#advertisers fleeing twitter

[tomorrowusa]

Elon Musk has turned Twitter X into a haven for hate speech as well as bots from Russia and other malevolent countries.

Musk himself promoted an antisemitic tweet – probably to show his far right pals that he's just one of the guys. Because of that, he's losing his few remaining respectable advertisers and is coming under scrutiny by governments in the US, UK, and the EU.

An advertising boycott of social media platform X is gathering pace amid an antisemitism storm on the site formerly known as Twitter. Apple, Disney, Comcast and Warner Brothers Discovery have all halted advertising on X, US media report, following hot on the heels of IBM. The European Commission, TV network Paramount and movie studio Lionsgate have also pulled ad dollars from X. It comes after X owner Elon Musk amplified an antisemitic trope. The corporate boycott has also been picking up steam in the wake of an investigation by a US group which flagged ads appearing next to pro-Nazi posts on X. A spokesperson for X told the BBC on Thursday that the company does not intentionally place brands "next to this kind of content" and the platform is dedicated to combatting antisemitism. Mr Musk came under fire on Wednesday after he replied to a post sharing an antisemitic conspiracy theory, calling it "actual truth".

Yeah, "actual truth" as the type of stuff you'd find on Truth Social. 🙄

The White House denounced Mr Musk's endorsement of the post. "We condemn this abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate in the strongest terms," said spokesperson Andrew Bates.

The Washington Post has a list of major advertisers who have suspended their ads on Musk's platform.

IBM IBM pulled its advertising from X on Nov. 16 after the Media Matters report identified it as one of several blue-chip companies whose ads had appeared next to tweets promoting antisemitism. [ ... ] Apple The maker of iPhones and MacBooks decided to pause all advertising on X on Friday after Musk endorsed an antisemitic post on platform, according to Axios, citing unnamed sources, and the New York Times. Apple was reportedly the platform’s largest advertiser, spending nearly $50 million in the first quarter of 2022. [ ... ] Lionsgate A spokesperson for the entertainment and film distribution company told The Washington Post it suspended advertisements on X on Friday afternoon, saying the decision came after “Elon’s tweet.” [ ... ] Disney The entertainment giant suspended advertising on the social media platform Friday, a company spokesperson said. [ ... ] Paramount The media, streaming and entertainment company is suspending all advertising on the platform, a spokesperson said in an email to The Post on Friday.

[ ... ] Comcast The global media and tech company is pausing ads on X, company spokesperson Jennifer Khoury said in an email on Friday. Philadelphia-based Comcast, with a market cap near $171 billon, provides a range of broadband, wireless and other services.

The European Union has also stopped all advertising at MuskX.

No more ads on Elon’s X, EU Commission tells staff

Truth Social is having HÜGE financial problems. Perhaps the two ought to merge; a lot of people wouldn't notice the difference except for the logo. 😆

Chris Hayes at MSNBC put Elon Musk's antisemitism in historical perspective.

To people still on Twitter/X: How do you explain to others why you remain on a platform associated with vile hatemongers?

#social media #twitter #x #elon musk #antisemitism #extremism #hate speech #advertisers fleeing twitter #ibm #apple #comcast #disney #lionsgate #paramount #european union #leave twitter #delete twitter #quit twitter #truth social #chris hayes #henry ford #rachel maddow

[arthropooda]

X

#Twitter #Ken klippenstein #Advertisers #Fleeing #Elon musk #Subscribe #Updates #Substack

[netscapenavigator-official]

The funniest parts about Tumblr, Reddit, and Twitter all collapsing is they all had to undo ONE decision, and it would've prevented it all.

If Tumblr had gone back, or even just lessened, its porn ban. It could still be in the top 10 sites, worldwide.

If Reddit had reversed its API decision, it wouldn't be struggling with a volatile, unsellable user base.

If Twitter had just not changed ANYTHING. If Musk had just LEFT THE SITE ALONE, it would've begun pulling a profit within a few years, and would've been bringing in enough revenue to keep the site alive until then.

But that didn't happen. These sites were making power hungry moves and chasing the money of advertisers to make up for it. However, each one of them forgot one very important thing:

A sanitized, unpopular website upsets it previous users. Upset users flee a site, leaving angry, volatile individuals behind. Angry, volatile users aren't marketable. Without marketable users, the site has no marketable value. And without marketable value, no advertisers are gonna give you money.

#7/2/23 #rambles #tumblr #twitter #reddit #twitter takeover #twitter collapse #elon musk #musk #fuck elon musk #reddit blackout #reddit strike #reddit protest #reddit moderator strike #moderator strike #fuck u/spez #u/spez #money #late stage capitalism #web 2.0 #social media #ad #ads #advertisments #advertisers

[wolfnanaki]

So.

In less than two weeks after the $44 billion purchase of Twitter, Elon Musk has driven away the majority of advertisers, cost billions in stocks for some major corporations due to fraudulent verified accounts, fired nearly all of the staff, and has locked down the headquarters building. And as everything crashes and burns in his wake, his entire career is revealed to have been built on a lie.

People are fleeing the site en masse. The trending tab now consists of “RIP Twitter” and alternative site suggestions. Dril – yes, THE Dril, THE premier Twitter poster – shared a LinkTree with their alternate accounts elsewhere. Posts calling out or criticizing Musk are hidden on mobile apps. Twitter is down in a number of territories.

$44 billion.  It’s hard to wrap around how big of a number that is. But here’s a fun thing to keep in mind: the estimated cost to deliver food to people living through food famines would cost about $7 billion. Musk’s Twitter purchase was over six times that amount. $44 billion, burnt to ash.

The worst part is the impact it’ll have on both art and communities. So many artists built their careers on Twitter because it was the only major option, and now they’ll have to rebuild everything elsewhere and hope their audience follows. Some of them have already passed on and their art archives might be lost for good. Independent reporters, minority rights organizations, etc. will now have a much harder time getting their word out to the public about what’s happening to the oppressed people of the world.

And Musk is still on Twitter, cracking jokes while everything collapses around him.

All he needed to do was nothing – just let Twitter do its thing – and shit would’ve been fine. But now this apartheid child is on the fast track to destroy a terrible but important website because he fell for one too many “ligma” jokes.

#Nanaki's Thoughts #Twitter #Elon Musk

[robertreich]

Does Elon Musk Have a Right to Destroy Twitter?

You break it, you own it. That's what I was told as a child. But for today's billionaires, it seems like the opposite is true.

“You own it, you can break it” — at least if you’re rich enough. 

Just look at Elon Musk.

He paid a fortune for Twitter and is now busily destroying it — firing half its employees and driving out even more, causing chaos on the platform, making advertisers flee, and threatening bankruptcy.

Or consider Sam Bankman-Fried, who became a billionaire after founding the popular cryptocurrency exchange FTX — until he drove the company into bankruptcy.

Seems FTX was a Ponzi scheme that got out of hand. At least $1 billion in customer funds is reportedly missing.

These billionaires are presumed to be free from responsibility because they own what they’ve had a hand in destroying. So under the rules of capitalism, they have a right to do whatever they want with their money. Right?

Wrong. Millions have come to rely on Twitter as a vital source of information and connection.  Investors put their money — and trust — in FTX. These people aren’t mere collateral damage. They’re bearing a big part of the cost.

“You own it, you can break it” is a careless norm for a complex society.

Do we really think that the super-wealthy should be allowed to control so much wealth and wield so much influence?

Absolutely not. We need stronger laws protecting the rest of us from the recklessness of these so-called "disruptors."

#youtube #elon musk #social media #crypto #sam bankman-fried #politics #video #videos

[mariacallous]

Soon after Elon Musk took control of Twitter, now called X, the platform faced a massive problem: Advertisers were fleeing. But that, the company alleges, was someone else’s fault. On Thursday that argument went before a federal judge, who seemed skeptical of the company's allegations that a nonprofit’s research tracking hate speech on X had compromised user security, and that the group was responsible for the platform’s loss of advertisers.

The dispute began in July when X filed suit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit that tracks hate speech on social platforms and had warned that the platform was seeing an increase in hateful content. Musk’s company alleged that CCDH’s reports cost it millions in advertising dollars by driving away business. It also claimed that the nonprofit’s research had violated the platform’s terms of service and endangered users’ security by scraping posts using the login of another nonprofit, the European Climate Foundation.

In response, CCDH filed a motion to dismiss the case, alleging that it was an attempt to silence a critic of X with burdensome litigation using what’s known as a “strategic lawsuit against public participation,” or SLAPP.

On Thursday, lawyers for CCDH and X went before Judge Charles Breyer in the Northern California District Court for a hearing to decide whether X’s case against the nonprofit will be allowed to proceed. The outcome of the case could set a precedent for exactly how far billionaires and tech companies can go to silence their critics. “This is really a SLAPP suit disguised as a contractual suit,” says Alejandra Caraballo, clinical instructor at Harvard Law School's Cyberlaw Clinic.

Unforeseen Harms

X alleges that the CCDH used the European Climate Foundation’s login to a social network listening tool called Brandwatch, which has a license to access X data through the company’s API. In the hearing Thursday, X’s attorneys argued that CCDH’s use of the tool had caused the company to spend time and money investigating the scraping, for which it also needed to be compensated on top of payback for how the nonprofit’s report spooked advertisers.

Judge Breyer pressed X’s attorney, Jonathan Hawk, on that claim, questioning how scraping posts that were publicly available could violate users’ safety or the security of their data. “If [CCDH] had scraped and discarded the information, or scraped that number and never issued a report, or scraped and never told anybody about it. What would be your damages?” Breyer asked X’s legal team.

Breyer also pointed out that it would have been impossible for anyone agreeing to Twitter's terms of service in 2019, as the European Climate Foundation did when it signed up for Brandwatch, years before Musk’s purchase of the platform, to anticipate how its policies would drastically change later. He suggested it would be difficult to hold CCDH responsible for harms it could not have foreseen.

“Twitter had a policy of removing tweets and individuals who engaged in neo-Nazi, white supremacists, misogynists, and spreaders of dangerous conspiracy theories. That was the policy of Twitter when the defendant entered into its terms of service,” Breyer said. “You're telling me at the time they were excluded from the website, it was foreseeable that Twitter would change its policies and allow these people on? And I am trying to figure out in my mind how that's possibly true, because I don't think it is."

Speaking after the hearing, Imran Ahmed, CEO of CCDH, was optimistic about the direction of the judge’s inquiry. “We were particularly surprised by the implication in X Corp.’s argument today that it thinks that CCDH should somehow be on the hook for paying for X Corp. to help neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and misogynists escape scrutiny of their reprehensible posts,” he says. “We can't help but note that X Corp. really had no response to our assertion that Musk changed X's policies to reinstate white supremacists, neo-Nazis, misogynists, and other propagators of hateful and toxic content.”

Breyer did not indicate Thursday when he would rule on whether the case could move forward.

Broken Trust

After taking over Twitter in late 2022, Musk fired much of the company's trust and safety team, which kept hateful and dangerous content as well as disinformation off the platform. He then also offered amnesty to users who had been banned for violating the platform’s policies. CCDH is among a number of organizations and academics who have published evidence showing that X has become a haven for harmful and misleading content under Musk’s watch.

The suit against CCDH was just one of many ways in which platforms have sought to limit transparency in recent years. X now charges $42,000 for access to its API, making analyzing data from the platform financially inaccessible to many researchers and members of civil society. For its part, Meta has wound down CrowdTangle, a tool that allowed researchers and journalists to track the spread of posts, and cut off researchers at New York University who were studying political ads and Covid-19 disinformation.

Both Meta and X filed suit against Bright Data, a third-party data collection service, for scraping their platforms. In January, Meta’s case against Bright Data was dismissed. “The Facebook and Instagram Terms do not bar logged-off scraping of public data; perforce it does not prohibit the sale of such public data,” wrote US federal judge Edward Chen in his verdict. “The Terms cannot bar Bright Data’s logged-off scraping activities.”

Bright Data spokesperson Jennifer Burns calls the platforms’ suits against the company “an effort to build a wall around publicly available data.”

Caraballo, of Harvard Law School, says Elon Musk appears to have decided lawsuits are a good strategy for silencing critics of his social platform. In November, X filed a lawsuit against the watchdog group Media Matters for America, accusing the group of trying to drive advertisers away from the platform by reporting how ads appeared next to neo-Nazi content.

The suit was filed in Texas, where anti-SLAPP laws that can be used to quash frivolous lawsuits do not apply in federal courts, which will make it more difficult for the case to be dismissed, says Caraballo. “I think it's incredibly concerning that this is part of that broader pattern, because these are the mechanisms that hold powerful companies accountable,” she says.

She guesses that while X might be able to move forward with a narrow version of its claim that CCDH breached its terms of service, “most of the claims will get tossed out.”

X did not respond to request for comment by the time of publication.

[qqueenofhades]

I realize this isn’t history so feel free to disregard, but you are knowledgeable about a lot of things and I’m curious. I just saw a graph showing how Eli Lilly’s stock dropped when a check marked impersonator tweeted that insulin is free; could they sue musk/twitter for allowing something like that? I feel like you could make the argument that they allowed market manipulation, but I’m not knowledgeable enough to know if that’s something that could actually happen.

Look, Musk is recklessly exposing the company to so much legal risk that the entire team responsible for legal, compliance, and safety resigned. Literally the entire set of top officials, all at once. Because they are ordinary people with career prospects to salvage and can't take the hit that Musk apparently thinks he can, financially or reputationally or any of it. Said Twitter staff sent an open letter warning all the remaining employees that they are exposing themselves to legal Deep Shit, and the possible FTC fine in the billions of dollars for business malpractice, if they continue to work there. If you alone have to make sure that your work follows the law and you have no company officials guaranteeing that you do that: why the HELL would you put yourself in this position? Which again, you wouldn't. Hence why they are all leaving.

Anyway, at this point, the site has become such a garbage hellfire that advertisers are fleeing en masse, impersonators are rampant, and all Musk cares about is bullying people to pay $8 for a fake verification checkmark, because what he really needs is more money. So yes, any company adversely impacted by this incredible flaming garbage fire could sue him/Twitter, but I can't emphasise enough how that is actually the least of their problems.

#anonymous #ask #fuck elon musk #god i wish there was a worse word i could use here #this is outright evil in so many ways

[galaxy98]

So Here's The Thing About Elemental

If you're somebody who's watched a lot of movies than me, you would probably look at this and tell me that there are more stories out there--animated or otherwise--that do a better job at portraying certain aspects. Specifically the immigrant experience.

And the truth is, you'd be right.

Elemental doesn't try to set a new gold standard nor do I think it's meant to do that. Heck, some could look at Pixar's backlog and argue that Turning Red does it the best--which definitely isn't a knockback make no mistake. (Not only that but Flee is also on my watchlist).

HOWEVER

It's the small things in Elemental that make it speak to me.

Having a 1st gen immigrant parent and being mixed myself, it's hard not to look at Wade and Ember and see yourself in both of them.

On the outside I live comfortably, yet I struggle internally. Job wise I feel directionless, but I still take pride in my work. I'm a people person, but I can have a hard time communicating with others. I'm opened about my feelings, yet I tend to keep them inside so often.

That's the thing about art.

It doesn't really matter what it is as long as it speaks to you on a personal level.

If you're on the fence, I would say check it out and see what you think. You may never know what you might expect.

Other Minor Stuff:

-I would highly recommend listening to Thomas Newman's movie score in isolation.

-I also enjoyed the short, Carl's Date. It left me feeling bittersweet since this was Ed Asner's last ever voice recording before he passed away.

-Like many others had said, the marketing for this movie did not do it any favors. Instead of focusing all their attention on the romance, they primarily did all their advertising on Clod, a character who only showed up for a total of 3 scenes. Can't even say he's a supporting character either because he doesn't stick around with the duo. Even Gale at least had some sort of importance by helping them out.

-This movie is also gaining a big following in Korea. You should definitely check out the Elemental hashtag on Twitter to see what I mean.

#elemental #pixar elemental #disney #disney animation #media #pixar #representation

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

As if Mondays weren’t bad enough, Elon Musk shared a photo of a Nazi soldier and then encouraged “independent-minded voters” to follow his lead and vote Republican in the midterm elections.

The Tesla founder posted a photo of a Nazi soldier with a crate of carrier pigeons on his back, with an unread notifications badge photoshopped onto the cage.

If Musk was looking for a photo of carrier pigeons to make a point about his new role as CEO of Twitter, he didn’t have to pick one of a Nazi soldier.

Less than an hour later, he tweeted a message to “independent-minded voters”:

Despite promising that Twitter would not become a “free-for-all hellscape” under his rule, the platform is already devolving into chaos, with Musk seemingly leading the charge.

Musk is entering his third week of ownership, and already, Twitter has been awash with hate speech. The social media research group National Contagion Research Institute said that in the 12 hours since Musk bought Twitter, use of the n-word increased almost 500%.

The self-described “free speech absolutist”—except, apparently, when it comes to jokes at his expense—has promised to roll back content moderation on Twitter. He has shared conspiracy theories about the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband and allowed election deniers back on the platform.

His decisions have led advertisers to leave Twitter in droves. Musk complained they were being pressured by activists, but his claim was community fact-checked as Twitter users said it lacked context.

“I will say that if you’re trying to assuage the fears of the advertisers fleeing the platform you just [spent] billions on, you might want to have someone on your payroll spend five seconds looking at whether a meme you’re about to post has any link to the Nazis,” tweeted writer and QAnon expert Mike Rothschild. “But that’s just me.”

#us politics #news #2022 midterms #2022 elections #2022 #elon musk #Twitter #nazi germany #nazis #fuck nazis #Republicans #conservatives #gop #fascists be like #conservatives be like #republicans be like #the new republic #National Contagion Research Institute #hate speech #Mike Rothschild

[misfitwashere]

Robert Reich - Musk's Humongous Mistake

 ROBERT REICH 

When Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion, he clearly didn’t know that the key assets he was buying lay in Twitter’s 7,500 workers’ heads.

On corporate balance sheets, the assets of a corporation are its factories, equipment, patents, and brand name.

Workers aren’t considered assets. They appear as costs. In fact, payrolls are typically two-thirds of a corporation’s total costs. Which is why companies often cut payrolls to increase profits.  

The reason for this is simple. Corporations have traditionally been viewed as production systems. Assets are things that corporations own, which turn inputs — labor, raw materials, and components — into marketable products.

Reduce the costs of these inputs, and — presto — each product generates more profit. Or that’s been the traditional view.

Yet today, increasingly, corporations aren’t just production systems. They’re systems for directing the know-how, know-what, know-where, and know-why of the people who work within them.  

A large and growing part of the value of a corporation now lies in the heads of its workers — heads that know how to innovate, know what needs improvement, know where the company’s strengths and vulnerabilities are found, and know why the corporation succeeds (or doesn’t).

These human assets are becoming the key assets of today’s corporations. But they can’t be owned, as are factories, equipment, patents, and brands. They must be motivated.   

When Musk fired half of Twitter’s workforce, then threatened to fire any remaining dissenters and demanded that the rest pledge to accept “long hours at high intensity” — leading to the resignations last week of an estimated 1,200 more Twitter employees — he began to destroy what he bought.

Now he’s panicking. Last week he tried to hire back some of the people he fired. On Friday he sent emails to Twitter employees asking that “anyone who actually writes software” report in, and stating that he wanted to learn about Twitter’s “tech stack” (its software and related systems).

But even if Musk gets this information, he probably won’t be able to save Twitter.

Most of Twitter’s employees are now gone, which means most of its know-how to prevent outages and failures during high-traffic events is also gone, most of its know-what is necessary to maintain and enhance computing architecture is gone, most of its know-where to guard against cyberattacks is gone, and most of its know-why hate speech (and other awful stuff advertisers want to avoid) is getting through its filters and what to do about it, is also now gone. 

Without this knowledge and talent, Twitter is a shell — an office building, some patents, and a brand — without the capacity to improve or even sustain its service.

Twitter is unlikely to fail all at once. But bugs and glitches will mount, the quality of what’s offered will deteriorate, hateful tweets will burgeon, and customers and advertisers will flee.

As Richard Forno, assistant director of the Center for Cybersecurity at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County told the New York Times, “it’s like putting a car on the road, hitting the accelerator, and then the driver jumps out. How far is it going to go before it crashes?”

Not even Donald Trump seems particularly eager to take up Musk’s offer to have him back on the platform.

Safe to say, Twitter is no longer worth the nearly $44 billion Musk paid for it. It’s now probably worth only a fraction of that sum — a fact that should be of no small concern to the bankers who lent Musk $30 billion to purchase Twitter on condition he pay $1 billion a year in interest.

Two lessons here.

First, corporations that regard employees only as costs to be cut rather than as assets to be nourished can make humongous mistakes. Elon Musk is Exhibit #1.

Second, where corporations view employees as costs, the traditional way for employees to flex their muscle is to strike, thereby temporarily closing factories and stopping the machines.

But where employees are a corporation’s key assets, workers’ greater power comes in threatening to — or actually — walking out the door. Elon Musk is Exhibit #2.

#twitterverse #elon musk #twitter

[tomorrowusa]

Elon Musk thinks that a photo op in Israel will make people forget about his record of condoning and even endorsing antisemitic activity on Twitter X.

Elon Musk uses expletive to blast advertisers fleeing X over hate speech and antisemitism

Musk has done his best to turn Twitter X into a cesspit of hatred. Now he's trying to distract everybody from his past 13 months of empowering Nazis, Putin fans, and conspiracy fanatics.

He's trying to blame advertisers for his own failure at running a social media platform. Like Donald Trump, he refuses to take responsibility for his own actions.

#elon musk #antisemitism #israel #twitter #x #social media #hate speech #conspiracy theories #nazis #leave twitter #delete twitter #quit twitter #dave granlund

[sekhithefops]

Today on "Elon Musk's Mark Zuckerberg's Steady Descent into Madness"

Rejoyce Tweeter Refugees! Threads has launched! Mark's answer to the utter ruination Elon is bringing to your once beloved... well, once tolerated social media platform!

Except... it auto-links to Facebook and Instagram so here's hoping you weren't planning on posting anything you wouldn't want seen by your grandma who still uses Facebook to follow her quilting friends and that nice newscaster who tells it like it is I tell you what sonny.

And there's no option to only see posts in your feed from people you follow.

Infact, there are no options except for the "For You" option basically, which is something about Tweeter I despised so much I actually used addons to permanently remove it from my browser version.

Speaking of, no browser version. What? Don't you guys have phones?

So yeah, its literally just advertising, clickbait, and other bullshit all the way down whether you like it or not.

Mark you nitwit. You had a golden opportunity to give everyone fleeing Twitter a new place to call home and THIS is what you came up with?! O_o

Oh well, I'm sure Tumblr's owners are thrilled at least. >w>

#Twitter is dying #Threads is dead on arrival #Elon Musk is an Idiot #So is Mark Zuckerberg #Seriously what the hell

[theozgnomian]

Thermonuclear? Did Unka Vlad give Elmo an early Christmas present?

Chill out Obergruppenführer Muskrat. Just because you can't launch a Starship or its booster with out blowing them both to hell, you have no excuse for picking on people for pointing out your moral nudity. So stick a sock in it, billionaire baby boy.

#elon muskrat #spacex #tesla #fascism in america #antisemitism

[paulsebert]

“Musk is not leading Twitter with careful vision, and he is certainly not dragging us all into the future with him. He’s bumbling his way through a job he’s unqualified for. He’s treating a human problem like an engineering problem, torching bridges.”

#Elon #Twitter #the anti social network #the atlantic

[syogren-heartofcrystal]

Oh boy the Twitter users are fleeing here again.  Quick, start firing rent-lowering shots again!

Okay ex-Redditors, here’s what you’ve gotta do: you’ve gotta make the most cringe-inducing posts imaginable.  Whatever you’re thinking about, no, that’s not cringy enough.  Keep going.

There is going to be a voice in your head telling you to be ashamed of what you’re about to post, and I swear to god, you’ve gotta ignore that voice.  Post it.  Then post more.

We cannot let ex-Twitter users get settled here.  They must be gatekept from this site at all costs.  And advertisers cannot assume they can make money on this site no matter what.

Good luck newbies, we’re all counting on you.

#my posts #twitter #tumblr #reddit

[mitchipedia]

Elon Musk's first week at Twitter is going great.

Musk is also blaming activist groups for advertisers fleeing Twitter.

Free markets are a bitch, Elon.

#Twitter #Ye #Kanye West #Elon Musk #Jews #The Jews #anti-semitism