The Twitter Files: A Murder against the Establishment of Right-wing Intelligence and Particle Propagatorism on Twitter

Half ofTwitter’s staff was laid off, and several executives were laid off as well. He gave an ultimatum to the remaining staff that they had to do a lot of work or leave, and several thousand people went out the door. – Musk has fired employees who openly disagreed with him and publicly named and shamed former employees who were engaged in difficult moderation discussions as part of the ongoing “Twitter Files.” The revised verification system that costs 8 for a blue check mark initially led to widespread spoofing, but Musk has stopped and started again. – Musk has frequently changed Twitter’s rules by executive fiat and with no notice, banning people who violate the new rules — including several tech journalists and an account that tracked his jet. Musk had once tweeted that allowing the ElonJet account to remain on Twitter demonstrated his commitment to free speech on the platform. – He took a deep dive into the culture wars, allowing some of the platforms permanently banned accounts to be restored, including former President Donald Trump.

Musk made changes to content moderation on the messaging service. He released documents that claimed the platform suppressed right-wing voices when it was led by previous leaders.

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

I guess not all of the content moderators were let go? She made fun of it on the alternative social media platform, Mastodon.

Tweet Blue with Verification: Twitter’s Safety and Integrity in Light of Musk’s “Okey-dokey” Decay

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 and I think I made my point,” she tweeted afterwards.

Musk believes the $8 verified accounts are the way to democratize the service. On Saturday, a new update for Apple’s app store said that users who “sign up now” for the new “Twitter blue with verification” can get a blue check next to their names, just like the celebrities, companies and politicians they already follow.

It said the service would first be available in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.K. It was not available Sunday and there wasn’t any 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.”

There is a risk that the platform will be filled with more misinformation in Tuesday’s elections if the company were to strip verified users of blue checks.

Like Griffin, some Twitter users have already begun migrating from the platform — Counter Social is another popular alternative — following layoffs that began Friday that reportedly affected about half of Twitter’s 7,500-employee workforce. 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.

Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety and integrity, sought to assuage such concerns in a tweet Friday. He said the company’s front-line content moderation staff was the group least affected by the job cuts.

Musk tweeted late Friday that there was no choice but to cut jobs “when the company is losing over $4M/day.” He did not provide details on the daily losses at Twitter and said employees who lost their jobs were offered three months’ pay as severance.

The social media platform’s policy of permanently suspending users who are repeatedly violated its rules will be repealed by Musk when he restores most previously banned accounts next week.

Hours before the poll was completed and the accounts were reinstated, Musk declared today “freedom Friday” in response to former congressional candidate Lavern Spicer’s comment that accounts were being reinstated at an increasingly fast pace. Several prominent right-to-far-right figures were not suspended on Friday, including MyPillow founder Mike Lindell and Gateway Pundit editor Jim Hoft as noted by Shayan Sardarizadeh. This appears to be part of Musk making good on his promise to give most previously-suspended accounts “general amnesty,” which he also claims is occurring due to the results of a poll.

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. More than 3 million votes were cast in the poll.

Twitter: Defenders of Shadow Banning and Pseudosyptotic Freedom in the Spontaneous Replatforming of Musk’s Popular Jet

Shortly after acquiring Twitter, Musk said he would create a “content moderation council” with “widely diverse viewpoints,” and that no major content decisions would be made until it was in place. There is no evidence that such a group has been formed or was involved in Musk’s replatforming decisions. The voice of the people is the voice of god. After Musk restored Trump’s account, he sent out a message with the Latin word for voice.

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.

Many advertisers abandoned Twitter over content moderation questions after Musk acquired it in October, and he now risks a rupture with media organizations, which are among the most active on the platform.

The New York Times and CNN had their accounts suspended and many other journalists had their accounts suspended after they wrote about the account that tracked the private jet used by Musk. The ElonJet account was suspended from Twitter prior to the strike against the other accounts but survives on other platforms (which is potentially the reason you can’t tweet a link to many instances of Mastodon, a decentralized Twitter alternative).

The billionaire then offered Sweeney $5,000 to shut down the account. Sweeney countered the offer, raising it to $50,000, writing, “It would be great support in college and would possibly allow me to get a car maybe even a [Tesla] Model 3.” Musk replied, “I don’t think it’s right to shut this down.”

He also was threatening legal action against Jack Sweeney 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.

Sweeney said he immediately filed an online form to appeal the suspension. His personal account was also suspended, and a message said it violated the rules against platform manipulation.

Twitter is Stepping Up its Actions Against Elon Musk and the Tracker of Musk’s Flying Jet: A Correspondence to Sweeney

Musk tweeted on December 15th that “Posting locations someone traveled to on a slightly delayed basis isn’t a safety problem, so is ok.” Twitter also explicitly states that “sharing publicly available location information after a reasonable time has elapsed, so that the individual is no longer at risk for physical harm” is not a violation of platform rules. The definition of live location data means someone’s real-time or same day whereabouts, according to the policy.

Musk said that his commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following his plane.

Sweeney told CNN that he was going to defer posting the location of Musk’s jet for 24 hours but only on social media.

It seems Twitter doesn’t currently have an ironclad filter for this, as I was able to tweet an alternate link to the Instagram version of the tracker. But it appears that Twitter is stepping up its actions against Sweeney and his accounts, despite Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s “commitment” to free speech, which he said in November extended to “not banning the account following my plane.”

Some other accounts tracking the jets of billionaires, including Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, have been suspended and remain so. According to The New York Times Ryan Mac, Sweeney has seen about 30 of his accounts banned, due to him operating many of them.

He got a notice that his account had been permanently suspended after he log in to the social media site. There was no explanation in the note how the rules were broken.

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.

CNN: The ban of Donie O’Sullivan and the violation of free speech on Twitter, and a warning from Vra Jourová

CNN’s Donie O’ Sullivan was suspended without warning, which is concerning but not surprising. Twitter’s increasing instability and volatility should be of incredible concern for everyone who uses Twitter,” the spokesperson said.

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.

It will be interesting to see if those who supported Musk for his pro- free speech rhetoric speak out against the bans.

As Nate Silver wrote, “News organizations like the NYT already had mixed feelings about their reporters using Twitter and if you can now be suspended from Twitter for doing fairly straightforward reporting, you have to wonder if that’s the tipping point.”

“Elon says he is a free speech champion and he is banning journalists for exercising free speech,” Harwell told CNN on Thursday. I think that raises questions about his commitment.

Věra Jourová, the European Commission’s vice president for values and transparency, said the “arbitrary suspension” of journalists was “worrying,” and she indicated that the company could face penalties as a result.

The report was confirmed by a CNN reporter who was prevented from sharing a Mastodon profile URL because of an error message that indicated that the site was potentially harmful.

Why did Musk put a Facebook page on suspension? A warning warning about social media freedom in the EU and how to ensure compliance with the EU Digital Services Act

He wrote that he is unsure why he was placed on suspension. He stated that he had a link on his account to a Facebook page.

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.”

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.

Germany’s foreign ministry says the freedom of the press can’t be switched on and off. The journalists no longer have the ability to comment or criticize. We have a problem with it.

Mediafreedom and fundamental rights are required by the EU Digital Services Act. This is reinforced by our media freedom act, and Musk should be aware of that, said Jourov in a post on the social networking site.

The social media platform was warned by a top EU official in November that it had to take steps to comply with the bloc’s content moderation laws.

“Twitter will have to implement transparent user policies, significantly reinforce content moderation and protect freedom of speech, tackle disinformation with resolve, and limit targeted advertising,” Breton said at the time. “All of this requires sufficient AI and human resources, both in volumes and skills. I look forward to progress in all these areas and we will come to assess Twitter’s readiness on site.”

The Future of Twitter is Up in the Air: CNN, Buzzfeed News, and Other Investigative Reporters During Musk’s Twitter Space Dispatch

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

CNN said in a statement that its future on Twitter is up in the air. “The impulsive and unjustified suspension of a number of reporters, including CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, is concerning but not surprising,” a spokesperson said. Everyone who uses Twitter should be worried about the increasing instability andunpredictability of the site. We have asked Twitter for an explanation, and we will reevaluate our relationship based on that response.”

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

After the suspensions, Musk ran a 30-minute long poll asking when he should unsuspend the journalists. “Now” won that poll as well, garnering 43 percent of responses, but Musk said he would redo it because it had “too many options.”

On Thursday, Musk also attended a Twitter Space hosted by Buzzfeed News’ Katie Notopoulos, which was also attended by several of the suspended journalists, who had apparently been allowed to join due to a technical glitch. Before leaving the call, Musk said “you dox, you get suspended. End of story, that’s it.” Twitter later turned off the Spaces feature. Notopoulos says she is unable to start or join a Space because she violated the Twitter Rules, meaning she cannot participate or go live.

Most accounts came back on 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.

She stated that she posted court related documents to the social networking site that included a Musk email address. Lopez said that the address was not current because he would change his email frequently.

The Mastodon Platform: A Disagreement at a Time after the Musk-O’Sullivan Corrupted Microblog Abrupt Action

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.

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

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

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

She said that the new regime has the same problem as the old one, because they are governed by their own biases.

The platform would be changed at the fundamental level if the media organizations were to leave, asLou Paskalis, a former head of global media for Bank of America said.

CBS temporarily shut down its social media activity in November due to uncertainty regarding new management, but media organizations have remained on the platform.

Some advertisers had already cut their spending on Twitter due to uncertainty about the direction of the platform and the suspension might be the biggest red flag yet.

Advertisers are watching for the loss of users on the micro-blogging site. Insider Intelligence forecast that the number of users on the social network will fall over the course of two years due to technical issues and account banned for offensive posts.

Mastodon had 3.4 million users on the day that Musk took ownership of the social networking site. On many of the thousands of confederated networks in the open-source Mastodon platform, administrators and users solicited donations as disaffected Twitter users strained computing resources. Many of the networks, known as “instances,” are crowd-funded. The platform is designed to not show ads.

“Chief Twit” Elon Musk hasn’t BEEN Bullied into Suppressing his Private Jet Flight Data,” he told CNN

Both Harwell and O’Sullivan told CNN on Saturday morning that they didn’t agree to deletion and instead chose to appeal the decision.

The whole affair was ridiculous, but the man told CNN that he decided to just remove the account and move on.

The suspension of the journalists was met with condemnation by news organizations, the American Civil Liberties Union, United Nations, Democratic members of Congress and others.

Musk asked people to vote on a question about whether he should step down as the CEO of the social network. Musk would abide by the results of the poll.

In reply to a Sunday message in which MIT researcher said he would take the CEO job, Musk said he hadn’t been very happy with his new job.

Below was the offending tweet: a link to one of the few websites that provide real-time private jet flight data that “chief twit” Elon Musk, I wrote, “hasn’t bullied into suppressing his flight data.”

The success of Musk in suppressing real-time flight data on the internet was lost in the chaos. In so doing, he’s taking aim at an incredibly valuable source of information—which has helped researchers, journalists, and experts with everything from tracking Russian oligarchs to investigating the fate of missing aircraft to tracking down international hitmen. Musk isn’t the only one trying to keep this type of information out of the public’s hands.

Both real-time and historical information on Musk’s main private jet—a 2015 Gulfstream G650ER, tail number N628TS—is conspicuously missing from the two main flight-tracking platforms: FlightAware and FlightRadar24.

“The ongoing hullabaloo about the location of Elon Musk’s airplane has caused us to stop displaying his plane at the moment,” says Christian Rommes, an AirportInfo administrator. We don’t want to take legal risks since Musk is threatening them.

The office took the step as a precautionary measure because they haven’t heard from the Musk legal team. He says to not mess with the former richest man of the world.

What the hell happened last weekend when an airline was banned from social networking sites? An online riot at the Centre of Light and Air Traffic Disorder (WIRED)

Aircraft operators are required to report detailed information on their flight path to various national regulators, including the Federal Aviation Administration. That data is generally a matter of public record and is published to various websites popular amongst airline enthusiasts.

FlightAware has sources of real-time flight information. Planespotters.net, and airliners.net, allow users to submit photos of aircraft that come and go around the world.

Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast technology (ADS-B) is used to transmit information about the altitude and location of most commercial and private aircraft. In order to ensure the safety of air traffic, aircraft flying in the USA and Europe are required to broadcast this information.

For those of us who are sick of all this, let me ask: What the hell happened last weekend?

I am lucky to know a lot of creatives, journalists and tech workers. When I awoke on Sunday to the news, I was horrified by the thought that some artists would be banned from social networking websites because of their links to their own portfolios. Many authors were terrified that their publishers would blacklist them on social networking websites if they didn’t promote their books, reviews, and Goodreads profiles.

What was essentially a small online riot ensued, with Twitter users from all corners decrying the new policy. The company backtracked after a few hours and all mentions of the policy had been scrubbed from the website. It was a quickie for anyone who watched it on the internet. (Although if you missed it, I wouldn’t say you missed it, if you know what I mean.)

At WIRED we talk about platforms and power. Of course, any steward of any platform, whether it’s a CEO, founder, or middle manager, has the unenviable job of setting and enforcing the policies and guidelines for that platform’s safe and legal use. That is not in question. Without such rules, online spaces can go bad fast. When platforms decide to harm users through policy decisions and when changes are large enough to force them to adapt, it’s an issue.

My friends on the chat platform interrupted their streams to talk about what had happened, worried that they wouldn’t be able to amplify their sound, or to add a link to their 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. After all, these same creators have the kind of disruptive, entrepreneurial spirit that everyone in Silicon Valley claims to want to foster and empower.