Elon Musk: Officially a fraud and piece of shit. Official or unofficial war criminal?

[Brisketexan 105691]

51 minutes ago, Neonmoon said:

What does this graph remind you of?

Aggy

Crypto

Texas football

My chances with Sela Ward (well, okay....the 2010 to 2018 part at least)?

['stache 21924]

4 hours ago, Homercles said:

I’m sure I’m in the minority here or will get accused of being a woke snowflake…but Chappelle has really nosedived in my humble opinion.  I remember going to COTA for some comedy tour where he was to close it out, and after all the drama about folks needing to put their phones away I was underwhelmed as it wasn’t anything worth recording anyways. 

Dave seemed to come back very different…bulked/roided up, angry and no longer rooting for the underdog in his comedy.  He’s full on fuck you mode.  I’ve thought it’s telling that he openly chain smokes all the time during shows, interviews, etc.  

A millionaire brought a billionaire on stage, and in response to fans booing, called them poor.  

I never understood why he let a few criticisms for the trans jokes get to him so much. It was a deal, then it died down, until he doubled and tripled down. The part about it in his last special felt really disingenuous. I still like his comedy but how he handled that ordeal was just angry and bizarre. He's starting to sound like Seinfeld "I can't tell jokes at colleges anymore" even though his brand of comedy was never the type that would get people all that riled up. Still like Seinfeld too, but that ordeal was just weird and unnecessary.

['stache 21924]

3 hours ago, Foosters said:

Really no way to know this guy's political beliefs. Besides listening to him, I mean 

Seriously. He literally just used the term "leftist." That's full on right-wing OANN stuff. He's chosen his side and is firmly within the extreme.

[Bateshorn 9969]

1 minute ago, 'stache said:

I never understood why he let a few criticisms for the trans jokes get to him so much. It was a deal, then it died down, until he doubled and tripled down. The part about it in his last special felt really disingenuous. I still like his comedy but how he handled that ordeal was just angry and bizarre. He's starting to sound like Seinfeld "I can't tell jokes at colleges anymore" even though his brand of comedy was never the type that would get people all that riled up. Still like Seinfeld too, but that ordeal was just weird and unnecessary.

I hate comedians who bitch that they are being canceled because they aren’t funny.  “You don’t get it! You’re too woke!” Blah blah blah.

 

Bullshit, it’s your job to make me laugh, funny man. You gonna roll out some Dane Cook makes fun of trans persons weak shit, I’m not going to laugh. That’s on you, not me. 

[956 Worldwide 34994]

More cringe from Elmo. This is old person on Facebook shit.

 

[Firemans4Horn 18336]

6 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

More cringe from Elmo. This is old person on Facebook shit.

 

Gotta love that the first 100 reply guys to everyone of his tweets are Crypto Bots. 

[atomheartbevo 90142]

2 hours ago, wildcat09 said:

Yeah. I wouldn't really even like to see Apple remove twitter from their app store (though it would be funny).  Normal people should just stop using twitter and let it turn fully into 8chan.

If Musk keeps up the current trend, he will be 100% to blame when it gets pulled from app stores, because he’s encouraging the spread of misinformation, racism ( unbanninf the Stormfront accounts, etc.), etc.

[G650 14303]

 

[G650 14303]

 

[wildcat09 29453]

2 hours ago, G650 said:

You can clearly see the early season setback.

[atomheartbevo 90142]

If you told somebody that Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, etc. were holding Twitter conversations with “catturd”, trying to make anonymous randos on Twitter like them, and had completely gone down the bats hit crazy Qanon rabbit hole, everybody would be surprised.

But when it comes to Elon Musk, a lot of people are like “you know, I kinda saw it coming, plus Grimes really broke him.”

[BearSchlong 8142]

4 hours ago, Aqua Buddha said:

Tesla stock falling and falling fast.

What's next?  News that he's somehow shorting TSLA to finance TWTR?  Man, I wish I was a billionaire so I didn't have to worry about petty childish things like money.

[Goredho 17516]

5 hours ago, Aqua Buddha said:

Tesla stock falling and falling fast.

The nice thing about being the victim of a conspiracy (theory) is that here's always someone else to blame.  It's never *your* fault.

[Aqua Buddha 14671]

[HenryJames 66364]

 

[Chopper 17379]

Among other things going wrong for Lron Husk, he seems to be losing his hearing. The audio from that Chris Rock show was more like 90% boos and a scattering of cheers.

[Francisco 2.0 32442]

When you've lost Popehat:

https://popehat.substack.com/p/goodbye-twitter

 

Quote

Today I was thinking of all the websites I’ve spent time on, and the people I’ve met there. 

I messed around on the internet in the days of screeching dial-up modems, but I didn’t really start to contribute regularly to online communities until 1995 or so. I met my wife on the Usenet back before that would inspire a gasp of horror; it’s been mostly unusable for decades. I participated in communities on AOL and Prodigy and a few of the other dinosaur provider/forums. I spent lots of time on an etiquette forum until they kicked me off for rudeness (best thing really; my tutoring was going nowhere). I spent lots of time on the Snopes forums, a gaming forum called Gone Gold that one day vanished, its successor gaming forum called Octopus Overlords. I participated in sites devoted to particular games, particular movies, particular hobbies.

 

 

Quote

Many of those forums are gone now, like the proverbial tears in rain. Usually whatever content I posted there — primitive lawsplainers, snark, banter, arguments — is gone as well. I still interact with many of the people I knew there, having connected with them at a series of successor locations, but many are lost to the decades — people I felt I knew, now only vaguely remembered.

Now it’s Twitter’s turn.

 

Quote

My late friend and co-writer Patrick started @Popehat’s Twitter account and built it. I only started using it around 2014 or so. Gradually I used it more and he used it less, until he split off to his own account. I miss him, and his perspective and wit and humanity, keenly. Twitter’s not the same without him. That’s one reason I’m leaving it.

 

 

Spoiler

The other reason is that I think it’s fundamentally changed, at least for now. I’m not just talking about the increasing tech glitches. Just as Twitter’s former leaders exercised their free speech and free association rights to brand Twitter one way, Twitter’s new boss is exercising his rights to brand it another way. That new branding is ugly and despicable and I don’t want to contribute content to it. The last straw was Elon Musk sending lunatics and bigots against former employees and leaning into conspiracy theories. So I’m exercising my free speech and free association and leaving, and shuttering the account. I’ll probably delete the past tweets because I can’t stomach them being available to promote this enterprise.

This is exactly how it’s supposed to work, as I’ve been arguing for years. Twitter — or whoever runs it — has rights. I have rights. If one of us disagrees with the other’s exercise of rights, we can part company. That, not government regulation, is the way to do it. I’m repulsed by the flood of triumphant bigotry and trolling, and by Musk’s sad-lonely-boy leaning into the arms of freaks who embrace him in his fruitless quest for love. But I’d never ask the government to stop it. I’m voting with my feet, exactly the way I’ve been telling people to do for years.

I will continue to write and interact. You can find me at these places:

On the Popehat page on Facebook;

On this Substack, the Popehat Report;

On SeriousTrouble.Show, the Substack for the podcast I co-host with Josh Barro;

On Post.News, “@Popehat”;

On Mastodon at @popehat@mastodon.social;

And by email at ken at popehat dot com.

Everything ends, and that’s okay. New doors open.

 

[atomheartbevo 90142]

That stuff @HenryJames posted, it’s….somewhat by design on Musk’s part.  This is the “free speech” he wanted/encouraged.  For as much as he bitches about “cancel culture” he loves to steer his fans at people or organizations that he feels wronged him.

[Brisketexan 105691]

20 minutes ago, HenryJames said:

 

Twitter is becoming exactly the psychopathic cesspool that Phony Stark wants.

Let them have it.  He's chosen to make it irredeemable.  So, let him have it.  Parler with a bird logo.  Cool for him.  Good luck recouping the $44b.

[atomheartbevo 90142]

7 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

When you've lost Popehat:

7 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

and by Musk’s sad-lonely-boy leaning into the arms of freaks who embrace him in his fruitless quest for love.

@G650 Grimes really did break him.

[Francisco 2.0 32442]

[Brisketexan 105691]

1 minute ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

 

....and put nothing in its place.

That's like saying "we think the Big XII refs suck [I purposefully picked a group that none of y'all would disagree about - Brisket], so we're disbanding them.  The next football games will be played without ANY referees."  How do you think that's gonna go?

Yeah, that's how Twitter's gonna go.

[atomheartbevo 90142]

Just now, Brisketexan said:

....and put nothing in its place.

That's like saying "we think the Big XII refs suck [I purposefully picked a group that none of y'all would disagree about - Brisket], so we're disbanding them.  The next football games will be played without ANY referees."  How do you think that's gonna go?

Yeah, that's how Twitter's gonna go.

Advertisers who had paused spending, are not going to unpause it.

And those who stuck around are going to rethink that.

Right as the holiday season is in full swing.

It was clearly not about making money from Twitter, and more about being in control and reading Grimes’s DMs, but it’s also going to be the world’s most expensive hobby/obsession that’s going to royally fuck with Tesla’s stock prices and management in the short term.

Then again, he will run out of Tesla stock to sell, which would be good for the other shareholders.

 

 

[atomheartbevo 90142]

 

You get a tier, and you get a tier, and you get a tier

 

[atomheartbevo 90142]

This is just Musk shitting on all of us who legitimately jumped through the hoops to get the blue check before he made it pay-to-play.  I’m sure he thinks he’s owning a bunch of people and organizations and making his fanbois happy and getting virtual high-fives from them, but he’s completely missing the point of why the checks existed in the first place.  He really is opening the door for another short-format platform or two.

[DixonHur 11679]

1 hour ago, Chopper said:

Among other things going wrong for Lron Husk, he seems to be losing his hearing. The audio from that Chris Rock show was more like 90% boos and a scattering of cheers.

[Neonmoon 38130]

42 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

but he’s completely missing the point of why the checks existed in the first place.  

[Sawbonz 27795]

1 hour ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

 

[Francisco 2.0 32442]

 

 

 

[atomheartbevo 90142]

Pretty much sums it up.

 

[Francisco 2.0 32442]

 

 

[Francisco 2.0 32442]

More on dissolving their Trust and Safety superfriends:

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/12/12/musk-twitter-harass-yoel-roth/

 

Quote

Twitter on Monday night abruptly dissolved its Trust and Safety Council, the latest sign that Elon Musk is unraveling years of work and institutions created to make the social network safer and more civil.

Members of Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council received an email with the subject line, “Thank You,” that informed them the council was no longer “the best structure” to bring “external insights into our product and policy development work.”

 

Quote

The email dissolution arrived less than an hour before members of the council were expecting to meet with Twitter executives via Zoom to discuss recent developments, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the plans.

Dozens of civil rights leaders, academics and advocates from around the world had volunteered their time for years to help improve safety on the platform.

 

Quote

“We are grateful for your engagement, advice and collaboration in recent years and wish you every success in the future,” said the email, which was simply signed “Twitter.”

In less than two months, Musk has undone years of investments in trust and safety at Twitter — dismissing key parts of the workforce and bringing back accounts that previously had been suspended. As the body unravels, Musk is tightening his grip on decisions about the future of content moderation at Twitter, with less input from outside experts.

 

Spoiler

The move is just throwing away “years of institutional memory that we on the council have brought” to the company, said one council member, who asked to remain anonymous due to concern about harassment on the platform. “Getting external experts and advocates looking at your services makes you smarter.”

The Trust and Safety Council unraveled after Musk himself had pitched the creation of a content moderation council that would have weighed in on key content moderation decisions, but later appeared to change his mind about introducing such a body.

Many members were already on the verge of resigning, said Larry Magid, chief executive of ConnectSafely, a Silicon Valley nonprofit that advises consumers about children’s internet use.

“By disbanding it, we got fired instead of quit,” he said. “Elon doesn’t want criticism, and he really doesn’t want the kind of advice he would very likely get from a safety advisory council, which would likely tell him to rehire some of the staff he got rid of, and reinstate some of the rules he got rid of, and turn the company in another direction from where he is turning it.”

Twitter first formed the Trust and Safety Council in 2016, as social networks were coming under greater scrutiny for their role in amplifying hate, terrorism, child exploitation and other problematic content online. The council convened a wide range of civil society groups, think tanks — and even some of Silicon Valley’s biggest critics. Twitter executives would regularly brief the council on new products in development and policies.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, a non-profit that promotes press freedom around the world, decried the dissolution of the council. “Safety online can mean survival offline," the group’s president, Jodie Ginsburg, said in a statement. “Today’s decision to dissolve the Trust and Safety Council is cause for grave concern, particularly as it is coupled with increasingly hostile statements by Twitter owner Elon Musk about journalists and the media.” 

“I don’t understand the logic of doing this when many of these relationships were hard fought to develop,” said another member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the council’s dissolution.

Twitter told Trust and Safety members that their “regional points of contact will remain the best people to contact to escalate concerns.” However, Twitter’s Trust and Safety and policy teams have been gutted by recent layoffs, as well as employee departures following an ultimatum from Musk.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which was a member of the council, will be “keeping a lookout for how they restructure,” said Gavin Portnoy, the center’s vice president.

“For the moment, we’ll continue to encourage reporting to the CyberTipline and hope to continue to have a seat at the table to address child safety on Twitter,” he said.

Last week, three members of the Trust and Safety Council resigned, warning that the “safety and wellbeing of Twitter’s users are on the decline.”

Musk responded to replies to their tweet announcing their resignation, writing, “It’s a crime that they refused to take action on child exploitation for years!”

Jack Dorsey, the company’s former CEO, responded to Musk, calling the claim “false.” But Musk’s comment nonetheless prompted a wave of threats and harassment at the board members who left the council, as well as some who remained.

The Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit that was a member of the council and has received funding from tech companies, said in a statement that it was “dismayed by Twitter leadership’s irresponsible actions to spread misinformation about the Council, which have endangered Council members and eroded any semblance of trust in the company.”

Musk’s treatment of the board mirrored a wave of attacks that enveloped a former top executive at the company over the weekend.

Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, and his family were forced from their home after Elon Musk’s tweets misrepresented Roth’s academic writing about sexual activity and children. The online mob also sent threats to people Roth had replied to on Twitter, forcing some of Roth’s family and friends to delete their Twitter accounts, according to a person familiar with Roth’s situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to concerns about Roth’s safety.

Musk’s followers also directed harassment at professors who reviewed the dissertation that Roth wrote in 2016, as well as at his graduate school, the University of Pennsylvania, the person said. The university did not respond to a request for comment.

As head of trust and safety at Twitter, Roth was involved in many of the platform’s decisions about what posts to remove and what accounts to suspend. His communications with other Twitter officials have been posted in recent days as part of what Musk calls the Twitter Files, a series of tweets by conservative journalists Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss.

Musk’s tweets to his tens of millions of followers have for years prompted his supporters to deluge the targets of his ire with online threats — famously, a participant in the rescue of a boys soccer team trapped in a cave in Thailand, whom Musk branded “pedo guy.” But now that Musk owns one of the most powerful social networks in the world and has gutted the company division that previously policed online harassment, the stakes are even higher.

Musk tweets about Roth recalled the QAnon conspiracy movement, which claims incorrectly that Democratic Party leaders direct a child sex abuse network.

“Looks like Yoel is arguing in favor of children being able to access adult Internet services in his PhD thesis,” Musk tweeted Saturday, attaching a screenshot of Roth’s dissertation.

In the text, Roth suggested that services like the gay dating app Grindr should adopt safety strategies to accommodate teenagers using their platforms, rather than drive them out entirely. Musk also commented on a 2010 tweet in which Roth wrote, “Can high school students ever meaningfully consent to sex with their teachers?” Roth then linked to an article about a Washington State Supreme Court ruling about what age students can consent to having sex with their teachers.

Musk’s critical comments about Roth are something of an about-face from his early days at the company, when Roth appeared to be one of the few high-level Twitter executives Musk supported. On Oct. 30, the billionaire tweeted, “I want to be clear that I support Yoel. My sense is that he has high integrity, and we are all entitled to our political beliefs.”

And Roth appeared measured in his comments on Twitter’s new owner, seeking to reassure the public about company efforts to fight hate and protect elections. He even appeared alongside Musk in a call intended to reassure advertisers.

Even after he left Twitter in November, Roth was muted in his criticism. He warned in an op-ed in the New York Times that there was “little need” for a trust and safety function at a company where “policies are defined by edict.” But he also said publicly that it wasn’t accurate to depict Musk as the “villain of the story” in his takeover of the company.

“I think one of the things that is tricky about Elon, in particular, is that people really want him to be the villain of the story, and they want him to be unequivocally wrong and bad, and everything he says is duplicitous,” Roth said during an interview at the Knight Foundation conference. “I have to say ... that wasn’t my experience with him.”

Still, Roth is the most visible former Twitter executive assessing Musk’s actions, and his role at the company has been highlighted in the Twitter Files.

Twitter employees have long been wary of Musk’s ability to stoke online criticism. Shortly after he announced his plans to take over the company in April, he tweeted a meme to his tens of millions of followers with the face of Twitter’s top lawyer, Vijaya Gadde, that appeared to suggest the company’s decisions are affected by a “left wing bias.”

Twitter users quickly piled on — calling on Musk to fire Gadde or using racist language to describe her. Gadde was born in India and immigrated to the United States as a child. One user said she would “go down in history as an appalling person.”

Such harassment is part of a years-long pattern for Musk, with few legal consequences to date. Musk ultimately was not held liable in a defamation suit brought after he made his “pedo guy” remarks.

 

[atomheartbevo 90142]

1 hour ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

For those lucky enough not to know a Qanon type, early in the cult/movement the followers would follow the white rabbit (Alice in Wonderland imagery) down the rabbit hole to discover the pedophiles and child traffickers, etc.

We are just days away from Musk tweeting out WWG1WGA (where we go one, we go all, it’s their rallying cry) or talking about JFK Jr, showing up in Dallas.  And that’s on top of him giving a shout-out to “88” a few weeks ago.

The dumbest fucking timeline

 

Edited December 13, 2022 by atomheartbevo

[Chopper 17379]

Quote

The email dissolution arrived less than an hour before members of the council were expecting to meet with Twitter executives via Zoom to discuss recent developments, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the plans.

"Accountability is a bitch and must be avoided at all costs." Elron Husk, 2022.

Whoever it was that said the model 3 is ugly and looking long in the tooth was so right. I don't know if it was this thread but ever since reading that comment, I've noticed. 

[atomheartbevo 90142]

[elfenix 34396]

 

[Nice Guy Eddie 13568]

You have to wonder how Tesla employees, with stock options, feel about the Twitter debacle harming their future finances.

If asked, I assume Elon would say it’s an opportunity for those employees to show their confidence by buying TSLA stock with their Tesla income.

[Brian Fantana 6722]

[956 Worldwide 34994]

Going fine without all that staff.

 

[BearSchlong 8142]

You have to wonder how Tesla employees, with stock options, feel about the Twitter debacle harming their future finances.
If asked, I assume Elon would say it’s an opportunity for those employees to show their confidence by buying TSLA stock with their Tesla income.

TSLA was poised to change the landscape of east of Austin from Taylor to Bastrop. Texas is/was all in on this clown.

People bet their careers and livelihood on stable leadership. This asshole has become Howard Hughes saving his own piss in bottles.

[NoName 16732]

8 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

We are just days away from Musk tweeting out WWG1WGA (where we go one, we go all, it’s their rallying cry) or talking about JFK Jr, showing up in Dallas.  And that’s on top of him giving a shout-out to “88” a few weeks ago.

The dumbest fucking timeline

I watched a livestream on youtube last year? when they said JFK and JFK Jr were going to re appear at Dealey Plaza. was exactly as comical as you think it would be.

[atomheartbevo 90142]

48 minutes ago, NoName said:

I watched a livestream on youtube last year? when they said JFK and JFK Jr were going to re appear at Dealey Plaza. was exactly as comical as you think it would be.

It’s one of my favorite parts of the Q movement, because it tells you the people who made up Q had decided to just start fucking with their followers.

1 hour ago, BearSchlong said:

TSLA was poised to change the landscape of east of Austin from Taylor to Bastrop. Texas is/was all in on this clown.

People bet their careers and livelihood on stable leadership. This asshole has become Howard Hughes saving his own piss in bottles.

 

[Chopper 17379]

Someone please tell me that if TSLA sinks to $50 that would mean Elron is near personal bankruptcy.

[G650 14303]

22 minutes ago, Chopper said:

Someone please tell me that if TSLA sinks to $50 that would mean Elron is near personal bankruptcy.

Oh I'm sure he'll fall. But I don't think we are lucky enough to have him break his neck.

[kevwun 15955]

Looks like Ukraine accidentally got removed from the list of Countries for new user registration.

[The Royal We 3072]

9 minutes ago, kevwun said:

Looks like Ukraine "accidentally" got removed from the list of Countries for new user registration.

FIFY

[Chopper 17379]

24 minutes ago, kevwun said:

Looks like Ukraine accidentally got removed from the list of Countries for new user registration.

Still taking vpn's and bots from Russia?

[Prepuce of Doom 21137]

No idea whether this is credible, but it's certainly believable. 

Also pasting the image for when it's inevitably removed by the Emperor. 

 

[Chopper 17379]

fwiw.

Eloon Muskkk not gonna like this

text is spoilered but it's a free article so give a click if you're interested.

https://www.semafor.com/article/12/11/2022/white-house-twitter-musk-indifferent

Spoiler

That’s because Biden’s team believes Twitter is largely valuable for just two things:

Selling its message to journalists and other influential figures.
Encouraging friendly activists to put pressure on those elite voices.

"There's a crowd within the White House that cares about disinformation and thinks it's a major problem for Democrats narrowly and democracy more broadly," an administration official said of Musk’s efforts to relax moderation and make the site more welcoming to the right. "But it's probably a minority."

undefined headshotMAX'S VIEW
Biden’s team seems to view the battle over moderation at Twitter as a matter of some concern — like, say, a big fire in California or the political crisis in Peru — but not something that’s exactly their problem.

The administration does not consider Twitter a vital part of any political strategy that reaches beyond the chattering classes. One former White House official told Semafor the platform is an “afterthought” in communications and press meetings, which tend to focus first on television and traditional media and on Facebook, a declining service that still reaches a mass audience.

It’s a stark contrast with President Donald Trump, who early this year sued the platform for removing him, comparing the ban to the Catholic Church’s silencing of the astronomer Galileo. As then-White House Press Secretary Jenn Psaki once put it: “I think it's safe to say that the president spends a lot less time obsessing over social media than the former president.”

The disdain for Twitter inside the White House has little to do with right-wing control of the platform, and more to do with its role inside the Democratic Party: Biden’s wing sees Twitter as fuel for activist voices who push ingroup thinking, left-of-center bias, and socioeconomic bias.

When Biden ran for president in 2016, his staff’s mantra was “Twitter isn’t real life.” Now, aides point to data from The New York Times suggesting that Democrats are “more moderate, more diverse and less educated” than those on the social media platform.

Some of Biden’s aides tweet a lot: Chief of Staff Ron Klain most prominently, but also rapid response director Andrew Bates, and Digital Director Rob Flaherty.

Klain is well aware of the scrutiny paid to his Twitter account, which he largely uses to influence the journalists he knows are glued to the platform, according to current and former officials. In the months leading up to the midterm elections, he incessantly used Twitter to highlight when gas prices were decreasing (and ignored them when they weren’t).

Flaherty is also the main point of contact with social media platforms, and has driven the outreach to many of the administration’s most vocal supporters online. The digital team pushed to reward Heather Cox Richardson, the popular liberal Boston College professor and Substacker, and Brian Tyler Cohen, a progressive YouTuber, with rare Biden sitdowns. And earlier this year, his team invited some of the biggest-name #resistance accounts to the White House for a briefing and conversation about some of the victories Biden’s team wanted to highlight.

Flaherty, who won an internal battle to move the White House’s digital messaging outside its communications office, is among those who have expressed concern that Musk’s regime could mean more “disinformation” on Twitter.

But there, too, aides said they remain much more worried about false information circulating on Facebook.

One compared the White House view of Twitter to its view of Fox News: A medium with a big audience who aren’t usually open to persuasion, but which they can’t totally ignore.

ROOM FOR DISAGREEMENT
The White House posture has critics on the left. Crooked Media editor-in-chief Brian Beutler thinks Democrats ought to take Musk’s takeover dead seriously.

“It is not uncommon to watch ideas leap seamlessly from Twitter thread into the churn of U.S. policy making or political strategy or mainstream news media. As long as influential elites continue to use it the way they use it, having control over what dominates political discourse on Twitter will affect what our political leaders choose to prioritize,” he writes.

THE VIEW FROM INDIA
The former head of Twitter in India, Manish Maheshwari, writes: “Neutrality is essential. If you favour one side, you are bound to lose the other. And it is the notice board of the world because the world is here.” He notes that when government pressure led Twitter to force some voices off the platform, they went to a local rival, Koo, which continues to compete in India.

“The only problem today with Koo is that it is local, and if you want to interact with people outside India, you need something else,” he wrote. “What if Koo expands globally? Then it becomes a viable alternative to Twitter for content creators and consumers.

 

[956 Worldwide 34994]

50 minutes ago, Chopper said:

fwiw.

Eloon Muskkk not gonna like this

text is spoilered but it's a free article so give a click if you're interested.

https://www.semafor.com/article/12/11/2022/white-house-twitter-musk-indifferent

  Hide contents

That’s because Biden’s team believes Twitter is largely valuable for just two things:

Selling its message to journalists and other influential figures.
Encouraging friendly activists to put pressure on those elite voices.

"There's a crowd within the White House that cares about disinformation and thinks it's a major problem for Democrats narrowly and democracy more broadly," an administration official said of Musk’s efforts to relax moderation and make the site more welcoming to the right. "But it's probably a minority."

undefined headshotMAX'S VIEW
Biden’s team seems to view the battle over moderation at Twitter as a matter of some concern — like, say, a big fire in California or the political crisis in Peru — but not something that’s exactly their problem.

The administration does not consider Twitter a vital part of any political strategy that reaches beyond the chattering classes. One former White House official told Semafor the platform is an “afterthought” in communications and press meetings, which tend to focus first on television and traditional media and on Facebook, a declining service that still reaches a mass audience.

It’s a stark contrast with President Donald Trump, who early this year sued the platform for removing him, comparing the ban to the Catholic Church’s silencing of the astronomer Galileo. As then-White House Press Secretary Jenn Psaki once put it: “I think it's safe to say that the president spends a lot less time obsessing over social media than the former president.”

The disdain for Twitter inside the White House has little to do with right-wing control of the platform, and more to do with its role inside the Democratic Party: Biden’s wing sees Twitter as fuel for activist voices who push ingroup thinking, left-of-center bias, and socioeconomic bias.

When Biden ran for president in 2016, his staff’s mantra was “Twitter isn’t real life.” Now, aides point to data from The New York Times suggesting that Democrats are “more moderate, more diverse and less educated” than those on the social media platform.

Some of Biden’s aides tweet a lot: Chief of Staff Ron Klain most prominently, but also rapid response director Andrew Bates, and Digital Director Rob Flaherty.

Klain is well aware of the scrutiny paid to his Twitter account, which he largely uses to influence the journalists he knows are glued to the platform, according to current and former officials. In the months leading up to the midterm elections, he incessantly used Twitter to highlight when gas prices were decreasing (and ignored them when they weren’t).

Flaherty is also the main point of contact with social media platforms, and has driven the outreach to many of the administration’s most vocal supporters online. The digital team pushed to reward Heather Cox Richardson, the popular liberal Boston College professor and Substacker, and Brian Tyler Cohen, a progressive YouTuber, with rare Biden sitdowns. And earlier this year, his team invited some of the biggest-name #resistance accounts to the White House for a briefing and conversation about some of the victories Biden’s team wanted to highlight.

Flaherty, who won an internal battle to move the White House’s digital messaging outside its communications office, is among those who have expressed concern that Musk’s regime could mean more “disinformation” on Twitter.

But there, too, aides said they remain much more worried about false information circulating on Facebook.

One compared the White House view of Twitter to its view of Fox News: A medium with a big audience who aren’t usually open to persuasion, but which they can’t totally ignore.

ROOM FOR DISAGREEMENT
The White House posture has critics on the left. Crooked Media editor-in-chief Brian Beutler thinks Democrats ought to take Musk’s takeover dead seriously.

“It is not uncommon to watch ideas leap seamlessly from Twitter thread into the churn of U.S. policy making or political strategy or mainstream news media. As long as influential elites continue to use it the way they use it, having control over what dominates political discourse on Twitter will affect what our political leaders choose to prioritize,” he writes.

THE VIEW FROM INDIA
The former head of Twitter in India, Manish Maheshwari, writes: “Neutrality is essential. If you favour one side, you are bound to lose the other. And it is the notice board of the world because the world is here.” He notes that when government pressure led Twitter to force some voices off the platform, they went to a local rival, Koo, which continues to compete in India.

“The only problem today with Koo is that it is local, and if you want to interact with people outside India, you need something else,” he wrote. “What if Koo expands globally? Then it becomes a viable alternative to Twitter for content creators and consumers.

 

This special Indian version of Twitter fascinates me. Due to a weird series of events I ended up being involved with Pakistani Facebook for about two years in the mid-2010s and that shit was wild.