Tweeting about a bullsh*t: How Donald Trump is turning the Twitter man into a Skinner box: Why he didn’t lose his hat

One person who texted Musk in the days after his Twitter stake became public (whose name was redacted in court documents) advised the billionaire that “it will be a delicate game of letting right wingers back on Twitter and how to navigate that (especially the boss himself, if you’re up for that)” — an apparent reference to Trump.

Musk said at a conference in May that he would reverse the ban if he became the company’s owner.

But relations between the pair seem to have soured since, with the men publicly trading barbs over the summer. After Trump called Musk a “bullsh*t artist” at a rally in July, Musk responded by tweet, writing, “I don’t hate the man, but it’s time for Trump to hang up his hat & sail into the sunset.”

More than that ties me to the site, more than professional utility. Slot machines hook people in a similar way, with what experts call anittent reinforcement schedule. Most of the time, it’s repetitive and uninteresting, but occasionally, at random intervals, some compelling nugget will appear. Unpredictable rewards, as the behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner found with his research on rats and pigeons, are particularly good at generating compulsive behavior.

While researching her book about gambling machine design at New York University, she said that “I don’t know that Twitter engineers ever sat around and said they are creating a Skinner box.” That, she said, is what they have built. It’s one reason people who should know better regularly self-destruct on the site — they can’t stay away.

When he agreed to buy the company, Musk said he would “unlock the potential” of the site by furthering free speech and defeating the bot armies.

In public, he told employees at an all-staff meeting that the platform should allow all legal speech, and in private he was texting investor Antonio Gracias that free speech matters most when someone you hate spouting what you think is bull.

It is sure to scare advertisers that even slightly loosened content moderation on the platform is not likely to be good for their brand safety.

Media Matters for America President Angelo Carusone said that alternative platforms like Parler, 454 and Truth Social promise less restrictions on speech and that’s a good view of what it will look like under Musk.

On those sites, he said, “the feature is the bug — where being able to say and do the kinds of things that are prohibited from more mainstream social media platforms is actually why everyone gravitates to them. And what we see there is that they are cauldrons of misinformation and abuse.”

“Would be great to unwind permanent bans, except for spam accounts and those that explicitly advocate violence,” he texted Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal shortly after agreeing to join the company’s board (a decision he soon backtracked).

That could mean lifting bans on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who was kicked off for abusive behavior in 2018; Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., whose account was suspended in January for tweeting misleading and false claims about COVID-19 vaccines; and 2020 election deniers like Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell and Mike Lindell, who were all banned in early 2021.

The person urged Musk to hire someone who had a “smart cultural/political view” to lead enforcement. Masters is the Republican Senate candidate in Arizona who has been endorsed by Trump and has echoed his false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.

Twitter and the Trump-Forming Saga: What Has Musk Learned Since Twitter Disrupts Its Facebook Staff? A Report from Musk on February 20, 2020

Allowing Trump and others to return could set a precedent for other social networks, including Meta-owned Facebook, which is considering whether to reinstate the former president when its own ban on him expires in January 2023.

After a few weeks of video meetings, a text was sent to Musk, which said, ” at least it became clear that you can’t work together.” That was clarifying.”

Whoever is in charge of day-to-day operations will likely be faced with a smaller workforce. Hundreds of employees have reportedly left in the months since the Musk saga began, with many inside Twitter disheartened by Musk’s plans to overhaul the company.

That’s a good news for the billionaire, who’s complained that the costs of the company are out of line with revenues.

Costs and staff cuts are only two pieces of the equation. In the spring, Musk pitched investors that he would quintuple Twitter’s annual revenue to $26.4 billion by 2028 and attract 931 million users by that same year, up from 217 million at the end of 2021, according to an investor presentation obtained by The New York Times.

With the weak state of the digital ad market, and the changes he wants to make to content moderation, he has little choice but to look at other revenue sources.

“Advertisers want to know that their ads are not going to appear alongside extremists, that they’re not going to be subsidizing or associating with the types of things that would turn off potential customers,” Carusone said.

What Musk Means About Social Media and the U.S. Tech Industry: The Case for a “Big-Bang” Super-App

What exactly he meant is, as always, anyone’s guess. During the summer, Musk told the staff that the company should copy the Chinese “super-app” WeChat, which is a mix of social media, payments, shopping and ride-sharing.

The Chinese style super-apps have yet to catch on in the U.S., even though other American tech companies have done this.

The oligarchs of the internet not only command larger audiences than the media barons of earlier eras; they operate under fewer constraints. That is because government has abandoned the principle that mass media companies have special obligations to society, and it has allowed a few big social networks to suffocate competition, leaving users and advertisers without practical choices or leverage.

Making room for new networks and giving users the ability to control what they see and hear on third-party sites is the best way to limit the power of any individual social media network.

An article written by an associate professor in the Lawrence Herbert School of Communication at Hofstra University covers issues affecting women and social media. She was spokeswoman for international affairs in the Treasury Department during the Obama administration. The opinions she expresses are of her own. View more opinion on CNN.

Can Kanye West Stand Up to the Critics? What Do Conservative Social Media Owners Really Want to Tell Us About Their Controversy?

Parler, a conservative social media company, said on Monday that it had been purchased by West, who has been suspended fromTwitter for posting antisemitic comments. According to the statement from the parent company announcing the deal, West has taken a bold step into the free speech media space, where he will never have to fear being removed from social media again.

In a release by Parler, West said that “in a world where conservative opinions are considered to be controversial we have to make sure we have the right to freely express ourselves.”

Just think about the way these owners already post, with Musk recently suggesting China control Taiwan and Russia keep part of Ukraine and West releasing a music video showing a doppelgänger of ex-wife Kim Kardashian’s then-boyfriend, Pete Davidson, being kidnapped and buried. If this is a glimpse of what social networks will look like in the future, we should all be very afraid.

While men such as West, Musk and Trump claim to promote free speech by not favoring the moderation of problematic content, here’s what lack of moderation really does: It drives away the people victimized by abusive content such as West’s tweet.

A 2020 study of women in 51 countries by The Economist Intelligence Unit found that 38% have been victims of online violence, from stalking to doxxing to violent threats. As Amnesty International and others have found, women of color are most affected. Antisemitic content is also rampant online. A 2021 report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that a sample of 714 anti-Jewish posts on five social networks had been viewed 7.3 million times.

In practice, what these so-called free speech policies really boil down to is an ugly form of censorship that scares away the voices of people who are attacked by users of these platforms.

Parler is seen as a place where conservative views can flourish and non-conservatives are unlikely to flock to Truth Social, given its association with Trump. If women, people of color and others start fleeing Twitter, that could leave it as a platform for conservatives as well. It would make their views even more zealous.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/18/opinions/kanye-west-elon-musk-social-media-alaimo/index.html

On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, and What Can Be Done? The CEO of a Silicon Valley Billionaire, Musk, is going to lose his job

“When like-minded people get together, they often end up thinking a more extreme version of what they thought before they started to talk to one another,” Harvard University law professor Cass Sunstein writes in “On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, and What Can Be Done.” Sunstein says this happens because their exchanges heighten their preexisting beliefs and make them more confident.

It’s expected that conservatives will become more far right when they join on social media. The far right views nurtured on these networks could have a huge impact on the politics of the country, similar to how Rush Limbaugh and others changed the landscape in the 1990s. It isn’t hard to see how people on these sites could band together to support political candidates who share their beliefs.

We can also expect these male owners to use their platforms to amplify their own views — even when they’re sexist, misogynistic, racist or otherwise hateful.

While employees wait for more from Musk, the reality of the acquisition is starting to set in. A memo seen by The Verge indicated that the code was going to be frozen until 10AM on Tuesday, November 1, the same day that many employees will see their compensation vests. Musk might have gotten a better idea of what he is buying when he talked to employees from the other company. (Bloomberg first reported the meeting.) Later in the day, employees donned costumes and brought their kids to work for a #trickortweet Halloween party at Twitter’s offices.

The acquisition also promises to extend Musk’s influence. A billionaire already owns, oversees or has significant stakes in many companies that are working on cars, rockets,robots, satellite internet, and brain implants. Now he controls a social media platform that shapes how hundreds of millions of people communicate and get their news.

Tweets of Harassment at the CEO’s Desk: Why Facebook Has No Role in Detecting Hateful Comments on Twitter

The parties were given five days to close the deal or face a new trial.

Jay Sullivan, the general manager of consumer and revenue product, has been visible as the most visible leader of the company since Musk said he wanted to buy it again. He has been holding regular listening sessions with employees, but on Thursday, shortly after employees received a calendar invite for a “quick informal check in” call with him at 7:35PM ET, the meeting was cancelled “until further notice” without explanation.

Twitter’s Head of Safety and Integrity, Yoel Roth, has also remained at the company. In recent days, he has tweeted about the company’s efforts to address a surge in hateful rhetoric on the platform, and Musk on Twitter encouraged users to follow him for “the most accurate understanding of what’s happening with trust & safety at Twitter.”

The major personnel moves, which were made quickly, are almost certainly the first of many changes the CEO will make.

He criticized the company’s top lawyer on the social networking site. The wave of harassment of Gadde was not limited to his own account. For Gadde, an 11-year Twitter employee who also heads public policy and safety, the harassment included racist and misogynistic attacks, in addition to calls for Musk to fire her. On Thursday, after she was fired, the harassing tweets lit up once again.

According to Yildirim, Facebook has good at targeting advertisements to what users want to see. Musk’s message suggests he wants to fix that, she said.

It’s a realization that having no content moderation is bad for business and can endanger advertisers and followers.

“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 has a great deal to offer: Tell me what you have to say about Musk, but what I don’t have to tell you

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 told investors that they will suspend trading in the company’s stock on Friday, when it will be going private.

Sarah Personette, the top sales executive at the company, said she had a “great discussion” with Musk on Wednesday and appeared to endorse his Thursday message to advertisers.

The enthusiasm Musk had about visiting the building this week was different to the idea he had of turning it into a homeless shelter.

Insider Intelligence principal analyst Jasmine Enberg said Musk has good reason to avoid a massive shakeup of Twitter’s ad business because Twitter’s revenues have taken a beating from the weakening economy, months of uncertainty surrounding Musk’s proposed takeover, changing consumer behaviors and the fact that “there’s no other revenue source waiting in the wings.”

Take Musk’s last 24 hours on the platform for example: The billionaire gave credence to a fringe conspiracy theory about the brutal attack on Paul Pelosi. Then, when media outlets reported on his irresponsible behavior, Musk assailed them. He trolled The New York Times in one tweet and chastised The Guardian as a “far left wing propaganda machine” in another.

A version of this article first appeared in the “Reliable Sources” newsletter. The evolving media landscape is chronicled by the daily digest.

Musk has ruined the information environment he now reigns over as he attempts to dismantle the tiny infrastructure that helps people sift through the daily chaos. According to recent reports, he will strip public figures of their blue verified badges if they don’t pay.

The business story might appear to be charging for verified badges. But the move will have significant ramifications on the information landscape. Most notably, it will make it much more difficult for users to distinguish from authentic and inauthentic accounts.

The right has for years lashed out at “blue checks,” whom in their eyes represent elitist gatekeepers who control the conversation, even though many conservatives also don blue badges. 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.

Do You Want to Keep Us Alive and Well: The Importance of Verifying a User’s Social Media Account with Musk’s New Policy

In the year 2018, Musk’s authorized biographer, WalterIsaacson, said that “the best thing” one could do to “save social networks, the internet, civil discourse, democracy, email, and reduce hacking would be authenticating users.”

Power users are the first place that Musk is looking to make money from. The update that might be rolled out next month will charge 20 cents a month for a verification badge, reports said over the weekend. It fits with the plans of Musk to increase the value of the premium service for its most active users. Verification is a central building block of trust for the platform, but Musk’s proposal could cause it to fall apart.

These two styles are very similar. The seriousness of Newswire has a huge effect on the humor and absurdity of Nonsense Twitter, which is very similar to Newswire Social Media. There is a chance for the occasional dose of chaos, like the fake North Korean propaganda feed known as ‘DPP News’.

The system works because verification helps separate order from chaos. If you can see a blue checkmark in a person’s or a brand’s post, you can guess that they are speaking for themselves. It removes the guesswork of scanning an account’s tweets and profile to gauge its veracity, especially in a fast-moving situation like a scandal, an election, or a public health emergency. Trust that readers can check for credentials, that is what the seal of authenticity gives serious accounts permission to be playful.

All of which might sound like an argument for Musk’s new plan. If you’re Beyoncé or McDonald’s or the Associated Press, $240 a year isn’t much to pay for preserving that sense of trust.

The Future of Twitter: A Conversation with Lindsey Iannucci, David Sack, and Vittoria Elliot

It is not known whether VP of Operations Lindsey Iannucci will stay with the company. The employment status of Iannucci, Berland, Sullivan, and Caldwell did not respond to the request.

On the same day Musk brought in David Sack, both Calacanis and Krishnan confirmed that they were working with him to manage the company and develop new products.

Calacanis earlier this week traveled to New York to meet with the marketing and advertising community. He has asked about the platform’s subscription and bookmark features on TWITTER.

The new Twitter owner has said he plans to establish a new content moderation council, comprised of “representatives with widely divergent views” to help determine Twitter’s policies. He said the platform’s policies haven’t changed yet.

This week on Gadget Lab, we talk with WIRED platforms and power reporter Vittoria Elliot about the changes coming to Twitter and how they may affect the future of the social network.

Tori wants you to encourage your male-presenting friends interested in fathering children to watch House of the Dragon on HBO. “De Todas las Flores” is a new album from Natalia Lafourcade. Lauren wants you to rethink your relationship with social media.

Follow me on Twitter @telliotter, Lauren Goode on twitter @snackfight, and @GadgetLab – the podcast of Boone Ashworth

Vittoria Elliott can be found on Twitter @telliotter. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

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