Elon Bought Twitter- X GON GIVE IT TO YA

[james]

Time to get off the Twitter train before Musk reaches the Hitler was right station

[Nintex]

Who knows what's still hidden in the T W I T T E R  F I L E S

[Nintex]

Elon Musk has built some anti-bot measures into Twitter
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1602027334751571968

He's also going to prosecute scammers globally
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1602035168444833792

CIA spooks can no longer call the censors and get wrecked in the comments
https://twitter.com/mask_bastard/status/1602070015725166592

[james]

FAUCI MURDERED MILLIONS

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1602113254360162304

[BIONIC]

Oh, has the 5G kill switch been activated yet?

I got three motherfucking jabs to accelerate the process and still nothing on my end 

#FauciLiedAndIStillHaventDied

[D3RANG3D]

https://twitter.com/RitaPanahi/status/1602126651730448384

[james]

Wait, if Musk is claiming covid came from a chinese lab...

Bye bye Tesla market there

[HaughtyFrank]

https://twitter.com/jimmykimmel/status/1602071763260608512

https://twitter.com/TheJohnDiMaggio/status/1601962008022163457

https://twitter.com/BillyBaldwin/status/1601996398115033088

"Fuck you for making jokes about pronouns!!"

*proceeds to express this in the form of a joke about pronouns*

[Potato]

Lol, first it was "delete Twitter" and now it's "boycott Tesla".

Do they not see the irony of saying this while sporting a fucking blue check mark that costs $8 month and ensures that Musk's Twatter becomes more financially viable than Soy Twatter ever was?

[benjipwns]

CIA spooks can no longer call the censors and get wrecked in the comments
https://twitter.com/JohnBrennan/status/1601949081189900288

haha this guy lied to Congress about the crimes he was committing and nobody cared or cares, now he's lecturing people on Twitter about having class

[benjipwns]

https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/1601994248370679808

why u searchin JP? (also lmao at Reich)

[benjipwns]

Fair and balanced:

[Occam]

Elon Musk Is a Far-Right Activist

One tweet says it all.
By Charlie Warzel

If there’s one tweet that will tell you everything you need to know about Elon Musk, it’s this one from early this morning:

    My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci
    — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 11, 2022

In five words, Musk manages to mock transgender and nonbinary people, signal his disdain for public-health officials, and send up a flare to far-right shitposters and trolls. The tweet is a cruel and senseless play on pronouns that also invokes the right’s fury toward Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, for what they believe is a government overreach in public-health policy throughout the pandemic and an obfuscation of the coronavirus’s origins. (Fauci, for his part, has said he would cooperate with any possible investigations and has nothing to hide.)

Beyond its stark cruelty, this tweet is incredibly thirsty. As right-wing troll memes go, it is Dad-level, 4chan–Clark Griswold stuff, which is to say it’s desperate engagement bait in the hopes of attracting kudos from the only influencers who give Musk the time of day anymore: right-wing shock jocks. But that is the proper company for the billionaire, because whether or not he wants to admit it, Musk is actively aiding the far right’s political project. He is a right-wing activist.

Currently, Musk’s politics are a subject of debate in the press. On Saturday, The New York Times’ Jeremy W. Peters attempted to offer a nuanced portrait of the Twitter owner’s ideologies, arguing that Musk “continues to defy easy political categorization.” But Peters’ laundry list of Musk’s recent lib-trolling and “woke” scolding—such as Musk’s November recommendation to his millions of followers to vote Republican—undermines the very thesis of the article. The nuance Peters is looking for does not exist: Musk’s actions and associations make a clear case that he is a right-wing reactionary.

Musk, for his part, has maintained that he is a centrist, that his politics have remained unchanged, and that it is the Democratic Party that has veered dramatically leftward. (Musk and Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.) Musk’s logic—that wayward leftism has given a lifelong moderate liberal no choice but to support right-wing causes—is a common trope among far-right activists. It has been employed by many in the so-called Intellectual Dark Web and influencers such as Dave Rubin, Joe Rogan, Glenn Greenwald, and others. The argument stretches far back in American politics. The neoconservative movement in the United States was originated by liberals who grew disillusioned with the Democratic Party, especially in relation to the left’s Vietnam protests.

Beyond Musk’s political affiliations, his actual political convictions—by which I mean the bedrock set of values, ideologies, and organizing principles through which he sees the world and wishes it to be structured—are a slightly different conversation. Here, I tend to agree with The Verge’s Liz Lopatto, who wrote recently that Musk doesn’t really have political beliefs, only personal interests. But one can have vapid or nonexistent political beliefs and still be a political activist. Political activism is about actions. Here’s what those actions look like in practice:

    I am gratified for the reinstatement of my account on Twitter and am grateful to @ElonMusk for his commitment to fairness and free speech.

    God Bless America and thank you, Jesus.
    — Roger Stone (@RogerJStoneJr) December 7, 2022

    I affirm your pronouns Elon.
    — Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (@RepMTG) December 11, 2022

Publicly, Musk appears deeply committed to the right’s culture war against progressivism in most forms. His purchase of Twitter was an explicitly political act couched in the notion of preserving free speech. But Musk’s notion of free speech is a broad course correction that involves amplifying and advancing the interests of right-wing reactionaries while trolling the left. Musk might argue that this is restoring balance to the system, but if we are judging based only on actions and outcomes, it is very hard to see his tenure at Twitter as anything other than a series of policies intended to benefit a particular ideology.

Musk also simply loves palling around with far-right influencers on Twitter. A scroll through his Twitter replies is a rather remarkable document of a man who has (or at least had) more money than any human being in the history of humanity, a fair amount of power, and an endless supply of options for how to spend his time, and who chooses to spend his time as a reply guy for prominent MAGA voices, such as a user who goes by the handle @catturd2 and Turning Points USA’s Charlie Kirk.

In a similar fashion, Musk’s “Twitter Files” project, for which he has been releasing Twitter’s old internal documents concerning controversial content-moderation decisions to independent journalists, is an attention spectacle dressed up in the style of investigative journalism designed to delight Musk’s Twitter friends. As I wrote on Friday, some of the internal conversations and screenshots from Musk’s company are fascinating documents that shed light on the intractable problem of content moderation at scale. But they are presented in a blatantly partisan and misleading manner, and have been released only to journalists who share Musk’s pet ideological issues: that the mainstream media is ethically bankrupt, that social media and most elite institutions are biased and colluding with the government.

The hypocrisy at the center of Musk’s Twitter tenure is crucial to the understanding of Musk’s political activism. He has championed ideals of free-speech maximalism and amnesty to those who’ve offended his rules. Twitter, under his management, has let back on organizers of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia; neo-Nazis such as Andrew Anglin; and January 6–investigation personalities such as Roger Stone. At the same time, Twitter has suspended accounts that have mocked Musk or expressed left-leaning views. Whether intentionally or not, Musk has, in effect, been governing Twitter using the classic Frank Wilhoit maxim: “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” Put differently, the billionaire has been advancing a long-running right-wing political project described recently by my colleague Adam Serwer as a “belief in a new constitutional right. Most important, this new right supersedes the free-speech rights of everyone else: the conservative right to post.”

Why is Musk doing all of this? The answer is reasonably simple. Musk’s far-right activism clearly seems to be, like all else in his life, personally motivated, not by a strong political ideology or value system but, as Lopatto argues, by the accumulation of money and “being perceived as a visionary who will reshape human society.” Musk is interested in preserving the political values and systems that keep him on top as a revered member of culture. It’s a philosophy that the writer John Ganz has described as “bossism” or “bosses on top.” For Musk, right-wing activism serves that role. Musk’s tweets—like his dismissive tweet this morning, or his concerning insinuations that, perhaps, his former trust-and-safety employees did not stop child-exploitation posts for motivated reasons—are cruel for the shallowest reasons: because they are likely to draw engagement to the platform that Musk has plunged into financial uncertainty, due to both his piling on of debt and his alienation of advertisers.

But even as a far-right shitposter, Musk is hapless. Unlike somebody such as Donald Trump, who remains the Twitter troll template, Musk is a try-hard. And although the Twitter shock jocks will happily lap him up because he triggers the libs and serves their purposes, Musk is still seen as a dilettante by the inveterate shitposters and bigots. Over on 4chan, the far-right message board, Musk’s Fauci tweet barely merited discussion. “Elon is just being controversial to drive traffic to his website,” one poster mused. Even in his thirsty attempts to be an edgelord, Musk is failing to be anything other than cringey.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/12/elon-musk-twitter-far-right-activist/672436/

[Potato]

Shitposting on the mentally ill is far right activism now?

[Nintex]

Charlie Warzel finished their piece. This was their watergate moment, meeting deepthroat in the trenchcoat, echoes of Bernstein and Woodward. "Pulitzer?" their assistent texted. With this thought they entered their Tesla and went home.

[Nintex]

https://twitter.com/SteveGoffman/status/1602229546383728640

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1602278477234728960

[Phoenix Dark]

I don't particularly care about his politics but man...dude sounds like a loser playing a role/act. A lot of this stuff sounds more like messaging than any real opinion. Like he has decided that his best route to replacing advertisement $ is to engage an active base of users enough to convince them to purchase Twitter Blue. Which of course is a laughable idea but given how dumb some of his actions have been I wouldn't be stunned if he thinks it's possible. It's either that or hoping a flurry of My Pillow, brain pills, and "buy gold" ads will save him (they won't).

I'm not doubting he's a right winger. I just think the engagement is weird given his claim that twitter should be balanced. Also the liberals who sit around crying about his tweets...why don't you just quit the site? You said you'd quit weeks ago and are still there.

[Cauliflower Of Love]

I heard musk in an operative who infiltrated twitter to shut down the alt right.

[HaughtyFrank]

https://twitter.com/paleofuture/status/1602257153234194432

 

(But also boo at the twitter guy for not knowing that the horn is part of the catchphrase)

[Occam]

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1589414958508691456

https://www.thedailybeast.com/twitter-account-following-elon-musks-private-jet-gets-shadow-banned

Technically it's not a lie, Apartheid Elton only mentioned banning, not shadow banning.

[headwalk]

due to the sheer strength of my convictions i'm not on twitter nor do i own a tesla. if only more people could show the same moral backbone the world would be a much better place.

[Uncle]

https://twitter.com/paleofuture/status/1602257153234194432

 

(But also boo at the twitter guy for not knowing that the horn is part of the catchphrase)

It’s difficult to tell from the videos precisely what percentage of the crowd was booing during the cringeworthy episode, but some on social media estimated it was the vast majority of people in the 18,000-capacity stadium.

 

[james]

This idiot is going up have nightmares about this for the rest of his life

https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1602305628734599168

I'm cackling

Is there a go fund me for the hero that got the camera in

[Occam]

This idiot is going up have nightmares about this for the rest of his life

https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1602305628734599168

I'm cackling

Wonder if he'll start to talk about crowd sizes next.

[james]

Odds of Musk shooting up one of his workplaces have gone up

[Nintex]

Odds of Musk shooting up one of his workplaces have gone up

Not dramatic enough. He'll lock himself up in a SpaceX facility in Venezuela with his crew of weird nerds, Putin and Kanye surrounded by PMC's from the dissolved Russian Empire.
Threatening to crash Starlink sattelites into government buildings overrun by communists and woke power centers.

President Trump sends Secretary of State Tulsi Gabbard and FBI Director Joe Rogan to make a deal.

[Phoenix Dark]

He's not a poster. This dude was not on SA, GAF, or any other forum that shaped our internet careers/experiences. Every time he posts a meme it feels like an old dude trying to appeal to the kids. This is the type of dude we would have trolled the fuck out of. Drinky would have made him commit suicide in 2004.

Look at the way he's moving on stage, and the "I'm rich bitch" thing. How old is that shit come on dude. I like Dave but he looks corny as fuck trying to cape for the guy on stage. Trust/respect your audience more dude. I'm gonna assume if you're going to a Dave show in 2022 you aren't particularly "woke" so that's not the issue. A lot of people view Dave as a rather even handed arbiter of truth. Whether that's accurate or not, a lot of people think that way. Whereas Elon is just a rich jerk.

[Occam]

[Cauliflower Of Love]

This is the type of dude we would have trolled the fuck out of.

Watching the clip, I feel like chappele and co were trolling him and the audience at the same time.

[Kurt Russell]

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1589414958508691456

Technically it's not a lie, Apartheid Elton only mentioned banning, not shadow banning.

I fucking loved Elon, but since you came up with that incredible zinger of a nickname for him, I've done a complete 180 and now I can't stand his fucking guts.

I haven't felt this sure about something since finding out that poopy pants Wendy did indeed have double cooties throughout third grade

[james]

Odds of Musk shooting up one of his workplaces have gone up

Not dramatic enough. He'll lock himself up in a SpaceX facility in Venezuela with his crew of weird nerds, Putin and Kanye surrounded by PMC's from the dissolved Russian Empire.
Threatening to crash Starlink sattelites into government buildings overrun by communists and woke power centers.

President Trump sends Secretary of State Tulsi Gabbard and FBI Director Joe Rogan to make a deal.

People need to start asking him if the starlink stuff can be used as kamikaze drones

[Boredfrom]

I really hope that Chappelle realizes that a person getting flamed at social media doesn’t mean that is without reason or that you audience suddenly stopped being socially conscious.

[Boredfrom]

This idiot is going up have nightmares about this for the rest of his life

https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1602305628734599168

I'm cackling

Is there a go fund me for the hero that got the camera in

Why the fuck did you buy Twitter if you didn’t want to deal with lefties at San Francisco? People knew that Sna Francisco was hellhole even when you were liked by most of the tech world.

[james]

Tesla down 6% while the rest of the market is up.

Go anti-woke go broke

[Occam]

I guess you could say, he seriously misread the room.
Insulting your customer base: Not a savvy business move.

[Occam]

Elton John has left Twitter because of Musk's behavior.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/elton-john-quits-twitter-as-ceo-elon-musk-slurs-gay-former-employee/

[james]

How Nothing Burger are the Twitter files?

Part 5 dropped earlier today.

On r/conservative...

Twitter files part 4 (twitter.com)
submitted 2 days
64 comments


Part 4 was ignored and they didnt even bother to post part 5 lol

In contrast, the video of him getting booed has 20k+ comments on reddit

[benjipwns]

Beyond Musk’s political affiliations, his actual political convictions—by which I mean the bedrock set of values, ideologies, and organizing principles through which he sees the world and wishes it to be structured—are a slightly different conversation. Here, I tend to agree with The Verge’s Liz Lopatto, who wrote recently that Musk doesn’t really have political beliefs, only personal interests. But one can have vapid or nonexistent political beliefs and still be a political activist. Political activism is about actions.
...
The hypocrisy at the center of Musk’s Twitter tenure is crucial to the understanding of Musk’s political activism. He has championed ideals of free-speech maximalism and amnesty to those who’ve offended his rules. Twitter, under his management, has let back on organizers of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia; neo-Nazis such as Andrew Anglin; and January 6–investigation personalities such as Roger Stone. At the same time, Twitter has suspended accounts that have mocked Musk or expressed left-leaning views. Whether intentionally or not, Musk has, in effect, been governing Twitter using the classic Frank Wilhoit maxim: “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” Put differently, the billionaire has been advancing a long-running right-wing political project described recently by my colleague Adam Serwer as a “belief in a new constitutional right. Most important, this new right supersedes the free-speech rights of everyone else: the conservative right to post.”

Why is Musk doing all of this? The answer is reasonably simple. Musk’s far-right activism clearly seems to be, like all else in his life, personally motivated, not by a strong political ideology or value system but, as Lopatto argues, by the accumulation of money and “being perceived as a visionary who will reshape human society.” Musk is interested in preserving the political values and systems that keep him on top as a revered member of culture. It’s a philosophy that the writer John Ganz has described as “bossism” or “bosses on top.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/12/elon-musk-twitter-far-right-activist/672436/

Kinda weird to write a whole article accusing someone of "far-right activism" while spending so much time of your article about this not leveling any specific accusations of any "far-right" views (except some incoherent nonsense from an idiot about how people have a "free speech right" to keep others off a platform they don't own) and instead explaining how you both do and don't think he has any actual "far-right" views.

Also, lol at the "classic" Frank Wilhoit hoax quote showing up yet again in the disinformation-free media.

[benjipwns]

https://twitter.com/LauraLoomer/status/1601755304638963712
https://twitter.com/LauraLoomer/status/1601949667306180608
https://twitter.com/LauraLoomer/status/1601977608199376896
https://twitter.com/LauraLoomer/status/1602117567006605314

 

spoiler (click to show/hide)

https://twitter.com/LauraLoomer/status/1602122181433036800
https://twitter.com/LauraLoomer/status/1602287946094329858
https://twitter.com/LauraLoomer/status/1602315423441117184
https://twitter.com/LauraLoomer/status/1602442395458609152
https://twitter.com/LauraLoomer/status/1602445797609594880
 
 

[close]

[james]

https://mobile.twitter.com/ZoeSchiffer/status/1602469871022854144

[benjipwns]

As first reported on The Bire weeks ago, the first new colored checks are out: underhydrated piss.

[james]

If they were attempting gold, they failed

[who is ted danson?]

As first reported on The Bire weeks ago, the first new colored checks are out: underhydrated piss.
(Image removed from quote.)

wtf elon why can't i buy a gold tick? blue ticks are literal trash

[Occam]

Twitter dissolves Trust and Safety Council
Meanwhile, a former top Twitter official fled his home amid attacks following Musk tweets

Twitter on Monday night abruptly dissolved its Trust and Safety Council, the latest sign that Elon Musk is unraveling years of work and institutions created to make the social network safer and more civil.
Members of Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council received an email with the subject line, “Thank You,” that informed them the council was no longer “the best structure” to bring “external insights into our product and policy development work.”
The email dissolution arrived less than an hour before members of the council were expecting to meet with Twitter executives via Zoom to discuss recent developments
Dozens of civil rights leaders, academics and advocates from around the world had volunteered their time for years to help improve safety on the platform.
“We are grateful for your engagement, advice and collaboration in recent years and wish you every success in the future,” said the email, which was simply signed “Twitter.”
[...]
The Trust and Safety Council unraveled after Musk himself had pitched the creation of a content moderation council that would have weighed in on key content moderation decisions, but later appeared to change his mind about introducing such a body.

Many members were already on the verge of resigning, said Larry Magid, chief executive of ConnectSafely, a Silicon Valley nonprofit that advises consumers about children’s internet use.

“By disbanding it, we got fired instead of quit,” he said. “Elon doesn’t want criticism, and he really doesn’t want the kind of advice he would very likely get from a safety advisory council, which would likely tell him to rehire some of the staff he got rid of, and reinstate some of the rules he got rid of, and turn the company in another direction from where he is turning it.”
Twitter first formed the Trust and Safety Council in 2016, as social networks were coming under greater scrutiny for their role in amplifying hate, terrorism, child exploitation and other problematic content online. The council convened a wide range of civil society groups, think tanks — and even some of Silicon Valley’s biggest critics. Twitter executives would regularly brief the council on new products in development and policies.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, a non-profit that promotes press freedom around the world, decried the dissolution of the council. “Safety online can mean survival offline," the group’s president, Jodie Ginsburg, said in a statement. “Today’s decision to dissolve the Trust and Safety Council is cause for grave concern, particularly as it is coupled with increasingly hostile statements by Twitter owner Elon Musk about journalists and the media.”
[...]
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which was a member of the council, will be “keeping a lookout for how they restructure,” said Gavin Portnoy, the center’s vice president.
“For the moment, we’ll continue to encourage reporting to the CyberTipline and hope to continue to have a seat at the table to address child safety on Twitter,” he said.

Last week, three members of the Trust and Safety Council resigned, warning that the “safety and wellbeing of Twitter’s users are on the decline.”

Musk responded to replies to their tweet announcing their resignation, writing, “It’s a crime that they refused to take action on child exploitation for years!”

Jack Dorsey, the company’s former CEO, responded to Musk, calling the claim “false.” But Musk’s comment nonetheless prompted a wave of threats and harassment at the board members who left the council, as well as some who remained.

Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, and his family were forced from their home after Elon Musk’s tweets misrepresented Roth’s academic writing about sexual activity and children. The online mob also sent threats to people Roth had replied to on Twitter, forcing some of Roth’s family and friends to delete their Twitter accounts, according to a person familiar with Roth’s situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to concerns about Roth’s safety.
Musk’s followers also directed harassment at professors who reviewed the dissertation that Roth wrote in 2016, as well as at his graduate school, the University of Pennsylvania, the person said. The university did not respond to a request for comment.

As head of trust and safety at Twitter, Roth was involved in many of the platform’s decisions about what posts to remove and what accounts to suspend. His communications with other Twitter officials have been posted in recent days as part of what Musk calls the Twitter Files, a series of tweets by journalists Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss.

Musk’s tweets to his tens of millions of followers have for years prompted his supporters to deluge the targets of his ire with online threats — famously, a participant in the rescue of a boys soccer team trapped in a cave in Thailand, whom Musk branded “pedo guy.” But now that Musk owns one of the most powerful social networks in the world and has gutted the company division that previously policed online harassment, the stakes are even higher.

Musk tweets about Roth recalled the QAnon conspiracy movement, which claims incorrectly that Democratic Party leaders direct a child sex abuse network.

“Looks like Yoel is arguing in favor of children being able to access adult Internet services in his PhD thesis,” Musk tweeted Saturday, attaching a screenshot of Roth’s dissertation.
In the text, Roth suggested that services like the gay dating app Grindr should adopt safety strategies to accommodate teenagers using their platforms, rather than drive them out entirely. Musk also commented on a 2010 tweet in which Roth wrote, “Can high school students ever meaningfully consent to sex with their teachers?” Roth then linked to an article about a Washington State Supreme Court ruling about what age students can consent to having sex with their teachers.

Musk’s critical comments about Roth are something of an about-face from his early days at the company, when Roth appeared to be one of the few high-level Twitter executives Musk supported. On Oct. 30, the billionaire tweeted, “I want to be clear that I support Yoel. My sense is that he has high integrity, and we are all entitled to our political beliefs.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/12/12/musk-twitter-harass-yoel-roth/

Looks like Yoel Roth got free speeched out of his home.

[Tasty]

As first reported on The Bire weeks ago, the first new colored checks are out: underhydrated piss.
(Image removed from quote.)

You can do really cool holofoil effects in pure CSS these days.

https://deck-24abcd.netlify.app/

Instead, they went with piss.

[james]

Prediction: Hes going full evilore

Hes going to start using the shadow banning tools on everyone who challenges him. Eventually, someone at twitter will leak pictures showing that a bunch of famous, but reasonable people have been de-boosted.

He will deny it. Claim it was a woke agent inside the org that did it to bring him down.

He will fire another 20+ people

An image of a log will leak showing it was in fact Elon who personally clicked the buttons

At that point is when he pushes the button that starts exploding teslas being driven by his critics

[Nintex]

Roth’s academic writing about sexual activity and children.

Perfectly normal academic writings from Twitter’s former head of trust and safety nothing to see here folks.

[Cauliflower Of Love]

As first reported on The Bire weeks ago, the first new colored checks are out: underhydrated piss.
(Image removed from quote.)

You can do really cool holofoil effects in pure CSS these days.

https://deck-24abcd.netlify.app/

Instead, they went with piss.

They're gonna have to rehire the thousands of twitter engineers to implement this though.

[Potato]

Twitter dissolves Trust and Safety Council
Meanwhile, a former top Twitter official fled his home amid attacks following Musk tweets

Twitter on Monday night abruptly dissolved its Trust and Safety Council, the latest sign that Elon Musk is unraveling years of work and institutions created to make the social network safer and more civil.
Members of Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council received an email with the subject line, “Thank You,” that informed them the council was no longer “the best structure” to bring “external insights into our product and policy development work.”
The email dissolution arrived less than an hour before members of the council were expecting to meet with Twitter executives via Zoom to discuss recent developments
Dozens of civil rights leaders, academics and advocates from around the world had volunteered their time for years to help improve safety on the platform.
“We are grateful for your engagement, advice and collaboration in recent years and wish you every success in the future,” said the email, which was simply signed “Twitter.”
[...]
The Trust and Safety Council unraveled after Musk himself had pitched the creation of a content moderation council that would have weighed in on key content moderation decisions, but later appeared to change his mind about introducing such a body.

Many members were already on the verge of resigning, said Larry Magid, chief executive of ConnectSafely, a Silicon Valley nonprofit that advises consumers about children’s internet use.

“By disbanding it, we got fired instead of quit,” he said. “Elon doesn’t want criticism, and he really doesn’t want the kind of advice he would very likely get from a safety advisory council, which would likely tell him to rehire some of the staff he got rid of, and reinstate some of the rules he got rid of, and turn the company in another direction from where he is turning it.”
Twitter first formed the Trust and Safety Council in 2016, as social networks were coming under greater scrutiny for their role in amplifying hate, terrorism, child exploitation and other problematic content online. The council convened a wide range of civil society groups, think tanks — and even some of Silicon Valley’s biggest critics. Twitter executives would regularly brief the council on new products in development and policies.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, a non-profit that promotes press freedom around the world, decried the dissolution of the council. “Safety online can mean survival offline," the group’s president, Jodie Ginsburg, said in a statement. “Today’s decision to dissolve the Trust and Safety Council is cause for grave concern, particularly as it is coupled with increasingly hostile statements by Twitter owner Elon Musk about journalists and the media.”
[...]
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which was a member of the council, will be “keeping a lookout for how they restructure,” said Gavin Portnoy, the center’s vice president.
“For the moment, we’ll continue to encourage reporting to the CyberTipline and hope to continue to have a seat at the table to address child safety on Twitter,” he said.

Last week, three members of the Trust and Safety Council resigned, warning that the “safety and wellbeing of Twitter’s users are on the decline.”

Musk responded to replies to their tweet announcing their resignation, writing, “It’s a crime that they refused to take action on child exploitation for years!”

Jack Dorsey, the company’s former CEO, responded to Musk, calling the claim “false.” But Musk’s comment nonetheless prompted a wave of threats and harassment at the board members who left the council, as well as some who remained.

Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, and his family were forced from their home after Elon Musk’s tweets misrepresented Roth’s academic writing about sexual activity and children. The online mob also sent threats to people Roth had replied to on Twitter, forcing some of Roth’s family and friends to delete their Twitter accounts, according to a person familiar with Roth’s situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to concerns about Roth’s safety.
Musk’s followers also directed harassment at professors who reviewed the dissertation that Roth wrote in 2016, as well as at his graduate school, the University of Pennsylvania, the person said. The university did not respond to a request for comment.

As head of trust and safety at Twitter, Roth was involved in many of the platform’s decisions about what posts to remove and what accounts to suspend. His communications with other Twitter officials have been posted in recent days as part of what Musk calls the Twitter Files, a series of tweets by journalists Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss.

Musk’s tweets to his tens of millions of followers have for years prompted his supporters to deluge the targets of his ire with online threats — famously, a participant in the rescue of a boys soccer team trapped in a cave in Thailand, whom Musk branded “pedo guy.” But now that Musk owns one of the most powerful social networks in the world and has gutted the company division that previously policed online harassment, the stakes are even higher.

Musk tweets about Roth recalled the QAnon conspiracy movement, which claims incorrectly that Democratic Party leaders direct a child sex abuse network.

“Looks like Yoel is arguing in favor of children being able to access adult Internet services in his PhD thesis,” Musk tweeted Saturday, attaching a screenshot of Roth’s dissertation.
In the text, Roth suggested that services like the gay dating app Grindr should adopt safety strategies to accommodate teenagers using their platforms, rather than drive them out entirely. Musk also commented on a 2010 tweet in which Roth wrote, “Can high school students ever meaningfully consent to sex with their teachers?” Roth then linked to an article about a Washington State Supreme Court ruling about what age students can consent to having sex with their teachers.

Musk’s critical comments about Roth are something of an about-face from his early days at the company, when Roth appeared to be one of the few high-level Twitter executives Musk supported. On Oct. 30, the billionaire tweeted, “I want to be clear that I support Yoel. My sense is that he has high integrity, and we are all entitled to our political beliefs.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/12/12/musk-twitter-harass-yoel-roth/

Looks like Yoel Roth got free speeched out of his home.

Twitter blue check marks made it very clear that these people were doing a "very bad job©®™" at making Twatter a "safe space" though...now we are led to believe they were essential?

[james]

Moderated website? Pedo porn
Unmoderated website? Believe it or not, pedo porn

[Phoenix Dark]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/13/technology/elon-musk-twitter-shakeup.html

Mr. Musk appears to be gearing up for legal battles at Twitter, which he purchased in October for $44 billion, according to seven people familiar with internal conversations. He and his team have revamped Twitter’s legal department and pushed out one of his closest advisers in the process. They have also instructed employees to not pay vendors in anticipation of potential litigation, the people said.

---

To cut costs, Twitter has not paid rent for its San Francisco headquarters or any of its global offices for weeks, three people close to the company said. Twitter has also refused to pay a $197,725 bill for private charter flights made the week of Mr. Musk’s takeover, according to a copy of a lawsuit filed in New Hampshire District Court and obtained by The New York Times.
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.

They're broke and he's about to lose a bunch of court cases for nothing.

[james]

Lol whats his argument? "I didnt sign the rent agreement so its not valid?"

Coming from the "everyone in the office" crowd? Get fucked

[Phoenix Dark]

Good luck with that in SF. BTW I think this is the first step in him relocating their HQ to Texas or Florida.

[Nintex]

Good luck with that in SF. BTW I think this is the first step in him relocating their HQ to Texas or Florida Joe Rogan's basement

[Tasty]

Good luck with that in SF. BTW I think this is the first step in him relocating their HQ to Texas or Florida.

Just imagining tomorrow's headline: "Musk to relocate Twitter HQ to upscale Manhattan office valued at $2.7 bil"

[Nintex]

Good luck with that in SF. BTW I think this is the first step in him relocating their HQ to Texas or Florida.

Just imagining tomorrow's headline: "Musk to relocate Twitter HQ to upscale Manhattan office valued at $2.7 bil"

Twitter relocating to Trump Tower

[HaughtyFrank]

Trump ghosting twitter and Musk is still the funniest thing
 So much worry and panic and then it turns out that this was the first time ever Trump shows integrity

[Occam]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/13/technology/elon-musk-twitter-shakeup.html

Mr. Musk appears to be gearing up for legal battles at Twitter, which he purchased in October for $44 billion, according to seven people familiar with internal conversations. He and his team have revamped Twitter’s legal department and pushed out one of his closest advisers in the process. They have also instructed employees to not pay vendors in anticipation of potential litigation, the people said.

---

To cut costs, Twitter has not paid rent for its San Francisco headquarters or any of its global offices for weeks, three people close to the company said. Twitter has also refused to pay a $197,725 bill for private charter flights made the week of Mr. Musk’s takeover, according to a copy of a lawsuit filed in New Hampshire District Court and obtained by The New York Times.
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.

They're broke and he's about to lose a bunch of court cases for nothing.

The good old stable-genius strategy of not paying your bills to "cut costs".
Blatantly illegal, and quite amazing how the Former Richest Guy won't be liable to pay the debt with his personal fortune. Got to love the system.

[benjipwns]

You'd think a multibillion dollar company would have more ownership over their own headquarters. Off the top of my head I couldn't name another one that I would suspect doesn't own the building especially one they've been in for a decade.

edit: Oh, they don't even rent all the space in it. And failed to take over Uber's old building just down the street previously. Not at all another strange thing about the company.

[Potato]

No matter how bad Musk fucks up, he will still be more competent than the idiots who ran Twatter before him.