General Elon Musk Fukkery Thread

[bnew]

Steve Herman (@w7voa@journa.host)

So-called "verified” users on the former Twitter, who now pay to have a blue check, pushed 74% of the most viral false Israel-Hamas war-related claims, according to a NewsGuard analysis shared with Adweek. “This is another nail in the coffin for X in terms of deteriorating advertisers’ trust,”...

journa.host

Verified Accounts on X Spread 74% of War Misinformation

'This is another nail in the coffin for X' among advertisers.

www.adweek.com

PLATFORMS

Verified Accounts on X Spread 74% of Wartime Misinformation​

'This is another nail in the coffin for X' among advertisers​

By Trishla Ostwal
|

1 day ago

Under Elon Musk's leadership, advertisers have grown increasingly uneasy.Adweek; X, Chesnot/Getty Images

As the latest Israel and Hamas war reaches its two-week mark, an overwhelming surge of videos and photos claiming to portray the ongoing turmoil has inundated social media platforms.

So far, Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) is struggling to combat wartime misinformation, making advertisers even more cautious about returning to the beleaguered platform.

The platform’s “verified” users, who now pay to have a blue check, pushed 74% of X’s most viral false Israel-Hamas war-related claims, according to a NewsGuard analysis shared with Adweek.
“This is another nail in the coffin for X in terms of deteriorating advertisers’ trust,” said Ruben Schreurs, chief strategy officer at independent marketing and media consultancy Ebiquity. “And they’re enforcing their decision not to return to X.”

Twitter’s Small First Step in Quelling Ad Buyers’ Brand Safety Concerns


In its first week of conflict beginning Oct. 7, the news rating company analyzed the top 250 posts containing misinformation that received the most likes, reposts, replies and bookmarks, and found 186 accounts of the 250—74%—were verified by X. NewsGuard identifies misinformation using a combination of humans and artificial intelligence.

The verified accounts promoted 10 false narratives, such as claims that Ukraine sold weapons to Hamas and a video of Israeli senior officials being captured by Hamas.

Collectively, posts promoting false claims garnered 1,349,979 likes, reposts, replies and bookmarks, and were viewed by more than 100 million people globally in a week, per NewsGuard.

Combating wartime misinformation has been X’s biggest content moderation test as advertisers grow increasingly leery about the platform. In March, Musk began un-checking accounts and selling verification (blue check marks), a feature that was once reserved for high-profile users and professional journalists. Since then, Musk has also slashed the number of content and safety policy positions within the company.
“That decision [to let people pay for verification] turned out to be a boon for bad actors sharing misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war,” according to NewsGuard.

Under Musk’s leadership, advertisers have grown increasingly uneasy, leading to a stop in ad spend. Since the acquisition, the platform’s ad revenue has declined each month, per Reuters. Meanwhile, ad rates have plummeted by more than 75% and X hit a three-year low, with CPMs as low as 61 cents as of August, according to the 2023 State of Social Media CPM report by Gupta Media.

Former NBCUniversal ad chief Linda Yaccarino’s hiring as CEO in June instilled some degree of confidence among advertisers, but the rampant outbreaks of disturbing content on X have further gutted advertisers’ trust, three sources told Adweek.

Following discussions with senior leadership across its 75 clients, “the absolute overwhelming majority of our brand advertisers are incredibly concerned with the ongoing misinformation,” Schreurs said. Audi and Sony are both Ebiquity clients—the former ceased organic posting on X in November last year, while Sony has continued.

Adweek has contacted X for a response.

EU’s involvement a ‘key driver of concern’​

The platform’s struggle to curb rampant misinformation has brand leaders even more cautious to return.
“Most brand partners hoped that Yaccarino would bring some maturity back to the platform,” Christopher Spong, associate director of social media and communications at media agency Collective Measures, told Adweek. “It quickly became clear that Musk was still running the show.”

Meanwhile, European regulators last week made a formal request for information from Musk’s platform concerning its procedures and practices to address hate speech, dissemination of misinformation and the presence of violent terrorist content pertaining to the Israel-Hamas war.

The flagging by the EU was a “key driver of immediate concern” for brand partners at Ebiquity.

In response, Yaccarino sent a letter to the EU outlining the platform’s efforts to curb war-related disinformation, including “redistributing resources” and “refocusing internal teams.” X has introduced new enhancements to its Community Notes, a crowdsourced fact-checking feature and has taken action to remove hundreds of Hamas-affiliated accounts.

However, per NewsGuard’s analysis, Community Notes failed to successfully debunk misinformation 68% of the time. Only 79 of the 250 posts that perpetuated wartime misinformation were flagged by the platform with Community Notes.

 

[BK The Great]

It’s been less than a year and he has completely fukked up this app.

 

[Redwood]

It’s been less than a year and he has completely fukked up this app.

As soon as he stepped foot into it, it was a disaster waiting to happen

 

[Conz]

As soon as he stepped foot into it, it was a disaster waiting to happen

motherfukker dropped $44 bil so he could make a hilarious sink joke

sidenote - i love how absolutely no one calls this bullshyt "X" and when they do, they always have to add "formerly Twitter." that name will never die. i have a bookmark on my desktop browser toolbar and it's still the little bird. i don't know how or when that's gonna change, but i love still seeing that little fukker.

 

[bnew]

Blue checks aren’t protecting sex workers from X’s porn crackdown​

'I feel like a fool for paying it. I feel fooled by Elon Musk.'​

Morgan Sung@morgan_sung / 7:15 PM EDT•October 13, 2023
Comment

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch

When X (formerly Twitter) launched paid subscription verification, Mistress Rouge, a professional dominatrix, hoped that it would help her advertise to new clients. But paying for the service didn’t protect her from X’s crackdown on explicit content, which is a particularly hard blow for sex workers on the platform who have few options to promote themselves elsewhere.
“It has done basically nothing for my Twitter engagement,” Mistress Rogue told TechCrunch over DM. “I feel like a fool for paying it. I feel fooled by Elon Musk.”

X Premium, the subscription previously called Twitter Blue, was supposed to grant users more than just a blue check mark. For a $7.99 monthly fee, the service promises prioritized rankings, ranking replies from verified users higher than replies from non-verified users. It’s also supposed to give posts that verified users interact with a boost in engagement, according to X’s Help Center.


Under Musk’s leadership, X has become increasingly hostile toward nudity and explicit content. This week, X started flagging NSFW posts as “sensitive material,” as Rolling Stone reported, and restricting flagged accounts to limit their reach. Sex workers said their engagement tanked and their accounts no longer show up in X’s search, even if they weren’t notified about being flagged. In screenshots shared with Rolling Stone and posted online, X told flagged accounts that their posts may be obscured with a warning to prevent people from seeing sensitive content, and that they may also be excluded from the For You and Following timelines, recommended notifications and trends.

Mistress Rogue is one of many sex workers who want to cancel their subscriptions because of the punitive measures X is taking against adult content.
“I thought it would help my engagement but now I feel like it’s a waste of money,” Mistress Rogue continued.

Sex workers were quick to adopt Twitter Blue in hopes that the boost in engagement would shield them from the shadowbanning and disproportionate censorship that they’re typically subject to on social media. Paying for a subscription, even if they didn’t support Musk’s changes to the platform, was essential for many sex workers to avoid being deplatformed.

Twitter was one of the only social media sites that tolerated explicit content, and until Musk’s takeover, it was a thriving hub for sex workers to share resources, find community and promote their services. The site’s culture was heavily influenced by the strippers, adult content creators and full-service escorts who drove both traffic and memes. But now branded as X, the site is becoming less tolerant of nudity, pornography and anything remotely sexual.


The crackdown affected accounts regardless of their X premium subscription. A sex worker who goes by Mara Villana on X warned fellow NSFW creators that her verified account was flagged and restricted. In replies to her post, she speculated that “they are trying to rid the app of SW [sex work] altogether.” Mara Villana did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.

https://archive.ph/RLrrv

Twitter allowed consensual pornographic content, but X’s sensitive media policy forbids adult nudity and sexual behavior, which it defines as media “that is pornographic or intended to cause sexual arousal.” The policy applies to full or partial nudity, simulated sex acts and sexual acts depicted by “cartoons, hentai, or anime involving humans or depictions of animals with human-like features.” Under X’s policy, even suggestive imagery is flagged as sensitive media.

Alleria, a dominatrix who subscribes to X Premium, said one of her posts was flagged even though it didn’t contain explicit nudity. The image, which was reviewed by TechCrunch, was a heavily pixelated shot of Alleria’s crotch, which was further obscured by a black bar. In white text over the bar, the image said “NO p*ssy FOR BETA LOSERS.”

“It was the word that triggered it I think, because the nudity is blurred out,” Alleria said. “It’s already censored.”


She said that she’s “not happy” about paying for X Premium because it only boosts views on her replies to other people’s posts, not on her own posts. She had to “go PG rated” with her X content, and only saw a marginal bump in her post views when she started engaging with users outside of the NSFW community.

“I honestly don’t understand why X is targeting porn content on this site when there is dangerous misinformation, racism and bigotry freely flowing from this site,” she said. “You would think targeting consenting adult nude content would be the last thing X should be doing.”

In its hurry to suppress adult content, X is neglecting to moderate the misinformation and violent rhetoric proliferating on the platform.

Misinformation has been rampant on X, particularly in wake of the escalating conflict in Gaza. The European Union has already publicly warned X for failing to stop the dissemination of illegal content and disinformation after the deadly Hamas attacks on Israel. Under the EU’s Digital Service Act, the onus is on large online platforms like X to mitigate “risks to public security” stemming from disinformation. Graphic content purporting to be footage of the violent conflict continues to go viral, despite experts debunking the posts as doctored, fictional or from previous incidents in other regions.


While X spent this week censoring sex workers, other blue check accounts — verified through X Premium — have been driving misinformation about the conflict with little to no consequences.

In his daily threads calling out misinformation on X, BBC journalist Shayan Sardarizadeh consistently debunks claims made by verified accounts, including one who falsely stated that Hamas had launched an airstrike on Israel. The video that the verified account posted was a clip from the video game “Arma 3.”

https://archive.ph/pmn0C

Alleria warned that banning porn, which is already under scrutiny by government agencies and banned in multiple states, is a “slippery slope” to targeting LGBTQ communities. Porn bans will eventually affect everyone, she said, if governments are granted the power to decide what media consenting adults are allowed to share.

Mistress Alexxxia, an adult content creator, described the increased censorship of sex workers as “digital discrimination.” In a thread about X’s hostility toward NSFW content, she criticized Musk as the “absolute antithesis of free speech.”

“SWers are the guinea pigs used in [the] changing of policy and access to information because the general population doesn’t care or straight up hates us,” she wrote. “*Your* rights vanish next.”

Alleria said she’ll keep paying for X Premium, even if reluctantly, as long as she can still post links to adult sites. Although she’s considered pivoting to Reddit or Bluesky to promote her services, she’s “not giving up on this site yet.”
“I mean Elon is unpredictable. Anything is possible with him,” Alleria said. “But unless he targets posting links to adult content, I’m not worried. Adult content creators adapt.”

 

[bnew]

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/twitter-cracks-down-nudity-israel-hamas-misinformation-1234853098/

War Misinfo Is Everywhere. So Twitter Is Cracking Down on … Nudity​

Sex workers report notifications that their accounts have been restricted in reach and hidden from search results

BY MILES KLEE


OCTOBER 13, 2023

''X'' sign formerly installed on the top of Twitter Headquarters in San Francisco. TAYFUN COSKUN/ANADOLU AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES

X, formerly Twitter, may sound like a porn site, but it’s growing more hostile to adult content. Although currently awash in misinformation and extremist hate speech related to the ongoing war between Israeli armed forces and Hamas militants, the platform is apparently focused on keeping nudity out of users’ feeds rather than how it may be fueling violence and geopolitical instability,.

More than a dozen sex workers with NSFW accounts, many of them promoting OnlyFans pages, tell Rolling Stone that in recent days, their engagement has plummeted. Some claim that their handles don’t come up in searches, or have received specific notifications that their reach has been limited.
“My engagement on X has dropped off by a factor between 10x to 20x over the past one or two days,” says Krystal Davis, an adult performer with over 150,000 followers on the site. A photo of herself in a bikini shared on Thursday currently has just 17 likes. “Very noticeable and likely to be very impactful on my earnings,” Davis says, “given so much of my revenue relates to traffic from the platform to others where my content is available.”

Nina Nova, who has more than 10,000 followers on X, has also witnessed a dramatic decrease in activity on her sex work account, and shared a data screenshot that proved it. “In September, my tweets had 1.6 million impressions,” she points out. “According to X analytics, my impressions have gone down 51 percent in the last 28 days, despite no significant change in my marketing and social media strategy.” Rolling Stone independently confirmed that searching Nova’s exact username on X yielded no results.

This week, Nova and others with NSFW accounts on X received a notification with a red flag icon that reads, “We’ve added a label to your account which may impact its reach.” Tapping the notification leads to a longer explanation that begins, “We have found that your account potentially contains sensitive media — such as graphic, violent [sic], nudity, sexual behavior, hateful symbols, or other sensitive content.” The message states that X may cover the users’ posts with a warning. “The reach of your account and its content may also be restricted, such as being excluded from the For You and Following timelines, recommended notifications, trends, and search results.”

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Other sex workers, like Lana Ryder, say their engagement has cratered — but that they haven’t been notified about being flagged. Formerly, Ryder says, “media posts would typically get anywhere from 10-100 retweets and 100-1000 likes, 10-50 comments.” But her last picture “got two retweets and 27 likes, which is completely uncommon for me in lingerie. I noticed my engagement completely down for the past month or so but the past few days have been the worst. I never received any notifications about being suppressed.”

Nobody in this line of business is a stranger to shadowbanning, the means by which social media platforms suppress and hide certain content and users, often in secret. Research has shown that sex workers promoting adult content are particularly likely to have their visibility restricted. Those who fail to label their profile or individual posts as “sensitive” may have that material removed or their accounts locked. Still, the latest crackdown feels extreme, they say. “There’s a been pretty wide discrepancy, even taking into account the usual throttling sex worker accounts usually get,” claims OnlyFans performer Bugs Maytrix, who has 103,000 followers on X but is now in what they refer to as “engagement hell.”

A representative for X was not available to comment on the situation, as the company no longer responds to inquiries from journalists, responding only with an automated email message.

RELATED​

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Verified Accounts on Musk's X Spread 74 Percent of Israel-Hamas War Misinformation​

MAGA Influencers Tearing Each Other Apart Over Israel-Hamas War​

The filtering out of nudity by X’s algorithm comes at a time when the site is so clogged with dangerous, violent, and misleading posts about the Israel-Hamas conflict that the European Union has warned it could face penalties for non-compliance with the recently implemented Digital Services Act, which compels tech companies to block or efficiently remove such content. The platform’s owner, Elon Musk, even personally endorsed an antisemitic account to follow for war updates (and later deleted his recommendation).

Meanwhile, a Media Matters report this week found that X was placing ads for the National Football League and Major League Baseball on verified antisemitic and white nationalist accounts with over a million followers combined. Some of these have promoted Holocaust denial and attacked Jews in dehumanizing terms. This follows demands from the NFL last month that X “rectify the issue” of slotting its advertising alongside extremist hate speech.

All this considered, it would look as if Musk and CEO Linda Yaccarino have bigger fish to fry than adult performers using X to connect with customers. For the moment, however, sex workers will just have to contend with a sudden banishment from the mainstream, crowded out by hateful propaganda and fake news.

 

[BK The Great]

BREAKING: The Supreme Court just temporarily allowed the Biden administration to continue asking social media companies to remove posts from their platforms that the government says are misleading.

https://x.com/simonateba/status/1715474233046761887?s=46&t=ADFHwaKGDQaguKGCA8YBjw

 

[AStrangeName]

Twitter is the internet equivalent of a fukkin KMart in 2017. i get depressed when i look at it

Twitter was the GOAT platform to be on from 2010-2017, it's been coasting until the lockdown in 2020 and everything changed since.

 

[ADevilYouKhow]

Elon Musk blasts the work-from-home crowd, saying they are 'detached from reality' - Autoblog

Musk ranted against the work-from-home crowd, saying they give off "Marie Antoinette" vibes, during Tesla's third-quarter earnings call.

www.autoblog.com

 

[ADevilYouKhow]

Elon Musk Loses $24 Billion After Tesla Stock Falls Roughly 9%

Tesla stock fell after a poor earnings report and ominous statements from CEO Elon Musk.

www.forbes.com

Tesla Owner Reports Shocking $21,000 Bill For Battery Damaged By Rain

Are the rains of Scotland too much for a Tesla to bear?

www.thedrive.com

Tesla’s Profits Plunge 44% After Big Price Cuts

The automaker reported a sharp drop in profits in the third quarter after slashing car prices by around 25 percent in an attempt to compete.

www.nytimes.com

 

[WTFisWallace?]

 

[BigMoneyGrip]

Shareholders suckered this clown into purchasing Twitter and ran off with the bag

 

[Voice of Reason]

Shareholders suckered this clown into purchasing Twitter and ran off with the bag

Nah him being a racist troll incel drove him to buy this company to "own the libs"


Dude is a clown

 

[MushroomX]

Some choice Elon Musk humor today... painfully unfunny and fukking dumb.

 

[ADevilYouKhow]

Grimes doesn't want Elon Musk to have custody of their son, X. But he does, court doc says

Elon Musk has custody of son X, whom he shares with Grimes, despite the singer's objections, court records show. Grimes sued Musk for parental rights.

www.businessinsider.com

Elon Musk's fortune plunged by $16 billion in a single day - Autoblog

Tesla CEO Elon Musk's net worth tumbled after the EV maker posted third-quarter earnings that fell short of Wall Street's expectations.

www.autoblog.com