Musk donating £80m to Reform

[glowinggg]

Is anyone else a mix of depressed and scared about this scenario playing out? In a nutshell:

• Musk reportedly donating £80m to Farage
• Musk seeking UK citizenship via his grandmother's nationality in order to do ate and influence UK politics
• Will use his skewed algorithm to boost his own X lists svc those of right wing mouthpieces - Tommy Robinson etc to destabilise UK electorate and undermine the government and Conservatives, resulting in a Reform win.

Link to article here:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/dec/07/money-lawyers-or-boosting-farage-on-x-how-elon-musk-could-affect-uk-politics?CMP=ShareiOSAppp_Other

but how is democracy, good for the public when the general public are basically led by the general mass media , and we know how honest the news papers are and not to mention the rich owners of said papers ?

Sorry @PlumHedgehog01 what's your alternative suggestion? Are you saying due to a biased media we just throw our hands in the air and chuck democracy down the drain? Let Musk take over? Putin? FFS.

We need to have a range of media sources and not allow one perspective, or especially owner, to dominate. Even if we disagree with some. We need The Sun, The Morning Star, Daily Mail, Telegraph, Guardian. Times and local papers. And online we need X as well as Meta and Google. More dangerous are the algorithms that put us in echo chambers. I now get an update ‘chosen for you’ email from my local paper; I do not want it ‘chosen for me’, I want to see different perspectives and articles on topics I might not have read before.

well when you have billionaire media owners that are in the same leagues as musk, etc then democracy has no real meaning when the public are lead

but when you look at who the owners are and the main parent companies that own all the news papers, then they pritty much all sing the same tune

Here’s a grouped list of UK newspapers by their respective owners:
News UK (Part of News Corp, owned by Rupert Murdoch)

• The Times
• The Sun

Lord Rothermere / DMG Media (Part of Daily Mail and General Trust)

• The Daily Telegraph
• The Daily Mail
• The Mail on Sunday
• The Mail Online

Reach PLC (Previously known as Trinity Mirror, also owns various regional titles)

• The Mirror
• The Express
• The Star
• The i
• The Daily Record
• The People

Scott Trust (Owns the Guardian Media Group)

• The Guardian
• The Observer

Nikkei Inc.

• The Financial Times

Independent Digital News and Media (Now owned by Levinson Capital)

• The Independent

This grouping should give you a clearer sense of the ownership structure behind the major UK newspapers.

so much for varied media

I make that seven owners (The Observer was sold recently). It would be good to have more but is better than less. Who owns the local papers? Though they tend to regurgitate press statements as they have fewer journalists. Plus regional papers (eg The Scotsman). And foreign press. Then there is also the likes of Private Eye and Spectator. And a number of online news sources like Unherd. But the really big boys are Google, Meta and X. Taking any one of those away would be worrying. That is where the need for deversification is more acute.

I guess you disapprove of 100 Labour activist flying over to campaign for the Dems then? Musk is just giving it back to Starmer. Maybe if Lammy et al hadn’t made so many deeply insulting comments about Trump, he would rein him in. You reap what you sow.

Trump is a convicted felon, he also attempted to overturn an election by force, Elon Musk owns one of the biggest and most influential media outlets in the world. If Musk openly uses a media outlet to allow disinformation and to tilt an election then something has to be done, it can't be allowed.

If people can't see how dangerous this mix is then they are the fools.

I take a balanced view and can see the good points of a Trump administration....it's not all bad. But he is a extreme threat to democracy and rule of law, the risks for America are huge and the threat to global democracy are also under siege.

America voted and decision is final but what happens here and across the world will be decided in the future. All we can do is make sure it's fair and in line with our values. If Musk chooses to interfere and spread baseless lies then our courts and government should move to block X from our internet hubs and confine his lies to America....it won't completely stop the spread of misinformation but it will prevent the vast majority of misinformation from that platform.

I'm sorry when our prime minister is being accused of being a rapist sympathiser and calling for a criminal to be released from jail by one of the most powerful men in the world.... something must be done. Tommy Robinson broke the law and has continued to brake the law....his breach in one case put a rape trial in jeopardy and could have seen three rapists walk free ...shows you how much that man really cares

The new vice president’s made equally insulting comments about Trump, clearly you don’t reap what you sow.

Because X is not the only large media outlet there is. Meta is also huge and has also interfered in politics and also is much less committed to free speech. Granting Meta a monopoly is far more dangerous.

@JRSKSSBH They didn’t give any money. Money is very different from doing a bit of campaigning!. I assume you can see that. They were not seeking huge influence. Nor did they have it. Now look at today. Elon Musk pressed a button and everyone jumps to attention. We are fools rushing headlong into an abyss.

Money is very different from doing a bit of campaigning!

Money is not very different from ‘doing a bit of campaigning’. Campaigning require resources; money and volunteers. More volunteers offsets use of other resources ie money. Historically, the use of ‘informal’ resources like this has always given Labour the advantage in terms of campaign spending.

Labour is not facing election and has a large majority so, if confident of their position, they can ignore Musk. It is not like when they made a backroom deal with the newspapers to get their endorsement prior to the general election (which the Tories have done in the past too).

I do think more should be done to regulate donations (money and resources, including clothes and wallpaper) to all political parties and politicians. Not quite sure how though.

100 campaigners in a country with a population of 331 million and a political donation of £80 million in a country of 68 million is the same? Seriously?

Didn’t the conservatives do the same?

I didn’t say the same. I don’t think any UK political party should be allowed to accept a donation that size, regardless of where the person lives. Parties do need funding but there should be a cap on the value of a donation for an individual organisation (and I would count a union as a single organisation if money from members were collected through them, or a group of companies with familial or organisational links). I think the cap should be below £1 million but with additional regulations for any donation above £5000 to try and stop direct benefits to the donor or those linked with them.

I suspect Reform won’t get that money as he has already back-peddled from his support for Farage. There have been a few other occasions when he has proffered largess in tweets that came to nothing.

So it’s all OK if it’s done in a small way? Who gets to decide the point at which small turns into too much?

I didn’t say that. I said the two weren’t comparable. Which they’re not.

@Blossomtoes
We agree. They are not remotely comparable. A few people campaigning has no tangible outcomes. Money is wholly different. Vast amounts of money, different again. This will be interference at worst. We’ve always had donors getting gongs (as long as a bit of charity work is thrown in) and views on policy put forward, but this is a big influencing donation. Might not happen of course.