May 14 2023

Strange “Democracy” – Govt of Turkey Demands Twitter Remove Political Opposition, Elon Musk Agrees

Posted originally on the CTH on May 13, 2023 | Sundance

The authoritarian government of Turkish President Recep Erdogan, a man of notoriously manipulative and unstable disposition intent on recreating the Ottoman empire, demanded that in advance of their elections Twitter remove the voice of the opposition party. Elon Musk complied:

This decision is interesting because it shows that despite his questions about the need to defend democracy and free speech, Twitter owner Elon Musk is willing to support the removal of opposition political parties during elections.

Musk justifies this decision by saying the choice was between shutting down a political viewpoint or shutting down all of Turkish Twitter access. Musk chose to simply eliminate one set of voices in opposition to the existing government in Turkey.

When Rumble was faced with a similar threat from France, Rumble stood with the principle of freedom and refused to block content the administration of Emmanuel Macron did not like. Rumble left France rather than comply with authoritarian censorship demands. Twitter remains operational in Turkey, willing to support the authoritarian censorship demands. An interesting contrast.

I have fielded many calls in the past few days about this seemingly 180° reversal from Elon Musk in his ‘speech’ positions. The hiring of Linda Yaccarino was one massive datapoint that seemed to indicate the priorities of Musk had changed. The acquiescent to Turkish government requests less than 24 hours later is another datapoint.

The general questions all fall in the spectrum of ‘what has changed’?

I will answer here, what I have answered privately.

When I published my thesis on the background of Twitter called Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop, the essential outline contained two basic cornerstones.

First, the United States government was operating to control the information on the Twitter platform with direct access to the content. Second, the USG was subsidizing it.

Two years ago, people thought I was nuts about government control over content. However, in the last several months the information from within Twitter, specifically the Twitter Files outlining the DHS influence and control, has verified exactly the issue CTH noted in the very first outline of Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop.

However, it is the second aspect behind the platform that people have yet to recognize. When the fulsome story is told in hindsight, you will see that I am correct.

The second aspect is that Twitter cannot financially exist as a viable communication platform without government subsidy.

As it is currently structured, including the AWS cloud-based services for data processing, the costs associated with handling 30 million active simultaneous users (24/7) exceeds the business model for self-sufficiency. It simply costs too much without ownership of the metal.

Amazon Web Services (AWS), and other cloud-based services (Microsoft etc), are efficient for platforms who do not then need to employ as many engineers to keep the data processing operational; but they are very costly.

Data processing for 30 million simultaneously active users engaging with the platform is extremely expensive. Every engagement feature makes this issue worse. It is simply an issue of scale. Unfortunately, unlike traditional business models, the per user costs do not decrease as the number of simultaneous users increase.

There is no viable business model for a ‘free’ or low-cost user-based platform that requires data processing for this scale of simultaneous users without a massive amount of money to create the actual servers (metal-based operations). A cloud service (AWS) is expensive, and Musk is on the hook for every penny in data processing cost.

There have also been many reports that AWS is technically an endpoint U.S. government operation. Meaning the actual data processing is done by systems attached to U.S. government operations. While staying away from the granular tech on this issue, it remains most likely that government subsidy underpins the ability of Twitter to exist and function as a platform.

The motive behind the public-private partnership is symbiotic and long precedes Musk purchasing the platform.

The evolution of Twitter from a private to a quasi-public institution under the control of DHS took place over a decade. Essentially from 2012 (Arab Spring), and the first requests of the U.S. government for assistance, to the present day. As the public-private partnership relationship grew, Twitter was viewed as beneficial to the interests of the U.S. government as a controlled communication platform, and the financial subsidy to retain the viability of the platform was predictable as an outcome.

As with all things connected to the deep state IC, over time controlling content on the platform became increasingly obvious. The Twitter files reveal the scale of this issue as it was available to understand via internal communication correspondence. However, as admitted by the journalists requesting the searches of the Twitter database, they really don’t know the full scale and scope of the government involvement in Twitter. My personal suspicions of govt scale greatly exceed those journalistic reviews, driven in part by my experience as a target of the background actors.

Which brings me back to the question that everyone asks me about the motive for Musk’s ideological reversal. Surprise, it’s the money!

There is only one force more powerful than the firmly committed and espoused ideology of an altruistic mind, ECONOMICS.

The economics of the thing always supersedes and overpowers the other issues related to the thing. If the U.S. government wanted to shift the full scale of cost to operate Twitter onto the shoulders of Musk, the platform would not survive.

Tap Musk on the shoulder, or allow Musk to discover this financial dependency organically, and suddenly the reality of the thing changes. Nothing changes espoused opinion faster than money, just ask Steve Cortes.

It is a simple truth in everything: if you see a person change opinion quickly and radically, look at the money behind them.

There are two vectors for economics to change things. First, the gain of money as an enticement. Ex. you do this, you get paid. The second vector is more powerful, the removal of money as an enticement. Ex. you do this, or the existing payment stops.

If you look at the financial background of an abrupt change, almost every time you will find the answer to the motive that puzzles you.

May 14 2023

Big Picture – Elon Musk Confirms Hiring DEI Advocate Linda Yaccarino as Twitter CEO

Posted originally of the CTH on May 13, 2023 | Sundance

Twitter platform owner Elon Musk has confirmed the hiring of Linda Yaccarino as CEO of Twitter. Many reactions are happening, but CTH analysis generally likes to stay ahead of the reactions and more into the future of what each datapoint means. That said, here’s some context.

The general or more common logic, completely understandable, is to look at the hiring of Yaccarino as binary. Either Musk was previously lying about everything he believed in, or the revenue situation is at a critical mass. Otherwise, it really doesn’t make sense to bring in Linda Yaccarino.

Before going deeper, it is critical to know just how ideological Linda Yaccarino is. The former head of NBCUniversal is the apex voice in the system of promoting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) from an advertising perspective. I’m not talking about a little bit ideological, I mean the full dna-level, metastatic, this is the core essence of what makes Yaccarino believe she has purpose in life.

Changing social culture by leveraging commercial enterprise is Yaccarino’s life work.

Literally Linda Yaccarino believes that advertisers should determine the product being sold. This is not a spoof, exaggeration, hyperbole or a spin on her outlook. Yaccarino believes marketing and advertising executives should be able to control the physical content, the actual stuff, created by the publisher they pay to advertise their product.

A traditional example might be Ford Motor Company telling Motor Trend magazine what positions to place ads for competitors in the auto industry as a contingency for their ad spend. A modern example might be Disney telling Fox News what content may be discussed by Tucker Carlson. This is the origin of DEI ideology controlling platform content.

To understand how this mindset applies to Twitter and Elon Musk, watch a few minutes of this previous interview between Yaccarino and Musk at a convention of advertisers. This is an example of how the NBCUniversal executive thinks. WATCH (prompted):

You can see in the back and forth, how Musk tries to stick to his core principles about “free speech” while Yaccarino uses terms like “partnership”, “collaboration”, and “mutual benefits” to leverage her advertising team’s agenda.

It is important to understand the views expressed by Musk and Yaccarino are mutually exclusive. There is no free speech when the advertisers are permitted to determine the content of that speech. Musk tries to negotiate a nuance, but the core of the dynamic is in conflict.

Any good, stable and even-tempered corporate executive will tell you the marketing team is consistently the least valuable mindset at the corporate table.

Factually, most of the people who fail out of business schools fail down into the humanities dept. However, sometimes those emotionally driven ideologues simply move into the marketing and advertising fields within the business majors. The outcome of this truism is Alissa Heinersheid and her destruction of the Bud Light brand through marketing.

Linda Yaccarino is the apex voice in the system that has allowed advertisers to determine content. She would be the ideal candidate within an organization like Google, but she is oil in the water of Twitter. So, what gives?

Why would Elon Musk hire Linda Yaccarino as the CEO of Twitter? We return to the binary issue…. Either Musk really doesn’t believe in what he previously advocated, or Musk has hit a wall of acceptance and generating revenue is now more important than the platform itself? For the latter, essentially the economics of the thing is determining the outcome of the thing.

There is a third alternative; a less familiar dynamic that has surfaced in the past and does provide a reference. This is what I call the “ino” hiring process within large institutions and organizations; “ino” stands for In Name Only.

An executive is hired to represent the division/organization, in name only. They have no actual control, influence or power. They are simply figureheads installed to create the optics needed for the institution to continue operations.

The ino practice is also visible with ‘diversity hires’. A person is hired not to drive the mission of the organization, but to deflect opposition away from the achievement of the organizational mission. However, all ‘in name only’ (ino) hires always end up in the exact same conversation within the organization.

When the ino realizes they are essentially irrelevant to the function of the organization, that means their opinions and recommendations are never part of the organizational outcome, there is always a conversation with the following words: “then why did you hire me?” This conversation always happens, it is the one constant in an ever-changing business world.

So, there’s three basic dynamics:

Elon Musk was not as committed to ‘Free Speech’ as he originally defined it.

Priorities have changed and now Revenue is more vital than Free Speech.

Musk is still committed but needs to create the illusion of DEI acceptance.

In considering the last element, Mrs. Yaccarino does not present herself as an ino-person who will accept a position and then not deliver on the intent of her mission.

So, what does this tell us about the future of Twitter content?

I think we all know the answer….