Elon Musk fires THOUSANDS of Twitter staff members! (UPDATE: TWITTERPOCALYPSE! Journalists and leftist accounts banned without warning!))
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Casey Newton (@caseynewton@mastodon.social)
Attached: 1 image I had hoped by now that the media would have begun to divorce Twitter. Instead, some journalists are doubling down. Some thoughts on why: https://www.platformer.news/p/why-journalists-cant-quit-twittermastodon.social
https://archive.is/wa8aN {platformer post}
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Twitter places labels on state-affiliated media accounts to provide additional context to their content. Learn why and how.web.archive.org
Dreamchaser
All Star
Anyone else noticing a lot of right wing post on Twitter getting pushed out by there algorithm? Shyt is a dumpster fire.
Elon Musk threatens to re-assign @NPR on Twitter to 'another company'
Updated May 2, 20239:22 PM ET
Bobby Allyn
Bobby Allyn
Twitter CEO Elon Musk speaks at the "Twitter 2.0: From Conversations to Partnerships," marketing conference in Miami Beach, Florida, in April.
CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images
Elon Musk has threatened to reassign NPR's Twitter account to "another company."
In a series of emails sent to this reporter, Musk said he would transfer the network's main account on Twitter, under the @NPR handle, to another organization or person. The idea shocked even longtime observers of Musk's spur-of-the-moment and erratic leadership style.
Handing over established accounts to third parties poses a serious risk of impersonation and could imperil a company's reputation, said social media experts.
"If this is a sign of things to come on Twitter, we might soon see even more of a rapid retreat by media organizations and other brands that don't think it's worth the risk," said Emily Bell, a professor at Columbia Journalism School who studies social media. "It's really an extraordinary threat to make."
Last month, NPR effectively quit Twitter after Musk applied a label to the news organization's account that falsely suggested it was state-controlled. Other public media organizations, including PBS and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, followed suit and stopped tweeting following similar labeling.
Musk has since removed the labels, but the outlets originally targeted have not resumed public activity on Twitter.
Musk: 'should we reassign @NPR to another company?'
In an unprompted Tuesday email, Musk wrote: "So is NPR going to start posting on Twitter again, or should we reassign @NPR to another company?"Under Twitter's terms of service, an account's inactivity is based on logging in, not tweeting. Those rules state that an account must be logged into at least every 30 days, and that "prolonged inactivity" can result in it being permanently removed.
Musk did not answer when asked whether he planned to change the platform's definition of inactivity and he declined to say what prompted his new questions about NPR's lack of participation on Twitter.
"Our policy is to recycle handles that are definitively dormant," Musk wrote in another email. "Same policy applies to all accounts. No special treatment for NPR."
The threat of retaliation is the latest volley in a months-long conflict between Musk and established media organizations since the billionaire purchased Twitter in October.
Musk has long attacked the media and attempted to undercut the credibility of journalists. The Twitter CEO has suspended reporters who have published or promoted stories critical of him. Musk has stripped away, and at times reissued, "verified" blue check marks to news organizations and individual journalists.
By recently making "verified" blue checks available for purchase, Musk has created a turbulent social media landscape, blurring the lines for users between what is real and what is fake on one of the most influential social networks.
Musk to NPR: 'So what's the beef?'
His remark on Tuesday that he may transfer NPR's primary Twitter account with nearly 9 million followers to another entity is typical of how Musk has run the social media site.As is often the case with Musk, it is not clear whether he will follow through on the threat.
One former Twitter executive was taken aback by the remark, telling NPR that such a threat should be alarming to any business operating on the site, since it indicates that acquiescing to Musk's every whim may be necessary in order to avoid being impersonated.
For most of its 17-year history, Twitter has had rules that maintained a certain level of order and offered both individuals and organization some control over their presence on the platform.
NPR CEO John Lansing has previously said he lost faith with "decision-making at Twitter," and that more time is needed in order to determine if Twitter can be trusted again.
A spokeswoman for NPR declined to comment further.
Musk, whose statements to reporters are regularly laced with jokes, insults or attempts at trolling, responded sarcastically when asked who would potentially take over NPR's Twitter account.
"National Pumpkin Radio," Musk wrote, adding a fire emoji and a laughing emoji to describe the content of the fictional gourd-themed broadcaster. "NPR isn't tagged as government-funded anymore, so what's the beef?"
Disclosure: This story was reported and written by NPR Tech Reporter Bobby Allyn and edited by Business Editor Lisa Lambert. Under NPR's protocol for reporting on itself, no corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.
levitate
I love you, you know.
Bluesky about to shyt on Twitter anyway…
Elon Musk threatens to re-assign @NPR on Twitter to 'another company'
Updated May 2, 20239:22 PM ET
Bobby Allyn
Bobby Allyn
Twitter CEO Elon Musk speaks at the "Twitter 2.0: From Conversations to Partnerships," marketing conference in Miami Beach, Florida, in April.
CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images
Elon Musk has threatened to reassign NPR's Twitter account to "another company."
In a series of emails sent to this reporter, Musk said he would transfer the network's main account on Twitter, under the @NPR handle, to another organization or person. The idea shocked even longtime observers of Musk's spur-of-the-moment and erratic leadership style.
Handing over established accounts to third parties poses a serious risk of impersonation and could imperil a company's reputation, said social media experts.
"If this is a sign of things to come on Twitter, we might soon see even more of a rapid retreat by media organizations and other brands that don't think it's worth the risk," said Emily Bell, a professor at Columbia Journalism School who studies social media. "It's really an extraordinary threat to make."
Last month, NPR effectively quit Twitter after Musk applied a label to the news organization's account that falsely suggested it was state-controlled. Other public media organizations, including PBS and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, followed suit and stopped tweeting following similar labeling.
Musk has since removed the labels, but the outlets originally targeted have not resumed public activity on Twitter.
Musk: 'should we reassign @NPR to another company?'
In an unprompted Tuesday email, Musk wrote: "So is NPR going to start posting on Twitter again, or should we reassign @NPR to another company?"
Under Twitter's terms of service, an account's inactivity is based on logging in, not tweeting. Those rules state that an account must be logged into at least every 30 days, and that "prolonged inactivity" can result in it being permanently removed.
Musk did not answer when asked whether he planned to change the platform's definition of inactivity and he declined to say what prompted his new questions about NPR's lack of participation on Twitter.
"Our policy is to recycle handles that are definitively dormant," Musk wrote in another email. "Same policy applies to all accounts. No special treatment for NPR."
The threat of retaliation is the latest volley in a months-long conflict between Musk and established media organizations since the billionaire purchased Twitter in October.
Musk has long attacked the media and attempted to undercut the credibility of journalists. The Twitter CEO has suspendedreporters who have published or promoted stories critical of him. Musk has stripped away, and at times reissued, "verified" blue check marks to news organizations and individual journalists.
By recently making "verified" blue checks available for purchase, Musk has created a turbulent social media landscape, blurring the lines for users between what is real and what is fake on one of the most influential social networks.
Musk to NPR: 'So what's the beef?'
His remark on Tuesday that he may transfer NPR's primary Twitter account with nearly 9 million followers to another entity is typical of how Musk has run the social media site.
As is often the case with Musk, it is not clear whether he will follow through on the threat.
One former Twitter executive was taken aback by the remark, telling NPR that such a threat should be alarming to any business operating on the site, since it indicates that acquiescing to Musk's every whim may be necessary in order to avoid being impersonated.
For most of its 17-year history, Twitter has had rules that maintained a certain level of order and offered both individuals and organization some control over their presence on the platform.
NPR CEO John Lansing has previously said he lost faith with "decision-making at Twitter," and that more time is needed in order to determine if Twitter can be trusted again.
A spokeswoman for NPR declined to comment further.
Musk, whose statements to reporters are regularly laced with jokes, insults or attempts at trolling, responded sarcastically when asked who would potentially take over NPR's Twitter account.
"National Pumpkin Radio," Musk wrote, adding a fire emoji and a laughing emoji to describe the content of the fictional gourd-themed broadcaster. "NPR isn't tagged as government-funded anymore, so what's the beef?"
Disclosure: This story was reported and written by NPR Tech Reporter Bobby Allyn and edited by Business Editor Lisa Lambert. Under NPR's protocol for reporting on itself, no corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.
Cat piss martini
Veteran
black people shouldnt be on twitter.
do our own thing.
do our own thing.
I remember when people claimed Twitter wouldn’t last another week when everyone got fired/people quit 
James Bulltard (@jamesbulltard) on Threads
This needs to be a bigger story, why was abc13shannon a legit reporter in houston banned off twitter within 30 minutes of her reporting on a Tesla crash in houston where people trying to rescue the driver couldn’t open the doors because of the faulty design of the door handles? Is musk going to...
www.threads.net
It's time to change how we cover Elon Musk
After a weekend of whoppers about X and fighting Mark Zuckerberg, the press should take a more skeptical approach
www.platformer.news
It's time to change how we cover Elon Musk
After a weekend of whoppers about X and fighting Mark Zuckerberg, the press should take a more skeptical approach
CASEY NEWTON
AUG 7, 2023
22
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Musk attends the Viva Technology conference in Paris in June. (Chesnot / Getty Images)
Today let’s talk about a wild weekend of backtracking at the company formerly known as Twitter — and how it should inform the way we cover Elon Musk and his frequent promises in the future.
On Sunday, Musk said in a post on X that the “Zuck v Musk fight will be live-streamed on 𝕏.”
He added: “All proceeds will go to charity for veterans.”
This all came as a surprise to Mark Zuckerberg. Behind the scenes, the billionaire’s teams had been negotiating for weeks to nail down details of the fight. Zuckerberg had proposed a date: August 26, as he would later share on Threads.
But Musk begged off, saying he needed more time to train.
On Sunday Musk said that he is lifting weights around the office because he doesn’t have time for more formal training. Later in the day, he further revealed that he is getting an MRI today of his neck and upper back, and may need unspecified surgery before the fight.
As a connoisseur of pro wrestling, I’m quite familiar with the character Musk is playing here: the big talker who can’t back it up in the ring. Wrestling promoters have made a lot of money with cowardly heel champions who go to great lengths to avoid having to face their adversaries in combat. (Feigning injury is a classic of the genre.) In his feud with Zuckerberg, Musk is essentially playing Ric Flair without the charisma.
Were the Musk-Zuckerberg fight a scripted WWE spectacle, we could all sit back and enjoy the show. But these are CEOs of publicly traded companies, and they can move markets with their announcements. As such, journalists tend to take them at their word. And while Zuckerberg has lived up to his — he’s dead serious about a fight, and has been spending possibly too much time preparing for it — there are few indications that Musk is serious about stepping in the ring.
Where to begin? Aside from one training session with podcaster Lex Fridman, there’s no evidence Musk is serious about it that hasn’t come from his own social media posts. Meanwhile, he keeps introducing complications that make the event less likely to happen — suggesting it should happen in the Roman Colosseum, for example, or be streamed on a free (and unstable) platform that would mean the fight forfeits its expected bonanza of pay-per-view money for charity.
For most of you, I realize, it is no longer news that Musk stretches the truth until it disintegrates. At least since he lied about having “funding secured” to take Tesla private, it’s been clear that we should apply a healthy discount rate to everything he says.
At the same time, it is in the nature of business journalism to assume that CEOs of public companies are not lying all the time. And it’s in Musk’s nature to make frequent, bold pronouncements about his companies, politics, the nature of consciousness, and so on, all of which are irresistible to editors.
Stories about these pronouncements are dead-simple and cheap to produce — a description of an embedded tweet, followed by 300 or so words of context. And because people read these stories in huge numbers, publishers devote a lot of space to them. (If there’s an Elon Musk tweet that Insider hasn’t written a short post about this year, it’s news to me.)
The issue is that these stories are often published without the skepticism that is appropriate to someone who the Securities and Exchange Commission once forced to pay $20 million for saying something that wasn’t true.
I thought about all this over the weekend as I read about one of Musk’s other almost-certainly-not-true promises: that he will pay the legal bills of anyone who is “unfairly treated” for posting or liking a post on X. The announcement came after a NASCAR driver was suspended for liking a meme parodying the death of George Floyd.
“No limit,” Musk added, presumably about the amount he is willing to spend. “Please let us know.”
Given that Musk won’t even pay his own vendors, it strains credulity that he would file unlimited lawsuits on behalf of anyone fired over what we used to call a tweet. And it’s particularly galling, given that — as Platformer reported last November — Musk himself fired Twitter employees for lightly criticizing him in the wake of his takeover of the platform.
That context was missing from Yahoo News’ post about the subject. It was missing from Reuters’, too. Bloomberg did better, noting that Musk has often fired his critics.
By now, we have countless examples of Musk making an announcement and walking it back. In February, for example, Musk said the company would begin sharing ad revenue with creators “today” — an announcement that was widely covered. After issuing just one payment last month to a small, hand-picked group of creators last month, the company said that it had gotten too many applications and would have to delay the start of payments indefinitely.
And even when Musk does deliver, the fine print is sometimes enough to ruin the whole proposition. Last week, for example, the company said it would make good on a promise to let subscribers to X Premium — formerly Twitter Blue — hide their verified checkmarks, which have become a badge of dishonor and mockery among the wider user base.
But as Ivan Mehta noted at TechCrunch, quoting from the company’s help page, “hiding” in this case is a relative term. Emphasis mine:
Given the hold he has on the popular imagination, these “Musk says” posts aren’t likely to disappear anytime soon. (In fact, once generative AI can credibly spit out 300 words of context underneath anything he might say, I imagine we’ll see more of them.)
But if “Musk says” posts are going to exist, they ought to be much more skeptical than the ones we’ve seen lately. For starters, assume that anything he says about a prospective fight with Zuckerberg isn’t true unless Zuckerberg or Meta confirm it.
And about those lawsuits? Maybe wait until X covers a single user’s legal bills before giving it ink.
As a business, X — with its sinking ad revenues and dead-end subscription business — continues to decline in relevance. But Musk remains a singular cultural figure, actively using his power and influence to shape public debate. Most recently, X sued the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate after it issued a report arguing that the company is failing to remove accounts that post hate speech.
Before Musk, the person setting the day’s news agenda on Twitter was Donald Trump. As it became clear during his first campaign that Trump mostly did not tell the truth, the press corps gradually brought more scrutiny to the candidate’s statements. In some cases, cable networks stopped carrying his public appearances live, since they could not be fact-checked effectively in real time.
Musk’s broken promises have yet to reach anything near the volume of lies that Trump told as president. But given his recent track record, it’s well past time for the press to grant him an equal measure of skepticism.