Musk offers to buy Twitter

[dada_dave]

Musk has gone full MAGA

And full QAnon as I wrote above.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Musk has gone full MAGA

And like 24 hours ago the NYT published a piece saying that "it was difficult to discern whether Elon Musk was a far-right conservative because he...claimed to be a centrist."

Some of this is really starting to make me wonder who the vested interests are and what they are truly pushing for -- all across the spectrum.
Musk is telling us and showing us "who he is" --- Believe people when they tell you who they are

I don't really know what to make of the NYT anymore honestly

 

[turbineseaplane]

Remind me again why this guy is going after Fauci of all people?

 

[dada_dave]

And like 24 hours ago the NYT published a piece saying that "it was difficult to discern whether Elon Musk was a far-right conservative because he...claimed to be a centrist."

Some of this is really starting to make me wonder who the vested interests are and what they are truly pushing for -- all across the spectrum.
Musk is telling us and showing us "who he is" --- Believe people when they tell you who they are

I don't really know what to make of the NYT anymore honestly

Yeah it’s bad when the NYT pitchbot is just screenshotting the actual NYT headlines/tweets for its parody account.

 

[Eric]

A lesson in pronouns.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Graham, Sacks, Musk

My god it’s just a full circle of completely self absorbed undesirables

 

[lizkat]

And like 24 hours ago the NYT published a piece saying that "it was difficult to discern whether Elon Musk was a far-right conservative because he...claimed to be a centrist."

Some of this is really starting to make me wonder who the vested interests are and what they are truly pushing for -- all across the spectrum.
Musk is telling us and showing us "who he is" --- Believe people when they tell you who they are

I don't really know what to make of the NYT anymore honestly

The NYT is standing back and doing a "That's just Trump being Trump" thing with Musk sometimes.

The problem is that the NYT has done the equivalent, sometimes subtly and sometimes otherwise, with a lot of high profile individuals in politics, entertainment and assorted business sectors.

They do it so often that one can be tempted by now just to say "That's just the NYT being the NYT."

So I'm not one to cancel subscriptions out of pique or exasperation either but I'll say the idea crosses my mind more often with the Times than it ever has done with the Washington Post.

And yet I love the NYT for so many reasons. Sigh. But I liked them better when they still had a public editor who would air --right in the paper itself-- some of the concerns about focus or slant or potential conflict of interest that all of us have had concerns about from time to time. The Times had created the slot after the Jason Blair plagiarism scandal, about 20 years ago. I had thought of the position later on as possibly a way for the paper to avoid some future clusterF*** that would require another internal investigation, another painful and very public mea culpa, like the protracted project they had eventually launched after realizing terrible flaws in some of their own coverage of the run-up to the Iraq war.

Unfortunately (from my POV) the Times eventually decided not to have a public editor any more, after going through six of them. Of course they have editors. But in lieu of a public editor, they moved then essentially to let social media serve as a variant on a public editor, and the columnists at the Times could pick up or not pick up trending views and relay them to NYT readers.

To me that was insane. One can pick fights with a public editor's take on anything, much the same as to disagree with a columnist in the same media outlet. A paper can also fire a public editor and the Times did that too, more than a few times. But a great many readers of the NYT appreciated the CONCEPT of a public editor airing her own or the public's "issues" --right in the paper itself-- with how the paper was covering or not covering any topic, event, person. And these days to encourage staffers to use social media "public reaction" to the NYT day to day as a measure of anything, never mind a barometer of how professional the coverage of a mainstream newspaper appears to "the public" -- well there lies some stellar lunacy, especially now with Musk at the helm of Twitter.

If I were managing the Times, I'd hire a public editor and just run a very clear disclaimer over top the column, something along lines of This is a regular account of what our public editor thinks of our coverage at the NYT, written by a person we pay to write without fear or favor. We might not agree at all with the content but we appreciate the scrutiny, and readers' comments are certainly welcome.

The managing editor of course was always always free to disagree with a public editor, and so were newsroom staff (and then there is the invisible hand of a publisher who might draw a line), but there it was, the elephant in the living room living large: someone on the staff whose sole job it was to hold the paper's feet to the fire in public and on behalf of the public whenever coverage (or, non coverage) seemed to have eluded the paper's guidelines or standards of professional journalism.

The last public editor at the Times before they eliminated the position was Liz Spayd. She wasn't very popular at all "in the house," so to speak, and so possibly she was doing a very fine job. The Columbia Journalism Review had a writeup on her departure including her own take on it, and a lot of background on the slot itself. This was a May 2017 piece, so for most of the Trump presidency, the voice of a formal public editor at NYT was absent, as it is right now. A pity, I say, and a mistake. The readers of the Times are more discerning than the editors may realize, certainly if those editors think that feedback from Twitter on "how we're doing" is better than a critique from the inside by a public editor.

New York Times public editor Liz Spayd on decision to eliminate her position

<p>The decision this morning by The New York Times to eliminate the position of public editor touched off a debate over the value of a position established in the wake of the Jayson Blair fabrication scandal to hold the paper’s editors and reporters accountable to industry standards and reader...

www.cjr.org

 

[dada_dave]

Unfortunately (from my POV) the Times eventually decided not to have a public editor any more, after going through six of them. Of course they have editors. But in lieu of a public editor, they moved then essentially to let social media serve as a variant on a public editor, and the columnists at the Times could pick up or not pick up trending views and relay them to NYT readers.

To me that was insane.

Just to add to this already excellent post, to make it even worse they’ve made it very clear how little they respect the opinions that come to them through social media unless it’s a high profile person of note. So it’s almost as though as an institution they’re like those journalists (mostly opinion columnists) who quit papers and go to substack because they want to escape the ‘tyranny of editors’. Which really means they think they’re above critical feedback and get very defensive about it when received. This isn’t to say that every journalist there reacts that way, but as an institution they are pretty arrogant.

 

[lizkat]

Taylor Greene weighed in on Musk's Prosecute/Fauci "pronouns." I see there are still a lot of right wing idiots following her around...

 

[leman]

Musk apparently got booed during an on-stage appearance at Dave Chapelle show. Which would be unremarkable in itself, but twitter posts related to this keep being mysteriously deleted and accounts are disappearing. Here is a Reddit thread discussing this.

 

[Pumbaa]

Ah, yes, the mortal threat to civilization that is the woke mind virus.

Misinformation, bigotry, unsubstantiated conspiracy theories, lies, hate speech, institutional racism, pollution, torturing and murdering animals, etc.? Perfectly fine.


Tweet link

 

[dada_dave]

Musk apparently got booed during an on-stage appearance at Dave Chapelle show. Which would be unremarkable in itself, but twitter posts related to this keep being mysteriously deleted and accounts are disappearing. Here is a Reddit thread discussing this.

I think it is a little notable that even people who are still paying to see Dave Chapelle boo Elon Musk. I bet he (and Chapelle) thought that would be a much safer space for him than it turned out to be. I mean that’s an audience you might imagine would be more receptive to Elon’s “civilization ending woke mind virus” garbage since Chapelle is on a similar kick himself and apparently even Chapelle couldn’t get them to stop booing.

But yeah … Elon Musk, free speech absolutist.

 

[Edd]

Most of Elon’s jokes are like “English isn’t my first language” type quips. Dude is aggressively awkward.

 

[Eric]

Musk apparently got booed during an on-stage appearance at Dave Chapelle show. Which would be unremarkable in itself, but twitter posts related to this keep being mysteriously deleted and accounts are disappearing. Here is a Reddit thread discussing this.

Nice to see Musk get a taste of what the real world outside of his Conservative online bubble thinks of him. As for Chappelle even having him there, WTF?? Those two can have each other.

Edit, sounds like the person who posted it lost their "free speech" as Musk is trying to rid the site of it. Here's a a source from site he doesn't own.

 

[lizkat]

Most of Elon’s jokes are like “English isn’t my first language” type quips. Dude is aggressively awkward.

Just the phrase "woke mind virus" is likely to draw a blank with most Americans, I can still hope.

Meanwhile if his version of Twitter is meant to save civilization, Elon Musk needs to triple-down on staffing of the moderation group. Otherwise new members might conclude that civilization will be saved only if everyone just adopts some of the truly vile mantras that are turning up in there, only to be squashed down by the ever more often tweaked "visibility algorithms" that "permit free speech while reducing its reach" or whatever the almighty F he's been promising regulators will make his platform compliant with their rules.

Neither the algorithms nor their coders nor any special intervention teams of humans are managing to keep up with the tide of shopworn garbage posts sweeping into his platform.

 

[Eric]

Elon Musk set to relaunch Twitter Blue with higher price for iPhone users

The company says it has a new process to avoid the chaos that followed the first attempt. That led to a flood of accounts impersonating companies, politicians and celebrities.

www.npr.org

Twitter has restarted a service dubbed Twitter Blue, where users can pay a monthly fee for a blue checkmark, along with the ability to edit tweets and upload high quality video.

Apple users, however, will be charged more.

The company says the revamped service will cost $8 a month on the web, or $11 a month if purchased through an app on iPhones and iPads, where in-app transactions are processed through the company's App Store, which generally levies a 30% commission.

The price new tiers follow sharp words from Musk leveled at Apple over its so-called "Apple tax," a longtime pain point for app developers and cause of concern for regulators around the world who have viewed the fee as excessive and financially damaging to Apple's rivals. Musk has since claimed his row with Apple was resolved following a meeting with the company's chief executive, Tim Cook at the company's Cupertino headquarters.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Meanwhile if his version of Twitter is meant to save civilization, Elon Musk needs to triple-down on staffing of the moderation group.

It’s not meant to and it’s not going to.

He has shown zero restraint or even backing down off terrible positions…in fact seemingly he’s leaning into them.

I think Twitter as it was is done…some folks clinging to it just haven’t internalized and accepted it yet. Depending upon what he does or not around a financial model may seal it to obscurity permanently. He doesn’t get communities and why they form and maintain, are enjoyable and are clung to. He misunderstands what Twitter was and what it needed…. (Letting back the worst characters to run wild again was 180 degrees from being part of that answer)

I’ve checked on my account there a few times this last week and it’s just amazing how many absolutely toxic replies there are to most anything anybody is saying, barring perhaps just general sports or animal video type stuff.

 

[fooferdoggie]

so he puts a extra tax on his uses because he does not like the apple tax. Genius.

 

[lizkat]

I’ve checked on my account there a few times this last week and it’s just amazing how many absolutely toxic replies there are to most anything anybody is saying

Same here. Doesn't matter the topic. It's toxic troll time! And I had thought it was Christmas Elf time.

 

[Edd]

Interesting, after Apple supposedly committed to continue advertising on Twitter? I never confirmed that but, if true, pretty provocative move by Elon.