Silicon Valley Managers and Policy Makers Who Don’t Have a Role in Computing: Why Musk and Spiro Want to Be Left Behind
The messages show Silicon Valley movers and shakers falling over themselves to get in on the Twitter deal. Investor Joe Lonsdale endorsed Musk’s proposal to make Twitter’s algorithm open source and promised to talk it up at a Republican policy retreat.
The files contain internal emails, chats and other material prior to Musk’s ownership. They revealed incomplete glimpses of how Twitter officials deliberated over high-profile decisions, including blocking the Post article and banning then-President Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection. They also showed the degree to which government officials, law enforcement and politicians regularly communicate with Twitter, along with other tech platforms, by flagging content that may violate the company’s policies and sharing threat assessments.
Alex Spiro said that it was designed to distract from the company’s legal problems after Peiter “Mudge” Zatko accused them of long-ignore.
Musk accepted a seat on the board and immediately proposed that the platform “unwind permanent bannings on users.”
“Frankly, I hate doing mgmt (management) stuff. I don’t think anyone should be in charge of anyone. The co-owner of six companies wrote that he loves helping solve technical problems.
The case against Musk: a lawyer’s response to the U-turn in the Musk-Bogoliubov lawsuit
The message appeared to be aimed at addressing concerns among advertisers — Twitter’s chief source of revenue — that Musk’s plans to promote free speech by cutting back on moderating content will open the floodgates to more online toxicity and drive away users.
Legal experts are watching the case closely and say that the more entertainment value is found in the cache of text messages.
The idea that his interest in the platform was due to its role in public debate is supported by the text messages.
In a stern response, the lawyers wrote that Musk had been trying to exit the deal and that the defendants intend to close after the trial. ‘Trust us,’ they say, ‘we mean it this time.’”
Musk’s data scientists mostly confirmed the company’s estimates about how many human users there are on the platform which is a key part of his argument.
The acquisition of the company by Musk was put on hold because it had downplayed the number of fake accounts on the platform. Musk claimed that there were more fake accounts on the service than had been revealed in the company’s disclosures. Musk added his own accusations after Peiter Zatko testified in front of the Senate that the company was 10 years behind industry security standards.
Legal experts weren’t surprised by the U-turn since Musk said in public statements he could walk away from his $44 billion commitment.
The Delaware Court of Chancery will be set for October 17th, 2015, as announced by Musk during his takeover of social networking site SpaceX
As it stands, the trial is still scheduled to proceed on October 17th. The Delaware Chancery Court judge who oversaw the case wrote that there hadn’t been any filed to stay the litigation, the Wall Street Journal reported. “I, therefore, continue to press on toward our trial set to begin on October 17.” The trial is almost certain to be put out of commission given the current negotiations.
Musk decided to fold because of the risk of the trial damaging him personally. The internet chewed over personal text messages that theentrepreneur had with many important people in Silicon Valley last week. Miller says he would have been a very embarrassing deposition.
Musk was questioned in court on Nov. 16 about how he splits his time among Tesla and his other companies, including SpaceX and Twitter. The Delaware Court of Chancery was the place where Musk had to testify in a shareholder challenge to his potential $55 billion compensation plan.
The commitment to free speech that was once made by Musk has fallen apart. The entrepreneur launched a takeover bid for the platform earlier this year and stated that it should allow all legal speech. His shift away from that stance began this month when he blocked a tweet featuring a swastika from rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West. He was able to increase his efforts this week, as he suspended more than 25 accounts for posting public flight data, including for his private jet. Several journalists who had reported on the purge were also kicked off of the social networking site along with Mastodon, one of their competitors.
It’s a topic he repeated in public, telling employees that the platform should allow all legal speech, and also texting investor Antonio Gracias that it’s important for everyone to be free to say whatever they want.
Such a move could affect the landscape of social media. One example of how small Twitter has acted as a model for the industry is when it banned President Trump following the January 6 Capitol riot.
For a “keyhole view of what Twitter under Musk will look like,” just look at alternative platforms such as Parler, Gab and Truth Social that promise fewer restrictions on speech, said Angelo Carusone, president of the liberal nonprofit watchdog group Media Matters for America.
On those sites, he said, “the feature is the bug — where being able to say and do the kinds of things that are prohibited from more mainstream social media platforms is actually why everyone gravitates to them. They are cauldrons of misinformation and abuse.
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.
In his push to lift the ban on high profile accounts that broke the rules against hate speech or violence, he has restored others that were previously banned.
Alex Jones was kicked off of his account for abusive behavior in late 2018, and it’s possible that the ban on Rep. Marjorie Taylor will also be lifted.
Someone urged Musk to hire someone with a political view to lead enforcement, which they suggested should be aBlake Masters type. Masters is the Republican Senate candidate in Arizona who has been endorsed by Trump and has echoed his false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.
The Flip of Twitter: Shaking Things Up For The Exit of the Donaldson-Trump-Morton-Stewart Relationship
Allowing Trump and others to return could set a precedent for other social networks, including Meta-owned Facebook, which is considering whether to reinstate the former president when its own ban on him expires in January 2023.
If Trump is rePlatformed, it will be easier for the Meta president of global affairs and the Meta CEO to say, ‘Well, he’s already back on Twitter.’ Nicole Gill is the executive director of Accountable Tech, a progressive advocacy group.
The person expected to shake things up is Musk. Agrawal, who succeeded Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey in the CEO role less than a year ago, will likely head for the exit, potentially with a $42 million payout.
Musk’s texts reveal that a cautiously friendly relationship began to sour after Musk was told that his criticism of the platform was not helping him.
That is good news for the billionaire, who has been complaining that the company is overstaffed for its size and has complained that its costs outstrip revenues.
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 may have little choice other than to find alternate sources of revenue besides advertising, given the weak state of the digital ad market and the changes he wants to make to content moderation.
Advertisers want to know that their ads are not going to be seen by extremists, that they’re not going to be subsidizing or association with things that would hurt potential customers, and that’s what makes them tick,” she said.
Twitter Is Not What Musk Means: Musk’s Twitter Investigation of an Explosive Particle-Leading Offtop of WeChat
As always, anyone’s guess is what he meant. 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.
Other American tech companies, including Facebook and Uber, have tried this strategy, but so far Chinese-style super-apps haven’t caught on in the United States.
The agencies who may be carrying out the probe are not clear and the actions that Musk may be taking may not be known. Authorities are looking into the conduct of Musk, said the filing.
The company filed a court filing stating that Musk’s legal team failed to produce materials for the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission as part of their ongoing litigation.
This summer, Twitter’s former head of security, Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, claimed Twitter was not meeting those obligations in an explosive whistleblower disclosure first reported by CNN and The Washington Post. Security and privacy have long been a top priority for the company.
In a separate filing on Thursday, Twitter also maintained that it did not instruct Zatko to burn several notebooks as part of a separation agreement, as Musk’s team had claimed in a filing earlier this month. Zatko destroyed his own notebooks according to the claims of the social networking site.
The acquisition is expected to extend Musk’s influence. The billionaire already owns, oversees or has significant stakes in companies developing cars, rockets, robots and satellite internet, as well as more experimental ventures such as brain implants. He controls how hundreds of millions of people communicate and get their news on a social media platform.
The company has not explained why the accounts were taken down. But Musk took to Twitter on Thursday night to accuse journalists of sharing private information about his whereabouts, which he described as “basically assassination coordinates.” He provided no evidence for that claim.
Twitter’s departures from Musk are a reflection of a serious assault on anti-LGBTQ/Faucido/CoVID-19
The departures come just hours before a deadline set by a Delaware judge to finalize the deal on Friday. No agreement was reached and she was threatening to schedule a trial.
Twitter’s Head of Safety and Integrity, Yoel Roth, has also remained at the company. In the past few days, he has taken to social media tout the company’s efforts to address a surge in hate speech on the platform and encourages users to follow him.
Major personnel moves that came quickly are not the only changes the CEO will make.
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. Musk attacked Anthony Fauci, a leading scientist, with a message that advocated a conspiracy theory about the CoVID-19 disease.
He continued: “There is currently great danger that social media will splinter into far right wing and far left wing echo chambers that generate more hate and divide our society.”
The note is a shift from Musk’s position that Twitter is unfairly infringing on free speech rights by blocking misinformation or graphic content, said Pinar Yildirim, associate professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
She said that it is also a realization that having no moderation is bad for businesses, and that it could lead to lost advertisers and subscribers.
“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.
What Does Musk Have to Say About Twitter HQ? A Conversation with Employees and Management in the Slack Age: On the Work and Personal Life of Twitter
Musk has been saying 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!”
The New York Stock Exchange notified investors overnight that it will suspend trading in the company’s shares prior to the opening bell on Friday, due to Musk’s plans to take the company private.
Sarah Personette, the company’s chief customer officer, spoke with Musk and seemed to endorse his Thursday message to advertisers.
Musk’s enthusiasm about going to Twitter headquarters this week stood in stark contrast to his earlier suggestion that the building should be turned into a homeless shelter.
Insider Intelligence’s Jasmine Enberg said there’s a reason why Musk won’t make a major change to his business model, especially since the weak economy has hurt the company’s revenues.
In their place, Musk is now the CEO and sole director of the social platform, according to a securities filing, cementing his unique influence over one of the world’s most influential platforms at a time when he is weighing significant changes to how it operates. At the same time, Musk is also running several other companies, including as CEO of Tesla and SpaceX.
The fate of VP of Operations Lindsey Iannucci, along with that of others in the top leadership team, is unknown. When queried about the employment status of Caldwell, Sullivan and Iannucci, they didn’t reply.
Calacanis earlier this week tweeted that he was in New York on behalf of Twitter meeting with “the marketing and advertising community.” He is asking users on Twitter about the subscription and bookmark features of the platform.
We need to talk about how the company bungled the layoff process, what happened inside ofTwitter, and what the paywall might look like.
Musk has been very involved in the chaotic launch of Blue, exchanging regular emails and participating in standup meetings with Esther Crawford, a director of product management at the company. “There is one decision-maker and that is me,” Musk told workers, according to meeting notes shared with employees in Slack.
A manager’s apology to a former employee about leaving his or her job to be left behind: The case of a Silicon Valley technicolor company
Managers jockeyed with their peers in an effort to preserve their jobs for pregnant women, people with cancer, and visa-exempt workers, according to a former employee.
Some teams were cut more than others; several were wiped out entirely. As it turned out, though, the company went too far. Managers were told to ask people who were laid off if they wanted their old jobs back as I was the first to report on Saturday.
It began as a rumor on Blind, the app where employees of various companies can chat anonymously with their coworkers. But within a day it was being posted in public Slack channels.
“Sorry to @- everybody on the weekend but I wanted to pass along that we have the opportunity to ask folks that were left off if they will come back. I need to put together names and rationales by 4 PM PST on Sunday,” one such message from a manager to employees read. “I’ll do some research but if any of you have been in contact with folks who might come back and who we think will help us, please nominate before 4.”
The manager said that he thought we might need some help. According to Platformer, the company has reached out to both engineers and designers in an effort to get them back.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/7/23446262/elon-musk-twitter-paywall-possible
How Do Some Employees in Twitter Respond to Musk’s Planned Layoffs? Pedestrians in a Crowded Environment
Some employees are nervous that if Twitter can’t get them to return voluntarily, the company will formally rescind the notice they received Friday laying them off. Businesses with more than 100 employees are required to give 60 days’ notice if they lay off more than 33 percent of their staff. It was promised that people at twitter would get paid for the next 60 days and get a month’s notice.
Some workers have begun to consult with lawyers over their options in the event that they are recalled. Others are in open revolt, tweeting public threads about various aspects of the organization that have been broken after the ready-fire-aim disaster of Musk’s layoffs process.
Meanwhile, remaining managers are bracing themselves for a much higher workload than they were previously used to. A person told me that a technical manager ought to spend at least 50% of their time writing code, as well as at least 20 individual contributors. Others have been given much higher numbers of direct reports.
“The couple of teams that are on his pet projects are doing 20-hour days,” one employee told me. Most of the company is sitting around. No chain of command, no priorities, and in a lot of cases, no clue who your manager is.
Employee Benefits in a Social Media Company: A Case Study of Greene’s Twitter Suspension and the Company’s Health System
The panel included Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose personal Twitter account was permanently suspended in January 2022 by the company’s previous management for repeatedly violating Twitter’s rules against false claims about COVID-19 and vaccines. Greene was put back in after Musk bought a social media site.
The health team was told to listen to the David Sacks podcasting show to learn why they had lost half of their colleagues. The trio of Sacks, Calacanis and Palihapitiyya are co-hosting the all-in show.
The vice president advised employees that the most recent podcast cover the current layoffs happening across tech and provides some insight into why this is happening. It’s worthwhile to listen in order to understand the macro environment we are operating in.
The health benefits of most employees were becoming a question mark as they became more interested in them. The company’s open-enrollment period was supposed to begin today, according to its global calendar, but no information was available in the company’s human-resources system. Employees posted several questions about benefits inside Slack today, but all went unanswered by management.
By the day’s end, I’m told, at least some teams had began to hold meetings in which employees were informed who their managers are, what their organization charts look like, and what their priorities will be.
On one hand, the company is telling advertisers that it is thriving, The Verge’s Alex Heath reported, adding 15 million daily users since the end of the second quarter.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/7/23446262/elon-musk-twitter-paywall-possible
Social Media, Privacy and Security Risks: Musk’s Response to the Company’s Decay of Twitter Blue, and the Role of the FTC
But the rollout of Musk’s first signature project, a new version of the Twitter Blue subscription that will allow anyone to get a verification badge, has been a disaster.
But the new Blue likely faces larger problems. The existing version had 100,000 active subscribers, according to Platformer. The new version will be 37.5 percent more expensive, and its value seems murky for most regular users of the platform. It is not known how the company will convince enough people to subscribe.
Then, after a debate about the potential effects of unleashing thousands of new verified accounts onto the platforms in the middle of the US midterm elections, the company postponed the launch.
Twitter employees tried to sell Musk and Sacks on the idea of asking business accounts to pay for extra features, since many of them use Twitter to reach large audiences. But they were dismissed in favor of offering wide-scale verification first, I’m told.
Other employees have warned about a secondary feature of the new Blue that Musk added at the last minute: reducing ad load in the Twitter app by half. Estimates showed that Twitter will lose about $6 in ad revenue per user in the United States by making that change, sources said. Factoring in Apple and Google’s share of the $8 monthly subscription, Twitter would likely lose money on Blue if the ad-light plan is enacted.
If the violation is proved, Musk’s risks could escalate as he stumbles through a large amount of business and content moderation headaches, most of which have been self-imposed.
There are other, more substantive regulatory obligations that have come into question, too. They include requirements that Twitter produce written privacy assessments of any new “product, service or practice” — or when Twitter updates those things — that could affect user data or put it at risk.
In that assessment, Twitter must also identify employees the FTC can contact to ensure future compliance. The report and other documents, which were sent to the commission, must be correct and true under penalty of perjury. Twitter is required to carry out vulnerability testing every four months, privacy and security risk assessments every year, and get an independent security audit every two years for a decade.
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.”
Putting a customer service hat on: Musk’s Twitter Blue option is not an option for users, but a company wants to sue
One current worker says Musk told his employees to track how many times each of his TWotter were recommended.
Matt Blaze, a professor of computer science and law at Georgetown University, urged Twitter employees to seek professional legal counsel “before signing anything or making any statement to regulators.”
If individual executives are found responsible for violating the company’s rules, the FTC can try to hold them personally accountable, naming them in future orders and imposing requirements on their future conduct if they leave the company. (Last month, the FTC showed its willingness to follow through, imposing sanctions on the CEO of alcohol delivery service Drizly.)
The FTC said that no CEO or company is above the law. “Our revised consent order gives us new tools to ensure compliance, and we are prepared to use them.”
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.
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 immediately clear when the offering would be restored.
Hours after the grey badges became available as a way to distinguish legitimate celebrity and branded accounts from accounts that had paid for a blue check mark, Musk said that he had killed the feature.
The verified support account of the social media site said on Wednesday that they are not currently putting an official label on accounts.
The rocky introduction of the paid verification feature was criticized by experts who warned it would make it harder to find trustworthy information during the crucial period after the US midterm elections. Some of the other high-powered users of the platform were not happy with the feedback.
elonmusk, from one entrepreneurial to another, for 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.
“In the past, Twitter operated too often by committees that went nowhere,” one employee said. “I do appreciate the fact that if you want to do something that you think will improve something, you generally have license to do it. There are consequences to moving that fast.
Musk was in an event for advertisers this week, where he implored brands to continue using the platform after a growing number of companies paused ads. In the event, Musk sought to appear magnanimous in accepting responsibility for the company’s performance.
If the president of the United States offered you $500 in free gasoline, would you take it? Barack Obama had to wonder about that in 2009, when his account was taken over by an attacker who gained access to a corporate account.
That is why we need Congress to subpoena a complete set of the so-called Twitter Files as well as compel past Twitter chiefs and Musk to testify under oath on national TV.
If there is an additional order there will be personal responsibility for Musk. If there is another consent decree, he could be put on the chopping block and there could be personal responsibility for other significant people within the organization.
A person with knowledge of the situation told CNN that the former head of trust and safety left his home due to an increase in threats after Musk criticized him.
A person with knowledge of what happened told CNN that the threats made against the former employee spiked after they heard about Musk’s pedophilia conspiracy theory.
It was argued that the tweets that were critical of Trump and his supporters were posted as a favor to the then-president.
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.
A series of internal Twitter documents shared on the social media platform Monday offer a glimpse into internal debates among some of the company’s employees ahead of its decision to ban then-President Donald Trump following the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol.
Twitter ultimately said at the time of Trump’s ban that his tweet about American patriots suggested that “he plans to continue to support, empower, and shield those who believe he won the election,” and that the tweet concerning the inauguration could be viewed as a further statement that the election was not legitimate or that the inauguration would be a “safe” target for violence because he would not be attending.
The social media site’s safety staffer said she was not seeing a clear orcoded indication ofTrump’s message to the American people, in which he said he would make America great again. They won’t be treated unfairly or disrespected in any way.
(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.)
The person who removed their name said in the thread that Trump’s remark about not attending President Biden’s inauguration was a clear no-violation. But a different staffer questioned whether that tweet could be “proof that [Trump] doesn’t support a peaceful transition,” according to Weiss’ tweets.
The former executive said that it is not unusual for teams to work through difficult issues and then push each other to think about context and information they did not know. The former executive said that the conversations look like people were trying to be careful.
Twitter, which is based in San Francisco, had confirmed the meeting with the council Thursday in an email in which it promised an “open conversation and Q&A” with Twitter staff, including the new head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin.
The council members who provided the images of the email to The AP were not willing to go public because of their fear of reprisal.
Our work to make a safe and informative place onTwitter will be moving faster and more aggressively than ever before and we will continue to receive ideas about how to accomplish this,” the email said.
The volunteers provided expertise and guidance, but didn’t have the right to make decisions, and they didn’t review specific content disputes.
Musk criticized the former council members for their alleged lack of action to halt child sexual exploitation on the site, sparking online attacks against them.
A number of attacks on the council prompted some members to send an email toTwitter demanding that the company stop misrepresenting it’s role.
One of the advisory groups of the Trust and Safety Council focused on child exploitation. The Rati Foundation was included along with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
The Orbit of Musk: Breaking Down the Censorship of Pseudoscalar Debate on Twitter
While Dorsey talks a lot about how he thinks transparency and moderation should work in his post, it’s possible he wants a more transparent process because the cherry-picked documents have been used by Musk and others to attack former Twitter staff. The attacks on my former colleagues could be dangerous, but that doesn’t describe how bad things have been. CNN reports that Yoel was forced to leave his home after Musk implied that he supported pedophilia. Musk has accused former employees of not doing enough to stop the sale of children on the platform.
If the original author of the piece of internet content doesn’t want to keep it, then all content produced by someone for the internet should be permanent until they do. He concedes that the stance could make some issues arise when it comes to things like illegal activity, but he thinks the ideal would allow for far better solutions.
The selection of Taibbi and Weiss, who both share Musk’s criticisms of the mainstream media and what they see as progressive censoriousness, has itself caused controversy. Other news outlets have not been given access to the original documents, which have been presented only in screenshots and excerpts in lengthy tweet threads, often without context.
But facts be damned in the world we now live in. Right-wing media has saturated Musk’s claim. If you rely on Fox News or talk radio or one of the online outlets that makes up the constellation of right-wing media, you likely believe the biggest scandal since Watergate is unfolding. A sitting Republican congressman even said on Tuesday he was in favor of halting “all funding” for the FBI over the story. And the poisoning of that information well is also confusing others, who hear the nonsense and aren’t sure what to believe.
When the New York Post decided to block the story of Hunter Biden’s lawyer, Jeremiah, in Ukraine, with Twitter, or not according to DiResta, an Internet observatory researcher
Renée DiResta, who studies narratives on social networks as a research manager at the Internet observatory, said that people who face high-stakes, unforeseen events and try to figure out what policies apply and how is coming through in the Twitter Files.
They show employees putting up with tradeoffs, questioning the company’s rules and some of them getting things wrong.
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 article was based on the files from Hunter Biden’s laptop and was written by Rudy Giuliani, a Trump private attorney. 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.
Citing its rules against sharing hacked material containing private information, the company showed a warning to anyone who tried to post a link to the article saying it was “potentially harmful.” The New York Post’s account was suspended until it took down its tweets about the story. Facebook was alarmed by the article, but did not go as far as they would have done if they had. It allowed the link to be posted, but limited distribution of those posts while its outside fact-checkers reviewed the claims.)
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 said he wished the internal files had been “released Wikileaks-style, with many more eyes and interpretations to consider.” He added: “There’s nothing to hide…only a lot to learn from.”
What Do Social Media Users Really Want to Know About the Trump-Cartan-Law Actions? A “Chilling Effect” on the CEO’s Twitter Files
DiResta said there’s good reason to demand more insight into how social media companies operate. “Often these decisions are quite inscrutable,” she said. “These platforms shape public opinion, and the question of how they’re moderated and how they’re designed is important.”
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 said that to better understand the decision to ban Trump, it would be helpful to see the discussions around other world leaders who have not been kicked off the platform.
“There’s value in what’s been revealed to the public, but at the same time, it is primarily reinforcing a perception in large part based on your pre-existing opinions as partisan individuals within the United States,” DiResta said.
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. Roth and his family have been forced to flee their home, according to a person familiar with the matter.
“The current attacks on my former colleagues could be dangerous and it doesn’t solve anything,” wrote Dorsey on Tuesday. “If you want to blame, direct it at me and my actions, or lack thereof.”
The CEO’s willingness to target people working to keep the platform’s users safe, including through the Twitter Files releases, is creating a “chilling effect,” according to one Trust and Safety Council member, who requested anonymity due to concerns of retaliation.
“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.
Comments on Musk’s Twitter Controversy after the suspension of the @elonjet account and his lawsuit against Sweeney
After that, the account was again suspended. After Musk said that a stalker attacked a car in Los Angeles with his child, it was brought to his attention.
Then, hours later, Musk brought back the jet-tracking account after imposing new conditions on all of Twitter’s users — no more sharing of anyone’s current location.
He also threatened legal action against Jack Sweeney, the 20-year-old college sophomore and programmer who started the @elonjet flight-tracking account, and “organizations who supported harm to my family.” There is no known legal action Musk could take against Sweeney for the automatic posting of public flight information.
Sweeney said he immediately filed an 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.”
Musk said the doxxing of real-time location info of anyone would be suspended as 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.”
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 said that the new version of the micro-messaging service will make it harder to send negative messages but will be more transparent about it.
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.
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.
Then, over the weekend, The Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz became the latest journalist to be temporarily banned. She said she was suspended after posting a message on Twitter tagging Musk and requesting an interview.
In a post on Substack, Rupar wrote that he is unsure why he was suspended. He stated that he did a link to a Facebook page for his jet- tracking account.
“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 don’t make any exceptions to this policy for the media or anyone else.”
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.”
The Mastodon Campaign on Twitter Revisited: Why the Musk-based ElonJet Controversy was Suspended
Last week, after its main social media account wrote about the ElonJet controversy, it took action to block links to Mastodon. Since Musk purchased the company for $44 billion in late October, Mastodon has grown quickly as an alternative for people who are unhappy with his changes to the service.
This new approach will have a lasting impact on Twitter. The platform is still relevant despite its small size because of the journalists who keep it relevant when news breaks and speculation and rumors swirl.
“Musk is responding to events that affect him personally to reshape that policy and place new limits on what could be disseminated through the platform,” says John Davisson, director of litigation and senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonprofit that focuses on privacy and free expression. This is being carried out in a way that is self-centered. Musk’s new live location sharing and privacy policies appear to be designed to help himself rather than to protect his users.
“Again, the suspension occurred with no warning, process or explanation — this time as our reporter merely sought comment from Musk for a story,” Buzbee said. By midday Sunday, Lorenz’s account was restored, as was the tweet she thought had triggered her suspension.
The accounts were back by early Saturday. One exception was Business Insider’s Linette Lopez, who was suspended after the other journalists, also with no explanation, she told The Associated Press.
Shortly before being suspended, she said she had posted court-related documents to Twitter that included a 2018 Musk email address. That address is not current, Lopez said, because “he changes his email every few weeks.”
Breaking Mashable’s Spaces ‘Censorship’ During the March 4 Musk-Motov Kicked Out
The move sets “a dangerous precedent at a time when journalists all over the world are facing censorship, physical threats and even worse,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
The Washington Post’s executive editor, Sally Buzbee, said technology reporter Drew Harwell “was banished without warning, process or explanation” following the publication of accurate reporting about Musk.
The suspended journalist, Matt Binder of the technology news outlet Mashable, said that he was banned Thursday night after sharing a screen shot from a post by O’ Sullivan.
The statement from Los Angeles Police Department was sent to multiple media outlets, the AP among them, after they inquired about the alleged stalking incident with Musk’s representatives.
high-profile accounts that were previously banned from the platform for violating its rules against harmful misinformation have been re-instated. He has also said he would suppress negativity and hate by depriving some accounts of “freedom of reach.”
She said the old regime was governed by its own biases and the new one seemed to have the same problem.
If the suspensions lead to the exodus of media organizations that are highly active on Twitter, the platform would be changed at the fundamental level, said Lou Paskalis, longtime marketing and media executive and former Bank of America head of global media.
CBS briefly shut down its activity on Twitter in November due to “uncertainty” about new management, but media organizations have largely remained on the platform.
Some of the advertisers have already stopped spending on the platform due to the uncertainty about what direction Musk is taking it.
On Thursday night, Twitter’s Spaces conference chat went down shortly after Musk abruptly signed out of a session hosted by a journalist during which he had been questioned about the reporters’ ousting. Musk later stated that Spaces had been taken offline to deal with a bug. Late Friday, Spaces returned.
The Mastoboon was more than double the 3.4 million users that it had before Musk took over. On many of the thousands of confederated networks in the open-source Mastodon platform, administrators and users solicited donations as disaffected Twitter users strained computing resources. Many of the networks, known as “instances,” are crowd-funded. The platform has been made free of ads.
On Twitter, Facebook and the FBI: Why he isn’t happy with his new job, nor does he want to work for Musk
In response to a Sunday announcement that the MIT Artificial Intelligence researcher would become the CEO, Musk said he wasn’t really happy with his new job.
Editor’s Note: Dean Obeidallah, a former attorney, is the host of SiriusXM radio’s daily program “The Dean Obeidallah Show.” Follow him @[email protected]. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. There is more opinion on CNN.
The hearing marks the second election where social media companies and the FBI have had to answer for their decision making in the final weeks of the election. After 2016, social media companies like Twitter were under fire for doing too little to police their platforms for misinformation campaigns, particularly from foreign governments like Russia.
The incoming chairman of the House Oversight Committee told Fox News that the FBI needs to be dismantled.
Meanwhile, Rep. Ted Lieu of California — recently elected vice chair of the House Democratic Caucus — slammed one of the journalists that Musk picked to share the files, disputing the allegation that the FBI had stopped investigating “child sex predators or terrorists” to focus on a “surveillance operation” of people using the platform.
The relationship between Musk and these two journalists is unclear. Taibbi told me Sunday morning via a Twitter direct message that “I do not work for Musk in any way, shape, or form.”
The FBI had its own ministry of propaganda: warning the public about a state actor’s possible release of misinformation about Hunter Biden’s son
After this fact- finding has been finished, the FBI should testify. The bureau should welcome this opportunity, given the smears by certain GOP lawmakers such as Comer that “the FBI had its own ministry of propaganda.”
For starters, in the run-up to the 2020 election, representatives of the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security met with social media giants such as Twitter to discuss threats posed by foreign actors to influence our elections.
But why did officials from then-President Donald Trump’s own administration raise concerns about a state actor’s possible release of misinformation about then-candidate Joe Biden’s son, Hunter?
It was odd that the FBI, which is under the umbrella of the Department of Justice, then headed by Attorney General William Barr, appointed by Trump, would flag this knowing that warning couldrile up the Trump base. (The documents released do not show that the FBI, Democratic officials or the Biden campaign asked Twitter not to allow a New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop to be shared on the platform.)
Beyond that, Taibbi alleges that the FBI began flagging certain Twitter accounts because of their content, starting in January 2020 — again under the Trump administration.
Billy Baldwin, the brother of Alec Baldwin who had been attacked by Trump over his SNL impressions, was one of the people targeted by the requests through last month.
The Daily Beast reported that the President asked whether the Justice Department could do the same thing, after he directed the FCC to investigate “SNL”.
The bureau may be protecting the nation from threats. Musk could be trying to attract more users to his platform by going after the FBI, since some celebrities and others have left the platform since he took over. Or there could be FBI wrongdoing.
Twitter Blogging of Musk’s Twitter Debate: A Case Study of a Fast Lane to Failover in the Electric Carmaker and the Tesla Board
When the poll ended on Monday, more than half of the 18.2 million people who responded said yes to the question of whether Musk should step down.
On Monday morning, Twitter users logged on to find a thicket of connected issues. Clicking on links would no longer open them; instead, users would see a mysterious error message reporting that “your current API plan does not include access to this endpoint.” Images stopped loading. Some users reported that they could not use the client for professional users.
After so much criticism, Musk promised to not make any more policy changes without an online survey of users.
Musk’s last attempt to control speaking was the shutting down of a twit account that was tracking the flights of his private jet.
The banned platforms included mainstream websites such as Facebook and Instagram, and upstart rivals Mastodon, Tribel, Nostr, Post and former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social. There is no explanation as to why those seven websites were included on the blacklist.
In public banter with followers on Sunday, Musk said that a new CEO of a company that had been in the ” fast lane to bankruptcy” must like pain.
The Massachusetts Democrat wrote a letter to the chair of the electric car maker, asking her whether she was doing enough to address issues that could hurt the company.
Since early April when Musk revealed that he had taken a major stake in Twitter, the company’s shares have plunged by over 50% and its market value has been wiped out. Musk has unloaded more than $6 billion worth of shares of the company in recent months, including another $3.6 billion worth earlier this month.
Noting Tesla’s board has legal obligations it must fulfill, Warren asked the board to respond to a series of questions about its handling of the situation by January 3.
What the Hell Happened Last Weekend on Twitter? How Elon Musk and the Right-Wing Media Can Get Their Words Out Of This World
Twitter’s guidelines for law enforcement, posted publicly on its website, openly disclose: “Twitter may seek reimbursement for costs associated with information produced pursuant to legal process and as permitted by law (e.g., under 18 U.S.C. §2706).” That law states that the federal government will pay companies for their efforts “obtaining the contents of communications, records, or other information” a fee “for reimbursement for such costs as are reasonably necessary and which have been directly incurred in searching for, assembling, reproducing, or otherwise providing such information.”
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Musk’s company receiving reimbursement for processing legal requests is portrayed as evil by the right-wing media, just like Donald Trump is depicted as evil.
WIRED has written frequently of late about Elon Musk’s Twitter, so forgive me for coming back to it—but for those of us as terminally online as I am, let me just ask: What the hell happened last weekend?
Let me explain: I’m lucky enough to know a lot of creatives as well as a lot of journalists and tech workers. I received a message from artists who were concerned they wouldn’t be allowed to use the site because of their links to their own portfolios and to platforms that accept commission for their work. I read horror stories from authors who were terrified that the Linktrees their publishers asked them to create to promote their books, reviews, and Goodreads profiles were suddenly bannable offenses on Twitter.
What was essentially a small online riot ensued, with Twitter users from all corners decrying the new policy. Within hours, not only had the company backtracked, but all mentions of the less-than-day-old policy had been scrubbed from Twitter feeds and the company website. Anyone that was online could see it. (Although if you missed it, I wouldn’t say you missed it, if you know what I mean.)
When we at WIRED talk about “platforms and power,” this is what we’re talking about. The CEO, founder, or middle Manager of the platform must enforce and set the policies and guidelines for safe and legal use. That’s not in question. Online spaces can go bad fast if rules are not in place. What is an issue is when those platforms choose to actively harm their users through policy decisions, and when those changes are large enough to force users to either adapt or abandon ship.
My friends on Twitch interrupted their streams to discuss the news, worried that they wouldn’t be able to tweet to announce they were starting a new stream, or add a link to their Twitter bio to help viewers find them. All of these things created the potential for lost income for people who, I would argue, need it more than the folks who made these policy decisions. Everyone in Silicon Valley wants to foster and empower the same kind of entrepreneurship that these creators have.
The first high-profile hearing for the new Republican majority investigating President Joe Biden and his family will be held on Wednesday at the House Oversight Committee, as three formerTwitter executives testify over the suppression of a New York Post story about Hunter Biden.
The House Oversight chairman in Kentucky was the one who launched an investigation into the business dealings of the Biden family, and he is investigating the decision to temporarily block users from sharing.
James Baker was fired by Musk in December, making him the first person to speak publicly about the matter.
“We want to know how they determined what was disinformation”, said one of the people involved. We want to know how the government helped to suppress certain stories and accounts. We want to know if and how much tax dollars were spent from federal agencies to Twitter because that’s kind of what we look into – tax dollars.”
Baker is among three people appearing before the committee, including a Chief Legal Officer and a Head of Trust and Safety.
The Democrats plan to use a former Twitter employee, named AnIKA CRACKER NAVORROLI, as a witness during the hearing.
What happens when a social media platform is used for the promotion of violent insurrection against the government of the United States? What should we do about that? The top Democrat on the Oversight Committee spoke to CNN and said that they learned from the man who reported the abuses on the social networking site. “So, I think the gravity of her testimony is pretty extraordinary compared to the trivia that the majority is engaged in.”
Raskin plans to say in his opening statement that in the lead-up to January 6, 2021, Twitter “became the national and global platform for incitement to seditious violence against our government and a forum on the day of attack for coordinating logistical movements and tactical maneuvers in the mob violence against our officers,” according to an excerpt from his prepared remarks.
I will ask whether or not a member of congress can permanently be banned from being a Member of Congress on the basis of their politics. My Twitter account was permanently banned for nearly a year,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican.
Greene’s account was suspended last January for repeated violations of Twitter’s Covid-19 misinformation policy, the company said at the time. Musk restored her account in November.
Hunter Biden’s Laptop as a Cybercrime: Why Twitter Erred in the 2016 Black Hole Exposing of the Democrat National Committee
The Democrats plan to poke holes in the Republican allegations in order to question the committee’s decision to hold the hearing.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and other House Republicans met with Musk on Capitol Hill in the build up to the hearing. The Kentucky Republican said that Musk offered him tips on lines of questioning, though Comer declined to offer more details ahead of the hearing.
Republicans hold up the incident as a prime example of Silicon Valley’s alleged anti-conservative bias. More recently, seizing on the Twitter Files, they’ve pushed the claim that the government and the Biden campaign pressured Twitter to suppress the story – even though the Twitter Files disclosures do not include any evidence that was the case.
The chair of the committee stated that the government was able to limit the free exercise of speech by using a private company.
“Immediately following the story’s publication, America witnessed acoordinated campaign by social media companies, mainstream news and the intelligence community to suppress and delegivitize the existence of Hunter Biden’s laptop and its contents,” he said.
“I believe Twitter erred in this case because we wanted to avoid repeating the mistakes of 2016,” Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, told the panel, alluding to Russia’s hacking of Democratic National Committee emails that year that were selectively leaked to the public in the final months of the campaign.
“I’m aware of no unlawful collusion with or direction from any government agency or political campaign on how Twitter should have handled the Hunter Biden laptop situation,” James Baker, who served as Twitter’s deputy general counsel, told the committee.
The House Republicans are going to use their newly regained majority to launch a number of investigations into the Biden administration and the actions taken by the federal government against conservatives.
Reply to “Comment on ‘Everything goes back to where you come from’” by R.D. Greene, D.C.U.A. Senator Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and J.
A witness called by the committee Democrats told them that the phrase “going back to where you came from” was removed from its policy after Donald Trump expressed the sentiment in a 2019, saying that he was against Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The White House had requested that the celebrity’s insult to the president be removed from her account. Democrats seized on her testimony to rebut the Republicans’ claims of political bias.
He said that the decisions here aren’t straightforward. “It isn’t obvious what the right response is to a suspected but not confirmed cyberattack by another government on a presidential election.”
Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s former chief legal officer, told the committee that she had approved the decision to block the link to the Post story on Twitter. She said in retrospect, Twitter should have immediately unlocked the newspaper’s account when it reversed that decision.
The hearing, which was interrupted by a power outage, followed the split-screen format that’s become the norm when lawmakers grill tech executives: Republicans spent their time accusing witnesses of censorship, while Democrats argued tech platforms have not done enough to crack down on harmful content.
Greene attacked the panel for her ban and lobbed baseless allegations against the former executives. That included echoing smears against Roth previously amplified by Musk. He sold his home because of the threats caused by the Musk’s airing of those stories.
Committee Democrats blasted the premise of the hearing, accusing their Republican colleagues of wasting time and taxpayers’ money on a political crusade.
The Engineer Who Killed Musk at the Headquarters: Why is he leaving? How did he tell him about his experience with search engine optimization?
On Tuesday, Musk gathered a group of engineers and advisors into a room at the headquarters looking for answers. Why are his engagement numbers going down?
According to multiple sources with direct knowledge of the meeting, he said, “This is ridiculous.” I have over 100 million followers, but I am only getting tens of thousands of impressions.
Musk’s employees provided him with data on engagement with his account as well as a chart of trends from the internet. Last April, they told him, Musk was at “peak” popularity in search rankings, indicated by a score of “100.” Today, he’s at a score of nine. Engineers had previously investigated if the reach had somehow been artificially restricted and found no evidence of it being biased against Musk.
Musk told the engineer that he had been fired. Platformer is not releasing the engineer’s name due to the harassment Musk has directed at former employees.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/9/23593099/elon-musk-twitter-fires-engineer-declining-reach-ftc-concerns
Twitter Seven Weeks After Musk Changed the API: The Revival of the Cooperative Culture at the Los Alamos Silicon Valley and the Persistence of Efficiency
It has now been seven weeks since Twitter added public view counts for every tweet. The feature was promised by Musk at the time to give a better sense of how vibrant the platform is.
Shows how much more alive it is than seems, as nearly all of the users on it read but don’t reply or even hint at what they think.
We’re told only one reliability engineer has been on the project due to Musk’s cuts to the company. On Monday, the engineer made a “bad configuration change” that “basically broke the Twitter API,” according to a current employee.
One employee said that they have not seen much in the way of cogent strategy. “Most of our time is dedicated to three main areas: putting out fires (mostly caused by firing the wrong people and trying to recover from that), performing impossible tasks, and ‘improving efficiency’ without clear guidelines of what the expected end results are. We mostly move from dumpster fire to dumpster fire.
“There’s times he’s just awake late at night and says all sorts of things that don’t make sense,” one employee said. He will eventually come to us and say that they can only do one thing on the platform and we have to chase some outlier use case for them. It doesn’t make any sense.”
The landlord of the San Francisco headquarters is suing them for not paying rent, and the air there is melancholy. When people pass each other in the halls, we’re told that the standard greeting is “where are you interviewing?” and “where do you have offers?” Employees have to reserve their beds in advance on the eighth floor.
The epicenter of the open culture of the company has gone quiet. One current employee described it as a “ghost town.”
What Is The Least Fireable Response? An Employee’s Perspective On The Mistaken Twitter Brain and the Destruction of Tumblr
“When you’re asked a question, you run it through your head and say ‘what is the least fireable response I can have to this right now?’” one employee explained.
(Of course, that’s not true for everyone at the company. There are a handful of true believers that are just ass-kissers and brown-nosers who are exploiting the clear vacuum that exists, according to an employee.
The employee said that the disastrous relaunch ofTwitter Blue resulted in brands being impersonated and dozens of top advertisers leaving the platform.
“If Elon can learn how to put a bit more thought into some of the decisions, and fire from the hip a bit less, it might do some good,” the employee said. “He needs to learn the areas where he just does not know things and let those that do know take over.”
At the same time, “he really doesn’t like to believe that there is anything in technology that he doesn’t know, and that’s frustrating,” the employee said. “You can’t be the smartest person in the room about everything, all the time.”
An employee says the recent vibe in tech and fear of not being able to find something else is the main factor for most people. “I know for a fact that most of my team is doing hardcore interview prep and would jump at likely any opportunity to walk away.”
Why Did Twitter Break? The Story Behind the Twitter Panic Outage, and How It Happened: When Musk Learned to Shut Down Access to the API
Twitter’s website is breaking in novel new ways — and while the company managed to recover from its latest outage within a couple of hours, the story behind how it broke suggests there are likely to be similar problems in the near future.
Chaos took over the timeline, as users tweeted vociferously about the outage — often illustrating their points with images that no one could see because they wouldn’t load.
The change in question was part of a project to shut down free access to the Twitter API, Platformer can now confirm. On February 1st, the company announced it will no longer support free access to its API, which effectively ended the existence of third-party clients and dramatically limited the ability of outside researchers to study the network. The company has been working on a paid service for developers to work with.
“A small API change had massive ramifications,” Musk tweeted later in the day, after Twitter investor Marc Andreessen posted a screenshot showing that the company’s API failures were trending on the site. The code stack is brittle for no reason. Will need a complete rewrite.
Some current employees are sympathetic to that view, which places at least part of the blame for Twitter’s problems on technical failures that predate Musk’s ownership of the company. The fail whale became an icon of the old Twitter for a reason.
When Musk took over the company he promised to dramatically improve the site’s speed and stability. His associates screened the existing staff for their technical prowess, ultimately cutting thousands of workers who were deemed not “technical” enough to succeed under Musk’s leadership.
A single engineer will be staffed on a major project, one that is connected to several critical interdependent systems that both users and employees depend on.
It took all morning for the service to be restored. “This is what happens when you fire 90 percent of the company,” another current employee says.
Comments on “Waidaisy of the FTC”: a new report from the Select Subcommission on the Weaponization of the Federal Government
As reported by the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government — part of the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee — revealed the requests in a new report (PDF), calling the FTC’s actions harassment and overreach.