smaller, less wealthy content creators. Because content creators, not CEOs, are a huge part of the reason that twitter has been successful.
AOC’s response was even better:
”Lmao at a billionaire earnestly trying to sell people on the idea that “free speech” is actually a $8/mo subscription plan”
Musk came back with:
”Your feedback is appreciated, now pay $8”
He was trying to be witty but… failed. He then posted a pic of one of her sweatshirts, which costs $58. He apparently doesn’t understand the difference between selling a product and his own attempt to sell free speech.
AOC responded to that with:
”Proud of this and always will be.
My workers are union, make a living wage, have full healthcare, and aren’t subject to racist treatment in their workplaces. Items are made in USA.
Team AOC honors and respects working people. You should try it sometime instead of union-busting.”
Musk apparently didn’t like this response but didn’t have anything to respond with, so he just went with retaliation:
AOC:
”Also my twitter mentions/notifications conveniently aren’t working tonight, so I was informed via text that I seem to have gotten under a certain billionaire’s skin 😂
Just a reminder that money will never by your way out of insecurity, folks.”
This is not free speech, Lizard! This is a billionaire throwing a tantrum and punishing those who say things he doesn’t like. This is far different from removing threatening tweets or disallowing people to post certain harmful words. The way I look at free speech is yes, people have the right to say what they want and not go to jail. They don’t have a right to say things like “f**” or “n*****” in my house, I have the right to ask them to leave if they’re doing that. This would not be me asking them to leave, though, this would be more like me putting dish soap in their coffee because I disagree with them, which I don’t have the right to do.
If we didn’t have the first amendment, Trump would’ve executed everyone who said anything bad about him. These people do not support free speech, Liz, and I’m guessing you don’t really either. The way most of you seem to think of free speech is your and your associates’ ability to say whatever you want, including violating everyone else’s free speech by disallowing them to disagree with you or disassociate from you in any way.
Tl;dr Musk is retaliating when people say stuff he doesn’t like and Lizard Wheel doesn’t know what the fuck she’s talking about, as usual.