Twitter Deal with Musk: Implications for the FTC, the Trade Commission, and the Public Interests of a Digital Town Square: Musk’s Characteristics

“The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence,” Musk said.

Musk said at a conference that he would reverse the ban if he were the company’s owner.

But he also likes to taunt, occasionally with disastrous consequences. He’s being sued for promoting the dogecoin as part of a pyramid scheme. (Musk says he still supports it.) The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating him over Twitter, and previously sanctioned him over other market-manipulating tweets. The SEC and Musk agreed to penalties on the fraud charges.

Legal experts widely believed that Twitter was on strong footing to have the deal enforced in court. The deal was supposed to go to trial two weeks before, but Musk said he would go ahead with it. Musk’s attorneys requested a judge to stay the legal proceedings in the midst of negotiations, as they realized that he may not be able to close the deal.

Musk’s impulsiveness and U-turns are familiar. As he decided to buy the service, he also decided to change his mind and stop using Starlink.

But privately, Musk’s critics have described the billionaire as dismissive of accountability, even in the face of scrutiny by the Federal Trade Commission, which publicly warned on Thursday, in a rare forward-looking statement, that it is “tracking recent developments at Twitter with deep concern.”

There was not much support to the argument that came about from the material that came to light. There’s nothing that looks like fraud here, but he knows that his best claim is fraud. “They’ve run out of cards to play.”

Musk’s decision to fold may also have been influenced by the potential for the trial to damage him personally. The entrepreneur watched the internet chew over a tranche of his personal text messages with major figures in Silicon Valley last week. He was facing a deposition that Miller said would probably be a very embarrassing one.

The Skinner Box: Why Twitter is Making Sense of Right Ideas and Hateful Persistent Affidity in America

But more than professional utility ties me to the site. Twitter hooks people in much the same way slot machines do, with what experts call an “intermittent reinforcement schedule.” Most of the time, it’s repetitive and uninteresting, but occasionally, at random intervals, some compelling nugget will appear. According to the research done by the behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner, rats and pigeons are good at generating obsessive behavior.

“I don’t know that Twitter engineers ever sat around and said, ‘We are creating a Skinner box,’” said Natasha Dow Schüll, a cultural anthropologist at New York University and author of a book about gambling machine design. She said that is what they have built. It’s one reason people who should know better regularly self-destruct on the site — they can’t stay away.

In the announcement of the deal, he said that free speech was the bedrock of a functioning democracy and that the digital town square was where matters critical to the future of humanity were debated.

But judging from other social-media platforms with loose restrictions on speech, a rise in extremism and misinformation could be bad business for a platform with mainstream appeal such as Twitter, says Piazza. “Those communities degenerate to the point to where they’re not really usable — they’re flooded by bots, pornography, objectionable material,” says Piazza. “People will gravitate to other platforms.”

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.

He wanted to join the board but later backtracked, and said he would like to remove permanent bans only for accounts that advocate violence.

Alex Jones was kicked off for abusive behavior in the year before, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene suspended her account for misleading and false claims about vaccine safety.

Someone urged Musk to hire someone who had a political view and who was culturally literate to lead enforcement. Masters is a Republican Senate candidate in Arizona who is endorsed by Trump and supports false claims that the election was stolen from him.

Facebook Disbandment After Musk Made an Offer to Join the Trust and Safety Commission? Comments on Musk’s Twitter comments on the Tesla CEO’s remarks

The Meta- owned Facebook, which has a ban on the former president, is reconsidering if it will allow him and others to return.

What did you do this week? Musk told Agrawal that he wouldn’t joining the board and would make an offer to buy it.

He has made deep cuts to the company’s trust and safety workforce, including teams focused on non-English languages and state-backed propaganda operations. This week, Twitter disbanded its external Trust and Safety Council, some of whose members had come under online attack after Musk criticized them.

The billionaire has been complaining about the costs of the company being too much and has implied the company is overstaffed for its size.

“The long-term potential for Twitter, in my view, is an order of magnitude greater than its current value,” he said on Tesla’s earnings conference call last week.

He may have little choice but to find other revenue sources besides advertising, given the weakness of the digital ad market and changes he wants to make to content moderation.

Advertisers want to know that their ads will not be associated with things that will turn off potential customers, and that they’re not going to be subsidizing or associations with extremists,” he said.

Kanye West’s decision to leave Twrest for an antisemitic message has the right to express our opinion freely, according to Musk

As always, anyone’s guess as to what he meant. In the summer Musk told staff that the company should have a similar app called “Weiss” so that employees could use it to do things such as shopping, ride-sharing, and more.

Chinese-style super-apps haven’t caught on in the United States despite attempts by other American tech companies.

In her column, the associate professor from the Lawrence Herbert School of Communication at Hofstra University wrote about women and social media. Her book “This Feed Is on Fire: Why Social Media Is Toxic for Women and Girls — In two years, the book “And How We Can Reclaim It” will be published. This commentary is her own and she has the right to make her own opinions. Take a look at CNN’s opinion.

Parler announced on Monday that it is being purchased byKanye West who was temporarily suspended from Twrest for an antisemitic message. A statement from Parler’s parent company announcing the deal described West, who has legally changed his name to Ye, as having taken “a groundbreaking move into the free speech media space” where “he will never have to fear being removed from social media again.”

In a world where conservative opinions are considered controversial we have to make sure we have the right to freely express ourselves according to West.

The Rise and Fall of Twitter: Politics, Safety, and Pseudoscenarios in the Era of Social Media

Just think about the way these people post, with Musk suggesting China control Taiwan and Russia and West releasing a music video featuring Pete Davidson being kidnapped and buried. We should be scared if this is a sign of what social networks will look like in the future.

The issue of how and why Twitter — like other major platforms — limits the reach of certain content has been long been a hot button issue on Capitol Hill and among some prominent social media users, especially conservatives. It’s been said many times that it does not moderate content due to its political leaning, but instead enforces its policies to keep users safe. In an interview with CNN in 2018, founder and then-CEO Jack Dorsey stated that the company does not look at political viewpoint or ideology when selecting content. We look at what’s happening.

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. As Amnesty International and others have found, women of color are most affected. There is a lot of antisemitic content online. A report found that a sample of anti-Jewish posts had been viewed more than seven 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.

Parler is seen as a place where conservatives can flourish, while Truth Social is not likely to attract non-conservatives given it’s association with Trump. If women, people of color and others start fleeing Twitter, that could leave it as a platform for conservatives as well. This would likely make the views of those who remain even more zealous.

On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them and What Can Be Done? CNN’s Frida Ghitis

“When like-minded people get together, they often end up thinking a more extreme version of what they thought before they started to talk to one another,” Harvard University law professor Cass Sunstein writes in “On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, and What Can Be Done.” Sunstein says this happens because their exchanges heighten their preexisting beliefs and make them more confident.

There is a risk that social media will lead to far right and far left wing echo chambers that will create more hate and divide our society.

Even when the owners are sexist, misogynistic, racist or otherwise offensive, we can expect them to use their platforms to amplify their own views.

Former CNN producer and correspondent, Frida Ghitis is a world affairs columnist. She is a weekly opinion contributor to CNN, a columnist for The Washington Post and a columnist for World Politics Review. The opinions expressed in this commentary are of her own. View more opinion on CNN.

If we don’t have to pay attention to the effects of Musk’s actions, we could enjoy the show. But, since he likes weighing in heavily on consequential matters, the rest of the world has to worry about the impact and wonder whose side he’s on. What are the principles – moral, ethical, financial – that drive his rambunctious forays into world affairs?

“He is manipulating the platform to force engagement centered around him and his content,” says Katja Muñoz, research fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations. While Musk’s use of algorithmic heating appears to be driven by insecurity, the fact that he can do it is alarming. “Singular acts are funny,” Muñoz says. I think it’s important to stop and look at the consequences of his actions.

His proposals were supported by the dictators. Musk may operate under the belief that he’s a genius, like some very wealthy men. He combines the thirst for attention with the arrogance of wealth.

A recent peace proposal for Ukraine, offered in a retweeted poll, stood out among his many manic moves. Musk asked his 100 million followers to vote on a plan that looked like it was drafted in the Kremlin, complete with distorted history of Crimea – the Ukrainian territory annexed by Russia in 2014.

It proposed that a referendum be held in Russia-annexed Ukrainian lands, and that they be under the watch of the UN.

There was a further twist to the veryscrutinized message. After US political scientist Ian Bremmer of the Eurasia Group said Musk told him he spoke to Russian President Vladmir Putin before that tweet, Musk denied it.

The most telling assessment of the relationship between Musk and Putin came from a man once at the helm of the US National Security Council.

“Putin,” she told Politico, “plays the egos of big men, gives them a sense that they can play a role. They are direct transmitters of messages from Vladimir Putin.

Putin learned the art of reading and manipulating people while working as a KGB agent. Some images of Putin plying his craft with world leaders – for instance, bringing his black Labrador to a meeting with the reportedly fearful of dogs then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in 2016 – are indelible.

What Does Musk Want to do? A Conversation with Musk about his Space X business, Taiwan, China, and the U.S. Post-Trump World

What’s in it for Musk? A man who turned space flight into a for-profit business is experimenting with a different vehicle. This is an ego trip.

His proposal for resolving hostilities between Beijing and Taipei was revealed during an interview with the Financial Times. Musk suggested that Taiwan might have an arrangement that is more strict than Hong Kong. China, you’ll remember, promised “one country, two systems” for Hong Kong, until it broke its word and crushed Hong Kong’s freedom.

China was very appreciative of the billionaire, just like Russia before it. Taiwan’s Washington envoy had a scathing reply, tweeting: “Taiwan sells many products, but our freedom and democracy are not for sale.”

Perhaps it’s not fair to paint the Tesla tycoon as a friend of dictators. Life is not Twitter, and in the real world the Starlink internet service made by Musk’s SpaceX has been an invaluable tool for Ukrainians fighting Putin’s invasion.

A few days ago, CNN discovered that SpaceX wrote to the Pentagon, requesting it start paying tens of millions of dollars per month or it might stop funding Ukraine’s Starlink.

Musk struck a humanitarian pose and said that even though a good deed is not unpunished, we should still do it.

Despite his shenanigans, he still likes to take himself seriously and thinks big thoughts about important topics. Some of his business ideas and their execution deserve the highest praise.

He claimed he wanted to buy Twitter and put former President Donald Trump back on the platform because he’s a “free speech absolutist.” He lacks a serious understanding of the complicated issues that a major platform has to grapple with when it comes to free speech on social media.

Yildirim said that, unlike Facebook, Twitter has not been good at targeting advertising to what users want to see. She said that Musk’s message suggests he wants to fix it.

Warren, who has clashed with Musk in the past, specifically criticized the fact that the social networking site relies on advertising revenue from its direct competitors.

The Wall Street Journal on Thursday reported that one ad buying agency had already received requests from about a dozen clients to pause their advertisements on Twitter if Musk restores Trump’s account, and other were considering doing the same.

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

It is a reversal of fortunes for Musk, who bought the company for $44 billion, but also for the platform used by many of the world’s most powerful people.

Musk also pledged to “defeat the spam bots or die trying,” referring to the fake and scam accounts that are often especially active in the replies to his tweets and those of others with large followings on the platform.

Donald J. Musk’s Twitter visit to the New York Stock Exchange over the weekend: No public comment on the COVID-19 pandemic

If the parties don’t close the deal by October 28, the trial will have to be held again.

The most recent personnel moves were expected and are probably the first changes that 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. He also attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci, who Musk says will feature in future installments of the Twitter files, with a tweet amplifying a conspiracy theory about the COVID-19 pandemic.

The note is a shift from Musk’s position, which was that the social media site was blocking free speech because it did not want its users to know about it.

But it’s also a realization that having no content moderation is bad for business, putting Twitter at risk of losing advertisers and subscribers, she said.

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

But Musk has been signaling that the deal is going through. He walked into the company’s headquarters in San Francisco carrying a porcelain sink and changed his profile to “chief twit” on the social networking site.

The New York Stock Exchange told investors that it would stop trading in the shares of the company before the opening bell on Friday because they were going to be 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.

The Disruption of Twitter and the Impact on the Information Landscape: The Story of Musk, the Atlantic, and Related Articles (in collaboration with Reliable Sources)

This is what is happening with Musk. Conor Friedersdorf in the Atlantic describes a “dysfunctional relationship between Twitter’s new owner and so many of the journalists who cover him … where the least defensible statements and claims on all sides are relentlessly amplified in a never-ending cycle that predictably fuels disdain and negative polarization.”

The first version of this article was in theReliable Sources newsletter. Sign up here for the daily digest chronicling the evolving media landscape.

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

The business story might be about charging for verified badges. The move will have an impact on the information landscape. Most notably, it will make it much more difficult for users to distinguish from authentic and inauthentic accounts.

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

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 Twitter Town Square: The Digital Town Square where Elon Musk once threatened to free a bird, and when Twitter shut down his name, Jay Sullivan and Nick Caldwell

Nick Caldwell, general manager of core technology, has changed his Twitter bio to “former Twitter Exec,” and Jay Sullivan, general manager of consumer and revenue products, removed the company and his title from his Twitter bio. The New York Times also reported Tuesday that Chief Marketing Officer Leslie Berland had left the company; on Tuesday night she tweeted a single blue heart.

Two individuals with expertise incryptocurrencies and Twitter’s consumer team lead have confirmed that they’re collaborating with Musk to manage the company and develop new products.

Calacanis earlier this week tweeted that he was in New York on behalf of Twitter meeting with “the marketing and advertising community.” He has also tweeted questions to Twitter users about the platform’s subscription and bookmark features.

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.

Felix Ndahinda was aware of a threat when billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk said last week that he’d free the bird.

Ndahinda is an international law and peace consultant who works in the Dutch city of Tilburg. He has already seen what a ‘free’ Twitter can do. He has been watching the hate speech on social-media over the last few years. Much of that speech has gone undetected because it is only found in languages that are not built into the platform’s screening tools.

The bans raise a number of questions about the future of the platform, which has been referred to as a digital town square. The question was raised about Musk’s commitment to free speech.

Twitter had said it would at least temporarily suspend accounts that include the banned websites in their profile — a practice so widespread it would have been difficult to enforce the restrictions on Twitter’s millions of users around the world. The company said that attempts to circumvent the ban by spelling out “Ipsy dot com” could have led to a suspension.

This is where false narratives start, says Stringhini. When those narratives creep onto mainstream platforms such as Twitter or Facebook, they explode. They go out of control when they are pushed on tweet because everybody is looking at them.

James Piazza, who is studying terrorism at Pennsylvania State University, says that he gets scared when people use inflammatory speech on social media. “That’s the situation where you can have more violence.”

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

The Covid Plandemic, Where I Wanna Be? When I Got There, I Had to Get Out. But I Couldn’t Get Stopped

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

“Hi. Your profile is funny. I love funny guys,” Schumer, dressed in a red dress, said as the bot. I was told that I was a bot. I’m all woman and I love funny guys like you. There is a website where I and some other girls hang out.

Donald Trump was the most notable person to speak in front of the council. 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’s 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.”

Why he didn’t ban his private jet, which was banned on Twitter, in response to Twitter blue with verification, and when it will go live

The account that followed Musk’s private jet was permanently banned on Wednesday, despite the social media company owner promising last month that he would not ban the account.

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 the content moderators were let go? She set up an account last week on Mastodon and joked about it afterward.

The actor used the screen name of Musk before changing it back to her real name. “Okey-dokey.” I’ve had fun and I think I made my point,” she tweeted afterwards.

Musk claims that the verified accounts are a way of democratizing the service. On Saturday, a Twitter update for iOS devices listed on Apple’s app store said users who “sign up now” for the new “Twitter Blue with verification” can get the blue check next to their names “just like the celebrities, companies and politicians you already follow.”

It said that services would be available in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.K. However, it was not available Sunday and there was no indication when it would go live. A Twitter employ, Esther Crawford, told The Associated Press it is coming “soon but it hasn’t launched yet.”

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.

Twitter defended Roth at the time, saying, “No one person at Twitter is responsible for our policies or enforcement actions, and it’s unfortunate to see individual employees targeted for company decisions.”

For Perez, the matter at hand isn’t simply the job losses that have decimated his former coworkers, nor the ability for people to say what they want on Twitter. It’s about upholding and protecting democracy. “It’s not entirely clear to me—particularly in the political context—that Elon Musk fully understands the degree of social responsibility that rests on his shoulders, and the very real harm, political harm, political violence, and division that can come from social media platforms.”

The drama surrounding corporate takeover is taking all the oxygen out of the room according to Perez, who is a board member at the OSET Institute. He asserts that the focus on the Musk psychodrama might make it hard to pay attention to election-related issues.

“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.

Tuning in on Tiny Talk Town: The Case for Elon Musk and the Pedestrian’s New Twitter (and Why You Might Need It)

The group of people are the power behind the account. Heavy users who use the English language account for less than 10% of all monthly users, but generate 90 percent of all revenue, according to internal company research.

In the past, Twitter had required the removal of violative tweets for users to regain access to their accounts, but the journalists in this case strongly dispute that their posts violated Twitter rules.

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

In the workplace, quiet quitting is rejecting the burden of going above and beyond, no longer working overtime in a way that enriches your employer but depletes your own metaphorical coffers. It’s about not giving more to a platform than is necessary to get back on it. If you want to stick around on this new Twitter—whatever it may become—you need to find a way to use it without it using you.

It would be easy for a person with a lot of followers to mistake their own experience for that of other people, because active users are noisy. Same goes for reporters. In reality, nearly half of Twitter users tweet less than five times a month, and most of their posts are replies, not original tweets. They check in on the news and live events and then they get on with their lives. They’re “lurkers.”

During the early days of the Covid pandemic, when people found themselves stuck at home and not able to find out what was happening on social media, rending is a practice that took hold. Being able to sit and observe is a simple way of dealing with the complexity and chaos of New Twitter. Then close your browser or app and check in on Elon Musk’s new toy. Don’t send a retweet, then disengage. Keep one eye on it during basketball games. Direct the message threads away from you if you have to. Save your most original thoughts for another place.

In the past week alone, one of the world’s most influential social networks has laid off half its workforce; alienated powerful advertisers; blown up key aspects of its product, then repeatedly launched and un-launched other features aimed at compensating for it; and witnessed an exodus of senior executives.

Trump is not the only politician out there, but Musk is the man to keep the public informed on social media (Reply to Musk on Twitter)

The option to sign up for a paid subscription was taken away from the platform only two days after its launch, and only on the last day of the week. It was unclear when the company would restore the offering.

After the gray badges went live on Wednesday as a way to differentiate legitimate celebrity and branded accounts from accounts that merely paid for a blue check mark, Musk canceled the feature and forced subordinates to explain the reversal.

The next day, the account said they had changed their name to an “OFFICIAL” label to combat impersonation.

The paid verification feature’s rocky rollout attracted widespread criticism from misinformation experts who had warned it would make identifying trustworthy information much more difficult, particularly in the critical period following the US midterm elections. Some high-powered users of the platform had a hard time getting feedback.

From one businessman to another, for when you have customer service hat on. Mark Cuban said that he spent a lot of time muting all of the new checkmark mentions to make them useful again.

Musk implored brands to continue using the service in an event held for advertisers this week. Musk wanted to seem magnanimous in asking for responsibility for the company’s performance.

The company is facing billions in potential fines from the FTC, for privacy missteps dating to before Musk’s ownership. The resignations of the company’s chief information security officer and chiefprivacy officer could expose it even further to the FTC’s scrutiny.

These thread are known as the “Twitter Files” because of the bombshell revelations that prove that conservative were muzzled because of their political views. Republicans have a claim that social media companies censor them despite the fact that there is ample evidence to the contrary. Twitter’s internal researchers, for example, have found its algorithms favor right-leaning political content.

The move from Musk came after he posted an unscientific poll on his personal Twitter account that concluded Friday night with 59% of participants voting in favor of immediately restoring the accounts.

The poll had 72.4% of the votes in favor of the proposition and 27.6% against. The poll garnered more than 3 million votes on Twitter.

The Twitter Files, Part Duex!: Musk’s Attempt to Disturbate Social Media from the Establishment of a Content Moderation Council

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 a group of people were involved in Musk’s replatforming decisions. Musk used the Latin words for ” voice of the people is the voice of god” after restoring 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.

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 going after an issue that has become a rallying cry among some conservatives who claim the social network has suppressed or banned their content.

A software update that will show your true account status will be forthcoming, according to Musk. He did not give any more details or a timetable.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonprofit that focuses on privacy and free expression, says Musk is responding to events that affect him personally to change the policy on the platform. It is being carried out in a way that is self-centered. Musk has announced new policies on live location sharing and privacy that appear designed largely to help himself, not to protect its users.

The second set of the so-called Twitter Files, shared by journalist Bari Weiss on Twitter, focused on how the company has restricted the reach of certain accounts, tweets or topics that it deems potentially harmful, including by limiting their ability to appear in the search or trending sections of the platform.

The documents appear to have been provided to the journalists by Musk’s team. Musk on Friday shared Weiss’ thread in a tweet and added, “The Twitter Files, Part Duex!!” Along with a couple of popcorn emojis.

Right Leaning Figures and Twitter Files: Why the Newsrooms aren’t Covering Right-Wing Particles

Weiss offered several examples of right leaning figures who had moderation actions taken against them, but it is not clear if they were equally taken against left leaning or other accounts.

A person told CNN that the former head of trust and safety has left his home because of threats made against him by Musk.

Roth’s position involved him working on sensitive issues including the suspension of then-President Donald Trump’s account in 2021. Weiss said he posted a series of files on Monday showing internal discussions about banning the account of the president, with some of the employees questioning if it was in violation of the platform’s policies.

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

“We’ve all made some questionable tweets, me more than most, but I want to be clear that I support Yoel. Musk claims that he has integrity and we are all entitled to our political beliefs.

The establishment press has less interest in the documents itself, with most news organizations ignoring various entries in the continuing series The mainstream press is made up of left-wing hacks who want to hide the truth, which is why the right-wing media is pushing the story.

Gerard Baker, the conservative former top editor of The Wall Street Journal, wrote Monday: “The Twitter Files tell us nothing new. There’s no shocking revelation in there about government censorship or covert manipulation by political campaigns. They merely bring to the surface the internal deliberations of a company dealing with complex issues in ways consistent with its values.”

It can be very difficult to make sense of what is happening. And the solution isn’t so clear. If newsrooms covered each story, they risked giving air to the storyline that has been framed by Musk as he wages an information war. He can define it in the public square if he doesn’t dissection each drop.

Around the time Trump was inaugurated in 2017, I said to colleagues in the newsroom where I worked at the time that we shouldn’t cover everything he said or tweeted. Previously, a president’s every word was assumed to be a carefully chosen signal of future policy, and was reported as such. Many things were said to get a rise out of people by Trump. Reporting on them, I argued, just fed the flames. Another editor pushed back. He said that the president is the one. “What he says is news.”

We saw a lot of rapid-response news stories about Musk, as well as a dig at the government’s former chief infectious disease expert, on December 11. Here’s another bunch about the picture of his bedside table with two replica guns on it, and some more about his tweeting a far-right Pepe the Frog meme.

This is precisely the way coverage of Trump worked. The liberal-leaning media were often drawn to stories confirming the belief that a person so clearly unfit to be president would only succeed in bringing himself (or the country) down in flames, while the right-wing media treated his evident egomania, corruption, and lack of interest in grasping basic policy issues or actually doing the job as at best irrelevant and at worst essential qualities for reforming Washington. There was plenty of good reporting going on at the same time, but these polarizing accounts tended to dominate the conversation. The losers were the public, whose understanding of what was actually happening across the country was forced through incompatible narratives around the behavior of one unhinged man in the White House.

The Twitter Files: a troubling tale of private information from the age of the Bidens: Hunter’s son, Jeremiah, and the NY Post

Many conservatives and Musk fans think that the existence of internal discussions is a smoking gun. The fact that many mainstream outlets are steering clear of covering the Twitter Files without a large degree of skepticism is only fueling righteous indignation.

“What is really coming through in the Twitter Files for me is: people who are confronting high-stakes, unanticipated events and trying to figure out what policies apply and how,” said Renée DiResta, research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, who studies how narratives spread on social networks.

They show Twitter executives and rank and file employees grappling with difficult tradeoffs, questioning the company’s rules and how they should be applied – and in some cases, getting things wrong.

The selection of Taibbi and Weiss, who both share Musk’s criticisms of the mainstream media, has 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.

The Twitter Files might not be the bombshell Musk teased in popcorn emoji laden tweets – but they offer an illuminating glimpse into the sausage-making of content moderation.

Take Twitter’s decision right before the 2020 presidential election to briefly block users from sharing a New York Post story alleging shady business dealings by then-candidate Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, in Ukraine.

The article was based on files from Hunter Biden’s laptop, which the Post said it got from Trump’s private attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon. It was not clear at the time if that material was legit. After being burned by the Russian hack and leak of Democratic National Committee emails in 2016, tech companies were on edge over the possibility of a repeat – and so Twitter decided to restrict the Post story.

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.” It also suspended the New York Post’s own Twitter account until it deleted its tweets about the story. It was alarmed by the article but didn’t go that far. It allowed the link to be posted, but limited distribution of those posts while its outside fact-checkers reviewed the claims.)

The backlash was huge across the political spectrum. The company was slammed for taking a heavy-handed approach to a story that, while controversial, was being reported by a major news outlet, and for offering little justification for its decision. Twitter changed its policies after reversing the block. Jack said the company had made a mistake.

There is no proof that the New York Post story was blocked because of government involvement.

“Everyone acted according to the very best information at the time, and I continue to believe there was no ill intent or hidden agendas,” he wrote. “Of course mistakes were made.”

He said he wished the internal files had been “released Wikileaks-style, with many more eyes and interpretations to consider.” There’s nothing to hide and a lot to learn from.

Elon Musk is Using the Twitter Files to Discredit Foes and Push Conspiracy Theorems to Make the Social Media Company Safe

DiResta said there’s good reason to demand more insight into how social media companies operate. She said that often the decisions are inscrutable. The question of how they’re moderated and designed is important as these platforms shape public opinion.

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

To better understand the decision to ban Trump, for example, it would help to see discussions around the accounts of other world leaders who have not been kicked off the platform, she said.

“There’s value 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.

A research scientist at the University of Washington’s center for informed public said that framing disclosures as secret knowledge is a good way to get the word out.

He made threats against both men. A person with knowledge of the situation says thatRoth and his family were forced to flee their home.

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

The Trust and Safety Council member, who requested anonymity due to concerns of backlash, said that the willingness of the CEO to target those who work to keep the platform safe is creating a chilling effect.

Musk has successfully hijacked the conversation with his gleeful and colorful messages about company’s former employees.

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

Twitter Bans on Whereabouts of the Musk Boson: Breaking Free Speech in the Era of Twitter-Supported Jet Tracking

“It’s being processed in such a way that we can’t see how the last regime will be changed but we can see how things will be done differently in the future,” DiResta said.

Sweeney woke up Wednesday morning to a message from Twitter informing him @ElonJet had been permanently suspended. Later in the day his personal account and other jet-tracking accounts he ran were also shut down by the company.

The billionaire then offered Sweeney $5,000 to shut down the account. In an email, Sweeney raised the offer to $50,000, writing that it would allow him to get a car if he wanted it. After some back and forth, Musk said that he doesn’t feel right to shut this down.

Sweeney said he setup @ElonJet initially because he was a Musk fan. “It gives you just another view that a lot of people don’t know about where [Musk] is going and might give you clues into what new business is going on,” he said.

Sweeney said he received an email from an anonymous person purporting to be a Twitter employee that included a screenshot showing an internal company message from Ella Irwin, Twitter’s new head of trust and safety, asking staff to “apple heavy VF to @elonjet immediately.”

In a statement to NPR, the head of Trust and Safety at Twitter stated that sharing people’s real-time location information is now a violation of its policies.

Musk falsely claimed that the journalists had violated his new “doxxing” policy by sharing his live location, amounting to what he described as “assassination coordinates.” Donie O’ Sullivan did not report on the billionaire’s location.

Asked if he planned to comply with the new policy, Sweeney told CNN he would begin delaying posting the whereabouts of Musk’s jet for 24 hours, “but just on Twitter.”

The journalists all have the same goal: to report aggressively on the billionaire, and to criticize him in commentary. It’s without question that these bans will serve to chill free speech, not only for those who report on Twitter, but also for those who report on Musk’s other companies, such as Tesla and SpaceX.

Doxxing refers to the practice of sharing someone’s home address or other personal information online. The account that was banned used public flight data to track Musk’s jet.

The Free Press (The Free Press) Problem: The Twitter Account Suspensions of Ryan Mac, The New York Times and the Free Press

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

A majority of consumers are going to stop supporting Mr. Musk/TSLA if journalists are not free to speak their minds in an environment where they think free speech is at risk.

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

The changes came after Musk reinstated previous Twitter rule-breakers and stopped enforcing the platform’s policies prohibiting Covid-19 misinformation.

The furor over the account suspensions unfolded with some people reporting that the platform started intervening when they tried to post links to their own profiles on other social networks.

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

A senior counsel at Free Press said suspending journalists for seemingly personal animus was a dangerous precedent.

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

The foreign ministry of Germany said on Friday that freedom of the press cannot be turned on and off. They are no longer able to follow us, to comment or criticize. We have a problem with that @Twitter.”

“The EU’s Digital Services Act requires respect of media freedom and fundamental rights. Jourov said that Musk should be aware of that, as reinforced by our #MediaFreedomAct.

In November, Musk was warned by an EU official that the social media platform had to take steps to comply with the bloc’s content moderation laws.

The bans also raise a number of serious questions about the future of the free press on Twitter, a platform that has been referred to as a digital town square. Will news and media organizations stay on the platform after Musk bans their reporters? Will they pull their reporters? Their content? And what will major advertisers such as Apple and Amazon do?

Sally Buzbee said that Drew Harwell was thrown out of the Washington Post after the publication of accurate reporting about Musk.

While Weiss interpreted the reluctance to use such measures against other world leaders as evidence that Trump was treated unfairly, the documents may also show the opposite; that the company underestimated the danger it posed for American democracy and only acted against threats to American democracy. If Twitter had implemented its rules uniformly across the world, Trump’s ban would have extended to other leaders, too.

A person at the organization that was involved in the trust and safety council of the company says that vulnerable communities in far away countries are not as important as the relationships they have with leaders. The employee asked not to be named because they were worried their organization would be targeted by harassment and threats.

Some of this discrepancy may come down to how different governments react to moderation by social platforms. After Twitter removed Buhari’s threatening tweet against Biafran separatists, the company was slapped with a ban. The company negotiated with the government to be back in business by agreeing to open a local office, pay taxes, and register as a broadcaster, among other things. Nigeria is now considering legislation to regulate platforms.

The Twitter Hate Game: A Critique of Musk and the Truth about Open Government Crime and Trade-offs between Democracy and Tech Laws

Kian Vesteinsson, Senior Research analyst for tech and democracy at Freedom House, says access to markets is one of the calculations that goes into the trade-off about whether to take enforcement actions.

A town square that is healthy should also have reliable information in it. But researchers at Tufts University recently found that tweets refuting hate and misinformation were “an order of magnitude greater” on Twitter before Musk took over.

Musk’s power moves are a little too dangerous. Tech workers who are recently unemployed and journalism workers who are recently hired can work together to create healthy online spaces. We have nothing to lose except our dependence on a mercurial, egotistical czar to set the terms of our public debates.

Most of the accounts came back on Saturday. Business Insider’s Linette Lopez was suspended after the other journalists, also with no explanation, she said.

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.”

Dujarric, Binder, O’Sullivan, Mashable and Spaces: What do journalists really need to know about Musk’s social media suspensions?

Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for the UN, said the move sets “a dangerous precedent at a time when journalists all over the world are facing censorship, threats and even worse.”

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.

A statement from the Los Angeles Police Department sent to multiple media outlets, including the AP, was about how it had communicated with Musk’s representatives after 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 said he would suppress hate and Negative thoughts by denying accounts of freedom of reach.

She said the old regime at Twitter was governed by its own biases and that it looks like the new regime has 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.

“We all know about news onTwitter and to now go after journalists, who really saws at the main tent pole of it,” he said. It’s the biggest self-imposed wound that I can think of.

The suspensions may be the biggest red flag yet for advertisers, Paskalis said, some of which had already cut their spending on Twitter over uncertainty about the direction Musk is taking the platform.

Musk’s sudden departure from the session hosted by a journalist after being questioned about the ousting of the reporters caused the conference chat to fall down. Musk later tweeted that Spaces had been taken offline to deal with a “Legacy bug.” Spaces was back late Friday.

The Twitter Bias in the Light of Musk’s Tweet-Policy Discontinuation: Comment on a Blog Post by Rochko

Twitter rival Mastodon has grown eight times its size in a matter of weeks, going from approximately 300,000 users in October to 2.5 million in November, according to a blog post by the platform’s founder, Eugen Rochko.

Musk had on Thursday banned CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, The New York Times’ Ryan Mac, and The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell. Independent progressive journalist Aaron Rupar, former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, and Insider columnist Linette Lopez were also banned.

Musk promised torestore the accounts he wrongly accused of sharing his location after a Friday night poll that showed people were against him.

O’Sullivan and Harwell both told CNN on Saturday morning that they had not agreed to delete the tweets and instead selected an option to appeal the decision.

Rupar told CNN that he had ultimately decided to simply remove the tweet and move on from the episode, though he described the whole affair as “kinda [sic] absurd obviously.”

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

The billionaire took to his platform Sunday to ask if he should step down from his job as head of the social networking site. I will abide by the results of this poll.”

The MIT artificial intelligence researcher said Sunday he would take the CEO job but Musk didn’t seem happy with his new job.

After much criticism, Musk promised not to make any more changes without an online survey of users.

There is an inherent conflict between Musk’s desire to create content on the platform and his ownership of the company that runs it as well as his commercial pressures and his ownership of a global public square.

Mainstream websites such as Facebook andInstagram, as well as upstarts Mastodon, Tribel, Nostra, Post and Donald Trump’s Truth Social, were banned. The seven websites that were included on the blacklist were not the ones that were featured on Parler, TikTok or LinkedIn.

Others who had backed Musk’s bid for Twitter appeared frustrated at the decision. Venture capitalist Paul Graham wrote of the policy, “This is the last straw. I give up.

The court questioned Musk about how he splits up his time among companies, including Musk’s own. Musk had to testify in Delaware’s Court of Chancery over a shareholder’s challenge to Musk’s potentially $55 billion compensation plan as CEO of the electric car company.

In public banter with his followers, Musk expressed pessimism about the future of a company that had been in the fast lane to bankruptcy.

In a letter to Tesla

            (TSLA) Chair Robyn Denholm, the Massachusetts Democrat argued Tesla

            (TSLA) shareholders may be hurt by its CEO’s ownership of Tesla

            (TSLA) and questioned whether the electric car maker’s board is doing enough to address the issues it poses.

Since Musk disclosed in early April that he had taken a major stake in Twitter, the Tesla’s shares have plunged by about 58%, a selloff that has erased nearly $800 billion of market value. Musk, who recently lost his status as the world’s richest person, has repeatedly unloaded Tesla shares in recent months, including another $3.6 billion worth earlier this month.

The board must respond to a series of questions by January 3 if they are to fulfill their legal obligations.

Rusch added that Musk’s behavior over the past few months as “chief Twit” has created “brand public backlash” that could tarnish Tesla’s brand image — particularly with key consumer groups.

Ross Gerber, a shareholder in both Twitter and Tesla, said over the weekend that he hopes Musk finds a CEO for Twitter during the first quarter of 2023.

Given Musk’s propensity for tweeting, and his rapid decisions after previous polls, many expected he would have addressed the elephant in the room by now. But he didn’t. In fact, Musk spent most of Monday conspicuously quiet, refraining from tweeting for a remarkable 18-hour period.

The Evil Billionaire Attack: How a Bad App can Save You from the Mistakes It Takes to People’s Eyes

In the field of information security, there’s a kind of vulnerability known as the evil maid attack whereby an untrusted party gains physical access to important hardware, such as the housekeeping staff coming into your hotel room when you’ve left your laptop unattended, thereby compromising it. We have a newAnalog which is capable of messing with systems and leaking data. Call it the “evil billionaire attack” if you’d like. The weapon is money, and more specifically, the likelihood that when the moment arrives you won’t have enough of it to make a difference. The call is coming from inside the house.

The reason this strategy works is that most ideas of any consequence are owned by people with more money than you, and then whenever possible they string them together into a network with the specific intent of making the gravity inescapable. Founders and investors and excitable technology writers like myself frequently use the term “platform” to describe technical systems with granular components that can be used to compose new functionality, and the power sources propelling the technology industry find platforms particularly appealing when the bits can be monetized each time they are used.

It’s believed that a platform is better than an app for two reasons: you can use it to build multiple apps, and other developers and companies can build their own apps from which you can take a 30 percent cut. The downfall of the proprietary platform should serve as a cautionary tale for anyone hoping to build a platform that is strong enough to be trusted. The overly conservative approach to intellectual property that makes things proprietary is a liability that compromises everything a company might create because it gives billionaires the power to kill them. Whether or not he actually destroys it, Musk’s takeover of Twitter is a case study in how to destroy something, a model for the next billionaire who fancies a social media empire. Our communication channel for the next vaccine we might need is now at risk.

The problem is fought on the deepest level possible. Musk would not be able to kill off the network if a few users objected. The risk of losing access to a computer because of Duplicating is infinite. This comes with different complications, of course, but losing information outright due to a hostile party is not one of them. A new version of the marketplace was launched after Hic et Nunc went under. The block chain is used to force interoperability, almost like organic self-defense.

What Should the Mastodon CEO (and Other Bloggers) Tell Us About Covid-19, Social Lobbyists, and the CEO of Twitter

We are very excited to see Mastodon grow into a household name in newsrooms around the world and we are committed to continuing to improve our software to face up to the rapid growth and increasing demand that comes with it.

As of Tuesday morning, Mastodon’s app stood at number 8 among free social networking apps on the Google Play Store and at number 11 in the social networking category on Apple’s app store. Mastodon is a decentralized social network, meaning there are also many third-party apps for it beyond its own.

In the blog post, which reflect the Mastodon founder’s first remarks since the link ban, Rochko highlighted Musk’s significant power as owner and CEO of Twitter.

“This is a stark reminder that centralized platforms can impose arbitrary and unfair limits on what you can and can’t say while holding your social graph hostage,” Rochko wrote.

Free Press agrees that Musk needs to step aside. This social media platform can only succeed if it puts the health and safety of its users before the whims of one reckless billionaire, and that’s what his replacement as CEO needs to be.

Neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin, right-wing Activist Laura Loomer and other figures who have spread hate to millions of followers can return to activity now that he has given them an opportunity to do so.

The potential new leadership of the social network should reverse their decision to allow Covid-19 misinformation to spread across the network. They need to retire Twitter’s pay-to-play blue checkmark feature, which allows verified users to post longer videos and have their content prioritized at the top of replies, mentions and searches. And they must cease Musk’s “general amnesty” plan on accounts that were suspended before he took over.

It isn’t clear how he would restrict voting to only those that pay for the service, but it could reduce the number of users that vote in polls. It would make it harder for people who pay for Blue to vote because they would get less of a say in the matter. Musk’s Monday tweet immediately prompted comparisons to poll taxes.

Over a matter of days, Twitter launched, and then was forced to un-launch, a paid verification feature that was instantly manipulated by satirical accounts impersonating verified major brands, athletes and other public figures on the platform.

Twitter announced a new policy on Sunday that took many users aback: It said tweets including links to other social media sites would no longer be allowed, calling such posts “free promotion.”

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?

I have a lot of creatives and journalists as well as a lot of tech workers. When I woke up on Sunday to the news, it was delivered to me by tweets from artists terrified they’d be banned from Twitter for linking to their own portfolios and to platforms where they accept commissions for their artwork. I’ve read horror stories of authors who were terrified because their publishers asked them to create Link Tree accounts in order to promote their books, reviews, and Goodreads profiles on social media.

This is what we are talking about when we talk about platforms and power. Any steward of any platform, whether it is a founder, CEO, or middle manager, has an unskilled job of setting and enforcing policies for the platform’s safe and legal use. That’s not in question. Without such rules, online spaces can go bad fast. 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 streamers were worried that they wouldn’t have enough time to announce their new stream or add a link to their account, and so they paused their streams to talk about the news. I think they created a chance for people who need it the most, to lose their income because of policy decisions. People in Silicon Valley claim that the creators have a kind of entrepreneurial spirit that they want to foster and empower.

After Sarah Oh lost her job as a human rights advisor at Twitter late last year in the first round of layoffs following Elon Musk’s chaotic acquisition of the company, she decided to join a friend in building a rival service.

T2 was launched by Gabor Cselle, who worked at a number of tech companies. It offers a social feed with 280-character limits. Oh claims that the key selling point is its focus on safety.

With that in mind, Oh told CNN that they are well positioned to deliver on their goal of creating an experience that allows people to share what they want to share without fearing abuse and harassment.

Distinguishing Chinese Disinformation from Twitter with Artificial Intelligence-powered News Feeds: A Case Study of Artifact, T2 and Musk

Some of the new entrants in the markets include a startup backed by Musk, an app created by former Twitter employees, and a service from the man who once ran the social network. While some apps like T2 strongly resemble Twitter, others take a different approach.

Last month, for example, the founders of Instagram announced Artifact, “a personalized news feed” powered by artificial intelligence, a description that quickly earned it comparisons to Twitter. The CNN app looked similar to news reader apps like Apple News and the doomed Google Reader in the test. Artifact displayed popular articles from large media organizations and smaller bloggers in a main feed, tailored to users based on their activity and selected interests.

All of the apps are vying to take the opportunity to scratch the itch that users might feel for a news feed that is not social media.

One of the things we hear from people who are moving over from Twitter is that they want a nicer experience, said the co- founder of Anti Software Software club. The service launched publicly in June of last year, after Musk offered to buy Twitter. In November, after Musk completed the takeover, the platform saw a surge in activity, adding 80,000 users within 48 hours.

Kaplan said that people have referred to them when they are aTwitter alternative, and that it was important to distinguish it from a replacement for the social network.

The systems were regularly monitored and addressed when there were mistakes. The team that cleaned upspam and had about 50 people at its peak, but was cut to single digits in recent layoffs and departures, was a third of the size in Asia. The head of the division for the Asia-Pacific region was laid off, as well as the Chinese activist accounts. People said that the resources for moderation for Chinese-language posts have been slashed.

So when some Twitter systems recently failed to differentiate between a Chinese disinformation campaign and genuine accounts, that led to some accounts of Chinese activists and dissidents being difficult to find, the people said.

The manager of the bestofdyingtwit account, which has been following the platform since Mr. Musk took the helm, said that it was difficult to be a user nowadays. She said she also has had difficulty seeing tweets from people she follows, with notifications “either delayed or sent twice,” and direct messages becoming cluttered with “so much spam.”

Non-English language moderation has been a particular challenge for American social media companies, which often do not have enough staff in those areas and rely on imperfect machine translations, said Gabriel Nicholas, a research fellow at the Center for Democracy & Technology who studies content moderation and disinformation on social media.

Elon Musk, the CEO of Twitter, has tweeted out about his support for the Philadelphia Eagles and the Eagles in the aftermath of his defeat to the Kansas City Chiefs

“We are debugging an issue with engagement across the platform,” wrote Musk, a cousin of the Twitter CEO, tagging “@here” in Slack to ensure that anyone online would see it. Anyone who knows how to make dashboards or write software can help solve the problem. This is high urgency. If you are willing to help out please thumbs up this post.”

When bleary-eyed engineers began to log onto their laptops, it was clear that the nature of the emergency was Musk’s less engagement than Biden’s.

Biden’s tweet, in which he said he would be supporting his wife in rooting for the Philadelphia Eagles, generated nearly 29 million impressions. Musk’s support for the Eagles made him a hit with 9.2 million impressions before he deleted his message.

In the wake of those losses — the Eagles to the Kansas City Chiefs, and Musk to the president of the United States — Twitter’s CEO flew his private jet back to the Bay Area on Sunday night to demand answers from his team.

Internally, this is called a “power user multiplier,” although it only applies to Elon Musk, we’re told. The code allows Musk to take advantage of the fact that he doesn’t have to use a single account to flood the feed.

That explains why people opening the app Monday found that Musk dominated the feed, with a dozen or more Musk tweets and replies visible to anyone who followed him and millions more who did not. Over 90 percent of Musk’s followers now see his tweets, according to one internal estimate.

Some of his tweets Monday were sent while he was on calls with Twitter engineers, to test out whether the solutions they’d designed were working as well as he thought they should.

Musk suggested the changes would be walked back, at least in part, after they caused an uproar. We have to make changes while we are there. “algorithm,” he tweeted.

The artificial boosts applied to his account remain in place, although the factor is now lower than 1,000, we’re told. Tuesday was a good day for Musk as his handful of postings reported 43 million impressions, which is the highest of his recent average.

Even though Musk’s antics are Absurd, they do highlight a tension that has been familiar to most users of social networks: why are some posts more popular than others? Why am I not seeing that one?

Engineers for services like TikTok and Instagram can offer partial, high-level answers to these questions. But ranking algorithms make predictions based on hundreds or thousands of signals, and deliver posts to millions of users, making it almost impossible for anyone to say with any degree of accuracy who sees what.

The most obvious reason for this discrepancy is that people think some tweets are better than others. But it doesn’t have to work like that: you could also change the ranking algorithms so that they show your posts no matter what.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/14/23600358/elon-musk-tweets-algorithm-changes-twitter

The Modi documentary: Why a CEO might not want to change the public opinion on a social media platform that’s not a business owner

“He bought the company, made a point of showcasing what he believed was broken and manipulated under previous management, then turns around and manipulates the platform to force engagement on all users to hear only his voice,” said a current employee. I do not think we can believe that he actually wants what’s best for everyone here.

Politicians and researchers working on integrity of civic spaces have been warning about the risks of social media platforms being used by their owners to change public opinion. On TikTok, the reported existence of a secret “heating button,” which allows the company to boost content delivered via its For you algorithm, was greeted with breathless reporting that it could be used to promote Chinese interests in the West. Fears of the Chinese government using the app to gather user data have led to calls to ban it in the United States and the United Kingdom.

The Modi documentary speaks to Muoz’s assumption of his reliance on foreign investment and his dependence on raw materials. “It is highly unlikely that we will ever get hard evidence on whom Musk talks to or whether he is asked to do something, but looking at the visibility and engagement on, or lack of, topics might hint at these dynamics.”