1/20/2026 at 2:29:41 AM
https://x.com/scottbuscemi/status/2013397238568099843?s=20last item here seems to indicate that the OP tweet is a (bad faith?) overly broad reading. The "in accordance with our privacy policy" link part is showing right there in that original tweet, and doesn't seem to have been checked.
I know a lot of people think Musk is simply a mustachio-twirling comic book villain so there's not a lot of critical thinking ever applied to this sort of story, but even still, he'd have to be an order of magnitude dumber than buying Twitter, to think they could just train on all browsing data and that people would be chill about it.
by xp84
1/20/2026 at 10:10:15 PM
The UK's BT Broadband did this around 2007 via Phorm. Actually they did worse - used the data to inject custom advertising. Not only were their customers chill with it, so was the Information Commissioner's Office, the government arm that ostensibly protects our privacy.by proactivesvcs
1/21/2026 at 12:00:30 AM
Pretty hilarious that they call enabled by default "opt in".by maxerickson
1/20/2026 at 8:31:38 AM
> , to think they could just train on all browsing data and that people would be chill about it.I mean, he does think he can do what he wants with impunity and track record is that yes, he can. He thinks that asking his bot to not produce child porn is an imposition, for example.
by watwut
1/20/2026 at 1:49:48 PM
Right? What an insane statement. Of course Musk thinks he can do this with impunity. He thinks he has the absolute right to do anything he wants.by estimator7292
1/21/2026 at 3:26:55 AM
How is ai-produced "porn" different than hentai? We're getting very divorced from the reason CSAM is illegal in the first place.The previous status quo was that skilled digital artists could easily produce fake porn with real people's faces pasted on using Photohop. Now, lots of people can cheaply produce the same. So? Eventually, the dumber people will come around to where most of us are, which is understanding that obviously the existence of an image of a thing is not proof of the existence of the thing itself, and we can stop pearl-clutching about what weirdos make fake AI pictures of, just like we don't have to care what some weirdo doodles in the privacy of their own home.
by xp84
1/20/2026 at 4:44:09 AM
why do you think buying twitter was dumb?by random3
1/21/2026 at 3:28:15 AM
Because it was a massive money pit that was already failing. If he wanted to have a microblogging site at x.com he could have built one at x.com and paid everyone interesting to use it for a year, for far less than he paid for Twitter.by xp84
1/20/2026 at 5:50:47 AM
One curious thing is they SOLD it to him.by tucnak
1/20/2026 at 4:29:17 PM
They sold it for a lot more than it was actually worth, got actual cash from it and got a return on their investment, why wouldn't they have sold? Twitter was barely profitable when he bought it, not selling would've been crazy.by nar001
1/21/2026 at 9:28:33 AM
We heard this story a million times, but who's to say what's Twitter really worth? Musk bought much more than a "barely profitable website" that day. And the liberal leaders should have seen this coming. Yet they were busy laughing out loud, and mocking, and making predictions on how he'll run the site into the ground, and humiliate himself, etc.How's that going by the way?
by tucnak