Musk's Twitter 2.0 circus reaches new heights of absurdity over the weekend. "Verified" has become a badge of dishonor across the Twitterverse. After the #BlockTheBlue campaign kicked off in full force late last week, Musk started giving Blue Checkmarks to accounts which stated they would never pay for verification. As blocking the blues gained momentum, Musk suddenly gave unpaid verification back to most of the accounts which had over a million followers. Musk even provided the blue check marks to dead celebrities -- bringing the absurdity to a new level. All this led to chaos across Twitter. Not to be outdone by the Blue Checkmark clown show, the Gold Checkmark for organizations became even more of a circus. This included a fake Disney account obtaining a Gold Checkmark as verified and then pushing out all sorts of racist garbage.
Its tough to work with customers when the customers are kamikaze. They will crash their plane into twitter regardless of the headaches it causes to popular twitters
How Elon Musk Turned the Blue Check Mark Into a Scarlet Letter A weekend-long master class in business failure. https://slate.com/technology/2023/0...ue-check-marks-verification-lebron-james.html
What’s that going up in flames? Why, it’s Elon Musk’s reputation https://www.theguardian.com/comment...ing-up-in-flames-why-its-elon-musk-reputation
Elon Musk appears to have an Alt Twitter account where he posts a lot of bizarre sexual content. Elon Musk reveals alt Twitter account where he acts as a child version of himself Elon Musk’s alleged secret Twitter has been revealed where he acts as a child version of himself. https://stealthoptional.com/news/elon-musk-alt-twitter-burner-account-acts-like-child/ More... Elmo accidentally tweeted out a screenshot of himself logged into his alt-Twitter account where he pretends to be a child and posts a lot of bizarre content. Is This Elon Musk’s Burner Twitter Account? Musk tweeted a screenshot on Monday evening which appeared to show him signed into a second account. That profile photo pointed to another account on the platform. https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7bew8/elon-musk-burner-account-ermnmusk
Twitter is nothing more than a propaganda outlet for Russia and China now. Remember to thank Elon. Twitter changes stoke Russian, Chinese propaganda surge https://apnews.com/article/twitter-russia-china-elon-musk-ukraine-2eedeabf7d555dc1d0a68b3724cfdd55 Twitter accounts operated by authoritarian governments in Russia, China and Iran are benefiting from recent changes at the social media company, researchers said Monday, making it easier for them to attract new followers and broadcast propaganda and disinformation to a larger audience. The platform is no longer labeling state-controlled media and propaganda agencies, and will no longer prohibit their content from being automatically promoted or recommended to users. Together, the two changes, both made in recent weeks, have supercharged the Kremlin’s ability to use the U.S.-based platform to spread lies and misleading claims about its invasion of Ukraine, U.S. politics and other topics. Russian state media accounts are now earning 33% more views than they were just weeks ago, before the change was made, according to findings released Monday by Reset, a London-based non-profit that tracks authoritarian governments’ use of social media to spread propaganda. Reset’s findings were first reported by The Associated Press. The increase works out to more than 125,000 additional views per post. Those posts included ones suggesting the CIA had something to do with the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S., that Ukraine’s leaders are embezzling foreign aid to the their country, and that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was justified because the U.S. was running clandestine biowarfare labs in the country. State media agencies operated by Iran and China have seen similar increases in engagement since Twitter quietly made the changes. The about-face from the platform is the latest development since billionaire Elon Musk purchased Twitter last year. Since then, he’s ushered in a confusing new verification system and laid off much of the company’s staff, including those dedicated to fighting misinformation, allowed back neo-Nazis and others formerly suspended from the site, and ended the site’s policy prohibiting dangerous COVID-19 misinformation. Hate speech and disinformation have thrived. Before the most recent change, Twitter affixed labels reading “Russia state-affiliated media” to let users know the origin of the content. It also throttled back the Kremlin’s online engagement by making the accounts ineligible for automatic promotion or recommendation — something it regularly does for ordinary accounts as a way to help them reach bigger audiences. The labels quietly disappeared after National Public Radio and other outlets protested Musk’s plans to label their outlets as state affiliated media too. NPR then announced it would no longer use Twitter, saying the label was misleading, given NPR’s editorial independence, and would would damage its credibility. Reset’s conclusions were confirmed by the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, where researchers determined the changes were likely made by Twitter late last month. Many of the dozens of previously labeled accounts were steadily losing followers since Twitter began using the labels. But after the change, many accounts saw big jumps in followers. RT Arabic, one of Russia’s most popular propaganda accounts on Twitter, had fallen to less than 5,230,000 followers on Jan. 1, but rebounded after the change was implemented, the DFRL found. It now has more than 5,240,000 followers. Before the change, users interested in seeking out Kremlin propaganda had to search specifically for the account or its content. Now, it can be recommended or promoted like any other content. “Twitter users no longer must actively seek out state-sponsored content in order to see it on the platform; it can just be served to them,” the DFRL concluded. Twitter did not respond to questions about the change or the reasons behind it. Musk has made past comments suggesting he sees little difference between state-funded propaganda agencies operated by authoritarian strongmen and independent news outlets in the west. “All news sources are partially propaganda,” he tweeted last year, “some more than others.”