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[Continuation] Musk buys Twitter II

jeremyp

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Continued from here.
Posted By: Agatha



Twitter's ad sales dropped 59% year on year in April according to leaked internal documents.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...dropped-59-just-88million-five-weeks-May.html

Apologies for the Daily Fail link but it was the first non paywalled link on a Google search. Forbes and the NYT are also carrying the story.

Also, the Head of Trust and Safety resigned after Elon Musk publicly reversed her decision on censoring Matt Walsh's "What is a Woman?" film. And the head of Brand Safety.

The Daily Wail claims the ad revenue in April was $88 million. If that continues at that level for twelve months it will just about cover the interest payments on Twitter's debt.
 
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People are having fun on Twitter showing off how terrible the bot problem is.

Apparently it's super easy to trigger bots to spam your replies by mentioning a few keywords or key phrases. For example, if you reply to image post with something to the effect of "I want this on a T-shirt", a bunch of bots will come into the replies posting links to their made-to-order Tshirt companies with mock ups of that image available for sale on a T shirt.

This is not a new problem, but it got some traction after some Elon Musk fanboy account went viral bragging about the much repeated claim that the Musk takeover resulted in less bots. People went into the comments to trigger the bot spam and prove the post wrong. The original post was deleted after Twitter's "community notes" feature added a caption saying that the claim about less bots was untrue.

From there the ****-posters went on a field day. They started making bot bait saying things like "This T-shirt company is run by pedophiles", or this one deliberately infringing on Disney IP and calling for litigation , or this one explicitly libeling JK Rowling while stealing Harry Potter IP all while begging to be sued .

All get multiple spam posts by bots offering to sell you these shirts.

Likewise mentioning having lost a crypto key or otherwise lost control of a web3 account is a great way to summon scam bots promising to help you recover your lost assets.

I have no idea if bots are more numerous now than before the Musk takeover, but thanks to the $8 accounts that are algorithmically boosted, I much more often see bot posts as the top replies despite having no engagement. Great system, blue check now means weird Elon fanboy, a bot account, or some scammer shilling a crypto project. Hard to decide which has the worst content.
 
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TurkeysGhost said:
Great system, blue check now means weird Elon fanboy, a bot account, or some scammer shilling a crypto project. Hard to decide which has the worst content.
Click to expand...

Quoted for truth.

In other Twitter news, Twitter is also showing me a lot of promoted posts to do with AI. Weird how quickly AI is becoming the next crypto bro obsession.
 
Sketchy vendors have been picking up the advertising slack after Twitter made itself radioactive to more respectable brands.

One of my favorite genre of tweet in Musk's twitter is this:

saw a promoted tweet today that said "this is the world's most powerful flashlight!" and there was a community note below it that said "this is NOT the worlds most powerful flashlight. it costs four dollars on alibaba and it ******* sucks!" incredible way to run an ad business
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https://twitter.com/KrangTNelson/status/1667245727288815616?cxt=HHwWgMCzhfrJn6MuAAAA

Gotta respect Musk for his free speech principles. I had assumed the ability of community notes to directly criticize these scammy dropshippers that are one of the few businesses still wanting to advertise on twitter would have been killed by now.
 
TurkeysGhost said:
I have no idea if bots are more numerous now than before the Musk takeover, but thanks to the $8 accounts that are algorithmically boosted, I much more often see bot posts as the top replies despite having no engagement. Great system, blue check now means weird Elon fanboy, a bot account, or some scammer shilling a crypto project. Hard to decide which has the worst content.
Click to expand...

And it's worth noting that part of the $8-check pitch was that bots would absolutely not buy one, so this was a good way of separating the real people from the fakes. I'm not sure if Elon thought a Twitter bot was something 100% automated with no humans behind it at all, but obviously, the person running the bot is fully capable of spending money to get its spam boosted. Lots of people warned Elon about this, but he didn't listen.
 
I Am The Scum said:
And it's worth noting that part of the $8-check pitch was that bots would absolutely not buy one, so this was a good way of separating the real people from the fakes. I'm not sure if Elon thought a Twitter bot was something 100% automated with no humans behind it at all, but obviously, the person running the bot is fully capable of spending money to get its spam boosted. Lots of people warned Elon about this, but he didn't listen.
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I imagine there are some types of bot accounts where spending the $8 a month isn't worth it, but for the most malicious ones that are trying to defraud people, $8 is a very low cost of doing business.
 
I see Musk and Twitter are being sued over music piracy. Apparently ignoring the law and imposing his one view on copyright isn't popular.............
 
Twitter is being evicted from its Boulder office over unpaid rent


Twitter owes three months’ rent to its Boulder landlord, and a judge has signed off on evicting the tech giant from its office there, court documents show.

Since its takeover by Elon Musk, Twitter’s business has more or less fallen into disarray, and there have been numerous reports of unpaid bills. While a contractor going unpaid during a rocky transition is unfortunate but not uncommon, ceasing to pay rent altogether for months suggests Twitter’s operations may be farther gone than anyone expected.
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https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/14/twitter-is-being-evicted-from-its-boulder-office-over-unpaid-rent/
 
It's an outrage !
Musk doesn't have to pay rent !
Only poor people do !
Our real-life tony Stark is being treated like a Hobo !
 
Since I started looking at Twitter again, it appears that I've been followed by a whole bunch of bot accounts. You know the kind. Pretty lady avatar, following 140, followed by 0, no tweets.

I wanted to try and report them as bot, but reporting an account is now a 37-step process requiring the user to specify the exact kind of behaviour is being reported out of a list of about 923, none of which are "is a bot".
 
arthwollipot said:
Since I started looking at Twitter again, it appears that I've been followed by a whole bunch of bot accounts. You know the kind. Pretty lady avatar, following 140, followed by 0, no tweets.



I wanted to try and report them as bot, but reporting an account is now a 37-step process requiring the user to specify the exact kind of behaviour is being reported out of a list of about 923, none of which are "is a bot".
Click to expand...
Reports of bots have plummeted since he took over! Once again he proves his out of the box thinking has succeeded whereas the hidebound traditional approach failed.
 
I don’t know why people are complaining. Since Musk took over I have been inundated with single women in my area who want to get to know me! These blond women would usually stand out quite a bit in Japan but so far I haven’t seen them. :(
 
Samson said:
Just catching up.

Do we all despise Musk?
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In Musk positive news, he seems to have single handedly vanquished a crypto project by banning its dumb gimmick account:

An artificial intelligence chatbot powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4 has been removed from Twitter after the social media site's billionaire owner Elon Musk labeled it a "scam crypto account" in a tweet yesterday.

The chatbot is linked to a Pepe the Frog-inspired meme coin called BOB Token, which surged in value 4,744% after Musk interacted with the account in April 2023. The token plunged over 40% on Sunday following the Explain This Bob account's suspension, from a high of $0.00003100 to lows of $0.00001818. The meme coin is currently trading at $0.00001931, down around 6.6% on the day, per CoinGecko.
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https://finance.yahoo.com/news/explain-bob-ai-twitter-bot-103527038.html

An act which spawned one of the most hilariously pathetic posts I've ever seen, where some idiot that is paying Elon $8 a month tries to grapple with his idol culling his preferred get-rich-quick scheme:

Every day, I would eagerly check
@ExplainThisBob
for updates, hoping for good news that could change my life. I found a community there, a support system of people who understood my struggles and believed in the same dream. It was a place where I felt connected, where I felt like I belonged.

[more pathetic blubbering snipped]
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https://twitter.com/DeFiDownsin/status/1670267692438237185?cxt=HHwWgsC9-bzn_a0uAAAA

:dl:

It goes on from there for quite a while, thanks to Twitter blue allowing longer text posts.

This is certainly an interesting turn for Musk. His friendliness with crypto has always been at odds with his supposed goal of making Twitter a less bot friendly website, considering crypto shilling accounts make up a lot of bot activity. Hard to say if this is a one-off or signals a real change in priority.
 
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Samson said:
Fantastic, thank you.
Is this damning with faint praise or heartfelt love for Elon?
I am a little/lots autistic so navigating this is challenging. Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

File this under:

"Heartbreaking: The worst person you know just made a great point".

Absent a systemic change in policy that makes twitter more hostile to crypto spam, I doubt Elon knifing a single crypto shill account will have much impact, but it was certainly quite funny regardless. Only time will tell.
 
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TurkeysGhost said:
File this under:

"Heartbreaking: The worst person you know just made a great point".

Absent a systemic change in policy that makes twitter more hostile to crypto spam, I doubt Elon knifing a single crypto shill account will have much impact, but it was certainly quite funny regardless. Only time will tell.
Click to expand...
Turkey you are incorrigible.
Now I must deconstruct in my spare time.
 
TurkeysGhost said:
This is certainly an interesting turn for Musk. His friendliness with crypto has always been at odds with his supposed goal of making Twitter a less bot friendly website, considering crypto shilling accounts make up a lot of bot activity. Hard to say if this is a one-off or signals a real change in priority.
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I don't think Musk really has priorities. He seems to operate mostly on whims.
 
ZirconBlue said:
I don't think Musk really has priorities. He seems to operate mostly on whims.
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It would not surprise me at all to learn this was strictly out of personal reasons, like petty revenge or maybe something financial. Elon is in a unique position to easily manipulate these crypto markets. He's taken pleasure in pumping DOGE coin in the past. Unlike the stock exchange, no regulators seem to care when you manipulate these crypto markets.

Maybe he took a short position against Bob before nuking them off Twitter.
 
Musk has decided that “cis” and “cisgender” are slurs and can result in banning sunder harassment.

What a rice paper spine that guy has.
 
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kookbreaker said:
Musk has decided that “cis” and “fisher” are slurs and can result in banning sunder harassment.

What a rice paper spine that guy has.
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I do wonder how much his outspoken anti-trans bigotry is a result of him being disowned by his trans child:

One of Elon Musk’s children has petitioned a California court to recognize her new name and gender, saying she no longer wishes to be related to her famous and wealthy father “in any way, shape or form.”

Musk’s daughter turned 18 earlier this year and made the filing with a county court in Los Angeles soon thereafter. She requests that her legal name be changed to Vivian Jenna Wilson. Wilson is the last name of her mother, Justine Wilson, Musk’s ex-wife and mother of five of his seven children.
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https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/21/business/elon-musk-child-files-to-change-name-gender/

It seems to be a common theme for many of these reactionaries doubling down on their regressive views after suffering personal rebuff.
 
obviously, the people celebrating his free speech on twitter initiative are up in arms about this new rule.

oh, no? huh
 
Elon, the savior of free speech!!! For whatever he decides free speech means to him at that moment.

The dudes an "edgelord" man-child. This should come as no big surprise.
 
Australia issues Elon Musk's Twitter with a 'please explain' notice over surge in online hate

Elon Musk's social media platform Twitter has been issued with a demand from Australian authorities for information on what it is doing to tackle online hate.

Australia's eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said around a third of the complaints her agency received about online hate involved content on Twitter, noting a surge in harmful posts since the Tesla chief bought the platform last year.

Twitter has 28 days to comply with the "please explain" notice, or face fines of almost $700,000 for every day it misses the deadline.
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The free speech 'absolutist' who feels so strongly about it that literal Nazis using slurs should be given a lot of leeway but 'cisgender' is inherently harassment.

"But you said free speech, no restrictions!"

"Oh, that was a misprint. It was supposed to be, 'Free Speech? NO! Restrictions!'".
 
Here's where he said it.

Bit of a technicality saying cis can be used as an insult during harrassment. It's not an insult.
 

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Susheel said:
Meanwhile, in India:
Elon Musk calls himself 'fan of Modi', says Tesla to invest in India

Not surprised...Elon's Twitter is bending over backwards to provide a safe platform for the sanghi hatemongers that are his base and suppress any criticism of his government and policies.
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Despite pandering to American reactionaries, Musk is suspiciously silent on the normal anti-China tropes that are common on the right.

Presumably Musk doesn't want to alienate the huge Chinese market for his electric cars.
 
Musk should be called out on this one, he is either a free speech absolutist or not. If groomers want to use slurs against other people, they should be allowed to.
 
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