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

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I thought he was running it to make money.



That is entirely false. Before Musk bought Twitter, it was actually difficult to get a blue tick.

The criteria were very specific:

* account must be authentic, notable, and active
* owner of the account must be a person or entity of public interest
* owner of the account must be government figure or entity, a news organisation, company, or prominent entertainer, athlete, company, activist, prominent content creator, or journalist.

Many people tried and failed to get a blue tick.
Yarp

I note that some people have claimed there was a roaring trade in them, in reality from what I've seen it was actually quite hard even if you were for example an actor with dozens/hundreds of credits including as the main performer on various massively popular animated series, video games and routinely a headline attraction at major events.


So you genuinely believe he went through the effort of signing a contract to buy Twitter, with the intention of walking away? He definitely does things as a joke, but I don't think he signs legal documents to that end.



No, he isn't trying to keep advertisers happy, because what the advertisers want Twitter to be is not why he bought Twitter. What laws are there around social media companies having child protection teams?



Yeah again, he isn't running Twitter for advertisers or celebrities, he's running it so people have a place they can speak. The blue tick thing could've been handled differently, but blue ticks were given out arbitrarily before, they were given out with no actual set criteria, how is that fair?
I can't exactly speak for his state of mind, but he certainly seemed to think it was a joke, then balked and tried to walk away after signing contracts that had many business lawyers wondering how his lawyers let him sign them...I mean he tried to fight that contract in court, which suggests he wasn't exactly as enthusiastic about buying twitter after the initial joke and publicity wore off and he started to realise what he'd done.

Social media companies have certain legal obligations, one of those is that for example they should be working with law enforcement when required to deal with criminal activity on their platforms, even the smallest commercial operations will have people who for example are meant to try and find/deal with complaints of things like CSM (large ones such as Twitter have, or in post Musk Twitter had, specific teams*), many countries also require that social media platforms take specific steps to deal with any data that may be collected in regards to children, or to restrict what children have access to.
As an example of what I mean by teams to try and find/deal with CSM, pretty much every image host or social media platform that allows people to upload images and video will fairly routinely try to do things like compare hash's of uploaded material against known hashes from CSM, and will have either people in house or specialist contractors who will review reports of such material, they will also have dedicated points of contact (usually legally required) for law enforcement so that such material can be taken down quickly and any evidence preserved or so that law enforcement can get the collected information from accounts with that material.

Musk got rid of entire teams of people in most countries outside of the US** meaning that in many cases those countries no longer have dedicated point of contact for Twitter, and no one in Twitter who speaks/understands the legal obligations for operating in that country, for example it appears twitter used to take advantage of a GDPR rule that allowed everything to go through one office, when he got rid of the Irish offices he just happened to get rid of Twitter's GDPR compliance people, and is now potentially liable to dealing with it in each individual country now (he may need some luck with that given he's also got rid of pretty much all the twitter staff in the EU).

*If nothing else it's normally considered a "very bad thing" for a company to be asked questions in the news or in front of legislators about things like "why do you allow this material" especially if they can't then point to a fairly robust, good faith effort to deal with it even if it isn't working as well as you'd hope. One of the safest or only ways to deal with that questioning is to have people who are specifically dealing with it so you can show you are at least trying (and those people are usually specialists because of what it entails).

**In the case of CSM he dumped the teams in the counties that are infamous for being hotspots in regards to it being produced and distrusted from.
 
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I thought he was running it to make money.



That is entirely false. Before Musk bought Twitter, it was actually difficult to get a blue tick.

The criteria were very specific:

* account must be authentic, notable, and active
* owner of the account must be a person or entity of public interest
* owner of the account must be government figure or entity, a news organisation, company, or prominent entertainer, athlete, company, activist, prominent content creator, or journalist.

Many people tried and failed to get a blue tick.

You tell me my post is false then start listing arbitrary criteria, do you know what that word means? You can't make a hard definition for someone who is "prominent" or "of public interest", my definition of those things and yours can be completely different, so the decision is random, probably based on which Twitter employee is making the decision. Or you know, whether that Twitter employee likes you.
 
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The whole blue tick thing is one of the worst chanted I could ever imagine Musk would make in such a short time.

The blue tick served a purpose. It showed every users that an account was the authentic verified person they say they were. That's gone now. Nothing has replaced it. The blue tick is an entirely different thing, only made to look like the old blue tick so that every day users would buy it, make Twitter more money (which roar claims Elon isn't trying to do) and make those users feel special as though they have the "celebrity tick".

Now how do I know that an account called rishi Sunak is the real deal authentic, staff verified account? Because any other users called rishi Sunak can pay and get the blue tick and look "authentic".

Really Elon should have left the blue tick as it was, and then made a whole new system and called it a green tick or whatever and allowed people to pay for that and get the features that it comes with, but far less would do that, as the blue tick came with a status and Elon knew that so was trying to get sales this way, but by doing so, has totally devalued the blue tick. It's useless now
 
Now how do I know that an account called rishi Sunak is the real deal authentic, staff verified account? Because any other users called rishi Sunak can pay and get the blue tick and look "authentic".
Is that how it works? I had misunderstood if so. I thought you had to pay for authentication but they still checked you were who you claimed to be. It was extending it so PlacidCasual authenticated is PlacidCasual not someone using my name to pull the hordes of women I have to take restraining orders out on.

I thought it widened the pool of whom could become authenticated beyond the great and the good not that it allowed people to cyber squat names they wanted.
 
You are (at least theoretically) supposed to undergo a check for being 'misleading or deceptive' as part of being approved for your Blue Tick.


I don't think you'd get very far trying to get a Blue Tick account as Rishi Sunak unless you were in fact called Rishi Sunak yourself and you were quite clear in not making your account look like the current Prime Minister.
 
Is that how it works? I had misunderstood if so. I thought you had to pay for authentication but they still checked you were who you claimed to be. It was extending it so PlacidCasual authenticated is PlacidCasual not someone using my name to pull the hordes of women I have to take restraining orders out on.

I thought it widened the pool of whom could become authenticated beyond the great and the good not that it allowed people to cyber squat names they wanted.

No you pay for a blue tick with zero authentication.

You get punished if people complain about your unauthenticated blue tick account being used for misrepresentation.

Money first, authentication checking later only if anyone cares to report.
 
... he doesn't buy yachts or expensive cars or own a house...
Not quite true is it @Roar87.
He owns/owned a McLaren F1, 'The Spy Who Loved Me' Lotus Esprit (still has it; paid nearly $1m), a few BMW's including a Hamann M5, Jaguar E-Type, 911 Turbo and a load of Tesla's.
As for houses, he recently sold a load for (iirc) ~$140m which included Gene Wilder’s old house.

So he may not have owned a (super)yacht, yet given there were rumours Tesla were looking at building one, but he's certainly spent a lot of money on cars and houses.
 
Not quite true is it @Roar87.
He owns/owned a McLaren F1, 'The Spy Who Loved Me' Lotus Esprit (still has it; paid nearly $1m), a few BMW's including a Hamann M5, Jaguar E-Type, 911 Turbo and a load of Tesla's.
As for houses, he recently sold a load for (iirc) ~$140m which included Gene Wilder’s old house.

So he may not have owned a (super)yacht, yet given there were rumours Tesla were looking at building one, but he's certainly spent a lot of money on cars and houses.

You're right, he has a car collection worth a few $million (though he did sell the McLaren F1 some 16 years ago), which is basically nothing for someone at his wealth, he isn't motivated to go out and earn money so he can continue buying expensive material possessions was my point.
 
You're right, he has a car collection worth a few $million (though he did sell the McLaren F1 some 16 years ago), which is basically nothing for someone at his wealth, he isn't motivated to go out and earn money so he can continue buying expensive material possessions was my point.
Isn't that because he takes expensive material possessions for granted? I mean come on you just dont make sense.
... he doesn't buy yachts or expensive cars or own a house...
Then you change your tune when its pointed out he does buy those things

He paid 44 billion, 30 billion over value just to give people free speech? That was very kind of him, lol

He didn't get to where he is being stupid I give him that but he's not self made, daddy gave him the funds but granted he made good choices what he did with them, until Twitter where he screwed up big time.

His joke of 44 billion was one thing but how the hell did he manage to make it legally binding, his stupidity was off the scale with that decision, someone in his inner circle must have got fired for that.

It wont change his life though, he can make the most of it and shrug it off the same way I would losing £100, big difference 44 billion to £100 but that the scale divide between him and us, a different world really.
 
It wont change his life though, he can make the most of it and shrug it off the same way I would losing £100, big difference 44 billion to £100 but that the scale divide between him and us, a different world really
Well not really. As tesla stock tanks due to the brand now being tarnished, and due to Elon being split sending memes and running tesla, and then tesla potebtially under performing etc, the loss of value in his tesla stock will hit. He could relatively soon be kicked out of tesla as the value of Elon is removed and he becomes a burden to the brand. All these things will cost him in such a way that it will be hard to just shrug it off
 
Is that how it works? I had misunderstood if so. I thought you had to pay for authentication but they still checked you were who you claimed to be. It was extending it so PlacidCasual authenticated is PlacidCasual not someone using my name to pull the hordes of women I have to take restraining orders out on.

I thought it widened the pool of whom could become authenticated beyond the great and the good not that it allowed people to cyber squat names they wanted.
I'm not saying someone pretending to be rishi Sunak, but someone genuinely called that can get a blue tick.

The ability before to see 5 rishi Sunak accounts, 1 with a blue tick, you instantly know, that's the real one that is the prime minister. Now they all have 5 blue ticks, and now you just have to hope that the one you read is the real prime minister and not one pretending to be him for a short moment and you've not noticed. But that will happen. Look how quickly jump on news now and share tweets without verifying.

Yes the "fake" accounts won't last, but the lie is around the world before then.

So it just creates doubt. Is this blue ticked user really x important person?

Elon has essentially said anyone can call themselves a celebrity now and as a result, being a called a celebrity means nothing on twitter. There still should be (and may be tbh) some way to signify this is a vip member verified by twitter staff.
 
I'm not saying someone pretending to be rishi Sunak, but someone genuinely called that can get a blue tick.

The ability before to see 5 rishi Sunak accounts, 1 with a blue tick, you instantly know, that's the real one that is the prime minister. Now they all have 5 blue ticks, and now you just have to hope that the one you read is the real prime minister and not one pretending to be him for a short moment and you've not noticed. But that will happen. Look how quickly jump on news now and share tweets without verifying.

Yes the "fake" accounts won't last, but the lie is around the world before then.

So it just creates doubt. Is this blue ticked user really x important person?

Elon has essentially said anyone can call themselves a celebrity now and as a result, being a called a celebrity means nothing on twitter. There still should be (and may be tbh) some way to signify this is a vip member verified by twitter staff.

I think Elon's idea is the government will just have to pay 1k and the other costs etc and give officials a gold star. As it would be shame if someone impersonates them wouldn't it. It's pretty much creating a protection racket.. pay up or who knows what impersonators might do
 
symbiosis is strong

“The system was only progressing very slowly internally” but “the public wanted a product in their hands,” said John Bernal, a former Tesla test operator who worked in its Autopilot department. He was fired in February 2022 when the company alleged improper use of the technology after he had posted videos of Full Self-Driving in action.


“Elon keeps tweeting, ‘Oh we’re almost there, we’re almost there,’” Bernal said. But “internally, we’re nowhere close, so now we have to work harder and harder and harder.” The team has also bled members in recent months, including senior executives.
Meanwhile, Musk pulled dozens of Tesla engineers to work with code at Twitter, the struggling social media platform Musk purchased with fanfare last fall, according to people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, and documents reviewed by The Washington Post. Earlier this month, after Tesla failed to announce a big new product on investor day, the company’s stock sank 6 percent.

so perhaps twitter can identify a legitimate blue badge holder even if it the cars can't identify a motorbiker.
 

Voting in polls, I wonder if that's because he lost that poll about him having to quit ? :cry:

I live in Afghanistan. The taliban pay for blue ticks.

I can't afford blue ticks.

I check twitter because it is sold as "free speech".

I see the taliban tweets all high up and recommended for me.

I see tweets from taliban controlled news stations.

I don't see tweets from my neighbours any more

The only information I see now is that which originates from the taliban that they pay twitter to promote.

This is a good idea? Do this again for any poor country.
 
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