Doing Business With Liars, Are You?

November 15, 2024 by Karl Denninger

This one's for you Elon, but of course not exclusively.

A week ago AP posted one of their "advocacy" pieces about getting updated Covid shots.  As you know if you've paid any attention at all these are strongly associated with both acute cardiac damage (that is, you're fucked and dead, right now) and also have a very strong association with cancers of all sorts which are way up (statistically about as likely to be a result of random chance as is my being hit by an asteroid while going to get my mail this afternoon.)

My response to them, which I dictated on my phone (thus the typo as you can see) was this:

Literally instantly, before I could see anything else (I had hit "reply" accidentally as opposed to backing up and fixing the typo) my account was suspended for seven days for what was alleged to be "violence."

No sane person could possibly read that tweet and determine that I am fomenting violence against anyone.  It is, from a speech perspective, exactly identical to Elon's infamous "Go. Fuck.Yourself."  In fact its literally that from a speech perspective.

No human made that determination and thus "no careful review" occurred so now I have two lies, not one.

Many have asked why I will never buy an "X" subscription.  This is why; the platform which Elon runs is programmed to take autonomous actions without human review, no human review then later takes place either.

I can understand immediate interdiction if, for example, you believe that someone might be attempting to spam.  Shoot first under automated action, immediately pass it to a human, and if in fact its sustained fine, if not reverse it with an apology.  Protecting the platform makes sense and in that case the damage is minuscule when you're wrong and you say you're sorry.

But that's not what happened, there was no reversal, my sentence was not reversed on human examination as clearly erroneous and I'm not the only one it happens to.  In fact I have a pile of others who have had the same thing happen, its a daily occurrence across the platform and only those people with huge reach and thus the ability to slam Elon in public get any sort of consideration beyond his obviously defective "artificial intelligence."

Its artificial all right but it sure as hell isn't intelligent.

More insulting is the second lie, that "careful review" took place.

Now Twitmo is not exactly a new place for me to be; much earlier, and well before Elon was effectively in control and said that X was now a "free speech" bastion I was thrown in jail a few times for various "infractions", one of which was advocating that a person convicted of a serious offense get the death penalty.  This too was deemed "violence" and it was by algorithm -- apparently, in that world before Elon, advocating that lawful capital punishment be carried out complete with the expected due process of law was an "offense."

But all that was all supposed to have changed with Elon's ownership and public pronouncements -- a claim now proved, by my own experience, to be false.

I don't do business with proved liars unless I have no choice or I can protect myself from getting it in the ass with contractual language that not only assesses a punitive amount of liquidated damages but also compensates for fees, costs and my time at a rational rate if I have to sue to go after themwhen they, as expected and demonstrated by their prior acts, lie to me and as a result I get fucked.

Since "X" will never offer any such thing and the company has demonstrated it will bullshit at will including claiming automated action constitutes "careful review" whenever its convenient to fuck its users in the ass with no compensation, no review, no apologies and no way to intervene with ahuman while at the same time making the claim that it is a forum for "free speech" well, if there's no money changing hands then all that changes is my behavior in that I will alter what I use said thing for to suit me and not Elon.  I most-certainly will not subscribe to any "service" in which I am likely to get fucked -- not now, not ever until and unless the prior errors are admitted to, all of the records of same (including any such "scoring" internally) are reversed, any and all propagation of that to any other party (e.g. those who were sold said data) is identified in specificity as to who and when andreversed so I have a cause of action against said purchaser or obtainer of said data if they did or do use it to screw me, the admission is made in public and the policies are changed so it does not, and cannot, happen again.

Is that a big ask?  You bet it is.  But if the answer is either "no" or silence (the same as "no") then my answer is:

GO. FUCK. YOURSELF.

In addition I will not now or in the future do business with any firm Elon owns or has a controlling or board seat upon under any circumstances because he has demonstrated to my satisfaction that he will lie any time there is any advantage in it at all, even if the "advantage" is only avoiding 10 seconds of effort by one of his employees looking at the event, saying "oh, that was dumb" and clicking a button to reverse the AI's stupidity.

I thus presume that any element of fuckery in, for example, a Tesla vehicle that would be to his monetary benefit (by even a dollar) and to my disadvantage (by even a dollar) would be undertaken and that informs my decision that I will never own or even ride in one of them because if he could steal any sort of contextual information about me and sell it to my detriment, even if the gain was a single penny, he would and will do so.  Incidentally this extends to Starlink as well; I was contemplating buying one of his "minis" for when I travel and as an emergency backup and once satisfied it would do the job stuff it in my travel trailer but there is no fucking way I'm going to give him access to my data streams and their destinations under any set of circumstances given this set of facts until and unless the above corrective actions occur and I am satisfied that this sort of shit will never happen in any entity he has any involvement in again.

Oh by the way if you think this abusive behavior and screwing to your detriment is pure speculation it most-certainly is not.  I'm well aware of what the Internet's "data brokerage" business has turned into as I was one of the people who managed to successfully block it for a short period of time (knowing it wouldn't last) thirty years ago, I knew that would not hold (it didn't) and today you do get reamed by it in things like car and homeowner's insurance rates.  Several firms have been caught selling said data from apps on your phone, for example, which you had no reason to believe would be aggregated and marketed in this way so this is definitely not speculation.

Now maybe I'm wrong on that judgment with regards to "X" and Elon personally but this is what he has led me to believe and what, in my opinion it should lead you to believe -- backed by the fact that others in fact do this and that is a known fact because they've been caught doing it.

Will it change your behavior?

Well, if it doesn't when you get it up the ass from him and from anything he's involved in, like Trump's DOGE department, I do not want to hear your complaints.  What you get from me, very publicly if you do complain is this -- and it will be doubly and very publicly so if it bankrupts or, even better from my point of view, kills you:

PS: We didn't have a bunch of people bullshit roughly a million Americans literally to death just a couple of years ago.... did we?