The ongoing Elon Twitter saga: "insert demographic" melts down

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Demon said:
I have said before I’m charitable enough to say they had good intentions based on the fake Russian collusion claims back in 2016, but the problem with subjective decisions they occasionally go wrong.
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How many times does it need to be said. Its been proven Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump. Members of Trump's team including his own son spoke to and passed information to agents of Russian intelligence. Just because Trump didn't get on the phone to Putin doesn't mean he didn't welcome and encourage their interference in the election.

Of the back of that knowledge its easy to see why FB and Twitter feared they were seeing a repeat of the Wikileaks email drop with the laptop story and that is absolutely what Rudy was trying to achieve with it.
 
C Kent said:
Remove topess pictures of an adult male but leave up child porn. Just twitter things
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That is just pure whataboutism. No one is defending child porn on Twitter. It is shameful it wasn't taken dealt with as the absolute top priority.

I've not seen the pictures of Hunter and have no interest in searching for them but all social media companies should be protecting private citizens from such intrusion into their private lives. The story can be told without publishing such pictures. I'd argue him being a drug addict is none of our business, it seems clear Don Jnr is a coke head but again its none of our business until he is either running for office or taking a job where he is paid from the public purse.
 
Colonel_Klinck said:
I've not seen the pictures of Hunter and have no interest in searching for them but all social media companies should be protecting private citizens from such intrusion into their private lives. The story can be told without publishing such pictures. I'd argue him being a drug addict is none of our business, it seems clear Don Jnr is a coke head but again its none of our business until he is either running for office or taking a job where he is paid from the public purse
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Agreed. But what's telling, is that they knowingly ignore Don junior, or even ivanka trump and all that happened to her during trumps term, and then go after nothing story about hunter.

If you told those users what has supposedly happened but don't say which names it happened to, so left ivanka, hunter etc out, and got them to list the most important ones to look into, they'd pick hunter as the least important, but to them, it's the only important one.

Very telling.

And its from the typical "I'm not right wing, I'm moderate etc etc, but I wear all the right wing clothes, get suckered in by all the right wing talking points, and get used by the right wing leaders to spread nonsense"
 
Sankari said:
Twitter's ad revenue has plunged 80% below expectations during the World Cup. Musk really is an expert at losing other people's money.
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That story is not good reading for Twitter or Elon. Its almost like he doesn't have a clue how to deal with advertisers and everyone that did has either been sacked or has resigned.

Full article

The World Cup has historically been a boon for Twitter, bringing in record traffic and an influx of advertising dollars.
But this time, when the global soccer tournament started on Nov. 20, Twitter’s U.S. ad revenue was running at 80 percent below internal expectations for that week, three people with knowledge of the figures said.
In tandem, Twitter was rapidly cutting its revenue projections. The company previously forecast that it would generate $1.4 billion in the last three months of the year, down from $1.6 billion a year ago because of the global economic downturn. But as Twitter kept missing its weekly advertising targets, that number slid to $1.3 billion, then to $1.1 billion, two people said.
Elon Musk, Twitter’s new owner, has warned repeatedly that his social media company faces dire financial straits. Interviews with seven former employees and internal documents seen by The New York Times paint a fuller picture of Twitter’s financial woes.

Many of the company’s troubles can be traced to Mr. Musk’s takeover in late October. Since then, advertisers — which provide 90 percent of Twitter’s revenue — have paused some spending on the platform, citing concerns about how Mr. Musk might change the service. The billionaire, a self-described “free speech absolutist,” has reinstated banned accounts and dropped at least one misinformation policy. Hate speech on Twitter has soared in recent weeks, researchers found.
At the same time, Mr. Musk has alternated between wooing advertisers and blasting them. Last month, he threatened a “thermonuclear name & shame” of brands that halted their spending on Twitter. This week, he briefly picked a fight with Apple, which was on track to spend more than $180 million on Twitter ads this year, three people said.

Twitter’s advertising business has become so fraught that it has started offering brands additional incentives. Some brands are committing only to promotions for events, like the Super Bowl, with heavy discounts or clauses that allow them to back out for any reason, according to internal documents and three people familiar with the efforts. Automakers are among the most concerned advertisers, with General Motors raising questions about whether Twitter’s data would be shared with Mr. Musk’s car company, Tesla, three people said.
“There hasn’t been any level of trust from us with Twitter, especially with the whiplash we’ve experienced over the last four weeks,” said Ellie Bamford, the head of global media at R/GA, a creative agency. Last month, IPG, R/GA’s parent and one of the world’s largest advertising companies, recommended that its clients pause their advertising on Twitter.

Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.
Even before he completed his deal for Twitter, advertisers began expressing their doubts. Twitter had 3,980 advertisers in May, the month after Mr. Musk agreed to buy the company, according to MediaRadar, an advertising intelligence company. By October, it had 2,315 advertisers, the fewest of any month until that point.
Advertisers’ confidence in Twitter was shaken further when its sales and advertising team turned over after Mr. Musk took charge. Leslie Berland and J.P. Maheu, who were responsible for maintaining key relationships with some top brands, left last month. Robin Wheeler, a U.S. ad executive who briefly resigned before staying on, was then fired after Mr. Musk asked her to cut employees from the sales team and she refused, two people said.
Dara Nasr, who oversaw Twitter’s European ad operations, also left last month. The company’s ad sales in Europe, the Middle East and Africa were down more than 50 percent the week of Nov. 21 from the prior week, two people familiar with the numbers said. The Platformer newsletter previously reported Twitter’s figures for the region.

Mr. Musk also made good on his threat to call out advertisers that paused their spending. On Monday, he posted several barbed tweets about Apple and its chief executive, Tim Cook, noting that the iPhone maker had pulled back its advertising on Twitter. Apple, which does not advertise on Instagram or Facebook, had committed more than $150 million on Twitter ads in 2022 and had exceeded that with more than $180 million in advertising spending, three people said.

But Apple temporarily paused that after a shooting left five people dead at an L.G.B.T.Q. nightclub in Colorado Springs on Nov. 19, two people said. Major brands tend to dial back advertising when there are shootings or disasters so their promotions do not appear next to news or tweets about the tragedies.

Mr. Musk suggested that Apple’s reduced advertising would lead to censorship on Twitter. “Apple has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter,” he tweeted. “Do they hate free speech in America?”

On Wednesday, Mr. Cook and Mr. Musk met at Apple’s Silicon Valley headquarters. Mr. Musk later tweeted that they had cleared up a “misunderstanding.” Apple did not respond to requests for comment.
Ms. Bamford said Mr. Musk’s behavior was beyond the pale. “There is no way to shame someone into advertising in an environment that is controversial and dangerous,” she said. “Yelling at people is not a plan.”
Other advertisers are concerned that their Twitter advertising data might be shared with Mr. Musk’s other companies. G.M., the first brand to announce that it had paused its Twitter advertising in late October, sought assurances that its data would not be shared with Tesla, two people said. It also asked for a way to keep its information separate from systems that Tesla’s engineers had access to, they said, given that Mr. Musk had brought Tesla employees into Twitter to navigate the ownership change.
“It’s important for us to ensure our advertising strategies and data can be safely managed by a platform owned by a competitor,” a G.M. spokesman said in a statement.
Twitter has recently offered some brands additional incentives to place ads on the service, according to an ad agency that received a proposal from the company. The larger the amount of money spent on the platform, the more Twitter will amplify those ads, according to the proposal, which was viewed by The Times.
Morning Brew, a business newsletter site, reported earlier on the incentives.
Twitter’s ad sales teams are now trying to confirm commitments for the Super Bowl in February. PepsiCo, whose ad agency has recommended that clients pause advertising on the platform, sought the ability to opt out of advertising at any point, one person familiar with the negotiations said. Pepsi did not respond to a request for comment.
 
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Demon said:
Just checked the link, good synopsis, but just that first point, on the bipartisan content removal requests, you conveniently left off the ‘however’ caveat..

And the key part of the timeline was that NYP (the primary source) was banned and would only be unbanned if they deleted all related tweets, so could only be unbanned if they where gagged, so to say it was only 48 hours seems a bit odd in terms of the events since it took weeks for that to be conveniently sorted out.
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It's bizarre to try and paint this as a "nothing burger", they had politicians on both sides questioning it, from the internal comms some of the twitter staff knew the justification was total BS and pushed back on it and it was all done under that censorship/head of legal woman Vijaya Gadde, Jack didn't even know about it initially and then had to take some heat for it.

There was a reasonable objection to the hacked materials policy itself too (even though it was misapplied here) - they're willing to censor a US newspaper's account over something like this, how does that policy apply when a newspaper reports on some serious government behaviour via a leak or a hack etc. ?

Censoring the Biden nudes is fine, censoring everything related to that laptop is definitely not fine!

This also illustrates how the bias creeps in, when they've allow for all these back channels to get stuff dealt with quickly then they've ended up skewing things in favour of one side.


One thing that is interesting is the reaction to Taibbi now that he's been involved in criticising the good guys; search for "PR" and "richest" and you'll get a bunch of the same messaging repeated:




/s
 
unwashed potato! said:
Agreed. But what's telling, is that they knowingly ignore Don junior, or even ivanka trump and all that happened to her during trumps term, and then go after nothing story about hunter.

If you told those users what has supposedly happened but don't say which names it happened to, so left ivanka, hunter etc out, and got them to list the most important ones to look into, they'd pick hunter as the least important, but to them, it's the only important one.

Very telling.

And its from the typical "I'm not right wing, I'm moderate etc etc, but I wear all the right wing clothes, get suckered in by all the right wing talking points, and get used by the right wing leaders to spread nonsense"
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Colonel_Klinck said:
That is just pure whataboutism.
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Colonel_Klinck said:
That is just pure whataboutism. No one is defending child porn on Twitter. It is shameful it wasn't taken dealt with as the absolute top priority.

I've not seen the pictures of Hunter and have no interest in searching for them but all social media companies should be protecting private citizens from such intrusion into their private lives. The story can be told without publishing such pictures. I'd argue him being a drug addict is none of our business, it seems clear Don Jnr is a coke head but again its none of our business until he is either running for office or taking a job where he is paid from the public purse.
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Just highlighting where their bread is buttered that's all :)
 
Colonel_Klinck said:
That story is not good reading for Twitter or Elon. Its almost like he doesn't have a clue how to deal with advertisers and everyone that did has either been sacked or has resigned.

Full article

The World Cup has historically been a boon for Twitter, bringing in record traffic and an influx of advertising dollars.
But this time, when the global soccer tournament started on Nov. 20, Twitter’s U.S. ad revenue was running at 80 percent below internal expectations for that week, three people with knowledge of the figures said.
In tandem, Twitter was rapidly cutting its revenue projections. The company previously forecast that it would generate $1.4 billion in the last three months of the year, down from $1.6 billion a year ago because of the global economic downturn. But as Twitter kept missing its weekly advertising targets, that number slid to $1.3 billion, then to $1.1 billion, two people said.
Elon Musk, Twitter’s new owner, has warned repeatedly that his social media company faces dire financial straits. Interviews with seven former employees and internal documents seen by The New York Times paint a fuller picture of Twitter’s financial woes.

Many of the company’s troubles can be traced to Mr. Musk’s takeover in late October. Since then, advertisers — which provide 90 percent of Twitter’s revenue — have paused some spending on the platform, citing concerns about how Mr. Musk might change the service. The billionaire, a self-described “free speech absolutist,” has reinstated banned accounts and dropped at least one misinformation policy. Hate speech on Twitter has soared in recent weeks, researchers found.
At the same time, Mr. Musk has alternated between wooing advertisers and blasting them. Last month, he threatened a “thermonuclear name & shame” of brands that halted their spending on Twitter. This week, he briefly picked a fight with Apple, which was on track to spend more than $180 million on Twitter ads this year, three people said.

Twitter’s advertising business has become so fraught that it has started offering brands additional incentives. Some brands are committing only to promotions for events, like the Super Bowl, with heavy discounts or clauses that allow them to back out for any reason, according to internal documents and three people familiar with the efforts. Automakers are among the most concerned advertisers, with General Motors raising questions about whether Twitter’s data would be shared with Mr. Musk’s car company, Tesla, three people said.
“There hasn’t been any level of trust from us with Twitter, especially with the whiplash we’ve experienced over the last four weeks,” said Ellie Bamford, the head of global media at R/GA, a creative agency. Last month, IPG, R/GA’s parent and one of the world’s largest advertising companies, recommended that its clients pause their advertising on Twitter.

Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.
Even before he completed his deal for Twitter, advertisers began expressing their doubts. Twitter had 3,980 advertisers in May, the month after Mr. Musk agreed to buy the company, according to MediaRadar, an advertising intelligence company. By October, it had 2,315 advertisers, the fewest of any month until that point.
Advertisers’ confidence in Twitter was shaken further when its sales and advertising team turned over after Mr. Musk took charge. Leslie Berland and J.P. Maheu, who were responsible for maintaining key relationships with some top brands, left last month. Robin Wheeler, a U.S. ad executive who briefly resigned before staying on, was then fired after Mr. Musk asked her to cut employees from the sales team and she refused, two people said.
Dara Nasr, who oversaw Twitter’s European ad operations, also left last month. The company’s ad sales in Europe, the Middle East and Africa were down more than 50 percent the week of Nov. 21 from the prior week, two people familiar with the numbers said. The Platformer newsletter previously reported Twitter’s figures for the region.

Mr. Musk also made good on his threat to call out advertisers that paused their spending. On Monday, he posted several barbed tweets about Apple and its chief executive, Tim Cook, noting that the iPhone maker had pulled back its advertising on Twitter. Apple, which does not advertise on Instagram or Facebook, had committed more than $150 million on Twitter ads in 2022 and had exceeded that with more than $180 million in advertising spending, three people said.

But Apple temporarily paused that after a shooting left five people dead at an L.G.B.T.Q. nightclub in Colorado Springs on Nov. 19, two people said. Major brands tend to dial back advertising when there are shootings or disasters so their promotions do not appear next to news or tweets about the tragedies.

Mr. Musk suggested that Apple’s reduced advertising would lead to censorship on Twitter. “Apple has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter,” he tweeted. “Do they hate free speech in America?”

On Wednesday, Mr. Cook and Mr. Musk met at Apple’s Silicon Valley headquarters. Mr. Musk later tweeted that they had cleared up a “misunderstanding.” Apple did not respond to requests for comment.
Ms. Bamford said Mr. Musk’s behavior was beyond the pale. “There is no way to shame someone into advertising in an environment that is controversial and dangerous,” she said. “Yelling at people is not a plan.”
Other advertisers are concerned that their Twitter advertising data might be shared with Mr. Musk’s other companies. G.M., the first brand to announce that it had paused its Twitter advertising in late October, sought assurances that its data would not be shared with Tesla, two people said. It also asked for a way to keep its information separate from systems that Tesla’s engineers had access to, they said, given that Mr. Musk had brought Tesla employees into Twitter to navigate the ownership change.
“It’s important for us to ensure our advertising strategies and data can be safely managed by a platform owned by a competitor,” a G.M. spokesman said in a statement.
Twitter has recently offered some brands additional incentives to place ads on the service, according to an ad agency that received a proposal from the company. The larger the amount of money spent on the platform, the more Twitter will amplify those ads, according to the proposal, which was viewed by The Times.
Morning Brew, a business newsletter site, reported earlier on the incentives.
Twitter’s ad sales teams are now trying to confirm commitments for the Super Bowl in February. PepsiCo, whose ad agency has recommended that clients pause advertising on the platform, sought the ability to opt out of advertising at any point, one person familiar with the negotiations said. Pepsi did not respond to a request for comment.
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Smart people are often terrible business people. See Sir Clive Sinclair for details.
 
C Kent said:
Remove topess pictures of an adult male but leave up child porn. Just twitter things
Click to expand...

Topless? No. Fully naked? Yes. Child porn is already banned on Twitter, they take it down as soon as they find it.

Colonel_Klinck said:
That story is not good reading for Twitter or Elon. Its almost like he doesn't have a clue how to deal with advertisers and everyone that did has either been sacked or has resigned.

Full article

The World Cup has historically been a boon for Twitter, bringing in record traffic and an influx of advertising dollars.
But this time, when the global soccer tournament started on Nov. 20, Twitter’s U.S. ad revenue was running at 80 percent below internal expectations for that week, three people with knowledge of the figures said.
In tandem, Twitter was rapidly cutting its revenue projections. The company previously forecast that it would generate $1.4 billion in the last three months of the year, down from $1.6 billion a year ago because of the global economic downturn. But as Twitter kept missing its weekly advertising targets, that number slid to $1.3 billion, then to $1.1 billion, two people said.
Elon Musk, Twitter’s new owner, has warned repeatedly that his social media company faces dire financial straits. Interviews with seven former employees and internal documents seen by The New York Times paint a fuller picture of Twitter’s financial woes.

Many of the company’s troubles can be traced to Mr. Musk’s takeover in late October. Since then, advertisers — which provide 90 percent of Twitter’s revenue — have paused some spending on the platform, citing concerns about how Mr. Musk might change the service. The billionaire, a self-described “free speech absolutist,” has reinstated banned accounts and dropped at least one misinformation policy. Hate speech on Twitter has soared in recent weeks, researchers found.
At the same time, Mr. Musk has alternated between wooing advertisers and blasting them. Last month, he threatened a “thermonuclear name & shame” of brands that halted their spending on Twitter. This week, he briefly picked a fight with Apple, which was on track to spend more than $180 million on Twitter ads this year, three people said.

Twitter’s advertising business has become so fraught that it has started offering brands additional incentives. Some brands are committing only to promotions for events, like the Super Bowl, with heavy discounts or clauses that allow them to back out for any reason, according to internal documents and three people familiar with the efforts. Automakers are among the most concerned advertisers, with General Motors raising questions about whether Twitter’s data would be shared with Mr. Musk’s car company, Tesla, three people said.
“There hasn’t been any level of trust from us with Twitter, especially with the whiplash we’ve experienced over the last four weeks,” said Ellie Bamford, the head of global media at R/GA, a creative agency. Last month, IPG, R/GA’s parent and one of the world’s largest advertising companies, recommended that its clients pause their advertising on Twitter.

Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.
Even before he completed his deal for Twitter, advertisers began expressing their doubts. Twitter had 3,980 advertisers in May, the month after Mr. Musk agreed to buy the company, according to MediaRadar, an advertising intelligence company. By October, it had 2,315 advertisers, the fewest of any month until that point.
Advertisers’ confidence in Twitter was shaken further when its sales and advertising team turned over after Mr. Musk took charge. Leslie Berland and J.P. Maheu, who were responsible for maintaining key relationships with some top brands, left last month. Robin Wheeler, a U.S. ad executive who briefly resigned before staying on, was then fired after Mr. Musk asked her to cut employees from the sales team and she refused, two people said.
Dara Nasr, who oversaw Twitter’s European ad operations, also left last month. The company’s ad sales in Europe, the Middle East and Africa were down more than 50 percent the week of Nov. 21 from the prior week, two people familiar with the numbers said. The Platformer newsletter previously reported Twitter’s figures for the region.

Mr. Musk also made good on his threat to call out advertisers that paused their spending. On Monday, he posted several barbed tweets about Apple and its chief executive, Tim Cook, noting that the iPhone maker had pulled back its advertising on Twitter. Apple, which does not advertise on Instagram or Facebook, had committed more than $150 million on Twitter ads in 2022 and had exceeded that with more than $180 million in advertising spending, three people said.

But Apple temporarily paused that after a shooting left five people dead at an L.G.B.T.Q. nightclub in Colorado Springs on Nov. 19, two people said. Major brands tend to dial back advertising when there are shootings or disasters so their promotions do not appear next to news or tweets about the tragedies.

Mr. Musk suggested that Apple’s reduced advertising would lead to censorship on Twitter. “Apple has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter,” he tweeted. “Do they hate free speech in America?”

On Wednesday, Mr. Cook and Mr. Musk met at Apple’s Silicon Valley headquarters. Mr. Musk later tweeted that they had cleared up a “misunderstanding.” Apple did not respond to requests for comment.
Ms. Bamford said Mr. Musk’s behavior was beyond the pale. “There is no way to shame someone into advertising in an environment that is controversial and dangerous,” she said. “Yelling at people is not a plan.”
Other advertisers are concerned that their Twitter advertising data might be shared with Mr. Musk’s other companies. G.M., the first brand to announce that it had paused its Twitter advertising in late October, sought assurances that its data would not be shared with Tesla, two people said. It also asked for a way to keep its information separate from systems that Tesla’s engineers had access to, they said, given that Mr. Musk had brought Tesla employees into Twitter to navigate the ownership change.
“It’s important for us to ensure our advertising strategies and data can be safely managed by a platform owned by a competitor,” a G.M. spokesman said in a statement.
Twitter has recently offered some brands additional incentives to place ads on the service, according to an ad agency that received a proposal from the company. The larger the amount of money spent on the platform, the more Twitter will amplify those ads, according to the proposal, which was viewed by The Times.
Morning Brew, a business newsletter site, reported earlier on the incentives.
Twitter’s ad sales teams are now trying to confirm commitments for the Super Bowl in February. PepsiCo, whose ad agency has recommended that clients pause advertising on the platform, sought the ability to opt out of advertising at any point, one person familiar with the negotiations said. Pepsi did not respond to a request for comment.
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Musk increasingly comes across as a guy who's completely out of his depth, and trying to cover for it by indulging people on Twitter. Right now he seems to be going through a cycle of abolishing Twitter policies, trying to replace them with something better, realising why the original policy was in place, then restoring it and moving on to the next policy as if nothing has happened.
 
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C Kent said:
False
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There is, to my knowledge, only one example of Twitter failing to take down child porn when it was clearly identified, and in that case a complaint to the DHS eventually forced the company to remove it. If this was still happening, on anything close to a large scale, it would be headline news all day, every day.

Meanwhile, the Twitter team responsible for eliminating child porn is now down to one member. And who's decision was that?

'Elon Musk Guts Twitter Team Handling Child Sexual Abuse.'

Oh.
 
R
Colonel_Klinck said:
Is this his "Twitter interfered in elections" proof? If it is its a bit of a let down to say the least. I'm sure it drove clicks for a few hours though.
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Republicans must be furious that their baseless conspiracy about biased twitter moderation and election interface has just been blown apart
 
Sankari said:
There is, to my knowledge, only one example of Twitter failing to take down child porn when it was clearly identified, and in that case a complaint to the DHS eventually forced the company to remove it. If this was still happening, on anything close to a large scale, it would be headline news all day, every day.
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Yeah, covered that already in the thread a few days ago, if you look at the court ruling on the case there's mention of users that shred the imagery in question having been reported to twitter months before for sharing and posting images of similar nature and were still active at the time of the above.
Sankari said:
Meanwhile, the Twitter team responsible for eliminating child porn is now down to one member. And who's decision was that?

'Elon Musk Guts Twitter Team Handling Child Sexual Abuse.'

Oh.
Click to expand...
lol, Jezebel
 
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