Elon's Twitter

[RoseMorninStar]

Musk ran another poll, the result of which, he says, is that all banned accounts except for those shut down for a few specific reasons (including legal violations) will be restored. That probably means a lot of racist former posters will be returning.

*Musk wrote "Vox populi, vox Dei" -- Latin for "The voice of the people is the voice of God" -- when announcing the results of both this poll and the one that restored Donald Trump's account. In response, someone pointed out that the Latin phrase may be best known for its use in this statement: "Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, Vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit," which Wikipedia translates as "And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness." The source may be familiar to some Tolkien fans: it's an eighth century letter to Charlemagne from the English priest and scholar Alcuin, whose scornful comments on the legendary northern hero Ingeld have been cited by many Tolkien scholars and indeed by Tolkien himself in his writings on Beowulf.

*My bolding.
Fascinating. It's interesting how such things are used. And twisted. It seems the wheels are going to come off the cart before too long. Half of the top 100 advertisers on Twitter have pulled out.

[N.E. Brigand]

Back in 2018, a conservative media company named Sinclair, which owns hundreds of local television and radio stations around the country, including not only Fox affiliates but also stations that broadcast ABC, CBS, and NBC content, forced its local TV news staff to all read from the same script denouncing "the troubling trend of irresponsible, one-sided news stories plaguing our country." This was widely understood to have been done in support of President Trump -- and Trump himself praised Sinclair a few days later for pushing back against the "Fake News Networks."

Then someone had the clever idea of splicing together all the clips so that people could see how Sinclair was propagandizing the country.



(I think that clip may have been shared here before, but haven't found it yet. I'm also not sure whether or not Deadspin was the original source.)

The message in itself is not wrong in the abstract: propaganda is, as the speakers in the clip says, "dangerous to our democracy." It all comes down to what is propaganda and what is truth -- and what the spliced clip shows is that this message itself was propaganda. I do hope all those news anchors were at least roundly shamed by their friends and family for participating in that nasty little exercise.

Now it's back. Yesterday, Elon Musk asked a question on his Twitter feed: "What do you think of the culture war?" Someone responded by sharing that clip, but presented it as an explanation of "why nobody trusts the mainstream media," i.e., as an example of liberal bias -- and while some people recognized it for what it really was, many people in response believed this new interpretation: that it shows the media is biased against conservatives.

And if you scroll far enough down in the replies, you'll see that one of those misguided people is Musk himself.

[N.E. Brigand]

I believe to see these Twitter results manipulated by the Chinese government, you have to search using Chinese characters.

Twitter used to have a team that would respond to this sort of thing.

[N.E. Brigand]

A number of Elon Musk's supporters seem to believe that child pornography was formerly rampant on Twitter and that Musk has eliminated that problem since he purchased the company.* If Musk's fans were regularly encountering child porn, that may say more about their browsing habits than about Twitter's policies.

This comes as Musk complains about what appears to be an annoying but routine moderation request from Apple and other app stores. As Josh Marshall notes at that link, Twitter's former chief safety officer wrote last week in an op-ed that such requests from app stores would regularly cause Twitter weeks of heartache as they struggled to adjust their moderation policies to satisfy these important customers' concerns.

It's probably not helping Twitter and its claims of brand safety that Musk has been sharing memes of the alt-right (a Pepe the Frog image posted today) or even Nazis (coyly joking with white supremacist accounts over the weekend about the numbers 14 and 88). Companies don't want their ads appearing next to that kind of stuff.

*Edited to add: Musk himself wants people to believe this nonsense:

[RoseMorninStar]

Twitter owner Elon Musk shares fabricated CNN chyron
Musk is his own worst enemy. And not very smart.

[Eldy]

Twitter’s $5bn-a-year business hit as Elon Musk clashes with advertisers - Financial Times

Elon Musk’s tumultuous reign at Twitter has led to a damaging rift with top brands and marketers, with the social media company’s $5bn-a-year advertising business hit by tensions over content moderation and resources.

Multiple top advertising agencies and media buyers told the Financial Times that nearly all of the big brands they represent have paused spending on the social media platform, citing alarm at Musk’s ad hoc approach to policing content and decision to axe many of its ad sales team.

Musk, meanwhile, has sought to personally call chief executives of some brands that have curbed advertising in order to berate them, according to one senior industry figure, leading others to instead reduce their spend to the bare minimum required so as to avoid further confrontation with the billionaire entrepreneur.

After several waves of job cuts and departures, Twitter’s ads business team has shrunk so much that many agencies no longer have any point of contact at the company and have received little to no communication in recent weeks, according to four industry insiders.

[RoseMorninStar]

Have those of you who use Twitter noticed any difference?

[Frelga]

Elon Musk has fired so many Twitter workers by mistake that HR created an 'accidental termination' category to re-onboard employees

The article is paywalled.

Have those of you who use Twitter noticed any difference?

I see more ads per tweet, and they are weird ads. Christmas sweaters, random accounts promoting themselves, random stuff. Apple and Amazon are two of the big ones still left. I also blocked some advertisers, like Apple TV, because they got annoying, and disabled as much personalisation as Twitter let me, so that may have affect what I see.

Otherwise, not much changed except people keep saying this may be their last day and so far it's not.

[Alatar]

Have those of you who use Twitter noticed any difference?

I'm getting lot more porn accounts directed at me for sure.

Also:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/202 ... id-policy/

A European regulator today reportedly threatened Elon Musk with a continent-wide ban on Twitter if the company fails to enforce content moderation rules required by the Digital Services Act. Also today, Twitter claimed it hasn't changed any policies—even though it stopped enforcing rules against COVID misinformation.

[RoseMorninStar]

Twitter has been threatening companies (such as Apple) who are pulling back or out of advertising on the platform. Apple has also been discussing whether Twitter meets their standards for ALL apps in the Apple Store (same for Google Play store). I don't think Elon understands how Capitalism works. Apple is a client who is not obligated to fund his business if he is not providing a service they feel is brand-safe and using established best practices.

[Frelga]

Doesn't Apple also provide some of the Tesla interface/integration?

Speaking of Tesla, Musk announced a beta for self-driving module on city streets. We are in a Tesla heavy area, and I'm trying to put a as much distance between my self and any Teslas as I possibly can.

Probably not coincidentally, there was a large car pileup near the Bay Bridge and witnesses reported a Tesla braking and swerving erratically just prior. Granted, human drivers change lanes erratically all the time before the toll plaza in an effort to get into a lane with a slightly shorter wait.

[Eldy]

I think Apple's walled garden is bad for the internet and I was not at all happy about how they strongarmed e.g. Tumblr into making changes in the past by holding the threat of removal from the app store over their heads, but Musk is not really the person I want to see as the face of any sort of push for change.

[Frelga]

See alt text in this thread for some highly entertaining legalese.

This is one of the law firms that are representing laid off Twitter employees who claim they did not receive the severance that was due to them under the terms of the merger. Twitter has mandatory arbitration, meaning a class action suit is not an option, so this firm is threatening to file for arbitration separately for each employee.

Or you can double down on breaking your word and screwing over your ex- employees as they head into the holidays. If so, deposing you will be a joy, and you should be aware that Washington law, among others that will apply, will allow us to obtain an award against you, personally, and not just Twitter the company.

[River]

So apparently there's some sort of tantrum on Twitter right now about how Hunter Bien's dick pics got deleted by Twitter staff. I have questions for anyone who feels entitled to stolen pictures of a complete stranger's penis and is loudly angry that they were deprive of such imagery on their social media feed. Starting with "What's your damage?" and ending with "Have you considered professional counseling?" Also, "Do you enjoy other forms of amateur porn?" and "Is the concept of consent something you are familiar with?"

[RoseMorninStar]

Wow. Amen River.

[Frelga]

BREAKING: SEIU Local 87 Janitors at Twitter HQ went on strike at 6am today. Picket line starting at 12 noon, 1355 Market St. in San Francisco. #TakeOnTheTwit

I hope no one put any leftover seafood into any trash can...

[RoseMorninStar]

#TakeOnTheTwit


It would be funnier if it weren't so damn tragic. The world is violent enough without a Twitter free-for-all hate-fest.

[Impenitent]

Hold on. Let me back up a second. Hunter Biden posted dick pics? on a public platform? Totally with River regarding the howling tantrum, but...he posted dick pics? I'm still stuck on my bafflement on why anybody would do that, especially somebody who has experienced mobs with pitchforks in the past.

[RoseMorninStar]

Imply, I think what happened is someone claimed Hunter Biden dropped off a laptop computer to be repaired. The person who accepted the laptop is nearly blind so they couldn't identify who exactly dropped it off. Supposedly Hunter never picked up this computer and so it was sold(?) In some shady way it made it's way into the media and the stuff on his alleged computer was published without his knowledge or consent. I have not seen the photos and I have no desire to. I certainly could not identify them. In any case, they were not intended for public consumption.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

They were not meant for public consumption, and the content moderators of Twitter refused to allow the people that stole them to publish them on twitter. Until Musk. And the wonderful "journalist," Matt Taibibi.