The Case for Musk’s Social Media Buying of a Social Media Platform: Trump’s Call to Drop the Ban, or You Can’t Get Your Oath
Musk wrote in a message that he bought the social network to have a digitally connected town square where a wide range of beliefs can be debated without resorting to violence.
“I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump; I think that was a mistake,” Musk said at a conference in May, pledging to reverse the ban were he to become the company’s owner.
Relations between the men seem to have soured since, with the pair exchanging barbs over the summer. After being derided by Trump at a rally in July, Musk responded to the president by saying, “I don’t hate the man, but it is time for him to hang up his hat and go fishing.”
The reply stated that Musk was trying to exit the deal and now, on the eve of the trial, defendants declare they intend to close. They say to trust them, they mean it this time.
The acquisition also promises to extend Musk’s influence. The billionaire already owns, oversees or has significant stakes in companies developing cars, rockets, robots and satellite internet, as well as more experimental ventures such as brain implants. Now he controls a social media platform that shapes how hundreds of millions of people communicate and get their news.
The fake and fraudulent accounts that are usually used to reply to Musk’s mentions on the platform are promised to be dethroned or die trying.
Tesla’s First Big Moves: The Case for a Free-for-all Hellscape and it’s Not Yours to Get Fooled
The departures come just hours before a deadline set by a Delaware judge to finalize the deal on Friday. If no agreement was reached a trial was to be scheduled.
“Even slightly loosening content moderation on the platform is sure to spook advertisers, many of whom already find Twitter’s brand safety tools to be lacking compared with other social platforms,” Enberg said.
“The long-term potential for Twitter, in my view, is an order of magnitude greater than its current value,” he said on Tesla’s earnings conference call last week.
Although they came quickly, the major personnel moves had been widely expected and almost certainly are the first of many major changes the mercurial Tesla CEO will make.
Musk privately clashed with Agrawal in April, immediately before deciding to make a bid for the company, according to text messages later revealed in court filings.
He criticized Gadde, the company’s top lawyer. There was a wave of harassment of Gadde from other accounts. The harassment included racist and misogynistic attacks, as well as calls for Musk to fire her, for Gadde, an 11-year employee of the company who heads public policy and safety. After she was terminated, the harassing posts lit up once more.
In his first big move earlier on Thursday, Musk tried to soothe leery Twitter advertisers saying that he is buying the platform to help humanity and doesn’t want it to become a “free-for-all hellscape.”
He continued: “There is currently great danger that social media will splinter into far right wing and far left wing echo chambers that generate more hate and divide our society.”
A professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School says the note is a change of mind from Musk’s opinion of free speech rights on the internet.
But it’s also a realization that having no content moderation is bad for business, putting Twitter at risk of losing advertisers and subscribers, she said.
“You do not want a place where consumers just simply are bombarded with things they do not want to hear about, and the platform takes no responsibility,” Yildirim said.
Twitter HQ, Chef Twit, and the Economic Impact of Musk’s Twitter Embedding on the Information Landscape: The Washington Post’s Reliable Sources
But Musk has been signaling that the deal is going through. He strolled into the company’s San Francisco headquarters Wednesday carrying a porcelain sink, changed his Twitter profile to “Chief Twit,” and tweeted “Entering Twitter HQ — let that sink in!”
The New York Stock Exchange informed investors that it will suspend trading in the stock of retweet before the opening bell on Friday as a result of the company going private.
Top sales executive Sarah Personette, the company’s chief customer officer, said she had a “great discussion” with Musk on Wednesday and appeared to endorse his Thursday message to advertisers.
It is apparent that Musk’s enthusiasm about the visit to the headquarters is different from his suggestion that the building should be turned into a homeless shelter.
According to a report by the Washington Post, Musk told potential investors that he planned to cut three quarters of the workforce once he took over the company. The newspaper had sources familiar with the deliberations.
Thursday’s note to advertisers shows a newfound emphasis on advertising revenue, especially a need for Twitter to provide more “relevant ads” — which typically means targeted ads that rely on collecting and analyzing users’ personal information.
In the last few months, Musk has shared conspiracy theories about the attack on Paul Pelosi, compared the Democrats to Joseph Stalin and warned that the woke mind virus will destroy civilization.
A version of this article first appeared in the “Reliable Sources” newsletter. Sign up for the daily digest chronicling the evolving media landscape here.
In fact, not only has Musk himself contaminated the information environment he now reigns over, but he is apparently working to dismantle the little infrastructure erected to help users sift through the daily chaos. Recent news reports, including from CNN, indicate that he plans to strip public figures and institutions of their blue verified badges if they do not pay.
The business story is about charging for verified badges. The move will have a big effect on the information landscape. It will make it more difficult for users to distinguish authentic and inauthentic accounts.
The right has been critical of “blue checks” in the past, even though they are also used by many conservatives to control the conversation. Taking away those free blue checks, and the air of authority they give upon the profile they are appended to, will certainly delight some conservatives.
On Twitter Blue Verification: Why a Comedian Trolled Musk, or Why We Shouldn’t Wanna Be Be Trolled on Twitter
Walter Isaacson, Musk’s biographer, said on social networks and the internet that the best thing one could do was to authenticating users.
Twitter is delaying the rollout of account verifications for its paid Twitter Blue subscription plan until after the midterm elections, a source with knowledge of the decision confirmed to CNN.
The decision to push back the new feature comes one day after the platform launched an updated version of its iOS app that promises to allow users who pay a monthly subscription fee to get a blue checkmark on their profiles, a feature that CEO Elon Musk has proposed as a way to fight spam on the platform.
The app’s latest update was outlined on Apple’s App Store, stating that users will now have to pay $7.99 per month for the company’s Twitter Blue verification feature, “just like the celebrities, companies, and politicians you already follow.” The checkmark has long been used to confirm the authenticity of government officials, prominent figures and journalists.
CNN tested the service on Saturday and it seems it was not complete before the Sunday decision. A new CNN account that used a paid feature did not show the check mark on its public profile. The price was outdated, and still appeared to be $4.99.
Comedian Sarah Silverman used her verified account to troll Musk, copying his profile picture, cover image and name. The only thing distinguishing a tweet coming Silverman’s account was the @SarahKSilverman handle.
I’m an advocate for freedom of speech. I eat doody for breakfast every day. Her account also retweeted posts supporting Democratic candidates.
The account was temporarily restricted on Sunday, with visitors warned to click through to the profile before seeing any unusual activity from it. The comedian’s account reverted to its usual form, with her name and image on it.
The blue checkmark on her account means her identity was confirmed, according to the actress. Scammers would have a harder time impersonating you. That no longer applies. Good luck out there! She replied to the follower asking how the check mark no longer applies, writing that you can buy a blue check mark for $7.99 a month without verification.
After changing her profile name to Musk, Bertinelli tweeted and retweeted support for several Democratic candidates and hashtags, including “VoteBlueForDemocracy” and “#VoteBlueIn2022.”
Musk said that warnings will no longer be given to users before they are suspended. He said that this would be identified as a condition for signing up to Twitter Blue.
The troll activity has been going on since the purchase of the company by Musk and he will restore the accounts of users banned from the platform. The company will limit content restrictions and require paid subscription for account verification, according to Musk.
The Covid Plandemic: Where are the real girls? A site for fun and funny guys like J Austin Johnson and the mayor of Los Alamos
“The Covid PLANdemic was created by Big Pharma to silence me. Everybody tries to silence me,” she said. Please say something at a lower volume. I apologize, but I am too loud for the intensive care unit. You aren’t even sick!”
“Hi. Oh my god, your profile is so funny. I love funny guys,” Schumer, dressed in a red dress, said as the bot. I am a bot, which is crazy. I love funny guys like you, I am all woman. You should check out this website where I and other girls hang out.
James Austin Johnson played Donald Trump and he spoke to the council. It was banned by Trump in 2021.
We love Truth Social and have moved to it. It’s great, Johnson’s Trump said. It’s terrible in many ways. It’s very bad. Very, very bad. It is a little difficult to make the phone screen crack and the Venmo to be automatically drained.
Twitter users mocked Musk over the weekend: What do they have to say about our social media? How many Twitter users have lost their information?
Kathy Griffin had her account suspended because she switched her screen name to Musk. She told a Bloomberg reporter that she had also used his profile photo.
“I guess not ALL the content moderators were let go? She set up an account on Mastodon, an alternative social media platform, and joked afterwards.
It stated the service would be first available in the US, Canada, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK. However, it was not available Sunday and there was no indication when it would go live. Esther Crawford told The Associated Press that it will launch soon, but not yet.
Like Griffin, some Twitter users have already begun migrating from the platform — Counter Social is another popular alternative — following layoffs that began Friday that reportedly affected about half of Twitter’s 7,500-employee workforce. They fear a breakdown of moderation and verification could create a disinformation free-for-all on what has been the internet’s main conduit for reliable communications from public agencies and other institutions.
Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety and integrity, sought to assuage such concerns in a tweet Friday. He said the company’s front-line content moderation staff was the group least affected by the job cuts.
A wave of prominent users impersonated Musk over the weekend, with the goal of under offsetting any flaws in the company’s plans for a revised verification system.
Musk has made an $8 Twitter subscription plan his signature bid to bolster the company’s revenue. The new plan was hastily rolled out over the weekend before the company ultimately decided to delay the service until after the midterms.
But the partially rolled-out plan faced widespread backlash, and in a display of defiance, some celebrities on the platform posed as Musk over the weekend, complete with a blue check mark on their profiles.
The CNN-President’s Bloody Head: Relating NBC and CNN to the 2015 New Year’s Eve Anomaly
CNN fired Griffin in 2017 after the comedian was photographed holding up a bloody head resembling that of then-President Donald Trump. Anderson Cooper and Kevin Costner co-hosted the New Year’s Eve program for a decade.