The Musk Fool is Born to Run: How Social Media Has the Potential to Save the World, for the Future of Cosmic History and for Humanity

“This is not a way to make money,” Musk said in an on-stage interview shortly after making an offer to buy Twitter. “My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization.”

Musk said at the conference that if he become the company’s owner, he would reverse the ban on Donald Trump.

But relations between the pair seem to have soured since, with the men publicly trading barbs over the summer. After Trump called Musk a “bullsh*t artist” at a rally in July, Musk responded by tweet, writing, “I don’t hate the man, but it’s time for Trump to hang up his hat & sail into the sunset.”

More than a professional utility ties me to the site. The same way slot machines hook people in by giving them an intermittent reinforcement schedule is what the social media platform has to offer. Most of the time, it’s repetitive and uninteresting, but occasionally, at random intervals, some compelling nugget will appear. Unpredictable rewards, as the behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner found with his research on rats and pigeons, are particularly good at generating compulsive behavior.

“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. But that, she said, is essentially what they’ve built. People should be aware that they can be self-destructing on the site so they can stay away.

In his first big move earlier on Thursday, Musk tried to soothe leery Twitter advertisers saying that he is buying the platform to help humanity and doesn’t want it to become a “free-for-all hellscape.”

It’s a theme he reiterated both in public, telling Twitter employees at an all-staff meeting that the platform should allow all legal speech, and in private, texting investor Antonio Gracias that “Free speech matters most when it’s someone you hate spouting what you think is bull****.”

Such a move could affect everyone in the social media landscape. Twitter, although smaller than many of its social media rivals, has sometimes acted as a model for how the industry handles problematic content, including when it was the first to ban then-President Trump following the January 6 Capitol riot.

If you want a view of what Musk will look like, just look at alternate platforms such as Parler, Gab and Truth Social, which promise less restrictions on speech.

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. They are cauldrons of misinformation and abuse.

“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).

Donald Trump had been banned from the platform after the Capitol attack, and was restored last week after Musk posted a poll on the platform in favor of returning him. Musk has also restored the accounts of several other controversial, previously banned or suspended users, including conservative Canadian podcaster Jordan Peterson, right-leaning satire website Babylon Bee, comedian Kathy Griffin and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

The person urged Musk to hire someone with “a savvy cultural/Political view” to lead enforcement, and they said it would be a “Blake Masters type”. Masters is the Republican Senate candidate in Arizona who is endorsed by the President and has echoed his false claims that the presidential election was stolen from him.

What Has the Musk Saga Learned About Twitter? Or Did Musk Really Get What He Had Before He Here? — An Insider’s Perspective

Facebook is considering whether to let the former president come back, which would set a precedence for other networks, including it’s own.

“What did you get done this week?” Musk snapped, before telling Agrawal that he was not joining the board and would make an offer to buy Twitter instead.

Whoever is leading day-to- day operations is likely to face a smaller workforce. Hundreds of employees have reportedly left in the months since the Musk saga began, with many inside Twitter disheartened by Musk’s plans to overhaul 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.

Costs and staff cuts are only two pieces of the equation. In the spring, Musk pitched investors that he would quintuple Twitter’s annual revenue to $26.4 billion by 2028 and attract 931 million users by that same year, up from 217 million at the end of 2021, according to an investor presentation obtained by The New York Times.

He might have little choice but to look for other revenue sources, since he wants to make changes to content moderation, and because of the poor state of the digital ad market.

“Advertisers want to know that their ads are not going to appear alongside extremists, that they’re not going to be subsidizing or associating with the types of things that would turn off potential customers,” Carusone said.

Musk’s tweet on Twitter is not a coded incitement to violence, but rather a warm and welcoming platform for all to learn what you can do on your smartphone

What exactly he meant is, as always, anyone’s guess. But this summer, Musk told Twitter staff that the company should emulate WeChat, the Chinese “super-app” that combines social media, messaging, payments, shopping, ride-hailing — basically, anything you might use your phone to do.

The strategy has been tried by other American tech companies, but Chinese-style super-apps haven’t caught on in the United States.

It is not clear which agencies may be carrying out the probe, and Twitter did not identify what specific actions by Musk US officials may be investigating. Authorities are looking into Musk’s “conduct” linked to the deal.

Alex Spiro said that it was designed to distract from the company’s legal troubles after Peiter Zatko, its former head of security, accused the company of long-ignore.

Elon Musk completed his $44 billion deal to buy the company last week, which led to massive layoffs and questions about whether the world’s richest man would restore some banned accounts.

Twitter’s then-head of legal, policy and trust, Vijaya Gadde — who, along with Twitter founder and then-CEO Jack Dorsey, was ultimately responsible for content decisions — asked later on January 8 whether Trump’s “American Patriots” tweet “is being used as a coded incitement to further violence,” following up with requests for “any context or insight” and any relevant past research, Weiss’ tweets show. Twitter’s “scaled enforcement” team also got involved with the evaluation, and questioned whether the Trump tweets could be considered glorification of violence, the screenshots show, which would violate the company’s policies.

According to the filing, Zatko was not asked byTwitter to torch his own documents. “Twitter had no knowledge of Zatko’s notebooks and no idea what information they contained.”

His announcement came after the release of a new document by Musk which showed the practice of limiting the reach of certain, potentially harmful content, a practice that Musk himself has publicly endorsed and criticized.

“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.”

A list of product recommendations prepared by trust and safety for the Blue rollout was used by advertisers to understand what Twitter needs than Musk does. Massive cuts to the moderation team and a paralyzing code freeze have created a company that is now courting a larger crisis.

The decision to restore countless previously banned accounts could further alienate Twitter’s advertisers, many of whom have fled the platform in the wake of the chaos since Musk took over and out of fear that their ads could end up running alongside objectionable content. The departure of key advertisers in recent weeks has led to a large drop in revenue for the company according to Musk.

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.

Let’s talk about the loans for a hot minute. The banks that helped facilitate the deal hold the debt at this time, which is unusual since generally they try to find buyers for the debt. But Musk’s lawsuit and delay in closing made that harder, and they are stuck with the loans on their balance sheets. When they got into this situation, interest rates were lower. Anant said that the appetite for debt had changed by the time the deal closed.

The acquisition will likely allow Musk to have more influence. The billionaire already owns companies developing cars, rockets, robot and satellite internet, as well as more experimental ventures such as brain implants. He controls a social media platform that helps hundreds of millions of people communicate and get their news.

The Mercurial Tesla CEO and the Harassment Facebook Messages on the CEO’s Twitter Profile: “I Know he’s fired, but I can’t tell you what you want to hear”

Delaware Chancery Court chancellor Kathaleen St. Judge McCormick gave the parties until 5 p.m. on Oct. 28 to close the deal or face a rescheduled trial.

According to Insider, the execs got good payouts for their troubles: Agrawal got $38.7 million, Segal got $25.1 million, Gadde got $12.5 million and Personette got $11.2 million.

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.

About the same time, he used Twitter to criticize Gadde, the company’s top lawyer. He’s followed by a lot of harassment from other accounts. Racist and misogynistic attacks, along with calls for Musk to fire her, were some of the harassment that 11-yearTwitter employee Gadde had to deal with. The harassing messages went up again on Thursday after she was fired.

There is a great danger that social media will become far right wing and far left wing echo chamber and divide our society.

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 don’t want consumers to be bombarded with things they don’t want to hear about, which is why the platform takes no responsibility,” Yildirim said.

Twitter HQ: The Last Stand, the Steady Place, and the Stable Future of the Information Landscape (after Musk and Isaacson)

Musk has said that the deal is going through. He strolled into the company’s San Francisco headquarters Wednesday carrying a porcelain sink, changed his Twitter profile to “Chief Twit,” and tweeted “Entering Twitter HQ — let that sink in!”

And overnight the New York Stock Exchange notified investors that it will suspend trading in shares of Twitter before the opening bell Friday in anticipation of the company going private under Musk.

Musk had suggested earlier in the year that the building be turned into a homeless shelter because so few employees actually worked there.

With the chaos surroundingTwitter, brands have been considering leaving the platform to avoid getting their ads next to objectionable content. It’s possible that there are other reasons advertisers have left and that attracting new ones could be difficult. Advertisers are also likely on edge about Twitter’s stability, as users and former employees raise concerns that the mass exodus of staff could leave the platform vulnerable to glitches and outages.

A version of this article first appeared in the “Reliable Sources” newsletter. The evolving media landscape is chronicled in the daily digest.

In fact, not only has Musk himself contaminated the information environment he now reigns over, but he is apparently working to dismantle the little infrastructure erected to help users sift through the daily chaos. Recent news reports, including from CNN, indicate that he plans to strip public figures and institutions of their blue verified badges if they do not pay.

It might look like a business story if you charge for verified badges. The move will have significant effects on the information landscape. Most notably, it will make it much more difficult for users to distinguish from authentic and inauthentic accounts.

If the company were to strip current verified users of blue checks — something that hasn’t happened — that could exacerbate disinformation on the platform during Tuesday’s midterm elections.

In the fall of 2018, Musk’s biographer Walter Isaacson commented that “the best thing one could do to save social networks, the internet, civil discourse, democracy, email and reduce hacking would be authenticating users.”

An end to the disruption seemed nowhere in sight on Friday. The latest reversal from the company is that it would re-introduce a gray ” official” Badge for certain accounts to confirm their identities. The decision was made after a wave of verified-account imposters posed as former President Donald Trump, Nintendo, and the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly. These accounts were the result of Musk’s decision to rush ahead with offering a blue check mark to any account holder willing to pay $8 a month, no questions asked, as he races to find new ways to make money from the platform.

Both styles are at their best. The seriousness of Newswire Twitter makes it funnier and a lot more absurd, like turning consumer protection agencies into memelords. There’s even room for the occasional dose of chaos, like DPRK News: the fake North Korean propaganda feed that’s fooled several news outlets, including The Verge.

But the system works (to the extent it does work) because verification helps separate order from chaos. A blue checkmark is a crucial symbol in the game of social media, signaling that a person, agency, or brand is speaking for itself. It removes the guesswork of scanning an account’s tweets and profile to gauge its veracity, especially in a fast-moving situation like a scandal, an election, or a public health emergency. It’s the seal of authenticity that gives serious accounts license to be playful, trusting that readers can check for their credentials.

All of that sounds like an argument for Musk. It is not necessary to pay $240 a year to keep that sense of trust.

This week on Gadget Lab, we talk with WIRED platforms and power reporter Vittoria Elliot about the changes coming to Twitter and how they may affect the future of the social network.

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 reconsidering your relationship with social media.

The Ellotrer: A Tribute to Musk about a Labor Law Violation Social Media Site (Telliotter@GadgetLab)

There is a person who can be found on the social media platform, which is named “telliotter”. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is a fighter. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. There is a show called ‘Boone Ashworth’. Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

You can always listen to it through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, you’ll need to follow these instructions.

If you’re on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link. You can also get an app, like Overcast or Pocket Casts. If you use Android, you can find us in the Google Podcasts app just by tapping here. We’re on Spotify too. And in case you really need it, here’s the RSS feed.

According to a memo sent to staff, Musk will lay off everyone at the social networking site on Friday morning, as several employees file a class action suit against him for violating labor law.

“If your employment is not impacted, you will receive a notification via your Twitter email,” a copy of the email obtained by CNN said. “If your employment is impacted, you will receive a notification with next steps via your personal email.”

The email added that “to help ensure the safety” of employees and Twitter’s systems, the company’s offices “will be temporarily closed and all badge access will be suspended.”

The class action lawsuit filed Thursday alleges Twitter is in violation of the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN Act) after laying off some employees already.

It is required for an employer with more than 100 employees to give 60 days’ advanced written notice before a mass layoffs.

How Do Social Media Users Get Their Attention? The Last Tweet from Elon Musk, the Capitol Attack, and the Suspended Twitter Account of Donald Trump

Just two weeks into Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter, the company may have already violated its consent agreement with the Federal Trade Commission, legal experts said.

When billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk completed his purchase of Twitter and pledged that “the bird is freed” last week, Felix Ndahinda saw a threat rising on the horizon.

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. In light of Musk’s concern about “liberal bias” on the platform, many activists, journalists, and advocates outside of the US have begun to worry about how a CEO with multiple businesses could lead a company without a board or shareholders.

Two days after the Capitol attack by some of his supporters, Trump’s account was permanently suspended byTwitter, because they were angry with him over the false accusations of election fraud. The ban was imposed due to the risk of further insinuation of violence. The decision was made because it was important that users hear directly from a world leader, and that was what the information labels on Trump’s account were about.

The platforms are normally where false narratives start. When those narratives creep onto mainstream platforms such as Twitter or Facebook, they explode. They go out of control because journalists cover them and push them on social media.

Piazza, a terrorism researcher at the Pennsylvania State University in University Park, says he becomes frightened when people with public stature use inflammatory speech on social media. There’s a situation where you can have more violence.

Over the coming weeks, Stringhini expects that researchers will launch studies comparing Twitter before and after Musk’s takeover, and looking at changes in the spread of disinformation, which user accounts are suspended, and whether Twitter users quit the platform in protest at new policies. Tromble intends to monitor campaigns of coordinated harassment on Twitter.

The Covid PLANdemic: A Black Hole, a Realistic, High-Dimensional, Hyperbolic Universe

“The Covid PLANdemic was created by Big Pharma to silence me. She said that everyone tries to silence her. “Ma’am, please speak at a lower volume. I am too loud for the intensive care unit. You aren’t even sick!”

“Hi. Your profile is very funny. I love funny guys,” Schumer, dressed in a red dress, said as the bot. “They said I was a bot, which is crazy. I love funny guys, and I am all woman. You should look out for this website where I and other girls hang out.

James Austin Johnson played Donald Trump in the movie. Trump had his account banned in 2021.

All of us are happy with Truth Social, and we love it. Trump said it was very great. It’s also terrible in many ways. It’s very bad. Very bad. Making the phone screen crack and the draining of the Venmo is a little buggy.

A 12-Year Relationship with Twitter: Don’t Forget to Say Good Grassmann, Or, When Elon Musk Takes Over Twitter

Roxanne Jones was a founding editor of the magazine and before that was vice president at the company, and also worked as a reporter, producer, and editor. Jones is a co-author of the history of the black athlete. She talks politics, sports and culture weekly on Philadelphia’s 900AM WURD. The views expressed here are solely hers. Read more opinion on CNN.

That’s the message I got 30 seconds after I deleted Twitter on the day Elon Musk became the platform’s new owner. After a mostly dysfunctional 12-year relationship with Twitter that I admit brought some moments of joy, it was time to exercise my freedom of speech to say goodbye and good riddance.

That small act may not change much in the Twitter-verse of 237.8 million users. But for me, quitting Twitter was an act of power and self-care. I was setting boundaries for what I will, and will not, allow in my life.

It was an act of silent defiance because I know that much of what we do in newsrooms, the stories we choose to tell, the assumptions we make about the world, have depended on what the internet is telling us.

Billy Dixon, a black web user, said he wanted to prove the new social networking site was causing harm and violence to Black people by saving racist posts. People only understand when they lose money.”

A cyber research organization, Network Contagion Research Institute, claims that the usage of theN-word spiked by 500% a day after Musk took over.

What is the point of using Twitter to harass and bully a black person? A case study: Paul Pelosi’s exodus on Twitter

Maybe he’ll even work on his own penchant to promote lies and conspiracy theories to his 114.5 million followers, as he did in a now-deleted tweet regarding the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, in the early hours of October 28 at their San Francisco home.

Not in a world of people wanting attention and adulation will you see a big exodus on the social networking site. Everyone, it seems, wants to be a virtual brand ambassador or an influencer.

Black users remain on the site despite it being a platform for Black users. The reasons vary for staying in the face of blatant disrespect and hatred. For some, it is about keeping a job. Others may be convinced Twitter is the best way to attain global influence, or that it’s better to stay and fight for change from within.

Another user, @lana_lovehall, wondered if hate speech would be dealt with: “Now that Elon Musk owns Twitter let’s see if our reports of racism will be taken (seriously) or continue to be ignored …”

In one vile incident that spilled over into my personal life and became a matter of my family’s personal safety, authorities had to get involved. Never one to back down to bullies, I stayed on the platform and battled haters one tweet at a time for years.

It was a waste of time. I found myself in beast mode on and off the site due to the toxicity of the attacks. You will be made angry and distracted from the real work at hand when you use the twit-verse.

Twitter will have you fighting anonymous bots meant to misinform the masses and real people who don’t have the courage or the intellect to challenge you in person.

The Perez Effect: How the corporate takeover of Twitter is sucking up the oxygen in the room? The case of the suspended Twitter account

The account remained suspended and it was not clear how long it would last. Musk mocked the woman for being suspended for being a comedian. Musk also tweeted that Griffin could get her account back by paying $8 a month for Twitter Blue, although it wasn’t clear whether Musk was serious.

Kathy had her account suspended after changing her screen name to Musk. She told a Bloomberg reporter that she had also used his profile photo.

“I guess not ALL the content moderators were let go? On Mastodon, an alternative social media platform where she set up an account last week, she joked about it.

Comedian Sarah Silverman used her verified account to troll Musk, copying his profile picture, cover image and name. The only thing distinguishing a tweet coming Silverman’s account was the @SarahKSilverman handle.

It said service would first be offered in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the U.K. There was no indication when it would be available or when it would go live. Esther Crawford told the AP that it was coming soon but it hadn’t launched yet.

Following layoffs that began Friday, many people are starting to migrate from the platform to other alternatives, like Counter Social. They fear that a breakdown of moderation and verification could cause a free for all on what has become the internet’s main conduit for reliable communications.

It was unfortunate to see individual employees being targeted for company decisions, but no one is responsible for the policies or enforcement actions.

Edward Perez oversaw the product team devoted to civic integrity while he was director of product management. Joining the company in September 2021, after more than three decades working in election integrity, Perez’s role was to keep Twitter safe during times of great upheaval—such as elections—from a product perspective. And as Musk guts Twitter of its staff and allows users to pay to get a coveted blue check on the platform, Perez feels he has to speak out.

Perez is a board member at the OSET Institute, which is devoted to election security and integrity, and he is concerned that the corporate takeover drama is sucking up the oxygen in the room. That focus on the Musk psychodrama “is resulting in potentially inadequate attention on these election-related issues,” he adds.

“How he treats pressure from countries like Saudi Arabia and India—I think those are key indicators of where he’s going with the platform,” says David Kaye, former UN special rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression and clinical professor of law at the University of California, Irvine.

Kathy Nuffer loses her Twitter account after a comedian ridicules Musk over a weekend over the use of a check mark on Twitter profiles

A relatively small group of people power Twitter. Heavy users who use English are less likely to account for 10 percent of monthly users but generate 90 percent of all revenue.

In India, Twitter’s third largest market, the company filed a case earlier this year to contest the government’s order to remove individual pieces of content as well as whole accounts that the government considers a risk to India’s security or sovereignty.

The first celebrity to lose their privileges seemed to be Kathy Nuffer after a wave of users impersonated Musk over the weekend, with the goal of undercutting potential problems with the company’s plans for a revised verification system.

But the partially rolled-out plan faced widespread backlash, and in a display of defiance, some celebrities on the platform posed as Musk over the weekend, complete with a blue check mark on their profiles.

“I am a freedom of speech absolutist and I eat doody for breakfast every day,” Silverman tweeted Saturday. She also posts on her account about Democratic candidates.

Visitors to her account were warned that there had been some unusual activity from the account and that they would have to click through to her profile. The comedian then changed her account back to its usual form, complete with her own name and image.

Elon Musk in Tiny Talk Town: After 10 Years, He’s Getting Closer to the Deep Fisher-Bowled Dorm Room

CNN fired Griffin in 2017 after the comedian was photographed holding up a bloody head resembling that of then-President Donald Trump. Anderson Cooper and Griffin co-hosted the New Year’s Eve program for a decade.

The announcement comes after Musk on Wednesday polled his followers about whether to offer “general amnesty to suspended accounts, provided that they have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam.”

Musk has shared conspiracy theories regarding the attack onPaul Pelosi, compared the Democrats to Joseph Stalin and warned that the woke mind virus will destroy civilization.

“Tiny talk is talk so small it feels like it’s coming from your own mind,” Musk fired off shortly past 10 pm last Thursday, a thought so deep it might have bubbled up from a fish-bowled dorm room. Congratulations: All of our conversations are about Elon Musk in Tiny Talk Town.

Lurking isn’t Doomscrolling on Twitter, but the Case Against Its Fake: A Case Study of Mark Cuban

There is a lot of noise within active users, so it would be easy for an electric car entrepreneur who followed a lot of very active blue checks to think his experience was different than that of everyone else. It is the same for journalists. In reality, nearly half of Twitter users tweet less than five times a month, and most of their posts are replies, not original tweets. They check in on current events, sports, and celebrity news, then go about their lives. They are called 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. To sit back and observe for a while, is basically a simplistic approach to deal with the complexity and chaos that is New Twitter. Check in on Elon Musk’s new toy, sure, then close your app or browser tab. Send a tweet, then disengage. You can keep an eye on it during basketball games. Use DMs if you have to, then direct those message threads elsewhere. For another time, save your most original thoughts.

It does get worse, and this part isn’t Musk’s fault. When the economy slows down, companies spend less money on advertising. Even if Musk hadn’t been doing wild things to appeal to advertisers, it might have been in trouble anyway. The fact that Musk has identified himself and his company as a loose canon could make those looking to trim ad spend more inclined to cutTwitter first.

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. The cut of revenue from Super Follows is less than the amount taken by Apple for in-app purchases.

Even without an economic downturn, I believe a lot of advertisers wouldn’t want someone with such an attitude to come back to them. The open question to me is whether users want to stay in that environment — one that’s just gotten a new layer of hoaxing and scammers. Billionaire Mark Cuban has already complained that the influx of new checkmarked users has made his mentions miserable. Cuban is a reason why people stay on the platform, his thoughts are one of the reasons.

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 unclear when the offering would be restored.

And it’s risky debt to boot, B1 rated, which is “on the lower end of the junk rating spectrum,” says Wharton’s Roberts. Investor appetite for this debt has gone down over the last four months. And when Moody’s rated Twitter’s debt, it cited Twitter’s governance — i.e., Elon Musk — as a major driver of risk.

Europe is worried about the fate of the six to eight person team that works on European policy and is a key point of contact with the regulators who are working on upcoming legislation that could affect the entire platform. Two people with knowledge of the situation say there are only two people left.

There is no list of people who have been fired. Employees are looking at colleagues statuses on the workplace messaging app to see if they are still working. Dublin is only one of many European offices that are affected by layoffs. Social media posts indicate employees in London and Brussels have been let go. It’s unclear if employees in Twitter’s other European hubs—Hamburg, Madrid, Utrecht, Paris, Berlin and Manchester—have also been affected.

Europe has been eager to show that its rules are strong enough to stand up to the world’s biggest tech platforms. In May, European Commissioner Thierry Breton posted a video on Twitter showing him discussing the Digital Services Act with Elon Musk. Musk said in the clip that it was exactly in line with his thinking. Yet Musk’s comments about free speech and layoffs among moderation teams have put Europeans on edge. Trust and Safety, the team responsible for content moderation, has lost 15 percent of employees worldwide, according to Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety and integrity.

He changed his mind this week after he claimed that one of his sons was accosted by a crazy stalker. On Wednesday, Mr. Musk tweeted that any account that posted “real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation. This includes links to sites with real-time location info.

There are more substantive regulatory obligations that have come into question. They require that a written privacy assessment of any new product, service or practice that could affect user data be produced by the company.

FTC consent orders have the force of law and any violation could lead to significant fines, restrictions on how the company operates and even possible sanctions against individual executives.

Alex Spiro, Musk’s attorney, told CNN on Thursday that “we are in a continuing dialogue with the FTC and will work closely with the agency to ensure we are in compliance.”

“The chaos there is something the FTC is going to be worried about,” said Vladeck, “because there were serious deficiencies which led to the consent order in the first place, and the FTC is going to want to make sure they’re doing what they’re supposed to do.”

The Drizly CEO was hit with a sharp penalty last week by the FTC, and Twitter Spaces applauded Musk’s decision

Davisson doubts Twitter, which has gutted its moderation staff, would be able to enforce Musk’s new policies announced this week in a way that covers all users.

A computer science and law professor at Georgetown University has urged his students to seek legal counsel if they sign anything or make a statement.

The FTC has increasingly signaled it could seek to hold individual executives personally accountable if they’re found to have been responsible for a company’s violations, naming them in future orders and imposing binding requirements on their future conduct, even if they leave the company. The CEO of alcohol delivery service Drizly was hit with sanctions by the FTC last month.

Companies must follow the consent decrees of the FTC if they want to be above the law. New tools are given to ensure compliance and we are prepared to use them.

In the past week alone, a prominent social network has laid off half of its staff, alienated powerful advertisers, blew up key parts of its product, and launched other features that were meant to compensate for it.

The feature that allowed users to see gray badges if they had paid for a blue check mark was being killed by Musk, forcing subordinates to explain the reversal.

The account posted the opposite message after nine hours, saying they had added an official label to some accounts.

“@elonmusk, from one entrepreneur to another, for when you have 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.

“Bottom line is that you have a decision to make,” Cuban added. “Stick with the new Twitter that democratizes every tweet by paid accounts and puts the onus on all users to curate for themselves. Or bring back Twitter curation. One makes it much easier for people to know about things. The other is awful.”

In a Twitter Spaces event held for advertisers this week, Musk pleaded with brands to keep using the platform, after a growing number of companies paused ads, causing what Musk previously described as a “massive drop in revenue.” Musk wanted to appear magnanimous in accepting responsibility for the company’s performance.

It was given to Esther Crawford, the director of product management at the company who has risen to become one of Musk’s top lieutenants. Sources said that Musk and Spiro were briefed as well. Sources said that while Crawford seemed sympathetic to many of the issues in the document, she did not want to delay the launch of Blue. (Crawford did not respond to a request for comment.)

Insider warnings about an internal impersonation concern: Twitter sued Musk, and an employee complained about the loss of legacy verification despite warnings

A concern in the highest risk category was tagged by the document as P0, meaning it could be paid for to achieve their ends.

Another P0 risk was identity theft of high profile individuals, such as world leaders, advertisers and brand partners. The loss of legacy verification is a sign that the impersonation rules are not being followed and this leads to an increase in high-profile accounts being impersonated.

On November 1st, when the document was circulated internally, Musk was considering a $99-a-year annual subscription for Blue; only later, after an exchange online with writer Stephen King, did he lower the cost. The desire to make fun of brands became an impulse buy at $8, causing the move to increase the risk for scam.

The company winning support for some solutions was the trust and safety team.

For the most part, though, the document offers a wish list for features that would make the product safer and easier to use, most of which have not been approved.

The launch went on as planned despite warnings. The trust and safety team were largely correct in their predictions, so Musk put the event on hold.

Content moderation, recruiting, ad sales, marketing, and real estate are some of the functions affected. It is not clear how the loss of thousands of moderators will affect the service. But it seems clear that Twitter now has dramatically fewer people available to police the site for harmful material.

Several workers said they had learned about their employment status after seeing our tweets, attempting to log in to Gmail and Slack, and finding that they no longer had access.

Over the course of the day, similar messages trickled in on Blind, an app for coworkers to anonymously discuss their workplaces, and on external Slacks that employees have established to have more candid discussions.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/14/23459244/twitter-elon-musk-blue-verification-internal-warnings-ignored

Why Twitter ain’t your goon? Employee complaints on Musk’s policy on code freezes and their implication for timelines infrastructure

Some employees told us that they had been bracing for cuts ever since the layoffs earlier this month. The sudden nature of the cuts is likely to cause many former contractors to lose their medical benefits today, their final day of employment.

“I’m wondering when people will realize the value of Twitter was the people that worked here,” one employee said, according to screenshots obtained by Platformer.

Employees continue to show a great deal of solidarity among one another. Those who have carried out Musk’s orders, which include those on-loan engineers from the Boring Company and volunteer venture capitalists, will not be referred to as the goons.

This was more than just a run-of-the-mill code freeze, during which engineers can commit code but not deploy it. Most of the time since Musk took over, there has been one. The plans are to make sure there is no chance of a bug disrupting the systems.

This time, however, engineers were told they couldn’t even write any code — “until further notice,” according to an internal email obtained by Platformer. The email stated that there will be exceptions if there is an urgent change that must be made to resolve the issue and employees are given the go-ahead from the VP.

On Slack, even engineers who attended the late-night meeting were confused. An engineer was being tasked with implementing the freeze and asked if he could reference a ticket. I don’t think there’s any context. A colleague said they don’t have much context right now. But this is coming from the other team.

The engineer Eric Frohnhoefer pushed back on Musk’s criticism, and offered a detailed thread about why some websites load more slowly than others. Musk fired him by the end of the day, Bloomberg reported, along with a second engineer who commented on the affair: “As the former tech lead for timelines infrastructure at Twitter, I can confidently say that this man has no idea wtf he’s talking about.”

Why does Eli Lilly’s Code Work? Why T-Mobile, General Mills, Macy’s, GM, and Other Companies are Stopping Twitter ad Campaigns

Instead, the experience is not great in India, for example. That’s because the payload gets delivered from further away (laws of physics come into effect) and that back-and-forth data transfer between the phone and the data center starts compounding.

Not to mention that places like India have a higher concentration of low power phones that tend to perform worse in general — as opposed to all of our overpowered iPhones and such.

Why the code doesn’t work? No one knows for sure, but some are speculating that Musk has grown paranoid that some disgruntled engineers may intend to sabotage the site on their way out.

On Friday, after the disaster of the Blue rollout, Eli Lilly paused all its ad campaigns on Twitter. The move potentially cost Twitter millions of dollars in revenue, according to the Washington Post. The fake Eli Lilly account had said that they would be free, but it took retweet six hours to remove it.

The ad sales team has been pushed out. Large companies from General Mills to Macy’s have paused advertising on the platform, with more potentially following suit after new owner Elon Musk’s decision to restore the account of former President Donald Trump and other controversial figures. And any cursory scroll of the platform will likely show you fewer big brand ads.

In a letter to the CEO of your company, I was informed that many of your markets and clients are seeing large declines in Q4. Adding any commentary, questions, issues in this thread and I will raise as many as possible TY!

T-Mobile requested to halt the campaigns due to brand safety concerns, according to an employee. Musk said he wouldn’t allow John Legere to runTwitter, three days after the former T-Mobile CEO asked.

Another employee said General GM had asked them to stop campaigns. “The initial reason they gave is elections, but it looks like an open-ended pause, because the team requested to meet next week to help them make a case to global on why they shouldn’t.” Later, this same employee added: “Pause on [GM] til end of year confirmed and implemented. The reason now is brand safety.”

GroupM, the largest media-buying agency in the world with $60 billion dollars in annual media spend, told clients that it was a high-risk media buy, according to an email obtained by Platformer. Group M updated their brand safety guidance to high risk due to the recent senior departures in key operational areas. They know that our policies remain in place, but feel that it’s uncertain at the moment if Twitter’s ability to manage infractions at speed will be ok.

Adherence to effective content moderation, enforcement of currentTwitter rules isDemonstrated.

On the Role of Twitter in the Decay of the Musk-Mott: The Case for a Social Media App Store

Mid-afternoon on Monday, after Musk announced he would begin disconnecting up to 80 percent of unspecified microservices, some users said two-factor authentication temporarily stopped working via SMS. Others reported noticing partial site outages and difficulty downloading their archives.

There are people who know how to fix those things, but not anymore, or have been told not to ship any new code. The question haunting the engineers at the end of the day wasn’t whether any new cracks in the service would emerge, but how many and when.

“I’ve always thought that a move to a subscription business would make sense for Twitter … it’s never been a great advertising platform,” said Larry Vincent, associate professor of marketing at USC’s Marshall School of Business. Twitter’s advertising business has long been smaller than that of rivals like Facebook, in part because it didn’t offer the same level of user targeting.

Last week, the New York Times published an op-ed by Yoel Roth, a former head of trust and safety, who claimed that the failure of the company to adhere to the rules of the app store could be catastrophic. Since Musk took over, the app stores have removed social media apps for not protecting their users from harmful content, and we’re already getting calls from app store operators. Over the weekend, the head of Apple’s app store, Phil Schiller, deleted his Twitter account.

Even though there is no guarantee that capturing the internet’s attention will translate into revenue growth, it can still be done.

Shadow Banned Accounts and the Theoretical Documents on the Twitter Files, Part Duex! Musk on Twitter on Thursday

The poll, which closed around 12:45 pm ET on Thursday, finished with 72.4% voting in favor of the proposition and 27.6% voting against. The poll had more than 3 million votes.

More than 3 million people were surveyed, and 72.3% of them agreed that unbanning accounts was a good idea. It’s difficult to know who voted, but it’s worth remembering that Musk spent a long time trying to get out of buying Twitter based on claims that the service was filled with bots and inauthentic accounts.

Some accounts will not be allowed back. Musk said that accounts that broke the law would not be given a ‘amnesty’. Most people do not break the law by being awful people, so doing something illegal is extremely high for moderation. Musk has stated that he has no morals beyond breaking the law, but he has signaled opposition to allowing someone like Alex Jones back on his website.

Musk has previously criticized the technique for being used unfairly to suppress right-wing accounts. He has said the new Twitter will still downgrade the reach of negative or hateful messages but will be more transparent about it.

“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 give any more details.

Bari Weiss shared the second set of the social networking company’s “Twitter Files,” which focused on how it restricts the reach of certain accounts, restricts their ability to be seen in the search section, and restricts the topics that can be found in the trending section of the platform.

In both cases, the internal documents appear to have been provided directly to the journalists by Musk’s team. Musk on Friday shared Weiss’ thread in a tweet and added, “The Twitter Files, Part Duex!!” Along with two popcorn messages.

Trump had an ill-gotten foot in the sand: Does it really matter if you are a racist tangerine or a left-leaning figure is Trump?

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.

A person with knowledge of the situation told CNN that the former head of trust and safety had fled his home due to threats made against him by Musk.

Roth’s position involved him working on sensitive issues including the suspension of then-President Donald Trump’s account in 2021. Weiss posted a bunch of pictures purported to show internal documents where someone discussed banning Donald Trump from the platform, while employees wondered if he violated its policies.

Among Roth’s tweets was one he wrote on Election Day 2016 that read, “I’m just saying, we fly over those states that voted for a racist tangerine for a reason.”

I want to be clear about my support for Yoel, I have made questionable comments but I support him. My sense is that he has high integrity, and we are all entitled to our political beliefs,” Musk tweeted.

While Weiss interpreted the reluctance to use such measures against other world leaders as evidence that Trump was treated particularly unfairly, the documents may also reveal the opposite: that the company consistently underestimated the danger its platform posed in contexts outside the US, and only acted forcefully against threats to American democracy. If the rules were uniformly applied across the globe, Trump’s ban would have gone to other leaders as well.

In a slack message, Anika said that she was not seeing any indication that Trump was encouraging violence in his January 8 message. They will not be treated in a way that is disrespectful or unfair.

(Navaroli later testified to the House committee investigating January 6 that she and other staffers had been alarmed by content posted on Twitter by the Proud Boys and other extremist groups that echoed statements by Trump, and had worried about the risk of violence ahead of the attack.)

A staffer in the same group as the one who removed his name said that a day after Trump said he would not go to Biden’s inauguration, he also said that a similar statement was made by the president. But a different staffer questioned whether that tweet could be “proof that [Trump] doesn’t support a peaceful transition,” according to Weiss’ tweets.

“This is how the whole process went … this is not really out of the ordinary,” one former Twitter executive told CNN, noting that the various teams involved in content decisions would push each other to consider context and information they might not have thought of as they worked through how to handle difficult issues. The former executive thinks people were trying to be thoughtful and careful.

The documents themselves have shown little interest from the establishment press, with most news organizations ignoring various entries in the series. The right-wing media apparatus pushing the story has, naturally, asserted that the mum reaction is effectively because the mainstream press is made up of left-wing hacks who want to hide the truth from the public.

According to the former top editor of The Wall Street Journal, there was nothing new. There is no shocking revelation about government censorship or political manipulation. They bring to the surface the deliberations of the company with complex issues that are consistent with its values.

Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment and Twitter did not respond to an email for comment. In a post on his website, Mr. Musk states that the rules on roxxes apply to journalists as well as everyone else. He did not elaborate.

If you’re just a regular person trying to make sense of what is going on, it can be awfully difficult. And the solution isn’t so clear. If newsrooms covered each item, they could further amplify the storyline that has been framed by Musk as he wages an information war. On the other hand, not dissecting each drop allows him and others to define it in the public square.

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 words were assumed to be signals of future policy, and were reported as such. Many things were said by Trump to get a rise out of people. Reporting on them fed the flames, I argued. An editor tried to push back. He said that he was the president. What he says is not news at all.

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 more pictures of his bedside table with replica guns and a far-right meme on it.

The way coverage was done was similar to the way it was done for Trump. While the right-wing media treated his egomania, corruption and lack of interest in grasping basic policy, the liberal-leaning media told stories about his ability to be president and bring himself down in flames. There was plenty of good reporting going on at the same time, but these polarizing accounts tended to dominate the conversation. The public’s understanding of what was happening across the country was forced into incompatible narratives around the behavior of a man in the White House.

Musk and his company are doing this. In a recent article in the Atlantic, Friedersdorf described a “dysfunctional relationship” between the new owner of the company and many of the journalists who cover him.

Since October, when it was taken over by a new management, one of the threats posed by it doubles as a promise. It will turn into pornography.

Porn is not my cup of tea, but you have to see it for what it is. It’s a megagenre, something the poet-philosopher Timothy Morton might call a hyperobject, ungraspable in its ubiquity and scale. In this case, porn online behaves like a predatory plant, using flesh colors, cutting off biodiverse meme, and sowing vast digital acres with salt.

Tumblr, which started as an artsy microblogging service in 2007, lost its allure when it was overrun by porn five years later. Chatroulette, which was founded in 2009 as a whimsical way to meet strangers, traded its lightheartedness for dick pics and leering goons almost immediately. OnlyFans, a platform for performers to post their videos, now has mostly porn created by sex workers.

The New York Post, Twitter, and the Hunter Biden Story: A Story that Explodes the Twitter, Facebook, and Twitter Networks of Online Narratives

Renée DiResta, a research manager at the internet observatory, studies how narratives spread on social networks, and she said that the people who are coming through in the file are those who are facing high-stakes, unforeseen events and trying to figure out what policies apply.

There is a collection of internal emails and chats between employees of the company. So far they’ve covered the decision to ban Trump, Twitter’s short-lived decision to block a news story in October 2020 drawn from material on Hunter Biden’s laptop, and how the company limits the reach of accounts that break its rules, including some well-known right-wing users.

Musk has given exclusive access to a small group of independent journalists including Matt Taibbi, formerly of Rolling Stone, and Bari Weiss, a former New York Times opinion columnist, under the condition they first post about the documents on Twitter.

Before the 2020 election, Twitter block users from sharing a New York Post story about Hunter Biden, the son of then-candidate Joe Biden, due to allegations of shady business dealings.

The Post said it got some files from Hunter Biden’s laptop and that they were from Trump’s private attorney, Rudy Giuliani. At the time, it wasn’t clear if that material was legit. After being burned by the Russian hack and leak of Democratic National Committee emails in 2016, tech companies were on edge over the possibility of a repeat – and so Twitter decided to restrict the Post story.

The company warned those who tried to post a link to the article that it was potentially harmful. The New York Post’s own account was also suspended until it deleted its posts about the story. (Facebook was alarmed by the article, too, but didn’t go as far as Twitter. The link to the posts was allowed to be posted, but limited distribution was allowed while its fact-checkers looked into the claims.

There was a huge backlash across the political spectrum after Twitter’s aggressive stance. The company had to come under fire because of their heavy-handed approach to a story that, while controversial, was being reported by a major news outlet. The block was reversed soon after and new policies on hacked materials were instituted. Immediately after, Jack Dorsey said the company had made a mistake.

It doesn’t show any evidence that the government was involved in the blocking of the New York Post story.

Everyone acted according to the best information they had at the time, and I still believe there was no ill intent or hidden agendas. “Mistakes were made.”

He wished the internal files had been “released with many more eyes and interpretations to consider”. He added: “There’s nothing to hide…only a lot to learn from.”

Elon Musk Is Using The Twitter Files To Discredit Foes And Push Conspiracy Theorem: The Case For Two Former Employees

There is a good reason to demand more information about how social media companies operate. She said that many of the decisions are inscrutable. The question of how they’re moderated and how they’re designed is important, because these are platforms that shape public opinion.

But she said to get the full picture, outsiders need more than the “anecdotes” Musk’s selected journalists are sharing – which, so far, focus exclusively on charged, highly partisan American political dramas.

She says it would help to see the discussions about the other world leaders who have not been kicked off the platform.

There’s value in what’s been released to the public, but it’s also reinforcement of a belief that is not new: that you are a partisan individual within the United States.

Framing the disclosures as secret knowledge plays particularly well on Twitter, said Mike Caulfield, a research scientist at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public.

His tweets triggered violent threats against both men. A person familiar with the matter says thatRoth and his family were forced to flee their home.

“The current attacks on my former colleagues could be dangerous and doesn’t solve anything,” Dorsey wrote on Tuesday. “If you want to blame, direct it at me and my actions, or lack thereof.”

The Trust and Safety Council member who requested anonymity said the CEO’s willingness to target people working to keep the platform’s users safe is creating a chilling effect.

Musk has successfully hijacked the conversation with his enthusiasm and joy in using the company’s former employees.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/14/1142666067/elon-musk-is-using-the-twitter-files-to-discredit-foes-and-push-conspiracy-theor

A Twitter Account that Posts Real-Time Flight Locations: A Case Study of Jack Sweeney, the CEO of a Jet-Tracking Account

“It is being processed as punitive and sort of owning the last regime, as opposed to saying, ‘Here are things that we can see in these files and here is how it’s going to be done differently under our watch,’” DiResta said.

A lot of people sent messages to Sweeney after he heard that the company had stopped sending out messages on their social networks. After Sweeney was a teenager, the account posted the flights of the jet with a map and an estimated amount of jet fuel and carbon emissions.

The billionaire offered to shut down the account. Sweeney replied, raising the amount to $50,000 and saying that it would support his studies in college and allow him to get a car. After some back and forth, Musk responded, “Doesn’t feel right to pay to shut this down.”

Jack Sweeney, the 20-year-old college sophomore who created the flight-tracking account, and organizations who supported harm to his family, were threatened with legal action by him. It’s not clear what legal action Musk could take against Sweeney for an account that automatically posted public flight information.

Sweeney said he filed the online form to appeal the suspension. Later, his personal account was also suspended, with a message saying it violated Twitter’s rules “against platform manipulation and spam.”

According to an interview with NPR, the head of Trust and Safety atTwitter said that sharing people’s real-time location information on the service is a violation of its policies.

Musk also posted his justification for the new policy. Any account doing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, because it is a physical safety violation. This includes posting links to sites with real-time location info. Posting locations someone traveled to on a slightly delayed basis isn’t a safety problem, so is ok,” he wrote.

In a January post pinned to the top of the jet-tracking account’s feed before it was suspended, Sweeney wrote that it “has every right to post jet whereabouts” because the data is public and “every aircraft in the world is required to have a transponder,” including Air Force One that transports the U.S. president.

I was able to use the alternate link to theInstagram version of the tracker on my account, which makes sense as it seems that there is no ironclad filter for this. Despite Musk’s assurances that he would not ban the account that followed his plane, it looks like they are stepping up their actions against Sweeney.

Some other accounts tracking the jets of billionaires, including Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, have been suspended and remain so. Sweeney operates many of them, as noted within his Discord, and has seen about 30 of his accounts banned, he told The New York Times’ Ryan Mac.

The account was permanently suspended after he became a member and saw a notice. The note did not explain how it had broken the rules.

Twitter: The suspension of the #elonjet account of Musk, the New York Times’s Ryan Mac, and the suspension of Covid-19

In the weeks since the Tesla CEO took over Twitter, the @elonjet account has chronicled Musk’s many cross-country journeys from his home base near Tesla’s headquarters in Austin, Texas, to various California airports for his work at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters and his rocket company SpaceX.

It showed Musk flying to East Coast cities ahead of major events, and to New Orleans shortly before a Dec. 3 meeting there with French President Emmanuel Macron.

The platform did not give a reason for banning the journalists from the platform.

Doxxing refers to the practice of sharing someone’s home address or other personal information online. The banned account had instead used publicly available flight data, which remain online and accessible, to track Musk’s jet.

“Tonight’s suspension of the Twitter accounts of a number of prominent journalists, including The New York Times’s Ryan Mac, is questionable and unfortunate,” said Charlie Stadtlander, a spokesman for The Times. Neither The Times nor Ryan have been given a reason for the event. We hope that all of the journalists’ accounts are reinstated and that Twitter provides a satisfying explanation for this action.”

Elon is banning journalists for exercising their right to free speech, Harwell told CNN. “I think that calls into question his commitment.”

The president of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) said in a statement it was “concerned” about the suspensions, and that the move “affects all journalists.”

Musk reinstated previous rule-breakers after the platform stopped banning Covid-19 misinformation.

Those reports were confirmed Thursday evening by a CNN reporter who was blocked from sharing a Mastodon profile URL and was given an automated error message that said Twitter or its partners had identified the site as “potentially harmful.”

Comments on a Twitter Account of Jet Tracking: Elon Musk’s Disruption of Spaces and the Future of the Free Press

In a post on Substack, Rupar wrote that he is unsure why he was suspended. He said he did tweet on Wednesday a link to a Facebook page for the jet-tracking account.

Nora Benavidez, senior counsel at the advocacy group Free Press, echoed Jaffer’s remarks, saying suspending journalists based seemingly on personal animus “sets a dangerous precedent.”

“Without commenting on any specific user accounts, I can confirm that we will suspend any accounts that violate our privacy policies and put other users at risk,” Irwin said. “We do not allow exceptions to this policy for journalists or any other accounts.”

The freedom of the press cannot be turned on and off as you please. The journalists have stopped following us, to comment or criticize. We have a concern with that account.

The bans also raise a number of serious questions about the future of the free press on Twitter, a platform that has been referred to as a digital town square. News and media organizations could still remain on the platform if Musk does not allow their reporters to work anymore. Will they pull their reporters? Their content? And what will major advertisers such as Apple and Amazon do?

And The Post’s Executive Editor, Sally Buzbee, said: “The suspension of Drew Harwell’s Twitter account directly undermines Elon Musk’s claim that he intends to run Twitter as a platform dedicated to free speech. Harwell was banished from Twitter without warning, process or explanation, following the publication of his accurate reporting about Musk. Our journalist should be reinstated immediately.”

Despite being banned from posting, some sort of glitch on Spaces allowed ElonJet and Harwell to show up to the chat. Musk didn’t like that, and he definitely didn’t like being put on the spot (to be fair, he is still reeling from getting booed in real life at a Dave Chappelle show). After Musk’s disastrous appearance, Spaces was at least partially disabled without warning. We are fixing a bug. Should be working tomorrow,” Musk tweeted in response to a user asking why the feature was no longer available.

As I reported last week, he got rid of the Spaces team through hardcore purges and layoffs. It’s still down on the App Store. It appears to be possible for some users of the operating system to listen in on Spaces chats, but not participate.

The unfortunate thing about the Spaces shutdown is that Twitter is pretty much the only company that has managed to make live audio work on a sustained basis. It’s not like Spotify Live is a shell, the live audio feature on Facebook has been changed beyond recognition and the live audio feature on Clubhouse has fallen from its peak. Spaces is easy to use and is in the exact right place to get a bunch of people who just want to run their mouths. There will be something else in there that will push Musk to the edge if Spaces comes back. He will not hesitate to take it away or institute arbitrary rules to protect his ego when that happens.

A person from an organization that worked on the trust and safety council at the micro-blogging site said that vulnerable communities in far away countries aren’t as important as their relationships with leaders. The employee asked for anonymity because they are concerned their organization may be targeted by harassment and threats like those faced by former Twitter staffers.

Some of the discrepancy may come down to the governments’ reaction to moderation on social platforms. After Twitter removed Buhari’s threatening tweet against Biafran separatists, the company was slapped with a ban. The company eventually relented and agreed to pay local taxes, open a local office, and register as a broadcaster in order to get the government to reinstate them. Legislation to regulate platforms is being considered by Nigeria.

Tech and Democracy: Research and Education for Freedom House, an Empirical Research Network based on the Center for Technology and Democracy (Technetism and Democracy)

Kian Vesteinsson is the senior research analyst for tech and democracy at Freedom House, a nonprofit research and advocacy group focused on technology.