A "social media forum," as far as I can tell from a very-deliberate distance, is merely a manifestation of the "IRC = Internet Relay Chat" chat-room. Even back in the day when all of this was new, and when a University colleague of mine was the actual person(!) who added "Relay" to that term, the whole idea quickly bored me. I never saw the value in it, and I still don't.

(But: full disclosure ... I also haven't had a television in my house for more than thirty years. I buy any video that I want to watch from the Internet ... commercial-free. And I have a "Sirius XM®" commercial-free radio in my car.)

An "old-fashioned forum," such as this one, is very different in a number of key ways. First of all, this site is: "Linux® questions." In other words, there is a specific reason for you to be here. There is something purposeful that attracted you here, and that "purposeful thing" is that "you need an answer, specifically about Linux®, right now!"

And the odds are very excellent that you will get it. Right away. On target.

The "General Forums" are simply an added attraction.

If you want to observe the pragmatic value of this "topic-specific forum model," you need only visit any of the "StackExchange® branded" forums – of which there are many. There are literally "hundreds of postings per minute," which must of course be a delight to their internet advertisers, but there is no taxonomy. Your "message in a bottle" has just been tossed into a white-water river, and within ten minutes (literally ...) it will be gone. No one will ever see it again. So, from my personal point of view as someone who has tried to find answers there – "useless." Within less than an hour, your entire exchange will be "many miles down-river."

This is why all of us who also like to hang out in "General" first spend our daily visits looking at "Newbie," "Programming," "Containers," and other places. Because, these are the real reasons why this entire web-site is here ... and has been here, now, for decades.

The "signal-to-noise ratio," if you will, of "a conventional forum," is very low. But this is exactly what makes it efficient. I have a nice bookmark-list of the "conventional forums" that I know that I can turn to when I need to "find an answer very quickly." LQ is one of several.

(P.S.: thank you, all!!) I can only hope that you think I'm upholding(?) my little part of the bargain . . .

I've never posted anything to those forums but search often leads me there. If I see something of interest, I bookmark it. If I type 'stack' into my bookmarks search tab more than 150 results turn up. I should add that I use a batch file(s) to date virtually every daily interaction with my computer since 2019. Every d/l, every file I create, every post I make to this and 4 other forums, every post to Facebook and Twitter and last but not least - I add a date to every page I see fit to bookmark.
First thing in the morning I create a folder with date and topic specific folders within the 'daily' folder and then move it at the end of the day.
As an example, of the 150 'stack' results above, typing 'stack 2019' cuts the result down to about 35, typing, for instance, 'stack grep' yields 9 bookmarks. As my tag line indicates I am a fan of our historic past - I don't find it terribly difficult to type (Subject) site:https://history.stackexchange.com/ into my browser and, of course, you can modify 'history' to any of the other branded forums.

^ as a social platform stack/exchange/ask sites are probably useless or even horrifying, but I get excellent results from them, time and again. Sure, some of it is just SEO, but there's something to be said for their voting and editing system.

Anyhow:
https://xkcd.com/1357/
Somebody probably already posted this.

I once had a sobering moment:
The manager of a supermarket told me that I am forbiden to enter it ever again, for no legal reason (I didn't do anything out of the ordinary or forbidden).
I then asked a lawyer if the manager could even do that, and they told me Yes, because a supermarket isn't public space, the supermarket owns it.

That said, if you open your space up to the public you also have to adhere to certain rules - something folks tend to ignore when they say "if you don't like it you can leave".

(That was long ago. Don't judge me on that.)

If you are on a site that is the private property of some other person or company operating within the letter of the law, and you do not like the rules or decisions there, leaving may be your ONLY valid, reasonable, and legal option.

Furthermore, they are free to forcibly remove you, and there is nothing you can do about it... That's the other side of the double-edged sword.

There was a brief time that I hosted "a forum for my customers" on my website ... which forced me to be "a moderator." I absolutely hated it, and it was a tremendous (almost daily ...) waste of time. Eventually it dawned on me that my customers were not actually calling for "a forum," and that most of them never used it. So, one day, I ditched the whole thing and never looked back. Nobody complained. Sales didn't suffer. I was relieved.

But ... in any public forum like this one, let's hear it for the Moderators! In a well-run forum like this one you usually do not perceive their daily efforts, simply because they do them so well. But you would very quickly and very unpleasantly come to realize it if they didn't. It is a thankless, ongoing task that I'm very glad that I don't have to do. They are the "quality-control officers" of the entire thing.

This is not true. You have a lot of other options, many of them valid, reasonable and/or legal.

If, however, they tell you to leave that is ultimately their right, and one has to go.

But, again, let's not forget that a business opening its premises (be they physical or digital) to the public has to follow additional rules, compared to private premises.

BTW, the story above was half a lifetime ago.

Done deal!

Details are slowly coming to hand, but my understanding is that approximately 49% of the stock will be paid for by Mr Musk, with approximately another 25 to 31% financed via some type of loan instrument.

I've also read that Mr. Musk's intention is to leave 20 to 25% of the company's stock on the market, and that the company will continue to have it's own Board. I guess we'll find out Mr. Musk's true opinions about free speech when (not if) he encounters a dissenting director.

Musk has all the money he could possibly wish to spend, but for the life of me I have no idea why he ... or anyone ... took an interest in Twitter.

Here's one suggestion: SEC dodging

Well, that article is more-than-slightly misleading. As an executive officer of Tesla, he is responsible under SEC rules for public things that he says – no matter where or how he says them. That won't change.

I heard on the news yesterday that he "took it private" - does this means it's not a shareholder company anymore?

They also said "anyway, he just gave himself a gigantic headache with this"

I don't know why there's so much attention on this particular transaction. We've had "media moguls" and "media barons" for generations.

Come to think of it, aren't most "media" privately owned (or government-owned)?

In case someone cites Facebook or Google, aren't most shares owned by the public without voting rights?

Musk isn't really a media mogul.

He uses Twitter a lot himself and got into trouble for some controversial tweets. Instead of taking no for an answer he just bought the whole thing...