Twitter is Not a Public Company: It’s Time for Trump to Hang Up His Hat & Sail into the Sunset, Not for Musk

Musk visited the San Francisco headquarters of the company to meet with employees. He posted an open letter in order to let the advertisers know he does not want the platform to become a free for allhellscape where anything can be said without consequences.

Musk pledged to reverse the ban if he became the company’s owner at a conference in May.

But relations between the pair seem to have soured since, with the men publicly trading barbs over the summer. Musk responded by writing, “It’s time for Trump to hang up his hat & sail into the sunset” after he called Musk a “bullsh*t artist”.

In a sharp response, Twitter’s lawyers wrote that Musk had been attempting to exit the deal and “now, on the eve of trial, Defendants declare they intend to close after all. ‘Trust us,’ they say, ‘we mean it this time.’”

Now the $44 billion deal — the same amount that Mr. Musk offered in April — could be significantly more costly for lenders like Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Barclays that committed to put big money into the deal before inflation, rising interest rates, economic uncertainty created by the war in Ukraine and Mr. Musk’s bombastic behavior.

It’s good to see that shenanigans are fun, but there’s a downside: Twitter is $1 billion a year in debt and needs to pay it all off. In 2021, Twitter made $5 billion in revenue and did not turn a profit. Mike Roberts is a professor at the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania. “He owes a bunch of money, and he’s gotta raise money somewhere, somehow. I wonder if this debt can be paid byTwitter.

The use of employees from a public company raises obvious questions about the propriety of Mr. Musk taking resources from a public company to build a private company, which may run afoul of his legal duty of loyalty.

Why Twitter is better than Twitter, not what Twitter is doing: The case of Musk in a deposition and a decision to end the deal on Twitter

That argument did not lend itself to support because of the material that came to light ahead of the trial in Delaware. “He knows that his best claim is fraud, but they’ve gotten the evidence from Twitter, and there’s nothing that looks like fraud here,” Miller says. They ran out of cards to play.

Musk had moved his deposition from late September to October 6th and 7th. After weeks of discussions with his lawyers, he announced he would honor the contract they had negotiated. A judge found that Musk probably deleted Signal messages that could have been relevant to the case, and that the deposition was going to be uncomfortable. The deposition was delayed as Musk and Twitter worked toward a deal; Musk even received a court order halting proceedings to allow the deal to close by October 28th.

But more than professional utility ties me to the site. Twitter hooks people in much the same way slot machines do, with what experts call an “intermittent reinforcement schedule.” Some compelling tidbits will appear occasionally at random intervals, but most of the time it is repetitive and uninteresting. The behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner found that rats and pigeons were particularly good at generatingcompulsive behavior due to unpredictable rewards.

“I don’t know that Twitter engineers ever sat around and said, ‘We are creating a Skinner box,’” said Natasha Dow Schüll, a cultural anthropologist at New York University and author of a book about gambling machine design. That is essentially what they have built, she said. It’s one reason people who should know better regularly self-destruct on the site — they can’t stay away.

When Musk agreed to buy Twitter back in April, he said he would “unlock” the company’s potential by advancing free speech and “defeating the spam bots.”

He told employees at a all-staff meeting that the platform should allow all legal speech, and he also sent a private text to Antonio Gracias saying that free speech matters most when it’s someone you hate spouting what you think is bull.

Such a move could also have ripple effects across the social media landscape. The first to ban the President in the wake of the Capitol riot wasTwitter, although it’s larger than many of its social media rivals.

For a “keyhole view of what Twitter under Musk will look like,” just look at alternative platforms such as Parler, Gab and Truth Social that promise fewer restrictions on speech, said Angelo Carusone, president of the liberal nonprofit watchdog group Media Matters for America.

On those sites, he said, “the feature is the bug — where being able to say and do the kinds of things that are prohibited from more mainstream social media platforms is actually why everyone gravitates to them. We can see that they are cauldrons of misinformation.

“Would be great to unwind permanent bans, except for spam accounts and those that explicitly advocate violence,” he texted Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal shortly after agreeing to join the company’s board (a decision he soon backtracked).

That could mean lifting bans on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who was kicked off for abusive behavior in 2018; Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., whose account was suspended in January for tweeting misleading and false claims about COVID-19 vaccines; and 2020 election deniers like Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell and Mike Lindell, who were all banned in early 2021.

The person suggested that Musk hire a person who has a political view and also a “seduced cultural/political view”. Masters is the Republican Senate candidate in Arizona who has been endorsed by Trump and has echoed his false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.

Facebook vs. WeChat: What’s in Musk’s Twitter? How many employees are impacted by his decision to resign?

Facebook, which banned the former president when his ban expires in January 2023, is considering reinstating him when his ban is up.

Musk privately clashed with Agrawal in April, immediately before deciding to make a bid for the company, according to text messages later revealed in court filings.

Whoever is in charge of day-to-day operations will likely be faced with a smaller workforce. Over 500 employees have left the company since the Musk saga began, many of which are upset with Musk’s plans to change the company.

That is likely welcome news to the billionaire, who has complained that Twitter’s costs outstrip revenues and has implied the company is overstaffed for its size.

He may have little choice other than to find alternate sources of revenue besides advertising, given the weak state of the digital ad market and the changes he wants to make to content moderation.

That creates a challenge for brands, which are sensitive to the types of content their ads run against, an issue made more complicated by social media. Most marketers don’t like the idea of having their ads run alongside toxic content.

What exactly he meant is, as always, anyone’s guess. In the summer, Musk told staff that the company should use the Chinese messaging and payment app, WeChat, just like it is in the US.

Other American tech companies, including Facebook and Uber, have tried this strategy, but so far Chinese-style super-apps haven’t caught on in the United States.

The Case for a Better FTC: Why Twitter Is On Fire: Why Social Media Is Toxic for Women and Girls – and How We Can Reclaim It

The social media platform said in a court filing that federal authorities are investigating Musk for his $44 billion acquisition of the company.

The Federal Trade Commission is responsible for the enforcement of a consent order withTwitter that Zatko alleges the company violated. But its chair, Lina Khan, has told Congress in public testimony that if it’s determined Twitter executives were responsible for legal violations, the FTC “absolutely” would and “won’t hesitate” to hold those executives personally accountable.

The filing on Thursday maintained that it didn’t instruct Zatko to burn a number of notebooks as Musk had claimed in a previous filing. Zatko destroyed the notebooks of his own will.

Better laws could help to revive competition, restrain harmful behavior and even realize the potential of social media to strengthen American democracy rather than undermine it. In short, policymakers can ensure the question of who owns Twitter, or Instagram or TikTok, doesn’t matter quite so much.

The best way to limit the power of any individual social media network is to make room for new networks and, perhaps even more important, for third-party sites that allow users to customize their online experience: combining content from multiple sites, controlling what kids can see and other features someone has imagined and needs a chance to make real.

Editor’s Note: Kara Alaimo, an associate professor in the Lawrence Herbert School of Communication at Hofstra University, writes about issues affecting women and social media. She will write a book called “This Feed Is on Fire: Why Social Media Is Toxic for Women and Girls – and How We Can Reclaim It”. The opinions expressed in this commentary are her own. Read more opinion on CNN.

The Story of Kanye West, the CEO of Parler, and What We Do About It: Attacking the Left and Right in the Social Media Space

The conservative social media company Parler announced on Monday that it is being purchased by Kanye West, who was temporarily suspended from Twitter this month for an antisemitic tweet. A statement from Parler’s parent company announcing the deal described West, who has legally changed his name to Ye, as having taken “a groundbreaking move into the free speech media space” where “he will never have to fear being removed from social media again.”

In a world where conservative opinions are considered controversial, West said that we have to make sure we have the right to freely express ourselves.

Just think about the way these owners already post, with Musk recently suggesting China control Taiwan and Russia keep part of Ukraine and West releasing a music video showing a doppelgänger of ex-wife Kim Kardashian’s then-boyfriend, Pete Davidson, being kidnapped and buried. If this is a glimpse of what social networks will look like in the future, we should all be very scared.

Before becoming Twitter’s CEO, owner, and “Chief Twit,” Elon Musk had often lobbed criticism at the platform for its approach to content moderation, even going so far as to target the company’s former policy chief Vijaya Gadde. But while Musk has expressed his concern about “liberal bias” on the platform, many activists, journalists, and advocates outside the US—where the majority of Twitter’s users reside—have begun to worry about how Twitter, now without a board or shareholders and led by a CEO with multiple business entanglements, will respond to authoritarian and authoritarian-leaning governments that have long sought to control public opinion.

A 2020 study of women in 51 countries by The Economist Intelligence Unit found that 38% have been victims of online violence, from stalking to doxxing to violent threats. As Amnesty International and others have found, women of color are most affected. Antisemitic content is also rampant online. A 2021 report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that a sample of 714 anti-Jewish posts on five social networks had been viewed 7.3 million times.

In practice, what these so-called free speech policies really boil down to is an ugly form of censorship that scares away the voices of people who are attacked by users of these platforms.

West has already described Parler as a place where conservative views can flourish, and nonconservatives are unlikely to flock to Truth Social, given its association with Trump. It could be a platform for conservatives if women, people of color and others start leaving it. This would likely make the views of those who remain even more zealous.

On rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, and What Can Be Done,” warns Elon Musk on Twitter

“When like-minded people get together, they often end up thinking a more extreme version of what they thought before they started to talk to one another,” Harvard University law professor Cass Sunstein writes in “On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, and What Can Be Done.” Sunstein says this happens because their exchanges heighten their preexisting beliefs and make them more confident.

He said there is “great danger that social media will split into far right and far left wing echo chambers that could create more hate and divide our society.”

We can expect these men to use their platforms to amplify their own biases, even when they are sexist, misogynistic, racist or otherwise offensive.

“In addition to adhering to the laws of the land, our platform must be warm and welcoming to all, where you can choose your desired experience according to your preferences,” he said in the Thursday post. “Fundamentally, Twitter aspires to be the most respected advertising platform in the world that strengthens your brand and grows your enterprise … Let us build something extraordinary together.”

Sarah Personette, chief customer officer, said she had a great discussion with Musk on Wednesday and appeared to endorse his Thursday message to advertisers.

On Friday, some of those same groups called on Twitter’s advertisers to halt all spending on the platform globally, in what they described as an escalation of a pressure campaign targeting Elon Musk and his plans to remake one of the world’s most influential social media sites.

Musk also reiterated in the letter a lofty earlier statement he had made that the Twitter acquisition is not meant to be a money-making venture for him.

The acquisition also promises to extend Musk’s influence. The billionaire already owns, oversees or has significant stakes in companies developing cars, rockets, robots and satellite internet, as well as more experimental ventures such as brain implants. Now he controls a social media platform that shapes how hundreds of millions of people communicate and get their news.

How Musk Got It Done? The Problem is Over, and How the CEO Has Come to Control of Twitter Until Judges Strike Their Ground

The departures come just hours before a deadline set by a Delaware judge to finalize the deal on Friday. She threatened to schedule a trial if no agreement was reached.

“The long-term potential for Twitter, in my view, is an order of magnitude greater than its current value,” he said on Tesla’s earnings conference call last week.

Things got particularly messy, it appears, when current Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal asked Musk to stop tweeting damaging things about the company. That’s when Musk immediately decided not to join the board and launched his plan to take it private. Everybody was falling over themselves to give Musk money for it to happen because of the weird ideas Calacanis had. The texts are very funny and worth a read.

Many Twitter employees have recently noted the absence of Parag Argawal, their current CEO, who Musk soured on after the two initially started talking about Musk joining Twitter’s board. A current employee of the social media site who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to discuss it said that the man had been absent for weeks. One person said he had ghosted them. There are plenty of comments about Argawal in the anonymous section of Blind and the employee-only section of Slack.

According to Insider, the executives received handsome payouts for their trouble, ranging from $38.7 million to $25.4 million and $11.2 million to Personette.

It is all over, and so is the ownership of Twitter by Musk. How did that happen? Read on — we’ll lay out every step of how it happened and how the billionaire is now in control of Twitter, with several former execs abruptly escorted out of the building and Twitter employees awaiting the first updates from their new “Chief Twit.”

The Mueller Investigation into the Trump-Twitter Buyout News Updates: A Brief Guide for Pedestrians and Particle Activists

This is a huge story with a lot of fast-moving parts to it. It’s also a story that will likely stretch out over the next few months, maybe even longer. So we thought we’d put together a guide for you, our readers, that can be updated as things continue to unfold. Because, like him, we are also you.

Jack Dorsey, Joe Rogan, Larry Ellison, Jason Calacanis — Musk texted with a huge number of people about the Twitter deal, and the release of many of those texts gave us some insight into how the deal came together and fell apart.

Your argument is invalid, and you can’t either, because of the way it’s responded by Twitter a few days later.

The tech industry has become known as the Who’s who of it’s field, including Dorsey, Larry Ellison, and many others. Dorsey was a surprise but seems likely to have plenty of pertinent information, given both his tenure as Twitter CEO and the fact that Dorsey reportedly pushed hard to convince Musk to buy the company in the first place.

Musk’s side wanted more time and for the trial to start in February 2023. It was important that it start as soon as possible. The trial will last for five days and will start October 17th, according to the Chancellor. Of course, that assumes the two sides don’t settle, and that remains anyone’s guess.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/23026874/elon-musk-twitter-buyout-news-updates

What’s worth reading about Twitter Blue if it is really going to stop promoting the manipulation of social media sites, as suggested by Elon Musk

We wouldn’t normally tell you it’s worth reading a 162-page legal filing that gets deep into the weeds of bot measurement procedures. A lot of the legal fighting written to be read by a large audience was written in this case. It’s a good yarn.

At the moment, Twitter Blue is far from the money-making initiative Musk had hoped it would be. But to Rachel Tobac, who runs Social Proof Security, a firm focused on preventing the manipulation of social media sites, if Twitter Blue is revived, the money generated from the new service is the least important thing.

Employees told The Verge’s Alex Heath they were frustrated by the lack of a more detailed response. They’re concerned about the future of the social media platform, as well as the possibility of layoffs.

But even a free speech maximalist like Musk needs to convince shareholders that his buyout offer is in their financial self-interest. Otherwise, what are we really doing here?

Casey was right in positing that Twitter’s poison pill provisions may not be enough to stop Musk. He figured that Musk would troll the company again with his social media postings.

Although they came quickly, the major personnel moves had been widely expected and almost certainly are the first of many major changes the mercurial Tesla CEO will make.

Why does Twitter let us out? A comment on the Twitter harassment of Gadde, a top lawyer, and the mayor of the New York Stock Exchange

About the same time, he used Twitter to criticize Gadde, the company’s top lawyer. His tweets were followed by a flurry of abuse from other accounts. When it came to harassment against Gadde, a public policy and safety person who works for the social media company, calls for Musk to fire her included racist and misogynistic attacks. On Thursday, after she was fired, the harassing tweets lit up once again.

The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School Associate professor of marketing Pinar Yildirim said that the note is a shift from Musk’s position that is blocking free speech rights by blocking misinformation.

But it’s also a realization that having no content moderation is bad for business, putting Twitter at risk of losing advertisers and subscribers, she said.

“You do not want a place where consumers just simply are bombarded with things they do not want to hear about, and the platform takes no responsibility,” Yildirim said.

The New York Stock Exchange informed investors that it would suspend trading on Friday in anticipation of the company being taken private by Musk.

Musk’s apparent enthusiasm about visiting Twitter headquarters this week stood in sharp contrast to one of his earlier suggestions: The building should be turned into a homeless shelter because so few employees actually worked there.

In the wake of the chaos at Twitter in recent weeks, there has been talk of brands quitting the platform out of concern that their ads could end up next to objectionable content. But that may not be the only or even primary reason advertisers have walked away — or why attracting new ones could be tricky. Advertisers may be worried about whether or not Twitter will remain stable as users and former staff worry that mass exodus of staff could leave the platform vulnerable to problems.

This is what’s happening with Musk and Twitter. Conor Friedersdorf in the Atlantic describes a “dysfunctional relationship between Twitter’s new owner and so many of the journalists who cover him … where the least defensible statements and claims on all sides are relentlessly amplified in a never-ending cycle that predictably fuels disdain and negative polarization.”

A version of this article first appeared in the “Reliable Sources” newsletter. Sign up for the daily digest chronicling the evolving media landscape here.

Musk has ruined the information environment he now reigns over, as well as attempting to dismantle the small infrastructure erected to help users sift through the daily chaos. According to recent news stories, he plans to take the blue verified badges from public figures if they don’t pay.

Charging for verified badges might appear at first glance as a business story. The move will have a huge impact on the landscape. Most notably, it will make it much more difficult for users to distinguish from authentic and inauthentic accounts.

The right dislikes the term “blue check” because it is seen as a representation of an elite group of people who control the conversation, just like many conservatives also don blue badges. Taking away those free blue checks, and the air of authority they give upon the profile they are appended to, will certainly delight some conservatives.

Authenticating Musk on Twitter: How a Social Network Can Suppress Conflict and Destabilize Hacking: A Brief Biography of Musk

The best thing one can do to save social networks, the internet, civil discourse, democracy, email, and reduce hacking would be authenticating users, according to Musk’s authorized biographer.

Nick Caldwell, general manager of core technology, has changed his Twitter bio to “former Twitter Exec,” and Jay Sullivan, general manager of consumer and revenue products, removed the company and his title from his Twitter bio. The New York Times reported Tuesday that Berland had left the company and on Tuesday night she took to social media with a single blue heart.

Investor Jason Calacanis and Sriram Krishnan, an Andreessen Horowitz general partner focused on crypto and Twitter’s former consumer teams lead, have both confirmed on Twitter that they are working with Musk to manage the company and brainstorm new products Musk has also reportedly brought in Craft Ventures partner David Sacks, as well as a handful of Tesla engineers.

Calacanis posted earlier this week that he was in New York for a meeting with the marketing and advertising community. He has asked about the subscription and bookmark features on the platform.

The new policies Musk announced this week cover all users, but Davisson does not think they will be enforced by the old moderation staff at Twitter.

Instead, he could turn to Bluesky, a project incubated inside Twitter that promises to establish a “federated social network” based around an open standard that multiple platforms can adopt.

This new approach will have a lasting impact on Twitter. Journalists have helped keep the platform relevant despite its small size relative to competitors like Facebook: They fuel the platform with free, vetted content when news breaks and speculation and rumors swirl.

The House of the Dragon Podcast: Tuning in on GadgetLab, Podcasts on iTunes, Spotify and iHeads on Android

Tori wants you to encourage your male-presenting friends interested in fathering children to watch House of the Dragon on HBO. Mike recommends the new album from Natalia Lafourcade, De Todas las Flores. Lauren recommends reevaluating your relationship with Twitter, and social media in general.

She can be found on the micro-blogging site. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Attach the main hotline atGadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

You can always listen to this week’s podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here’s how:

If you’re on an iPad, you can just open the Podcasts app on your phone. You can use an app such as Overcast or Pocket Casts to find Gadget Lab. If you do not mind, you will find us in the Podcasts app on your phone. We’re on Spotify too. If you really need it, here’s the RSS feed.

Apple, Jobs, SpaceX, Tesla, Pfizer, Mondalez, and Volkswagen Group are All Preferring Their Social Media Ads

At the time, Jobs had been developing personal computers for 20 years, his entire adult life. He was familiar with the company he was running because he founded it and led the team that created its flagship product. During his years away from Apple, he started another computer company that was innovative in its approach to the internet and operating systems. Plus, he was Steve Jobs. If anyone could quickly turn around the near-bankrupt computer giant, it would be him. Yet it took him months to come up with his plan and years to bring it to fruition. While the colorful iMac he unveiled to me that day in May would help nudge Apple’s bottom line back into the black, it wasn’t until the company’s entry into non-PC devices—like the iPod in 2001 and the iPhone in 2007—that it became a profit machine. And Apple’s post-PC future wasn’t even on Jobs’ road map in 1998.

Musk need not look farther than his own successful enterprises to realize the absurdity of his haste. When he took over Tesla in 2008, the company was already five years old. Musk came up with a plan to revive the company but it didn’t post an annual profit until 2020. Musk deservedly gets a lot of credit for what Tesla has achieved—and for, among other things, his persistence. SpaceX, Musk’s other company, is private and doesn’t report earnings. But making rocket ships is the ultimate test of patience—it takes years to even launch successfully, and cutting corners to go faster can wind up killing people.

An exodus of advertisers will only further erode Twitter’s finances and force Musk to unload even more Tesla stock to cover the cash hole, the firm wrote.

A number of major brands including General Mills, the North Face and several car companies (which compete with Musk’s Tesla) have announced they are pausing ads on the social network. Earlier this month, Musk said the growing pullback in advertiser spending has led to a “massive drop in revenue.” He called it a messed up situation.

In a separate statement, Volkswagen Group, which owns Audi, Porsche and Bentley, confirmed it had recommended its brands “pause their paid activities on the platform until further notice.”

Pfizer and Mondalez are pausing their advertisements on social media, according to The Wall Street Journal. The companies did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The companies join General Motors, which had previously said it would pause paying for advertising on Twitter while it evaluates the platform’s “new direction.” Toyota told CNN that it’s in discussions with key stakeholders and is keeping an eye on the situation on social media.

Social Media Markets: Musk, Anti-Defamation, Free Press and NAACP Addressed at a New York State Meeting

Interpublic Group advised its clients to stop advertising on the platform this week, which works with brands such as Coca Cola.

Civil Society leaders are concerned that misinformation and harmful content could spread on the platform and create disruption ahead of the US midterm elections.

In the meantime, Musk is working to stave off a possible advertiser exodus. The marketing and advertising community in New York was the focus of a meeting that Musk and his team had on Monday.

Musk also met earlier this week with a group of leaders of civil society organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League, Free Press and the NAACP, to address concerns about a rise in hate on the platform. Representatives at the meeting told CNN they were encouraged by Musk’s willingness to talk and his initial assurances to not change the company’s policies, but they wanted him to take further steps to protect the platform.

The ADL, Color of Change and Free Press all said that the mass layoffs on Friday were key in their thinking because of the fear that Musk’s cuts will make election integrity policies meaningless even if they technically remain active.

David Kaye, a professor of law at the University of California, Irvine says that it is important to see how he deals with countries like Saudi Arabia and India.

Although they may not represent a huge share of the company’s revenue right now, countries like Turkey, Indonesia, Nigeria and Pakistan are all attractive markets as the company looks to improve its user base and increase revenue. But all of those countries have had arguments with Twitter specifically or with social media companies more broadly, he says. The Nigerian government ordered all internet service providers in the country to block the social network after it deleted a tweet from the country’s president. The ban was lifted after the government agreed to have a Twitter office in the country.

In India, a third largest market for the company, they filed a case in order to contest the government order to remove individual pieces of content.

Quitting Twitter without Quitting Social Media: Learning to Survive with Complexity and Chaos from Musk’s Telling Speech on Tiny Town

Musk commented on small talk last week, saying it felt like it was from his own mind. Thank you: We all live in Tiny Talk Town now, where all conversation is about Elon Musk.

We can be anywhere, in Tiny Talk Town. We know it. There are other places online that are a decent hang. But Twitter is unique, and its most fervent users are unlikely to leave en masse. And most of the knee-jerk “I’m outta here” reactions to Musk’s takeover aren’t that compelling, unless you’re a writer assigned to collate celebrity tweets. The smarter move might be a slow burn instead of a pyrotechnic exit—a thoughtful, considered approach to quitting Twitter without quitting Twitter. It’s similar to quiet quitting for social media.

So active users are a noisy bunch, and it would be easy for, say, an electric car entrepreneur who follows a disproportionate number of extremely active “blue checks” on Twitter to mistake his own Twitter experience for everyone’s experience. Same goes for the media. Almost half of users on the social network don’t actually post much more than 500 words a month, but most of their posts are responses to other people’s posts. They go about their lives when they check in on current events or live sports or celebrity news. They’re “lurkers.”

Lurking isn’t doomscrolling, a practice (and phrase) that took hold during the early days of the Covid pandemic, when many people found themselves stuck at home and grasping at info on social media. Choosing to lurk, to sit back and observe for a while, is basically a heuristic and simplistic approach to dealing with the complexity and chaos that is New Twitter. After you close the app or browser tab you should check in on the new toy by Musk. First send a post, then disengage. Keep an eye on it during basketball games. Use DMs if you have to, then direct those message threads elsewhere. Take your most original thoughts and place them in another place.

The Twitter Badge, Not the Musk: Why Twitter is Shutting the Bed? How Do Banks Handle Credit Card Debt?

It is not necessarily full of Musk fans, but is an acquisition. That means Musk is less likely to get away with bad things. There is a small group of early users on Twitter who love fuck with people and they are the most dominant of the Something Awful forums. There was a group of people who disliked Musk and wanted him to go out with a bang by getting people to impersonate him, mainly because they knew it would make him angry. And it probably did! Certainly, that would explain why his very first policy change was to increase punishment for impersonation.

Now, Twitter did set up Tips — a way to send cash to people you like — but it doesn’t take a cut of that money. It does take a cut of the revenue from Super Follows, a way to make your tweets a subscription service, but Twitter’s share is dwarfed by the fees taken by Apple for in-app purchases.

On Friday, there was no end to the disruption. The social media company said it would re-introduce a Badge to help confirm identities for some accounts. The decision came after Twitter was forced to fend off a wave of verified-account impostors this week, including some posing as former President Donald Trump, Nintendo, and the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, among others. As Musk is searching for new ways to make money from his platform, he decided to offer a blue check mark to any account holders willing to pay $8 a month, no questions asked.

Even with an economic downturn, I don’t think advertisers will want to return to someone with that attitude. The open question for me is not if users want to stay in that environment, but if they do. Mark Cuban said that the increase of new users has made his mentions miserable. The platform is one reason people stay on it, Cuban is one of the reasons.

So for the banks, offloading Twitter’s debt now means taking an immediate loss. Banks may choose to hang on to the debt for a while to see whether the market conditions change. But if Twitter is obviously shitting the bed, unloading that debt gets even harder. Banks might be willing to negotiate with Musk about the repayment of his debts, since he’s the richest man in the world. But I do wonder how long they want to hold these loans and who might buy them. If banks can’t place the debt, that probably does make it difficult for any other leveraged buy-outs in tech to get done.

In just the last week, one of the world’s most influential social networks laid off half of its workforce, alienated powerful advertisers, blew up key aspects of its product, and launched and un-launched other features to compensate for it.

The Fate of Twitter Blue, an Explicitly Suspended iOS Add-on to Twitter, and the Effects on Tesla CEO Ross Gerber

That paid subscription service, too, was also suspended on Friday with little warning, just two days after its official launch, with the menu option to sign up for Twitter Blue suddenly disappearing from Twitter’s iOS app — the only place the add-on had been offered. It was not known when the offering would be restored.

After the gray badges went live on Wednesday as a way to distinguish celebrities and branded accounts from accounts that merely paid for a blue check mark, Musk abruptly claimed that he had killed the feature and forced subordinates to explain the reversal.

The account posted a message saying they’ve added an ‘official’ label to some accounts to combat impersonation.

Many misinformation experts warned that the paid verification feature would make it harder to identify trustworthy information in a critical period leading up to the US midterm elections. Even some of Musk’s fellow high-powered users of the platform had tough feedback.

From one entrepreneur to another you need your customer service hat on. I just spent too much time muting all the newly purchased checkmark accts in an attempt to make my verified mentions useful again,” tweeted billionaire Mark Cuban.

The debt payment could help convince Musk and his backers that a Chapter 11 reorganization is the best alternative for the company’s future.

Tesla investor Ross Gerber is on the record in the Semafor story, saying he was contacted yesterday about another funding round — he’d already dropped some nonzero but less than $1 million amount on Twitter. Gerber, you will be pleased to know, is considering this generous offer to put more money into an asset the owner has himself said is overpriced. He could be argued that he has destroyed value at the site. “It’s hard to tell at this point.”

Adding even more pressure on the company is the mayhem unfolding internally, with the departure of a slew of top executives, some of whom were responsible for things like the safety of the platform and complying with federal regulations.

“In addition to potential financial returns, my sense is that Musk and his co-investors are ideologically driven, that they’re really driven by values,” Wu said.

It was not enough for Musk to change what a core problem the company is, it has just one other way of making money: online advertising.

It is an unfortunate reality for the company right now, considering it is a miserable time to be in the online advertising business. The tech industry has been adversely affected by a large decline in ad spending. Meta laid off 11,000 people. 20% of its staff were let go. Other ad-reliant tech companies like Spotify and Google’s YouTube are feeling the squeeze.

Introducing the Blue-Check-for-Sale Option on Twitter: Implications for Social Media Fraud and Spammation in the 21st Century

Musk’s idea is to change the service to charge $8 a month for the once-coveted blue check. Musk wants more people to use the service and that being “verified” on it is no longer reserved for the elite.

So far, the program’s launch has had the exact opposite effect. A flurry of accounts impersonating star athletes like Lebron James, former President Trump and companies including Eli Lilly and Pepsi, put a spotlight on just how quickly the blue-check-for-sale option could be used to spread deception.

Imagine, Tobac said, if an emergency service account with a blue check was opened by an impersonator and began dispending harmful advice about, say, where to seek shelter during a natural disaster.

Tobac also fears disinformation agents paying $8 to sow confusion and discord in connection with an election — something fresh on her mind, as the country awaits the final outcome of a number of key midterm election races.

“Right now, we have people making jokes, impersonating the president, impersonating Nintendo and Elon Musk is laughing at those jokes because he thinks they’re funny right now,” she said. Someone pretending to be an election official and interfering with the results is not going to be funny.

Musk confirmed on Twitter Monday that his aerospace company, SpaceX, bought a package to advertise its Starlink internet service on Twitter, though he downplayed the size of the ad buy.

In the weeks since Musk completed the Twitter takeover, some civil rights groups have called for an advertiser boycott of the platform, citing concerns about the direction under its new owner and reports that incidents of hate speech have ticked up on the platform.

An associate professor of marketing at USC’s Marshall School of Business has said that he thinks a move to a subscription business would make sense for Twitter. In part, this is because they don’t offer the same level of user targeting as Facebook.

The large digital platforms have experienced professionals who work with advertisers. When a staff is let go, it reduces the value of the ad platform.

A platform is better than an app, or so the theory goes, because you can use a platform to build multiple apps, or enable other developers and companies to build apps from which you might take a 30 percent cut. Whatever its advantages, the Twitter debacle should spell the end of the proprietary platform as a serious technical undertaking, a high profile illustration that they are too risky to trust no matter how strong the code might be. The liability that compromises every company’s creation is the result of an overly conservative approach to intellectual property that makes things proprietary in the first place. The case study in how to destroy something is what comes out of Musk taking over the social media company. Our communication channel for the next vaccine we might need is now at risk.

There is still no guarantee that capturing the online world’s attention will translate into revenue growth.

Twitter Files Suppressed by Conservatives: Elon Musk Explains the “Twitter Files Mistake” and What We Don’t Want to Learn

Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk on Thursday said he plans to introduce an option to make it possible for users to determine if the company has limited how many other users can view their posts. In doing so, Musk is effectively seizing on an issue that has been a rallying cry among some conservatives who claim the social network has suppressed or “shadowbanned” their content.

“Twitter is working on a software update that will show your true account status, so you know clearly if you’ve been shadowbanned, the reason why and how to appeal,” Musk tweeted on Thursday. He did not provide additional details or a timetable.

The lack of explosive new details is coupled with the fact that Musk refuses to open up the “Twitter Files” to the press at large. Instead of providing multiple news outlets with access to the documents and Twitter personnel, he has instead opted to exclusively share them with writers of his own choice. In other words, Musk has relied on a set of handpicked gatekeeping writers to cover the story, while keeping the raw materials — and context — locked away from the rest of the news media and broader public. That has led to an increase in skepticism.

There is a downside, however, to newsrooms generally choosing to avoid the Twitter Files mess: doing so allows the saga to become defined by dishonest actors in right-wing media. When I searched for the term on the internet, Fox News was the top story, followed by the New York Post and Washington Examiner. The press ignores each new release and interprets it in a way that is warped by the right.

Weiss believed that actions were taken without the knowledge of users. At least in some cases, Twitter may apply a “strikes” that correspond with suspended accounts if it determines that certain content violates its policies. In the case of strikes, users receive notification that their accounts have been temporarily suspended.

The News Files: How the Right Media Misleads the Media, and How the Media Has Influenced Left-Leaning Politics

The internal documents appear to have been given directly to the journalists. Musk on Friday shared Weiss’ thread in a tweet and added, “The Twitter Files, Part Duex!!” along with two popcorn emojis.

Weiss offered several examples of right-leaning figures who had moderation actions taken on their accounts, but it’s not clear if such actions were equally taken against left-leaning or other accounts.

The right-wing media is hyping the stories as if they were the next Pentagon Papers because they reveal how much power has been exercised by powerful people.

Gerard Baker, the conservative former top editor of The Wall Street Journal, wrote Monday: “The Twitter Files tell us nothing new. There is no shocking revelation about the government’s censorship of political campaigns. They don’t really bring to the surface the company’s deliberations on complex issues in ways consistent with its values.

It can be difficult if you are a regular person who is trying to understand what is going on. The solution is not clear. On one hand, if newsrooms covered each installment, they risk giving air to and further amplifying a storyline that has been selectively framed by Musk as he wages an information war. On the other hand, not looking at each drop allows him and others to define it.

Around the time Trump was inaugurated in 2017, I said to colleagues in the newsroom where I worked at the time that we shouldn’t cover everything he said or tweeted. Previously, a president’s every word was assumed to be a carefully chosen signal of future policy, and was reported as such. Many of the things said by Trump were to get a rise out of people. Reporting on them, I argued, just fed the flames. The other editor pushed back. “He’s the president,” he said, or words to that effect. He says it’s news.

Here, for instance, we saw a slew of rapid-response news stories about Musk’s tweet on December 11 that “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci,” a dig at the government’s former chief infectious disease expert, as well as at gender diversity. There are a number of pictures of his bedside table with replicas of guns, as well as a lot of information about what he is up to on the internet.

This is how coverage of Trump was done. The liberal-leaning media were often drawn to stories confirming the belief that a person so clearly unfit to be president would only succeed in bringing himself (or the country) down in flames, while the right-wing media treated his evident egomania, corruption, and lack of interest in grasping basic policy issues or actually doing the job as at best irrelevant and at worst essential qualities for reforming Washington. There was a lot of good reporting going on at the same time, but some accounts were more talked about than others. The public’s understanding of what was happening in the country was forced through incompatible narratives about the behavior of a man in the White House.

The ElonJet Debacle: When Peter Thiel Had a Car Accident, and Elon Musk and Twitter Changed the Rules to Forbid Real-Time Location Sharing

I think of that time when Elon Musk bought a McLaren F1 for $1 million and then quickly drove it into the ditch trying to show off to Peter Thiel. “You know, I had read all those stories about people who made money and bought sports cars and crashed them,” Musk said to Thiel, according to Max Chafkin’s The Contrarian. “But I knew it could never happen to me, so I didn’t get any insurance.”

Is it possible to stop pretending that this is something but flailing after last night’s debacle? He’s had a car accident and there is no insurance.

On Wednesday, Musk banned the ElonJet account and then changed theTwitter rules to forbid the sharing of another person’s location without their consent. He then took aim at journalists who were writing about the jet-tracking account, which can still be found on other social media sites, alleging that they were broadcasting “basically assassination coordinates.”

In tweets, Musk accused the journalists of violating the platform’s policy against doxing — or posting private information online — by sharing his “exact real-time” location. But none of the banished reporters — including CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan and The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell — appeared to have done so. Musk and Twitter didn’t respond to CNN’s requests for comment.

People can find reliable information in a healthy town square. According to the researchers, before Musk took over, refuting hate and misinformation on the platform was an order of magnitude greater.

Musk’s latest power moves are very dangerous. Recently unemployed tech and journalism workers should take them as a rallying call to unite to create new, healthier online spaces. We have nothing to lose and we just depend on an egotistical czar to set the terms of our debates.

The company’s suspension would be lifted after the results of a public poll were posted on the site. The poll shows that over 50% of the respondents want to unsuspend accounts immediately and over 50% want the suspensions to be lifted in seven days.

Most of the accounts were back early Saturday. Business Insider’s Linette Lopez was suspended after the other journalists with no explanation, she told The Associated Press.

She said that she had posted documents related to the courts to her social media account. Lopez said that the address was not current because he changes his email every few weeks.

Twitter Sentiments to the Twitter “Squares” in the Light of a “Legacy Bug,” a Washington Post Corresponder Suspended by Musk

Stephane Dujarric said the move sets a dangerous precedent at a time when journalists all over the world are facing threats and even worse.

The Washington Post correspondent, Taylor Lorenz, became the latest journalist to be temporarily banned. She said she was suspended after posting a message on Twitter tagging Musk and requesting an interview.

CNN said in a statement that “the impulsive and unjustified suspension of a number of reporters, including CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, is concerning but not surprising.”

Another suspended journalist, Matt Binder of the technology news outlet Mashable, said he was banned Thursday night immediately after sharing a screenshot that O’Sullivan had posted before his own suspension.

The screenshot showed a statement from the Los Angeles Police Department sent earlier Thursday to multiple media outlets, including the AP, about how it was in touch with Musk’s representatives about the alleged stalking incident.

He has promised to let free speech reign and has reinstated high-profile accounts that previously broke Twitter’s rules against hateful conduct or harmful misinformation. He said he would suppress negative vibes by giving up some accounts of freedom of reach.

“The old regime at Twitter governed by its own whims and biases and it sure looks like the new regime has the same problem,” she tweeted “I oppose it in both cases.”

If a group of media organizations that are active on the platform leave due to the suspensions, the platform will be changed based on fundamental levels, said Lou Paskalis, who worked for Bank of America.

CBS temporarily shut down its activity on Twitter because of uncertainty, but the media organizations have mostly remained on the platform.

Journalists should now be looking at the main tent pole of the social media site to find out what is going on. The most self inflicted wound I can think of is how to drive journalists off social networking sites.

A number of advertisers have cut their spending on the platform due to uncertainty about the direction Musk is taking the platform.

On Thursday night, Twitter’s Spaces conference chat went down shortly after Musk abruptly signed out of a session hosted by a journalist during which he had been questioned about the reporters’ ousting. Musk later tweeted that Spaces had been taken offline to deal with a “Legacy bug.” Friday was Spaces’ return.

Advertisers are also monitoring the potential loss of Twitter users. Twitter is projected to lose 32 million users over the next two years, according to a forecast by Insider Intelligence, which cited technical issues and the return of accounts banned for offensive posts.

Mastodon on Friday had more than 6 million users, nearly double the 3.4 million it had on the day Musk took ownership of Twitter. On many of the thousands of confederated networks in the open-source Mastodon platform, administrators and users solicited donations as disaffected Twitter users strained computing resources. Many of the networks, known as “instances,” are crowd-funded. The platform is free of ads.

The Outburst of Musk’s Chief Operating Officer, Lex Fridman, on Twitter and Other Medium-Blogging Sites: An Informal Recommendation on Twitter

More than half of the 17 million users who responded to the poll were in favor of Mr. Musk stepping down from his role as head of the micro-blogging website.

Replying to a tweet Sunday, in which MIT artificial intelligence researcher Lex Fridman said he would take the CEO job, Musk hinted he hasn’t been completely happy with his new gig.

All Musk needs from his captive audience is a little more attention, with a promise that there will be votes about “major policy changes” in the future.

His $44 billion takeover of the company — that he tried desperately and unsuccessfully to get out of — started with a poll, and it would be both appropriate and timely if his time as its CEO ended the same way.

The fact that its stock price has dropped by half from a year ago is not mentioned in his Tweet, but it is looming over the entire episode. Musk dropped to second on Forbes’ list of the world’s richest people.

More than 17 million votes were cast in the informal referendum on his chaotic leadership of Twitter, which has been marked by mass layoffs, the replatforming of suspended accounts that had violated Twitter’s rules, the suspension of journalists who cover him and whiplash policy changes made and reversed in real time.

In yet another significant policy change, Twitter had announced that users will no longer be able to link to Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon and other platforms the company described as “prohibited.”

Following the decision, Musk promised not to make any more major policy changes without an online survey of users.

Mainstream websites such as Facebook and Instagram were banned, as was upstart rival Mastodon and former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social. Twitter gave no explanation for why the blacklist included those seven websites but not others such as Parler, TikTok or LinkedIn.

Elon Musk’s Management of Twitter, the Ban of Multiple Journalists, and Tesla’s Effect on Wall Street Sentiment and Consumer Sentimence

Musk was questioned about how he splits his time between companies during a court hearing. Musk had to testify about his compensation plan as the CEO of the electric car company in Delaware’s Chancery Court.

In public banter on Sunday, Musk expressed pessimism about the prospects for a new CEO and said that person must like pain a lot.

Questions are being raised about possible violations of securities laws that were caused by Musk.

Noting Tesla’s board has legal obligations it must fulfill, Warren asked the board to respond to a series of questions about its handling of the situation by January 3.

Elon Musk’s management of Twitter, including the banning of multiple journalists, has “severely damaged” market sentiment around Tesla, and risks sparking a backlash from advertisers and consumers , a Wall Street analyst warned on Monday.

The decision to ban several journalists, including CNN’s Donie O’ Sullivan, is what led to the downgrade.

In an environment where many people feel free speech is at risk, we believe it is too much for most consumers to support Mr. Musk’s company.

According to Ross Gerber, a shareholder of both companies, he hopes Musk will find a CEO for Twitter in the first quarter of 2023.

Given Musk’s propensity for tweeting, and his rapid decisions after previous polls, many expected he would have addressed the elephant in the room by now. But he hasn’t. Musk spent most of Monday conspicuously quiet, refraining from posting on his verified account.

The Evil Billionaire Attack: Money and the Rise of a Network of Cryptologic Power Sources in the Age of Internets and Big Data

The evil maid attack is a type of information security vulnerability that allows an adversary to gain access to important hardware, such as the laptop that you left in your hotel room. We have a new analog that is similar to the old one and capable of messing with systems and leaking data. If you want you can call it the evil billionaire attack. The weapon is money, and more specifically, the likelihood that when the moment arrives you won’t have enough of it to make a difference. The call is coming from inside the house.

The reason this strategy works is that most ideas of any consequence are owned by people with more money than you, and then whenever possible they string them together into a network with the specific intent of making the gravity inescapable. The term “platform” is often used to describe technical systems with granular components that can be used to compose new functional features, and the power sources that propel the technology industry like me find platforms particularly appealing when the bits can be monetized each time.

Blockchains fight this problem on the deepest level possible. It would be vastly more difficult, or perhaps impossible, for Musk to kill off a blockchain so long as a handful of users objected enough to continue operating independent nodes. Duplicating across many computers means the risk of losing access is infinitesimal; the blockchain is its own API. This comes with different complications, of course, but losing information outright due to a hostile party is not one of them. One version of the Hic et Nunc marketplace was relaunched when it went under. The blockchain acts as a shared resource that forces interoperability, almost like organic self-defense.

Or consider the case of WordPress, the early blogging engine that has since grown into increasingly elaborate general-purpose content management software. It now powers about 40 percent of the open web, with which it is loosely synonymous. A huge economy has sprung up around it: companies that develop websites, developers who work for those companies, indie developers who work for themselves, many of them writing plugins which can be unlocked or extended with licensing fees. The core is open source and encourages the same of its ecosystem. WordPress has been around for a long time and its straightforward RSS feeds decisively lost out to Twitter’s social features, so in 2022 there is a reasonable argument that it is a bit long in the tooth. It’s a bigger technical success, because it’s not at risk, that’s why we should understand it.