Elon's Twitter

[N.E. Brigand]

Twitter is now "serving users with a new ad format that can't be blocked or reported. The ads aren't even actual posts and aren't connected to any accounts. They do not disclose that they are ads."

[N.E. Brigand]

NBC reports (my emphasis):

Michael Benz, a former Trump State Department official whose work has been cited in congressional hearings and promoted by Elon Musk, has become a go-to voice for Republican criticism of government and social media censorship in the past year.

But before his stints in government and as a pundit, Benz appears to have been a pseudonymous alt-right content creator who courted and interacted with white nationalists and posted videos espousing racist conspiracy theories, according to recordings, livestreams and blog posts reviewed by NBC News.

The pseudonym, Frame Game, posted videos and participated in podcasts and livestreams during the rise of the alt-right following Donald Trump’s election. Frame Game avoided showing his face in his videos or appearances, during which he pushed a variety of far-right narratives including the “Great Replacement Theory” that posits the white race is being eradicated in America for politics and profits. In others, Frame Game said he was a white identitarian, railed against the idea of diversity and made montages urging white viewers to unite under the banner of race.

In interviews with white nationalists, Frame Game blamed Jews for “controlling the media” and for the decline of the white race. “If you were to remove the Jewish influence on the West,” he said in one video, “white people would not face the threat of white genocide that they currently do.”

Oh hey, look, it's the likely next Speaker of the House:

Benz and his organization were also cited in reports and witness testimony from the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, led by Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, as well as the Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs. Benz also amplified the “Twitter Files,” documents released by Musk that revealed internal debates about content moderation and communications with outside organizations, governments, journalists and researchers. For months, in videos and threads posted to Twitter, Benz has framed those internal debates as grand conspiracies and maligned the academic researchers and institutions involved as government spies and plants.

[Dave_LF]

Just in case you're wondering: yes, that says ten dollars.

I'm sort of curious about what kind of advertising you can buy for $10

[RoseMorninStar]

NBC reports (my emphasis):

Michael Benz, a former Trump State Department official whose work has been cited in congressional hearings and promoted by Elon Musk, has become a go-to voice for Republican criticism of government and social media censorship in the past year.

But before his stints in government and as a pundit, Benz appears to have been a pseudonymous alt-right content creator who courted and interacted with white nationalists and posted videos espousing racist conspiracy theories, according to recordings, livestreams and blog posts reviewed by NBC News.

The pseudonym, Frame Game, posted videos and participated in podcasts and livestreams during the rise of the alt-right following Donald Trump’s election. Frame Game avoided showing his face in his videos or appearances, during which he pushed a variety of far-right narratives including the “Great Replacement Theory” that posits the white race is being eradicated in America for politics and profits. In others, Frame Game said he was a white identitarian, railed against the idea of diversity and made montages urging white viewers to unite under the banner of race.

In interviews with white nationalists, Frame Game blamed Jews for “controlling the media” and for the decline of the white race. “If you were to remove the Jewish influence on the West,” he said in one video, “white people would not face the threat of white genocide that they currently do.”

Oh hey, look, it's the likely next Speaker of the House:

Benz and his organization were also cited in reports and witness testimony from the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, led by Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, as well as the Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs. Benz also amplified the “Twitter Files,” documents released by Musk that revealed internal debates about content moderation and communications with outside organizations, governments, journalists and researchers. For months, in videos and threads posted to Twitter, Benz has framed those internal debates as grand conspiracies and maligned the academic researchers and institutions involved as government spies and plants.

I was going to post about this yesterday but I couldn't find the article I'd read/couldn't remember the guy's name. Notably, Michael Benz was "... a former Trump State Department official." Color me surprised. (not)

Just in case you're wondering: yes, that says ten dollars.

I'm sort of curious about what kind of advertising you can buy for $10

Dave.. what came to my mind was a token financial place holder payment to prevent the company from getting some sort of retribution against their channel.

[Dave_LF]

This browser extension can make X-Twitter look like Twitter again, from functional fixes like putting the headlines back on links to purely aesthetic ones like replacing all those Xs with birds. I linked to the Firefox version, but it's available for the other major browsers too.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Very cool, though to clarify, it is solely for the Firefox browser.

[Dave_LF]

No, it is available for other browsers too. There are links to several different versions (maybe all of them?) in this article:
https://www.minitool.com/news/control-p ... itter.html

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Ah, gotcha. Chrome, Edge and Safari, in addition to Firefox. That pretty much covers them.

[N.E. Brigand]

The Times of Israel reports that Kanye West's Twitter/X account has been reinstated. West was banned last year for posting anti-Semitic content.

This being the most recent post to mention Kanye West, it's where I'll note this new story from the New York Times:

"Kanye and Adidas: Money, Misconduct and the Price of Appeasement."

The piece opens with a story about West expressing his anger at Adidas by drawing a swastika during a meeting -- in Germany just a few miles from Nuremberg. It turns out that Adidas had been quietly tolerating West's antisemitism, misogyny and bullying for nearly a decade before they parted ways with him in 2022. The partnership made billions for Adidas and West. Shortly before that 2013 incident, West "made Adidas executives watch pornography during a meeting at his Manhattan apartment, ostensibly to spark creativity." And:

He later advised a Jewish Adidas manager to kiss a picture of Hitler every day, and he told a member of the company’s executive board that he had paid a seven-figure settlement to one of his own senior employees who accused him of repeatedly praising the architect of the Holocaust.

[N.E. Brigand]

Reuters: "Judge finds evidence that Tesla, Musk knew about Autopilot defect."

This was in a ruling last week (not previously reported) by a Florida judge who ruled that the "plaintiff in a lawsuit over a fatal crash could proceed to trial and bring punitive damages claims against Tesla for intentional misconduct and gross negligence."

[N.E. Brigand]

Maya Bodnick argues that "Business leaders are ignoring Elon Musk's antisemitism. They're much quieter when antisemitism comes from the right than from the left." As she notes, this is also true of the antisemitic remarks made by other powerful people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Donald Trump. " One hedge fund manager quipped to me that 'my business friends only notice antisemitism when it comes from a woman of color.'" And Bodnick does point to some specific examples of people who have condemned the left but not the right. That said, a number of companies have pulled their ads from Twitter in response to Musk's latest remarks. But it's not like he hasn't been making reasonably similar comments for some time. And I think Bodnick is right that Musk "has more power than every pro-Palestinian student on every college campus in the U.S. combined." As one of her respondents notes, Musk has been able to convince at least one state's attorney general to launch an investigation into a media organization critical of him.

[N.E. Brigand]

Headline today in Variety: "Elon Musk to X/Twitter Advertisers Who Have Pulled Spending: 'Go F— Yourself'".

This happened at the New York Times DealBook Summit. At that conference (although it's not clear if he was in the room) was Bob Iger, the chair of Disney, one of the companies which pulled advertising dollars from Twitter after Musk shared yet another racist meme on the platform last week.

[Dave_LF]

It's well-known that public figures become corruption risks when they don't have enough money. What the X-Twitter fiasco is demonstrating is that it's almost as bad when they have so much money they don't need to care about wasting it.

[Frelga]

Elon has moved from Jews to his own customers as the probable cause of Twitter's impending demise. I suppose it's an improvement?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Elon has moved from Jews to his own customers as the probable cause of Twitter's impending demise. I suppose it's an improvement?

I would say rather, "Elon has added "his own customers" to "Jews" in the list of probable causes of Twitter's impending demise."

Of course, there are probably others on the list, as well. Not including Elon, of course.

[Frelga]

tumblr_na6mscGWHp1qiox8vo2_500.gif (93.53 KiB) Viewed 10926 times

[N.E. Brigand]

Writing in SFGate, Drew Magary argues yesterday's interview will be seen as the beginning of "The End of Elon Musk."

After many big-name companies withdrew their advertising from X in the wake of Musk’s continued hate speech, he used his exchange with Sorkin to respond to those companies thusly:

“Don’t advertise,” he said to the audience. “If someone is going to try to blackmail me with advertising? Blackmail me with money? Go f—k yourself. Go. F—k. Yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is. Hey Bob [Iger, CEO of Disney]! If you’re in the audience. That’s how I feel. Don’t advertise.”

Here is where Sorkin had to give Musk a bit of pragmatic business advice. I, like Sorkin, am a journalist and lemme tell you: You’re in BIG trouble if one of US understands how to make a profit better than you do.

“I understand that,” Sorkin told Musk with the utmost professionalism. “But there’s a reality too, right? I mean [X CEO] Linda Yaccarino is right here and she’s got to sell advertising!”

Musk, who appeared both high and made of plywood, responded with a reality of his own:

“Actually, what this advertising boycott is going to do is, it’s going to kill the company. And the whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company, and we will document it in great detail.”

Here Musk looked out to the audience, expecting vehement agreement, perhaps even applause. He was greeted with dead silence instead. Sorkin, still residing in the correct reality, told Musk, “But those advertisers, I imagine they’re going to say, ‘WE didn’t kill the company.’”

And here is where Musk revealed his delusion to all. “Oh yeah?” he shot back. “Tell it to Earth.”

“Tell it to Earth.” If you imagine Will Smith delivering that line, it REALLY hits. But this was coming from a purported titan of industry, who was seemingly unaware that no one gives a holy s—t about his social media platform anymore. “Twitter isn’t real life” is a tired sound bite, but it’s never been more true than now. You really are screaming into the void when you post there. But Musk, who told Sorkin that he believed data to be more valuable than gold, remains committed to the idea that owning X means means owning the chief information exchange for all of this planet’s 8 billion citizens. He thinks he can Thanos Snap wars and recessions into being merely by posting a recycled Pepe the Frog meme from 2016 on there. There is no reasoning with someone who is so megalomaniacal and so, SO stupid.

[Túrin Turambar]

He has certainly made some highly questionable business decisions on Twitter/X. On the other hand, he has now released a truck which is impervious to arrows, so he will be racking up some good sales among drivers who've been worried about the risk of attack by Mongolian horse archers during their daily commute.

[Dave_LF]

By coincidence, my "recently visited" tiles put X (X-Twitter) and xfinity (X-Comcast) right next to each other...

x.png (4.76 KiB) Viewed 10661 times

Just think of what a better world we could have if each entity sued the other into oblivion.

[N.E. Brigand]

Elon Musk said today that Alex Jones's Twitter account will be reactivated and also streamed a live chat between the two of them plus Andrew Tate (the kickboxer who's been indicted on sex trafficking charges in Romania) and Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.

Edited to add: Michael Flynn was also part of the conversation.