Trump is gonna die, but what do you guys want to do about it? Donald Musk’s tweet about the micro-messaging service in the US is going to be out of business
The public rebuke from the US government on Thursday was unusual, but it seemed to accelerate the swings of the day at the micro-messaging service. It is reported that Musk told employees that they could be on the verge of aruptcy on Thursday, which is not the first time he has said that about his companies.
“I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump; I think that was a mistake,” Musk said at a conference in May, pledging to reverse the ban were he to become the company’s owner.
The relationship between the pair soured after the summer, with the men publicly trading barbs. 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.”
In the since-removed tweet, West said he was “going death con 3 [sic] On JEWISH PEOPLE,” and also that, “You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda,” without specifying what group he was addressing, according to internet archive records pulled by CNN.
A person from the company told CNN that the account had been locked for violating their policies. A message from the company says that the account has been replaced because it violated the rules.
Kanye West’s controversial tweet and the free speech platform Parler had torpedoed by a far-right extremist
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 worked in the Treasury Department as a spokeswoman for international affairs. This commentary is her own and she does not express it in any way. CNN has more opinion on it.
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. In a statement announcing the deal, Parler’s parent company described West as having taken an innovative move into the free speech media space where he will not have to fear being removed from social media again.
In the release by Parler, West said that in a world where conservative views are considered controversial, we have to make sure we have the right to freely express ourselves.
The already-extant conservative community on social media will be strengthened if Musk and West own Parler. The policies of these men are likely to drive people away from the internet. Those who remain in these conservative spaces will become even more extreme as a result of their interactions, which could cultivate a dangerous far-right ideology that has far-reaching effects on our politics.
At the same time, he’s reinstated thousands of accounts that had been banned for breaking the rules, including Trump, neo-Nazis, white nationalists and Qanon promoters – but won’t allow conspiracy theorist Alex Jones or Kanye West, who’s been vocally antisemitic, to tweet. How that squares with Musk’s purported embrace of free speech principles is unclear.
A 2020 study of women in countries around the world found that 42% have been victims of online violence. The women of color are the most affected. There is antisemitic content on the internet. A report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate showed that there was a sample of 712 anti-Jewish posts on five social networks that had been viewed 7.3 million times.
The ugly form of censorship that these free speech policies call for is designed to keep users away from the voices of people who are attacked by them.
Parler is described by West as a place where conservative views can flourish and Truth Social is not likely to be a favorite of conservatives because of its association with Trump. If women, people of color and others start fleeing Twitter, that could leave it as a platform for conservatives as well. This would likely make the opinions of those who remain more vociferous.
‘On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, and What Can’: Musk Revisited on Twitter after the Trump Acquisition
Harvard University law professor and author of ‘On Rumors: HowFalsehoodsSpread,WhyWe BelieveThem, and What Can’ says that when like-minded people get together, they end up thinking a more extreme version of what they thought before they started talking to one another. Sunstein says that their exchanges heighten their beliefs and make them more confident.
So, when conservatives get together on social media, we can expect them to become more far right. It is possible that the far-right views nurtured by these social networks will have a large impact on our country’s politics, just like they did in the 90s when Rush Limbaugh and other conservative talk-show hosts changed the political landscape. It isn’t hard to imagine that the people who live on these sites can band together to support and vote for political candidates who share their beliefs.
We can expect these male owners to use their platforms to amplify their own views, even if they are sexist or misogynistic.
“New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, not freedom of reach,” Musk said in a tweet last week, echoing an approach that is something of an industry standard. “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter.”
The Post did not respond to the requests for comment. Kristine Coratti Kelly, a CNN spokeswoman, said the suspensions were “concerning but not surprising” and that “Twitter’s increasing instability and volatility should be of incredible concern for everyone who uses” it. In an appearance on CNN after his account was suspended, Mr. O’Sullivan said Twitter’s actions could intimidate journalists who cover companies owned by Mr. Musk.
The Wall Street Journal on Thursday reported that one ad buying agency had already received requests from about a dozen clients to pause their advertisements on Twitter if Musk restores Trump’s account, and other were considering doing the same.
Musk tried to appease advertisers who were wary that he was buying the platform to help humanity and not to become a free-for-all hellscape.
Within weeks of the acquisition agreement, however, Musk began raising concerns about the prevalence of those same fake and spam accounts on Twitter and ultimately attempted to terminate the deal.
The acquisition also promises to extend Musk’s influence. The billionaire has stakes in companies making cars, rockets, robots and satellite internet as well as Brain implants, which he also owns or oversees. Now he controls a social media platform that shapes how hundreds of millions of people communicate and get their news.
Musk pledged to defeat the fake accounts on the platform who are especially active in the replies to his tweeted, saying that they must be defeated or die trying.
The Twitter Abrupt Deal: Musk’s Discontent and the Scenario for the Trump-Cartel-Levitov Cosmic Microwave Background
The deal is just days away from a deadline set by a Delaware judge. If no agreement was reached, she would schedule a trial.
“Although slightly loosen content moderation on the platform is sure to scare advertisers, many of whom already find it difficult to stay safe on other social platforms,” Enberg said.
“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.
Although the major personnel moves came very quickly, they had been expected and are likely to be the first of many changes made by the eccentric CEO of the electric car company.
Musk had a conflict of interest, as he was going to try and buy the company, according to text messages later revealed in court.
Over the weekend, Musk smeared Twitter’s former head of safety, Yoel Roth, who features prominently in the documents, with homophobic tropes common in anti-LGBTQ conspiracy theories. He also attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci, who Musk says will feature in future installments of the Twitter files, with a tweet amplifying a conspiracy theory about the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to a political scientist at George Washington University, Musk’s ‘free speech’ rhetoric may be impractical due to regulations from the European Union. The EU’s Digital Services Act, due to go into effect in 2024, will require social-media companies to mitigate risks caused by illegal content or disinformation. In theory, Twitter and other platforms could try to create separate policies and practices for Europe, but that would probably prove difficult in practice, Tromble says. When it is fundamental systems that are introducing those risks, the mitigation measures will impact the system as a whole.
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.
Twitter HQ: What Has Musk Learned in the Last Three Months? (Revisitated in The New York Stock Exchange on Twitter)
Musk has been stating that the deal is happening. 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!”
The New York Stock Exchange notified investors that it will halt trading in shares of twitter before opening bell on Friday because the company went private under Musk.
Musk’s enthusiasm about coming to the headquarters stood in contrast to his earlier suggestion that the building be turned into a homeless shelter because few employees actually worked there.
He has made deep cuts to the company’s trust and safety workforce, including teams focused on non-English languages and state-backed propaganda operations. A group of their members had come under online attack after Musk criticized them.
According to Thursday’s note to advertisers, advertisers are more interested in advertising revenue than ever before, as they seek out more relevant ads that use user data.
The suspension of journalists endangers the ability of the public to know what is going on inside the micro-blogging service, as Musk already has a long track record of attempting to silence people he dislikes or is critical of.
The first version of this article appeared in the newsletter. If you sign up, you’ll get the daily digest on the evolving media landscape.
The information environment that Musk is responsible for has been contaminated by him, and he is working to dismantle the small infrastructure built to help users sift through the daily chaos. Recent news reports indicate that he may be able to take the blue verified badges of public figures and institutions if they don’t pay.
Business stories might include charging for verified badges. The move will affect the information landscape in significant ways. It will make it difficult for users to distinguish authentic and inauthentic accounts.
Many conservatives also do blue badges but the right still lashed out at the “blue checks” whom they saw as representing the snobbery that controls the conversation. 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.
Reexamining your relationship with social media: A keynote address by Lauren Lafourcade on WIRED platforms and the House of the Dragon (review with Lauren)
In October of last year, Musk said that the best thing an individual could do to save social networks, the internet, and civil discourse would be to authenticating users.
WIRED platforms and power reporter Vittoria is talking to us about changes coming to twitter and how they may affect the social network.
House of the Dragon can be watched on HBO by men who want to fathers children. Mike recommends the new album from Natalia Lafourcade, De Todas las Flores. Reexamining your relationship with social media is recommended by Lauren.
Source: https://www.wired.com/story/gadget-lab-podcast-573/
The Wild Side of Twitter: When Mr. Trump Decides to resign his Twitter ban on 2021, when Failed to Save the Bird
Vittoria Elliott can be found on Twitter @telliotter. LaurenGoode is a person. Michael Calore is @snackfight. The main hotline is being blinged out. 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:
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Last week, when billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk said that the bird would be freed, Felix Ndahinda saw a threat.
In January 2021, Donald Trump’s account was locked out after he made a public statement in support of insurrection on the Capitol. But across the world, leaders have tweeted in support of genocide and threatened violence, yet none of them have been banned from the platform. In June of 2021, the Nigerian President posted a threat against the group of people in the southwest who had rebelled against the government. Buhari’s tweet was removed, but his account remained live.
Currently, Twitter uses a combination of automated and human curation to moderate the discussions on its platform, sometimes tagging questionable material with links to more credible information sources, and at other times banning a user for repeatedly violating its policies on harmful or offensive speech.
The comments come after Musk made the controversial decision last month to reverse the platform’s ban of Trump following a poll of his Twitter followers, after initially saying he would consult a panel of experts on the decision. The Trust and Safety Council, a group of outside experts who consulted with the company on sensitive issues, was also abolished by Musk.
Hateful Narratives and the Firehose: A Method for Feeding Feasibility on Twitter and Facebook in the Post-Okama Era
Normally, these platforms are where false narratives start, says Stringhini. When those narratives creep onto mainstream platforms such as Twitter or Facebook, they explode. “They get pushed on Twitter and go out of control because everybody sees them and journalists cover them,” he says.
James Piazza is an associate professor at Pennsylvania State University who studies terrorism and is scared by the use of inflammatory speech on social media. “That’s the situation where you can have more violence.”
Researchers at Tufts University’s Digital Planet group tracked hate speech on Twitter before and after Musk took ownership of the company in late October. They used the data stream from the platform to feed the firehose, which is a feed of every public reply on any public account on the platform. The group has used the same approach in previous studies, including one looking at toxicity on Twitter around the US midterm elections.
The Covid Plandemic and the Truth Social Network: Where Do We Stand? Where Do You Stand, When Do You Live? What Have We Learned?
The Covid Plandemic was created to silence me. She said that everybody tries to silence her. Please say something at a lower volume. I apologize but am I too loud for the intensive care unit? You aren’t even sick!”
“Hi. Your profile is so 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 like you, I am all woman. In fact, you should check out this website where me and some other girls hang out.”
James Austin Johnson, who plays Donald Trump, spoke in front of the council. Trump’s account was banned in 2021.
We have all moved to Truth Social and we love it. It is wonderful, said Johnson’s Trump. “And in many ways, also terrible. It’s very bad. It was very bad. It’s a little buggy in terms of making the phone screen crack, and the automatically draining of the Venmo.”
Quitting Twitter to Say Goodbye, or What Have You Done Recently About Black Women? Roxanne Jones’s TED Talk on CNN
Roxanne Jones is a founding editor of The Magazine and former vice president at Disney, which she also serves as a producer, reporter and editor. Jones is co-author of “Say it Loud: An Illustrated History of the Black Athlete.” She talks politics, sports and culture weekly on Philadelphia’s 900AM WURD. She holds the views expressed here to be her own. Read more opinion on CNN.
That was the message I received 30 seconds after I deleted myself from the platform. 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.
Tiny Talk Town doesn’t have to be where we are. We all know it. There are a few places online that are of a good quality. The majority of users are unlikely to leave the social networking site. 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. Think of it as quiet quitting, but for social media.
And surely, it was an act of silent defiance, because I know as a media professional so 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 Twitter-verse is telling us.
Data points about rising racism on a social media site reinforce what we know to be true. Like many Black women on the site, I can testify about what it feels like to be harassed and threatened with violence. I have experience with it all.
The use of the N-word spiked 500% on the platform a day after Musk took over.
Black Twitter: Stand Up, Stay Up, & Don’t Just Tweet About Paul Pelosi: After 10 Years, My Name is Michael Musk
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.
But don’t expect a great Twitter exodus — not in a world where everyone craves attention and adulation. Everyone would like to be a virtual brand ambassador.
Yet Black Twitter — the platform’s community of largely millions of Black users — has remained on the site. The reasons vary for staying in the face of blatant disrespect and hatred. For some, it means staying at 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.
In one vile incident that took place in my personal life and became a matter of my family’s 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.
What a waste of my time. On and off the site, I was in beast mode when I was woken up by toxic attacks. The social networking site makes you angry and keeps you distracted from the real work at hand.
Not all real people can challenge you in person and so we will have you fighting anonymous bots meant to misinform the mass.
On Sunday, Musk tweeted that, “Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying ‘parody’ will be permanently suspended.” A name change on Twitter will cause a short-term loss of verified checkmark.
Comedian Kathy Griffin had her account suspended Sunday after she switched her screen name to Musk. She said she used his profile photo as well.
All the content moderators were let go. It was on Mastodon where she set up her account last week that she made the joke.
Twitter, Politics and Business: Why are Countries Interested in His Disinformation? A Case Study of Turkey, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Pakistan
Actor Valerie Bertinelli had similarly appropriated Musk’s screen name — posting a series of tweets in support of Democratic candidates on Saturday before switching back to her true name. “Okey-dokey. I’ve had fun She followed that up by saying that she thought she made her point.
It is possible for paying users to receive a blue check mark on their profiles, which had been only available to verified celebrities and politicians. The new feature was proposed by Musk.
It said the service would first be available in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.K. However, it was not available Sunday and there was no indication when it would go live. A Twitter employ, Esther Crawford, told The Associated Press it is coming “soon but it hasn’t launched yet.”
After layoffs at the company, some users are already moving from the platform to Counter Social and other alternatives. They fear a breakdown of moderation and verification could create a disinformation free-for-all on what has been the internet’s main conduit for reliable communications from public agencies and other institutions.
Twitter defended Roth at the time, saying, “No one person at Twitter is responsible for our policies or enforcement actions, and it’s unfortunate to see individual employees targeted for company decisions.”
“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.
Although they may not represent a huge share of Twitter’s revenue stream right now, countries like Turkey, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Pakistan, which have very large, increasingly online populations, are all attractive markets as the company looks to grow its revenue and increase its user base, according to Pielemeier. He explains that all of those countries have had arguments with social media companies. The Nigerian government ordered internet service providers to block the site after it deleted a message from the president of the country. The ban was lifted after the company agreed to open an office and pay taxes in the country.
The company filed a case earlier this year in India to contest the government’s order to remove individual pieces of content and whole accounts that the government considers a risk to India’s security or sovereignty.
Griffin appeared to be the first celebrity to lose her tweeting privileges after a wave of prominent users impersonated Musk over the weekend, with the goal of underscoring potential flaws in the social media company’s plans for a revised verification system.
Musk is making an $8 per month subscription plan to bolster the revenue of his company. The new plan was hastily rolled out over the weekend before the company ultimately decided to delay the service until after the midterms.
The partially rolled-out plan faced widespread backlash, and some celebrities on the platform posed as Musk over the weekend, complete with a blue check mark.
The thorn in Musk’s side is in the spotlight: tweeting Silverman during the 2017 New Year’s Eve program with CNN
I believe in the freedom of speech. and I eat doody for breakfast every day,” Silverman tweeted Saturday. Her account supports Democratic candidates.
Silverman’s account was labeled as “temporarily restricted” Sunday, with a warning that “there has been some unusual activity from this account” shown to visitors before clicking through to the profile. The comedian then changed her account back to its usual form, complete with her own name and image.
CNN fired Griffin in 2017 after the comedian was photographed holding up a bloody head resembling that of then-President Donald Trump. For a decade, Griffin co-hosted the New Year’s Eve program with Anderson Cooper.
The account had long been a thorn in Musk’s side. According to screenshots Sweeney shared with CNN, Musk reached out to him last December through a Twitter private message asking, “Can you take this down? It is a risk for the security of our country.
Musk thought it might have been from a fish-bowled dorm room, when he said tiny talk is so small it feels like it is coming from your own mind. I’m sure you’re pleased. We all live in Tiny Talk Town now, where all conversation is about Elon Musk.
Louder than You Think: Luring on Twitter during the Covid Epidemics (Review and Comment on the News Release of an Electric Car Founder)
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 journalists.) Half of users don’t post more than five times a month, and most of their replies are from other people. They check in on current events or live sports or celebrity news, and then they go about their lives. They are referred to as lurkers.
Lurking is a practice that took hold during the early days of the Covid outbreak, when many people were stuck at home and could not access information 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. Check in on Elon Musk’s new toy, sure, then close your app or browser tab. Send a tweet, then disengage. Don’t forget to look at it during basketball games. Use DMs if you have to, then direct those message threads elsewhere. Save your most original thoughts for another time, another place.
In the past week alone, one of the world’s most influential social networks has laid off half its workforce; alienated powerful advertisers; blown up key aspects of its product, then repeatedly launched and un-launched other features aimed at compensating for it; and witnessed an exodus of senior executives.
Twitter Spaces: What has the Musk(s) been up to? Amidst criticism and criticism, Twitter Blue was unable to respond to Musk
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 clear when the offer would be restored.
Hours after the gray badges launched on Wednesday as a way to help users differentiate legitimate celebrity and branded accounts from accounts that had merely paid for a blue check mark, Musk abruptly tweeted that he had “killed” the feature, forcing subordinates to explain the reversal.
The account’s very next tweet, a day and nine hours later, said exactly the opposite: “To combat impersonation, we’ve added an ‘Official’ label to some accounts.”
The paid verification feature faced criticism because it made it harder to find reliable information in the run-up to the US midterm elections. Even some of Musk’s fellow high-powered users of the platform had tough feedback.
“@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.
You have a decision to make, added Cuban. “Stick with the new Twitter that democratizes every tweet by paid accounts and puts the onus on all users to curate for themselves. Or return to the days when it was possible to follow and comment on a specific topic on a particular social networking site. It makes use of time and information on the social networking site. 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 sought to appear magnanimous in taking responsibility for the company’s performance.
Musk has shown little fear of the FTC regulators over the years, even though the firm has several legally binding consent agreements with them that require it to maintain a robust Cybersecurity program, produce written privacy impact reports, and launch any new products or services.
Sex is added to the game popular with young adults. It’s been up since around 9AM ET on Thursday morning. A now-dead account pretending to be Coke threatened to put cocaine back in Coca-Cola if 1000 people took a liking to it. It received a lot of retweets.
An account parodying Ohio Governor Mike Dewine has also managed to escape a ban, despite its ten-hour old tweet with over 2,000 retweets announcing the governor’s plan for “eradicating the people of Columbus.”
Still, it’s bad for Twitter that these tweets stayed up for so long, especially the ones from fake brands. As of right now, the company relies on advertising as its main source of revenue. Advertisers have shown that they don’t like a platform that lets people impersonate them. There have been several very brand-unsafe viral tweets — perhaps one of the most infamous was someone impersonating pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, announcing that insulin was free.
The company’s official account later issued an apology that people were fooled by the faker. Eli Lilly and company saw their stock prices plummet on Friday, but this is not sure if it was caused by thetweets or not.
On Thursday, Musk responded to someone talking about fake posts from Nintendo and President Joe Biden with two laughing emojis, as shown in this incredible compilation of impersonators (most of whom have since been banned, per Twitter’s policy). I believe he is not laughing a lot today, because one of the biggest advertising firms with clients like Apple and Coca Cola advised its clients to hold off on buying ad space on social networking websites for a while.
Musk has previously criticized that filtering technique — nicknamed “shadowbanning” — and alleged that it was unfairly used by Twitter’s past leadership 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 Users Have the Voices of God: Elon Musk’s Decline to Return Trump’s Twitter Account despite a Pleasurable Poll Closing
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 garnered more than 3 million votes on Twitter.
Immediately after acquiring the company, Musk promised that no major content decisions would be made until the council was in place. There is no evidence that such a group has been formed or was involved in Musk’s replatforming decisions. Instead, after Musk restored Trump’s account, he tweeted “Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” Latin for “the voice of the people is the voice of god.”
Twitter CEO Elon Musk has decided to offer “general amnesty” to suspended accounts starting next week — a gentler way of saying that he’s decided to welcome back some of the site’s worst and most toxic people. It’s the second major moderation decision he’s made since taking over after unbanning former President Donald Trump; both decisions were made after Musk ran an informal poll from his personal Twitter account.
The poll was a blowout, with 72.4% of respondents voting “yes” toward unbanning accounts, from a pool of slightly more than 3 million votes. 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.
Nonetheless, a blanket restoration of most suspended accounts will likely have immense and widespread unintended consequences — particularly in regions where Twitter’s moderation and compliance capacities have been eviscerated by the company’s new leader.
It was possible for users to determine whether or not the company has limited how many other users can view their posts by using an option that will be introduced by Musk. Musk has effectively seized on an issue that has been a main point of contention among some conservatives who claim the social network has suppressed or banned their content.
It was announced on Thursday that a software update would show your true account status so you can appeal if you have been shadowbanned. He didn’t give additional information or a timetable.
Musk has also used his new platform to promote the so-called Twitter Files, a tranche of internal documents that he claimed to expose a censorship scandal, but in fact revealed messy internal debates about thorny subjects more than anything else.
The reports from internal documents show that the company decided to suppress the NY Post story about Biden and his laptop after getting information from Musk’s team.
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!!” They had two popcorn messages along with them.
Twitter: The Case against a Black Holes: Elon Musk’s Tweet on January 6th, 2016 and the New York Times’ Report on “Memory on Twitter”
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.
Twitter’s former head of trust and safety has fled his home due to an escalation in threats resulting from Elon Musk’s campaign of criticism against him, a person familiar with the matter told CNN on Monday.
The internal debates within the company were brought to light by a series of internal documents that were shared on the platform Monday.
On Election Day 2016, he wrote, “I’m just saying, we fly over those states that voted for a racist for a reason.”
“We’ve all made some questionable tweets, me more than most, but I want to be clear that I support Yoel. My sense is that he has high integrity, and we are all entitled to our political beliefs,” Musk tweeted.
In the wake of January 6, there were both sides of the debate on banning Trump, according to Weiss. One employee raises concerns about “censorship” and another notes that we ” impose far stricter rules on effectively everyone else on the platform.” in a leak from an internal slack conversation. Weiss did not say whether the employees in this discussion were involved in the decision making process that led to Trump’s ban.
“I am not seeing clear orcoded instuction to violence from Trump.” said Anika Navaroli in a slack message. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”
While testifying to the committee investigating the January 6th attacks, INRDeals INRDeals revealed that she and other staff had been concerned by the Proud Boys’ and other groups’ rhetoric and had been worried about the risk of violence when it came to the attack.
Another staffer, whose name was removed in the screenshot, said in Slack that a subsequent tweet that day from Trump saying he would not attend President Joe Biden’s inauguration was also “a clear no vio[lation].” Weiss questioned if that statement could proof that Trump doesn’t support a peaceful transition.
What Trump said about the first year of office did we feed the flames? A tale of two faces of a man in the White House
They show Twitter executives and rank and file employees grappling with difficult tradeoffs, questioning the company’s rules and how they should be applied – and in some cases, getting things wrong.
I told colleagues in the newsroom where I worked that we shouldn’t have covered everything Trump said or did in his first year in office. Previously, a president’s every word was assumed to be a carefully chosen signal of future policy, and was reported as such. Trump, on the other hand, clearly said many things purely to get a rise out of people. Reporting on them, I argued, just fed the flames. Another editor pushed back. He said that he was the president. “What he says is 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. Here’s another bunch about the picture of his bedside table with two replica guns on it, and some more about his tweeting a far-right Pepe the Frog meme.
This is precisely the way coverage of Trump worked. 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. These accounts dominated the discussion, but there were plenty of good reporting going on at the same time. The public lost their view of what was happening in the country because of incompatible narratives surrounding the behavior of a man in the White House.
The Twitter Files: Why the New York Post and Twitter blocked a News Story about a Russian hacker’s son, Hunter Biden, are over-hyped
But many tech journalists, social media experts and former Twitter employees say Musk’s claims are over-hyped, given that the documents shared so far largely corroborate what is already known about the messy business of policing a large social network.
Renée DiResta, a researcher at the Stanford Internet Observatory who studies how narratives spread on social networks said that people who are confronting high-stakes, unexpected events and trying to figure out what policies apply and how are coming through in the Twitter files for her.
They’re a collection of internal emails and Slack chats capturing Twitter employees discussing company policies and fraught moderation calls. 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.
Under the circumstances, Musk gave 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.
The Twitter Files might not be the bombshell Musk teased in popcorn emoji laden tweets – but they offer an illuminating glimpse into the sausage-making of content moderation.
Take Twitter’s decision right before the 2020 presidential election to briefly block users from sharing a New York Post story alleging shady business dealings by then-candidate Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, in Ukraine.
The Post said that it got the files from Hunter Biden’s laptop, which it said was from Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon. At the time, it was unclear whether that material was authentic. 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 anyone trying to post a link to the article that it was potentially harmful because it contained private information. The New York Post’s own account was suspended until it deleted any comments it made about the story. Facebook was alarmed by the article, but didn’t go too far. It allowed for the link to be posted, but limited the distribution of the posts while the fact-checkers reviewed the claims.
The head of the American Civil Liberties Union said that it was impossible to square the rights of free speech and the need to eliminate critical journalists accounts.
And it does not show any evidence that there was government involvement in the move to block the New York Post story, despite assertions by Musk and others.
“I continue to believe there was no ill intent or hidden agendas, and everyone acted according to the best information we had at the time,” he wrote. “Mistakes were made.”
He wished the internal files had been released in a more open and transparent way. He said there’s nothing to hide and a lot to learn from.
Elon Musk is using the Twitter Files to Discredit Foes and Push Conspiracy-Theory: The Case for Trump and his Families
There is good reason to demand more information about how social media companies operate. “Often these decisions are quite inscrutable,” she said. “These are platforms that shape public opinion, and so the question of how they’re moderated and how they’re designed is impactful.”
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.
To better understand the decision to ban Trump, for example, it would help to see discussions around the accounts of other world leaders who have not been kicked off the platform, she said.
“There’s value to the public in what has been revealed to them, but at the same time it’s reinforcing a perception of being partisan individuals here in the United States,” he said.
Mike Caulfield, a research scientist at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, said that framing the disclosures as secret knowledge is a good way to do it.
His tweets triggered violent threats against both men. A person familiar with the situation says thatRoth and his family have been forced to leave their home.
The current attacks on my colleagues are not solving anything, according to my letter on Tuesday. “If you want to fault me, direct it to me or my actions.”
The Trust and Safety Council member who requested anonymity due to concerns of retaliation said the CEO was creating a “chilling effect” by targeting those who worked to keep the platform safe.
Musk has hijacked the conversation by releasing a drumbeat of news on 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
The Musk-Sweeney Account of ElonJet, a 20-year-old student running an online flight tracker
“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.
Jack Sweeney is a 20-year-old student from Florida who runs the ElonJet account which uses publicly available flight tracking information to build a computer that’s supposed to announce when a plane takes off and lands. The last post from the account prior to the suspension showed Musk’s jet taking off from Oakland, California, on Monday and landing in Los Angeles 48 minutes later.
The billionaire then offered Sweeney $5,000 to shut down the account. Sweeney countered the offer by raising it to $50,000, writing, “It would be great support in college, and would allow me to get a car maybe even a Model 3.” Musk said he didn’t feel right to shut this down.
He made threats against the college student who started the flight-tracing account and organizations who supported harm to his family. It’s not clear what legal action Musk could take against Sweeney for an account that automatically posted public flight information.
The email that Sweeney received was from an anonymous person purporting to be a senior manager at the social media company. The email gave staff a message from new head of trust and safety, who asked them to “apple heavy VF to elonjet immediately.”
Sharing people’s real time location information on the social networking service is a violation of the company’s policies, according to a statement by the trust and safety head.
But he changed his mind this week, after he claimed a car in which one of his sons was traveling 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 posting links to sites with real-time location info.”
Sweeney told CNN that he was postponing posting Musk’s jet location for 24 hours, but only on social media.
I am able to send an alternate link to the IG version of the tracker, as I was able to get an ironclad filter for this. But it looks like the action against Sweeney and his accounts is being stepped up even though Musk said in November that he wouldn’t ban the account following his plane.
Some other accounts tracking the jets of billionaires, including Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, have been suspended and remain so. The New York Times’ Ryan Mac talked with Sweeney who said he had seen many of his accounts banned and that he operates many of them.
Since Musk took over at the helm of the famous messaging service, the account has chronicled his cross-country journeys from his home base in Austin, Texas, to various California airports for his work.
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 New York Times and the London Post Investigate the Mass-Ban’ for Elon Musk’s Jet Tracking Account”
A New York Times spokesperson called the mass bans “questionable and unfortunate,” adding: “Neither The Times nor Ryan have received any explanation about why this occurred. We hope that the journalists have their accounts back and that there is a satisfying explanation for the action.
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.
Those words ring very empty today. According to Harwell, Elon says he is a free speech champion and is banning journalists for exercising free speech. I think that calls into question his commitment.”
The vice president for values and transparency at the european commission said the suspension of journalists is worrying and indicated that it could result in fines.
The changes were made after Musk took back previous rule-breakers and stopped enforcing the platform policies against misinformation.
“I do think this is very important for the potential chilling impact this can have for freelance journalists, independent journalists around the world, particularly those who cover Elon Musk’s other companies, like Tesla and SpaceX,” O’Sullivan told CNN Thursday after his account was suspended.
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.”
Reporters whose accounts were suspended include Donie O’Sullivan of CNN; Ryan Mac of the New York Times; Drew Harwell of the Washington Post; Micah Lee of the Intercept; and journalist Aaron Rupar.
In a post on Substack, the man wrote that he is not sure why he was suspended. He said he did tweet on Wednesday a link to a Facebook page for the jet-tracking account.
Jaffer’s Remarks: “We have a problem with that Twitter!” warned Musk on Twitter, and the EU’s Digital Services Act
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.”
“Freedom of the press cannot be switched on and off as you please,” Germany’s foreign ministry tweeted on Friday. “As of today these journalists are no longer able to follow us, to comment or criticize. We have a problem with that @Twitter.”
“The EU’s Digital Services Act requires respect of media freedom and fundamental rights. Jourov added that Musk should be aware of that, saying in a post that this is reinforced under the #MediaFreedomAct.
In late November, the top EU official warned Musk that the social media platform must take steps to comply with the bloc’s content moderation laws.
The Future of Twitter is Up in the Air: CNN’s Sean O’ Sullivan’s Response to Spaces Shutdown and the Discontinuation of the Spaces Feature
CNN said in a statement that its future on Twitter is up in the air. The suspension of CNN reporter Donie O’ Sullivan is concerning, but not surprising, a spokesman said. A concern for everyone using the service is the increasing instability and volatility. We have asked Twitter for an explanation, and we will reevaluate our relationship based on that response.”
Sally Buzbee, Executive Editor of The Post, said that the suspension of Drew Harwells account directly undermined the claim that Musk was going to run 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 returned to work 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 when he was put on the spot and he’s still reeling from being booed at a Dave Chappelle show. Musk had a disastrous appearance which caused Spaces to be partially disabled. We’re fixing a bug. The feature was no longer available but Musk said it should be working tomorrow.
I reported last week that he got rid of the Spaces team through layoffs and purges. It is still down on iOS as of 1PM. It is available to some users, but desktop users cannot listen in on a Spaces chat.
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. Spotify Live is a shell, Clubhouse has fallen from its pandemic highs, and Facebook’s live audio feature has been transformed beyond recognition. 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. But assuming that Spaces comes back, today or otherwise, there will inevitably be something else in there that pushes Musk to the edge. And when that happens, he will not hesitate to take it away or institute arbitrary rules to protect his own ego.
An employee of a now-gone trust and safetycouncil says that relationships with leaders like Modi and others are more important than vulnerable communities in far away countries. The employee requested anonymity because they are afraid their organization will be harassed and threatened like those who worked for Twitter.
Some of this discrepancy could be due to how different governments react to social platforms. The company had a ban after it removed Buhari’s threat to kill Biafran rebels. The company later agreed to open a local office and pay taxes in order to get the government to restore them. Nigeria is now considering legislation to regulate platforms.
Access to Markets and the Trade-off between Enforcement Actions and Economic Freedoms: The Kian Vesteinsson Research Analyst at Freedom House
“I think there are a lot of calculations that go into the trade-off about whether to take enforcement actions, and of course access to markets is one of them,” says Kian Vesteinsson, senior research analyst for tech and democracy at Freedom House, a nonprofit research and advocacy group focused on democracy and political freedoms.