Musk offers to buy Twitter

[Eric]

 

[Eric]

Robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Bloomberg

Elon Musk’s Tesla Share Sales Approach the $40 Billion Mark​

• Carmaker’s CEO offloaded $3.58 billion more stock this week
• Latest disposal coincided with losing spot as No. 1 richest

 

[lizkat]

Welp, WaPo reports Twitter has suspended accounts of a bunch of journalists... . from CNN, NYT, WaPo "and other outlets" tonight. Stay tuned, it only began around 730pm.

Breaking news piece WaPo - paywall removed: https://wapo.st/3YpT6qj

 

[shadow puppet]

Welp, WaPo reports Twitter has suspended accounts of a bunch of journalists... . from CNN, NYT, WaPo "and other outlets" tonight. Stay tuned, it only began around 730pm.

Breaking news piece WaPo - paywall removed: https://wapo.st/3YpT6qj

Time to get my Post News account set up. Have been seeing Twitter users list their Post accounts all day. The great migration is beginning.

 

[lizkat]

Time to get my Post News account set up. Have been seeing Twitter users list their Post accounts all day. The great migration is beginning.

Well when Musk starts banning journos, the papers and other media outlets for which they work will have to make some decisions about their own "umbrellla" presence on Twitter as landing page accounts from which they tout feature stories etc. At the very least you'd expect them to start setting up either their own Mastodon server for social media accounts of their employees, or else amp up their presence elsewhere in existing platforms .

 

[turbineseaplane]

This really begs the question of why he bought Twitter at all

Is he really just going to destroy everything that made it what it was and essentially light 40+ billion on fire?

Incredible

 

[dada_dave]

Twitter also suspended the official join mastodon account and people are now saying Twitter will no longer allow the posting of links to mastodon - the reason given that such links are “unsafe”.

 

[lizkat]

This really begs the question of why he bought Twitter at all

Is he really just going to destroy everything that made it what it was and essentially light 40+ billion on fire?

Incredible

So many questions about this acquisition's financing and what those lenders and co-investors think, what is the impact on the management (and capitalization) of his other businesses, are there private channel talks between social media hosting "behavior" regulators in Europe and the US, etc.

There is also at least one class action suit of former Twitter shareholders pending, over allegations that Musk's tweets last autumn about intent to abandon the acquisition (due to his own later dismissed allegations about Twitter-induced flaws in the merger agreement) caused the plaintiff class losses during a specific timeframe.

Meanwhile he has sold at least $20 billion of Tesla shares and is losing money by the truckload pending whatever are his "fixes" that he imagines will turn the thing around and start making money.

Tonight's wave of dismissing journos who may have dissed him from their Twitter accounts doesn't sound like a contribution to a fix. Suppressing dissent is exactly the thing he claimed to be fixing, no?

Sure it's his site now and he may censor what he wishes to suppress. The main problem remains that he's not suppressing material that regulators regard as illegal. But now that he's into suppressing dissent from the left, or criticism of his own behavior, there are other platforms more hospitable to journalists, and if he keeps that up then mainstream media outlets will depart: to stay makes them look complicit with the overall aims of Musk, whose goals would now appear to have very little to do with "absolute free speech."

Musk has made Twitter into his own image. He is Twitter and Twitter is Musk. What's a paper like the WaPo or NYT doing there with landing page accounts churning out links to their own wares and so helping draw traffic to Musk's site, while its own journalists get banned for expressing content Musk dislikes?

 

[lizkat]

Twitter also suspended the official join mastodon account and people are now saying Twitter will no longer allow the posting of links to mastodon - the reason given that such links are “unsafe”.

Some of them probably are unsafe, even if Mastodon eventually catches up with the hosts and denies use of their further association to Mastodon.

But re Twitter's assertion: Hah. As if some of the links in the "free speech" sh^tposts that Twitter's hastily constructed algos are pushing to the bottom (rather than banning the authors) are safe.

Rule one of pursuing links on the net: caveat emptor.

Just because a site has rules doesn't mean they aren't violated. People report unsafe links all the time but it takes awhile for them to disappear even on reputable sites.

 

[Eric]

Welp, WaPo reports Twitter has suspended accounts of a bunch of journalists... . from CNN, NYT, WaPo "and other outlets" tonight. Stay tuned, it only began around 730pm.

Breaking news piece WaPo - paywall removed: https://wapo.st/3YpT6qj

Here they are, from the NYTimes luckily everyone from Fox News made the cut.

The accounts suspended included Ryan Mac of The New York Times; Drew Harwell of The Washington Post; Aaron Rupar, an independent journalist; Donie O’Sullivan of CNN; Matt Binder of Mashable; Tony Webster, an independent journalist; Micah Lee of The Intercept; and the political journalist Keith Olbermann. It was unclear what the suspensions had in common; each user’s Twitter page included a message that said it suspended accounts that “violate the Twitter rules.”

 

[lizkat]

Here they are, from the NYTimes luckily everyone from Fox News made the cut.

Also from that piece

After his suspension from Twitter, Mr. Sweeney turned to Mastodon, an alternative social network. After Mastodon used Twitter to promote Mr. Sweeney’s new account on Thursday, Twitter suspended Mastodon’s account. As some journalists shared the news of Mastodon’s suspension, their own accounts were suspended.

The guy is just a vindictive bully. Easy to bait, eh? Like Trump.

 

[dada_dave]

Some of them probably are unsafe, even if Mastodon eventually catches up with the hosts and denies use of their further association to Mastodon.

But re Twitter's assertion: Hah. As if some of the links in the "free speech" sh^tposts that Twitter's hastily constructed algos are pushing to the bottom (rather than banning the authors) are safe.

Rule one of pursuing links on the net: caveat emptor.

Just because a site has rules doesn't mean they aren't violated. People report unsafe links all the time but it takes awhile for them to disappear even on reputable sites.

No no these were just journalists testing links to mastodon and none were allowed, all were marked unsafe regardless of content. As of right now, you can no longer post *any* mastodon links on Twitter.

Also this:

 

[lizkat]

No no these were just journalists testing links to mastodon and none were allowed, all were marked unsafe regardless of content. As of right now, you can no longer post *any* mastodon links on Twitter.

So they're unsafe because they're competition. Got it.

 

[Eric]

So they're unsafe because they're competition. Got it.

He's hemorrhaging millions per day at this point without advertisers and I doubt the check mark thing will even put a dent into that sort of debt. I'm sure he's putting up every wall he can to keep people from leaving.

 

[fooferdoggie]

He's hemorrhaging millions per day at this point without advertisers and I doubt the check mark thing will even put a dent into that sort of debt. I'm sure he's putting up every wall he can to keep people from leaving.

gonna need a cage to keep the non crazy ones.

 

[dada_dave]

qanon theories good

tracking Elon‘s jet bad

View attachment 19941

Even more ominous in retrospect, no?

Also as I said in a previous post this Ella Irwin seems to be a piece of work:

Twitter’s New Head of Trust and Safety Offers to Partner with Controversial Anti-Trafficking Group

Operation Underground Railroad has a long track record of misrepresenting its work; now, it could be partnering with Elon Musk’s Twitter.

www.vice.com

No idea if she moved forward with this, but it follows the track record so far …

 

[lizkat]

Even more ominous in retrospect, no?

Also as I said in a previous post this Ella Irwin seems to be a piece of work:

Twitter’s New Head of Trust and Safety Offers to Partner with Controversial Anti-Trafficking Group

Operation Underground Railroad has a long track record of misrepresenting its work; now, it could be partnering with Elon Musk’s Twitter.

www.vice.com

No idea if she moved forward with this, but it follows the track record so far …

The penultimate paragraph of that piece is really rather sickening.

All of this, as well as OUR’s distance from the established anti-trafficking community—as Motherboard has reported, it is infamous in NGO circles, and many reputable groups both domestically and abroad refuse to work with it—would seemingly make it an ally of questionable value. It had, though, expressed eagerness to align itself with Musk’s Twitter even before Irwin’s invitation to partner, tweeting at Musk on December 9, “We couldn’t agree more about protecting children, and are ready to help Twitter in any way we can,” and tagging him in a similar tweet a few days later. If Irwin does indeed move forward with a partnership, it would offer OUR legitimation from a major company, and a continued way to burnish the image it’s worked hard to impress upon the public.

Start with the assertion that established NGOs apparently want nothing to do with the OUR group. I mean that it's "infamous" in their circles is quite a strong assertion, and doubtless one that can be verified. Musk has been making Twitter a hellscape of "absolute free speech" per his own definitions of that, even though he claims to have adequate moderation of illegal or hate speech in place via "allow the speech but not the reach." So even if the visibility of inappropriate posts is merely reduced in lieu of removing that material and banning the authors, one can only imagine the opportunities on Musk's Twitter for an entity that purports to be about deterring CSEM or trafficking but may be about something else entirely. Ugh.

Sounds like another thing for the regulators to look into.

 

[Runs For Fun]

Seems Musk and Twitter are having a meltdown today. So far a bunch of journalists have been suspended who have been critical of Musk. And he suspended the official Mastodon account. Lol what a baby. Also Mastodon links are now blocked.

 

[Cmaier]

turns out that banning still allows you to use twitter spaces. So a bunch of the banned journalists got together for a pow wow there. Elon eventually showed up, made a fool of himself when he was fact-checked, and then had the feed shut off.

 

[lizkat]

Seems Musk and Twitter are having a meltdown today. So far a bunch of journalists have been suspended who have been critical of Musk. And he suspended the official Mastodon account. Lol what a baby. Also Mastodon links are now blocked.

Musk Shakes Up Twitter’s Legal Team as He Looks to Cut More Costs (NYT, paywall removed)

Subhead: "Twitter has stopped paying rent on offices and is considering not paying severance packages to former employees, among other measures."

But the piece is about the legal ramifications of that and about where Musk is getting his legal counsel from these days.

Twitter’s leaders have also discussed the consequences of denying severance payments to thousands of people who have been laid off since the takeover, two people familiar with the talks said. And Mr. Musk has threatened employees with lawsuits if they talk to the media and “act in a manner contrary to the company’s interest,” according to an internal email sent last Friday.

With Twitter drained of legal talent from layoffs and departures, Mr. Musk has sought lawyers from his other companies, including rocket maker SpaceX, to fill the void. More than half a dozen lawyers from the space exploration company have been given access to Twitter’s internal systems, according to two people and documents seen by The Times. SpaceX employees who have been brought in to Twitter include Chris Cardaci, the company’s vice president of legal, and Tim Hughes, its senior vice president, global business and government affairs.

Meanwhile it seems Musk may be entertaining or executing moves that invite further legal woes: not paying office rents, not finalizing all termination paperwork so severance payments lag, and perhaps most importantly, continuing to lay off execs who may be integral to Twitter's former or existing tech and security concerns, including head of global Infotech and VP of info security. This while the FTC is asking Musk to confirm that it's still capable of adhering to an "expanded consent decree" that went into effect after Twitter under previous management had violated an earlier decree and paid a fine, related to originally insufficient response to two data breaches and user privacy. Possibly Musk wants to disclaim responsibility, as the decree went into effect before he bought the company. Good luck with that.