Elon Musk fires THOUSANDS of Twitter staff members! (UPDATE: TWITTERPOCALYPSE! Journalists and leftist accounts banned without warning!))

[bnew]

Elon Musk Fought Government Surveillance — While Profiting Off Government Surveillance

Elon Musk and X postured as defenders against government surveillance but sold user data to Dataminr, which facilitates such surveillance.

theintercept.com

ELON MUSK FOUGHT GOVERNMENT SURVEILLANCE — WHILE PROFITING OFF GOVERNMENT SURVEILLANCE​

Musk made hay of his legal battle against secret surveillance but continued selling X user data to a company that facilitates government monitoring.

Sam Biddle

March 25 2024, 12:16 p.m.

TEN YEARS AGO, the internet platform X, then known as Twitter, filed a lawsuit against the government it hoped would force transparency around abuse-prone surveillance of social media users. X’s court battle, though, clashes with an uncomfortable fact: The company is itself in the business of government surveillance of social media.

Under the new ownership of Elon Musk, X had continued the litigation, until its defeat in January. The suit was aimed at overturning a governmental ban on disclosing the receipt of requests, known as national security letters, that compel companies to turn over everything from user metadata to private direct messages. Companies that receive these requests are typically legally bound to keep the request secret and can usually only disclose the number they’ve received in a given year in vague numerical ranges.

In its petition to the Supreme Court last September, X’s attorneys took up the banner of communications privacy: “History demonstrates that the surveillance of electronic communications is both a fertile ground for government abuse and a lightning-rod political topic of intense concern to the public.” After the court declined to take up the case in January, Musk responded tweeting, “Disappointing that the Supreme Court declined to hear this matter.”

The court’s refusal to take the case on ended X’s legal bid, but the company and Musk had positioned themselves at the forefront of a battle on behalf of internet users for greater transparency about government surveillance.

However, emails between the U.S. Secret Service and the surveillance firm Dataminr, obtained by The Intercept from a Freedom of Information Act request, show X is in an awkward position, profiting from the sale of user data for government surveillance purposes at the same time as it was fighting secrecy around another flavor of state surveillance in court.

Related​

Police Surveilled George Floyd Protests With Help From Twitter-Affiliated Startup Dataminr​

While national security letters allow the government to make targeted demands for non-public data on an individual basis, companies like Dataminr continuously monitor public activity on social media and other internet platforms. Dataminr provides its customers with customized real-time “alerts” on desired topics, giving clients like police departments a form of social media omniscience. The alerts allow police to, for instance, automatically track a protest as it moves from its planning stages into the streets, without requiring police officials to do any time-intensive searches.

Although Dataminr defends First Alert, its governmental surveillance platform, as a public safety tool that helps first responders react quickly to sudden crises, the tool has been repeatedly shown to be used by police to monitor First Amendment-protected online political speech and real-world protests.

“The Whole Point”​

Dataminr has long touted its special relationship with X as integral to First Alert. (Twitter previously owned a stake in Dataminr, though divested before Musk’s purchase.) Unlike other platforms it surveils by scraping user content, Dataminr pays for privileged access to X through the company’s “firehose”: a direct, unfiltered feed of every single piece of user content ever shared publicly to the platform.

Watching everything that happens on X in real time is key to Dataminr’s pitch to the government. The company essentially leases indirect access to this massive spray of information, with Dataminr acting as an intermediary between X’s servers and a multitude of police, intelligence, and military agencies.

While it was unclear whether, under Musk, X would continue leasing access to its users to Dataminr — and by extension, the government — the emails from the Secret Service confirm that, as of last summer, the social media platform was still very much in the government surveillance business.

“Dataminr has a unique contractual relationship with Twitter, whereby we have real-time access to the full stream of all publicly available Tweets,” a representative of the surveillance company wrote to the Secret Service in a July 2023 message about the terms of the law enforcement agency’s surveillance subscription. “In addition all of Dataminr’s public sector customers today have agreed to these terms including dozens who are responsible for law enforcement whether at the local, state or federal level.” (The terms are not mentioned in the emails.)

According to an email from the Secret Service in the same thread, the agency’s interest in Dataminr was unambiguous: “The whole point of this contract is to use the information for law enforcement purposes.”

Privacy advocates told The Intercept that X’s Musk-era warnings of government surveillance abuses are contradictory to the company’s continued sale of user data for the purpose of government surveillance. (Neither X nor Dataminr responded to a request for comment.)

“X’s legal briefs acknowledge that communications surveillance is ripe for government abuse, and that we can’t depend on the police to police themselves,” said Jennifer Granick, the surveillance and cybersecurity counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “But then X turns around and sells Dataminr fire-hose access to users’ posts, which Dataminr then passes through to the government in the form of unregulated disclosures and speculative predictions that can falsely ensnare the innocent.”

“Social media platforms should protect the privacy of their users.”

“Social media platforms should protect the privacy of their users,” Adam Schwartz, the privacy litigation director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed an amicus brief in support of X’s Supreme Court petition. “For example, platforms must not provide special services, like real-time access to the full stream of public-facing posts, to surveillance vendors who share this information with police departments. If X is providing such access to Dataminr, that would be disappointing.”

“Glaringly at Odds”​

Following a 2016 investigation into the use of Twitter data for police surveillance by the ACLU, the company went so far as to expressly ban third parties from “conducting or providing surveillance or gathering intelligence” and “monitoring sensitive events (including but not limited to protests, rallies, or community organizing meetings)” using firehose data. The new policy went so far as to ban the use of firehose data for purposes pertaining to “any alleged or actual commission of a crime” — ostensibly a problem for Dataminr’s crime-fighting clientele.

Related​

U.S. Marshals Spied on Abortion Protesters Using Dataminr​

These assurances have done nothing to stop Dataminr from using the data it buys from X to do exactly these things. Prior reporting from The Intercept has shown the company has, in recent years, helped federal and local police surveil entirely peaceful Black Lives Matter protests and abortion rights rallies in recent years.

Neither X nor Dataminr have responded to repeated requests to explain how a tool that allows for the real-time monitoring of protests is permitted under a policy that expressly bans the monitoring of protests. In the past, both Dataminr and X have denied that monitoring the real-time communications of people on the internet and relaying that information to the police is a form of surveillance because the posts in question are public.

Twitter later softened this prohibition by noting surveillance applications were banned “Unless explicitly approved by X in writing.” Dataminr, for its part, remains listed as an “official partner” of X.

Though the means differ, national security scholars told The Intercept that the ends of national security letters and fire-hose monitoring are the same: widespread government surveillance with little to no meaningful oversight. Neither the national security letters nor dragnet social media surveillance require a sign-off from a judge and, in both cases, those affected are left unaware they’ve fallen under governmental scrutiny.

“While I appreciate that there may be some symbolic difference between giving the government granular data directly and making them sift through what they buy from data brokers, the end result is still that user data ends up in the hands of law enforcement, and this time without any legal process,” said David Greene, civil liberties director at EFF.

“The end result is still that user data ends up in the hands of law enforcement, and this time without any legal process.”

It’s the kind of ideological contradiction typical of X’s owner. Musk has managed to sell himself as a heterodox critic of U.S. foreign policy and big government while simultaneously enriching himself by selling the state expensive military hardware through his rocket company SpaceX.

“While X’s efforts to bring more transparency to the National Security Letter process are commendable, its objection to government surveillance of communications in that context is glaringly at odds with its decision to support similar surveillance measures through its partnership with Dataminr,” said Mary Pat Dwyer, director of Georgetown University’s Law Institute for Technology Law and Policy. “Scholars and advocates have long argued the Dataminr partnership is squarely inconsistent with the platform’s policy forbidding use of its data for surveillance, and X’s continued failure to end the relationship prevents the company from credibly portraying itself as an advocate for its users’ privacy.”

 

[Zime]

This probably needs its own thread but:

 

[The Half-Blood FKA Prince]

boer fakkit

 

[bnew]

Spoiler: thread continued

Spoiler: full text

1/24
1/ Two years ago today, on 4/25/22, Twitter’s Board accepted Elon Musk’s offer to acquire the company at $54.20/share.

As an ex-director for civic integrity at Twitter, I’ve watched what Musk has done since then.

And today is my last post on this platform.

I’m leaving.
>>>

2/24
2/ TL;DR: After watching and tweeting dramatically less for the past two years, I’ve decided that (for me) even passive participation on this platform amounts to complicity in Elon Musk’s project of promoting anti-democratic values.

I will not have any part in that.

3/24
3/ Musk is a poster child for divisive racist, sexist, and plutocratic tendencies that undermine democracy’s commitment to equality for all.

No amount of hand-waving can hide what Musk is doing.

Destroying Twitter’s value is the tell: It’s not about the money.

It’s worse.

4/24
4/ Musk’s willingness to burn down what he purchased suggests that he’s motivated by a perverse righteousness, not profit.

I won’t repeat the litany of mistakes demonstrating Musk’s failure to be a responsible steward for this platform, nor the mountains of data that prove it.

5/24
5/ From all angles — be it growth, revenue, brand equity, advertising, credibility as a global news source, trust & safety, or hell, even simply as *entertainment* — Musk’s takeover of Twitter has been a stunning crash & burn story.

Actually, a better word would be “tantrum.”

6/24
6/ The “free speech/content moderation” issue is cynical redirection.

As an ex-Dir of Product Mgmt at Twitter, I care about mitigating harm associated with speech.

As a long-time student of political philosophy, I also care about the value of free speech.

Musk fails at both.

7/24
7/ I cringe every time journalists and others refer to Musk as a “free speech absolutist.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

The only absolute is Musk’s hypocrisy, as he repeatedly contradicts his so-called principles to serve himself and his pet causes.

8/24
8/ When Musk talks about protecting “free speech” he really means supporting provocative and/or violent voices — and *esp* trolls who hate the idea that all people are equal.

Conversely, Musk is quick to *stifle* speech if it embarrasses him or his companies.

He’s a hypocrite.

9/24
9/ When one of the richest men in the world uses his own private global media platform to selectively amplify anti-democratic voices, and to prey on those he does not like, that is not “free speech.”

That’s personal psychological weakness, enabled by systemic plutocracy.

10/24
10/ Musk also demonstrates an utter lack of understanding about how a global platform for interactive communication requires a thoughtful, judicious business strategy unlike any other product.

Musk has done precisely the *opposite* of what leadership requires.

11/24
11/ Musk is a textbook example of the schmucks who believe that any problem can be solved with more tech, lower costs, more automation, better code, more “hardcore” engineers & the right investors — as if Twitter’s challenges are simply *business* challenges.

But they are not.

12/24
12/ Musk utterly failed to understand that Twitter’s hardest challenges are not about more revenue & fewer rules.

They are *human* challenges, about power, speech, competition, fairness, diversity, wealth, poverty, war, peace, safety, inclusion, equity, and privacy.

13/24
13/ A wiser person would understand that…

- a global platform like this cannot deepen and reify the worst excesses and inequalities of capitalism, privilege, and power;

- nor carry water for bad actors;

- nor incentivize and monetize the ugliest, most cruel human behaviors.

14/24
14/ Furthermore, ownership of a platform like this cannot be online therapy and acting-out to soothe the grievances of insecure, immature, thin-skinned billionaires (yes, note the plural) who desperately want & need to be liked (because they are psychologically damaged).

15/24
15/ Like Donald Trump, Rupert Murdoch, and too many other wealthy & powerful men, Elon Musk is a toxic mix of narcissism, insecurity, sexism, and a particularly cruel form of unkindness that seems especially gleeful about punching down on those with less power.

16/24
16/ It would be bad enough if Musk’s immaturity and lack of self-control simply made him an insufferable a$$hole.

But Musk is an insufferable a$$hole with a global media platform that he has re-made in furtherance of pernicious values.

That’s why I cannot be here any longer.

17/24
17/ This isn’t a story about “free speech” v. “censorship.”

It’s a story about who gets to wield the power of speech — & a cautionary tale of how massive private wealth enables an immature man[child] to selectively elevate those who reject democracy’s bedrock value:

Equality.

18/24
18/ Musk has clearly signaled whose messages he believes deserve his personal support and amplification:

-Right-wing stooges for Putin;

-Antisemites spouting “replacement theory;”

-Racists who question Black professional skills;

-Anti-LGBTQ trolls

The list goes on.

19/24
19/ If Musk were to edit George Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” he might say:

“All voices are equal, but some voices are more equal than others.”

20/24
20/ I cannot sign off without also feeling sadness for the company that Twitter used to be, and which Musk destroyed.

The bird was not “freed” — Musk killed it.

History will show this to be true.

I see no way this empty husk of a once-great platform for news will survive.

21/24
21/ I can also say w/ confidence that my fellow Tweeps were some of the smartest, most thoughtful, earnest, and humane professional colleagues that I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with.

And there is a silver lining:
Many have carried those qualities to new employers.

22/24
22/ I continue to participate in the ongoing public dialogue about democracy, elections, voting, tech, security and information integrity.

I’m now at:
http://linkedIn.com/in/eddie1perez Contact me for professional opportunities.

Also:
http://eddie1perez.bsky.social/ eddie1perez@mastodon.social

23/24
23/ Finally, if you want to support democracy and public confidence in elections, please consider making a donation to the nonpartisan nonprofit 501(c)(3)
@OSET Institute, where I serve on the Board of Directors.
http://osetinstitute.org/ Twitter is dead.
Long live Twitter.

/END

24/24
P.S. The single best, most perceptive commentary I’ve ever read that perfectly *nails* all of the psychological angst and resentment at the heart of Musk’s purchase — and in the hearts of his fanboys — is below.


@AmandaMarcotte , in Salon:


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[bnew]

Life After X: Journos Who Ditched Elon Musk’s Twitter Speak Out

Mediaite spoke with four journalists about what caused them to limit their use of Twitter and what their social media use looks like now.

www.mediaite.com

Life After X: Journos Who Ditched Elon Musk’s Twitter Speak Out​

Juwan HolmesApr 26th, 2024, 7:00 am

Sthanlee B. Mirador/AP Images

By all accounts, one of the great benefits of Twitter has always been real time access to information. That made it a vital platform for journalists and news outlets seeking not just a live feed for their coverage but also to build their brands as immediate sources for reporting and commentary. As political reporter Peter Hamby wrote in a 2013 paper for the Harvard Shorenstein Center, for better or worse, Twitter forever changed the news business as a result.

Now, two years since Twitter’s board first agreed to sell the company to Elon Musk, reliable information is disappearing from the site as more and more journalists and newsrooms have reduced their presence, or outright disappeared from the platform now known as X. Mediaite spoke with four journalists about what caused them to limit their use of Twitter and what their social media use looks like now.

Oliver Darcy, CNN’s senior media reporter and author of the Reliable Sources newsletter, spoke with Mediaite about both his team’s decision – and his own personal one – to completely exit the platform in July 2023.

“I just don’t know why you would want to serve as a cog in the machine of someone who is at war with you and doing everything he can to smear your profession and tarnish what you do,” he said. “So it just seemed pretty clear that Reliable Sources was no longer a good fit for X.”

Musk has become increasingly antagonistic to the media industry since taking over. His own personal disdain for the media has extended into a broader effort to discredit it; Musk and his high-profile supporters regularly post on X celebrating the decline of traffic to news sites and ratings of news networks. Those that publish stories critical of him bear the brunt of his attacks. He has also made extreme changes to the platform in an effort to reduce the reach of the traditional media, changing how links are displayed and stripping prominent outlets like The New York Times of their verified badges.

Perhaps his biggest tiff with media newsrooms came when he made changes to Twitter’s “state-affiliated” designations in April 2023. Twitter removed this label from accounts of state-run outlets, such as Russia’s RT and Iran’s PressTV, but then added them to BBC News, CBC and Radio Canada, PBS, and NPR — although those organizations are not operated by any government. Musk changed the labels multiple times before they were eventually removed, but that prompted both NPR and PBS to stop posting on their primary accounts (although several NPR affiliates and PBS programs, such as PBS NewsHour, remain active). CBC took a pause as well, and was on the butt end of a joke from Musk when it resumed posting on X.

Despite his claims to being a free speech absolutist, Twitter accepted more censorship requests under Musk than prior to his ownership. When an official X account tried to claim that the company “supports” pro-free speech organizations such as Reporters Without Borders, the non-profit came out and stated it has not received “any form of support from X whatsoever” and called the platform “a haven for disinformation and in no way an ally” to them.

All the while, Musk has sought to burnish Twitter’s bonafides as a news platform by bringing media veterans on board to post exclusive content on the platform. The results have been mixed. The signing of two of the biggest names in media – Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon – to revenue sharing deals has mostly imploded. Musk axed Lemon’s deal after an interview between the pair went awry, and Carlson has begun promoting his own website’s subscription service rather than Twitter.

It is a stark change from the Twitter that was revolutionizing the digital media landscape just a decade ago. It became conventional wisdom in the 2010s that a presence on Twitter was vital to the success of any media operation, due to the easy access to verifiable information, firsthand sources, and – perhaps, most of all — readers and audiences, in a way that was practically unmatched by any singular website or digital tool.

The present version of Twitter has become the opposite of that: prominent Twitter features — such as TweetDeck, the search bar, and direct messaging — have been restricted, the verification program has become a subscription service that any account can access, leading to a proliferation of bad information, and hateful content has reportedly spiked.

“It wasn’t perfect by any means,” Darcy said of old Twitter, “but at least there was an attempt at creating a community where there was a priority on truth stemming the flow of misinformation and conspiracy theories. Right now, the person that owns it is a prominent peddler of that kind of content.”

Rachel Chen, a Toronto-based journalist with several years’ experience in audience development, told Mediaite she “used to spend a lot of time on Twitter — I liked the feeling of being ‘the first to know’ about events and there were a lot of interesting discussions.” But she quit the platform when Musk took over.

“I studied information policy in university and I know how much it takes to run a platform,” said Chen. “The way he talked about Twitter made it clear to me he has no idea what it takes. He still doesn’t.”

Others had similar feelings about the state of the platform under Musk, who made it a priority to gut the company and significantly reduce its staff — many of whom worked in moderation or other services that made it a reliable source of news.

“I had been on Twitter in some form or another since 2012 or 2013 and I remember being really excited for all the stuff I had learned there and the people I never would’ve met otherwise,” Aria Velasquez, the founding writer of the Labor Pains newsletter, told Mediaite, “but all things must come to an end.”

While not all of Twitter’s problems began with Musk, the journalists Mediaite spoke with cited his acquisition as the turning point.

“I had started getting a little tired of Twitter already by the time Elon bought the site last year,” Velasquez said. “Then when he took over… I knew my days on that site were numbered.” She called it quits sometime in February 2023, four months after he assumed control.

Two years into Musk’s leadership, Twitter’s business and reputation is in tatters. Despite his claim to being a “free speech absolutist,” Musk has waged high-profile wars against his own critics. Musk is currently suing Media Matters for America, a liberal research group critical of the content allowed on Twitter. He has tried to bring legal action against several other critics or users he didn’t like, including the the Center for Countering Digital Hate, the Anti-Defamation League, and the individual behind the @ElonJet account. As recently as January, multiple journalists and content creators have been repeatedly suspended after making posts critical of him or sharing information about his critics.

It’s not just detractors or major media outlets that have been on the receiving end of Musk’s ire. He has also beefed with Matt Taibbi, one of the journalists who he worked with to release the “Twitter Files,” dismissed Andrew Ross Sorkin’s concerns about the declining traffic publishers are receiving from the social network. Musk also claimed Kara Swisher – with whom he used to have a friendly relationship – “should take it easy on the Adderall” after she interviewed a former Twitter executive about the platform’s problems.

 

[bnew]

{continued}

“I mean, in general, I think it was kind of like a Jenga puzzle, and at some point, the puzzle just collapsed,” said Darcy. “He had done one thing at a time, removing one piece at a time of what made Twitter worth spending time on. It became clear that this was going one direction. It was a one way train, and I did not want to be on the train anymore.”

“I actually think I had a fairly open mind early on, at least, when Musk expressed some interest in purchasing it,” said Darcy. “But I’m not sure I ever anticipated this… I don’t think I ever anticipated getting to the point where I’d leave the website altogether.”

Musk’s chaotic stewardship of the social media behemoth has fueled an exodus of other users. Darcy cited data from multiple research firms and public sources, reported by NBC News, that found usage of the site has declined overall every month since November 2022. “I do think a lot of people have reduced the amount of time on, or content they’re posting on, Twitter,” he said.

Some publications that left the platform said they did not face problems as a result. Six months after leaving, NPR reported that it has only lost 1% of its website’s traffic as a result.

Indeed, media analytics company Chartbeat found that Twitter accounted for just 1.1% of its clients’ referral traffic in February 2023, lower than any point in the five years prior.

Others have struggled after quitting Twitter. Frankie Huang, the co-editor of Reappropriate, an Asian-American and Pacific Islander feminist blog, told Mediaite the site suffered following its exit: “To be blunt, Reappropriate is pretty fukked without Twitter at the moment. We had relied on Twitter as a public utility and never imagined that it would fall apart in such a rapid and disastrous manner.”

A survey Reappropriate ran of its readers showed “an overwhelming majority of readers find us through Twitter, which meant we were completely reliant on Twitter functioning properly to be seen at all,” Huang said.

Other outlets that have remained on the platform have seen their referral traffic drop. Social media engagement firm NewsWhip found in September 2023 that The New York Times, which Musk has called a “mouthpiece of the state,” saw posts with links to their articles receive much lower visibility on Twitter compared to other media websites.

“If you look at everything that he’s done – and this is not even including the fact that sometimes, the site’s basic features don’t function that well anymore – I just don’t know how you can look around in that space and decide that that’s where you want to put your time and effort,” said Darcy.

In the meantime, alternatives are vying to take Twitter’s place as the premier text-based platform, with varied levels of success among journalists. Threads and BlueSky have proven the most popular, while Mastodon and Spill have pulled some popular media personalities but little mainstream traction.

“In my perfect world, the ‘Fediverse’ would kick into gear and allow people to just interact across different platforms,” Darcy said. In the absence of that infrastructure in place, Reliable Sources currently posts to Threads, Instagram, and Linkedin.

“I don’t know if there’s one platform out there that’s the ‘perfect’ platform right now,” he said. “I will say, though, our primary platform at Reliable Sources is a newsletter where we have a direct relationship with our audience, and there’s no middleman or algorithm that’s stepping in the way.”

Meta, the operator of several social media websites including Threads, has had an adversarial relationship with media as well. “I think that some of the things that are said and done are concerning, in terms of what Meta is doing,” Darcy said. “I am no stranger to criticizing Meta, or Mark Zuckerberg, or [Instagram head] Adam Mosseri. But I don’t think they’re governing their platforms in the same realm as the way Elon Musk is governing Twitter, or X.”

The other journalists that spoke to Mediaite also have given the smaller alternatives a shot. “I joined Bluesky about a month and a half ago, and so far it’s been fine. Most of the people I liked following on Twitter are on there and it’s not as crowded,” Velasquez said.

Huang, who had “completely abandoned Twitter” in March, said they “have grown somewhat fond of Bluesky, though I withhold any real optimism about it replacing Twitter for me as a distribution platform for my work and what we publish on Reappropriate.”

“I still use Instagram to connect with friends, but professionally I’m probably sticking to LinkedIn,” Chen said, because “the platform was built for that.”

Whether any alternative works out, or another Twitter is needed at all, remains one of the great quandaries for the media industry. “Regardless of any problems with the site, journalists have a very unhealthy relationship with Twitter,” Darcy said. “Everyone in the industry is, or has been for a while obsessed.”

Huang, describing Twitter currently as “a clown car on fire,” said “I do think newsrooms should still continue to use it, in the spirit of taking up some space so misinformation [doesn’t] take up all of the space.”

Rather than “helping keep the site alive,” Huang argued journalists should abandon the platform in the hopes of hastening its demise. “We should just nuke it from orbit at this point.”

“I think there is no harm in still using it professionally, if you have the capacity,” Chen said, but she “probably” won’t use it again because “there is so much noise in the world already.”

One conclusion was consistent among the journalists that spoke with Mediaite: the only way they’d consider returning is if Musk was no longer in charge. “I think as long as he’s at the top of a platform, that platform’s not going to be stable because he has proven that he does not govern in a stable way,” said Darcy.

“I never had a large audience on my personal [Twitter] account, so it’s not as though I lost a megaphone or anything,” Velasquez said. “I do miss seeing really smart people in conversation, but I don’t miss how much time I spent on that site, if that makes any sense. I’ve taken back some of my brain space.”

Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.com[/SIZE]

FILED UNDER:

Elon Musk Oliver Darcy social media Twitter

 

[bnew]

 

[Zime]

You know what this means

 

[null]

You know what this means

it'll be more like tiktok ?

 

[bnew]

Spoiler: thread continued

Spoiler: full text

1/4
Pete Souza posted this tweet this morning and now his account no longer exists. @petesouza

2/4


3/4
I’ve reposted this from @VladaKnowlton ‘s account as well. I’m hoping others will too.
🩷

4/4
WTF Elon.


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Spoiler: mirror

 

[bnew]

Labour MPs begin quitting X over ‘hate and disinformation’

Exclusive: MPs leaving platform or scaling back use over its ‘deterioration’ under Elon Musk’s ownership

www.theguardian.com

Labour MPs begin quitting X over ‘hate and disinformation’​

Exclusive: MPs leaving platform or scaling back use over its ‘deterioration’ under Elon Musk’s ownership

Eleni Courea Political correspondent

Mon 12 Aug 2024 15.00 EDTLast modified on Mon 12 Aug 2024 16.27 EDT
Share

One Labour MP accused Elon Musk of turning X into ‘a megaphone for foreign adversaries and far-right fringe groups’. Photograph: Étienne Laurent/EPA

Labour MPs have begun quitting X in alarm over the platform, with one saying Elon Musk had turned it into “a megaphone for foreign adversaries and far-right fringe groups”.

Over the weekend, newly elected MPs took to WhatsApp groups to raise growing concerns about the role X played in the spread of misinformation amid the far-right-led riots in parts of England and Northern Ireland.

Two Labour MPs are known to have told colleagues they were leaving the platform. One of them, Noah Law, has disabled his account. Other MPs who still use X have begun examining alternatives, including Threads, which is owned by Facebook’s parent company, Meta, and the open-source platform Bluesky.

Musk, who bought Twitter in 2022 and renamed it X, has been embroiled in a public spat with Keir Starmer since the tech billionaire suggested that the riots meant “civil war is inevitable” in the UK. Musk has been criticised for failing to crack down on misinformation on the platform and for sharing fake news himself.

In an article for the Guardian on Monday, a former Twitter executive, Bruce Daisley, said Musk should face personal sanctions and even an arrest warrant if he continues to stir up public disorder online.

Over the weekend, Jess Phillips, a Home Office minister who has more than 700,000 followers on X, said she wanted to scale back her use of the platform as it had become a “bit despotic” and was “a place of misery now”.

A government minister also told the Guardian they had reduced their posts on X over the summer and that Musk’s actions had made them “very reluctant to return”.

Musk – who has cast himself as a proponent of free speech, reinstating to X figures including Donald Trump and the far-right activist Tommy Robinson – is due to conduct an interview with Trump on X on Monday night .

Josh Simons, the Labour MP for Makerfield, said he was looking into alternative platforms such as Bluesky. “What matters about Musk is not only what he said, but how he changed X’s algorithms,” he said. “He’s turned X into a megaphone for foreign adversaries and far-right fringe groups seeking to corrupt our public sphere. Nobody should have that power.

“A new generation of legislators are flexing their muscles, people who’ve grown up understanding the power of these platforms. By talking down Britain, Musk has placed X firmly in our sights.”

Lewis Atkinson, the Labour MP for Sunderland Central, has begun collating a list of MPs from his party who use Threads and said that “any platform that has lots of hate and disinformation is not very appealing to use”.

“I’ve noticed in recent weeks some people moving away from X because of their experiences there, so I’ve expanded where I’m posting to include some X alternatives – Threads and BlueSky,” he said.

“I’ve been pleased to find others I know there, including other Labour MPs; by my count 28 now using Threads. Using multiple platforms gives constituents and journalists a choice of what they use. I don’t plan to quit X, but I don’t see why it (or any platform) should have a monopoly on politicians posting.”

Jo Platt, the Labour MP for Leigh, quit X before the general election after witnessing the “deterioration” of the platform and is now a Threads user.

“I used to love it. I was on it since 2009,” Platt said. “That deterioration of it has just happened quite quickly over the past few years and even more so now.” She cited “the misinformation and disinformation that you see on there, without it being challenged, and you know that it’s not going to be removed”.

Far right-led unrest was whipped up by activists online who falsely claimed that a Muslim asylum-seeker was behind a stabbing attack that left three children dead in Southport two weeks ago.

On Monday, Downing Street indicated that social media companies could face stronger regulation if they failed to take robust action against disinformation on their platforms. Peter Kyle, the technology secretary, met social media executives last week and another meeting is expected this week.

“We’re very clear that social media companies have a responsibility for ensuring that there is no safe place for hatred and illegality on their platforms,” the prime minister’s spokesperson said.

“Our immediate response has been responding to the disorder and working with police. But as [Starmer] said last week, he does agree that we’re going to need to look more broadly at social media after this disorder.”

She said ministers were focused on implementing the Online Safety Act as soon as possible.

On Monday, in response to a post by the rightwing Reform party leader, Nigel Farage, saying: “Keir Starmer poses the biggest threat to free speech we’ve seen in our history,” Musk replied: “True.”

The prime minister’s spokesperson said he would “disagree with that completely”, but stressed that Starmer would not enter a tit-for-tat spat with Musk.

In a string of posts over the past fortnight, Musk has repeatedly attacked the UK government, police and justice system. He has used the hashtag TwoTierKeir – a reference to allegations that police have treated some protesters more harshly than others – and has described the prison sentences handed to two far-right rioters as “messed up”.

But the prime minister’s spokesperson said the government had no plans to review its use of X and said: “With all of our communications, it’s important to make sure that we reach the broadest possible audience, and that is one of a number of channels that we use to ensure that we’re doing that.”

 

[bnew]

X caught blocking links to NPR, claiming the news site may be 'unsafe' | TechCrunch

X, the Elon Musk-owned platform formerly known as Twitter, is marking some links to news organization NPR's website as "unsafe" when users click through

techcrunch.com

X caught blocking links to NPR, claiming the news site may be ‘unsafe’​

Sarah Perez

9:46 AM PDT • August 29, 2024

Comment

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch

X, the Elon Musk-owned platform formerly known as Twitter, is marking some links to news organization NPR’s website as “unsafe” when users click through to read the latest story about an altercation between a Trump campaign staffer and an Arlington National Cemetery employee. The warning being displayed is typically applied to malicious links, like those containing malware, and other types of misleading content or spam. However, in this case, the web page being blocked is an NPR news report, raising questions about whether or not Musk’s X is actively trying to stop the news story from spreading.

On Thursday X users began to notice that a link to the NPR story about the Arlington Cemetery event, when clicked, would display the following message: “Warning: this link may be unsafe” followed by the URL of the web page in question, https://npr.org/2024/08/29/nx-s1-5092087/trump-arlington-cemetery-altercation-tiktok.

Instead of being taken to the website, the warning encourages them to go “back to the previous page” by clicking the big blue button. To read the news story, users would have to click on the small text below that reads, “Ignore this warning and continue.”

It’s not immediately clear why NPR’s news site would have triggered this warning, nor why it would show up on specifically this story.

ScreenshotImage Credits:screenshot of X, 12:09 PM ET

The message warns X users:

The link you are trying to access has been identified by X or our partners as being potentially spammy or unsafe, in accordance with X’s URL Policy. This link could fall into any of the below categories:

• 
  malicious links that could steal personal information or harm electronic devices
  
• 
  spammy links that mislead people or disrupt their experience
  
• 
  violent or misleading content that could lead to real-world harm
  
• 
  certain categories of content that, if posted directly on X, are a violation of the X Rules
  

It does appear that NPR changed the URL from https://npr.org/2024/08/29/nx-s1-5092087/trump-arlington-cemetery-altercation-tiktok to https://www.npr.org/2024/08/29/nx-s1-5092087/trump-arlington-cemetery-altercation-video, but whether that’s in response to the link being blocked or whether some other issue may have falsely triggered the malicious link warning is not yet known.

In any event, the move further muddies X’s image as a platform for free speech, which could drive more users to competitors like open source Mastodon, social networking startup Bluesky, Meta’s Threads and others.

NPR did not immediately return a request for comment and X typically longer replies to media requests for comment under Musk’s leadership. It did, however, reply to NPR in this case later this afternoon, and said that the link was marked as a “false positive” and had been corrected.

This is not the first time there’s been an incident between NPR and X. The news organization last year chose to abandon X, then called Twitter, after Musk had the outlet labeled as “state-affiliated media” — a label Twitter had previously used for propaganda outlets like those in Russia and China. It has not officially returned.

More recently, Musk has used X’s platform to showcase his support for Trump, even hosting an online conversation with the former president on X Spaces earlier this month. The service was not able to handle the traffic, however, and crashed.

Story updated, 8/29/24, 2 PM ET to include X comment to NPR.

 

[bnew]

San Francisco says ‘good riddance’ as X prepares to leave

Elon Musk is moving X out of San Francisco, but city officials claim it won't have a major impact due to how much the company has shrunk.

www.siliconrepublic.com

San Francisco says ‘good riddance’ as X prepares to leave​

by Leigh Mc Gowran

4 days ago

Elon Musk at the UK AI Summit in 2023. Image: Rory Arnold/No 10 Downing Street/Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Musk is moving his businesses out of California and has been critical of San Francisco online, but city officials claim the departure of X won’t have a major impact.

Elon Musk is moving X out of its San Francisco headquarters and city officials are claiming not to care.

The billionaire announced plans earlier this month that he would take X out of California and move its headquarters to Texas. Musk said on X that he had “no choice” but to move and claimed “it is impossible to operate in San Francisco if you’re processing payments”. He has also been critical of other taxation policies in the city and California for years.

Musk may have a different motive for leaving California, however. In July he responded to posts about state legislation to support LGBT+ students and called it “the final straw”, declaring he would move SpaceX to Texas.

“Because of this law and the many others that preceded it, attacking both families and companies, SpaceX will now move its HQ from Hawthorne, California, to Starbase, Texas,” he said.

In response to the move, San Francisco officials gave The New York Times lukewarm reactions. City attorney David Chiu claimed he shares the perspective of “most San Franciscans” which is “good riddance”.

San Francisco’s chief economist Ted Egan claimed the company’s departure will have little impact due to how much it has shrunk and that “in many respects, they were already gone”. X did not respond to requests from NYT for comment.

The company formerly known as Twitter made a significant number of job cuts after Musk took over in October 2022. By January 2023, internal records seen by CNBC showed that the company’s numbers had dropped to around 1,300 full-time staff, compared to around 8,000 before Musk’s acquisition.

Since then, the rebranding of Twitter to X caused its own problems for relations in San Francisco. The company headquarters was ‘upgraded’ with a large, glowing X logo on the top of the building in 2023, but the brightness of this logo led to complaints from neighbours.

Even back then, Musk was growing critical of San Francisco and claimed it was in a “doom spiral with one company after another left or leaving”. But he also claimed that X would be different, despite getting “rich incentives” to move elsewhere.

“San Francisco, beautiful San Francisco, though others forsake you, we will always be your friend,” Musk said in a post.

Find out how emerging tech trends are transforming tomorrow with our new podcast, Future Human: The Series. Listen now on Spotify, on Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.

Elon Musk at the UK AI Summit in 2023. Image: Rory Arnold/No 10 Downing Street via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

 

[ORDER_66]

Brazil bans X: all the latest news

Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes told the National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel) to limit access to X within 24 hours and has given Apple and Google five days to remove X from their mobile app stores. The country will also impose daily fines of $50,000 Brazilian real (~$8,900 USD) to people who try to access X through a virtual private network (VPN), as reported by Poder360.

 

[bnew]

Brazil’s X ban is sending lots of people to Bluesky

“We’ve never seen traffic like this.”

www.theverge.com

​

Brazil’s X ban is sending lots of people to Bluesky​

​

Brazilian users seem to be turning to Bluesky in droves while they can’t use X.​

By Jay Peters, a news editor who writes about technology, video games, and virtual worlds. He’s submitted several accepted emoji proposals to the Unicode Consortium.
Aug 30, 2024, 5:28 PM EDT

Image: Bluesky

X is currently banned in Brazil following an order from a Supreme Court justice, and Brazilian users seem to be turning to Bluesky, an alternate social network, in droves.
“Brazil, you’re setting new all-time-highs for activity on Bluesky!” the official Bluesky account says in a post.
“There will almost certainly be some outages and performance issues,” Bluesky developer Paul Frazee says. “We’ve never seen traffic like this. Hang with us!”

Bluesky (@bsky.app)

Brazil, you're setting new all-time-highs for activity on Bluesky! 🥇 Brasil, você está estabelecendo novos recordes de atividade no Bluesky! 🥇

bsky.app

The Bluesky app looks and functions a lot like X, but it’s a decentralized social media platform that’s built on the AT Protocol (which is also developed by Bluesky). In a 5:12PM ET post, Frazee says that Bluesky is seeing 1,000 events per second — a “new milestone” — on its “relay,” which essentially functions as the firehose of data for the platform.

Mastodon (another decentralized platform) and Meta (the corporation that runs Threads, which has links to the fediverse) didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment about whether they’re seeing increased usage as well.