Elon's Twitter

[N.E. Brigand]

After Twitter suspended the account of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene for violating the firm's policies on disseminating misinformation, the general counsel for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy tried to get the company to reinstate her. It seems to me that a representative of the government telling a private company that they have to publish something (in this case, Greene's opinions) is more likely to be a violation of the First Amendment than a representative of the campaign for a political candidate requesting that the company not publish revenge porn featuring the candidate's son.

[N.E. Brigand]

Some of the far right figures who were most enthusiastic about Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter are now complaining that their tweets are not being as widely shared as they were before Musk took over, but the moderate conservative David Frum conducted an an experiment and found that weird changes recently made to the platform mean it's probable that all users are getting less of the content they want: "It's as if, in the days of the old newspaper, my subscription were delivered with random stories scissored out by the publisher itself, for some capricious whim of the publisher's own."

And even as Twitter, whether through error or design, seems to be preventing people from reading the information they want, it also seems to be keeping at least some users from getting even stories of national note -- although this is also a case of how people sort themselves into bubbles. A conservative commentator complained early Sunday afternoon that the shooting Saturday night in Monterey Park, California, in which 11 people were murdered, was being ignored by the media because the perpetrator was Asian American rather than white. And then as you can see at that link, dozens and dozens of blue-checked respondents (i.e., people who have either been recognized by Twitter as being notable -- that's what the blue checks meant until November -- or people who have agreed to pay Elon Musk eight dollars per month, but in either case presumably actual people and not bots) all saying as recently as just a few hours ago, i.e., early Monday, that they hadn't heard about it at all. And when they are told that this story was widely shared in newspapers and on television (it was just about the only topic all day yesterday on CNN; it's on the front page of today's (Monday's) New York Times), they reply that that's not how they get their news.

[Frelga]

A lesson in headline writing.

‘Free Speech Absolutist’ Elon Musk Censors BBC Doc Critical of India's PM on Twitter

[N.E. Brigand]

Ah! I hadn't realised that the pics originated in that illegally acquired laptop. Now it all makes sense.

The House will hold a hearing next week in which three former Twitter executives will discuss Twitter's 2020 response to the laptop story.

And last night, Hunter Biden's lawyers "wrote letters to the Justice Department, the attorney general of Delaware and the Internal Revenue Service." The lawyers asked those entities "to investigate former computer repair shop owner John Paul Mac Isaac, former Trump advisers Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon and their lawyer, Robert Costello. The lawyers said they believed various Delaware laws were breached 'in accessing, copying, manipulating, and/or disseminating Mr Biden's personal computer data'" but they also say these letters "do not confirm Mac Isaac's or others' versions of a so-called laptop."

[N.E. Brigand]

Today a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives held a hearing about how Twitter may or may not have been under the undue influence of politics when making certain decisions to restrict certain posts, posters, or topics. The hearing was of course meant to show that Twitter and the Biden for President campaign improperly colluded when responding to suspiciously-sourced reports in fall 2020 about a laptop supposedly belonging to Hunter Biden (including, as previously mentioned, the decision to delete tweets sharing links to pictures of his genitalia).

From what I've read, today's hearing did not run as planned, although it surely generated enough right-wing content to fill the time on Fox News this evening. But the Democrats on the committee came prepared to show that the narrative the Republican majority wished to present was false.

For example, in this video, a former top security staffer at Twitter confirms that "Twitter changed their own policy after the president [Donald Trump] violated it, in order to essentially accommodate his tweets". In July 2019, President Trump had tweeted about Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley: "Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came." That violated a Twitter rule that specifically said the phrase "go back where you came from" (an anti-immigrant trope) should result in suspension of the account that uses it. Twitter's safety team accordingly determined that Trump's account should be suspended. Not only were they overruled, but that phrase was then removed from the list of things you weren't allowed to tweet.

In another case, I believe former Twitter personnel acknowledged today that the Trump White House asked them to delete a tweet posted by model Chrissy Teigen that crudely insulted the president (but didn't violate any rules). In that instance, Twitter refused to remove the tweet, but it was wrong for the Trump administration to ask in the first place. That came to light in a Rolling Stone article that apparently was published while the hearing was underway which reports that "GOP officials and former Twitter employees say Donald Trump’s team and other Republicans routinely demanded posts be taken down."

- - - - - - - - - -
The Republican chairing today's hearing, Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, called on the Dept. of Justice not to indict Hunter Biden or anyone else before the committee has completed its work on this subject. Comer said he is concerned that if DOJ starts charging people, then the committee's witnesses might invoke their Fifth Amendment rights.

- - - - - - - - - -
Also apparently lots of users are encountering serious difficulty with Twitter today, following some so-called upgrade.

[N.E. Brigand]

"Elon Musk fires a top Twitter engineer over his declining view count."

Musk called a meeting to ask why, despite having about 100 million followers, his tweets were getting fewer than 100,000 "impressions."

"One of the company's two remaining principal engineers," citing data from a Google Trends analysis, said that the reason appeared to be that the public wasn't as interested in what Musk had to say as they were in mid-2022: search rankings show him falling to a score of 9 from a peak of 100 last April.

"'You're fired, you're fired,' Musk told the engineer." And he wasn't joking. That engineer's employment was terminated.

The article notes that another reason fewer people are viewing and interacting with Musk's tweets is "Twitter's increasingly glitchy product."

[RoseMorninStar]

Social media has ramped up narcissism and the cult of persona/desire for personal attention & adulation. It's a new tool for people with money & power.

[N.E. Brigand]

Today a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives held a hearing about how Twitter may or may not have been under the undue influence of politics when making certain decisions to restrict certain posts, posters, or topics. The hearing was of course meant to show that Twitter and the Biden for President campaign improperly colluded when responding to suspiciously-sourced reports in fall 2020 about a laptop supposedly belonging to Hunter Biden (including, as previously mentioned, the decision to delete tweets sharing links to pictures of his genitalia).

From what I've read, today's hearing did not run as planned, although it surely generated enough right-wing content to fill the time on Fox News this evening. But the Democrats on the committee came prepared to show that the narrative the Republican majority wished to present was false.

In fact, as Semafor reporter Dave Weigel notes here, Rep. Byron Donald, Republican of Florida (as I recall, he received many of the anti-McCarthy protest votes during the Speaker's election a month ago), specifically complained about Twitter deleting posts that linked to pictures of Hunter Biden's privates.

[Frelga]

If anyone wanted proof that money doesn't buy happiness.

Yes, Elon Musk created a special system for showing you all his tweets first

At 2:36 on Monday morning, James Musk sent an urgent message to Twitter engineers.

“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. “Any people who can make dashboards and write software please can you help solve this problem. This is high urgency. If you are willing to help out please thumbs up this post.”

When bleary-eyed engineers began to log on to their laptops, the nature of the emergency became clear: Elon Musk’s tweet about the Super Bowl got less engagement than President Joe Biden’s.

...

By Monday afternoon, “the problem” had been “fixed.” Twitter deployed code to automatically “greenlight” all of Musk’s tweets, meaning his tweets will bypass Twitter’s filters designed to show people the best content possible. The algorithm now artificially boosted Musk’s tweets by a factor of 1,000 – a constant score that ensured his tweets rank higher than anyone else’s in the feed.

[RoseMorninStar]

How pathetic.

[Sunsilver]

Wow.

Just saw this article - Musk has cut yet another 200 or so employees, which represents about 10% of the remaining workforce. This includes an employee who has been putting in mega hours, and even sleeping in her office, because Musk said:

Loaded with debt after the $44 billion sale, and with advertising revenues dropping, Twitter went from over 7,000 employees to under 2,000, with the remaining crew being told by Musk to be "extremely hardcore" and put in "long hours at high intensity." Bedrooms were installed at the office, which Musk reportedly stayed in.

Looks like Esther Crawford will no longer be sleeping a work: https://www.vice.com/en/article/3adxyv/ ... JwCTQzrmv8

[Alatar]

This is why I like living in Ireland where we're protected by law from unreasonable working environments.

[Frelga]

It's not the only reason I work in the public sector, but it's one of them.

I will never get people boasting of spending their entire life, neglecting their health and relationships, in service of making an obscenely rich man a bit richer.

[N.E. Brigand]

As you know, I don't have a Twitter account. I just read content there via a web browser. Today I notice that if I click on a link (e.g., someone's tweet linked to an ABC story about former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort settling a U.S. government civil suit against him for $3.5 million, so I just clicked on their link), I get the following message, and I see actual Twitter users are reporting the same thing:

{"errors":[{"message":"Your current API plan does not include access to this endpoint, please see https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/twitter-api for more information","code":467}]}.

That can't be good.

[Frelga]

Yep, can confirm.

A former Twitter employee posted that they got paged by an automated process assigning them some sort of system failure. They left Twitter in October.

The response options were Acknowledged and Resolved, of which they chose the latter.

[RoseMorninStar]

I have never been on Twitter and, up until a few days ago, I was not able to see tweets posted here without clicking on them and actually going to Twitter. But as of a few days ago they started showing up here as I presume everyone else sees them. I just clicked on one and can still view Twitter as before.

[Frelga]

Musk announced that the press email account will autorespond with a poop emoji. As usual, he didn't think it through.

[RoseMorninStar]

It's better than he deserves. A prime example of a narcissist pissing away a legacy, reputation, and millions/billions of dollars. What a

poop.png (3.69 KiB) Viewed 902 times

[Inanna]

This is so ridiculous and so funny at the same time.

[River]

It's funny because it's ridiculous. So very very over-the-top ridiculous.

And to think everyone thought he was a serious person...