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

I don't know why Musk doesn't just acknowledge the issue and work on reducing it. He has always pushed back since the New York Times reported on it in December 2022. This leads one to believe he either truly doesn't think there is any issue (he's wrong), he doesn't care, or he welcomes them.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65246394

What evidence is there?
But there are both in-depth studies and anecdotal evidence that suggest hate speech has been growing under Mr Musk's tenure.

Several fringe characters that were banned under the previous management have been reinstated.

They include Andrew Anglin, founder of the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website, and Liz Crokin, one of the biggest propagators of the QAnon conspiracy theory.

Other lesser-known Twitter users have taken advantage of the new ownership. One account with a racial slur in its user name was able to get a blue checkmark. Another one was purchased by a neo-Nazi who tweets videos of himself reciting Mein Kampf - Hitler's autobiography.

Anti-Semitic tweets doubled from June 2022 to February 2023, according to research from the Institute of Strategic Dialogue (ISD). The same study found that takedowns of such content also increased, but not enough to keep pace with the surge.

The ISD also found an increase of nearly 70% in Islamic State accounts - a problem that was once huge on Twitter, but had been reduced to a trickle by account bans.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate, a London-based campaign group, found that slurs increased substantially after Mr Musk's takeover.

Our own reporting also provides some clues. The BBC analysed over 1,100 previously banned Twitter accounts that were reinstated under Mr Musk. A third appeared to violate Twitter's own guidelines. Some of the most extreme depicted rape and drawings showing child sexual abuse. Such content was also a scourge on Twitter for years before Mr Musk acquired the platform.

But a BBC investigation heard from Twitter insiders who expressed concern that the company is no longer able to protect users from trolling, state-co-ordinated disinformation and child sexual exploitation.

What don't we know?
A few issues cloud the matter. One is that there is no blanket definition of hate speech under American law, which is generally much more permissive than other countries because of the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

This, after all, is a country where in 1978 civil rights lawyers sued to defend the right of a neo-Nazi group to march through the Chicago suburb of Skokie, where many Holocaust survivors lived.

Mr Musk's free-speech views - which are mainstream in the United States - may have encouraged people who were worried about a ban to speak more freely. In other words, we don't know if the spike identified by researchers will last.

There is clearly still moderation happening on Twitter, and Mr Musk himself has robustly pushed back on the studies and investigations.


He's argued that he has taken a politically neutral line - that not only right-wing accounts have been reinstated, but some left-wing accounts that were previously banned as well.

"This is not a right-wing takeover, but rather a centrist takeover," he tweeted.

And, he argues, his strategy is working. In December, he tweeted that hate speech was down by a third.

 

Sounds like made up **** from the Left.

 

Oh, this altitude brings a better perspective, which is probably the most likely. If he thinks it's from the left, then it must be BS. Similarly, if it's from the right, then it must be golden. That's probably how he so readily believed in the gay Paul Pelosi conspiracy, unable to judge without bias.

 

What part is made up **** from the Left?

 

Leave it to Publicly Funded Harry Bolz to complain about 1% Publicly Funded NPR/PBS.

 

The last I saw, the LA Times estimated Elon's government cheese at $4.9 billion, and that's just from the US Government, not South Africa or China or elsewhere

 

The problem with these boycotts is its leaving a void in the space, further promoting the great divide.

 

Oh no do you think we will go back to what we did before Twitter which is go to the websites to read the sources? Which would be better for the agencies anyway due to ad revenues?

 

Twitter is a horrible platform for consuming news. It will be a great day when all news organizations no longer exist on Twitter or any social media platform that spreads news using a "tweet"-like format. However, this format is great for emergency broadcasts to the masses. But Twitter's recent decision to no longer allow automatic tweets is impacting this capability, which many emergency alerts use.

 

Que? Aggregation has been one of the fundamental benefits of the internet. Sure, people will visit their partisan news site, which of course feeds into their echo chamber. I would speculate most people who end up at a specific news organization does so from an outside link.

But that wasn't my point in the first place.

 

Twitter is now like Facebook when all the "old folks" started joining in mass, which doesn't mean that's its ultimate future. Right now Elon isn't disciplined enough to run a media-esque type of company, no matter what he tries to morph it into.... which seems like some WhatsApp 2.0 type of platform.

 

Elon joins to party .. punching down on LGBTs

Twitter quietly removes transgender protections from its hateful conduct policy

NBC News noticed, however, that the site's "report" function still contained an option for "misgendering or deadnaming", suggesting the removal is yet another hastily and ineptly-implemented whim.​

 

Is there anyone who likes him anymore? What did he accomplish by buying twitter? Alienating his base and sucking up to people who will never like you

 

Catturd3 better hang on for its dear life

 

Microsoft dumps Twitter, Musk threatens lawsuit

Microsoft has recently announced that Twitter will no longer be included in its ad-planning service. The company's Smart Campaigns service, which advertisers use to place ads on social media, has refused to pay for Twitter's API, which was previously free. This decision has not been well-received by Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, who has claimed that Microsoft had been using Twitter's data illegally and is considering suing Microsoft.

Musk's legal threat is typical of the billionaire's erratic behavior on the platform, which has included making misleading statements and promoting conspiracy theories, resulting in the platform being viewed as unreliable by many.

Microsoft's decision couldn't have come at a worse time for Twitter, as the platform has been experiencing advertisers fleeing due to concerns about their brands being associated with what has been viewed as an increasingly fascistic platform.​

 

more funnies (now that verified is gone)