Barstool Dave Portnoy (from live video)
Dave Portnoy, the bombastic and controversial owner of Barstool Sports, is one person who does not seem to be concerned with Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, quite the opposite. Portnoy explained his reasons for cheering Twitter’s change of ownership in an interview on Fox News with Tucker Carlson.
This certainly makes sense. If anyone should be concerned with the way that social media companies police their users these days it is Dave Portnoy. His comments on sports teams alone could be enough to get an everyday person in trouble with Twitter or Facebook. Just recently he tweeted out the “Current list of people I hate.” But then again he was being honest when he posted, “I’m nothing if not honest,” as we can always depend on Dave Portnoy to say exactly what is on his mind.
Dave Portnoy was even once investigated by the National Labor Relations Board Portnoy in 2019 for Tweets in which he allegedly illegally threatened to fire employees if they unionized. In the end, Portnoy was forced to delete his Tweets.
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So, what exactly does Dave Portnoy like about the idea of Elon Musk owning Twitter? Well, he feels that Elon Musk will not be so quick to punish users for the content of their Tweets and allow for a freer political discourse on the social media service.
“There’s people [who] throw shots at you. And when you respond, they have an army of bots, people who say ‘harassment, harassment’ — And they get you banned. So they throw all the arrows. And if you respond in kind once or defend yourself, you get banned or you get in trouble,” Dave Portnoy told Tucker Carlson. “I think that is essentially what spurred this on for Elon, because he got muted and he’s just saying, ‘Hey, let’s open the playing field exchange of ideas’.”
“The good news is he’s the ultimate guy – he’s the ultimate gangster,” added Dave Portnoy. “If you don’t like me, you don’t like what’s going on. I’m just going to buy you up and let it run.”
