Elon Musk offers to buy Twitter and take it private

[RedRajah]

Hubby deleted his account yesterday. I'm still on (for the aforementioned Jorts, various cute animal pics, Midnight Pals, Gail Simone and Niantic Support for Pokemon Go). Had to show hubby where the IG account was for "Foxes In Love" this morning though as he normally followed them on Xitter.

 

[ElaineA]

Apple is "reported" to have also suspended ads today, along with Lionsgate, the film distributor. I'm seeing stories in multiple locations, but they all seem to be reporting it without specific confirmation. Here's the report from The Verge.

(edited to fix sourcing info)

 

[nighttimer]

Indivisible, the liberal activist group dropped me a line that due to Elon Musk's latest display of bigotry, they have had enough:

Indivisible as a movement was born online. In 2016, our founders wrote a Google Doc on how to resist Trump’s fascist agenda and posted it on Twitter. There, it was shared by prominent progressive activists, enabling it to reach millions of people. Indivisible groups began popping up organically all over the country, and were able to grow and mobilize thanks in no small part to the reach that Twitter afforded them.


The Twitter we knew -- which, despite its many problems over the years, allowed us to build this community and fight for a better world -- is now largely gone. The platform has become a megaphone for a bigoted and conspiratorial billionaire, propped up by a subscription scheme that amplifies the voices of transphobes and white nationalists who agree with him and muzzles his critics.


Since purchasing Twitter/X, Musk has uplifted accounts that target LGBTQ+ people for harassment, spread transphobia and antisemitism, re-verified violent white supremacists, and dabbled with dangerous ‘Great Replacement’ rhetoric.


Musk’s outburst scapegoating Jews for the decline of X in September was an inflection point, accelerating internal discussions about our continued participation in a platform that not only allows such hate speech, but rewards it, amplifies it, issues it from its C-suite. Musk doubled down by endorsing dangerous antisemitic conspiracy theories this week.


We didn’t like the message it sent -- to the communities targeted by Musk and his minions or to the bigots celebrating his mainstreaming of hate -- to continue on as normal. X is no longer a normal platform. And, absent a change of ownership, there’s little hope of it doing anything but becoming a more toxic, dangerous cesspool of hate and disinformation ill-suited for progressive organizing.

So, we made the decision to step back from X.​

 

[ElaineA]

Indivisible, the Arab Spring, Mom's Demand...these and many more are the *reason* Twitter had to be destroyed. It was the single most useful grassroots political organizing site on the planet, and the billionaires, the politically powerful and politically corrupt, the kings and princes with everything to lose, the corporations and lobbies and carbon kingpins, they couldn't have that.

 

[JJ Litke]

Auschwitz Museum is on Mastodon (and Facebook, and Instagram). Just FYI.

 

[Introversion]

Auschwitz Museum is on Mastodon (and Facebook, and Instagram). Just FYI.

Indivisible is on Mastodon too @[email protected].

 

[Introversion]

Add Disney to the list of non-Twitter advertisers.

 

[frimble3]

Well, turns out the thread title is coming true: Xitter is becoming more private by the day/incident.

 

[BenPanced]

IBM has pulled their ads after one appeared next to a post reportedly spouting pro-nazi bullshit. Which happened the day after M**k endorsed an antisemitic post.

*slo-mo standing O*

 

[Helix]

So Popehat (Ken White), who has been at Blue Sky for quite a while, went back to Twitter to post this:

There are about fifty reasons your petulant flounce is nonsense, you emotionally spavined freak, but let’s start with the first clause of the first sentence: it’s 2023 and you e-file complaints now. You don‘t have to wait for the courthouse to be open. You utter twat.

What is Ken referring to?

Elmo's tweet

The split second court opens on Monday, X Corp will be filing a thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters and ALL those who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company

Anyway, you can read Elmo's tweet at the Bad Place, if you really need to. There are a lot of words and the claim is presented as a screenshot without alt text, but the header is 'Stand with X to protect free speech'. It's taken from a Word file because you can see the cursor and 'speech' is underlined because it needs a full stop.

Popehat was too generous in his description.

 

[Friendly Frog]

Lemme guess, he's going to 'blaze his glory' as his 'thermonuclear lawsuit' blows up in his face? Nothing says freeeee speeeeech like frivolous lawsuits.

So, if I got this right, Media Matters's only crime is exposing that companies ads come right next to Musk favourite hate-spreading content and he didn't want them to find out?

 

[ElaineA]

And today it's NBC/Universal suspending ad buys, lol.

The split second court opens on Monday, X Corp will be filing a thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters and ALL those who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company

The King of Abusive Use of NDAs should have thought about it before he bought a *checks notes* PUBLIC PLATFORM. Free Speech warrioring is such a grind.

 

[nighttimer]

So Popehat (Ken White), who has been at Blue Sky for quite a while, went back to Twitter to post this:



What is Ken referring to?

Elmo's tweet



Anyway, you can read Elmo's tweet at the Bad Place, if you really need to. There are a lot of words and the claim is presented as a screenshot without alt text, but the header is 'Stand with X to protect free speech'. It's taken from a Word file because you can see the cursor and 'speech' is underlined because it needs a full stop.

Popehat was too generous in his description.

 

[Roxxsmom]

I'm at the point where I'm annoyed when news articles link to tweets, because I can't click through. It's no longer a reliable source, and journalists should adjust accordingly.

I completely agree!

X is going to have even more woes now, because its Lord and Master simply can't shut his mouth.

Disney, Apple, and other big companies are pulling their ads from the platform after pro-Nazi ads are appearing next to company ads (I mean, even a conservative probably doesn't want that popping up next to their brand name), and of course EM has been spouting his antisemitic conspiracy theories to followers. And the bleed of respectable "X" users continues, as folks up thread have already been posting.

https://www.npr.org/2023/11/17/1213836636/advertiser-exodus-grows-as-elon-musks-x-struggles-to-calm-concerns-over-antisemi

If anyone still needs to be disabused of the notion that success in business equates with brilliance, let alone an admirable personality...

Seriously, what is the guy even thinking? Does he even? It's like he had a bet with someone over whether or not it's possible to run a popular social media company into the ground with increasingly idiotic management decisions. I have trouble seeing how his lawsuits can get any traction here. Surely our "conservative" courts support the right of corporate entities to advertise where and how they like!

 

[Roxxsmom]

Do you get access when you follow a link like one in a news story? Does it ask you to log in like with your Google account?

I get that on some other sites. I just dismiss it and whatever I'm looking at doesn't block me even though I didn't log in.

I have to check and see. It's been a while since I even tried to click on a link to a twitter article.

They're already getting rid of all the content from inactive accounts. A lot of people are upset losing the tweets of their deceased loved ones.

I hadn't thought about that. I suppose we should be grateful he hasn't thought to monetize memorializing dead peoples' accounts (yet).

Did Twitter never allow the creation of memorial sites from the account of the deceased person? FB does, though it's kind of a pain (need to send a death certificate somewhere). I suspended my mom's FB right away after she died, because the vulture algorithms didn't wait 24 hours after she died to start sending fake crap from her account! I don't think we even discussed her death on FB, though a couple people on her friends list posted condolences on her page when they heard from us directly. Why would any entity think it's economically feasible to send zombie likes and so on from beyond someone's grave is beyond me! As if my mom would ever have "liked" WalMart in life! As if I need another reason to never darken that chain's doorstep...

I couldn't do this properly and set up a memorial account, since it takes a long time to get a death certificate in our state, but I had her account information and simply logged in as her to inactivate it. That might have been harder to do if my mom had posted much of substance I didn't already have access to on FB over the years.

 

[Brigid Barry]

I'm not able to see anything when I click Twitter links.

 

[Helix]

If Elmo does file his 'thermonuclear lawsuit' in a non-SLAPP state, he's going to have a shock at how many lawyers will step up to kick his arse.

 

[nighttimer]

I have to check and see. It's been a while since I even tried to click on a link to a twitter article.

Don't waste your time. Twitter no longer shows the headline for a linked article, but only whatever photo/illustration (if there is one) and the name of the source itself. It's made reposting anything on Twitter completely useless.

Just as Evil Genius wanted.

 

[Introversion]

Judge rejects Elon Musk’s attempt to kill Twitter/FTC privacy settlement

Elon Musk lost an attempt to avoid a deposition and terminate a privacy settlement that Twitter agreed to before he bought the company.

Hate speech group calls Musk “thin-skinned tyrant” amid X advertiser fallout

Advertisers with zero-tolerance policies for antisemitism spent the weekend urging the CEO of X (formerly Twitter), Linda Yaccarino, to follow their lead, save her reputation, and ditch Elon Musk's toxic social media platform, according to a pair of reports.

Advertising industry insiders told the Financial Times and Forbes that Yaccarino got bombarded all weekend by industry friends advising her to resign, or else face a "credibility crisis" as major brands—including Apple, Disney, IBM, Lionsgate, Paramount Global, Sony, and Warner Bros.—have stopped advertising on X.

 

[Helix]

Rightio. The 'thermonuclear lawsuit' has been filed.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.txnd.383454/gov.uscourts.txnd.383454.1.0_1.pdf

 

[dickson]

Rightio. The 'thermonuclear lawsuit' has been filed.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.txnd.383454/gov.uscourts.txnd.383454.1.0_1.pdf

This doesn’t read like anything an attorney would write. Could it have been dictated by Elmo? Is he taking legal advice from TFG?

 

[Brigid Barry]

This doesn’t read like anything an attorney would write. Could it have been dictated by Elmo?

LLM.

 

[MaeZe]

Before you all laugh too hard:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/texas-attorney-general-opens-investigation-into-media-mattersfor-potential-fraudulent-activity/ar-AA1kg7lk

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is opening an investigation into Media Matters for "potential fraudulent activity" after X CEO Elon Musk accused the left-wing media watchdog group of manipulating data on the social media platform.

After a slew of advertisers, including IBM, Apple, Disney, Lionsgate and Paramount, fled X, formerly known as Twitter, Musk pledged to hit the watchdog group with a "thermonuclear lawsuit."

Media Matters published a report on Friday accusing X of placing ads next to "white nationalist hashtags." However, Musk believes that the group "completely misrepresented the real user experience" in order to mislead advertisers.

Republican Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey posted on Sunday that his legal team was "looking into" the matter. Now, Paxton is launching an official investigation with his office after being "extremely troubled" by the allegations.

"We are examining the issue closely to ensure that the public has not been deceived by the schemes of radical left-wing organizations who would like nothing more than to limit freedom by reducing participation in the public square," said Paxton.

This is yet one more reason why elections matter.

 

[Friendly Frog]

Despite the tone it makes for interesting reading, of course all with the big caveat 'if true' because I don't trust Musk to speak the truth if it doesn't suit him. And I won't put it past him to manipulate 'evidence' coming from Ex-Twitter's servers to what makes him look better.

(This is my reading of things, I may be wrong.) The issue now does not seem to be that Media Matters exposed damning advertising pairings, but that they went through some lenghts to produce it because Twitter is programmed specifically to prevent these pairings from happening. So he's not in a huff that Media Matters showed something unsavoury, but that they circumvented safety features he had promised his advertisers were fail-proof.

They probably paid extra for that brand-security which is now compromised or maybe it was the only thing that made them reconsider pulling their money. (Let's be honest, big companies don't care about nazi's reigning on Twitter, they want their money all the same, they just don't want to be seen as cosying up to nazi's because they also want the money of the non-nazi's.)

So IMO he's not mad because he looks like a nazi (he is), he's mad because he's made to look like an incompetent fool (he is) whereas he loves to see himself as a tech-genius.

Not having read Media Matters original reports, I can't say whether their framing was less than honest. Musk may have something there. Or not, because -again- we only have his word for it that he has truthfully re-engineered the process that Media Matters used, and that is was so impossible unless they gamed the system to the breakingpoint. Does he still have enough tech-savvy staff to pull this off? Won't they try and please their fickle boss in tweaking the results to his liking to avoid another tantrum? Who can say? He needs it to be nigh impossible to produce the pairing.

I can believe Media Matters did try to manipulate the system into a situation where the advertising pairing occurred. I would have thought many more people would have alerted companies if the pairing produced more often. But it was only until I read this article that I realised Twitter is actively programmed to prevent it.

 

[Helix]

I can believe Media Matters did try to manipulate the system into a situation where the advertising pairing occurred. I would have thought many more people would have alerted companies if the pairing produced more often. But it was only until I read this article that I realised Twitter is actively programmed to prevent it.

He says it's programmed to prevent it but he's one of the ones supporting the neo-Nazi stuff.

Par 22, p. 6 says

As a first layer of protection for advertisers, X applies default protections to all posts. These protections are designed to prevent advertisements from being placed next to content that violates community guidelines. When users operate within X’s community guidelines, these default mechanisms are effective and have a long history of successfully protecting X’s advertisers from undesirable interactions with fringe content

Fine, fine. But neo-Nazi bullshit, racism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, etc etc don't violate community guidelines. So if that stuff is acceptable on Twitter (he can fuck off with that 'X' nonsense), then there's nothing to prevent advertisments being shown next to the offensive tweets.

And when the owner tweets some of that stuff, it's no longer fringe content.