The Case for a Better Customer: Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and the Status of the Migrant Product (MIGRA)

In the last week, you may have noticed that the platform has deviated from what it normally does. Mostly because everybody on there is talking about how Elon Musk just bought the place. It’s clear that there’s no doubt about its current state, as a company and as a community. So far Musk has already fired top executives, flirted with adding additional paid tiers of service, tasked employees with finding ways to make the company more money, and spread his own share of misinformation.

“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 men publicly traded barbs over the summer, as their relations seem to have soured since. After Trump characterized Musk as abullsh*t artist, Musk responded by saying it was time for Trump to hang up his hat.

The link between social media, hate and the Internet: An anthropologist’s perspective on Musk’s “Free Speech” Rhetoric

But more than that, ties me to the site. Twitter hooks people in much the same way slot machines do, with what experts call an “intermittent reinforcement schedule.” Occasionally, it will appear at random intervals but most of the time it is repetitive and uninteresting. Unpredictable rewards, as the behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner found with his research on rats and pigeons, are particularly good at generating compulsive behavior.

An anthropologist from New York University and author of a book about gambling machine design said that she doesn’t know if there was ever a case of engineers sitting around and saying they were creating a Skinner box. But that, she said, is essentially what they’ve built. It’s one reason people who should know better regularly self-destruct on the site — they can’t stay away.

According to Rebekah Tromble, a political scientist at George Washington University in Washington DC, regulations from the EU could make Musk’s “free speech” rhetoric impractical. Social-media companies will have to help protect themselves from the risks caused by illegal content under the EU’s Digital Services Act. Tromble says that it’s difficult in practice to create separate policies and practices for Europe. “When it’s fundamental systems, including core algorithms, that are introducing those risks, mitigation measures will necessarily impact the system as a whole.”

He said in the official deal announcement that “free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.”

Ndahinda believes that the influence of hate speech would increase in the Great Lakes and beyond as a result of Musk plans to reduce the oversight of social-media posts. “A permissive culture where anything goes will always increase the trends,” says Ndahinda. It will increase virulence in hate speech by the actors.

An alternative platform like Parler, Gab and Truth Social offers a “keyhole view” of what Twitter will look like under Musk, says the president of Media Matters for America.

People gravitate to those sites because of the feature that allows them to say and do things that are forbidden from more mainstream social media platforms. They are cauldrons of misinformation and abuse.

After agreeing to join the company’s board, he decided to back away from it, saying: “Would be great to repeal permanent ban, except for those that explicitly advocate violence.”

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

The person urged Musk to hire “someone who has a savvy cultural/political view” to lead enforcement, suggesting “a Blake Masters type.” Masters is a Republican senate candidate in Arizona who has endorsed the president who has been accused of plagiarizing the 2020 election.

Facebook Doesn’t Want to Return: Musk’s Twitter Controversy at the End of the 2023 Presidential Reinterval

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.

Musk’s texts show that the relationship between the two men soured soon after Musk invested, after he was told that his criticism of the platform weren’t helping him.

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.

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

Last week he said on the earnings call that the potential for the company is an order of magnitude greater than its current value.

He may have no choice but to find other sources of revenue due to the 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 appear alongside extremists, that they’re not going to be subsidizing or associating with the types of things that would turn off potential customers,” Carusone said.

What exactly he meant is, as always, anyone’s guess. Musk told the staff that the company should copy the Chinese “super-app” that combines social media, messaging, payments, shopping, ride-hailing, and so on.

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.

A federal court filing accusing Musk of “legal violations” in the social media platform Zatko bought the company $Delta m_mu$

The social media platform said in a court filing that federal authorities are investigating Musk in relation to his acquisition of the social media platform.

The lawyers for the company wrote that Musk had been trying to exit the deal before the trial began, and that defendants had declared they would close after all. They say, ‘we mean it this time.’

Last week, Musk said he would buy the company at the agreed upon price of $54.20 per share. The judge overseeing the dispute later in the week ruled to pause the legal proceedings until Oct. 28 following a request from Musk.

The Federal Trade Commission, which is responsible for enforcing the terms of a 2011 consent order with Twitter that Zatko alleges the company violated, has not publicly disclosed an investigation. The chair of the FTC said in public testimony that it would hold the executives who were responsible for legal violations personally accountable.

“Twitter did not ask Zatko to torch his own documents, much less demand that he do so,” Twitter’s filing read. It wasn’t known if Zatko’s notebooks contained information or not.

Kanye West and the Social Media Industry: A “Mean-Field View” of Kamalaimo’s Ongoing Suspension from Twitter

The oligarchs of the internet not only command larger audiences than the media barons of earlier eras; they operate under fewer constraints. That is because government has abandoned the principle that mass media companies have special obligations to society, and it has allowed a few big social networks to suffocate competition, leaving users and advertisers without practical choices or leverage.

One way to limit the power of a single social network is to make room for new networks and third party sites that allow users to personalize their online experience.

An associate professor in the Lawrence Herbert School of Communication at Hofstra University, Kara Alaimo writes about issues affecting women and social media. She was spokeswoman for international affairs in the Treasury Department during the Obama administration. The opinions expressed in this commentary are her own. CNN has more opinions 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. The parent company of Parler said in a statement that West had taken a “groundbreaking move” into the free speech media space where “he will never have to fear being removed from social media again.”

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

What will Facebook be like if we stop using Twitter? A warning from Elon Musk on a platform for conservatives and nonconservatives

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

Before becoming Twitter’s CEO, owner, and “Chief Twit,” Elon Musk had often lobbed criticism at the platform for its approach to content moderation, even going so far as to target the company’s former policy chief Vijaya Gadde. While Musk has expressed his concern about liberal bias on the platform, many activists, journalists, and advocates outside the US have begun to worry about what the future holds without a board or shareholders.

A 2020 study of women in 51 countries by The Economist Intelligence Unit found that 38% have been victims of online violence, from stalking to doxxing to violent threats. Women of color are most affected by this. There is also antisemitic content on the internet. A report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate states that a sample of anti-Jewish posts on social networks had been viewed 7.3 million times.

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

West has already described Parler as a place where conservative views can flourish, and nonconservatives are unlikely to flock to Truth Social, given its association with Trump. If women, people of color and others start fleeing Twitter, that could leave it as a platform for conservatives as well. This would make those who are still interested even more interested.

Tweeting about hate, hatred, and the war of the world: Musk’s Twitter deal with Tesla CEO Ben Simmons fails to close on Friday

When people with similar ideas get together, they tend to think of a more extreme version of themselves that they had before, according to a Harvard law professor. Sunstein says this happens because their exchanges heighten their preexisting beliefs and make them more confident.

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.”

We can also expect these male owners to use their platforms to amplify their own views — even when they’re sexist, misogynistic, racist or otherwise hateful.

Yildirim said that, unlike Facebook, Twitter doesn’t have a good way of targeting advertising to what users want to see. She said Musk’s message suggested he was interested in fixing that.

Top sales executive Sarah Personette, the company’s chief customer officer, said she had a “great discussion” with Musk on Wednesday and appeared to endorse his Thursday message to advertisers.

The weak economy, uncertainty surrounding Musk’s proposed takeover and changing consumer behaviors made Musk’s decision to avoid a major shakeup of the ad business good for him, said Insider Intelligence principal analyst Jasmine Enberg.

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

Friday’s deadline to close the deal was ordered by the Delaware Chancery Court in early October. It is the latest step in a battle that began in April with Musk signing a deal to acquire Twitter, then tried to back out of it, leading Twitter to sue the Tesla CEO to force him to go through with the acquisition. If both sides don’t meet the Friday deadline, a trial could follow in November that could result in a judge forcing Musk to complete the deal.

It’s a stunning reversal of fortunes not just for Musk, who bought the company for $44 billion, but also for a platform used by some of the most powerful people on the planet, including world leaders, CEOs, and the Pope.

Tesla CEO Melissa Musk Takes Control of Twitter and Immediately-Oscillating Top Executives: After the Deal, Twitter Has a Greener Look

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

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

About the same time, he used Twitter to criticize Gadde, the company’s top lawyer. His tweets were followed by a wave of harassment of Gadde from other Twitter accounts. Racist and misogynistic attacks, as well as calls for Musk to fire her, were some of the harassment that an 11-yearTwitter employee called for. On Thursday, after she was fired, the harassing tweets lit up once again.

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’s also a realization that no content moderation is good for business, as it would put Twitter at risk of losing advertisers and subscribers.

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

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/27/1132153277/elon-musk-takes-control-of-twitter-and-immediately-ousts-top-executives

Tweeting the CEO: Trump’s message to advertisers on European Central Bank and central bank interest rates despite Musk’s visit to Twitter headquarters

But Musk has been signaling that the deal is going through. He entered the company’s headquarters in San Francisco on Wednesday carrying a porcelain sink, and then changed his profile to “chief twit,” which meant “lord” in Spanish.

The New York Stock Exchange said it would stop trading in the shares of the company before the opening bell on Friday in anticipation of the company going private under Musk.

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

Thursday’s note to advertisers shows a newfound emphasis on advertising revenue, especially a need for Twitter to provide more “relevant ads” — which typically means targeted ads that rely on collecting and analyzing users’ personal information.

A version of this story first appeared in CNN Business’ Before the Bell newsletter. Not a subscriber? You can sign up right here. Clicking on the link will take you to an audio version of the newsletter.

Will central banks stop raising interest rates? Wall Street analysts must wear wrist braces whenever they shake their Magic 8 Balls hard because of that multi-trillion dollar question.

Last week, the European Central Bank increased its interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point, the fastest rate of increase in the history of the euro currency. TheFederal Reserve is projected to increase rates by 75 basis points this week. The Bank of England could join the club on Thursday.

For some time, it was thought that 2023 would bring lower interest rates and a return to dovish monetary policy. But a mountain of mixed data is clouding that outlook. Now, some analysts are saying that central banks will opt for sustained smaller hikes over time and take a less rapid approach to policy decisions.

Across the globe, central bankers have shifted overnight borrowing rates higher in the hopes that they can cool the economy and temper rampant inflation by making it more expensive to borrow money. The impact has been lackluster so far.

The inflation rate for the Eurozone rose from 9.1% in August to 9.9% in September. A flash estimate for October released Monday showed inflation accelerating to 10.7%.

Christine Lagarde, the President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, told reporters on Thursday that she was surprised by the rise in inflation. She is of the opinion that retail energy prices could go up in the future.

The US economy, meanwhile, grew by 2.6% last quarter, which indicates that the economy isn’t softening yet (though there are signs that a slowdown could be coming). America is still struggling with higher prices, according to a new data on Friday from the Federal Reserve. Europe is growing as well.

It would not be appropriate to continue raising rates until inflation drops below 2 percent, since it is unlikely that households have seen the full effects of the latest rate increases. She said that the effects of the first rate increase in March have been passed through to the economy because of the tightened financial conditions caused by Fed communications. It’s an indication that we need to increase rates further.

Because of a lag in data, central bankers aren’t sure if they’ve done enough yet. If they ease up on rate hikes too soon, they risk inflation becoming further entrenched in the global economy. They risk sinking their countries into a recession if they over-correct.

A possible answer: Wall Street tends to favor big events, but the future of central bank policy may be more nuanced. To prepare T.S. Elliot for slaughter. The tightening will end not with a bang, but a whimper.

Twitter is a new low: Trump’s criticism of the US-Saudi relationship and a case for prosecution of a tame billionaire

Over the years, he has tweeted misleading claims about Covid-19 and made a baseless accusation that a man who helped rescue children from a cave in Thailand was a sexual predator. He has also tweeted a (since deleted) photo comparing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Adolf Hitler and has compared the now-ousted Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal to Joseph Stalin.

He gave credence to the theory of a conspiracy by linking to an article that was full of baseless claims. He later deleted the tweet, but not before racking up 28,000 retweets and 100,000 likes.

“This is a new low. We have seen a degradation in the US-Saudi relationship for years, but this is the worst it’s been,” said Clayton Allen, director at the Eurasia Group.

The price of gas was going to go up before the November elections as a result of the Saudi-led reduction in oil production.

US lawmakers are threatening steps that were unthinkable not long ago, including banning weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and unleashing the Justice Department to file a lawsuit against the country and other OPEC members for collusion.

If this relationship goes down in flames it could have repercussions for the world economy and international security.

Musk’s critics have described the billionaire as disrespectful to accountability even in the face of scrutiny by the FTC, which warned on Thursday that it is tracking recent developments at Twitter with deep concern.

Charging for Verified User Ranks in the 21st Century: What Will We Learn from Musk’s Dismantling of the Information Landscape?

A version of this article first appeared in the “Reliable Sources” newsletter. You’ll get a daily digest on the evolving media landscape.

The information environment Musk now leads has been contaminated and he is working to dismantle some of the small infrastructure that was built to help users sift through the daily chaos. Recent news reports indicate that he plans to remove the blue verified badges of public figures if they don’t pay.

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

Even though many conservatives also have blue badges, the right has never forgiven them for being in the dark about who’s in charge of the conversation. The air of authority they give upon their profile will be appreciated by some conservatives.

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

The Denial of Alex Jones is a Criminal Activist, and the First Amendment Implies a Social Good, but the Second Amendment doesn’t

Alex Jones had a judgment against him for lying about the Sandy Hook shooting. One of the groups most leery of libel lawsuits is the one I work for and I believe it is because of his behavior. Jones targeted private citizens who’d suffered a horrific loss with absurd, protracted, totally unsupported claims. His lies caused tangible harm that continues a decade later, and in theory, the damages outweigh even the tens of millions of dollars he made off those claims.

Tech freedom advocates have fought for years against laws that would stifle online communication, a project based on the assumption that this communication is a social good. The limits of this assumption have never been clearer, and the backlash threatens to make things worse.

There are some proposed changes to speech law that are upfront about their aims, like New York Attorney General Letitia James’ call to ban distributing live videos filmed by mass shooters. Legal experts like Danielle Citron have also proposed fixing specific problems created by Section 230, like its de facto protections for small sites that solicit nonconsensual pornography or other illegal content. The approaches do face serious criticisms but they are attempts to address real legal tradeoffs.

The provider or user of an interactive computer service won’t be treated like the publisher or speaker of information given to them.

Since 1996, courts have interpreted the law as wide as possible. It means that web services, as well as newspapers, gossip blogs, listserv operators, and other parties, are not allowed to be sued for hosting or reposting illegal speech. After a couple of seemingly conflicting defamation cases, the law was passed, and it has since been found to cover everything from harassment to gun sales. In addition, it means courts can dismiss most lawsuits over web platform moderation, particularly since there’s a second clause protecting the removal of “objectionable” content.

But making false claims about pandemic science isn’t necessarily illegal, so repealing Section 230 wouldn’t suddenly make companies remove misinformation. There’s a good reason why the First Amendment protects shaky scientific claims. Imagine if researchers and news outlets were sued for publishing assumptions that were later proven to be incorrect, like covid not being airborne.

Removing Section 230 protections is a sneaky way for politicians to get around the First Amendment. Without 230, the cost of operating a social media site in the United States would skyrocket due to litigation. Legal content could face lengthy lawsuits if sites are not able to invoke a straightforward 230 defense. And when it comes to categories of speech that are dicier, web platforms would be incentivized to remove posts that might be illegal — anything from unfavorable restaurant reviews to MeToo allegations — even if they would have ultimately prevailed in court. The money and time would be burned in ways that weren’t clear. platform operators do what it takes to keep 230 alive. When politicians gripe, the platforms respond.

The thing is, these complaints get a big thing right: in an era of unprecedented mass communication, it’s easier than ever to hurt people with illegal and legal speech. The legal system is a part of the problem, and that’s why more people should take action against Facebook.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/23435358/first-amendment-free-speech-midterm-elections-courts-hypocrisy

The Failed First Amendment: How Difficult Has It Be To Disturb A Political Candidate? The Case of Jerry Jones

It isn’t clear whether it matters. Jones declared corporate bankruptcy during the procedure, tying up much of his money indefinitely and leaving Sandy Hook families struggling to chase it. He treated the court proceedings contemptuously and used them to hawk dubious health supplements to his followers. Legal fees and damages have almost certainly hurt his finances, but the legal system has conspicuously failed to meaningfully change his behavior. It provided him with a platform to proclaim himself a martyr.

Contrast this with the year’s other big defamation case: Johnny Depp’s lawsuit against Amber Heard, who had identified publicly as a victim of abuse (implicitly at the hands of Depp). The case was less dried than that of Jones, but she lacked a certain type of machismo. The case became a public humiliation partly due to the incentives of social media and also because the courts failed to respond to the way that things like livestreams helped create the media circus. People who maintain a reputation can be hurt byDefamation claims, while the worst offenders are beyond shame.

I mostly addressedDemocratic and bipartisan proposals to reform Section 229 because they have at most some shred of substance to them.

Speech reforms proposed by Republicans are very bad. Over the past year, we have learned how bad it was when Republican legislators in Texas and Florida passed legislation that effectively banned social media moderation because they were using it to ban posts from conservative politicians.

The First Amendment probably renders these bans unconstitutional. The speech regulations are government ones. But while an appeals court blocked Florida’s law, Texas’ Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals threw a wrench in the works with a bizarre surprise decision to uphold its law without explaining its reasoning. Months later, that court actually published its opinion, which legal commentator Ken White called “the most angrily incoherent First Amendment decision I think I’ve ever read.”

The Supreme Court temporarily blocked the Texas law, but its recent statements on speech haven’t been terribly reassuring. The case will most likely be heard by Clarence Thomas, a court that has argued that the government should be able to treat a public utility like a public utility. (Leave aside that conservatives previously raged against the idea of treating ISPs like a public utility in order to regulate them; it will make your brain hurt.)

The justices voted against putting the law on hold. (Liberal Justice Elena Kagan did, too, but some have interpreted her vote as a protest against the “shadow docket” where the ruling happened.)

But only a useful idiot would support the laws in Texas and Florida on those grounds. The rules are rigged to favor certain political groups. They attack “Big Tech” platforms for their power, conveniently ignoring the near-monopolies of other companies like internet service providers, who control the chokepoints letting anyone access those platforms. Disney was given an exemption from speech laws as a result of its spending power in Florida, and subsequently proposed blowing up the copyright system to punish the company for stepping out of line.

Even as they rant about tech platform censors, many politicians are trying to effectively ban children from finding media that promotes acceptance of trans, gay, or gender non conforming people. On top of getting books pulled from schools and libraries, Republican state delegate in Virginia dug up a rarely used obscenity law to stop Barnes & Noble from selling the graphic memoir Gender Queer and the young adult novel A Court of Mist and Fury — a suit that, in a victory for a functional American court system, was thrown out earlier this year. A disingenuous panic over “grooming” doesn’t only affect LGBTQ Americans. Texas is also trying to stop Facebook from being able to kick off insurrectionists, but it is also suing for the distribution of the film Cuties under a questionable law against erotica.

There is a real tradeoff to this, if you take the First Amendment at its broadest possible reading, almost all code is speech, making software-based services impossible to regulate. While Section 230 hasn’t always been effective, it remains open for companies with core services that don’t have anything to do with speech or software to use it.

Balk’s Law is obviously an oversimplification. Internet platforms change us — they incentivize specific kinds of posts, subjects, linguistic quirks, and interpersonal dynamics. The internet is at its biggest, crammed into spaces owned by a few powerful companies. Human beings at scale can be really ugly. Vicious abuse that comes from one person or a campaign of threats, lies, and terrorism involving thousands of different people, isn’t quite rising to the level of a viable legal case.

WIRED Platforms and Power Reporter Vitoria Elliot: House of the Dragon, The Guardian, and De Todas las Flores

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

Your male-presenting friends want you to watch House of the Dragon. Mike recommends the new album from Natalia Lafourcade, De Todas las Flores. Lauren suggests rethinking your relationship with social media.

Someone can be found on a social media account named telliotter. Lauren was called LaurenGoode. The person is Michael Calore. The main hotline atGadgetLab should be adorned. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Solar Keys is the music for our theme.

Source: https://www.wired.com/story/gadget-lab-podcast-573/

How Musk’s ownership of the micro-networking site made his bird a threat to the freedom of business and politics in the Democratic Republic of Congo

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

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

Felix Ndahinda saw a potential threat when billionaire investor and inventor Elon Musk said he was going to release the bird last week.

To Ndahinda, however, it is clear that the normalization of hate speech and conspiracy theories on social media could have contributed to violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, even if academics have not yet been able to delineate its contribution clearly. “It is a very difficult thing to work out the casual link from a tweet to violence,” says Ndahinda. Many actors make public statements to commit crime, and then later the crimes are committed.

One user asked if the reports ofracism would be taken seriously by the new owners of the website: “now that Musk has ownership, let’s see if the reports ofracism will be taken seriously or not.”

Weiss suggested that such actions were taken “all without users’ knowledge.” But Twitter has long been transparent about the fact that it may limit certain content that violates its policies and, in some cases, may apply “strikes” that correspond with suspensions for accounts that break its rules. In the case of strikes, users receive notification that their accounts have been temporarily suspended.

This is where false narratives begin, 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 a criminology student at Pennsylvania State University who studies terrorism and is worried about the people who use inflammatory speech on social media. “That’s the situation where you can have more violence.”

To figure out how Musk’s ownership changed on the micro-networking site, the researchers searched for the 20 most popular messages between March 1 and November 13 of this year, and they found anti-LGBTq+, racist, and misogynist messages. They tried to judge their true intent by looking at the language that they used in each category.

The Covid PLANdemic: What Happens When You’re Not Sick? And How Do You Get Better Results from the Covid Plandemic?

“The Covid PLANdemic was created by Big Pharma to silence me. Everybody tries to silence me,” she said. I’m requesting that you speak at a lower volume. I’m sorry, am I too loud for your precious intensive care unit? You are not even sick!

“Hi. Your profile is so funny. I love funny guys,” Schumer, dressed in a red dress, said as the bot. I’m crazy when they say I’m a bot. I love funny guys like you. You can check out the website where I and other girls hang out.

But the most notable person to speak in front of the council: former president Donald Trump, played by James Austin Johnson. Trump’s account was banned in 2021.

“Yes, we’ve all moved to Truth Social, and we love Truth Social. It’s very great,” Johnson’s Trump said. “And in many ways, also terrible. It is very bad. Very, very bad. It’s a little buggy in terms of making the phone screen crack, and the automatically draining of the Venmo.”

Quitting Twitter: What I Learned in 30 Seconds After Elon Musk Moved the Micro-Messaging Site, And How I Was Abused by Black Holes

Editor’s Note: Roxanne Jones, a founding editor of ESPN The Magazine and former vice president at ESPN, has been a producer, reporter and editor at the New York Daily News and The Philadelphia Inquirer. Jones is co-author of “Say it Loud: An Illustrated History of the Black Athlete.” She talks about politics, sports and culture on 900 AM in Philadelphia. The views expressed here are solely hers. Read more opinion on CNN.

That’s the message I got 30 seconds after I deleted Twitter on the day Elon Musk became the platform’s new owner. It was time to say goodbye and good riddance to a 12-year relationship with the micro-messaging site, that I admit brought some moments of joy.

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

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 Twitter can be illuminating, but they generally reinforce what we already know to be true. I can testify about what it feels like to be threatened with violence, just like many women on the site. I’ve experienced it all.

According to one cyber research organization, Network Contagion Research Institute, the use of the N-word jumped by nearly 500% on the platform a day after Musk, the self-declared “free speech” absolutist, took over.

The Twitter Dilemma: Why I’m Bullied on Twitter and How I Managed to Survive My Oasis

Not in a world where everyone wants attention and adulation will you see a big exodus on TWITTER? It seems that everyone would like to be a virtual brand ambassador.

Black users make up a large portion of the community on the site. The reasons vary for staying in the face of blatant disrespect and hatred. For some, keeping a job is what it means. Some may think that it’s better to stay and fight for change from within, if you believe that there’s a better way to get global influence.

Authorities had to be involved in the vile incident that spilled over into my personal life and became a threat to my family’s safety. I battled my detractors on the platform and never once went back to being a bully.

What a waste of time. On and off the site, I was kept in beast mode because of all the toxic attacks on the site. That’s what the Twitter-verse will do to you — make you angry and keep you distracted from the real work at hand.

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

“We’re not currently putting an ‘Official’ label on accounts but we are aggressively going after impersonation and deception,” Twitter’s verified support account tweeted on Wednesday evening.

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

“I guess not ALL the content moderators were let go? She made a joke on Mastodon where she set up an account last week.

”Mum’s Up, and I’m sorry,” Musk tweeted after the Twitter Disruption and the Election Deluge

The actor went back to her true name after posting a series of posts supporting Democratic candidates on Saturday, but had appropriated Musk’s screen name. “Okey-dokey. I’ve had a good time. and I think I made my point,” she tweeted afterwards.

An end to the disruption seemed nowhere in sight on Friday. In its latest change of position, it said it would introduce a gray Official Badge for select accounts to help confirm their identities. The decision came after Twitter was forced to fend off a wave of verified-account impostors this week, including some posing as former President Donald Trump, Nintendo, and the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, among others. Musk rushed ahead with the blue check mark on every account holder because he wanted to find new ways to make money on the platform.

It said the service would be available in several countries, such as the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK. On Sunday 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.”

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 that if moderation and verification are broken, the internet could be used to create a misinformation free-for-all.

In a Friday morning message, YoelRoth, the head of safety and integrity, sought to make things better for those who are concerned. He said the company’s front-line content moderation staff was the group least affected by the job cuts.

Until September, Edward Perez was director of product management at Twitter, overseeing the product team devoted to civic integrity. After more than 30 years as an election official, Perez joined the company in September of 2021, and was tasked with keeping the service safe during times of turmoil. Perez feels he has to speak out, as Musk gutsTwitter staff and allows users to pay to get a coveted blue check.

The OSET Institute, a nonpartisan group devoted to election security and integrity, is worried that the drama around corporate takeover is sucking up the oxygen in the room. That focus on the Musk psychodrama “is resulting in potentially inadequate attention on these election-related issues,” he adds.

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

Turkey, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Pakistan, which have a large online population, are all attractive markets as the company looks to grow its revenue and increase its user base. But all of those countries have had arguments with Twitter specifically or with social media companies more broadly, he says. Last year, the Nigerian government ordered all Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block Twitter after the platform deleted a tweet from the country’s president, Muhammadu Buhari, for violating its policies. The ban was lifted only after the country’s government agreed to pay taxes.

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

What Happened to Elon Musk? The Lives of the Lonely Town in Tiny Town During the Covid Epidemic

The Musk thought was so deep, it may have appeared from a fish-bowled dorm room. You have achieved something. We all live in Tiny Talk Town now, where all conversation is about Elon Musk.

It is easy for an electric car entrepreneur to mistake his own experience on the micro-dott for that of everyone else as he follows a disproportionate number of very active users. The same is true for journalists. In reality, nearly half of Twitter users tweet less than five times a month, and most of their posts are replies, not original tweets. They watch current events and live sports and then go about their lives. They are called lurkers.

When many people were stuck at home and not able to access social media during the early days of the Covid outbreak, luau is a practice that took hold. To sit back and observe is basically a simplistic way to deal with the complexity and chaos that comes with New Twitter. Check in on Elon Musk’s new toy, sure, then close your app or browser tab. Send a tweet, then disengage. It’s important to keep an eye on it during basketball games. Use DMs if you have to, then direct those message threads elsewhere. If you don’t mind, save your most original thoughts for another time.

Why CEO Musk didn’t sign the hard core pledge? Employees’ frustrations with Twitter as European regulators confronted with a new technology policy

As the European Union introduces new technology rules, they have slashed their own team, according to the AWO director. At a time when regulators expect meaningful relationships with people who are based in Belgium, it’s not a good look. By comparison, Meta and Google employ between 20 and 30 people each in the city, he says. A request to comment from WIRED was not responded to.

There is no single list of people who have been fired. Employees have been using workplace messaging app Slack to see if their colleagues are still working. In addition to Dublin, other European offices are affected by layoffs. Social media posts show that employees in both London andBrussels have been let go. It is unclear if the employees in other European capitals have also been affected.

Mr. Musk, whose union-busting record and ruthless firing of people who disagreed with him is just like a boss on steroids, is exposing the national mood about this. Twitter employees seemed to say as much: Some 1,200 of them, or nearly half of the company’s remaining work force, opted not to sign his “hard core” pledge, raising questions about whether Twitter would survive at all. Two lawsuits have been filed by employees who believe the policy will result in discrimination against them.

Those claims, which predate Musk’s ownership, may already have put Twitter on the hook for billions of dollars in potential FTC fines, legal experts have said.

The risks Musk has to face as he stumbles through a maze of business and content moderation headaches, have been self-destructive, but that could change if a violation is proven.

Twitter Compliance Under Twitter’s New Constraint Order and Trump’s Letter to the U.S. Competition and Competition: Commentary on a Conversation with Vladeck

Under Twitter’s latest FTC consent order, which was implemented this year, Twitter must submit a sworn compliance notice to the regulator within 14 days of any such change. The compliance notice is intended both to advise the FTC of major changes at the company as well as a commitment that it will continue to comply with the order, according to David Vladeck, a former senior FTC official and a law professor at Georgetown University.

Alex Spiro told CNN that Musk is in talks with the FTC and will work to make sure he is in compliance.

There are more substantive regulatory obligations that have come into question. They include requirements that when a new product, service or practice is introduced, it must put user data at risk or be required to produce written privacy assessments.

“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.”

An employee warned colleagues of Musk trying to put responsibility for certification of FTC compliance on individual engineers at the company in a message viewed by CNN earlier this week.

The computer science and law professor at Georgetown University urged employees to seek professional legal counsel when making statements to regulators.

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

“No CEO or company is above the law, and companies must follow our consent decrees,” the FTC said. “Our revised consent order gives us new tools to ensure compliance, and we are prepared to use them.”

Founder and CEO Mark Cuban: Twitter Spaces in the wake of the Akimov-Scalar-Moser Era

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.

Just two days after the launch of the paid subscription service, the option to sign up for it vanished from the app, while the add-on had already been removed. It was not immediately clear when the company might restore the offering.

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 said nine hours later that it had been added to the official list in order to fight impersonation.

The paid verification feature has been criticized for making identification of trustworthy information much more difficult during the critical period ahead of 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.

Cuban said that you have a decision to make. “Stick with the new Twitter that democratizes every tweet by paid accounts and puts the onus on all users to curate for themselves. Or bring back some of the things you posted on social media. One is an efficient way to spread information on the social network. The other is not good.

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

According to an internal Slack message posted by a Twitter worker and viewed by CNN, Musk has showed no fear of the FTC regulators overseeing the company’s multiple, legally binding consent agreements, committing it to maintaining a robust cybersecurity program and producing written privacy impact reports before launching any new products or services

Many employees of the ad sales team have been forced out and fired, including on Monday after another round of layoffs.

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

The New York Times published an article last week that was written by Yoel Roth, the former head of trust and safety at the company. The app stores have previously removed social media apps for failing to protect their users from harmful content, and Roth suggested that Twitter had already begun to receive calls from app store operators following Musk’s takeover. Over the weekend, the head of Apple’s app store, Phil Schiller, deleted his Twitter account.

“A Fork in the Road” was Not the First Thing that Elon Musk Didn’t Tell Us About His Empathetic Leadership

Even still, there is no guarantee that continuing to capture the online world’s attention will translate into subscription payments or other revenue growth.

Have you ever received an email at midnight from your boss that said “a fork in the road”? Email guidelines say that we aren’t supposed to get midnight emails from bosses. But Elon Musk is no ordinary boss, and it’s safe to assume he didn’t get the memo on empathetic leadership. After laying off half of his staff, Mr Musk took a sink to work and promised he would be sleeping at the office until the problem with the organization was fixed. Were they ready to be hard core? They could select “yes” — or opt for three months of severance pay.

To Mr Musk, the word hardcore means long hours at high intensity, and a culture that accepts only the most exceptional performance. I think it was more or less turned off by that philosophy behind it, and even though it conjured up an image of sweaty Wall street bankers collapsing at their desks, I think a few workaholics and their bosses were more or less turned off by it. It’s a prepandemic mind-set that, sure, some bosses may long for but many more employees are determined never to go back to.

The researchers only found one tweet that was actually offensive against Jewish people before Musk took over. The others were either quoting another person’s hateful remarks or using the relevant key words in a non-hateful way.

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

The Voice of the People is the Voice of god: Musk’s Twitter replatforming after Trump refunded his campaign against the Trump-Cartan referendum

The poll ended around 12:45 pm on Thursday, with 72.4% voting in favor of the proposition and 27.6% against. 3 million people voted in the poll on social media.

Shortly after acquiring Twitter, Musk promised 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. The Latin phrase for “the voice of the people is the voice of god” was written by Musk after he restored Trump’s 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.

Meta’s Cross Check Program: When the Board of Commissioners Decided to Reply to the Wall Street Journal and Takedown a Sexually-Standard Post

The topic at hand was Meta’s controversial Cross Check program which allowed special treatment to posts from certain powerful users. For years this program operated in secret, and Meta even misled the board on its scope. When details of the program were leaked to The Wall Street Journal, it became clear that millions of people received special treatment, which makes it harder for their posts to be taken down if they are reported for violating rules against hate speech. The idea was to not make mistakes in cases where the speaker had a bigger impact on the community. Meta researchers had reservations about the project, according to internal documents. Only after that exposure did Meta ask the board to take a look at the program and recommend what the company should do with it.

The meeting I witnessed was part of that reckoning. The tone of the discussion made me wonder if the board would suggest that Meta stop the program in the name of fairness. The policies should be for everyone. one board member cried out.

That did not happen. The social media world stopped looking silly and focused on the things that mattered this week, as the Oversight Board finally delivered its Cross Check report, which was delayed because of foot-dragging by Meta. (It never did provide the board with a list identifying who got special permission to stave off a takedown, at least until someone took a closer look at the post.) The conclusions were not positive. The program’s purpose was to improve the quality of its decisions, but the board said it was more to protect the company’s interests. Meta didn’t set up processes to monitor or assess the program. The lack of transparency to the outside world was appalling. It was not always Meta’s fault that those posts were spared the quick takedowns. There were simply too many of those cases for Meta’s team to handle. They stayed up for days before they were given the same consideration as other people.

The prime example, featured in the original WSJ report, was a post from Brazilian soccer star Neymar, who posted a sexual image without its subject’s consent in September 2019. Because of the special treatment he got from being in the Cross Check elite, the image—a flagrant policy violation—garnered over 56 million views before it was finally removed. The program meant to reduce the impact of content decision mistakes wound up boosting the impact of horrible content.

The board didn’t recommend shutting down Cross Check. It called for an update. The reasons are in no way an endorsement of the program but an admission of the devilish difficulty of content moderation. The hopelessness in the report was meant to convey that it was possible to get things right. Meta, like other platforms that give users voice, had long emphasized growth before caution and hosted huge volumes of content that would require huge expenditures to police. Meta does spend many millions on moderation—but still makes millions of errors. To cut down on those mistakes is more important than the company is willing to spend. The idea of Cross Check is to minimize the error rate on posts from the most important or prominent people. Meta didn’t want to make a mistake when a celebrity was using its platform to speak to millions.

Evaluating the Shadowbanned: A Twitter Update aimed at Correcting the Claims of Left-Leaning Figures and Right-Machines

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

The software update will show your true account status so you know if you have been shadowbanned, the reason, and how to appeal. He did not provide additional details or a timetable.

His announcement came amid a new release of internal Twitter documents on Thursday, sanctioned and cheered by Musk, that once again placed a spotlight on the practice of limiting the reach of certain, potentially harmful content — a common practice in the industry that Musk himself has seemingly both endorsed and criticized.

Earlier this month, journalist Matt Taibbi released internal Twitter emails relating to the decision to temporarily suppress a New York Post story about Hunter Biden and his laptop, which largely supported what was already known about the incident.

In both cases, the internal documents appear to have been provided directly to the journalists by Musk’s team. On Friday, Musk shared Weiss’ thread and added, “TheTwitter Files, Part Duex!!” along with two popcorn emojis.

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