The Unofficial "Elon Musk trying to "Save Everyone" from Themselves (except his Step-Sister)" Thread...

[The Evil Genius]

Every 3rd or 4th post on my Twitter timeline is as ad now (and mostly nothing you have ever heard of). Probably does nothing but I do take great joy is blocking every one of those mother****ers. 

Edited October 27, 2023 by The Evil Genius

[China]

Everything Elon Musk Broke in the Year He’s Owned Twitter

He didn’t want to, but Elon Musk closed his purchase of Twitter one year ago. The world’s wealthiest person originally struck the deal in the spring of 2022, realized within a few weeks that he had committed a grievous mistake, and then spent the summer and early fall trying to weasel out of the $44 billion acquisition. The lawyers representing Twitter’s outgoing board of directors were better than Musk’s—or, maybe more accurately, had a close-to-ironclad case against a reputably brilliant billionaire who tried to call “backsies!” on a contract he’d inked. Musk had to pay up, Twitter’s shareholders got $54.20 in cash per share, and the site has been subject to Musk’s whims ever since.

 

It has gone badly. Twitter, which is no longer called Twitter, is a sad shell of its former self by every conventional business metric available to the general public. Repelled by Musk’s behavior and changes to the site, advertisers have pulled back much of their spending. Users have fled. The company appears to be worth about a third of what Musk paid. It faces a crushing debt load, which requires Musk’s employees to twist into funny contortions as they describe the health of the business.

 

None of that is strictly anyone’s problem but Musk’s. What is our problem is everything else with X, the new name of a formerly useful social network. The user experience has cratered; Twitter’s pulse, formerly the heartbeat of the news, has ebbed. It is, generally, much harder to follow anything there, including news about X itself. So in commemoration of Musk’s first anniversary in charge of whatever the place has become, it’s listmaking time. Here are 11 ways Musk has made Twitter worse—for users, for advertisers, for the broader web, and conceivably even for democracy too. And here are three ways he’s actually improved the place. It’s not all bad!

 

Click on the link for the list

[Cooked Crack]

 

 

[Califan007 The Constipated]

 

 

[PokerPacker]

 

On 10/25/2023 at 12:50 PM, ixcuincle said:

would really help if you could access threads on your pc

Using a platform controlled by Facebook isn't really an improvement.

[Cooked Crack]

 

[Cooked Crack]

Probably mad about blue checks posting the fakest news known to man

[Califan007 The Constipated]

4 hours ago, Cooked Crack said:

Probably mad about blue checks posting the fakest news known to man

 

Probably realized that having a boatload of Twitter users point out all the accounts that are "being paid to spread misinformation" was 1) incentivizing people to start pumping out all kinds of bull**** for cash, and 2) hurting the "X" brand in the eyes of whatever advertisers that are left even more than before.

 

I said it before: Musk doesn't think anything through when he makes changes, at all. Which makes him the prototypical Republican lol...

[TradeTheBeal!]

9-D Chessification.

 

 

[Corcaigh]

Absent another crazy billionaire buying it I don’t know how you get to a valuation this high even if it is a loss of $25B in a year. With recent interest rate increases (not all of which Elon will be exposed to) the interest payments on his $13 B debt alone are 50% of their claimed forecast 2023 revenues of about $3B.

 

Then he has his operating expenses and at some point will need to repay the debt. The advertisers are not coming back in numbers he needs.

 

That ‘everything app’ better really monetize his fanboys to the tune of multiple billions a year

[Cooked Crack]

 

[Cooked Crack]

 

[tshile]

Demonetizing accounts that’s tweets require community notes or other warnings is a good move. 
 

blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while. 

[China]

Major critic of X sues after being banned from platform

 

X has banned the account of a prominent critic after he published data that he claims exposed the site’s embrace of the far-right after Elon Musk’s takeover last year.

 

Travis Brown, a software developer based in Berlin, alleges his account was first suspended on July 1 this year, several months after his data formed the basis of New York Times and CNN reports claiming that far-right influencers featured prominently among Twitter Blue subscribers, and how thousands of previously banned X accounts, including members of the far-right, were being reinstated on the site.

 

On Tuesday, Brown announced his decision to challenge his account’s suspension in court in Berlin. “This is a matter of principle,” he says. “I think it is important that platforms like Twitter are not allowed to shut down criticism arbitrarily.” X did not reply to repeated requests for comment.

 

X has been accused of attempting to silence its critics several times since Elon Musk acquired the platform in October 2022. In July, X sued the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) after the nonprofit published research suggesting that problematic content on the platform, such as hate and disinformation, was becoming more widespread. In December 2022, X suspended the account ElonJet, which tracked the movement of Musk’s private jet.

 

“Elon Musk likes to pretend he cares about free speech, but this case exposes that commitment as little more than window dressing,” claims Tiemo Wölken, a German politician who represents the Socialists and Democrats group in the European Parliament. “Someone who silences critics and researchers by kicking them off their platform isn’t a free speech advocate.”

 

Brown says he worked for X for one year, leaving in 2015 when his team was shut down. In 2022, he received a grant from the Open Knowledge Foundation, a nonprofit, to build software that would enable him to trace the history of accounts engaging in disinformation and hate speech. That tool, which focused on the company then known as Twitter, enabled him to identify which social media accounts posting about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had a history of posting spam. But it also meant he could identify, almost in real time, which previously banned accounts were being reinstated on X, he says.

 

“After Musk took over, you did see a very strong turn toward the far right, in terms of which accounts were being amplified, which accounts were building followings more quickly,” he claims.

 

Brown received no warning before his account was initially banned in July, the developer says. He says his account was restored in September, after a court order. But later that same month, Twitter informed Brown that his account would be banned again, with X justifying its decision to the court in a 36-page letter. X argued that Brown was using the platform’s data in a way that violated its terms of service. A similar argument was used in the case against the CCDH. X’s terms of service were updated in September 2023 to prohibit crawling or scraping in any form.

 

 

According to Brown, he has developed many small applications that draw on different data sources and are used by different researchers. But the tool he used to trace the history of X accounts relied on data from the Internet Archive, as well as data gathered from X’s API, he says, adding that this was done in a way he believed to be in compliance with the developer agreement at the time.

 

“What is at stake here is the freedom of researchers on social media platforms,” says Josephine Ballon, spokesperson for HateAid, a German nonprofit that campaigns against online hate speech and is helping Brown with his case. “Travis did not even publish this information on his own. He only contributed to press publications.”

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Dan T.]

Weird. Elon Musk just started following me on Twitter.  I have no earthly idea why. That makes 11 followers.

[The Evil Genius]

Heh look it's an unblockable Prager U ad about detransitioning. Wonder why Elonazi would be forcing that down everyone's throats. 🤔 

 

Spoiler

Not really wondering, I know. 

 

Edited November 2, 2023 by The Evil Genius

[Cooked Crack]

 

[FrFan]

Charge rage’ could be set to replace road rage!

‘Charge rage’ could soon be replacing road rage on London’s streets if the predicted demand for electric car charging points is not met. Drivers in the United States have already been involved in heated disputes as they compete over a shortage of electrical points – dubbed ‘charge rage’ by US media.

Now a new report suggests that we may soon be seeing an increasing incidence of (wait for it) ‘highly charged’ situations between drivers across London, unless the number of charging points is not increased significantly.

 

The report, ‘Clearing the Air’, by Shaun Bailey, a member of the London Assembly which scrutinizes the activities of the Mayor of London, found the installation of charging points was occurring at an unsatisfactorily slow rate compared with the uptake of electric vehicles.

Latest Department for Transport figures show electric car sales are increasing by 172% every five years. Current installation rates of charging points, however, mean there will be just one available for every 15 electric cars on the road by 2031.

At the same time, many of the sockets currently being installed are either ‘standard’ or ‘slow’ chargers, taking between six and eight hours to fully charge a vehicle.

The report recommends that London Mayor Sadiq Khan spends £30million installing 1,579 rapid charging points – which can provide a vehicle with an 80% charge in 30 minutes – as part of his drive to clean up London’s dirty air.

 

Report author Bailey said: “If London is going to fully support the adoption of electric vehicles we need adequate charging infrastructure on our roads.

“This report found London is not preparing to provide the right number and quality of charging points to meet predicted demand and on current levels drivers could be left squabbling over sockets.”

 

Meanwhile, to help ease the national charging situation, a deal has been signed to bring vehicle recharging points to more than 400 forecourts across the UK.

ChargePoint Services and Motor Fuel Group have signed a partnership deal for the roll-out of electric vehicle (EV) charging across the nation’s forecourts.

Motor Fuel Group (MFG), the second largest independent forecourt operator in the UK with 413 stations, will host the 50kW plus rapid chargers at its sites nationwide, which operate under the BP, Shell, Texaco, JET and Murco fuel brands.

 

The chargers will become part of ChargePoint Services’ existing GeniePoint Network, run and managed on its GeniePoint Platform.

ChargePoint Services’ GeniePoint Network is acknowledged as one of the most robust, rapid charging network in the UK, with a high level of functionality enabling continuous monitoring of all the chargers on the network to ensure maximum uptime for drivers.

Jeremy Clarke, MFG’s chief operating officer, said: “We are delighted to be extending our fuel offer to customers as the growth of the electric and hybrid vehicle market is an important part of the fuel mix going forward.”

 

Tension on the line !

[CousinsCowgirl84]

On 11/3/2023 at 11:46 PM, Cooked Crack said:

 

Who paid 50k for a username?

[Cooked Crack]

13 minutes ago, CousinsCowgirl84 said:

Who paid 50k for a username?

Says they're offering 50k. Who knows if anyone has taken them up on it. Feel like it anyone plays 50k for a Twitter handle they'd keep quiet about it.

[GhostofSparta]

1 hour ago, CousinsCowgirl84 said:

Who paid 50k for a username?

So if everybody here chips in some money, I think we could all buy Trump's old twitter handle and have a LOT of fun leading up to the next election.

[The Evil Genius]

1 hour ago, CousinsCowgirl84 said:

Who paid 50k for a username?

 

The same people who bought nft's. 

[tshile]

50k is nothing for a person that sees an opportunity to vastly increase their influence on something 

 

the right username on the right situation would be worth even more than that to certain people running bot farms for example. 

[CousinsCowgirl84]

25 minutes ago, tshile said:

 

 

the right username on the right situation 

Such as?

 

 

50K for a username on a platform that may be defunct in a year and has sole discretion over your use of the platform seems like a poor investment to me.

[tshile]

1 hour ago, CousinsCowgirl84 said:

Such as?

 

 

50K for a username on a platform that may be defunct in a year and has sole discretion over your use of the platform seems like a poor investment to me.

if you’re a state sponsored hacking group that has something you’d like to get out there somehow, maybe a defunct security expert/product/org/whatever would help you. 
 

or a political org, maybe one funded and run by dark money. 
 

Use your imagination. 
 

50k isn’t that much money to tons of places and governments. I’ve seen more spent on ridiculously less useful things. 

Edited November 6, 2023 by tshile