Twitter Was Already a Hellscape Even Before It Was Set Free

Plus: For Halloween, the editors describe what scares them most about politics and government right now.

1x 1.1x 1.25x 1.5x 2x 3x

:15 :15

Download

Twitter Was Already a Hellscape Even Before It Was Set Free

In this week's The Reason Roundtable, editors Matt Welch, Peter Suderman, and Nick Gillespie celebrate the triumphant return of Katherine Mangu-Ward with a conversation about Elon Musk's Twitter takeover and the chatter around political violence in the U.S.

1:36: Elon Musk takes over Twitter

11:19: The Paul Pelosi attack and political violence

29:00: Weekly Listener Question:

I was pretty horrified by the $2,500 fines PayPal was handing out. They retracted them, sure, but it was no accident. They targeted a few of my favorite websites. I consider myself libertarian-leaning and agree with you guys on a host of issues. But I always get confused when you defend PayPal as NOT being a monopoly. I mean, forget about a dictionary definition and just think in terms of utility: What viable alternatives do I have in the digital marketplace right now? Let's say I'm horrified by what they're doing and want to vote with my dollars. Because I really really do. What service should I use instead? Venmo? I think they're also owned by PayPal.

40:10: What's currently scariest in government and politics?

48:03: This week's cultural recommendations

Mentioned in this podcast:

"Musk Says He Bought Twitter 'To Help Humanity,' Pledges Not To Let It Become a 'Free-for-All Hellscape,'" by Elizabeth Nolan Brown

"Twitter Sucks Because We Suck. Don't Blame @Jack," by Mike Godwin

"Why Is Twitter a For-Profit Platform, Anyway?" by Andrea O'Sullivan

"Political Violence Escalates in a Fracturing U.S.," by J.D. Tuccille

"The Dangerous Lure of Political Violence," by Katherine Mangu-Ward

"To Curb Political Violence, Make Government Less Important," by J.D. Tuccille

Send your questions to [e-mail]. Be sure to include your social media handle and the correct pronunciation of your name.

Today's sponsor:

• It can be tough to train your brain to stay in "problem-solving mode" when faced with a challenge in life. But when you learn how to find your own solutions, there's no better feeling. A therapist can help you become a better problem solver, making it easier to accomplish your goals—no matter how big or small. If you're thinking of giving therapy a try, BetterHelp is a great option. It's convenient, accessible, affordable, and entirely online. Get matched with a therapist after filling out a brief survey, and switch therapists any time. When you want to be a better problem solver, therapy can get you there. Visit BetterHelp.com/roundtable today to get 10 percent off your first month.

Audio production by Ian Keyser

Assistant production by Hunt Beaty

Music: "Angeline," by The Brothers Steve

 

What are we consuming this week?

Nick Gillespie

• African Founders

Katherine Mangu-Ward

• This Is Going to Hurt

Peter Suderman

• The Peripheral (The Jackpot Trilogy)

Matt Welch

• The Lincoln Project

---

Comments

[BestUsedCarSales]

I think people grossly overrate how bad free-for-all hellscapes are.

[InsaneTrollLogic]

FFS, it’s not Usenet in the 1990s. I remember those days. You had to have a thick skin just to view a flame fest, much less participate in one. Twitter, even under Musk, is nowhere near like that. Some Usenet forums were very distinctly hellscapes where fire and brimstone were flung back and forth with reckless abandon. The modern snowflakes would never survive that shit.

[R Mac]

GO TO HELL!

[Social Justice is neither]

Ah, the good old days.

[Union of Concerned Socks]

Get bent, fuckface.

[evaharcity]

Great article, Mike. I appreciate your work, I’m now creating over $35400 dollars each month simply by doing a simple job online! I do know You currently making a lot (jsi-02) of greenbacks online from $28000 dollars, its simple online operating jobs
…
Just open the link————————————–>>> http://Www.TopCityPay.Com

[Union of Concerned Socks]

I was earning $3847667483800000 an hour before you were in diapers, shithead. Go play in the freeway, ugly.

[Utkonos]

And who the hell is Mike? Yo mama? Go fuck yourself up the ass with a rusty chainsaw you fucktarded piece of shit!
(Am I doing this right?)

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

Yeah, fuck off. Keep your sorry-ass attitudes to your fucking self, you hellscape wannabe.

[InsaneTrollLogic]

Thanks for the flames. LOL!

[trsrenes]

Transexuel Toulouse is great web platform for casual chat experience with fine ladies in France

[TheReEncogitationer]

Henri de Toilouse-Lautrec was Transexual? Well, that's an interesting little tid-bit! 😉

[Overt]

And what I have observed is that on a lot of these "moderated" sites, that just means it is a one sided hellscape. A liberal can defame you and call you nasty names with no consequence, but push back and you are banned.

Go look on twitter. There, bluechecks across the board say nasty, vile shit about hoping people die and accusing people of being shills of corporations, corrupt, etc.

[crtum]

Hellscape I don’t know I am picturing flames and shit. When you can use a fake name and log off when your panties get moist from pee, doesn’t sound like anything near a hellscape

[Longtobefree]

Maybe people should just stop being twits?

Freedom loving individuals can leave because they are openly discriminated against.
Raving mad totalitarians can leave because Elon took it "private", and "private" is bad by definition.

(Or Elon could fine blue checks $2,500 every time they deny the truth)

[LauraMullen]

I remodelled $700 per day exploitation my mobile partly time. I recently got my fifth bank check of $19632 and every one i used to be doing is to repeat and paste work online. This home work makes Pine Tree State able to (dng-05) generate more money daily simply straightforward to try and do work and regular financial gain from this are simply superb.

Here what i’m doing. strive currently.......>>> Topcitypay

[Nardz]

The talking point is that there's a 500% increase in the use of the n word.
I think they made up that "stat" out of thin air.

[Mother's Lament]

I'm guessing the actual percentage increase ranges somewhere between 0 and 0.000001.

[Nardz]

Meanwhile...

https://twitter.com/nataliegwinters/status/1587135297208320003?t=p_70JEaoarF1rF1uwjZ9rA&s=19

Representatives from JPMorgan Chase attended virtually all DHS meetings about federal government efforts to censor disinformation on social media.

Are they laying the groundwork for "de-banking" to become an (even more) mainstream strategy?

[Link]

[OpenBordersLiberal-tarian]

Any progressive or Democratic #Resistance Twitter user with more than 1,000 followers has to be aware that Democrats are the party of billionaires.

Throwing tantrums about Elon Musk is their way of maintaining the illusion that progressive interests and billionaire interests are in conflict. It's a comical notion that reached its expiration date at least a couple decades ago. But there are tens of millions of low-info Democratic voters who still believe it.

#OBLsFirstLaw

[Don't look at me!]

^Gold.

[InsaneTrollLogic]

+1

[Utkonos]

You know who else created a hellscape or two back in the day?

[Stuck in California]

I don't know... Could it be...

Satan?!

[Jerryskids]

Hieronymus Bosch?

[Union of Concerned Socks]

/thread. The Garden Of Earthly Delights: now THAT'S a hellscape.

[SQRLSY One]

https://www.hieronymusbosch.net/hell/

Hell by Hieronymus Bosch

Please do NOT tell ANYONE who told you this!!! I want to remain... Hieronymus!!!

[creech]

Gustav Dore?

[Gaear Grimsrud]

I guess you're looking for Lucifer here but I think hell already somehow existed before he fell from grace so I'm gonna say God.

[Mother's Lament]

^ This was the common view until the 20th century. Remember Satan frozen in the ninth circle of hell in Dante’s "Inferno"?

Revelation has Satan being thrown into the Lake of Fire as his final destruction:

"And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever."

[TheReEncogitationer]

So who's torturing The Devil, The Beast, and The False Prophet? And how do you maintain ice and fire in the same Hell at the same time?

These so-called inerrant "holy" works sure are shitty on details.

[Utkonos]

Well, if you must know, the one I was thinking of actually begins with the letter “H”
Yup, you guessed it—— HUD!!!!!

[TheReEncogitationer]

Housing and Urban Development? I can see that. The quickest way to destroy an apartment complex is to have it go Section 8.

[TheReEncogitationer]

The Ultimate "You Know Who Else?..."

Now look what you've done! You've crabbed Utkonos' main schtick. He'll have to get another. 😉

[Social Justice is neither]

Clive Barker.

[Vernon Depner]

Peabody Coal Co.?

[TheReEncogitationer]

Not Mr. Peabody and Sherman! 😉

[rev-arthur-l-kuckland]

The people who produce the jersey shore

[Claptrap]

One of the more honest reality shows. They did not create a hellscape, they merely documented an existing one.

[JasonAZ]

LOL!!!

[JeremyR]

Paypal actually quietly added the $2500 penalty back in.

So start your own money transfer service (and don't sell out to PayPal, like Venmo)

[JesseAz]

The Atlantic calls for a covid amnesty where we forget how for 3 years they pushed lockdowns, vaccines, censored people, tried to get people to lose their jobs, asked hospitals to not treat the unpacked, etc. Just call it even and move on.

Not even a sorry, our bad.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/covid-response-forgiveness/671879/

[Bill Dalasio]

But the thing is: We didn’t know.

Yeah, but the more important thing is people like Ms. Oster behaved as if they knew a lot more than they did. To the point that they were willing to destroy dissenters lives, make a hash of the economy and impose misery and suffering on millions. And the truth is forgiveness is predicated on repentance. Even Christ exhorted those he helped to "go and sin no more". And not acknowledging that means Ms. Oster and all the rest of her ilk will only continue to presume they know a lot more than they do. And they'll only repeat all of their sins (yes, sins) the next time an opportunity arises to signal their social superiority.

[A Thinking Mind]

They closed their ears to the truth, and then want to use their ignorance as an excuse.

[Utkonos]

They were just following orders.

[TheReEncogitationer]

And speaking of, no forgiveness for Emperor Xi and his Minions in the CCP and PRA either. They, are, after all, the ones who murdered the Doctors who revealed the outbreak, thus spreading the COVID-19 crud to the rest of the World. (Whether it was bat soup or biolab is basically irrelevant.)

And, of course, our home-grown tyrants doted on Emperor Xi's policies for dealing with the outbreak of his own making.

[Nardz]

It was the most massive crime against humanity ever perpetrated.
Never forget those who participated, and never forgive.

[Gaear Grimsrud]

Sorry. Anybody living outside the bubble knew by March of 2020 exactly what the consequences of this flu would be. We had a laboratory study on a cruise liner with a couple thousand passengers and crew where every individual was exposed. We knew exactly who was at risk. But these assholes ignored the science and decided not to let the manufactured crisis go to waste. They are beyond redemption and in a just world they would pay a horrible price for their crimes against humanity.

[rev-arthur-l-kuckland]

Your spelling is fucking awful. I'm sorry I cannot remIn silen. When you said m-a-r-c+h you misspelled january

[A Thinking Mind]

"Don't blame us for what we didn't know!"

Your willful ignorance is actually your own fault. You tuned out people who were just asking questions, you ignored people who told you it wasn't worth destroying education and the economy over, you cheered when people were banned for mask "misinformation" that was 100% accurate, and you wore masks even after you knew they were ueless because only the wrong people were going maskless.

[Social Justice is neither]

They didn't just ignore them but ran them out of the public discourse and made the penalties for dissent with their ignorance equivalent to exile.

[Claptrap]

As documented elsewhere, it's also a totally insincere line of argument because the author knew full well that most of this shit didn't work and largely refused to advocate the truth out of personal and professional pressure. Nuts to this in general, and extra nuts to this from her specifically.

[R Mac]

Who won the presidential election again? Mission accomplished.

[Nardz]

Correct.

But that was just the first part of the plan.

[Hank Ferrous]

Not only no, but fuck no. No amnesty, no forgiveness. The decision to omit, ignore, cover up, deny, demonize, ban, fire, call for denying of medical and other services for is not something for which one receives amnesty. The facts were known.

[DesigNate]

But there were bears in trunks!

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

I come to the podcast for the "listener" question.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

That's all I look at. I'm not about to waste an hour listening to people pretending to be libertarians. Might as well go to bingo night to hear the diatribes against gambling.

[BestUsedCarSales]

I just don't listen. That question is a reasonable one though. I think there's an answer in that PayPal is a bank and is a regulated entity already, but I feel iffy about that answer myself.

[JeremyR]

Paypal isn't legally a bank, though

[Gaear Grimsrud]

I come to the podcast hoping that somebody else actually listened to it so I don't have to.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

You and me both. A link to download a transcript isn’t too much to ask, is it?

[DesigNate]

It took them nigh on 20 years to provide us an edit button.

So yes, it is too much to ask.

[hlthcode]

I don’t listen.

[LauraMullen]

I remodelled $700 per day exploitation my mobile partly time. I recently got my fifth bank check of $19632 and every one i used to be doing is to repeat and paste work online. This home work makes Pine Tree State able to (dng-05) generate more money daily simply straightforward to try and do work and regular financial gain from this are simply superb.

Here what i’m doing. strive currently.......>>> Topcitypay

[Gaear Grimsrud]

Gonna need a libertarian translator for this one.

[R Mac]

Something something girl-bullyer something something.

[Utkonos]

No no no, rookie! THIS is how you summon him:
HANK PHILLIPS HANK PHILLIPS HANK PHILLIPS!!!!
(Whoa! Bloody Mary, what are YOU doing here?!)

[CE]

Twitter is just a tool. It's the people who use it, and the people who determine who can use it, who make it good or ill.

[Stuck in California]

>Twitter is just a tool. It’s the people who use it

Most people who spend a lot of time on Twitter are tools.

So, yeah. This checks out.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

IOW, the tools have a tool. That’s the kicker.

[martinjannifer1]

I am making 80 US dollars per hr. to complete some internet services from home. I did not ever think it would even be achievable , however my confidant mate got $13k only in four weeks, easily doing this best assignment and also she convinced me to avail.
For more detail visit this article… http://www.Profit97.com

[JasonAZ]

I see the new DNC talking points about Twitter are release and Reason is engaged. Well done, good and faithful progressive comrades.

[jdgalt1]

PayPal has NOT rescinded its threat of $2500 "fines." Only the word "misinformation" was deleted. PayPal will still impose the "fines" for messages it deems to violate any of several different rules. Get off PayPal (and its subsidiaries Venmo and Stripe) before they rob you.

I recommend GabPay.com instead.

[ElvisIsReal]

https://www.paypal.com/us/smarthelp/article/what-is-paypal%E2%80%99s-acceptable-use-policy-and-where-can-i-find-it-help270

If you violate the Acceptable Use Policy (AUP), we may hold your money up to 180 Days, may place a limitation on your ability to use PayPal’s products and services, may debit your PayPal account up to $2,500 USD [or $2,500 CAD for all PayPal Canada account holders] for each such violation, and may take legal action against you to recover additional losses we incur.

https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/useragreement-full?locale.x=en_US#s4-restricted-activities

In connection with your use of our websites, your PayPal account, the PayPal services, or in the course of your interactions with PayPal, other PayPal customers, or third parties, you must not:

Provide false, inaccurate or misleading information;

[Andy Hawks]

Regarding PayPal, I just wanted to point out that the reductio ad absurdum of defining market size is now before the Supreme Court on a First Amendment issue that Damon Root and other Reason staffers are no doubt following. In 303 Creative v. Elenis, the issue is whether Colorado can compel a web designer to design custom websites celebrating same-sex marriage. The Tenth Circuit applied strict scrutiny to the designer’s “pure speech,” but then held that strict scrutiny was satisfied because an individual artist, “due to the unique nature of [her] services, . . . is more similar to a monopoly.”

[Jess]

Nick, thanks so much for the book recommendations. I am reading African Founders and it's exactly what you said, the answer to 1619 Project I was searching for! I am looking forward to finishing it and also starting Albion's Seed. Cheers!

[liamjonh225]

Excellent work, Mike. I admire your work since thanks to one easy internet job, I'm currently making over $35400 every month! I am aware that you are currently earning a sizable amount of money (jsi-02) online from a starting capital of $28,000.

Read More: Medical Coding Services