To Tweet, or Not To…wait, what?!?

Will rebranding to X make any difference?

We had such high hopes.

When Elon Musk bought Twitter, conservatives, libertarians and free-speech advocates rejoiced. Musk promised to quash the censorship and shadow banning we’d all come to know and loathe. When Matt Taibbi began releasing the Twitter Files, we rejoiced again, even as the IRS showed up at his door—while he was testifying before the Weaponization Committee, no less. Coincidence? Mmmm…no. The degree of enmeshment between the Alphabets & Twitter would have made Comrade Beria blush, and Musk let Taibbi put the facts out there for all the world to see. Transparency FTW!

The mass layoffs at Twitter, the pay-to-play blue checks, the weeping and wailing of the snowflakes? Take the good with the bad, different isn’t automatically detrimental, and some bumps along the way were only to be expected. We sighed and kept our hopes up.

We kept hoping despite persistent rumors about the algorithm still running. Flags and warnings kept appearing. Elon’s snappy tweets gigging the whiners, Karens and other idiots made us smile and buoyed our spirits. But then…

Substack users started notice problems with Twitter embeds and comments. For those who, like myself, use both platforms, this was (and is) annoying. Then, Elon said he was going to rehire some of the Twits he’d pink-slipped. Even worse, he hired Davos Woman Linda Yaccarino, whose woke credentials are absolutely impeccable—and absolutely anathema to those of us who don’t want Klaus Schwab making us eat ze bugs.

People laughed when the #DeSaster launch on Spaces flopped, but the technical inability to handle a major event wasn’t the most disturbing thing happening at the “new” Twitter. No, that would have been how “new” Twitter was all too much like “old” Twitter, or worse—like not being able to view tweets without having an account and being logged into Twitter!

A crash & burn Spaces event was just the side of diarrhea on the feces sandwich Twitter was serving, especially for those of us who aren’t politically to the left of Karl Marx or comfortable wearing our pink pussy hats.

“Wait and see”, Musk kept telling us. Wait for what, Elon? Yaccarino hasn't changed her opinions just because she got a free blue check. How long will it be before you look away and she starts making Twitter toe the WEF line?

When Elon admitted in May that he had little choice but to continue censoring content at the request of some national governments, some of us cried ‘foul’!

Of course he had a choice, some said. He could have done what Rumble did when France insisted the platform censor pro-Russian content:

Rather than remove some Russia news sources, Rumble electronically said bon voyage to France. One only hopes that those who love freedom in le Republique have good VPNs.

But perhaps Elon doesn’t actually have a choice after all. When he took over Jack’s little blue birdcage, he inherited its structural weaknesses, including the complete and total lack of his own hardware.

Remember Parler? No? That’s okay, nobody else does, either. Amazon made sure of that when they pulled the plug on the red P.

Parler, for all its promise, was just a software package running on Amazon’s servers. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is one of the three main players in the “cloud space for rent” business, with Google and Microsux being the others. These three titans maintain huge server farms—warehouse-sized buildings filled with gazillions of computers and drives where the internet lives. These aren’t cheap to build, and they’re really not cheap to run because they take lots of electricity. Lots and lots of electricity—as much as 20% of the world’s energy by 2025 (and about 5.5% of global carbon release, if you’re a Climate Cultist who obsesses about that. If you are, you’re on the wrong Substack!)

At any rate, Parler promised free speech and targeted conservatives, who were desperately seeking a platform of their own. Then AWS, which Parler had contracted with to host their platform shut them down, with Apple and Google helping by removing the app from their app stores. Aside from his/her/its ripping on the “build our own platforms” crowd, streiff (yep, that’s how the author writes its name) did some pretty good reporting on Parker’s demise on Red State.

I hate to bust your bubble, streiff, but Andrew Torbin and Gab were working hard around that time to do what you said was stupid and impossible. They HAVE built their own hardware. They own their own iron, so aside from Alphabet raids (always a risk in Biden’s Amerika), or the flipping of Obama’s internet kill switch (ditto) there’s not a lot the Regime can do to Gab.

Elon doesn’t have that luxury. Long before he dropped a cool $44 billion on Twitter, Jack Dorsey negotiated long-term megabucks contracts with both AWS and Google to host his blue bird. Long story short, Elon is on the hook for $300 million a year to AWS and Google through 2025, and Twitter’s business model isn’t now (and probably never has been) able to support that.

As Sundance so wonderfully reminds us, AWS and Google both work hand-in-glove with elements of the United Stares Government (if they’re not effectively subsidiary units of Uncle Sam’s apparatus). And, like Parler found out, if they don’t like your content, you’re hosed:

“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?“

There’s a lot more of the excellent analysis I’ve come to expect from Sundance and The Last Refuge in that article, which I can’t recommend strongly enough. In fact, let me steal two more paragraphs from him:

“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.“ (emphasis mine)

Not even Elon’s pocket’s pockets are infinitely deep, especially when his main opponents are playing with taxpayer/Deep State/Cabal money. So, how is he going to survive for the next two-ish years, hemorrhaging money all the while?

That is the question, isn’t it?

Now many more things, including this week’s rebranding of Twitter into X, make sense. Ultimately it’s all about old Doc Contrarian’s Three Pillars: Money, Power and Control. Follow the Three Pillars—ask yourself who is getting more of each one, and who wants/needs more of each—and you’ll have a better understanding of what’s really going on.

If Elon wants to continue building the One Platform To Rule Them All with messaging, video, communications, money and, well, everything else, he needs to salvage his investment in Twitter. That means for the next few years, he’s forced to dance to the tune that AWS and Google, and therefore the CIA, Pentagon (who uses AWS, oddly enough) the US Government and WEF play. If he doesn’t—instant death, no saving throw. Go to Internet Jail. Go directly to Jail. Do NOT pass GO. Do NOT collect a refund on your $44 billion.

So, will rebranding Twitter make conservatives more confident in the platform? It shouldn’t, but some conservatives are as dumb as most liberals, so maybe, yeah.

At least now we won’t have to face the question, “To Tweet, or Not To Tweet”.

BTW, we’re still waiting for some indictments, or firings, or something to come of the Twitter Files and the Weaponization Committee. Anything, really, to show that there are consequences to such gross shenanigans. Even knowing that they will probably never happen, hope springs eternal, and all that rot. Because, after all, being an Alphabet means never having to say you’re sorry. Or have any consequences whatsoever—those are for the plebes & Deplorables, you stinking rubes!

Whatever you do, DO NOT SHARE THIS POST! Someone might read it, and enjoy it, and you wouldn’t want that, now would you? Of course not! It’s not like it’s free, or anything. DO NOT FOLLOW @DocContrarian on X, GETTR, Gab and Truth Social. Don’t get my book Beyond MAGA. Don’t review it, and for the love of God don’t tell your friends about it.