Last week, there was another bombshell story by the Washington Post on the purported evil that is Elon Musk. Quickly amplified by MSNBC and other media, it was another hit job on Musk and could be viewed as what many in the media love to call “disinformation.” Musk himself noted that the premise of the piece (that his tweets were artificially boosted during a recent period) was demonstrably false. Yet, the countervailing facts found little space in the long Post piece. None of that is particularly surprising. Musk became a hunted man when he sought to restore free speech protections to social media. The media regularly offers him little quarter or consideration. However, what was most striking was that the underlying controversy may have been Musk’s targeting of “bots” in his restructuring of Twitter.
The Post story was written with the usual telltale signs of a hit piece. First, there was the breathless headline (notably amplified on its own Twitter account) expressing a combination of shock and scorn: “Elon Musk reinvents Twitter for the benefit of a power user: Himself.” Then came the lead line of how Musk had transformed the company into the “billionaire’s personal sandbox.” It reported how Musk ran amok at Twitter headquarters firing people in a rage over the failure to artificially boost his own tweets in the system. It portrays employees cowering from his wrath and rushing to change algorithms to increase his tweet visibility.
Musk immediately responded with a simple but seemingly major point: there was no such spike or adjustment. He tweeted “Several major media sources incorrectly reported that my Tweets were boosted above normal levels earlier this week. A review of my Tweet likes & views over the past 6 months, especially as a ratio of followers, shows this to be false. We did have a bug that briefly caused replies to have the same prominence as primary Tweets, but that has now been fixed.”
The Musk tweets do not necessarily end the controversy but it raises core factual questions that seemed to be largely omitted in the Post coverage. Indeed, it was simply ignored by media who continued to push the narrative regardless of the serious questions over the premise of the article. Sound familiar? The Russian collusion scandal, the Hunter Biden “Russian Disinformation,” the Lafayette Park “Photo Op” conspiracy, the Nick Sandmann controversy, the Jussie Smollett case, the Migrant Whipping scandal. This list seems endless of false stories where the “facts were too good to check.” However, that is not “disinformation.” Not at all.
If you read the Post piece, it becomes clear what the real fight at Twitter may have been over. Buried in the piece is this observation: “Even before he bought Twitter, Musk emphasized the site’s need to crack down on spam and bots, particularly those shilling cryptocurrency.” The Post noted that Musk declared before buying the company that “If our Twitter bid succeeds, we will defeat the spam bots or die trying!”
Musk has been riding roughshod over engineers to remove certain algorithms and combat bots to restore the company’s transparency and integrity.
Bots and AI systems, however, have a growing alliance in Washington.
Democratic leaders have called for a type of “enlightened algorithms” to frame what citizens access on the internet. In 2021, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called for algorithms to be created to protect people from their own bad choices. She was upset that people were not listening to the informed views of herself and leading experts. Instead, they were reading views of skeptics by searching Amazon and finding books by “prominent spreaders of misinformation.” She denounced Amazon and declared that “this pattern and practice of misbehavior suggests that Amazon is either unwilling or unable to modify its business practices to prevent the spread of falsehoods or the sale of inappropriate products.” She gave the company 14 days to change its algorithms to throttle and obstruct efforts to read opposing views.
More recently, Bill Gates seemed to go “full Borg” in calling for AI to stop certain views from being “magnified by digital channels.” The problem is that we allow “various conspiracy theories like QAnon or whatever to be blasted out by people who wanted to believe those things.” Gates added that AI can combat “political polarization” by checking “confirmation bias.”
So AI overlords will bring unity through forced content assimilation where, to paraphrase the Borg, “free speech is futile.”
The Post does not go to bat for bots like Gates in this piece and even acknowledges that ” it wasn’t that crypto bots weren’t a problem,” but then returns to the Musk press mosh pit.
I previously discussed how Washington has gone to war with Twitter with an alliance of political, corporate, and media interests. It has been unrelenting and includes a campaign to get companies to suspend or reduce advertising until censorship is restored. The media has kept a steady stream of hit pieces on Musk that often border on wartime propaganda.
Musk is not perfect. No one is and being a billionaire gives you a billion ways to magnify your own idiosyncrasies. However, Musk has brought a level of transparency to Twitter (and his own controversies) that is unmatched in any social media company.
I will admit to a bias in favor of Musk as a long-standing free speech advocate. I previously wrote that, despite his incredible achievements in space and transportation technology, Musk’s greatest legacy may prove his defense of free speech. His release of the Twitter Files has revealed a comprehensive system of censorship coordinated with the government. He has also restored free speech protection to a major social media platform. The move is transformative and historic.
The campaign against Musk reflects a degree of desperation as the control of social media collapsed with his purchase. If you are to control speech on social media, it must be complete and total. Musk shattered that unified front and, with it, the ability to maintain approved narratives by silencing critics and barring particular views. Elon Musk did not “reinvent” Twitter as much as restore Twitter to what it was. However, there is a reinvention of journalism in a new and more menacing image.
New book on how press went off the rails:
https://www.foxnews.com/media/new-book-details-how-media-lost-people-fact-checking-fetish-anti-speech-activism
Thank you Professor Turley. Your insights are always appreciated.
Let’s see if I got this straight. One of these things is not like the other. Trump ask for a tweet to be taken down and 80 FBI agents patrol the halls at twitter. One of these things is not like the other. Trump asks that a tweet be taken down and the FBI pays twitter 3.5 Million bucks to censor twitter users. One of these things is not like the other. Trump asks that a tweet be taken down and Twitter bans The New York Post from posting. They really do think your stupid enough to fall for it. Maybe you are and maybe you aren’t.
Tit, you’re a moron.
I will admit Anonymous your calling me an idiot is the most intelligent thing you’ve had to say today. Low ceiling. Everything I have said about the FBI relationship with Twitter is true. When you can’t deal with it you call a name. Like I say you’ve hit a new level of intelligence.
He has more money than any of them, and sadly, that is the deciding factor here IMO, they know they can’t outspend him, sadly, it is that simple. I thank my lucky stars he is there and that he is who he is. In modern America, even one prominent, dissenting voice is enough to bust the fascist narrative, and that is where we are. Mao would *love* our modern media. Extreme leftists, *in our government*, would think that a compliment. Anyway, a movement for free speech is something in their arrogance the left never planned on, and I hope it grows and grows, because we need it in every institution in Western society at this point. Every single one. Privilege has very nearly taken over. it is 100% on us to take it back, and please, let us do it without bloodshed.
The struggle continues…
The pattern is easy to discern. They don’t want to talk about the infiltration of the FBI and the CIA into social media so they deflect to Trump asking that a tweet be taken down. The FBI and the CIA will be with us long after Trump is gone. One must wonder, did the FBI think that the tweet about Trump should be taken down because it was disinformation. Wake up folks, don’t fall for the deflection. We have the most powerful law enforcement organization in the world controlling what you can see or hear and what we get from the left is what about Trump. 80 FBI agents meeting with Twitter on a weekly basis and we get what about Trump. When Chuck Schumer said the FBI has seven ways to Sunday at getting back at you he gave them the green light and they pushed the accelerator to the floor free speech be damned.
Tit, it’s become very clear you have no idea what you are talking about. The FBI and CIA did not infiltrate twitter. The FBI meeting with twitter weekday is not illegal or unconstitutional. What is concerning is the fact that too many folks here have shown a very poor grasp of what reading for comprehension is. It’s also clear that you are very gullible and easily manipulated and it shows. It’s pretty sad actually.
Svelaz, why should the FBI be meeting with Twitter at all? By the way, it is illegal for the federal government to initiate actions of censorship in a free nation. When it was Hillary who was being investigated in 2016 the leftist were declaring that the FBI was illegally influencing an election. Now that the FBI was influencing an election through helping Twitter to censor views from the right it becomes justified by you and your leftist friends. To all of those who post on this blog be aware. Svelaz knows exactly what he is doing and who he is doing it for.
Tit, Jesus, you really don’t think things through at all despite your blog handle.
If you would just spend a little bit of effort and some real thinking for yourself you would be able to get the answers for yourself. You don’t think it through. You just take anything out in front of you at face value and run with it.
This column has been up for about 5 hours and Svelaz already has about 30 comments. Watch as he comments 200 times for each and every issue and yet some people don’t realize that he is a paid operative.
Anonymous is just getting uglier and uglier every day, a real wretched fool.
Estovir,
You’re so used to having this blog as your personal echo chamber. But your comment (under countless names) are not that interesting.
Anonymous, your icon looks like a Costco roasted chicken. That chicken tastes good when one eats it, but one doesn’t expect it to have anything useful to say.
S. Meyer,
Clever and witty!
Very nice!
I laughed out loud. It was good 🙂
Alan, prefers the cookie cutter comments of Estovi’s endless puppets.
Costco Chicken, did I clip your wings and serve them?
Thanks Upstate for the compliment.
Alan, Upstate Farmer is Estovir!
Ah, nope.
As I have stated many a time here on the good professor’s blog, I am not religious.
Estovir is, to which I hold absolutely nothing against him.
On more than a few occasions Estovir has posted things I have found to be inspiring, common sense, astute observations, humility, and a good dose of humanity.
Then the times I read your comments I wish there were more Estovirs’ in the world and less of, well . . . you.
Thanks UpstateFarmer.
Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, which is the start of Lent. I am giving up for Lent the internet as a social outlet. So I will let you spar with Peter Shill (as he was once known around here) but now known as Costco Chicken. He, Svelaz, Gigi, Anonymous Leftist, Dennis, Fishwings, Justice Holmes, YNOT, and others use Saul Alinsky “12 Rules for Radicals” as their trolling playbook. See link below this text. And yes, they are all, without a doubt, paid Media Matters / ACT Blue trolls. They usually knockoff at sunset and return in the morning, i.e. this is their paid job.
You can either ignore them (my vote) or succumb to their batsh!t crazy behaviors ala David Brock, who has become wealthy by ridiculing political adversaries. It apparently pays to be nasty, e.g. David Brock, Hillary, AOC, etc. Professor Turley is a single, solitary individual who wields more influence than most attorney commentators. Joe Patrice and
Elie Mystal combined cant hold a candle to Professor Turley. Expect the Media Matter trolls to intensify their vitriol against Turley given that David Brock is now spearheading yet another scorched earth organization, bankrolled of course by George Soros. Evil exists. Believe it.
Either way, don’t lose your integrity, have fun and I’ll see you and the gang after Easter.
Your farm strikes me as a great place
Alinsky Rules for Radicals
https://citizenshandbook.org/rules.html
Rule 5: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It’s hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.
Costco Chicken,
He isn’t. They are two different individuals.
Anyone with any degree of critical thinking, and observe the difference in language used, our posts that give us insight into who we are as individuals, our occupations, family, background, even location all clearly point out we are different individuals.
Something the Costco Chicken cannot grasp.
Is it possible I could post under many different handles?
Sure.
But we have a better sense of honor then they do.
And the effort to create different personalities on line? Hurts my head.
Anonymous, Costco Chicken, keeps trying to tell everyone that a bunch of us are one person but it isn’t true. You see we all have specific monikers whereas the Chicken keeps being “Anonymous”.
S. Meyer, what? Are you 5 years old? YOU didn’t have anything useful to say either. What a coincidence.
You and Anonymous, the Costco Chicken, have something in common. Both of you are the same, but you are a five year old cooked chicken left out of the refrigerator.
LOLOLOL! You’re on a roll this morning, Alan 😉
Diogenes,
I would argue a five year old cooked Costco Chicken left out of the refrigerator has more intelligence, critical thinking skills and common sense then Svelaz and most of the various Anonymous.
I know my livestock, to include my cattle, goats, chickens and ducks and most certainly my hogs do.
I have more respect for my livestock. They are far more intelligent and serve a greater purpose than Leftists do.
I think the trolls have proven you right yet again, Upstate. 🙂
HullBobby,
Well said.
As I have noted in another of the good professor’s articles, we have personalities that are conveyed through our posts. We get a feel for each other as if we were at a bar or coffee shop talking about current events.
We do not get that same feel from the various Anonymous. I generally dont read any of the Anonymous posts as I cannot keep track of who is who, but the times I do, I find them to be as you put,
“. . . getting uglier and uglier every day,”
What an ugly mind.
Thank God for Svelaz who knows what he’s talking about and backs it up with facts and citations to validate what he reports. People like hullbobby and TIT post on here to support Turley’s slanted and Fox-purchased swill and lack the knowledge about issues to cogently engage in any rational discussion or reasonable response–so they just engage in accusations and name-calling, just like the orange one they worship.
Wow Hullbobby, still whining and moaning about posting? I’m not paid sorry to burst your bubble. I’m no different than any other poster here. Apparently I live rent free in your head. Gotta say it’s pretty boring.
Free speech must be so annoying for you. You know you could just ignore me but somehow you keep reading what I say. The problem seems to be on your end.
This is what he does instead of having a life.
Hullbobby, Svelaz has a trust fund. Thats why he has all the time for these postings.
Turley Represents Republican Efforts To Intimidate Social Media, Part 2
Wednesday’s hearing was just the latest effort to advance an increasingly popular Republican narrative that Democrats colluded with social media companies. House Republicans have formed a panel to probe perceived government abuses against conservatives, including allegations of social media bias. Meanwhile, two Republican attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri have filed a lawsuit alleging that the Biden administration is circumventing the First Amendment to censor social media.
At times, the hearing veered away from Republican aims as Anika Collier Navaroli, a company whistleblower, brought forward new testimony alleging that conservatives influenced the social network. The company changed its policies to accommodate President Donald Trump’s rule-breaking tweet, according to Navaroli, and the Trump White House asked Twitter to remove an insulting tweet about the president, posted by the television personality Chrissy Teigen.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/02/08/house-republicans-twitter-files-collusion/
WaPo tried to create a controversy where there was none and Musk proved it.
Now all the brainwashed Leftists ignore the facts and scream how bad Musk is.
Fun to watch Musk discredit the WaPo with a few sentences.
Kinda like how Lin does it.
Upstatefarmer,
“ WaPo tried to create a controversy where there was none and Musk proved it.”
He didn’t prove anything. All he had was his word. That’s worthless. He’s the one who claims he supports complete transparency on how Twitter works. Yet he’s provided zero documentation or any evidence to support what he says. Just because he’s Elon doesn’t mean he’s infallible when it comes to what he says.
Criticisms probably written by bots and assigned to editors.
We are beginning to smell the fear eminating from the prog/left. Their mask is slipping. Their rotten core is becoming visible to many. I just hope we have enough time remaining for their total exposure to even their most brainwashed tools.
“Their rotten core is becoming visible to” … a *very* tiny *few* more, each day, very little by very little. And the leftists and propagandists are working overtime to stem the tide. The whole truth will eventually come to light …
@rck77
This is accurate but with a caveat. I have in-laws who are of millennial age, and they have *just now* noticed something might be amiss, and what they notice is the tiniest tip of the iceberg (to whit: maybe someone, some unknown and unnamed someone else, is in control?’. And yet, they absolutely voted for Biden, and would likely vote for Sanders if that were an option). We have not turned a corner yet. Not at all or in any meaningful way, whatsoever.
Turley Represents Republican Efforts To Intimidate Social Media, Part 1
On Wednesday, Musk’s “Twitter Files” took center stage in a combative Capitol Hill hearing, as GOP leaders attempted to turn Twitter’s decision to briefly block sharing a New York Post story about President Biden’s son into evidence of a broad conspiracy. Conservatives have long argued that Silicon Valley favors Democrats by systematically suppressing right-wing viewpoints on social media.
The testimony of former Twitter executives repeatedly contradicted these accusations. Still, Republicans plowed ahead with unsubstantial allegations of collusion between government officials and the company’s old regime. After one former Twitter executive testified that most of his interactions with the FBI were about foreign interference, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, shot back: “I think you guys got played.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/02/08/house-republicans-twitter-files-collusion/
……………………………….
One needn’t be too cynical to suspect that Professor Turley is coordinating directly with committee Republicans in an effort to intimidate social media companies.
Anonymous, twitter wasn’t the only one having serious doubts about the Hunter Biden laptop story. Fox News also refused to publish the story. Giuliani approached Fox News first before going to the New York post.
“ Mediaite has learned that Fox News was first approached by Rudy Giuliani to report on a tranche of files alleged to have come from Hunter Biden’s unclaimed laptop left at a Delaware computer repair shop, but that the news division chose not to run the story unless or until the sourcing and veracity of the emails could be properly vetted.
With the general election just three weeks away, Giuliani ultimately brought the story to the New York Post, which shares the same owner, Rupert Murdoch.”
https://www.mediaite.com/tv/exclusive-fox-news-passed-on-hunter-biden-laptop-story-over-credibility-concerns/
I don’t recall Turley ever bringing this important fact during his criticisms of media censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop “scandal”.
Oh man, this one struck a chord with the two contrarians. Yet, they get to post and not be censored. I’m beginning to enjoy them. Very rich!
Anonymous – You assert that the Twitter “briefly” blocked the Hunter Biden story. It was far from brief in light of the circumstances. The NYP was blocked for two weeks during the last weeks before the 2020 Presidential election when the revelations contained in the report could have had a bombshell effect in the political sphere. (“The New York Post has been locked out of its Twitter account for two weeks because it has not deleted a tweet linking to a dubious article on Hunter Biden, Dorsey said during a Senate committee hearing . . ..” https://www.businessinsider.com/jack-dorsey-ny-post-remains-locked-out-twitter-hunter-biden-2020-10
It does not seem that the Post story has been debunked at all.
Free speech is still controlled by twitter. It is just controlled by Musk rather than by a larger group of people. Musk and Musk alone makes the decisions to ban accounts, such the as the one tracking his jet, and Alex Jones. He has reinstated Neo-Nazis though: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/elon-musk-twitter-reinstates-neo-nazi-andrew-anglin-account-1234640390/
The fact that a single billionaire with his own biases is making these decisions now – accountable to no one – does not seem like an improved situation (unless you are a fan of the Neo-Nazi accounts and the like).
Blahblah, your name matches your content.
For one….I really do not care what Joe Biden has to say but I do very much care what Elon Musk does.
One is the catalyst to renewed emphasis upon Free Speech and the other is exactly the opposite.
Which is more important?
Had we genuine free speech Biden would not have been elected and that no matter how hard you try to deny it…..is the truth!
When 20% of Biden voters admit had they known of the Laptop story and Classified Documents it would have changed their vote…..that indicates the value of free speech and the price we are paying for the lack of it.
Ralph Chappell — so well said, in such few words. Excellent!
Ralph, here’s an interesting bit of news that Turley never mentioned at the time. This was from 2020 just weeks before the election.
“ Fox News, too, is reported to have passed on the chance to grab the story when it came by, according to Mediaite. The site reported Monday that Fox News had “credibility concerns” about the files alleged to have come from Biden’s laptop, which is how the Post got the scoop. Rupert Murdoch owns both Fox News and the Post.
But according to two sources familiar with the matter, the lack of authentication of Hunter Biden’s alleged laptop, combined with established concerns about Giuliani as a reliable source and his desire for unvetted publication, led the network’s news division to pass. Fox News declined to comment on this story.
Some of Fox News’ top news anchors and reporters have distanced themselves from the story. During an on-air report that largely focused on how social media platforms handled this story, Bret Baier said, “Let’s say, just not sugarcoat it. The whole thing is sketchy.”
…” The Fox News article, which was co-bylined by Sam Dorman and Mike Emanuel, doesn’t name the source who confirmed the contents of this email. Fox News also reported that sources identified one of the six people to be Joe Biden — who was at the time out of office and a private citizen. There is no evidence in his released tax returns that Joe Biden benefited from this supposed graft arranged by his son Hunter and it is unrelated to Ukraine or then Vice President Biden’s work to oust an allegedly corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor. According to an Associated Press report, the mixing of legitimate emails with false ones was a tactic used by Russian intelligence operations in the 2017 French election. Leaked emails that were called “utterly mundane” were included to lend credibility to falsified information designed to undermine Emanuel Macron’s reelection bid.
On Sunday night, the New York Times reported that the New York Post had a difficult time finding a reporter to put their byline on the story amidst internal concerns about its dubious sourcing. The Times reported that the staff writer who mostly wrote the story, Bruce Golding, refused put his name on the report because he doubted its credibility. Post editors then “pressed staff members to add their bylines to the story — and at least one aside from Mr. Golding refused,” according to the Times report, which cited two unnamed Post journalists. A Post spokeswoman had no comment on how the article was written or edited.“
https://www.mediaite.com/tv/exclusive-fox-news-passed-on-hunter-biden-laptop-story-over-credibility-concerns/
This is why the New York post is listed pretty high in the GDI Turley recently criticized. This is why Fox News who has been caught lying to its viewers by peddling Trump’s voter fraud claims knowing they were BS.
This is why Elon has issues with twitter,
“ If Elon can learn how to put a bit more thought into some of the decisions, and fire from the hip a bit less, it might do some good,” the employee said. “He needs to learn the areas where he just does not know things and let those that do know take over.”
At the same time, “he really doesn’t like to believe that there is anything in technology that he doesn’t know, and that’s frustrating,” the employee said. “You can’t be the smartest person in the room about everything, all the time.”
With Musk continuing to fire people impulsively, entire teams have been wiped out, and their work is being handed to other, overstretched teams that often have little understanding of the new work that is being assigned to them.”
His need or dependence in the image that he’s a genius at everything. Obviously he’s not smart when it comes to SM. He won’t admit it and those around him know it.
My gosh, look at all the epistles from Svelaz this morning. Soros doesn’t pay you enough. Bucking for a promotion to Baghdad Bob?
Svelaz, so Twitter employees said that Elon would just shoot from the hip and that he should just trust the experts. Are you referring to the same experts who cancelled the New York post Hunter laptop story. Perhaps they were referring to the experts who blocked the account of the Whitehouse press secretary when they continued to allow the tweets from the Taliban. My hope is that Elon will do a lot more shooting from the hip to get rid of the mind control “experts” at Twitter. Gee, you get “experts” on disinformation from Twitter and put them in the same room with “experts” on disinformation from the FBI and what could possibly go wrong. Thank you Elon Musk for getting rid of the stench.
Tit, it’s obvious Musk is not smart when it comes to SM and how it works. That doesn’t mean he’s not smart. Just not in the sphere of social media platforms and how they work. He DID fire those who had a better understanding of how twitter’s inner workings and those who understood the complexities of what the algorithms do and how they affect control of content. People who are in the industry know Elon is not knowledgeable enough about it despite his image that he is some sort of genius at everything. That’s a carefully cultivated image that allows him to project this aura of credibility. It’s a facade. That’s not saying he’s not good at other things. Nobody disputes that he’s good a building rockets and electric cars. He’s not good at managing social media platforms however and that became very obvious to insiders who know how those systems work.
It takes a little bit of research and using various sources to get to the truth instead of just buying at face value what you’re being told by Turley and Musk. It’s clear neither know how social media works and that’s the problem. Turley admits he’s heavily biased toward Musk. So much that he metaphorically has his lips firmly planted on his rear end.
Once upon a time Svelaz argued that as a private entity they could do whatever they wanted to do. Where is that argument now. Leftist like Svelaz just can’t stand the fact that Twitter worked hand in hand with the FBI and Elon Musk exposed their censorship game. Svelaz says, we had it so good when we could block anything we wanted to block about Covid and the Hunter laptop. Svelaz says, it was our day in the sun and Elon rained on our parade. Svelaz says, someone left the cake out in the rain and it was so sweet for so long. It’s a personality thing.
TIT, you’re hilarious. I have no issue with Musk doing what he wants with twitter. It’s his prerogative. I’ve never said he couldn’t do what he wanted.
Elon cherry picked what he released as the “twitter files”. Matt Taibbi deliberately left out the fact that the trump administration directly requested tweets be taken down because Trump didn’t like the crude references addressed to him. Taibbi or Elon didn’t disclose the fact that Twitter kept a database of requests for removing content from Trump’s administration and Republican legislators who are currently harping about this FBI cooperation.
It’s obvious you’re pretty clueless about the issue. Did you notice that Turley isn’t covering the hearings? Nobody really is. That’s because it’s being recognized as a $hit show. It’s so bad that the viewership is lower than the J6 committee hearings.
“Elon cherry picked what he released as the “twitter files”
Show us the requests by Trump that were carried out by Twitter. Stop with your nonsense.
“ Show us the requests by Trump that were carried out by Twitter. Stop with your nonsense.”
Anonymous, it only takes a little bit of effort on your part to get the information you seek. As a usual others have to do the work for you because you are too lazy or incompetent.
“ Twitter Kept Entire ‘Database’ of Republican Requests to Censor Posts”
But former Trump administration officials and Twitter employees tell Rolling Stone that the White House’s Teigen tweet demand was hardly an isolated incident: The Trump administration and its allied Republicans in Congress routinely asked Twitter to take down posts they objected to — the exact behavior that they’re claiming makes President Biden, the Democrats, and Twitter complicit in an anti-free speech conspiracy to muzzle conservatives online.“
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/elon-trump-twitter-files-collusion-biden-censorship-1234675969/amp/
Elon didn’t released that data base when he released the twitter files. Suggesting he was cherry-picking what to show instead of being totally transparent like he promised.
To control the information it has to be all encompassing or it doesn’t work. Past example Russia. Once outside information was available via the internet the people were able to get the truth. Same here with Twitter. Mr Musk is to be congratulated.
“ At the same time, Twitter usage in the United States has declined almost 9 percent since Musk’s takeover, according to one recent study.
Twitter sources say the view count feature itself may be contributing to the decline in engagement, and therefore views. The like and retweet buttons were made smaller to accommodate the display of views, making them harder to easily tap.
An even more obvious reason for the decline in engagement is Twitter’s increasingly glitchy product, which has baffled users with its disappearing mentions, shifting algorithmic priorities, and tweets inserted seemingly at random from accounts they don’t follow. On Wednesday, the company suffered one of its first major outages since Musk took over, with users being told, inexplicably, “You are over the daily limit for sending tweets.”
It turns out that an employee had inadvertently deleted data for an internal service that sets rate limits for using Twitter. The team that worked on that service left the company in November.”
Obviously twitter is not the same and under Elon it’s been operating shoddily.
Another example of why you’re nothing but a troll. Devoid of facts.
A 9% reduction of traffic is small. If 10% of the traffic was bots, and another 5% responses to those bots. Actual traffic is up.
But as one of Turleys past posts covered, the nations schools are turning out a product, sliding into illiteracy and innumeracy. You are a great example of what that looks like in real time.
Musk has been riding roughshod over engineers to remove certain algorithms and combat bots to restore the company’s transparency and integrity.
Bots and AI systems, however, have a growing alliance in Washington.
Iowan2, 9% is a lot when you realize that Twitter has 450 million users. That’s close to 41 million users dropping the service. It’s pretty significant.
The article is quoting people who use twitter’s data for sourcing. They are indeed facts. It’s from a twitter employee telling musk the statistics.
“ Actual traffic is up.”
Yet you offer no evidence to back that up.
“ But as one of Turleys past posts covered, the nations schools are turning out a product, sliding into illiteracy and innumeracy. You are a great example of what that looks like in real time.”
That’s funny. I’ve been posting excerpts from the actual source that Turley deliberately left out. It took a bit of research and you know some of that knowledge they teach you in school on how to look for things and make arguments. YOU have never shown anything close to that. It seems YOU are the better example. All you have is insults. I have provide evidence and sources. What have you done to back up your argument?
Yet you offer no evidence to back that up.
You suffer that illiteracy and innumeracy I mentioned.
you use 41 million because it ‘sounds’ bigger than 9%, the article is talking traffic not people dropping the service.
Illiterate and innumerate.
It seems there’s a pattern to Elon’s obsession about his tweets and shows a lack of understanding how his own SM platform works. He fired engineers because he didn’t like the fact that his tweets weren’t trending as he thought they should. Here’s why Turley should have researched this more thoroughly.
“ For weeks now, Elon Musk has been preoccupied with worries about how many people are seeing his tweets. Last week, the Twitter CEO took his Twitter account private for a day to test whether that might boost the size of his audience. The move came after several prominent right-wing accounts that Musk interacts with complained that recent changes to Twitter had reduced their reach.
On Tuesday, Musk gathered a group of engineers and advisors into a room at Twitter’s headquarters looking for answers. Why are his engagement numbers tanking?
“This is ridiculous,” he said, according to multiple sources with direct knowledge of the meeting. “I have more than 100 million followers, and I’m only getting tens of thousands of impressions.”
One of the company’s two remaining principal engineers offered a possible explanation for Musk’s declining reach: just under a year after the Tesla CEO made his surprise offer to buy Twitter for $44 billion, public interest in his antics is waning.
Employees showed Musk internal data regarding engagement with his account, along with a Google Trends chart. Last April, they told him, Musk was at “peak” popularity in search rankings, indicated by a score of “100.” Today, he’s at a score of nine. Engineers had previously investigated whether Musk’s reach had somehow been artificially restricted, but found no evidence that the algorithm was biased against him.
Musk did not take the news well.
“You’re fired, you’re fired,” Musk told the engineer. (Platformer is withholding the engineer’s name in light of the harassment Musk has directed at former Twitter employees.)”
https://www.platformer.news/p/elon-musk-fires-a-top-twitter-engineer
Elon didn’t dispute this when it was reported. It’s pretty clear that he has no idea how these algorithms work. And that he can’t stand the fact that he’s not really that popular.
shows a lack of understanding how his own SM platform works.</i
You have made this determination because despite knowing nothing about SM you are smarter than Musk who has been studying twitter for more than a year, with access to proprietary information.
The error made in all of this reporting is assuming to understand what Musk's, long term and short term goal look like.
Iowan2, I’m not claiming I’m smarter than Musk. That doesn’t mean he is smart enough to understand how Social media worlds either. Those who have worked for twitter for years KNOW what is going on and KNOW that Musk does not understand certain things about the workings of a social media platform. He’s finding out or found out that it’s not as simple as he though it was given his assumption that his intelligence would allow him to understand. That is not always the case.
“ Musk who has been studying twitter for more than a year, with access to proprietary information.”
No he hasn’t bee studying twitter. He has been making demands about what he wants from it without the people he needs to make it happen. Remember he fired a lot of them and the ones who are left are not competent enough to point out to him that what he is experiencing with twitter is not due to algorithms, it’s what people are actually thinking or NOT thinking regarding Musk. People simply stopped caring what he thinks and that seems to bother him.
The reporting about what has been going on with twitter and Elon is based on sources close to him or those still working at twitter.
Musk has a track record, across a wide expanse of knowledge bases.
You are an ignorant internet troll with and agenda, selecting as an information source, disgruntled employees.
Think the Left does not have every intention to censor speech they do not agree with…..just read the posts at this blog.
The Left knows truth destroys their agenda at every turn.
Thus…..they do everything they can….however they can….whenever they can…..to stop anyone and anything that poses that existential threat to their agenda.
The plainly despise the Constitution and the especially the First and Second Amendments, the Rule of Law, and just plain old commonsense.
That is why there can be no compromise with them….none.
Theirs is a cancer that left unchecked shall end this Great Experiment we have created in this Nation.
Ralph, what truth have you presented? So far body’s who has been criticizing me or anonymous has provide anything with any substance let alone any evidence.
There’s a reason why Turley didn’t link to the Washington post’s article. It leads to the source which can verify the claim. Elon is being dishonest. This is the source of the Washington post’s reporting.
“At 2:36 on Monday morning, James Musk sent an urgent message to Twitter engineers.
“We are debugging an issue with engagement across the platform,” wrote Musk, a cousin of the Twitter CEO, tagging “@here” in Slack to ensure that anyone online would see it. “Any people who can make dashboards and write software please can you help solve this problem. This is high urgency. If you are willing to help out please thumbs up this post.”
When bleary-eyed engineers began to log on to their laptops, the nature of the emergency became clear: Elon Musk’s tweet about the Super Bowl got less engagement than President Joe Biden’s.
Biden’s tweet, in which he said he would be supporting his wife in rooting for the Philadelphia Eagles, generated nearly 29 million impressions. Musk, who also tweeted his support for the Eagles, generated a little more than 9.1 million impressions before deleting the tweet in apparent frustration.
In the wake of those losses — the Eagles to the Kansas City Chiefs, and Musk to the president of the United States — Twitter’s CEO flew his private jet back to the Bay Area on Sunday night to demand answers from his team.
Within a day, the consequences of that meeting would reverberate around the world, as Twitter users opened the app to find that Musk’s posts overwhelmed their ranked timeline. This was no accident, Platformer can confirm: after Musk threatened to fire his remaining engineers, they built a system designed to ensure that Musk — and Musk alone — benefits from previously unheard-of promotion of his tweets to the entire user base.
In recent weeks, Musk has been obsessed with the amount of engagement his posts are receiving. Last week, Platformer broke the news that he fired one of two remaining principal engineers at the company after the engineer told him that views on his tweets are declining in part because interest in Musk has declined in general.“
https://www.platformer.news/p/yes-elon-musk-created-a-special-system
“But there were also legitimate technical reasons the CEO’s tweets weren’t performing. Twitter’s system has historically promoted tweets from users whose posts perform better to both followers and non-followers in the For You Tab; Musk’s tweets should have fit that model but showed up less only about half the time that some engineers thought they should, according to some internal estimates.
By Monday afternoon, “the problem” had been “fixed.” Twitter deployed code to automatically “greenlight” all of Musk’s tweets, meaning his tweets will bypass Twitter’s filters designed to show people the best content possible. The algorithm now artificially boosted Musk’s tweets by a factor of 1,000 – a constant score that ensured his tweets rank higher than anyone else’s in the feed.
Internally, this is called a “power user multiplier,” although it only applies to Elon Musk, we’re told. The code also allows Musk’s account to bypass Twitter heuristics that would otherwise prevent a single account from flooding the core ranked feed, now known as “For You.”
That explains why people opening the app Monday found that Musk dominated the feed, with a dozen or more Musk tweets and replies visible to anyone who followed him and millions more who did not. Over 90 percent of Musk’s followers now see his tweets, according to one internal estimate.”
Clearly Turley being biased didn’t do any research and chose instead to blindly defend Elon by making all sorts of insinuations and putting out the usual rambling about media’s “attack” on free speech.