Zatko’s final Twitter deal failed to respond to Musk’s criticism of Trump: “We can do better, but we can’t do that”

The lure of tens of millions of followers may make it difficult for the former president to resist, even though he said he’d stay on Truth Social.

He pledged to reverse the ban were he to become the company’s owner.

The men traded barbs over the summer, with relations between them soured. 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.”

It’s not clear which agencies are carrying out the probe, and which actions Musk US officials may be investigating. There is a filing by the company saying that authorities are looking into Musk’s conduct linked to the deal.

In a sharp response, Twitter’s lawyers wrote that Musk had been attempting to exit the deal and “now, on the eve of trial, Defendants declare they intend to close after all. They say, ‘We mean it this time.’

Musk first attempted to terminate the deal in July, alleging that Twitter violated their mutual purchase agreement by misrepresenting the number of spam and fake bot accounts on its platform. Twitter sued Musk to complete the acquisition, accusing the billionaire of using bots as a pretext to exit a deal that he developed buyer’s remorse over following a market decline.

Elon Musk completed his $44 billion deal to buy the company last week, which led to massive layoffs and questions about whether the world’s richest man would restore some banned accounts.

The Federal Trade Commission, which is responsible for enforcing the terms of a 2011 consent order with Twitter that Zatko alleges the company violated, has not publicly disclosed an investigation. According to its chair, if the FTC determined that there were legal violations, they would hold the executives personally accountable.

“Twitter did not ask Zatko to torch his own documents, much less demand that he do so,” Twitter’s filing read. The social media giant didn’t know what information Zatko’s notebooks contained.

Free Speech on Social Media: The Case of Parler, a Micro-Blogging Site for Antisemitic Comments, and a Political Correspondence Against Donald Trump

Editor’s Note: Kara Alaimo, an associate professor in the Lawrence Herbert School of Communication at Hofstra University, writes about issues affecting women and social media. She was the spokesman for international affairs in the Treasury Department. The opinions expressed in this commentary are her own. Take a closer look at CNN’s opinion.

Parler, a conservative social media company, said on Monday that it was being purchased by West, who was suspended from the micro-blogging site for sending an antisemitic message. A statement from the parent company was about the deal and said West had taken a “groundbreaking move 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.”

Think about the way these owners post and the way Musk has suggested that China control Taiwan and Russia and West has released a music video showing Pete Davidson being kidnapped and buried. We should all be afraid if this is a glimpse of what social networks will look like in the future.

Musk wrote a letter to the platform which said he did not want it to become a free- for-all-hellscape where anything can be said with no consequences.

When women become victims of online hate, they often “shut down their blogs, avoid websites they formerly frequented, take down social networking profiles, (and) refrain from engaging in online political commentary,” according to University of Miami law professor Mary Anne Franks.

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 believed to be a place where conservative views can flourish, despite the fact that non-conservatives will probably not flock there because of its association with Trump. If women, people of color, and other people stop using it, it will be a platform for conservatives as well. The views of those who remain more vigilant would likely be made even more so by this.

Are Social Media Accounts of Left and Right? When Donald Musk and the Wall Street Journal Learned to Stop Ads on Twitter, And What Happens When They Rejoin

“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 believes that their exchanges make them more confident.

We can expect conservatives on social media to become far right. The right wing views nurtured on social networks could have a huge impact on our country’s politics as they did with Rush Limbaugh and other conservative talk-show hosts in the 1990s. It isn’t hard to imagine that the people who commune on these sites could band together to support and elect political candidates who share their worldviews.

We can also expect these male owners to use their platform to amplify their views, even if they are sexist, misogynistic, racist or otherwise offensive.

Last month, Musk said Twitter’s “new” policy is “freedom of speech, not freedom of reach,” echoing an approach that is something of an industry standard. “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter.”

A representative for The Post did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Kristine Coratti Kelly, a CNN spokeswoman, said the suspensions were “concerning but not surprising” and that “Twitter’s increasing instability and volatility should be of incredible concern for everyone who uses” it. In an appearance on CNN after his account was suspended, Mr. O’Sullivan said Twitter’s actions could intimidate journalists who cover companies owned by Mr. Musk.

The Wall Street Journal on Thursday reported that one ad buying agency had already received requests from about a dozen clients to pause their advertisements on Twitter if Musk restores Trump’s account, and other were considering doing the same.

Musk tried to soothe advertisers by saying that he wants to help humanity and not make it a free-for-all hellscape.

It is a stunning reversal of fortune, not only for Musk, who bought the company for $44 billion but for the platform used by world leaders, CEOs, and the Pope.

The fake and scam accounts that are often especially active in the replies to his tweets are referred to as the “mess or die trying” by Musk.

Twitter is not gonna be the next big tech war: Enberg, Agrawal, and the Tesla “Twitter Files”

If the parties fail to complete the transaction by 5 pm on October 28, the trial will be delayed.

Enberg said that “even slightly loosened content moderation on the platform is sure to frighten advertisers, since many of them already find the lack of brand safety tools on the platform a problem.”

“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.

The former employee, who quit his job at the company in November, has faced threats and attacks in the past few weeks, following the release of the so-called ” “Twitter Files” which were internal communications Musk has released.

Although they came quickly, the major personnel changes had been expected and are the first in a series of changes the 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.

About the same time, he used Twitter to criticize Gadde, the company’s top lawyer. His tweets were followed by a wave of harassment of Gadde from other Twitter accounts. 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. The harassment was back on Thursday, after she was fired.

The note is a shift from Musk’s position that Twitter is unfairly infringing on free speech rights by blocking misinformation or graphic content, said Pinar Yildirim, associate professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

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.

Consumers do not want a place where they get bombarded with things they do not want to hear, and the platform takes no responsibility, according to Yildirim.

Twitter is going Private: Elon Musk’s Twitter Shutdown Becomes an Embarrassment of the Social Media Landscape

But Musk has been signaling that the deal is going through. He walked into the San Francisco headquarters carrying a porcelain sink, changed his name to “chief twit”, and sent a “#Let that sink in!”

The New York Stock Exchange told investors it would stop trading in the shares of Twitter before the opening bell Friday, due to the fact that the company is going private under Musk.

It was no coincidence that Musk’s enthusiasm about visiting the site this week was very different to the one he had previously advocated: The building should be turned into a homeless shelter.

He has made deep cuts to the company’s trust and safety workforce, including teams focused on non-English languages and state-backed propaganda operations. This week, Twitter disbanded its external Trust and Safety Council, some of whose members had come under online attack after Musk criticized them.

The pharmaceutical giant is pulling their ad dollars from social media platform. Companies that have paused their campaigns are being advised by large advertising firms to do the same.

“Musk suspending journalists’ accounts is petty and vindictive and absolutely disgraceful—and especially so because Musk has styled himself, however absurdly, as a champion of free speech,” Jaffer said in a statement.

There is a version of the article that was published in the newsletter. Sign up for the daily digest chronicling the evolving media landscape here.

On Thursday evening, after a full day of chaos on the timeline, Elon Musk’s Twitter halted new enrollment into its $8-a-month Blue subscription offering. Offering anyone the chance to slap a “verified” badge on their account had led to widespread impersonation of government officials, corporations, and celebrities. The resulting mayhem, which led to memorable hoaxes from accounts misrepresenting themselves as Eli Lilly, Tesla, Lockheed Martin and others, had triggered an advertiser pullout and a general sense that the platform had descended into chaos.

Charging for verified badges might appear at first glance as a business story. But the move will have significant ramifications on the information landscape. It will make it difficult for users to differentiate from authentic and inauthentic accounts.

The right has been railing against blue checks for a very long time, and even though many conservatives also have blue badges, they still think they represent an elite circle of people who control the conversation. Taking away those blue checks and the authority they give to the people they are appended to will be a good thing for conservatives.

A Conversation with Wilkinson Power Reporter Tori Elliot on Twitter and the Future of the Social Network: Top Ten Lectures from Gadget Lab

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

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. The new album from Natalia Lafourcade is recommended by Mike. Lauren recommends reevaluating your relationship with Twitter, and social media in general.

Source: https://www.wired.com/story/gadget-lab-podcast-573/

Solar Keys at Gadget Lab: a Show with Boone Ashworth (@telliotter_Lambda)

Vittoria Elliott can be found on Twitter @telliotter. Lauren is the daughter of Lauren Goode. Michael Calore is a fighter. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Solar Keys is the music for our theme.

You can always listen to this week’s podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here’s how:

You can open the app on the iPad or Apple device if you have it. You can also download an app like Overcast or Pocket Casts, and search for Gadget Lab. If you use Android, you can find us in the Google Podcasts app just by tapping here. We’re on Spotify too. And in case you really need it, here’s the RSS feed.

Why do we care about your Twitter profile? Laughing at the CIO at the ICU Building, San Diego, July 14. In honor of President Donald Trump and his Twitter Account

Big pharma created a plan to silence me. Everybody tries to silence me,” she said. Please speak at a slower volume. I’m sorry, am I too loud for your precious intensive care unit? You aren’t even sick!”

“Hi. Your profile is so funny. Schumer is dressed in a red dress. I am crazy that they said I was a bot. I’m all woman and I love funny guys like you. The website that you should check out is where I and some other girls hang out.

But the most notable person to speak in front of the council: former president Donald Trump, played by James Austin Johnson. Trump had his account banned in 2021.

“Yes, we’ve all moved to Truth Social, and we love Truth Social. It’s very great,” Johnson’s Trump said. “And in many ways, also terrible. It’s very bad. Very, very bad. It’s a little buggy to make the screen crack on the phone and it automatically draining of the money.

There are some high profile imitations who have been on the platform for hours or even days and have never hadody in their usernames. The tweets are getting more and more popular, increasing the danger for Twitter’s brand in the eyes of advertisers.

Comedian Kathy Griffin had her account suspended Sunday after she switched her screen name to Musk. She told a Bloomberg reporter that she had also used his profile photo.

I don’t think most of the content moderators were let go. She joked on the platform where she was set up an account last week.

Musk’s Twitter Blue with Verification: Implications for the Moderation and Verification Systems at a Micro-Networking Site in the United States and Canada

Actor Valerie Bertinelli had similarly appropriated Musk’s screen name — posting a series of tweets in support of Democratic candidates on Saturday before switching back to her true name. “Okey dokey.” I’ve had a good time. and I think I made my point,” she tweeted afterwards.

Musk claims that the $8 verified accounts are his way of democratizing the service. The “Twitter Blue with verification” option is included in a Saturday update on the iPad and Apple’s app store.

The service would first be available in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. However, it was not available Sunday and there was no indication when it would go live. A Twitter employ, Esther Crawford, told The Associated Press it is coming “soon but it hasn’t launched 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 lead to false information being spread on the internet, which has been the main conduit for reliable communications.

Yoel Roth, a head of safety and integrity at the micro-networking site, tried to calm those concerns in a Twitter message Friday. The front-line moderation staff was the group least affected by the layoffs.

The Fake Musk Account on Twitter: A Case Study on India’s Third Largest Social Media Market (Preliminary Twitter User Report)

David Kaye is a clinical professor of law at the University of California, Irvine, and was a former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression.

While it doesn’t boast as many users, it is used by politicians and other influential people to shape public policy and opinion. The platform has also proved crucial for those organizing protests in places like India, Nigeria, and Argentina, and has provided an avenue for those living in highly controlled societies like Saudi Arabia to voice criticism of their governments.

In India, Twitter’s third largest market, the company filed a case earlier this year to contest the government’s order to remove individual pieces of content as well as whole accounts that the government considers a risk to India’s security or sovereignty.

The goal of the fake Musk account that was perpetrated over the weekend was to underscore potential flaws in the social media company’s plans for a revised verification system.

Musk made an $8 plan to bolster the company’s revenue. The company decided to delay the service until after the elections after they hastily rolled out the new plan over the weekend.

Some celebrities on the platform posed as Musk over the weekend in defiance of the backlash that resulted from the partially rolled-out plan.

When CNN rolled out an apology against a Donald Trump-like comedian, Mark Cuban, on the #Snaps4U: Unusual Activity”

“I am a freedom of speech absolutist I eat doody for breakfast every day. She also supports Democratic candidates.

It was marked as temporarily restricted on Sunday, with a warning that there had been some “unusual activity” from the account. The comedian changed her account back to what it was before, including her name and image.

CNN fired Griffin in 2017 after the comedian was photographed holding up a bloody head resembling that of then-President Donald Trump. Griffin had co-hosted the New Year’s Eve program alongside Anderson Cooper for a decade.

Musk’s purchase of the company and his promise to restore the accounts of people banned from the platform sent the company into a frenzy of account cracking. Musk has also said he will limit the company’s content restrictions and require the paid subscription for account verification.

In the last week alone, a hugely influential social network laid off half of its workforce, lost powerful advertisers, blew up key aspects of its product, and had an exodus of senior executives.

After just two days after its official launch, the option to sign up for the paid service was suddenly vanished from the mobile app, and the paid add-on had also been suspended. The company wasn’t sure when the offering might be restored.

Hours after the gray badges launched on Wednesday as a way to help users differentiate legitimate celebrity and branded accounts from accounts that had merely paid for a blue check mark, Musk abruptly tweeted that he had “killed” the feature, forcing subordinates to explain the reversal.

The next thing that the account said was that they had added an “OFFICIAL” label to some accounts.

The paid verification feature’s rocky rollout attracted widespread criticism from misinformation experts who had warned it would make identifying trustworthy information much more difficult, particularly in the critical period following the US midterm elections. Some of Musk’s fellow high-powered users on the platform gave him some tough feedback.

When you have a customer service hat on, it’s from one person to another. I spent too much time tweaking my verified mentions in order to make them useful again, says billionaire Mark Cuban.

Cuban stated that there is a decision to be made. The onus is always on the users to make their own decisions on which accounts to follow and which to stay away from. Or bring back Twitter curation. One makes Twitter time and information efficient. The other is not good.

In a Twitter Spaces event held for advertisers this week, Musk pleaded with brands to keep using the platform, after a growing number of companies paused ads, causing what Musk previously described as a “massive drop in revenue.” In the event, Musk sought to appear magnanimous in accepting responsibility for the company’s performance.

The other risks were identified by the team but they have yet to identify any solutions. For starters, the company lacks any automated way to remove verified badges from user accounts. It will take high operational lift without investment, because we anticipate a large amount of legacy verified users will not pay for Blue if they decide not to.

A tweet from @Roblox_US announces the addition of sex to the game popular with young adults. It was up since Thursday morning. An account pretending to be Coke (which is currently still active and verified) had a now-deleted post saying “If this gets 1000 retweets we will put cocaine back in Coca-Cola.” It got those retweets.

The account parodying Ohio Governor Mike Dewine, which has over 2,000 followers, was able to escape the ban even after it posted a ten-hour old statement about the governor’s plan.

Still, it’s bad for Twitter that these tweets stayed up for so long, especially the ones from fake brands. Advertising is the company’s main source of revenue. And advertisers have shown that they’re not huge fans of a platform that lets people convincingly impersonate them. There have been several very brand-unsafe viral tweets — perhaps one of the most infamous was someone impersonating pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, announcing that insulin was free.

The company’s official account later issued an apology that people were fooled by the faker. Both Eli Lilly and Lockheed Martin, which had an imposter of its own, have seen dramatic drops to their stock prices on Friday, though it’s impossible to say for sure if the tweets were even partially responsible for that.

On Thursday, Musk responded to someone talking about fake posts from Nintendo and President Joe Biden with two laughing emojis, as shown in this incredible compilation of impersonators (most of whom have since been banned, per Twitter’s policy). I doubt he’s laughing much today, though; Omnicom, one of the world’s biggest ad firms with clients like Apple, PepsiCo, and McDonalds, issued a memo advising its clients to hold off on advertising with Twitter for a bit.

The Musk-Blue-Verification Internal Warnings Ignored: A Study of Elon Musk’s Imputation Against Public Interests on Twitter

It was presented to Esther Crawford, a director of product management at the company who in recent weeks has risen to become one of Musk’s top lieutenants. Sources said Musk and his attorney were briefed as well. Crawford appeared to be sympathetic to many of the concerns in the document, but she did not want to delay the launch of Blue. Crawford didn’t reply to the request for comment.

“Motivated scammers/bad actors could be willing to pay … to leverage increased amplification to achieve their ends where their upside exceeds the cost,” reads the document’s first recommendation, which the team labeled “P0” to denote a concern in the highest risk category.

The team found that the fraudulent impersonation of world leaders, advertisers, brand partners, election officials, and other high profile individuals was a P0 risk. It’s likely that there will be an increase in impersonation of high-profile accounts on Twitter, becauseLegacy verification provides a critical signal to enforce impersonation rules.

Musk contemplated a $129-a-year subscription for Blue on November 1st after he read Stephen King’s article online, but he decided to go back to the original price after he saw how popular Blue was. The desire to make fun of brands and government officials became a impulse buy, increasing the risk of being a victim of a scam.

The team thought that taking away the verified Badge and other privileges would drive high profile users away from the platform. “Removing privileges and exemptions from legacy verified accounts could cause confusion and loss of trust among high profile users,” they wrote. “We use the health-related protections … to manage against the risk of false-positive actions on high-profile users, under the assumption that the accounts have been heavily vetted. We run risk of false positives and lost privileges if that signal is no longer present.

The company’s trust and safety team did win support for some solutions, including retaining verification for some high-profile accounts using the “official badge.”

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/14/23459244/twitter-elon-musk-blue-verification-internal-warnings-ignored

The day Musk-bleached-verification internal-warnings-ignored: a company fires Twitter for pursuing child sexual exploitation

Most of the features on the wish list that have not been approved make the product safer and easier to use.

Despite the warnings, the launch proceeded as planned. A few days later, with the predictions of the trust and safety team largely realizing, Musk halted the project.

Functions affected included content moderation, recruiting, ad sales, marketing, and real estate, among others. At the moment, it’s unclear how the loss of what may have been thousands of moderators will affect the service. It seems that fewer people are available to police the site for harmful material.

The company’s manager reported in the company’s channels that a contractor was removed without notice in the middle of making important changes to the child safety system. We have previously reported how difficult it has been for the platform to adequately police child sexual exploitation material.

Over the course of the day, similar messages trickled in on Blind, an app for coworkers to anonymously discuss their workplaces, and on external Slacks that employees have established to have more candid discussions.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/14/23459244/twitter-elon-musk-blue-verification-internal-warnings-ignored

Why are so many engineers scrambling on Twitter? After Musk’s orders on Covid-19, Twitter executives and engineers wondered why India does not support microfiche

Several employees told us that they had been bracing for cuts since the layoffs. But the abrupt nature of the cuts will likely send many former contractors scrambling: as Platformer was first to report, vendors told them via email their medical benefits would end today, their final day of employment.

They show Twitter executives and rank and file employees grappling with difficult tradeoffs, questioning the company’s rules and how they should be applied – and in some cases, getting things wrong.

There is a great deal of solidarity between employees. The people who have been working with Musk’s orders, including the volunteers and on-loan engineers from the Boring Company, are referred to as the goons.

The platform was no longer enforcing its policies prohibiting Covid-19 misinformation.

This time, however, engineers were told they couldn’t even write any code — “until further notice,” according to an internal email obtained by Platformer. Exceptions will be granted if there is an “urgent change that is needed to resolve an issue with a production service, including any changes reflecting hard promised deadlines for clients,” the email said, and employees get “approval from VP level and Elon explicitly stating that the change needs to be made.”

On Slack, even engineers who attended the late-night meeting were confused. “Is there a ticket I can reference?” asked an engineer who was being tasked with implementing the freeze. “I don’t see any context.” “We don’t have much context as of now,” a colleague responded. “But this is coming from Elon’s team.”

I want to apologize for the poor performance of the social media network in many countries. App is doing >1000 poorly batched RPCs just to render a home timeline!” Musk tweeted on Sunday morning, referring to remote procedure calls. It’s thought that the number of microfiche is designed to prevent the whole site from crashing when one part goes down.

The experience in India is not great. That’s because the payload gets delivered from further away (laws of physics come into effect) and that back-and-forth data transfer between the phone and the data center starts compounding.

India has a higher percentage of low power phones than ours, which tends to perform worse in general.

Why do the Code Freeze? Why did Eli Lilly pause all its Twitter campaigns? An ad agency perspective on the news of Twitter, with an application to L7D

Why do the code freeze? Musk has been paranoid that disgruntled engineers may try to sabotage the site on their way out.

On Friday, after the disaster of the Blue rollout, Eli Lilly paused all its ad campaigns on Twitter. The Washington Post said it could costTwitter millions of dollars in revenue. A fake account purporting to be Eli Lilly had claimed thatinsulin would be free, and it took six hours to take the account down.

The news has had a negative effect on the ad teams which are responsible for managing ad agency relationships.

Many of your markets and clients are seeing large declines in Q4 and in particular, L7D. Please add any commentary, questions, and issues that you have in this thread and I will try to raise as many as possible.

One employee of the micro-presidency said that General GM had also asked to stop campaigns. The initial reason they gave is elections but it appears like an open-ended pause, because the team requested to meet next week to make a case for why they shouldn’t. This same employee said that GM should not be implemented until the end of the year. The reason now is brand safety.”

GroupM, the biggest media-buying agency in the world, told clients that the social networking site was a high-risk media buy according to an email obtained by Platformer. Twitter’s agency partnerships lead explained the situation in Slack: “Given the recent senior departures in key operational areas (specifically Security, Trust & Safety, Compliance), GroupM have updated Twitter’s brand safety guidance to high risk. They know that our policies are in place, but feel that the ability to scale and manage violations at speed is uncertain at the moment.

Demonstrating commitment to moderation of content, as well as enforcing current rules.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/14/23459244/twitter-elon-musk-blue-verification-internal-warnings-ignored

Are There New Cracks in Twitter? After Musk’s Twitter Disruption, Twitter Reveals His Campaign to Restore The Voice of the People is the Voice of God

Mid-afternoon on Monday, after Musk announced he would begin disconnecting up to 80 percent of unspecified microservices, some users said two-factor authentication temporarily stopped working via SMS. Others reported noticing partial site outages and difficulty downloading their archives.

Some people know how to fix those things, but they don’t work for the company or are told not to ship new code. And the question haunting engineers at the end of the day was not whether any new cracks in the service would emerge, but how many, and when.

The poll had 72.4% voting in favor of the proposition and 27.6% against. The poll garnered more than 3 million votes on Twitter.

Hours after suspending @ElonJet, an account that tracked the trips taken by Elon Musk’s private plane, Twitter banned the account’s creator, Jack Sweeney, and dozens of other accounts he operates. ElonJet, which had its account suspended, tried to get its account back, but was briefly banned by the social network.

Immediately after acquiringTwitter, Musk promised to establish a moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints, and no major decisions on content would be made until the council was in place. There is no evidence that such a group has been formed or was involved in Musk’s replatforming decisions. Instead, after Musk restored Trump’s account, he tweeted “Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” Latin for “the voice of the people is the voice of god.”

Musk previously criticized the technique of “shadowbanning,” saying that it was unfairly used to suppress right-wing accounts. He has said the new Twitter will still downgrade the reach of negative or hateful messages but will be more transparent about it.

72.4% of respondents voted in favor of unbanning accounts, from a pool of more than 3 million votes. It’s hard to know who voted, but it’s worth remembering that Musk spent a long time trying to get out of buying the service, based on claims that it was filled with inauthentic accounts.

A blanket restoration of most suspended accounts will likely cause massive problems for the company, particularly in regions where they have lost their moderation and compliance capacities.

Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk on Thursday said he plans to introduce an option to make it possible for users to determine if the company has limited how many other users can view their posts. In doing so, Musk is effectively seizing on an issue that has been a rallying cry among some conservatives who claim the social network has suppressed or “shadowbanned” their content.

If you were shadowbanned, you will be able to see your true account status with a software update that will show you the reason. He did not provide additional details or a timetable.

Social Media Critique of the Twitter Files: The Case of Yoel Musk and the Left-Right Correlation Against The Right-Leaning Candidates

Musk has released internal documents to journalists over the past two weeks, allowing them to dig through them and perform their jobs.

Musk and his allies promote the “Twitter Files”, a set of bombshell revelations that prove thatTwitter muzzled conservatives because of their political views. Republicans have been saying that social media companies censor them for a long time, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary. Internal researchers at Twitter found that the algorithm favors the right-leaning political content.

The internal documents are thought to have been given to the journalists by Musk’s team. Musk on Friday shared Weiss’ thread in a tweet and added, “The Twitter Files, Part Duex!!” There are two popcorn things.

Weiss offered several examples of right-leaning figures who had moderation actions taken on their accounts, but it’s not clear if such actions were equally taken against left-leaning or other accounts.

The person familiar with the situation told CNN that the former head of trust and safety at Twitter had fled his home because of the increased threats made against him.

A person familiar with Roth’s situation told CNN threats made against the former Twitter employee escalated exponentially after Musk engaged in the pedophilia conspiracy theory.

Among Roth’s tweets was one he wrote on Election Day 2016 that read, “I’m just saying, we fly over those states that voted for a racist tangerine for a reason.”

I want to make it clear that I support Yoel, despite the questionable statements I have made. My sense is that he has high integrity, and we are all entitled to our political beliefs,” Musk tweeted.

It is believed that Musk tried to sway his authority over the platform by banning high-profile journalists from their accounts.

The administrator of the safety program for the social networking site said that they are not seeing clear orcoded insinuation to violence. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”

The House committee investigating January 6 heard testimony that she and her staff were worried about the risk of violence because they had seen Proud Boys and other groups that echoed statements by Trump on social media.

Another staffer, whose name was removed in the screenshot, said in Slack that a subsequent tweet that day from Trump saying he would not attend President Joe Biden’s inauguration was also “a clear no vio[lation].” Weiss questioned if that was a proof that Trump doesn’t support a peaceful transition.

The process of involving multiple staff and teams and relying on research to make high-profile decisions seems like it’s in line with how social platforms make content moderation decisions.

At the time of Trump’s ban, there was a further statement that the election was not legitimate in the statement that he plans to defend, empower, and shield those who believe him.

Covering the Fox News Story: When Donald Trump was inaugurated in 2017, did we learn what he said and tweeted about his political career, or how we found out about him?

The right-wing media machine at Fox News has been hyping every new document as an earth- breaking scoop, that will illuminate the abuses of power that occurred in the 1700s and 1800s, as if they were the Pentagon Papers.

The Wall Street Journal’s former top editor,Gerard Baker, stated on Monday that there was Nothing New in theTwitter Files. There’s no shocking revelation in there about government censorship or covert manipulation by political campaigns. The deliberations of the company dealing with complex issues in ways that are consistent with their values are brought to the surface.

If you are just a regular person trying to understand what is going on, it can be difficult. And the solution isn’t so clear. On one hand, if newsrooms covered each installment, they risk giving air to and further amplifying a storyline that has been selectively framed by Musk as he wages an information war. On the other hand, not dissecting each drop allows him and others to define it in the public square.

Around the time Trump was inaugurated in 2017, I said to colleagues in the newsroom where I worked at the time that we shouldn’t cover everything he said or tweeted. Previously, a president’s every word was assumed to be a carefully chosen signal of future policy, and was reported as such. Trump clearly said some things in order to get a rise out of people. Reporting on them, I argued, just fed the flames. Another editor pushed back. “He’s the president,” he said, or words to that effect. He says it’s news.

There was a lot of rapid-response news stories about Musk suggesting that his pronouns were’murder’ and “fascist” in reference to the government’s former chief infectious disease expert and gender diversity. He has a picture of his nightstand with guns on it and he has also posted a meme about the Frog.

This is precisely the way coverage of Trump worked. The liberal-leaning media would often cover stories stating that a perfectly capable president would only be successful in bringing himself down in flames, while the right-wing media focused on his egomania and lack of interest in grasping basic policy. There was plenty of good reporting going on at the same time, but these polarizing accounts tended to dominate the conversation. The losers were the public, whose understanding of what was actually happening across the country was forced through incompatible narratives around the behavior of one unhinged man in the White House.

How the New York Post Story About Hunter Biden’s Business Deals Spreads on Social Networks: An Analysis of Musk’s Comments on Twitter Files

Many journalists, social media experts and former employees say that Musk is exaggerating the seriousness of his claims, because documents shared so far corroborate what is already known about the messy business of policing a large social network.

“What is really coming through in the Twitter Files for me is: people who are confronting high-stakes, unanticipated events and trying to figure out what policies apply and how,” said Renée DiResta, research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, who studies how narratives spread on social networks.

They are a collection of internal emails and Slack chats that show employees discussing company policies. So far they’ve covered the decision to ban Trump, Twitter’s short-lived decision to block a news story in October 2020 drawn from material on Hunter Biden’s laptop, and how the company limits the reach of accounts that break its rules, including some well-known right-wing users.

Musk has given exclusive access to a small group of independent journalists including Matt Taibbi, formerly of Rolling Stone, and Bari Weiss, a former New York Times opinion columnist, under the condition they first post about the documents on Twitter.

The New York Post story claiming that shady business dealings by Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, were exposed, was shared on social media before the 2020 presidential election.

The article was based on files from Hunter Biden’s laptop, which the Post said it got from Rudy Giuliani, and Steve Bannon, who were both associated with Donald Trump. At the time, it wasn’t certain whether that material was authentic. After being burned by the Russian hack and leak of Democratic National Committee emails in 2016, tech companies were on edge over the possibility of a repeat – and so Twitter decided to restrict the Post story.

The company warned those who tried to get a link to the article that it was potentially harmful. The New York Post suspended its own account because it had commented on a story. Facebook was alarmed by the article, but did not go as far as the social networking site’s micro-blogging platform, Twitter. It allowed the link to be posted, but limited distribution of those posts while its outside fact-checkers reviewed the claims.)

And it does not show any evidence that there was government involvement in the move to block the New York Post story, despite assertions by Musk and others.

He said there was no ill intent or hidden agendas, and everyone acted according to the best information at the time. “Mistakes were made.”

He said he wished the internal files had been “released Wikileaks-style, with many more eyes and interpretations to consider.” He added: “There’s nothing to hide…only a lot to learn from.”

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/14/1142666067/elon-musk-is-using-the-twitter-files-to-discredit-foes-and-push-conspiracy-theor

Elon Musk is using the Twitter Files to discredit FOES and push conspiracy theorem: a response to Caulfield’s tame tweet

DiResta said there’s good reason to demand more insight into how social media companies operate. “Often these decisions are quite inscrutable,” she said. The question of how they’re moderated and how they’re designed is important, because these platforms are important for public opinion.

The full picture is needed more than the “anecdotes” Musk’s journalists are sharing, she said to get the full picture.

To better understand the decision to ban Trump, for example, it would help to see discussions around the accounts of other world leaders who have not been kicked off the platform, she said.

There’s value in what has been disclosed to the public, but it’s reinforcing a perception in large part because of old pre-existing political opinions, DiResta said.

Framing the disclosures as secret knowledge plays particularly well on Twitter, said Mike Caulfield, a research scientist at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public.

His tweets triggered violent threats against both men. A person familiar with the situation says that the family has been forced to leave their home.

“The current attacks on my former colleagues could be dangerous and doesn’t solve anything,” Dorsey wrote on Tuesday. “If you want to blame, direct it at me and my actions, or lack thereof.”

The CEO’s willingness to target people working to keep the platform’s users safe, including through the Twitter Files releases, is creating a “chilling effect,” according to one Trust and Safety Council member, who requested anonymity due to concerns of retaliation.

Musk has been hijacking the conversation with his prolific releases of files from the company’s former employees.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/14/1142666067/elon-musk-is-using-the-twitter-files-to-discredit-foes-and-push-conspiracy-theor

Defending the @ElonJet account via Twitter’s real-time location sharing policy against a student and a former Mastodon student

The last regime is being processed as if it’s going to be done differently in the future, rather than saying “Here are things we can see in this files and here is how it’s going to be done differently under our watch,” said DiResta.

The @ElonJet account, which had amassed more than 500,000 followers, was permanently suspended Wednesday after Twitter introduced a set of new policies banning accounts that track people’s live locations. Musk also blocked any account linking to such information. Previously, there were no location sharing-related restrictions on Twitter.

For Sweeney, it was the latest in a longtime tangle with the billionaire. Musk told a student at the University of Central Florida to take the account down, due to security concerns, according to the student. Musk later stopped communicating to Sweeney, who never deleted the account. Protocol reported on their exchange earlier this year.

He said he would go to court against Jack Sweeney, the 20-year-old college sophomore and programmer who started the @elonjet flight- tracking account. It’s not clear what legal action Musk could take against Sweeney for an account that automatically posted public flight information.

A Mastodon account named Sweeney shared a picture of a suspension that was made for violating the rules of the social network. But Musk said that the ban may have been for something else. “Any account doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation,” Musk tweeted. Later, he added that a car carrying one of his children had been followed by a stalker thinking it was him and that he is taking legal action against Sweeney.

In a statement to NPR, Twitter’s head of Trust & Safety Ella Irwin said sharing people’s real-time location information on Twitter is now a violation of its policies.

“Any account doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation,” Musk tweeted. The links to the sites have real-time location info. Posting locations someone traveled to on a slightly delayed basis isn’t a safety problem, so is ok.”

In a January post pinned to the top of the jet- tracking account’s feed before it was suspended, Sweeney wrote that the data is public and all aircraft in the world are required to have a transponder.

It seems Twitter doesn’t currently have an ironclad filter for this, as I was able to tweet an alternate link to the Instagram version of the tracker. But it appears that Twitter is stepping up its actions against Sweeney and his accounts, despite Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s “commitment” to free speech, which he said in November extended to “not banning the account following my plane.”

The accounts that track the jets of billionaires such as Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos have been suspended. The New York Times reported that Sweeney has seen 30 of his accounts banned, and said he operates many of them.

He saw that his account had been permanently suspended because he broke the rules. The note didn’t explain how it broke the rules.

Twitter and The NYTimes: A Twitter Exile from the Twitter Accounts of Musk and the Loss of Twitter’s Charmed Flight Tracking Account

In the weeks since the Tesla CEO took over Twitter, the @elonjet account has chronicled Musk’s many cross-country journeys from his home base near Tesla’s headquarters in Austin, Texas, to various California airports for his work at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters and his rocket company SpaceX.

It showed Musk flying to East Coast cities ahead of major events, and to New Orleans shortly before a Dec. 3 meeting there with French President Emmanuel Macron.

Neither Musk nor Twitter responded to a request for comment Thursday evening, and the platform did not explain precisely why the journalists were exiled from the platform.

Doxxing refers to the practice of sharing someone’s home address or other personal information online. The banned account had instead used publicly available flight data, which remain online and accessible, to track Musk’s jet.

“Tonight’s suspension of the Twitter accounts of a number of prominent journalists, including The New York Times’s Ryan Mac, is questionable and unfortunate,” said Charlie Stadtlander, a spokesman for The Times. Ryan and The Times have yet to get any explanation about why this happened. We hope that all of the journalists’ accounts are reinstated and that Twitter provides a satisfying explanation for this action.”

Several high-profile journalists were suspended from their accounts by Musk, the owner of the social media site, who also has been criticized for his chaotic leadership.

The president of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) said in a statement that the move affects all journalists and that it was concerned about the suspensions.

Those reports were confirmed Thursday evening by a CNN reporter who was blocked from sharing a Mastodon profile URL and was given an automated error message that said Twitter or its partners had identified the site as “potentially harmful.”

Reply to Jaffer’s Comments on “Jansky is not a Jet, he is a Stranger,” by Nora Benavidez

The suspended man wrote in a post that he doesn’t know why he was put out of work. He said he did tweet on Wednesday a link to a Facebook page for the jet-tracking account.

Nora Benavidez, senior counsel at the advocacy group Free Press, echoed Jaffer’s remarks, saying suspending journalists based seemingly on personal animus “sets a dangerous precedent.”

“Without commenting on any specific user accounts, I can confirm that we will suspend any accounts that violate our privacy policies and put other users at risk,” Irwin said. “We don’t make exceptions to this policy for journalists or any other accounts.”