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

[cactusflinthead 27598]

28 minutes ago, Thetexashammer said:

any reasonable person, that never happened.

I actually have work to accomplish today, but it's likely you can find a dance partner.

I'm going to have to decline.

But, you're wrong. 

[wildcat09 29349]

2 hours ago, Thetexashammer said:

What I react to is obvious lies. The post you quoted describes "his own endorsement of white genocide theory and all the Nazi/extremist content on his website". To any reasonable person, that never happened. Even the single post he made wasn't an endorsement of Nazism, it was an attack on the ADL. Elon has been going after the ADL for months if not years. 

I don't think Elon is a Nazi, I think he holds a political position you disagree with so you and your fellow travelers want to call him a Nazi/racist etc. It's not a new formula, it's old and tired. But you do you.

I though Elon should have been fired from Tesla years ago, he is obviously acting against the interest of shareholders. I have no idea how he manages to hang on to his CEO titles.

Here's what actually happened:

 

 

Poster 1: "If you think 'Hitler was right' explain why"

Poster 2: Basic ass white genocide theory bullshit long promoted by neo-nazis, as an explanation for why he thinks Hitler was right

Elon: Poster 2 has "said the actual truth"

If you're going to argue that this is anything other than Elon expressly endorsing the belief that Hitler was right for the reasons the poster he was responding to stated, you're a fucking liar.

Edited November 22, 2023 by wildcat09

[cactusflinthead 27598]

[Francisco 2.0 32389]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-22/advertisers-ditch-x-after-elon-musk-endorses-anti-semitic-theory?srnd=premium

 

Quote

Elon Musk’s tweet endorsing an antisemitic conspiracy theory seemed to take his business partners by surprise. On Nov. 15 he responded to a social media user who articulated a version of the racist “great replacement theory,” which says that Jews are secretly conspiring with immigrants to destroy White culture. The idea was the inspiration for the deadly shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018. “You have said the actual truth,” Musk wrote.
 

 

Quote

The next day, International Business Machines Corp. announced it was suspending ads on X, the social network formerly known as Twitter, citing a separate report from Media Matters for America on antisemitism on the platform. Apple, Disney, Lionsgate and the European Commission all soon followed. A White House spokesman accused Musk of repeating “the hideous lie behind the most fatal act of antisemitism in American history.” President Joe Biden later posted for the first time on Threads, Meta Platforms Inc.’s X competitor.
 

 

Quote

If the outcry over Musk’s behavior is putting renewed pressure on an already beleaguered company, it shouldn’t have come as a shock. A review of Musk’s social media usage since 2020 shows a political shift that began during the Covid-19 lockdowns, then seemed to intensify dramatically in recent months as he spent more time interacting with accounts associated with White nationalism. Imran Ahmed, founder and chief executive officer of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit that’s been critical of Musk, says X’s owner is “one of those odd people with a classic case of Twitter brain,” using a term describing how social media narrows one’s worldview.
 

 

Spoiler

Musk generally responds to such comments with vitriol, and sometimes lawsuits. Earlier this year, X sued the CCDH, accusing it of deliberately harming the company’s advertising business. (Ahmed’s group says the lawsuit is meritless.) Musk has denied being antisemitic. He’s blamed the recent outrage on Media Matters, announcing a “thermonuclear lawsuit” that contends the Media Matters report was manufactured. Media Matters calls the lawsuit frivolous. Neither X nor Musk responded to requests for comment.

Musk also attacked the companies that have begun boycotting X, pointing to IBM’s history of doing business with Nazi Germany. In the face of pressure from advertising executives who called for her to step down in protest, according to a report in Forbes, X CEO Linda Yaccarino railed against “detractors and fabricated distractions” in a post on X. She has said she remains committed to the company.

The first sign of Musk’s embrace of the right came in May 2020 when he told his millions of Twitter followers to “take the red pill,” a common way to refer to accepting a right-wing worldview. By then, Musk had been raging about stay-at-home restrictions for months, but he was still largely seen as a left-of-center capitalist known for his environmentalism. The tweet prompted a raft of explainers about red-pilling and drew cheers from Republicans. “Taken!” wrote Ivanka Trump. But some of the most enthusiastic responses—and the ones that ultimately caught Musk’s attention—came from more extreme provocateurs, including Mike Cernovich, Robby Starbuck and someone who goes by the handle Catturd.

 

Musk responded positively to the attention and made several other gestures toward the far right in the months that followed. By the end of the year, the billionaire had cited misinformation about Covid, mocked the idea of using they/them pronouns and complained that the left was becoming too extreme. His engagement with right-wing Twitter accounts accelerated as he began looking to buy the company and really picked up after the deal closed.

Musk began replying to dozens of right-wing posts each week as his interests broadened. He might respond to a post promoting some fringe political view with a single word—“Interesting”—an exclamation point or, another favorite, the laughing-while-crying emoji. These interactions boosted his standing with the far right and created incentives for those accounts to try to attract his attention. Musk is X’s most popular user, with nearly 164 million followers, and he can bring huge viewership to an account by replying to one of its posts, making the content eligible to show in any feed that follows Musk.

An early beneficiary was Ian Miles Cheong, a self-described independent journalist who focuses on culture-war issues. Cheong, whose fixations include issues such as crimes committed by Black people and the perceived degradation of San Francisco, had about 300,000 followers when Musk began responding to his posts. He now has nearly 850,000. Cheong responded to the increased visibility by explicitly courting Musk. In recent months, he’s praised the Musk-owned chatbot Grok, backed up Musk’s attacks on Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales and injected himself into a feud between Musk and Bill Gates.

Musk reversed bans on extremist users such as “Stop the Steal” advocate Ali Alexander and neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin. He also replaced the company’s “blue check” verification system, which was designed to identify prominent politicians, celebrities and journalists, with a new one that allowed anyone to pay for the same status. In February, Musk announced X would share ad revenue with verified users, and it began doing so with a number of controversial figures. Besides Cheong, who boasted about receiving more than $16,000, X began paying an account called End Wokeness, which frequently posts White nationalist memes, and Andrew Tate, a self-proclaimed misogynist who’s under house arrest in Romania for allegations that include rape and human trafficking. In July, Tate, who has denied wrongdoing, posted a screenshot showing that X had paid him more than $20,000 in advertising revenue.

In October 2022, Musk shared a link to an article endorsing a conspiracy theory about the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband that posited the attacker was a male prostitute. There was no evidence supporting this idea, which turned out to be false, but lots of people in right-wing circles were talking about it. He later deleted the post about the Pelosi attack. This July, Musk implied the Covid vaccine might have been responsible for a cardiac arrest suffered by LeBron James’ then-18-year-old son, Bronny, amplifying a persistent (and false) theory that the vaccine was causing many fatal heart problems. Doctors later attributed the young man’s cardiac arrest to a congenital heart defect.

Musk’s posts have taken on a more strident tone in recent months. The same week he endorsed the great replacement theory, he repeatedly replied to tweets containing videos and memes suggesting that White people were under attack, that the US was being invaded by immigrants or that immigrants should all be deported. Musk, himself an immigrant from South Africa, also endorsed a post describing the country of his birth, which ended its system of racial apartheid in the 1990s, as “an anti-White apartheid state.”

Musk’s heightened far-right engagement continued even after the outcry over his great replacement tweet, with Musk responding to a tweet about American slavery by suggesting that educators were exaggerating its historical import—“throughout history, the vast majority of people have been in slaves in one form or another!” he wrote in a reply to right-wing influencer Ashley St. Clair. Musk’s fans have responded with messages of solidarity, with Tate, the accused sex trafficker, offering $1 million per month in advertising spending and the far-right podcaster Tim Pool offering $250,000.

The pledges highlight just how big a hole Musk has dug for himself at X. Apple alone spent $48 million on Twitter during the first quarter of 2022, according to documents obtained by the Washington Post. Now Apple is gone, at least temporarily; X’s revenue is down 60%; and Musk is making up for it by trying to rally support among his right-wing admirers. On Nov. 17 he wrote that many of the largest advertisers—presumably referring to some of the companies that had paused spending—“are the greatest oppressors of your right to free speech.” That message might have felt satisfying to blurt out, but it’s unlikely to persuade those companies to come back anytime soon.

 

[wildcat09 29349]

What's wild is how little any of the coverage of this even notices that he wasn't just embracing great replacement theory, but that he was doing so immediately in response to someone else explaining that great replacement theory is "why Hitler was right." The only possible inference is that Elon thinks Hitler was right and all of the fucking coverage of this ignores that.

[atomheartbevo 89650]

2 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

When do we fast forward where Elon just pulls the plug on X? There is no chance that he admits his mistakes and leaves the platform to professionals. 

2 hours ago, Left Coast said:

I don’t think he’ll pull the plug on X. He’ll just keep it around as it continues to devolve into his own “Truth Social” playground full of hate and dildo ads.

Yeah, he’s been wanting to make X.com happen even before Thiel ousted him at PayPal. It’s his dream of an all-in-one app/lifestyle hub.

[Francisco 2.0 32389]

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/11/elon-musk-and-tesla-ignored-autopilots-fatal-flaws-judge-says-evidence-shows/

 

Quote

A Florida judge, Reid Scott, has ruled that there's "reasonable evidence" to conclude that Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk knew of defects in Autopilot systems and failed to fix them. Testimony from Tesla engineers and internal documents showed that Musk was "intimately involved" in Tesla's Autopilot program and "acutely aware" of a sometimes-fatal defect—where Autopilot repeatedly fails to detect cross traffic, Scott wrote.

"Knowing that the Autopilot system had previously failed, had limitations" and, according to one Tesla Autopilot systems engineer, "had not been modified, Tesla still permitted the 'Autopilot' system to be engaged on roads that encountered areas of cross traffic," Scott wrote.

 

Quote

Because a jury could perhaps consider that a "conscious disregard or indifference to the life" of Tesla drivers, Scott granted a motion to seek punitive damages to Kim Banner, whose husband Jeremy was killed in 2019 when his "Model 3 drove under the trailer of an 18-wheeler big rig truck that had turned onto the road, shearing off the Tesla's roof," Reuters reported. Autopilot allegedly failed to warn Jeremy or respond in any way that could have avoided the collision, like braking or steering the vehicle out of danger, Banner's complaint said.

Seemingly most worrying to the judge, Tesla engineers told Scott that following Banner's death in 2019 and the "eerily similar" death of another Florida driver, Joshua Brown, in 2016, the automaker did nothing to intervene or update Autopilot's cross-traffic detection system. Tesla continues to market the Autopilot feature as safe for drivers today, Scott wrote.

 

Quote

"It would reasonable to conclude that [Tesla] dismissed the information it had available in favor of its marketing campaign for the purpose of selling vehicles under the label of being autonomous," Scott wrote.

Scott noted that Tesla's marketing of Autopilot is "important" in this case, pointing to a 2016 video that's still on Tesla's website, where Tesla claimed "the car is driving itself." The video, Scott wrote, shows the car navigating scenarios "not dissimilar" to the cross-traffic encounter with a truck that killed Banner's husband.

"Absent from this video is any indication that the video is aspirational or that this technology doesn’t currently exist in the market," Scott wrote.

 

Spoiler

Scott's ruling is considered a big blow to Tesla, which had denied liability for Banner's death, arguing that human error is at fault because "its manual and the 'clickwrap' agreement sufficiently warned" Tesla owners of Autopilot's limitations.

The judge wrote that Tesla would be able to make this argument at trial—which has been delayed—but at this stage, a jury presented with available evidence could reasonably find Tesla guilty of both intentional misconduct and gross negligence. The result of such a verdict could put Tesla on the hook for awarding huge damages that experts have said could also enormously damage Tesla's reputation. At trial, Banner will likely argue that these warnings were inadequate.

Banner's attorney, Lake "Trey" Lytal III, told Reuters that they are "extremely proud of this result based in the evidence of punitive conduct."

Despite being called the "de facto leader" of the Autopilot team in internal Tesla emails, Musk did not provide a deposition in Banner's case, which was one of the first times Tesla had to defend itself against claims that Autopilot was fatally flawed, Reuters reported. In August, Tesla also seemingly attempted to do damage control by seeking to "keep deposition transcripts of its employees and other documents secret," Reuters noted.

Scott's order has seemingly now made it clear why Tesla may have considered those depositions and documents so damning.

Tesla's Autopilot feature has been under investigation for years. In 2021, as Tesla began experimentally testing the feature with drivers it determined were safe, the US launched a major probe after 11 Teslas crashed into emergency vehicles. That same year, Consumer Reports found that Autopilot could easily be rigged to work without a driver in the seat, raising more safety concerns.

By summer of 2022, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) had documented 273 crashes involving Teslas using Autopilot systems, and when the season turned to fall, the feds promptly opened a criminal investigation into Tesla Autopilot claims, "examining whether Tesla misled consumers, investors and regulators by making unsupported claims about its driver assistance technology's capabilities."

Tesla's troubles have continued throughout 2023. The year started with Tesla announcing to its investors that it was being investigated by the Justice Department, which had requested documents related to Tesla’s Autopilot and Full Self Driving features. Around the same time, it came out that Tesla had staged the 2016 self-driving demo—a fact that Scott directly called out in his November order—and that Musk had overseen the staging.

"I will be telling the world that this is what the car *will* be able to do, not that it can do this upon receipt," Musk said in an email to employees where the CEO made it "absolutely clear that everyone’s top priority is achieving an amazing Autopilot demo drive."

Fatal crashes have continued to be a top concern for officials attempting to understand how safe Tesla's Autopilot and Full Self Driving features are. In February, Tesla hit a new low and recalled 362,758 cars because its Full Self Driving Beta was considered too dangerous.

But Tesla has not stopped defending its cars amid the constant scrutiny. This year, Tesla had two big wins when the National Transportation Safety Board found that Autopilot had no involvement in a fatal Texas Tesla crash, and a California jury found that Tesla Autopilot was not responsible for a 2019 fatal crash.

With Tesla cars still using potentially defective Autopilot systems on the road today, Scott's order granting Banner leave to amend her complaint to seek punitive damages could result in discovery that further exposes how Tesla makes decisions regarding driver safety. That could be meaningful to the NHTSA, which earlier this year demanded answers from Tesla on its Autopilot systems, but Tesla reportedly failed to respond.

According to an expert in autonomous systems in vehicles and driver monitoring systems who testified as one of Banner's witnesses, Mary “Missy” Cummings, Tesla's Autopilot is substandard in many ways. Cumming's opinion was that Tesla overrepresented the Autopilot technology "as far more capable than it actually was" and "used insufficient avoidance detection technology." Cummings also suggested that "the steering wheel torque driver inattention attenuation technology was substandard to driver facing cameras used by other auto manufacturers." In addition to other flaws, these allegedly major defects, Cummings said, "led to the foreseeability of the resulting crash in this case," Scott wrote.

Scott based part of his opinion specifically on Cummings' testimony and testimony from Adam Gustafsson, the systems engineer who investigated both Banner's and Brown's Tesla crashes, concluding that, "There is reasonable evidence from which the finder of fact could conclude that Tesla through its officers, employees and agents knew the vehicle at issue had a defective Autopilot system and allowed the vehicle with the system to be driven in areas not safe for that technology."

 

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2 hours ago, Thetexashammer said:

 I have no idea how he manages to hang on to his CEO titles.

Not many people are capable of keeping catturd2 happy - it’s a very demanding job.  Even Musk sometimes stumbles trying to keep him happy.

It does raise questions though. Earlier this week, he drew attention to pizzagate bullshit, and in the past, he’s used terminology/phrasing that ties into qanon bullshit.  I don’t know if Musk truly buys into that whacko shit or just manipulates those people, but anybody who actually buys into Qanon or pizzagate bullshit has mental health issues - witness the long TexAgs Qanon thread that Luigi finally had to nuke because it was too much even for TexAgs.

I also don’t think any other auto CEOs would have been tolerated if they did the same shit he does.   That sword photo was a chef’s kiss of both sad and lonely.

[Ted Lange 16084]

 

Worth watching to the end.  LMAO

 

[Chopper 17230]

How to Fuck Around and Find Out is the working subtitle of a new bio about Muskkk. Allegedly.

link to article - the screenshots aren't showing for me now but they were when I pasted it...

https://www.dailydot.com/debug/x-advertising-lawsuit-media-matters-musk/

Quote

X users are posting screenshots of their searches for white nationalist and antisemitic terms and hashtags—attempting to debunk Elon Musk’s big new lawsuit.

On Monday, Musk’s X filed a lawsuit against the progressive watchdog group Media Matters after a report showed that X displayed advertisements from major companies such as Apple, Xfinity, IBM, and Oracle next to pro-Nazi content.

The lawsuit does not deny that the ads were displayed next to that content, but alleges Media Matters “manufactured” images and portrayed them “as if they were what typical X users experience on the platform.”

The lawsuit accuses Media Matters of employing inauthentic activity “until it finally received pages containing the result it wanted: controversial content next to X’s largest advertisers’ paid posts.”

“In fact, IBM’s, Comcast’s, and Oracle’s paid posts appeared alongside the fringe content cited by Media Matters for only one viewer (out of more than 500 million) on all of X: Media Matters,” it added. “Not a single authentic user of the X platform saw IBM’s, Comcast’s, or Oracle’s ads next to that content, which Media Matters achieved only through its manipulation of X’s algorithms as described above.”

But as X continues to defend its safety protocols for advertisers, users on X tried to see if they would find advertisements when they searched for problematic terms like #HeilHitler.

One user, Avi Bueno, called out Twitter CEO Linda Yacarrino, who defended the lawsuit by posting the same claim that “Not a single authentic user on X saw IBM’s, Comcast’s, or Oracle’s ads next to the content in Media Matters’ article. Only 2 users saw Apple’s ad next to the content.”

“Linda cannot be genuinely making this claim,” they wrote.

“It took me about 30 seconds to find X placing advertisements for @TheAthletic, @ShopTemu, @ActionNetworkHQ, and @Visit_NJ alongside a search for ‘killjews,'” he said. “This place is broken and advertisers should be worried.”

He added in subsequent posts that the results were not a fluke and he’d found advertisements when searching for other terms including “heilhitler,” “r*peiscool,” and “g*dhatesgays.”

And he wasn’t the only one posting about finding ads next to offensive content.

“Like others, I searched #HeilHitler for an experiment and these were the ads that popped up,” Evan Hurst wrote alongside a screenshot of ads for the conservative Media Research Center, an apparel company, and a vintage Banknotes seller. “I didn’t have to ‘excessively scroll’ anything, it took under a minute to find all three.”

“how could there not be an ad blacklist for some of this stuff???” wrote a separate X user of a screenshot of an ad for a Christian fundraising campaign that appeared under a search for “#Jewskilledjesus.”

“Holy shit. If you search HeilHitler, you get a ton of ads. I literally just got the German Government’s ‘come live in Germany’ ad on the search,” wrote independent journalist Erin Reed. “The German Govt is literally accidentally advertising to Hitler searchers to ‘come live in Germany.’ Media Matters was not lying.”

Users also claimed Musk and X were aware of their efforts to point out the inaccuracy of the suit.

“It would appear in response to multiple people confirming this, Twitter has nuked all search ads,” Reed added Monday night.

Multiple companies suspended advertising on X in the wake of Media Matters’ report. IBM told the Financial Times it “suspended all advertising on X while we investigate this entirely unacceptable situation” and Apple reportedly paused its advertising on the platform as well.

Other companies not named in the report have additionally halted advertising, according to Media Matters.

 

 

Edited November 22, 2023 by Chopper
if you want to see the screen shots you may have to click through

[NoName 16351]

https://fortune.com/2023/11/20/inside-twitter-x-all-hands-after-media-matters-lawsuit-elon-musk-antisemitism-yaccarino/

Inside Linda Yaccarino’s X all-hands after Elon Musk’s platform sues Media Matters: ‘By all means, put your heads together to bring new revenue into the company’

 

Quote

 

Yaccarino reiterated many of the details in Musk’s post on Monday, telling staff that “this was a contrived experience that could be curated—or this situation could be committed—on any platform today.”

“No platform is gonna get it right,” Yaccarino said. “So they basically gamed the system.”

 

i'm guessing this is why we have seen Musk stans or X themselves recreate it and share the results from all the other major platforms out there, right?

then again, maybe i missed it.

 

Quote

 

Yaccarino responded that staff should “be as fiscally responsible as possible,” including only expensing “critical and necessary travel.” A source familiar with the matter told Fortune the company had just updated its travel policy to reflect this statement and that some travel might have to be approved by Yaccarino or Musk.

“If you deal with contracts, if you’re negotiating with anyone, just know that the pauses cause a more specific discipline and diligence as it relates to any type of spending at the company,” Yaccarino said. “And by all means, put your heads together to bring new revenue into the company.”

 

the CEO saying help us find new revenue and we are only allowing critical travel is never good.

 

full text:

Spoiler

At a hastily-assembled all-hands meeting on Monday, X Corp CEO Linda Yaccarino urged staff to find new sources of revenue as advertisers paused business with X following a Media Matters report on antisemitic content on the platform formerly known as Twitter. Yaccarino spoke shortly after X sued the media watchdog group on Monday in a defamation lawsuit that claims the report relied on manufactured content and was designed to ruin X. Elon Musk, owner of X , did not attend the meeting.

 

“Some customers have still paused their investments because of some misleading or manipulated information in an article,” Yaccarino said, referring to the Media Matter report. “But the data tells the real story and I want to be extremely clear about our efforts, and talk about the most important thing that we’ve been doing—and that’s the most important thing—about fighting anti semitism and discrimination. There’s no place for it anywhere on this platform, anywhere in the world, and we’re doing our best to keep fighting it at X.”

Media Matters published a report Thursday that said advertisements for brands including Apple, Oracle, and Xfinity had appeared next to content on X that was pro-Nazi and/or pro-Adolf Hitler. The report followed X owner Elon Musk agreeing with a post that accused Jews of hating white people. Afterwards, many major brands paused advertising, including Yaccarino’s former employer, NBCUniversal.

Musk, who bought the platform for $44 billion last year and has seen its value plummet to $19 billion, posted on Saturday that “X Corp will be filing a thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters and ALL those who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company.” Musk also defended his own rhetoric, calling claims that he’s anti-semitic “bogus.” X did not respond to Fortune‘s request for comment.

X made good on Musk’s threat on Monday, suing Media Matters in federal court in Texas. X claims Media Matters “knowingly and maliciously manufactured side-by-side images depicting advertisers’ posts on X Corp.’s social media platform beside Neo-Nazi and white-nationalist fringe content and then portrayed these manufactured images as if they were what typical X users experience on the platform.” X claims the watchdog group “designed both these images and its resulting media strategy to drive advertisers from the platform and destroy X Corp.” X is seeking unspecified monetary damages and demands that Media Matters take down the report.

 

In a statement, Media Matters said, “This is a frivolous lawsuit meant to bully X’s critics into silence. Media Matters stands behind its reporting and looks forward to winning in court.”

At the staff meeting Monday, one anonymous employee asked Yaccarino what she would consider the best outcome of the lawsuit. Yaccarino responded that it “would be the validation that Media Matters, unfortunately manipulates, in this case, not just advertisers but people in general.”

 

“Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Hopefully this is a disinfectant that surfaces all the great work that all of us are doing at X,” she said.

Both Musk and Yaccarino have defended X on the social media platform in the wake of the report. Musk claimed on Saturday that the watchdog group “created an alternate account and curated the posts and advertising appearing on the account’s timeline to misinform advertisers about the placement of their posts.”

Yaccarino reiterated many of the details in Musk’s post on Monday, telling staff that “this was a contrived experience that could be curated—or this situation could be committed—on any platform today.”

“No platform is gonna get it right,” Yaccarino said. “So they basically gamed the system.”

The X chief executive also sought to calm worries about the advertiser exodus, claiming some brands still doing business with X have told her that they believe that X “is vital for the global community” but want Yaccarino to share more data so they can explain their positions to employees and key stakeholders.

 

“They know that I work hard on their behalf and that I am a truth teller, and I want them to hear it from me—everything that is going on at the company,” Yaccarino, who has been in the advertising business for several decades, told staff. “And I tell a lot of people this: I didn’t come to the company because I needed the company. I came to the company because I wanted to help lead X and be successful in what we’re trying to achieve here.”

As big brands have paused ads on X, numerous right-wing media companies and influencers have pledged to advertise on X in order to make up for lost revenue. One anonymous staffer asked what should “we do as employees to be more responsible … just to help offset anything that we might be seeing from a loss from advertisers?”

Yaccarino responded that staff should “be as fiscally responsible as possible,” including only expensing “critical and necessary travel.” A source familiar with the matter told Fortune the company had just updated its travel policy to reflect this statement and that some travel might have to be approved by Yaccarino or Musk.

“If you deal with contracts, if you’re negotiating with anyone, just know that the pauses cause a more specific discipline and diligence as it relates to any type of spending at the company,” Yaccarino said. “And by all means, put your heads together to bring new revenue into the company.”

 

  

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28 minutes ago, NoName said:

the CEO saying help us find new revenue and we are only allowing critical travel is never good.

Been there, done that.  There are layoffs in the future.

Objectively, if you step back, Musk's tweet is possibly what is causing the exodus, not the Media Matters stuff - nobody wants to personally point the finger at Musk himself (and have him sic his hordes on them), but instead "the environment" on twitter, which drops the hot potato in the CEO's lap instead of Elmo's. And the fact that such major advertisers bailed so quickly means they've been itching to pull the trigger (and some of them had paused spending earlier this year or last with other controversies).  If they were that quick to start pulling spending, then they may not bother coming back - they've had over a year now to find alternative advertising channels and see what alternative social media platforms would emerge.

 Threads is coming on strong, if slowly, and I'm seeing an uptick in just general conversation (helps that hashtags/topics are in testing in part of the world).

[Nivek 16923]

The solution is obvious to anyone but Elon and his lackey.   

Edited November 22, 2023 by Nivek

[F250 28767]

1 hour ago, Nivek said:

The solution is obvious to anyone but Elon and his lackey.   

Throw Musk off the roof of the Twitter building?

 

[Francisco 2.0 32389]

24 minutes ago, F250 said:

Throw Musk off the roof of the Twitter building?

 

Sure.  But first, let's turn on the big X sign and have it glowing so he can see it as he falls backwards into the afterlife.

 

 

[Neonmoon 38129]

With that much revenue pausing, it’s only a matter of time 

[Fudge Nuggets 19190]

3 hours ago, NoName said:

Inside Linda Yaccarino’s X all-hands after Elon Musk’s platform sues Media Matters: ‘By all means, put your heads together to bring new revenue into the company’

That shit pisses me off to no end when my company’s C-suite assholes do it. Hey mother fucker, you’re the one pulling in multi-millions. Why don’t you earn that money and come up with some ideas your own damn self. 

[Schulz2.0 28951]

[Fudge Nuggets 19190]

He's getting fatter.  Won't be long before he's pushing Trump weight.

[Nivek 16923]

2 hours ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

That shit pisses me off to no end when my company’s C-suite assholes do it. Hey mother fucker, you’re the one pulling in multi-millions. Why don’t you earn that money and come up with some ideas your own damn self. 

But that's why you get paid the little bucks.  To do the actual work while they actively burn the bridges you previously built. 

8 minutes ago, Schulz2.0 said:

Got to work in how he was sold a backwards cowboy hat.

[Nivek 16923]

2 hours ago, F250 said:

Throw Musk off the roof of the Twitter building?

 

That could work.  

[BearMace 2202]

3 hours ago, Nivek said:

Got to work in how he was sold a backwards cowboy hat.

And didn't have a friend to tell him..

[texasdago 7572]

It's really not fair to call Musk a Nazi when he prefers Afrikaans 

[MrBig 5396]

Elon prefers “the Bro”

[BrickHorn 18218]

5 minutes ago, MrBig said:

Elon prefers “the Bro”

Bro’s no good for him. Too ethnic.

[MrBig 5396]

2 minutes ago, BrickHorn said:

Bro’s no good for him. Too ethnic.

I’m sure Joe Rogan would say, “Bro, it’s the bro. That’s what they call it in Texas without worrying about political correctness.”

[Deej 76759]

On 11/22/2023 at 12:45 PM, longhornmatt said:

"So, what you're saying is that the only piece left for Tesla's Autopilot to be complete is figuring out how to detect and run over Jews?"

-Elon Musk

Fixed

Edited November 23, 2023 by Deej

[Neonmoon 38129]

Elon has decided to go to Israel and meet with Netanyahu 

because he needs more attention 

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1 hour ago, Neonmoon said:

Elon has decided to go to Israel and meet with Netanyahu 

because he needs more attention 

That sounds like Linda made him realize how bad he's made things, because I can't see him arriving at that conclusion on his own.

[MrBig 5396]

11 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

That sounds like Linda made him realize how bad he's made things, because I can't see him arriving at that conclusion on his own.

I’m sure it’s just another quick stop on the way to Saudi Arabia to kiss more crown prince ass.

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13581]

4 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

That sounds like Linda made him realize how bad he's made things, because I can't see him arriving at that conclusion on his own.

 

[Nice Guy Eddie 13511]

Elon seems to be getting into a habit of late night tweeting and then having to run to Netanyahu to bless him as not being anti-Semitic. Or at least attempt to do so.

might be easier and cheaper to lock up the phone before taking any substances at night.

[BearMace 2202]

1 hour ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Elon seems to be getting into a habit of late night tweeting and then having to run to Netanyahu to bless him as not being anti-Semitic. Or at least attempt to do so.

might be easier and cheaper to lock up the phone before taking any substances at night.

Really, at this point what kind of sane, stable genius doesn't have a solid phone self-prohibition team in place to save you from being too willy nilly in showing off your stability and genius at sane hours of the night?

SAD!!/interesting.

Edited November 24, 2023 by BearMace

[Chopper 17230]

Muskkk, like his fascist friends, wants the jews in the US to leave or die trying. Honestly I'm not quite sure of the reasons - because Jews tend to vote with D's? because some Jews are civil rights lawyers? Rushing off to meet with Netanyahu is a defensive maneuver right out of the fascist playbook - they're both amoral criminals looking for money and high profile support where ever they can get it and whatever the source.

Edited November 24, 2023 by Chopper

[atomheartbevo 89650]

C'mon Elmo, tell us how you really feel about the Swedes.

[Thetexashammer 1062]

 

Edited November 24, 2023 by Thetexashammer

[ConferenceRoom 6141]

So about tree fiddy. 

[Chopper 17230]

Quote

 

X, the social media company formerly known as Twitter, could lose as much as $75 million in advertising revenue by the end of the year as dozens of major brands pause their marketing campaigns after its owner, Elon Musk, endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy theory this month.

Internal documents viewed by The New York Times this week show that the company is in a more difficult position than previously known and that concerns about Mr. Musk and the platform have spread far beyond companies including IBM, Apple and Disney, which paused their advertising campaigns on X last week. The documents list more than 200 ad units of companies from the likes of Airbnb, Amazon, Coca-Cola and Microsoft, many of which have halted or are considering pausing their ads on the social network.

The documents come from X’s sales team and are meant to track the impact of all the advertising lapses this month, including those by companies that have already paused and others that may be at risk of doing so. They list how much ad revenue X employees fear the company could lose through the end of the year if advertisers do not return.

On Friday, X said in a statement that $11 million in revenue was at risk and that the exact figure fluctuated as some advertisers returned to the platform and others increased spending. The company said the numbers viewed by The Times were either outdated or represented an internal exercise to evaluate total risk.

The advertising freezes come during the final three months of the year, which is traditionally the social media company’s strongest quarter as brands run holiday promotions for events such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday. In the last three months of 2021 — the last year the company reported fourth-quarter earnings before Mr. Musk took over — the company recorded $1.57 billion in revenue, of which nearly 90 percent came from advertising.

Since Mr. Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter last year, some brands have been hesitant to advertise on the platform, concerned with Mr. Musk’s behavior and content moderation decisions, which have led to a rise in incendiary and hateful content. U.S. advertising on the platform is down nearly 60 percent this year, prompting the company to try to woo back advertisers in an effort its chief executive, Linda Yaccarino, is spearheading. X is also running ad campaigns during the holiday period to try to make up for revenue shortfalls.

The documents, however, reveal that has not been going to plan. More than 100 brands are shown as having “fully paused” their ads while dozens of others are listed as “at risk.” Many paused on or after Nov. 15, when Mr. Musk wrote in a post on X that the conspiracy theory that Jewish people supported the immigration of minorities to replace white populations was “the actual truth.”

Leesha Anderson, the vice president of digital marketing and social media at the advertising agency Outcast, said its clients steadily stopped spending on X after Mr. Musk took over and had found alternatives on platforms like LinkedIn and TikTok.

“In today’s dynamic marketplace, brands have a plethora of platform choices at their disposal for precise audience targeting,” she said. “Therefore, it is imperative for the stewards and proprietors of social platforms to exercise deliberate discretion in all aspects, be it their personal beliefs or political stances, as these choices will inevitably undergo public scrutiny.”

The organizations that have paused their ads on X range from political campaigns to fast food chains to tech giants, according to the documents. Airbnb, for example, halted more than $1 million of advertising, while Uber cut back on ads worth more than $800,000, halting campaigns in U.S. and international markets. Both tech companies declined to comment.

Other large brands, including Jack in the Box, Coca-Cola and Netflix, paused some of their campaigns. Netflix’s halted ads were worth nearly $3 million, according to X’s estimates. Jack in the Box, Coca-Cola and Netflix did not respond to requests for comment.

Various subsidiaries of Microsoft have also stopped advertising — leading to a potential loss of more than $4 million in revenue for X’s fourth quarter, based on the documents — as have Amazon’s units for books and music and one subsidiary of Google. The search giant and some other brands that have paused spending, including NBC Universal, have continued to post content on the platform without paying X to ensure it reaches a broad audience.

Google and Microsoft declined to comment. Amazon did not return requests for comment.

On the NBC program “Meet the Press” last Sunday, the Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie called Mr. Musk’s comment part of a recent outpouring of an “outrageous type of hate.”

“Whether it’s Elon Musk, whether it’s professors on our college campuses or students that they are misleading, or whether it’s individuals who are speaking out in an antisemitic way on the streets of our cities,” he said.

Two days before Mr. Christie’s appearance, a super PAC supporting him, called Tell It Like It Is, pulled its advertising from X, according to the documents. A representative for the political fund-raising group did not respond to a request for comment.

In an internal meeting with employees at X this week, Ms. Yaccarino cut a defiant mood. She made no mention of Mr. Musk’s endorsement of the antisemitic post and attributed the company’s problems to a report by the left-wing media watchdog group Media Matters, which showed that ads on X from companies like IBM and Apple appeared next to posts promoting white nationalist and Nazi content.

On Monday, after Mr. Musk called Media Matters “an evil organization,” X sued the group and argued that its report, which was published after Mr. Musk’s statement, “manipulated the algorithms governing the user experience on X to bypass safeguards and create images of X’s largest advertisers’ paid posts adjacent to racist, incendiary content.” Ms. Yaccarino has blamed the Media Matters report for X’s declining ad sales.

“Kowtowing to external criticism or pressures is simply not how X will ever operate,” she wrote in an email to X employees on Wednesday that was seen by The Times. “The people at X are free speech defenders. We stand in solidarity with those who believe in this fundamental right and the critical checks and balances of a thriving democracy.”

Earlier this week, Mr. Musk spent time celebrating companies that have continued to advertise on X, including the National Football League. Using a heart emoji, X’s billionaire owner said he loved the N.F.L. (The New York Times largely stopped marketing on the platform in early 2023, though the company’s sports publication, The Athletic, has continued to purchase ads, according to a spokesman.)

Mr. Musk also noted that the company would donate “all revenue from advertising & subscriptions associated with the war in Gaza to hospitals in Israel and the Red Cross/Crescent in Gaza.” The funding will include revenue from ads bought by charity groups, news organizations and other groups that advertised content related to the conflict.

Following her boss, Ms. Yaccarino added to Mr. Musk’s original post with a plea.

“Lean in and help,” she wrote on X.

 

no paywall:  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/24/business/x-elon-musk-advertisers.html?unlocked_article_code=1.A00.ogGl.FoxJ5d3m9MIX&smid=url-share

Of course it was leaked by the sales team. Bad idea to take money out of a salesperson's hands.

 

[atomheartbevo 89650]

Elmo’s not-a-town gets a bodega, pub,and a salon

https://www.kxan.com/news/elon-musks-bastrop-town-gets-bodega-salon/

Quote

Elon Musk’s new “town” in Bastrop County for employees of two of his companies now has a bodega, salon, and pub coming soon. 

The Boring Company partnered with Lennar Corp., one of the nation’s largest homebuilders, in 2022 to build 110 (homes) in a project codenamed “Project Amazing.” The Wall Street Journal reported in March that Musk was planning to create a town near a SpaceX industrial site and the Boring Company’s  Bastrop headquarters. 

Quote

Musk posted to his platform X, formerly Twitter, after the WSJ article was published, calling it “false.” 

Quote

Hyperloop Plaza, near Space X and the new development, now has several amenities, which are reportedly open to the public, and merchandising branding the community space.

The Bastrop community has had a mixed reaction to Musk’s presence in the low-key Austin suburb. Much of the concern from the community has to do with Musk’s Boring Company’s handling of wastewater. In April, the Boring Co. received three violations — two moderate and one minor — from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality for the Bastrop facility.

 

[Chopper 17230]

I can't even fucking believe this one.

 

 

[atomheartbevo 89650]

16 minutes ago, Chopper said:

can't even fucking believe this one.

I had to go look and that’s real.

Bravo Elmo, bravo.  

 

He just needs to buy the Cincinnati Reds.  

Edited November 27, 2023 by atomheartbevo

[UT_OB1 2218]

33 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

I had to go look and that’s real.

Bravo Elmo, bravo.  

 

He just needs to buy the Cincinnati Reds.  

I’m a xennial. I feel like I should know what the combination of those 3 mean, but I don’t. Someone is going to have to explain that to me. 

[atomheartbevo 89650]

43 minutes ago, UT_OB1 said:

I’m a xennial. I feel like I should know what the combination of those 3 mean, but I don’t. Someone is going to have to explain that to me. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marge_Schott#Controversies

[Chopper 17230]

1 hour ago, UT_OB1 said:

I’m a xennial. I feel like I should know what the combination of those 3 mean, but I don’t. Someone is going to have to explain that to me. 

Media Matters: Twitter has become a racist haven and Elmo Muskkk is enabling it.

Elmo: That's not true. I'm going to sue you.

Also Elmo: Demons attacking innocent beings is the same as a group of black men fucking a white woman.

[atomheartbevo 89650]

Probably should go in the SpaceX thread, but Matchbox has a couple of SpaceX vehicles out - Dragon and Starship

[atomheartbevo 89650]

[wildcat09 29349]

Netanyahu taking the world's most famous, wealthy, and powerful anti-Semite to tour the kibbutz that was attacked, when he won't even meet with its survivors, is so fucking gross.

[chainsaw 9865]

i'm sorry what the fuck is he wearing?

[Francisco 2.0 32389]

4 minutes ago, chainsaw said:

i'm sorry what the fuck is he wearing?

 

Urban-combat.  Once modeled by Jared Kushner:

 

[wildcat09 29349]

A kids size plate carrier paired with a suit is actually the most stylish he's looked in years.