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Neonmoon

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Satchel

Satchel 6908

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I don’t think we have any idea what all Jack Smith knows about Trump’s criminality:

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4145619-special-counsel-won-secret-search-warrant-for-trumps-twitter-account/#:~:text=The case%2C decided in July,court order of the records.

The Justice Department (DOJ), which first sought the records in January, also obtained a nondisclosure order that prohibited X from disclosing the existence or contents of the search warrant to anyone, including Trump himself.

The filing details a months-long battle between X and the special counsel’s office over the efforts to get information tied to Trump’s account, with an appeals court backing a lower court ruling “in all respects.”

“The district court found that there were ‘reasonable grounds to believe’ that disclosing the warrant to former President Trump ‘would seriously jeopardize the ongoing investigation’ by giving him ‘an opportunity to destroy evidence, change patterns of behavior, [or] notify confederates,’” the U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. noted in its ruling.

The lower court’s March ruling also found probable cause to search Trump’s Twitter account “for evidence of criminal offenses.”

The ruling does not offer specific details about DOJ’s warrant or the subpoena.

Trump on Wednesday bashed the move on social media, accusing DOJ of “making it a point not to let me know about this major ‘hit’ on my civil rights.

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C-Man

C-Man 27049

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Twitter/X CEO Claims That ‘99.9%’ of Site’s Content Is ‘Healthy’

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/twitter-x-ceo-claims-99-165837484.html

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Linda Yaccarino, CEO of the social media company formerly known as Twitter, claimed on Thursday that X is a “much healthier and safer platform than it was” when Elon Musk bought it, adding that “99.9 percent” of the content on the site is “healthy.”

Yaccarino, whom Musk brought in from NBCUniversal to boost the company’s sagging advertising revenue, also insisted that since she came aboard X’s “operational rate run” has come “pretty close to breakeven” and advertisers are starting to come back.

Sitting down with CNBC anchor Sara Eisen, Yaccarino first attempted to take some credit for the massive box-office success of summer films Barbie and Oppenheimer, stating that the “Barbenheimer” social media trend began on her platform. “It’s where the conversation started,” she boasted.

Elon Musk’s Lawsuit Against a Nonprofit Prove He’s a Free Speech Phony

“There’s also a lot of hate and a lot of vitriol and conspiracy theories and those attract a lot of eyeballs too,” Eisen countered. “And so, if you’re a brand and a business, why would you feel safe advertising?”

Conceding that it was an “appropriate question,” Yaccarino then claimed some of these “headline comments and phrases need to be continually brought to light and debunked.” Referencing her time as a top ad executive for NBCUniversal, she noted that Twitter was “our number one social partner” and was always considered safe.

“A lot of brands have left,” Eisen shot back.

“I hear you,” Yaccarino replied. “I want to take that last 10 years and put it in perspective, because by all objective metrics, X is a much healthier and safer platform than it was a year ago.”

Can’t get enough media news? Subscribe to Confider, The Daily Beast’s media newsletter here.

Following his acquisition of Twitter, Musk reinstated hundreds of previously banned accounts, stripped away verification badges while simultaneously handing them out to anyone willing to pay, suspended journalists from the platform, and personally amplified misinformation and falsehoods.

Additionally, several independent studies have found that hate speech has significantly increased on the site since Musk purchased it last fall. The edgelord billionaire, who has repeatedly threatened legal action against ex-employees and tech competitors, recently sued a nonprofit watchdog for claiming Twitter “fails to act on 99 percent” of hateful messages from Twitter Blue subscription accounts.

Yaccarino asserted to CNBC that the site has “built brand safety and content moderation tools that have never existed before at this company,” stating that X now has a policy called “freedom of speech, not reach” to deal with hateful content.

“So if you’re going to post something that's illegal or against the law, you’re gone. Zero tolerance,” she declared. “But more importantly, if you're going to post something that is lawful, but it’s awful, you get labeled. You get labeled, you get deamplified, which means it cannot be shared. And it is certainly demonetized.”

Making the case that brands shouldn’t be concerned with their ads “being next to that content,” Yaccarino then made another stunning claim.

“Reducing that hateful content from being seen, is one of the best examples how X is committed to encouraging healthy behavior online. And today, I can confidently sit in front of you and say that 99.9 percent of all posted impressions are healthy,” she proclaimed.

“How do you define healthy though? Is porn healthy? Are conspiracy theories healthy?” Eisen, without missing a beat, retorted.

“You know, it goes back to my point about our success with freedom of speech, not reach,” Yaccarino responded. “And if it’s lawful, but it’s awful, it's extraordinarily difficult for you to see it.”

Eisen, meanwhile, noted that the platform recently reinstated antisemitic rapper Kanye West's account. The controversial superstar, who is purportedly running for president, was banned by Musk last year after declaring his love for Adolf Hitler and posting Nazi imagery. “Lawful but awful, and he’s allowed back on,” the CNBC anchor observed.

Yaccarino, for her part, said that West would “operate within the very specific policies that we have established” but that “we also have to remember what's at the core of free expression.” At the same time, she said this is “why we’re doubling down on brand safety.”

It’s Official: Musk Says Former NBC Exec Linda Yaccarino Is New Twitter CEO

Elsewhere in the wide-ranging conversation, the X CEO was asked if Musk’s notorious tweeting habits made her job “impossible,” prompting her to say that “it’s really important that everyone should be allowed to have their own opinion.”

Yaccarino also alleged that amid the platform’s rebrand, she convinced blue-chip advertisers to come back, the company was getting closer to profitability, and X is hiring again after firing most of its workforce.

“Coca-Cola, Visa, State Farm is a huge partner,” she said. “They’re coming back the last bunch of weeks—continued revenue growth and I think it's a combination of things.”

Asked when the company could “get to cashflow positive,” Yaccarino claimed “the operational run rate” is “pretty close to breakeven” and the company is “pacing well” due to its “cost discipline.”

Earlier this year, however, Twitter’s American advertising revenue was down 59 percent and had regularly fallen well short of weekly sales projections, The New York Times reported. Last month, in fact, Musk admitted that the company carried a “heavy debt load, its cash flow was negative, and ad revenue had plunged. This was after insisting in April that Twitter was “roughly breaking even” and “almost all advertisers have come back.”

Meanwhile, since rebranding Twitter to X, analysts and brand agencies have speculated that Musk has wiped out anywhere between $4 and $20 billion in brand value from the company he purchased for $44 billion. And this is after the Tesla founder himself admitted that the company was now worth roughly half of what he paid for it.

 

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ultimaton

ultimaton 2966

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Bitch, Elon personally intervened to save the account of a guy that was posting pictures of a TODDLER BEING SEXUALLY ABUSED. I don't care if 99.9% of the content is "healthy" (L O fucking L) if the owner allows chid pornography to exist within that other 0.1%, you have a kiddie porn site. Period. And if Coke, Visa, and State Farm want to associate their brands with that, then they can fuck off and die too.

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C-Man

C-Man 27049

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Musk trying to get out of fighting Zuck, now pitching the idea of a "noble debate." (Whatever the fuck that is.)

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-noble-debate-mark-zuckerberg-cage-fight-2023-8

Quote

It looks as if Elon Musk is trying really hard to get out of his cage fight with Mark Zuckerberg. 

On Sunday, the billionaire said his fight with Zuckerberg — if it happens — would be live-streamed on his platform, X. But the same day, Musk said he needed to get his neck and upper back examined before fixing a date. 

"May require surgery before the fight can happen. Will know this week," Musk tweeted.

And now Musk is floating the idea of having a "noble" debate with Zuckerberg instead of throwing hands. The TED curator Chris Anderson proposed having a "cage match DEBATE" between the two billionaires, and Musk seemed game for it. 

"Here's a better idea: a cage match DEBATE 'How to Build an Amazing Future,'" Anderson tweeted on Tuesday.

Musk appeared to agree with the suggestion, tweeting that a debate sounded "like a good idea too."

"This is really fighting as (I believe) a noble sport," Musk replied. "We also hope, with humility, to express our admiration for those who have fought before for noble causes."

Anderson's proposed alternative is similar to what Musk's mother previously suggested he do. Maye Musk tweeted in June that her son and Zuckerberg should "fight with words only" instead of beating each other up.

"A verbal fight only. Three questions each. The funniest answers win. Who agrees?" Maye Musk tweeted in June. 

Musk may not have taken his mother's advice then, but he seems to be warming up to the idea now and for a good reason. Musk's chances of beating Zuckerberg in the ring are slim, considering the latter's MMA training and jiu-jitsu medals.

Musk, too, has been realistic about his odds of winning the fight.

"If the fight is short, I probably win. If long, he may win on endurance," Musk tweeted Sunday. 

 

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Foosters

Foosters 17730

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I guess the question I have is why is Rob Reiner on Twitter to begin with? I begrudgingly accept that many of you all "have" to be on the website that has become a hive of anti-Semitism, hate speech, racism, and pro-authoritarian accounts, because there's no other way to stay informed, without waiting a few hours for it to be posted elsewhere, but Reiner and people like him should be asked why they are continuing to support the site.

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Rimbo

Rimbo 25777

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12 minutes ago, Foosters said:

I guess the question I have is why is Rob Reiner on Twitter to begin with? I begrudgingly accept that many of you all "have" to be on the website that has become a hive of anti-Semitism, hate speech, racism, and pro-authoritarian accounts, because there's no other way to stay informed, without waiting a few hours for it to be posted elsewhere, but Reiner and people like him should be asked why they are continuing to support the site.

He's been there a while and hasn't moved on? I know most celebrities I follow shifted to Threads pretty much immediately, and stayed there.

But you still get more "engagement" from Twitter. Maybe now that Threads has a web interface, that will change... slowly, over time.

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Satchel

Satchel 6908

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If Q’Elon doesn’t get his rage and need for vengeance under control, he’s gonna stroke out:

https://www.reuters.com/legal/x-sues-media-matters-after-report-about-ads-next-antisemitic-content-2023-11-20/

Nov 20 (Reuters) - Social media company X on Monday sued media watchdog group Media Matters, alleging the organization defamed the platform after it published a report that said ads for major brands had appeared next to posts touting Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party.

X, formerly Twitter, has faced growing outrage since Media Matters published the report on Thursday, which led IBM, Comcast and several other advertisers to pull ads from the platform in response.

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C-Man

C-Man 27049

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Pretty scathing feature on Linda Yaccarino. Yup, piece of shit just like her boss.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/linda-yaccarino-elon-musk-x-advertisers-1235683997/

Quote

When Elon Musk announced last May that he was naming Linda Yaccarino the CEO of the company that I will always call Twitter, few people outside of the media business had any idea who she was. By now, just a few months later, the former head of advertising at NBCUniversal has become a lightning rod for rage arising from Musk’s erratic, impulsive and, in many cases, repulsive behavior, even as he has made it all but impossible for her to fulfill the mission of making Twitter an alluring place for advertisers. 

 Through it all, Yaccarino has generally presented herself as oblivious to Musk’s conduct and its impact on the company that she at least nominally leads — behavior so maddening that she has been dragged on the very platform she supposedly runs. 

According to those who have worked for or with Yaccarino in the past, the Twitter job gave her an opportunity to fulfill a long-standing ambition: to rise to the level of CEO. And they say they believe her self-regard is such that she thought she could manage Musk despite his well-established reputation as an agent of chaos. Having found that she is unable to do so, these sources say, it’s nothing new for Yaccarino to insist on presenting matters as she would like them to be, trying to choose her own adventure despite the very obvious obstacles in the way. (Yaccarino declined to comment for this article.)

This is where I pause to disclose that I have tweeted at or about both Musk and Yaccarino at times when Musk’s behavior has reached a new apex of toxicity and her response, or lack of one, has remained exasperatingly obtuse. After various Musk emanations, I would tag Yaccarino in a tweet, asking, “Does this make advertisers feel safe?” When Yaccarino made a disastrous appearance at the Code conference in September, I felt the same incredulity as many others as she dodged questions about Musk’s behavior. (CNN’s Reliable Sources newsletter observed that she had seemed “totally untethered from reality.”) At the time, Musk was threatening to sue the Anti-Defamation League for allegedly costing the site ad dollars. Yaccarino said she wished that were different but expressed disappointment that the ADL did not acknowledge “all the progress” the platform had supposedly made in combating antisemitism. I fired off an angry tweet: “This woman is either extremely stupid or mentally unwell.”

Since then, Yaccarino has hardly been able to improve the perception of Twitter among advertisers; as Musk ramped up his invective, companies like NBCU, Apple and Disney have fled in droves. Even Paris Hilton’s entertainment company suspended its ad campaign on the site, a month after announcing an exclusive partnership with Twitter involving live video and commerce. (“The queen of pop culture, music, business and TV is #Sliving on X,” Yaccarino tweeted at the time.)

Yaccarino was even the subject of a Nov. 20 sketch on Jimmy Kimmel Live. After mentioning the troubles engulfing the site, Kimmel said he decided to check in with the CEO. “Everything’s going great,” the woman playing Yaccarino said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

By now, Yaccarino has become one of the best-known CEOs in America, if not for the most desirable reasons. Amid all the noise and controversy, prominent voting-rights attorney Marc Elias posted: “I had never heard of Linda Yaccarino before her joining X, but was she this ridiculous in her last job?”

According to many former associates at NBCU, the answer is a qualified no. Though several describe her as a difficult and volatile boss or colleague, they say she was an extremely hardworking and capable ad-sales executive. Advertisers — who she was, of course, always courting — also praise her. In mid-November, after Forbes reported that marketing leaders were urging Yaccarino to resign, Axios quoted Lou Paskalis, founder and CEO of marketing consultancy AJL Advisory, saying that “the advertising community is now working to save the reputation of a beloved member of our industry who does not share Elon Musk’s views.” 

In fact, it’s unclear what Yaccarino thinks of Musk’s views; after his Nov. 15 tweet endorsing an antisemitic trope as “the actual truth,” she touted the site’s “efforts to combat antisemitism and discrimination.” (Her views on Donald Trump are much clearer. Associates say she was an enthusiastic supporter. She was appointed to the President’s Council on Sport, Fitness and Nutrition during his administration.)

Based on conversations with multiple sources who worked with or for Yaccarino at NBCU, the word “beloved” is not one that many would use to describe the way she was seen internally. “She was good at ad sales but wrecked the culture,” says a former insider. “She was not collegial. She was a scorched-earth manager.” Sources say there were many hirings, firings and reorganizations. “Stability is so important for success, but her reign was marked by instability,” says another source. “You could count on a reorganization once or twice a year.” 

Multiple former associates say Yaccarino sometimes seemed to have an elastic relationship to facts at the company. When communicating with her, says one, “You had to not only send her an email but copy other people [because] even though she had it, she would deny it.” At times, the reason for the confusion seemed understandable, this person continues: “Her organization was so big, she had so many direct reports. She took on too much. She didn’t know how to delegate.”

In dealings with the advertising community, former associates say, Yaccarino was free to make claims that no one was going to vet for accuracy. One example: In 2018, NBC announced that it would cut the number of ads on its TV networks by 20 percent and charge advertisers a premium for the remaining spots. After ad giant Dentsu complained that the commercial load had not been cut as promised, Yaccarino responded by icing the agency for months.

“She quite adeptly navigated that world of alternative facts,” says one former associate, adding that at Twitter, the public will “parse every word and she’s never had to deal with that.” Says another source: “She was in a very protected bubble at NBC. Her image was very carefully scripted. Her whole life was a press strategy.” 

Several of Yaccarino’s former associates say she was determined to rise to the level of chief executive, which was clearly not going to happen at NBCU. “I don’t think she has the skill set to be CEO,” a former colleague says. “She can’t do a simple mission statement. She’s not transparent. She doesn’t have the facts at hand. She doesn’t create a positive culture. She takes pushback personally.” 

Though it would seem obvious that Musk could be more than a handful, a former colleague says her “ego was as big as the building in which we worked. I really do believe that she felt she could manage him.” Another NBCU veteran concurs: “She let her ego get the best of her. She thought she could control him. It was a level of ego and hubris that you rarely see.”

In April, a month before she was hired, Yaccarino interviewed Musk at an industry conference in Miami. “She had the entire staff prepping for that for at least a few weeks prior,” says an NBCU insider. “I think she felt that was an audition for working for him.” (At one point she asked, “Have you de-risked the opportunity or chance of [advertisers’] campaigns landing in these awful, hateful places?” Musk responded that Twitter had “adjacency controls” that enabled marketers to block their ads from appearing next to “anything that is remotely negative.”)

The meticulous preparation for the Miami event was not repeated a few months later, when Yaccarino, as the CEO of Twitter, stepped onstage for the Code conference for an interview with CNBC’s Julia Boorstin. “The Code conference thing was an unmitigated disaster,” says a former NBCU exec. “Linda was used to speaking to people about subjects that she knew cold. She can talk about advertising forever. She got up at Code thinking she could charm people. She just decided to wing it and it was really bad.” Afterward, this person says, “She was kind of despondent. She said, ‘I thought it would be a friendly forum. I’ve known Julia for years. Yeah, I wanted to feed my ego a little bit. It was just a mistake.’ ”

The bad news for Twitter has only intensified the days following Musk’s incendiary Nov. 15 tweet bolstering an antisemitic trope. (Whether his recent jaunt to Israel will change anything remains to be seen.) The New York Times reported that an internal document revealed that more than 100 brands had “fully paused” their ads while dozens of others were “at risk,” potentially leading to a $75 million loss by the end of the year. (The company disputed the accuracy of those figures.) The paper reported that in a meeting with staff, Yaccarino didn’t mention Musk’s post, and blamed the company’s problems on a report from watchdog group Media Matters alleging that ads from companies like IBM and Apple appeared next to posts promoting white nationalist and Nazi content. Twitter has now sued Media Matters.

After Yaccarino tweeted disputing that ads had been placed alongside pro-Nazi content, tech journalist Kara Swisher tweeted, “Denial is not a river in…oh never mind, she’s lost the narrative completely.”

But an NBCU executive observing the chaos says Yaccarino’s see-no-evil stance is what he would expect. “In her mind, she’s committed to this,” he says. “I’ve seen commentary that she needs to leave. She’s not listening to any of that. She has this way of blocking out the negative and almost speaking her mantra until it becomes the truth. Or she thinks it’s the truth.”

 

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Satchel

Satchel 6908

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Elon wants to make sure your plane is not being flown by an HBCU grad. Y’all need to check:

https://news.yahoo.com/elon-musk-cosigns-racist-claim-153400769.html

Late last year, Musk threw a massive tantrum on stage following outrage at his calling an unhinged and antisemitic conspiracy theory "the actual truth."

Now, Musk has similarly endorsed a tweet suggesting Black students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have lower IQs and shouldn't become pilots.

"It will take an airplane crashing and killing hundreds of people for them to change this crazy policy of  DIE," he tweeted, in response to a post arguing that IQ averages were lower at HBCUs, and lower than the "average IQ of US Air Force pilots."

 

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atomheartbevo

atomheartbevo 89414

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I can only tell you this - I'm seeing a lot more people popping up on Threads, Bluesky, and Mastodon - they are posting their introductions, etc., and there's some good folks popping up on those services and having good conversations. Nothing has hit critical mass yet (I'm betting on Threads, but I can create Bluesky and Mastodon accounts if I need to) but conversations are being had, news is being shared, college football is being discussed, etc.

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immamac

immamac 42516

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14 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

I can only tell you this - I'm seeing a lot more people popping up on Threads, Bluesky, and Mastodon - they are posting their introductions, etc., and there's some good folks popping up on those services and having good conversations. Nothing has hit critical mass yet (I'm betting on Threads, but I can create Bluesky and Mastodon accounts if I need to) but conversations are being had, news is being shared, college football is being discussed, etc.

Surly should be an activitypub or something. 

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atomheartbevo

atomheartbevo 89414

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14 minutes ago, immamac said:

Surly should be an activitypub or something. 

Probably.

Speaking of things in the Fediverse, the head of Threads posted this last week:

We’re also continuing our work integrating Threads with the fediverse. Starting today, people who have turned on sharing to the fediverse can see who follows them and likes their content from other fediverse servers. Tap the post activity or follower list for the full list

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