Elon's biggest problem @ Twitter - he's not funny at tweeting

I think the NY Times correctly identified that they bring tons of value to Twitter while getting very little back from the platform. And sure enough, Elon caves and exempts them from the fee.

https://variety.com/2023/digital/ne...onthly-verified-status-fee-exempt-1235569966/

 

Fun game (maybe?):

What would Elon do with each Houston sports franchise. Go!

EDIT: Give Rockets' support staff opportunities to claim roster spots in order to save $. Consider playing with four players at a time in order to save on total roster $ while optimizing chances for draft position.

 

Not Funny!

 

That gif is older than you.

 

LOL, not a surprise either. Twitter's value lies in its "creators". Piss them off, and Twitter would cease to exist. If anything, charge non-creators a fee, not creators.

 

Getting less useful.

 

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

 

A few recent funny changes:

Twitter labels NPR's account as 'state-affiliated media,' which is untrue : NPR

Twitter added a "state-affiliated media" tag to NPR's main account on Tuesday, applying the same label to the nonprofit media company that Twitter uses to designate official state mouthpieces and propaganda outlets in countries such as Russia and China.

NPR operates independently of the U.S. government. And while federal money is important to the overall public media system, NPR gets less than 1% of its annual budget, on average, from federal sources.

Noting the millions of listeners who support and rely upon NPR for "independent, fact-based journalism," NPR CEO John Lansing stated, "NPR stands for freedom of speech and holding the powerful accountable. It is unacceptable for Twitter to label us this way. A vigorous, vibrant free press is essential to the health of our democracy."

NPR officials have asked Twitter to remove the label. They initially assumed it was applied by mistake, NPR spokesperson Isabel Lara said. "We were not warned. It happened quite suddenly last night," Lara said.

In response to an NPR email for this story seeking comment and requesting details about what in particular might have led to the new designation, the company's press account auto-replied with a poop emoji — a message it has been sending to journalists for weeks.​

Twitter now disables likes, replies, and retweets if a tweet has Substack links - The Verge

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lol

 

Apparently, this is what freaked Musk out.

Suppressing content (that you believe are competitors) is likely not a long-term working strategy. Valuing the creators on your platform is. Not valuing them is likely to lead to your demise.

Substack’s new short-form ‘Notes’ feed looks a lot like Twitter | TechCrunch

Substack announced today that it’s introducing a new Notes feature that is designed to let users share posts, quotes, comments, images, links and ideas. Notes shared on the platform are displayed in a dedicated short-form feed that looks a lot like Twitter. Once you share a note, it’s essentially like posting a tweet. Each note displays a like count and comment count. There’s also the option to “restack,” or retweet, a post.

The company seems to agree that the new feature looks similar to Twitter, as Substack noted in its announcement post that Notes “may look like familiar social media feeds.” However, Substack argues that Notes differs from traditional social media feeds because it doesn’t run on ads.

“The lifeblood of an ad-based social media feed is attention,” the company wrote in a blog post. “By contrast, the lifeblood of a subscription network is the money paid to people who are doing great work within it. Here, people get rewarded for respecting the trust and attention of their audiences. The ultimate goal on this platform is to convert casual readers into paying subscribers. In this system, the vast majority of the financial rewards go to the creators of the content.”

Substack also argues that Notes won’t feel like traditional social media, and that the goal with the new product is not to create a “perfectly sanitized information environment,” but to allow for constructive discussion where there is enough common ground to seek understanding “while holding onto the worthwhile tension needed for great art and new ideas.”



...

 

Wow that's going to just as awful.

 

Omg he was full of **** this entire time? What? Shocking!

 

Except to the value of the company and he still hasn’t reached profitability.

 

There is something not right with Musk. Maybe covid got to his brain.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattnovak/2023/04/08/elon-musk-denies-substack-links-are-blocked-on-twitter-a-claim-thats-very-misleading/?sh=f4019f14e6b1

Elon Musk broke his silence about the Twitter CEO’s conflict with the online publishing site Substack and one of its biggest writers Matt Taibbi on Saturday. Taibbi, who worked on the so-called Twitter Files, announced he was quitting Twitter on Friday after the social media platform severely hampered the sharing of Substack content. And Musk is calling Taibbi a liar.

“Substack links were never blocked. Matt’s statement is false,” Musk tweeted on Saturday.

Musk insists Twitter never blocked links to Substack posts, which might be technically true in some sense, but doesn’t tell the whole story. In reality, Twitter has put up numerous roadblocks for anyone trying to visit Substack posts, even displaying a warning that links to Substack may be unsafe.

....

But Musk made one final claim on Twitter that was, again, very misleading.

“Turns out Matt is/was an employee of Substack,” Musk wrote.

Substack denies Taibbi has ever been an employee of the platform but acknowledges he gets paid from readers on the platform, which is the entire business model of the site. Writers can charge monthly fees to readers for some content, something that Taibbi does, along with thousands of other people on Substack.

“That writers making money seems to be such a strange concept is telling,” Best wrote on Saturday, an apparent dig at Musk trying to charge famous people on Twitter $8 per month rather than paying them for creating value on the site.

To top it all off, it appears the Substack crew is being punished on Twitter in other ways. If you try to search co-founder Chris Best on Twitter, his profile doesn’t show up.

...

 

Just as funny.

Twitter Changes NPR Label That Sparked Backlash (mediaite.com)

Twitter removed the “state-affiliated media” label it had affixed on NPR’s account this week, replacing it with a new designation describing the nonprofit media company as “government funded.”

Twitter CEO Elon Musk initially defended the decision to slap NPR with a label that placed the editorially independent outlet in the same category as state-controlled propaganda outlets like Russia’s RT. When questioned by NPR tech reporter Bobby Allyn who noted that the outlet is not controlled by the U.S. government, however, Musk admitted the label “might not be accurate.”

NPR said it would not be using Twitter until the “false label” was removed.

Musk has apparently re-evaluated since then. On Saturday, the label was changed from “state-affiliated” to “government funded.” NPR receives 1% of its funding directly from the U.S. government.

 

I'm fairly certian that Elon gets at least 1% of his funding from the federal government as well

 

from multiple governments

 

more funnies




and yet...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technol...tter-lifts-restrictions-putin-kremlin-russia/
7 April 2023 • 3:30pm

Twitter has removed restrictions on Kremlin-linked accounts in the wake of its acquisition by tech billionaire Elon Musk, a review of the website has found.

Tests from multiple accounts showed that Twitter’s search results, timeline and recommendation tools are showing users such as Vladimir Putin’s presidential account, the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and its UK Embassy – all of which had restrictions placed on them when hostilities broke out.

It comes after it emerged that Twitter was no longer limiting the reach of Russian state media organisations.

Last April, in the weeks after Russian troops entered Ukraine, Twitter said it would “not amplify or recommend government accounts belonging to states that limit access to free information and are engaged in armed interstate conflict”, saying the policy would instantly apply to Russian government accounts.

It said this would mean the accounts would not be recommended in searches, the home timeline and other parts of the service.

However, tests by The Telegraph last week showed that Russian government accounts featured at the top of certain search results and would show up in suggestions of other accounts to follow.

Russian government tweets appeared in Twitter’s algorithmically-driven “For You” feed for a newly created account, even when it did not follow them.

A former Twitter executive confirmed that this marked a reversal from last year’s measures.

They said: “It would be exceedingly unlikely that this change would have happened accidentally, or without the knowledge and direction of the company's staff.”

Social media is seen as a key part of the Kremlin’s misinformation. Its UK embassy account has been condemned for claiming that Ukrainian forces are firing on their own citizens and saying that soldiers “deserve death by hanging”.

...

Last week it emerged that Twitter had loosened restrictions on Russian and Chinese state media accounts such as RT.com and the Global Times, introduced in 2020. Wenhao Ma, a reporter at the US-owned Voice of America broadcaster, found that he was being recommended posts from Beijing-funded media outlets. The site has also removed labels attached to the accounts urging users to “stay informed”.

A study of Twitter’s source code last week showed that its algorithm downranks posts related to the Ukraine crisis.​