Yesterday, Elon Musk responded to criticism of Twitter censorship, vis-a-vis government demands, with this Tweet: “Please point out where we had an actual choice and we will reverse it.”
The Musk supporters are saying Musk has to comply with government demands if their national laws require it. However, that angle doesn’t take into consideration the choice that Musk/Twitter always have.
If the platform content is not approved by a government, and that govt then demands removal or censorship of that content, Twitter always has two options. One, to comply with the demand and block or restrict the user content (which is the direction they have taken) – or two, stop allowing the platform to operate in the country demanding the censorship. It is the latter option that everyone always avoids mentioning.
Related: Elon Musk defends criticism of George Soros, shrugs off financial risks of sharing his views
However, the issue appears to be bigger and goes to the heart of the second aspect of Twitter we have noted.
Twitter is not viable as a business model under the construct of its creation. Twitter operates on Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud and Google Cloud.
Both big tech monopoly systems are extremely expensive, and as a result Musk is stuck in contracts with AWS and Google that are major financial drains. Twitter does not operate any server infrastructure; the only asset that Twitter has on the tech engineering side is the software to operate the platform.
Absent any hardware infrastructure, Musk is vulnerable to the excessive costs of AWS & Google.
Keep in mind that all cloud-based systems are arguably U.S. government subsidized and end in server farms built and owned by the U.S. govt. Send something to a cloud-based system, or operate your tech through a cloud-based system, and you are essentially operating on govt hardware.
UPDATE (04/22/23): Twitter has inexplicably removed its ‘government-funded media’ label from Canada’s CBC and NPR, with neither using their accounts despite Elon Musk seeming to backtrack on his decision to promote transparency around their funding.
That means, after what appeared to be a victory, our campaign is far from over.
Please sign and share the petition today!
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UPDATE (04/18/2023): The CBC — Canadian Broadcasting Corporation — is reeling after Elon Musk finally applied the ‘Government-funded Media’ label to its Twitter page on Sunday in a welcome victory for people like you who used LifePetitions.com to call for this transparency.
The CBC, which receives about $1.24 billion in public funding every year, lashed out at the move yesterday, announcing it would ‘pause’ its use of Twitter and insisting that the government provides less than 70% of its funding.
Elon Musk has wryly inserted “69%” beside the “Government-funded Media” Twitter label in response.
Canadian Broadcasting Corp said they’re “less than 70% government-funded”, so we corrected the label pic.twitter.com/lU1EWf76Zu
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 18, 2023
The broadcaster denys that the Canadian government wields any influence over its editorial decisions, but this claim may have been undermined by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s remarkably swift and public defense of the CBC in the wake of Twitter’s decision.
Trudeau claimed yesterday that the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) leader Pierre Poilievre was trying to “attack a foundational Canadian institution” when, like you, he petitioned Elon Musk to label the CBC appropriately.
The Prime Minister appeared inconsolable yesterday, which speaks volumes for how useful the CBC was and is to his office.
Thank you for taking part in this LifePetition to Elon Musk – this victory shows once again that people-power matters.
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Elon Musk is taking unprecedented steps for free-speech advocates by exposing state-sponsored media for their lies and agendas — including the BBC and NPR.
The time is NOW while the trend is hot to ask that Elon Musk also label Canada’s CBC for what it is: state-sponsored media and a propaganda machine of the radical left.
Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre this week informed Musk that the public broadcaster receives the “vast majority of its funding” from the federal government.
CBC/Radio Canada received a whopping $1.24 billion in government funding in 2021-2022.
Now that Elon Musk is taking massive swings at the leftist mainstream media outlets like BBC and NPR it is time for Canadians to remind him of what’s happening up here.
In fact, Musk just DESTROYED a BBC reporter live on air in a widely televised “Twitter Spaces” interview.
Will Elon Musk also take aim at the CBC? WE MUST LET HIM KNOW THAT THE CBC IS A CORRUPT STATE-SPONSORED ARM OF THE ANTI-FREEDOM TRUDEAU GOVERNMENT.
War has been waged by Elon Musk against the mainstream media — we cannot let Canada’s biggest propaganda machine operate unnoticed!
Look at just some of the headlines in these agenda pieces proudly published by the CBC:
CLIMATE ALARMISM: “Researchers need help to determine which birds are most at risk from climate change.”
PRO LGBT AGENDA: “These kids’ books depicting ‘joyful, queer stories’ are being censored in Hungary and Russia.”
PRO TRANSGENDER AGENDA: “Two-spirit, trans, non-binary, gender diverse people face ‘exceptional barriers to overcome’: Manitoba artist”
ANTI-FREEDOM: “Conservative opposition to mandatory vaccinations is ‘irresponsible’ and ‘dangerous,’ says Trudeau.”
PRO EXPERIMENTAL VACCINE: “Here’s a science-backed approach to timing your next dose.”
AND SO MUCH MORE REPORTED BY LIFESITENEWS!
Now is the time to act — tell Elon Musk, owner of Twitter, to EXPOSE the CBC for the pro-Trudeau agenda-carrying propaganda machine that it is.
***SIGN: TWITTER MUST LABEL THE CBC AS STATE-SPONSORED MEDIA NOW***
As you can see from this article in March 2023 [MUST READ], Musk was behind in his payments to Jeff Bezos (Amazon, AWS) but up to date on his payments to Google.
In essence, even as the article admits, Elon Musk is making payment decisions based on determinations of how best to avoid advertising revenue interruptions. Keep this in mind.
As you can see in the article, Musk is on the hook for contracts with AWS through 2025. As written, “AWS is not willing to renegotiate the five-and-a-half year contract it signed with Twitter in 2020.” That is before Musk took ownership. “That contract required Twitter to pay $510m over that period. It was signed when Twitter was expecting to move its main timeline over to AWS, but that never occurred (instead it hosts Twitter Spaces and other services), meaning that Twitter is not fully making use of the contract.” So, Jeff Bezos (AWS) has a hook into Musk for roughly $100 million a year.
Additionally, “Twitter uses Google Cloud to a greater degree, with its own five-year contract worth $1bn. While Twitter is also looking to reduce its Google Cloud costs.” That puts Musk on the hook for $200 million a year to Google, and Google controls the vast majority of advertising revenue on the web.
Each system, AWS and Google, represents a threat vector for Twitter (Musk), insofar as Twitter cannot operate without the cloud services each provider contributes to the data processing.
Absent his own data processing systems, Musk is vulnerable to the AWS/Google demands -$300,000,000/yr just for them. Again, keep this in mind.
This is all part of the financial section I have written about extensively, and it has an impact on the content.
With this information as the overlay, how much freedom does Musk actually have with the platform when he is dependent on Google and Amazon to operate? The same Google who controls the majority of his revenue (advertising) controls his data processing. See the problem?
On content, look at what AWS did to Parler as an example of what they could do to Twitter if Musk is not compliant. On revenue, consider how Google already has influence over the monetization of any platform on the internet, combined with terms and conditions for content control they can exert through their revenue power.
♦ Amazon (AWS, CIA, U.S. Govt) then becomes the primary control lever for rules and guidelines on content – the government compliance stuff. How does it surface? Musk saying he must censor Turkish political opposition parties.
♦ Google then becomes the primary control lever for Twitter revenue. How does that surface? Musk hiring Linda Yaccarino as CEO of Twitter.
Can you see it now?
Do the irreconcilables start to reconcile?
Does Elon Musk saying, “Please point out where we had an actual choice and we will reverse it,” start to make sense now?
Given that Musk is on the hook for $300 million/yr, and that’s just one expense, I suspect Musk is closer to bankruptcy with Twitter than most people think.
The operating costs are too extreme for the business model. They always were; however, I suspect the USG was indirectly subsidizing Twitter through data processing when Jack Dorsey had ownership.
The subsidy would be part of the private-public partnership, where the USG was benefitting from their ability to control public information and public opinion.
With the USG control via DHS and FBI now in sunlight (Twitter Files), the financial side has always been the second -and hidden- big picture element around Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop.
Bottom line, Musk has to make decisions through one prism, THE ECONOMICS. Musk’s decision-making, pro freedom or not, is constrained by this financial dependency. Hence, a lot of the platform censorship elements remain (including some personnel) and now the outreach to appoint Google/WEF approved Linda Yaccarino in an effort to enhance the revenue.
As the end dates of the contract terms with AWS and Google start to come closer, decisions will have to be made if Musk wants a sustainable platform. Either he builds out new hardware (extremely costly and likely cost prohibitive), or he looks for an existing platform that he might be able to merge with and operate.
If you are a platform owner of reasonable scale, and you control your own servers and data-processing, watch out for David Sacks (repping for Elon) to tap you on the shoulder. Twitter is in a bind, or Musk needs to sink buckets of money he doesn’t have into building something. The financial viability is now the primary prism, not principles of free speech.
On the content side, Elon Musk needs content providers, which explains the thirst for Tucker Carlson and even the DeSantis launch to gain some operational impact. That’s likely where his key tech advisor David Sacks again comes into play. On the type of content, that’s where Linda Yaccarino steps in as the Google/WEF bridge to approved content revenue.
This article was originally published by the Conservative Treehouse and is reprinted on LifeSiteNews with permission.
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