X -Where Twitter goes to die.

[Gregg]

I am currently suspended for a week for the second time in 2 weeks.

The offending post, on a site where "It's time for us to use the 2nd Amendment now" is fine?

In one of those cartoon FAP pictures that put Trump with people who would have nothing to do with him "Martin Luther King, JFK, this time George Washington literally hugging him..." I responded "He'd pimp slap his orange ass"

So that's how Absolute Free Speech is going...

[Reality Check]

Meanwhile Elon Musk personally re-instated the account of a right wing dude who had been banned for posting child pornography.

[Suranis]

Very interesting Article from Salon. The ironic thing is that by righting this she is patching into the exact same industry she is critiquing - Writers writing about Right wing asswipes for self styled progressives to feel superior and tut tut about. But she is spot on about trolls needing "liberals" to bait. and create content to drive their viral marketing and other activities.

And Musk was banking on enabling that to keep people on his platform, fighting.

"They need us. We don't need them:" The fall of Twitter is making the trolls and grifters desperate

Elon Musk's business model depends on "triggering" liberals — but he's now running out of progressives to bait

The grifters that make up the troll-industrial complex are not okay.

One can see the sheen of desperation in the world of self-identified conservatives who make a living by "triggering" the liberals. The usual dose of outrage bait isn't working as well any longer, so the right-wingers are escalating the provocations. Tucker Carlson, for example, gave a glow-up interview with manosphere "influencer" Andrew Tate, who is being held in Romania on charges of sex trafficking and rape. Daily Wire anti-trans provocateur Matt Walsh is selling plushies of himself clad only in a diaper, which he encourages people to give to children. Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro, on the other hand, made a nearly hour-long video tantrum about "Barbie," complete with setting the dolls on fire. The clawing need to get attention from progressives seems to be driving these engagement farmers a little nuts, as they up the weird-and-evil ante, hoping to get those precious clicks and plays.

And it's not just those who openly align themselves with the right who seem more unhinged than usual. The "contrarian" class of trolls is, if anything, acting even more frantic. These are the people who claim not to be partisan Republicans or MAGA sympathizers, but whose online existence is largely, often exclusively, built around baiting liberals with reactionary opinions or disinformation. Some, like former New York Times writer Bari Weiss and former psychology professor Jordan Peterson, pretend they are being canceled for intellectual independence that invariably reads like standard right-wing talking points. Some, like fake presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or faux journalist Michael Tracey, repackage far-right disinformation as leftist politics. And some, like journalists Freddie deBoer or think tanker Matt Stoller, brand themselves as "socialists," mainly by discouraging people from backing Democratic candidates in elections.

Whatever flavor they come in, there are two things both Republican and not-a-Republican trolls have in common: First, their "professional" existence is defined by drawing negative attention from liberals. Second, by profiting off liberal outrage, they are giving Donald Trump and the MAGA movement a boost.

These folks, by design, are annoying all of the time, but lately, things seem to be getting worse. After being captured on tape spouting an anti-semitic conspiracy theory, Kennedy doubled down with an incoherent gripe about not getting Secret Service protection, which mainly appeared to be an excuse to dog whistle "14" and "88," which are understood as coded signals of support to neo-Nazis.

Tracey also leveled up the trolling over the weekend by repackaging Holocaust denialism as a "leftist" critique of the American military.

Less vile but still in the desperate-for-attention category: Stoller trying a "Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla. is a leftist ally because he hates Disney" troll at Politico and deBoer snatching eye rolls and dunks with "Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., is a traitor to progressives" hot take at New York magazine. Neither opinion was worth the electricity needed to publish them, but both no doubt succeeded at the main goal of generating traffic through hate clicks. Weiss' latest gambit for attention, meanwhile, is even more cringeworthy: A "debate" over whether "the sexual revolution has failed" between a group of fake feminists and faux-socialists titled "A Clash of the Female Titans." (Well, at least the word "female" is accurate.) Sure, all three examples are technically off-Twitter, but it's hard to imagine they'd exist but for trying to get those "look at these assholes" social media shares.

"What Musk has proven through his actions and his statements is that he's committed to serving the trolls and the fraudsters first and the ordinary good faith users second."

The escalation of shock value tactics, on both the right and the pretending-not-to-be-right political classes, are likely rooted in the same cause: The slow motion collapse of Twitter, now rebranded "X," under the leadership of Tesla CEO Elon Musk. While these folks have various outlets, both in the media and social media, ultimately their business model of trolling depends heavily on Twitter.

"Grifters need people to harass and a mainstream discourse to counter. As traffic takes a nosedive and Twitter becomes less a part of the conversation, it's going to be harder for these folks to make money," Melissa Ryan, a strategist who helps counter online disinformation, told Salon.

Want more Amanda Marcotte on politics? Subscribe to her newsletter Standing Room Only.

"What Musk has proven through his actions and his statements is that he's committed to serving the trolls and the fraudsters first and the ordinary good faith users second," explained Brian Hughes of American University, who is the co-founder of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL). But, he noted, Musk is "blinded by his own ideology" and can't see how this is backfiring.

"As normal people, for lack of a better term, continue to leave Twitter, that's actually going to cause probably a reduction in the use of the platform by these trolls and these fraudsters. They don't have their audience of targets that they need," he continued.

All this, Ryan said, explains why the trolls "are getting more extreme and desperate." The pool of people available to get attention from is shrinking, so the only way to keep the engagement rates as high is to say wilder and nastier things. But eventually, there will be so few people on Twitter left to aggravate that even white nationalist dogwhistling and Holocaust denialism won't work.

By profiting off liberal outrage, they are giving Donald Trump and the MAGA movement a boost.

Even before Musk, Twitter was, in sheer numbers, a relatively small platform, with a user base a mere fraction of what Facebook, TikTok, or even Reddit enjoy. But to focus strictly on numbers misunderstands why the troll-industrial complex relied so heavily on Twitter. As Hughes told Salon, "Twitter was very important for what we call 'agenda-setting' in media studies." Because Twitter was the favorite platform of journalists, politicians, and other politically important figures, getting attention on there meant getting your message amplified, even (and often especially) if only by people mocking or arguing with you.

Hughes pointed to Kennedy as an example. With the pandemic fading in the rearview mirror, it's much harder for Kennedy, who made his name as an anti-vaccination conspiracy theorist, to keep getting media coverage. But by dishing out regular provocations on Twitter, Kennedy can keep his name in the media. "Otherwise," Hughes said, "he becomes more irrelevant."

Musk may feign confidence about his strategy on Twitter, but there are strong signs he's worried that the site's reputational decline is driving off the everyday users he needs in order to keep his beloved trolls active. The New York Times reports that Musk has been threatening to sue the Center for Countering Digital Hate for reporting on the prevalence of bigotry on the platform. In response, the group's leader, Imran Ahmed, said that Musk wants "stem the tide of negative stories and rebuild his relationship with advertisers." It's a sign that Musk has run out of ideas. The reason people are leaving Twitter is not because they read a report on a non-profit's website. It's because they can see for themselves that Twitter is increasingly a ghost town dominated by a handful of trolls who get increasingly vile to make up for declining engagement numbers.

While it's a good thing to interrupt the supply chain of liberal outrage fueling the trolling-industrial complex, Hughes did caution that there are dangers from Twitter becoming the right-wing echo chamber. Some people get a "charge" out of "rallying against a scapegoat" or "getting high off of a sense of persecution or of persecuting others," he said. Pointing to QAnon as an example, he argued that these communities "don't need an audience of liberals to troll. They really just need each other." Trump's Twitter rip-off, Truth Social, shows that social media networks that cater only to this right-wing bubble may not scale to the point of profitability, but they are unfortunately good at radicalizing people.

Still, it's hard not to feel some joy, watching the Musk takeover of Twitter undermine the reach of the very trolls he was trying to empower. "It has to come as quite a shock" to "folks like Tracy, RFK Jr., and Weiss," Ryan said, "since Musk's Twitter was supposed to be a far-right paradise."

Hughes points out that some Twitter alternatives like Bluesky have revived that sense of joy some remember from Twitter in its days before professionalized trolling. "Political liberals, people on the left, centrists, moderates, people who are just hobbyists, they all have a lot more fun when the trolls and the propagandists aren't there to harass and defraud them," he said. Trolls, however, "can't have a good time at all if we're not there."

As Hughes notes, "They need us. We don't need them."

https://www.salon.com/2023/08/01/they-n ... desperate/

[Gregg]

I'm thinking as I read this about people who I doubt even believe half of the garbage they post.

My first example is Nick Adams (Alpha Male)[/iwho for quite a long time I thought was a left wing parody making fun of the Alpha Male group, he's not, but I still think he's being an asshole for the clicks. Other less obvious but I am convinced just as much are examples of people clowning for the cameras are Nick Fuentes, Ben Shapiro, Charlie Kirk etc... Sure' they're true believer right wing dipshits but their online persona is overblown to drive engagements online.

It's the 4,829,947 worst part of how Social Media is destroying society.

[bob]

The latest indictment has led to many lawyers -- some from the best law schools on the planet -- saying on Twitter profoundly dumb things about the indictment.

They say it straight, with their trust-me-I'm-a-lawyer gravitas, when what they say is absolute bunk.

I don't believe these highly successful in life people got that successful by being dumb. This leads to the conclusion they are saying false things for the attention created by sites like Twitter.

[raison de arizona]

Free speech for me, but not for thee.

Elon Musk's X Corp Is Suing an Anti-Hate-Speech Group. Here's What They Have to Say

On Monday, Elon Musk’s X Corp, formerly known as Twitter, filed a lawsuit against an anti-hate speech group, accusing it of “intentionally and unlawfully” accessing the company’s data and conducting “a scare campaign to drive away advertisers from the X platform.”

The complaint, filed in a California federal court, alleges that research conducted by the advocacy group Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) cost the company “tens of millions of dollars.” The suit alleges that 16 unnamed advertisers either stopped spending on the platform, paused plans to advertise, or decided not to reactivate campaigns following CCDH’s research.

In an interview with TIME, Imran Ahmed, CCDH’s founder and CEO, said that the nonprofit, which has yet to be physically served by X’s legal team, plans to fight the lawsuit, and warned that the lawsuit’s outcome could have an adverse impact on independent researchers.

“It’s an unprecedented and shocking escalation in the war Twitter [X Corp] is waging with transparency,” says Ahmed.

Ahmed also notes other recent moves by Musk to reduce transparency, like requiring third-party developers to pay to access X Corp's API, which had long provided researchers data into how people communicate online. “Now he's suing the voice holding him accountable.”

https://time.com/6301841/6301841/

Congressional response: https://trahan.house.gov/uploadedfiles/ ... access.pdf

[neonzx]

X user “super pissed” that Musk ordered takeover of his @music
X user quits paying for Twitter Blue to protest X commandeering his account.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/202 ... c-account/

About a week after X commandeered the popular @X account from longtime Twitter user Gene X Hwang, another user has reported that X has taken over his popular account, @music.

"16 years ago, I created @music and have been running it ever since," Jeremy Vaught, director of engineering at the nonprofit Life Happens, posted on X. "Just now, Twitter/X just ripped it away. Super pissed."

Vaught told Ars that he created the @music Twitter account in 2007 as a way to promote independent music being performed live in Second Life.

Over the next 16 years, Vaught connected with a vibrant community of software developers on Twitter as he continued developing major promotions in Second Life. Then, once his online interests grew past Second Life, he continued using the @music account to simply post about music, as Twitter became his preferred social media platform. With that basic account premise, the @music audience exploded, and he organically gained followers, eventually building up to approximately 450,000 followers.

During that time, Vaught experimented with the @music account, seeking the best way to utilize the large following there.

"I'm a software developer," Vaught told Ars. "And I was trying to come up with the right way to use that audience and do something with it."

But Vaught never had the time to focus on leveraging the @music audience, only ever benefiting from the account when companies occasionally sent him free perks like headphones in trade for promotions. Occasionally, buyers would approach Vaught, trying to tempt him to sell the @music handle, but the biggest offer was only around $5,000. Vaught said he was never interested because he knew that selling his handle violated Twitter's terms of service, and he figured there was more value in keeping the account.

Now X has taken the account away. In the email Vaught posted on X, the platform told Vaught that "the user handle associated with the account @music will be affiliated with X Corp."

"Accordingly, your handle will be changed to a new user handle," the email said.

If you visit @music now, it has 11 million followers, which—judging from an Internet Archive snapshot—appears to be generated from merging the now-defunct @TwitterMusic account into Vaught's @music account. :snippity

:

[raison de arizona]

What a dick move.

[sugar magnolia]

What a dick move.

[pipistrelle]

What a dick move.

That's his middle name.

[Ben-Prime]

What a dick move.

That's his middle name.

At this point, I would not put it past him to file for a legal name-change by which his middle name becomes an eggplant emoji.

[bob]

At this point, I would not put it past him to file for a legal name-change by which his middle name becomes an eggplant emoji.

Musk tried to something similar with one his children, and tried to change the name essentially to a symbol.

The court kicked it, saying English alphanumeric only.

[raison de arizona]

At this point, I would not put it past him to file for a legal name-change by which his middle name becomes an eggplant emoji.

Musk tried to something similar with one his children, and tried to change the name essentially to a symbol.

The court kicked it, saying English alphanumeric only.

Alpha only. They tried to name the child X Æ A-12, but had to go with the darling X AE A-XII instead.

[neeneko]

Free speech for me, but not for thee.

Please please please let SLAPP laws apply here...

[raison de arizona]

If you were unfairly treated by your employer due to posting or liking something on this platform, we will fund your legal bill.

No limit.

Please let us know.

[pipistrelle]

People believe he means it.

Also, what about Twitter employees who were fired?

[Kriselda Gray]

If you were unfairly treated by your employer due to posting or liking something on this platform, we will fund your legal bill.

No limit.

Please let us know.

Just like Trump was going to handle everyone's legal bills from something - Jan 6 I think? I can't recall off the top of my head which it was. I just know he didn't do it.

[pipistrelle]

"Jonathan Random Numbers" is impressed.

Just the Facts
@jonatha26052632
·
Aug 6
This is beyond awesome.

Nobody asked him to do it.

Nobody expected him to do it.

Could cost him and the company unimaginable amounts of money.

But if it works . . .

If corporations and institutions hear about this and are scared straight, we all win.

[p0rtia]

So I spent a bit of time on Twitter today--I've been lingering to monitor the collapse for amusement. I've been in the habit of blocking ads and blue checks, and today I had the time to work out the ratios.

On my main feed, set to Following, one out of six tweets is ad. That's being generous--it's probably closer to one in five. It is impossible to scroll Twitter in the usual way without being inundated.

As others have noted, if you go into the replies of a favorite's post to enjoy the other responses, you are far too often met with countless blue check tweeters, splatting crap all over the thread.

I spent more time blocking than I did reading.

It's dead, Jim.

[neonzx]

So I spent a bit of time on Twitter today--

As others have noted, if you go into the replies of a favorite's post to enjoy the other responses, you are far too often met with countless blue check tweeters, splatting crap all over the thread.

I spent more time blocking than I did reading.

It's dead, Jim.

You are a braver soul than I. I have mostly given up on the TwiX and far too many of my followed accounts (mostly journalists) abandoned it as well, so my feed is crappy.

It is true that Twitter was bleeding cash so something needed to happen. But Elmo wasn't it. *tear drop*

[Slim Cognito]

So I spent a bit of time on Twitter today--I've been lingering to monitor the collapse for amusement. I've been in the habit of blocking ads and blue checks, and today I had the time to work out the ratios.

On my main feed, set to Following, one out of six tweets is ad. That's being generous--it's probably closer to one in five. It is impossible to scroll Twitter in the usual way without being inundated.

As others have noted, if you go into the replies of a favorite's post to enjoy the other responses, you are far too often met with countless blue check tweeters, splatting crap all over the thread.

I spent more time blocking than I did reading.

It's dead, Jim.

IMG_2535.jpeg (93.37 KiB) Viewed 1598 times

[Reality Check]

Looks like X-Pro aka Tweet Deck has gone Blue Check only. Since I had switched most of my devices to the new version (because the old version was broken again) I get redirected to a page to sign up for Twitter Blue. I can still access old Tweet Deck from a tablet I had not switched over. Except for following links to Tweets that's probably it for me as far as Twitter. I hate the normal interface.

I had hopes for Threads but frankly they dropped the ball. It has been out 6 weeks and still lacks a desktop interface. The phone app is worse than Twitter and that means it sucks big time.

[pipistrelle]

What is this?

IMG_1678.jpeg (50.27 KiB) Viewed 1457 times

[Jim]

Twitter continues its implosion...

Brands Suspend Twitter Advertising After Appearing on Pro-Nazi Account

An account on social media platform X, previously known as Twitter, has been suspended after at least two brands cut their advertising for appearing on the profile. A report, initially published by Media Matters for America, revealed how brands including Sports Illustrated, Gilead Sciences, USA Today, NCTA-The Internet and Television Association and more appeared on the verified profile. Following the publication of the article, X suspended the account, and soon after, CNN received confirmation from NCTA and pharmaceutical company Gilead that they immediately paused their ad spending on X.

[RTH10260]

Xwitter --- where anything goes --- including advertizers