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

[Pancho 45103]

[Francisco 2.0 32432]

46 minutes ago, Pancho said:

 

That's one colorway I never expected to see a Cybertruck in.  I figure Elon is tracking down who bought it so they can get penalized one way or another.

 

 

[Captain Ron 12932]

Props to SpaceX this morning - almost 10 minutes into flight they appear to be A-OK on their flight thus far. 

[Captain Ron 12932]

24 minutes ago, Captain Ron said:

Props to SpaceX this morning - almost 10 minutes into flight they appear to be A-OK on their flight thus far. 

They were able to actually float their booster above the water, which was impressive. They are having video issues on their orbiter, but things are supposedly going well.

[Captain Ron 12932]

NO FUCKKNG WAY. I think they just "landed" that thing. That thing had the wing nearly ripped off and I think they did it.

Edited June 6 by Captain Ron

[1978horn 896]

NO FUCKKNG WAY. I think they just "landed" that thing. That thing had the wing nearly ripped off and I think they did it.

Yeah, surprisingly that flap was still working after half of it melted away

[0xdeadbeef 1652]

That was was pretty damn amazing.  The wing was disintegrating bit by bit, but held together.

 

[Kwix 2199]

I can't get over the live view we were getting.  So fucking cool.

[Goredho 17427]

Gonna be hard for Elon to top this

[Clintonaldo 2576]

16 hours ago, F250 said:

U.S. Air Force captain catching some heat for Fucking Around in a Cybertruck.

 

The kind of thing that makes you Find Out.

 

 

https://www.8newsnow.com/news/local-news/air-force-captain-speeding-cybertruck-video/

 

This is something I will never understand. When you are wrong just say sorry or at least stop talking. With social media, daring someone to get you in trouble NEVER works out for you. Just ask Hugh Freeze.

[Captain Ron 12932]

1 hour ago, Clintonaldo said:

This is something I will never understand. When you are wrong just say sorry or at least stop talking. With social media, daring someone to get you in trouble NEVER works out for you. Just ask Hugh Freeze.

 

Not just daring, but being an absolute shithead to people while double and tripling down. Social media makes people think they have some semblance of anonymity and that they are bullet proof. 

[Chopper 17306]

Behold the beauty of the $3k tent for sibersimps.

[Chopper 17306]

Off-road life with the truck

 

[Deej 76981]

Mud probably voids the warranty, too. 

[Ted Lange 16144]

Probably?

[Brian Fantana 6692]

There's a warranty?

[Ted Lange 16144]

Its more of a EULA

[BurntEyes 6038]

1 hour ago, Brian Fantana said:

There's a warranty?

Lifetime >50 miles, no car washes, rain, mud, or use of "autopilot". Some exclusions may apply.

[Sgt Hulk 13870]

Fuckton of data to sift through but today’s launch was tits.   I love space. Shit is wild right now and today was awesome. The last 24 hours in the launch world showing how smart humans are. 

[immamac 43243]

21 minutes ago, Sgt Hulk said:

Fuckton of data to sift through but today’s launch was tits.   I love space. Shit is wild right now and today was awesome. The last 24 hours in the launch world showing how smart humans are. 

All enabled by AI. 

[atomheartbevo 89850]

5 hours ago, Captain Ron said:

Not just daring, but being an absolute shithead to people while double and tripling down. Social media makes people think they have some semblance of anonymity and that they are bullet proof. 

He seems to be more interested in being a YouTube “influencer” than his Air Force job judging by his YouTube channel, and the Air Force might just help him go down that road full-time.

[atomheartbevo 89850]

7 hours ago, Goredho said:

Gonna be hard for Elon to top this

 

A whole lot of us were traumatized by that as kids.  If asked what I remember about those days in school, that’s the first thing that comes to mind.

 

[Chopper 17306]

It's a TRUCK, dammit!

[C-Man 27286]

Elon Musk's X app ran ads on #whitepower and other hateful hashtags

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/rcna151945

Quote

Elon Musk’s social media app X has been placing advertisements in the search results for at least 20 hashtags used to promote racist and antisemitic extremism, including #whitepower, according to a review of the platform. 

NBC News found the advertisements by searching various hashtags used to promote racism and antisemitism, and by browsing X accounts that often post racial or religious hatred. The hashtags vary from obvious slogans such as #whitepride and #unitethewhite to more fringe and coded words such as #groyper (a movement of online white nationalists) and #kalergi (a debunked theory alleging a conspiracy to eliminate white people from Europe).

While the hashtags make up a small percentage of what is posted daily on X, they add to previous examples showing how the platform has struggled to maintain control of its ad network and how it intersects with hate speech — an issue that has plagued the platform for years. The placements allow X to monetize extremist content more than 18 months after Musk said that he would demonetize hate posts on the platform he owns.

It’s not clear to what extent people at X were aware that the company was monetizing the extremist hashtags prior to NBC News’ reporting. Twitter, as the platform was then known, began placing ads amid search results around 2010. Last year, some users posted on X that they saw ads amid the search results for #heilhitler. Some of those users tweeted about the issue to X management, meaning the company could have known for months, at least, that it was monetizing certain problematic hashtag searches.

After NBC News sought comment from X on the findings, X appeared to have taken action against at least five of the 20 hashtags that previously had ads, removing the ability of users to search for the hashtags. The other 15 including #whitepower remained searchable.

In a statement to NBC News, X did not dispute the findings but said the company “had already taken action on a number of these terms and will continue to expand our approach as necessary.” The statement also reiterated the company’s intention, announced in January, to open a 100-person “center of excellence” for content moderation.

Recommended

TECH NEWSYouTube is implementing stricter rules around gun videos

BUSINESS NEWSBillionaire Frank McCourt's TikTok bid wins key backer as he looks past app’s prized algorithm

The statement, sent via email, said the NBC News findings did not reflect the full extent of the company’s enforcement practices, including around violent content.

“X has clear rules in place relating to violent and hateful speech, and robust protections in place for advertisers,” X said in the statement. “One of our enforcement tools is to limit the reach of posts, which is not reflected in this research.” 

Representatives for X did not answer emailed questions about how it decides which hashtags to demonetize or block entirely.

On Thursday, after NBC News published this report, X said in a post on one of its corporate accounts that it had rolled out a change last month to greatly limit ads in search results. The company said it now maintains a list of “brand-safe and commercially relevant search terms” and allows search ads only alongside those terms or terms chosen by advertisers.

X bans the promotion or glorification of violence and has previously applied the policy to racist and antisemitic content. In April, an NBC News report found that at least 150 paid X subscribers at the time were sharing pro-Nazi content, including speeches by Adolf Hitler. Being a paid subscriber of X allows users to potentially enroll in X’s revenue sharing program, which gives creators a cut of ad dollars generated from their content.

Anika Collier Navaroli, who worked at Twitter as a senior content policy expert before leaving in 2021, said that X could block or demonetize specific hashtags like #whitepower if it wanted to without compromising its free speech principles. 

“There’s no freedom to trend, or populate at the top of search, or be recommended to new people. These are not freedoms,” said Navaroli, now a senior fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University.

Musk has rolled back much of the content moderation on X since he bought the app, then known as Twitter, in October 2022. 

X has lost dozens of major advertisers under Musk’s ownership, with 74 out of the top 100 U.S. advertisers from that month no longer spending on the platform as of May, according to research firm Sensor Tower. At least some of those former advertisers, such as Disney, quit X after reports about antisemitism and other forms of hate on the platform, including in posts by Musk himself. Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, created a firestorm in November when he embraced the concept of the “great replacement,” which says there is a conspiracy to replace the white population with nonwhite people. 

In April, Hyundai paused spending on X after a sponsored post from the automaker appeared next to antisemitic and pro-Nazi posts. The company said Tuesday it had not resumed such spending. 

Because hashtags are used to amplify the reach of content, they can be ripe for abuse, and for years have been a significant battleground for content moderation as tech companies such as Meta and TikTok decided which hashtags to demonetize or restrict.

Social media apps have various ways to restrict hashtags, including blocking them from searches and removing them from auto-complete functions. Last year, X blocked searches for hashtags associated with child sex abuse material after NBC News reported that certain terms served as rallying points for people seeking to trade or sell the illegal material. At the time, an X representative said the company was using automated detection models to compile a list of thousands of hashtags that could violate the company’s policies.

Before Wednesday, X appeared to have blocked at least three antisemitic hashtags, according to searches of the platform. A search for those hashtags produces an error message: “Something went wrong, but don’t fret — it’s not your fault.” In all, NBC News reviewed 50 hashtags. After NBC News contacted X about the hashtags, 12 of 50 hashtags appeared to be blocked.

The 20 monetized extremist hashtags on X included six associated with explicit white supremacy, eight promoting antisemitism and six related to anti-immigrant conspiracy theories. Gearset and Shopify, two companies that make business software, and MS, a company that creates music playlists, were among the X advertisers whose ads ran in between the search results for racist and antisemitic hashtags; the three companies did not respond to requests for comment.

A Shopify ad appears with the hashtag "itneverhappened" search.X

Companies don’t necessarily choose the type of content their ads are adjacent to. They can use block lists to try to avoid certain content, though on X’s ad system, they must list keywords one-by-one to avoid them.

Tech companies do not publish their block lists and vary in how often they restrict hashtags to reduce the amplification of hate speech, sexual content or other objectionable material. In 2013, a blogger compiled a list of more than 200 hashtags that Instagram had made unsearchable. Most of them referred to sex or nudity, which Instagram limits while X generally does not. 

X is different from rival social media sites in allowing certain searchable hashtags with racial prejudice. Instagram and TikTok do not show users any results when they search for #whitepower or #whitepride — two hashtags that X has allowed and placed advertisements alongside. 

Of the 50 reviewed hashtags, searches on X for 45 of them returned recent racist or antisemitic posts. On Instagram, 15 of the 50 hashtags returned racist or antisemitic posts, with the other 35 either blocked or producing anti-racist or unrelated content. On TikTok, 10 of the 50 hashtags returned racist or antisemitic posts, with the rest either blocked or producing other content. 

Instagram, which is owned by Meta, discloses that certain hashtags may not be searchable if the associated content “consistently” does not follow the app’s community guidelines. The company says it periodically reviews hashtags under moderation and may revise its decisions based on the content being posted using the hashtags.

Instagram said in a statement that, short of removing a problematic hashtag entirely from search, it may take less restrictive steps such as removing individual posts. Meta has policies that apply to specific hateful ideologies such as Nazism.

Of the 15 hashtags that produced racist or antisemitic content on Instagram per the NBC News review, Instagram made six of them non-searchable by Wednesday.

TikTok described a similar policy and process, saying that it removes or restricts hashtags that violate the app’s rules.

TikTok said that it tailors its approach depending on circumstances, with “public interest exceptions” to leave up some problematic content for educational or satirical reasons.

“We recognize that some content that would otherwise violate our rules may be in the public interest to view,” it says on a website.

Of the 10 hashtags that produced racist or antisemitic content on TikTok per the NBC News review, TikTok made seven of them non-searchable by Wednesday. 

 A "@MSfromUS" ad appears with the hashtag "JewishSupremacy."X

Some of the extremist hashtags on X have spiked in popularity in recent months, according to research by Darren Linvill, co-director of Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub. Linvill, who has researched troll factories and disinformation tactics, analyzed several of the hashtags at the request of NBC News. 

In late March, a Holocaust denial hashtag echoing the debunked conspiracy theory that it “never happened” spiked to more than 2,200 mentions in one day after previously getting almost no activity, according to Linvill’s findings. Linvill said the spike appeared to be the result of an organized effort by a group of accounts to get the hashtag trending, with no clear connection to offline events. He said several of the accounts were later suspended.

The hashtag was searchable on X until Wednesday, when it appeared to be blocked. Top posts on that hashtag included images depicting antisemitic stereotypes and memes depicting Holocaust denial.

AI appears to be fueling some of the content associated with certain hashtags. In one series of posts, neo-Nazi users have posted AI-generated cartoon hedgehogs with the animal as a stand-in for Hitler. Linvill said use of the associated hashtag spiked this year through early May, with accounts repeatedly posting images of hedgehogs in paramilitary and Nazi outfits holding firearms and giving Nazi salutes. NBC News did not see advertisements in the search results for that hashtag.

Accounts posting images of hedgehogs in paramilitary and Nazi outfits holding firearms and giving Nazi salutes.X

Megan Squire, deputy director for data analytics at the Southern Poverty Law Center, an anti-hate group founded in 1971, said that X isn’t living up to its own policies when it allows violent extremists to use the platform’s amplification features.

“It shows that it’s not top of mind and it’s not on anyone’s to-do list for the week,” she said. “It’s a choice.”

She said that X’s approach to violent extremism contradicts its hands-on attempts to be an arbiter of popular culture — attracting presidential candidates and being a hub of discussion for major events. 

“They can’t have it both ways,” she said. “If you’re going to have the power to weigh in on cultural issues, then that extends to the responsibility to use that power for good.”

 

[hornian 5230]

6 hours ago, C-Man said:

Elon Musk's X app ran ads on #whitepower and other hateful hashtags

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/rcna151945

 

[The Royal We 3072]

14 hours ago, Chopper said:

It's a TRUCK, dammit!

 

[Hank Kingsley 21062]

Jesus. This screencap is not doctored. Looks like the red pill is a calorie bomb. 

 

Edited June 7 by Hank Kingsley

[NoName 16412]

35 minutes ago, Hank Kingsley said:

Jesus. This screencap is not doctored. Looks like the red pill is a calorie bomb. 

 

guess he got butt implants

[Hank Kingsley 21062]

Real men like Elon are fathers that look like your buddy's gay aunt who still follows The Mighty Mighty Bosstones around the country. 

[HenryJames 66192]

He's turning into a Cybertruck.

[Schulz2.0 29020]

9 minutes ago, Hank Kingsley said:

Real men like Elon are fathers that look like your buddy's gay aunt who still follows The Mighty Mighty Bosstones around the country. 

That's the impression that I get.

[Nivek 16997]

30 minutes ago, NoName said:

guess he got butt implants

Neuro Butt

[Parliament 14351]

26 minutes ago, Hank Kingsley said:

Real men like Elon are fathers that look like your buddy's gay aunt who still follows The Mighty Mighty Bosstones around the country. 

Oddly specific.

[Guadaloopy 11025]

On 6/5/2024 at 5:15 PM, Brisketexan said:

Wait....so he's bragging about the super-duper Elon invention and innovation, the never-before-seen feature called.....power steering?

Why are all of these people so fucking stupid?  Seriously, why?

 

On 6/5/2024 at 5:18 PM, F250 said:

Yeah, that was a weird flex. But then again, Cybertrucks don't necessarily have all the modern amenities like being waterproof and breaks that work. So maybe having power steering is an accomplishment.

I don't think his flex is so much that it's power steering, but that the Cybertruck has a .94 steering ratio.  Most vehicles would require 3 full wheel turns for a u-turn while the CT can do it in 1/2 a wheel turn, eliminating the need for hand over hand steering.  It's still a rather unimpressive party trick, and does nothing to redeem the abomination that is CT.

[Captain Ron 12932]

2 hours ago, Hank Kingsley said:

Jesus. This screencap is not doctored. Looks like the red pill is a calorie bomb. 

 

 

When even Elon can no longer afford Ozempic, you know the price is off the charts

[C-Man 27286]

28 minutes ago, Guadaloopy said:

 

I don't think his flex is so much that it's power steering, but that the Cybertruck has a .94 steering ratio.  Most vehicles would require 3 full wheel turns for a u-turn while the CT can do it in 1/2 a wheel turn, eliminating the need for hand over hand steering.  It's still a rather unimpressive party trick, and does nothing to redeem the abomination that is CT.

USAF captain defended

[Ted Lange 16144]

[Captain Ron 12932]

12 minutes ago, Ted Lange said:

Rob Liefield was a fucking hack

[F250 28828]

3 hours ago, Hank Kingsley said:

Jesus. This screencap is not doctored. Looks like the red pill is a calorie bomb. 

 

That shape he is forming into looks familiar. It won't be long before he starts doing the lean forward stance.

[mdmost 43059]

25 minutes ago, Ted Lange said:

Son of a bitch, are you in my mind? Every time I see Elon I think of this. 

[atomheartbevo 89850]

24 minutes ago, Captain Ron said:

Rob Liefield was a fucking hack

I don’t care for his art, but this guys does little docs on comics etc., and put Liefield in context - I give Liefield credit for going his own way and putting his money where his mouth is.

 

[Captain Ron 12932]

1 hour ago, atomheartbevo said:

I don’t care for his art, but this guys does little docs on comics etc., and put Liefield in context - I give Liefield credit for going his own way and putting his money where his mouth is.

 

 

Watched all. You got me, he did put his money where his mouth is and the guy loves comics.

 

Still a fucking hack.

[Pancho 45103]

So we can’t block the ads now?

Up to 200 times reporting the prager u add and counting…

[Francisco 2.0 32432]

4 minutes ago, Pancho said:

So we can’t block the ads now?

Up to 200 times reporting the prager u add and counting…

 

No, but you can tap "not interested in this ad" , which essentially does the same thing.  Of note; I've found after the first 4-5 ads I hide, I do not see any more the rest of the session using the app.

[JMFP 1126]

Man I remember this one time I used to visit this one message board. I wasn't a fan of the team they focused on but I found it was a great place to get news about college football but it also had areas that were pretty funny, and some that were actually really useful.

 

Then one day it turned to shit so I quit going there. 

[Pancho 45103]

31 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

 

No, but you can tap "not interested in this ad" , which essentially does the same thing.  Of note; I've found after the first 4-5 ads I hide, I do not see any more the rest of the session using the app.

I’ve done that a shit ton of times and nothing happens. 

[InkaUtexas 26185]

So Surly is the new tesla?

[hornian 5230]

17 minutes ago, Pancho said:

I’ve done that a shit ton of times and nothing happens. 

You can do what I did. And stop going to twitter. 

[Pancho 45103]

Just now, hornian said:

You can do what I did. And stop going to twitter. 

[Captain Ron 12932]

35 minutes ago, hornian said:

You can do what I did. And stop going to twitter. 

I get anoyed with not being able to read SOME people. But for the most part, I am not unhappy to not be there anymore. It took about a week before I didn't miss it anymore.