You know that obscene revolting troll who comes by every once in a while with a new pseudonym, who then drops a torrent of racist, anti-semitic, misogynistic, homophobic, and transphobic comments? And then I have to take a few minutes to delete every one of his abusive comments, and ban another pseudonym?
Imagine if I didn’t carry out that last step. Most of you wouldn’t be coming back, and the nastiness would pile up without end until all value in the conversation was lost. Curating and policing the comments section is an essential part of running a site.
Or imagine a grocery store where no workers responded to those “clean up on aisle 5” requests. It would quickly become a filthy, neglected garbage dump that no one would want to shop at.
You can stop imagining. All you need to do is observe Twitter in the near future.
An emboldened cast of anonymous trolls spewed racist slurs and Nazi memes onto Twitter in the hours after billionaire industrialist Elon Musk took over the social network Thursday, raising fears of how his pledge of unrestricted free speech could fuel a new wave of online hate.
Twitter has struggled to enforce its rules against harassment and extremism, and the company has not yet published any broad-scale changes to its content-moderation policies.
But Musk, a self-described “free speech absolutist,” has fiercely criticized the company’s previous leaders as overly rigid and suppressive and said he would work to overturn some of the company’s main enforcement mechanisms, such as indefinitely suspending accounts.
Already. The trolls leapt into furious masturbatory action at the first opportunity.
“Elon now controls twitter. Unleash the racial slurs. K—S AND N—–S,” said one account, using slurs for Jews and Black people. “I can freely express how much I hate n—–s … now, thank you elon,” another said.
Thanks so much, Elon.
One account, created this month, included a Nazi swastika as its profile picture and retweeted quotes from Musk alongside antisemitic memes. Another tweet, showing a video montage glorifying Nazi Germany with the comment, “I hear that there have been some changes around here,” was liked more than 400 times.
Racial slurs were posted rampantly overnight. One single-word tweet, showing a single racial slur in all capital letters, was retweeted more than 500 times and liked more than 4,000 times. It was tweeted at 9 p.m. Thursday night and remained online nearly 12 hours later.
Twitter was never particularly responsive to racist trolling, and I would guess that now, when the employees are looking at only a 1 in 4 chance of being retained, they are even less motivated to do a cleanup. I can tell you as someone who maintains a teeny-tiny site on the internet, keeping it tidy and functional requires constant vigilance.
Hey, advertisers! Unless you’re selling MAGA hats, Confederate flags, and chloroquinone — that is, those kinds of trolls are your customers — I don’t think Twitter is going to be a useful medium for long. The only good part of that sentence is the idea that Musk just burned up $44 billion dollars.
Wonder how advertisers are going to like the n word app pic.twitter.com/c1UizfHRmQ
— The Serfs (@theserfstv) October 28, 2022
Noted.
It seems it’s about time I take my leave of that site. I’ve been there long enough.
Also, Musk is very happy to silence people who criticize him.
He is not even the freezepeach absolutist he claims to be.
I had a twitter account for a while. I stopped mainlining the tweety-bird exactly a year ago and my life is immeasurably better. I don’t doom scroll an hour (plus!) of my morning away.
Granted, there are a lot of people I can no longer talk to, but the upsides are huge.
Louis
Happy to say I deleted Twitter from my phone when Elon ‘Mush’ announced his bid on it months ago.
Now I’ll just circle back around and delete my account completely…
Breakfast cereal and tea in the same grocery store aisle? I suspect that photo may be staged.
I am assume it will be allowed to post on Tw*tter that Musk is a “pedo guy.”
@ ^ Reginald Selkirk : An experiment worth trying. Shall we see?
I wonder what even asking on twitter : You claim to be a “..free speech absolutist” but what about when people critiicise you will get? Esp tagging Musk in that..?
Also posting legally actionable libel, slander, hate speech & state secrets – or corporate Musk company secrets will get you?
Not that I’d really reccomend postng any of those – ‘cept maybe the latter..
PZ said, “Musk just burned up $44 billion dollars.” He’s right and I’m glad. The only problem is, that money went to enrich more million/billionaires!
Mush (thanks for the appropriate ‘handle’ for him, heffe7) seems to be ever more freakish in his thoughts and actions. I really appreciate what the Tesla founders and engineers did. But, Mush is not a tech creator, he just bought it and capitalized it.
Twittler, just like all the other social media sites is just, to paraphrase Marx, opium for the masses. Even though some worthwhile people post there, we avoid the corrosive influence of social media.
Yes, I do &, yes, I can.
Although .. ya reckon there’s only one in that category? Think there might be a few more than just that yeah?
@StevoR, you have a gift for sarcastic understatement. When (not if) you look around society, everywhere, seems to be flooded with trolls (both on line and IRL).
I’ve long found that the secret to avoiding harassment from trolls and the like is to remain obscure and unknown. Sort of like how abject poverty can offer some protection from being robbed, at least in theory. No, it’s not much fun, and can wear on the ego a bit, but it’s mostly worked for me.
But, as we’ve seen the last few years, the racists, misogynists, homophobes, transphobes and general asswipes really don’t require much more than tacit approval or acceptance before they start openly spewing their toxic shit all over the place. Just having Donald Trump in the White House being Donald Trump gave them the confidence to come out of the shadows and proclaim that their “patriotism” is so righteous that laws and rules of conduct no longer apply and things like kidnapping a governor and hanging a vice president are justified and now even normalized.
So, yeah, Elon’s buying the platform is probably enough to turn on the firehose of fuckwaddery, which might even reach my quiet little corner. And I’m too old for that shit.
Could we please refer to him as “the chief twat of Twitter”?
That sounds good but isn’t quite correct.
Musk used a huge amount of OPM, Other People’s Money.
According to this source, the twitter deal was financed by OPM.
Musk only owns 9.6% of twitter.
So he isn’t even a majority shareholder.
Two of the OPMs are Larry Ellison and a high ranking Saudi prince.
So if twitter goes to zero, Musk is only out $4 billion. Everyone else is out $40 billion.
Russia is what you get when internet trolls run a country.
The leadership of Russia could be described many ways but calling them trolls is definitely one of them.
Mike the Mad Biologist has some thoughts on the twitter situation.
Personally I don’t have an account there, but there are a few researchers I follow the ‘hard’ way ie occasionally checking what is the latest in their stream. As long as they are there I’ll keep checking, I guess.
@feralboy12, your method provides a lot of protection. But, as you mentioned and I have experienced, that “might even reach my quiet little corner. And I’m too old for that shit.” As I say, “Keep your head down and don’t poke the bears”
@raven, good point. Most million/billionaires, Mush and tRUMP included, use other people’s money, so win or lose they gain. Silly, me. My conscience would never let me be that abusive of others.
I’m trying to find out who the OPMs are that financing Elon Musk’s deal.
So I can laugh at them if twitter goes to zero.
So far, there isn’t a list in one place, but here is more.
.1. OK, it is Bank of America, technology firms, investment banks, and hedge funds.
A whole bunch of people are in on the deal.
.2. So what is the plan here?
“…that debt could be hard to sell on to investors, meaning the banks may have to hold onto the debt.
They are all going to dump their twitter stock into the stock market or anywhere they can.
The ultimate bagholders are going to be anyone who holds on to twitter stock for too long, if it does indeed head for zero. A lot of these will be pension funds and retail shareholders.
I never did get a Twitter or Facebook account. I thought about it a few times but neither site actually had anything worthwhile for me. Now I’m thinking about just blocking twitter.com entirely. It occurs to me that Elon isn’t rich because he’s such a selfless guy. He’ll want his money back really fast. So whatever data Twitter gets from your browsing habits (the links to share something on Twitter that you see on other sites all contain trackers from Twitter unless you have an add-on like Privacy Badger that blocks them)? Yeah, there’s going to be a fire sale on that stuff.
Also as far as nicknames go… Mush is good but I think I prefer Mook. It needles his obnoxiously obvious sense of self importance.
@2
as far as I can see all the conservative free speech advocates are like that one and all.
never was interested much in any social media sights but it will be interesting to see what will happen.
any acquisition that carries that much financing will be under a lot of pressure from their creditors so I would expect a lot of changes that will generate cash in the short term but not a lot of long term strategic improvements. My guess is a long term slide to the bottom as its parasitic nature becomes more obviously predatory.
@raven #12:
But if the Saudis decide they’ve been conned, Musk gets a visit from a gang of chainsaw enthusiasts.
@19
probably a little safer then conning Putin.
raven: Twitter can shut down tomorrow and the pension funds and individual shareholders who sold their shares today will still have $54.20 per share in their accounts. Nobody is dumping TWTR on the stock market, it’s not listed anymore. X owns it all, and is owned largely by Musk plus a few other investors.
Musk put up a huge amount of money — the shares he bought earlier (which he bought for a lot less than $4 billion) plus the $20+ billion he put up today. A huge amount of money in absolute terms, but a small part of his fortune. There’s a few other investors in on the deal, and a bunch of banks holding debt. Much of that debt is against Musk’s Tesla shares so those loans are pretty low-risk.
Can I recommend this excellent piece? The Wile E. Coyote supergenius who just bought twitter is probably going to take a bath on his purchase, and here’s the reasons why:
https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/28/23428132/elon-musk-twitter-acquisition-problems-speech-moderation
Just to add, twitter is not even that big a social network:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/
I would claim that twitter isn’t just social media or a social network.
It can be and sometimes is to be sure.
It is also a news media or outlet for breaking news.
Since it has a word limit you can get the information in a short burst.
In this case, what is important is not the number of users but who they are.
Governments, corporations, wire services, a lot of mass media, various organizations etc.. all use twitter to get their information out quickly.
That is the only reason I read twitter.
You can get some quality news and some quality analysis without too much trouble.
That is how I keep track of Ukrainian news media, helpful because of course, I don’t read Ukrainian.
I don’t even have a twitter account. You don’t need an account to read a lot of it, unlike Facebook, where most of the info requires an account.
It could be with Elon Musk working his magic (this is sarcasm), twitter will now be a slow motion train wreck.
Yeah, I see that now.
This is a leveraged buyout so the shareholders got paid and went away and the stock isn’t trading any more.
I’m still trying to figure out who financed the leveraged buyout though.
According to the verge here, $13 billion in debt is held by Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, and Barclays.
They want to sell that debt on but the market for it isn’t there right now.
The whole idea of leveraged buyouts is to get rid of the assets sooner or later, hopefully for a profit.
If I recall correctly, what they often do is strip all the assets out of the company and then sell the shell. Sometimes after the asset transfers, they go public again and sell shares.
Whoever is in on the twitter deal are all very smart people.
I’m sure they have some strategies for making money on this deal, and they may well be rather dodgy at that.
I’ve said for years “Twitter is for twits”. In that regard, it is the most aptly named of social media enterprises, unless you spell that other one with an R: Farcebook.
Also, I do not have to imagine what a free-for-all site looks like. I just go to my local TV station’s web site and read the comments. It’s an absolute mess; A cesspool of misinformation spread by people whose ignorance of reality is superseded only by their arrogance and lack of empathy.
But if the Saudis decide they’ve been conned, Musk gets a visit from a gang of chainsaw enthusiasts.
That won’t happen. That Saudi prince is buying himself a propaganda-organ/intel-asset, not a venture that’s supposed to make a monetary profit. If he does get a money return, that would just be icing on the cake; and if it all tanks (as I really REALLY hope it does), he’ll just write it off as a standard risk of the intel/propaganda business. Remember, this is the same regime that bankrolled Jared Kushner to the tune of (IIRC) ~$2B, despite their own fund-management experts rating him “unsatisfactory in all aspects.”
Xpost from Infinite Thread
This didn’t take long.
Russia unblocked twitter after Elon Musk bought it.
Elon Musk leans towards Russia, which makes this not too surprising.
It also is yet again, another reason to stay away from…Elon Musk.
Well, this Twitter deal may be another example that being rich doesn’t mean you are good at business. If, as expected, Musk grinds Twitter into dust, then all of these ‘expert’ investors and bankers will lose billions.
How do the rich get rich? Inheritance, luck, corruption, …
Tempted to finally sign up a twitter account just so I can delete it, but why bother?
I expect Musk to lose a pile of money on this but it’s not going to hurt him, unfortunately.
.. Exploitation, theft, old boys networks, bullying..
@28. whywhywhy ^ natch.
According to The Grauniad, the fired execs will be getting around $120mn in golden parachute payouts. So, no tears shed for that lot. The shareholders might not be so happy, though.
Meanwhile, facebook’s stock valuation is swirling around the toilet. A couple of 20% and 25% drops and it’s junk. We should have a dead pool to try to peg when twitter and meta get delisted. 2 years maybe? 5 at the outside.
Like ELON MUSK? What it may lack in racialness, it makes up hugely in slurness.
@#5 That’s the usual grocery store outlay in my neck of the woods. At least in StupidStore.
Hmm.. Not exactly what I was expecting from Musk here :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-30/elon-musk-proposes-different-versions-of-twitter/101594552
Will be interesting to see if this actually happens and which version is more popular here..
FWIW. I still think facebook has its uses and like it as a way of sharing all sorts of stuff as problematic as it is in some areas.
^ PS. See also now :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-31/elon-musk-deleted-tweet-paul-pelosi-attack-social-media/101596122
Seems Qlon Musk has descended a fair way down the Conspiricist rabbit hole which is rather worrying given his wealth and influence.Seems politically he’s devolved badly lately :
Source : Wikipedia Elon Musk page. Politics sub-heading.
If the Democratic party is one of “division & hate” what the hell does that make the Repugs?
Also on Twitter (& via fb meme) :
Especially not that last word I’d say.
^ Typos mine of course – If Nazis rejoice when you take over a social media company, you’re not a free speech hero.” Middle Age Riot.
Looks like the Twit of the Year has interesting plans with his new toy.
He plans to fire 50% of the employees before they can get this years benefits and the software developers have to implement a “new feature” in the next week or they will get the boot too.
Looks like Twitter might crash faster than a Tesla on autopilot.
And the Techbros still celebrate him, because allegedly Twitter is completely overstaffed and the employees are all lazy incompetents and he is better without them. We’ll see.