It IS a hostile takeover. Musk and Trump are currently in the process of overthrowing the US government and installing a pluocratic autocracy in its place.

Surfaces?

It’s been there all along - it’s just been routinely ignored by the legacy media.

That said - there is a sort of interesting meta-topic here.

It’s arguably likely that there’s a relatively powerful and serious opposition to Trump coming together, simply because the NYT is so craven and cowardly and ethically bankrupt that there’s basically no way that they’d publish something like this unless there was somebody other than Trump that they could suck up to by doing it.

For whatever that’s worth.

Of course it has.

There are two qualities that are crucial to fulfilling Trump’s dictatorial ambitions - hatred and ignorance. He needs people to be hateful enough to support his overtly destructive and oppressive rule and ignorant enough to not figure out that they will suffer/are suffering right alongside the people they hate.

Step 1 was to gain control of the legacy media and social media and he’s mostly already done that (there are still some holdouts, but they’ll have to be destroyed if they won’t submit and that will come later). Step 2 is to solidify control of the governmental distribution of information and use that to suppress information that might undermine his dictatorial ambitions and promote and even manufacture information that will further them. That’s exactly what he and his co-conspirators and their mercenaries are doing right now.

This incident leaves the LA Times in an impossible position. How can readers trust anything published under its banner when its owner has demonstrated such willingness to corrupt the paper’s editorial integrity for his own political agenda?

They can’t, and shouldn’t bother trying.

That’s a freedom that the internet provides that too few people exercise. There are more than enough news sources out there, so there’s no reason for anyone to ever grant a single one of them a second chance.

Weird that they’re only now determined to do something about a problem that Zuck says has existed all along.

Almost as if the real problem - the thing that’s changed between the past and today - isn’t the fact of the leaks, but their likely content. As if aligning themselves with a deranged psychopath trying to destroy American liberty, justice and democracy through a campaign of hatred and deceit is likely to lead to leaks that will be too damaging to weasel out of.

This has apparently become a new vector for transferring bribes - Trump files a suit, and then the corporation that wants influence pays a “settlement.”

It’s unfortunate that the mod devs were so thoroughly fucked over, but their response was perfect.

I sure as hell hope I’m not the only one who thinks that the alternative explanation is even worse than the original.

No surprise there.

He’s a criminal who’s surrounding himself with fellow criminals. There’s no room for watchdogs in his administration.

And more to the point, nobody is going to stop him.

Those who would stop him can’t and those who could stop him won’t.

Ah …

I’ve been wondering what Trump gave the Chinese in exchange for that cringeworthy credit as the supposed savior of TikTok.

When I encounter a collectivist who places individualism in nominally necessary complete opposition to collectivism, I see the same thing that I see when I encounter a Christian who insists that morality is impossible without religion - a person whose own reason is limited, and who projects that limitation onto others.

The simple fact of the matter is that there’s no necessary conflict between the two - there’s absolutely no reason why a person who focuses first and foremost on their own autonomy could not or would not then conclude that their interests are best served by entering into and maintaining collective arrangements, and as a matter of fact, I think that’s the only path by which actual anarchism can ever be achieved - that any nominal anarchism that prioritizes and demands collectivism first and foremost is doomed to revert to authoritarianism.

It’s about goddamned time.

This has been what’s happened for the last 20 years or so:

The left: “The patriarchy and toxic masculinity are evil and destructive!”

Young men: “Okay. What should I do instead then?”

The left: “Fuck off!”

So, entirely predictably, they’ve fucked off. Right into the welcoming embrace of the toxically masculine and patriarchal right.