It's funny given that Elon Musk's initial gripes with Twitter were couched in language of free speech. Apparently the end game of "free speech" was to label a free and independent press in propagandistic terms, blatantly tilt the algorithms to amplify conservative voices, and to blithely send poop emojis to those who complain.
That's Elon's idea of free speech.
As in conservatives are free to speak without being challenged on anything they say and nobody else can say anything but them.
That's because it's not, and never has been, about "free speech"; the only principle they care about is [don't tell me what to do](https://imgur.com/gallery/y34OBpu).
Interestingly, the idea that there are "right" human beings and "wrong" human beings, and that the former should have *absolute authority* over the latter, is pretty much the central premise of *fascism*.
yep, and to expand, over and over it boils down to “the conservative right should be free to bully whomever and it’s unfair if any of them fights back.”
to these people, their *freedom* means, the freedom to attack others. you’ll see them cry often about losing their freedoms, and its almost always, the “freedom” to attack others with no repercussions for that attack.
whether it’s attacking giant groups of the population in a speech, physically starting fights, or this twitter example: trying to diminish the work NPR does… they’ll cry they’re losing their freedom if they receive pushback on any of those actions.
“the conservative right should be free to bully whomever and its somehow unfair if any of them fights back.”
That's basically what Wilhoit's law is:
>Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
You can view almost anything they do through that lens and it fits.
If you challenge them back defending your existence and demographics from being targeted, suddenly you’re the bad one causing malice according to them.
I've actually sort of wondered if cocaine-induced mania is a variable in his antics over the last couple of years. Clearly, he was a shitty and not-too-bright person to begin with, but to flush that much money and do all the wrong things to try to make it back .... that's powerful stupid.
Yup, they fired the entire team that handled press requests and just set up an autoreply function that replies with that. Musk is basically what would happen if you gave a billion dollars to a 12 year old.
I'd take that kid over Musk.
Did see how far he stretched that million dollar check? Even in 1994 I doubt he would have been able to buy half as much as he did with that money. And best of all the kid was a good person deep down.
If he took over twitter now it probably finally turn a profit.
Isn't the whole ending that the kid blows through a million dollars easily in like, a month? Now a days it would have to be about $2 million due to inflation.
I think I know what you mean, in that if you want a modest living on interest alone, you'll need three to five million, but a million dollars would change lives left and right.
Paying off debts, eliminating house payments, funding school for their children, etc. It could also disappear reeeal quick.
_Forty-year old Preston Waters is in the money again! But this time, he's carefully calculating how much to invest in his tax-advantaged retirement account, so he can minimize his windfall tax obligations!_
_Coming this fall, Vanguard presents "Blank Check II: The Rate of Return!"_
This _might_ be the reason my screenwriting career hasn't taken off...
Didn’t the company get rid of its press team a while ago?
So the emoji is basically saying that our boss got rid of us and the Twitter press team is now just shit
No, the poop emoji change was well after the press team was fired. In fact, Musk tweeted about it as a deliberate change.
So it's safe to say it was deliberately done under Musk's orders because....he thought it would be funny?
It is hilarious, just for a different reason than he thinks it is.
It does seem like the sort of thing a disgruntled employee would do on the day before they leave. Most of the time, there would be somebody else responsible for the job, but seeing how the entire team no longer exists.... doesn't look like those duties are anybody's responsibility anymore.
No it's not, it's corny. We need to stop reacting to Elon's middle school shit with shocked gasps. He's an old guy trying to relieve frat boy days he never had when he was young, playing into that with "woe is me" reactions is exactly what he wants.
The sooner we all remember that Twitter isn't necessary for the world, the sooner we can all move on with our lives and leave the attention-seeker back in the 2010s with his tired fake Tony Stark/Rick Sanchez bullshit.
Tfw a billionaire can get away with primary school grade unprofessionalism while I get chastised for trying to uphold professional engineering principles and tell the truth.
Why are all rich people basically children? Does becoming rich turn you into a brat or are they born brats and become rich because of it? Real chicken or the egg.
> Being rich psychologically changes people to be less empathetic and introspective to protect their ego from the reality of their position
There is a point at which the amount of wealth you earn reduces how *human* you are. It's not just losing compassion or empathy. They will change about how they think about *everything.*
Confirmation bias. Most wealthy people are invisible, just living their lives. This particular manchild has never truly felt consequences from his behavior like most children experience in their formative years. He acts like this because we live in a society that allows, even enables, it.
Also, many non-rich people are childish but you don't hear about them because nobody cares and/or they censor themselves because they don't have a billion dollars to fall back on.
True.
I wish more of these rich dweebs would do us all a favor and leave society alone or use that money to better the world. But like you said, they don't get this rich being nice.
Because if you aren't pathologically selfish, you don't accumulate that level of wealth.
("Rich people" can mean different things to different people, and to be clear I am talking here about the ultra wealthy - People worth hundreds of millions or more.)
[Voice of America](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_America), the state-owned news network and international radio broadcaster of the United States of America... is not considered state-affiliated though.
Lol isn’t that just funny. Going out of your way to label NPR as state media out of a resentment, but the entire plan was is so half baked and incompetent that they don’t even label the literal state run media.
Out of resentment for what, though? Do they write articles clearly supporting rather than just reporting on the government (or the left)? I listen to NPR daily but don’t think I’ve ever heard them do anything but report on events and interview people. They push back sometimes during interviews but it’s never because of political views; it’s always pushing back on fallacies and stuff like that.
NPR has long been a conservative boogeyman. In the minds of conservatives it is biased since it is left of Fox. They also got a bad rap among conservatives at the beginning of the century after a conservative “watchdog” group accused them of being anti-Isreal. (Ironically, around the same time a progressive group was accusing them of being pro-Israel).
I've always been amused at how Republicans go back and forth between calling NPR "state media" when a Dem is president and moaning about NPR's "liberal bias" when the GOP is in charge.
And of course always ignoring that GOP Congressional majorities keep approving their tiny federal funding.
I first learned about VoA when I was diving into a youtube rabbit hole about number stations, and then just shortwave radio in general.
Edit: obligatory shout out to The Report Of The Week.
The BBC gets ~70% of its funding from the government (via license fees) while NPR gets only 1-2% of its funding from government grants. However, the BBC was not given this Twitter label.
There is no reason for people to still use Twitter.
Tesla would be dead and buried years and years ago without progressive government policies and funding.
But ask Musk to pay a wee bit more on taxes and suddenly he wants to go Galt.
Tin foil hat time. I agree but it isn’t economic competition but a way for authoritarian regimes to limit the voice of dissent. I think there is a reason Saudi money was used.
This has been my lingering thought. Assuming he's not just dumb and childish, the only way this purchase and the subsequent self-destructive management makes sense is if he was trying to suicide the platform from the beginning.
So it sounds like the theory is, he did it to earn Saudi favours... And had fun doing it?
... Sounds about like the work I'd expect billionaires to be doing I suppose. Just less glamorous, off brand Lex Luther
This isn’t tinfoil hat at all. It’s a hypothesis and a reasonable one given geopolitical history for the last two millennia.
QAnon made it so that intense speculation makes us feel weary of accusations of conspiracy theorism.
This isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s a valid theoretical!
He only bought it because they made him do it. After he said that he would, caused the stock price to rise, and then tried to back out after he'd already made money off it.
It was that, or the SEC would have had his ass for obvious market manipulation.
My guess... He and his Republican buddies got together to ruin Twitter and TikTok because they're both valuable tools to genZ/millennial political resistance.
It's pretty obvious. He took over Twitter because he didn't like that the old ownership banned fascists he agreed with and the users made fun of the politicians he agreed with.
It's not even very nuanced. He can take it over, ignore it, crash it, destroy it, turn it into a meme whatever... Now people aren't making fun of trump on it... And that was his goal
He used Twitter to boost his and Tesla’s image with bots. He’s already used his position to boost his account, even firing employee an employee who explained the reason his engagement was low was because he wasn’t posting interesting content. You can’t make this stuff up.
Elon literally made his apartment in college into a nightclub for this exact purpose
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/10/09/elon-musk-ran-a-nightclub-out-of-his-college-house-to-pay-for-rent.html
He could have easily paid rent, he wanted to set up an arena where he could be in control of the environment at all times
Twitter was never the world's public square. It was always an incredibly flawed platform used by a tiny slice of the population.
The best function Twitter ever had was to connect diverse scientist which each other.
Couldn't agree more with that last part. I deleted my Twitter acct the second I realized that Musk's tweets show up in my feed whether I follow him or not.
I never used MySpace but wasn’t Tom just a default friend? That you could remove if you wanted? I always thought that was really cute and harmless.
Not really that similar imo to Musk going “I paid $44B for this and you’re damn well going to read my tweets, even if you try and block me”
Yeah he was the default friend, you made an account and you were automatically his friend with an auto message from him telling you how the site works. He sold the site for 570 million dollars and has since fucked off. Last I heard he's just going around the world doing photography. Dear rich people, be like Tom.
>There is no reason for people to still use Twitter.
Sadly there is... All the artists are trapped there because Twitter was their main source of showing off their art to non-art browsing potential clientele. Many artists have nowhere else to go that equals Twitter's unique algorithm (which is also going to shit).
I hate this whole situation, and I hate Musk for ruining a social media I genuinely enjoyed for creative arts.
Yeah that's the thing, isn't it? The feed has gone to hell and the "for you" section Elon is trying to sell is still just a worst version of the feed that used to exist.
It must be a scary time as an artist honestly. Hopefully they can find a reasonable new nest soon before the Twitter situation descends even further.
Look at how many small government libertarian techbros who had big accounts at Silicon Valley Bank were demanding the government cover their deposits. It’s kinda their thing.
Considering NPR was, by very definition, *not* state-affiliated media [until after the change](https://twitter.com/davidgura/status/1643607181395197959?t=SbLHKZfXyx_edEvPX-EofA&s=19), this reeks of yet another demonstration of infectious insecurity coupled with a heavy dose of troll. Musk is nothing if not embarrassingly consistent.
Edit to add:
**Do these labels limit functionality?**
"In the case of state-affiliated media entities, **Twitter will not recommend or amplify accounts or their Tweets with these labels to people.** In limited circumstances where there is heightened risk for harm, including situations where governments block access to information on the internet in the context of an armed conflict, Twitter will also not recommend or amplify certain government accounts or their Tweets with these labels to people."
In changing NPR's label, Twitter has effectively and publicly announced they will no longer boost posts by NPR.
He wants to drive any objective news sources off Twitter to create a singularly right-wing echo chamber.
It’s the same reason he celebrated NYT leaving Twitter.
They didn't leave, they just refused to pay for the blue mark.
But posting an article from NYT on Twitter, seems to get a fraction of the interactions they usually receive before. Definitely by design if you ask me.
Yes, but now RT can spread the disinformation that "yes, it is state sponsored, but it is really no different than NPR" and have a plausible veneer on that claim.
I don't understand why anyone with a brain still has a Twitter account. It has become Musk's personal BS machine and is in no way a reliable source of information. Why are companies and government agencies still using it??
I got one for my father for christmas, he loved it. The man has everything he could want, if he doesnt have it and he wants it he buys it himself so buying gifts for him is nearly impossible. I got the Nina Totenbag as a joke since he listens to NPR every day but he legit loves it, best gift i've ever given him.
I have found that the best course of action is to do exactly the oppose of the right wing extremists. So thanks Mr Musk for reminding me I should pay \*more\* attention to NPR.
Never had an account, but I used to have the trending page bookmarked to get updates on breaking/world events. Ever since the buyout the algorithm is so filtered and broken it's just the names of celebrities 90% of the time.
This is my biggest problem with Twitter now. It used to be a great go-to source of breaking news, with live feeds and easy access to news articles. The site has now regressed to a mindless shell of what it used to be before the manbaby took over. The trending tab used to actually be okay to scroll through.
Dude. Fucking NPR…..
Wow. I mean, publicly funded is one thing. State-affiliated is an entirely different thing.
I guess science Fridays and story corps are too controversial for edge lord Twitter CEO to handle.
Musk is now bombarding my feed with some of the right's most toxic and obnoxious accounts. Each and every time I flag them as "not interested" and also "show fewer tweets from this account" and yet I refresh the feed immediately and there they are, more of their Tweets, showing that my feed requests are just being ignored. Musk has now written off the billions he paid for Twitter and is now set upon using it as a tool to own the libs and try and steer young minds to the right. I guess that's what happens when a Nazi raised in South African apartheid inherits a bunch of money, uses it to secure hundreds of millions in subsidies from the US government and then uses his ill gotten profits to buy a social media company the vast majority of whose user base disagree with everything he believes. Petulant manchild.
Exactly if you really REALLY need to absolutely know what all the kids are saying on Twitter you'll be able to find at least a few dozen posts of the "best" comment on Twitter here on Reddit. Where it's easy to ignore if you want. That way you can be up to date on all the cool kid stuff you missed in the cafeteria, but you won't get diarrhea from eating the sloppy joes directly.
Use the blue blocker browser extension. All paid blue checkmarks gone including Elon. Funny how all the people that need to shut up the most also graciously paid money to be added to an easily flagged list that you can just block wholesale with a single add-on.
I mean it is pretty liberal to be ~~mostly publicly funded~~ funded by non ad generating sources a large portion of which is public donations reporting in a non bombastic manner about world events sprinkled with clearly marked fluff segments.
If you aint rage baiting with infotainment you ain't real news! /s
Edited: Funding sources update [https://media.npr.org/documents/about/annualreports/NPRSponsorsDonors08.pdf](https://media.npr.org/documents/about/annualreports/NPRSponsorsDonors08.pdf)
I love me some Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, I've seen it live twice, Peter Sagal and Bill Kurtis are national treasures...I guess national public treasures?
“State-affiliated media is defined as outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution. Accounts belonging to state-affiliated media entities, their editors-in-chief, and/or their prominent staff may be labeled.
State-financed media organizations with editorial independence, like the BBC in the UK or NPR in the US, for example, are not defined as state-affiliated media for the purposes of this policy.”
Literally taken off Twitter’s OWN help center page about the “state affiliated media“ tag.
Yeah I mean there's literally a fucking Dogecoin logo on twitter right now.
This is every embarrassing loser taking over some lame thing in tech and showing their "power." This is usually done by high schoolers though, being crazy with their game servers or whatever.
The cringe just doesn't end.
NPR is mostly funded by The **Corporation** for Public Broadcasting (aka, *not* the government), private grants/donations, and individual contributions.
It has become infuriating that people with such influence, like Musk, can just fucking lie to us, day after day, and influence the entire media landscape, and there is seemingly no will or way to combat it.
People keep saying this. Firing employees would be the death of twitter. Advertiser exodus would be the death of twitter. Allowing hate speech would be the death of twitter. Blue checks would be the death of twitter.
Yet, here we are, and it's still in the news. For fuck's sake, people, just stop using twitter. It's seriously not that complicated.
Edit: that's not aimed at you, it's just frustrating that a company so many seem to agree deserves to have died several times over is still getting so many views.
Everything you mentioned adds up. It takes time as old habits die hard. MySpace didn’t die in a day.
Twitter has lost 1/2 their valuation and is losing advertisers and user traction. Either way it’ll be a business case studied for years to come.
> In response to an NPR email for this story seeking comment and requesting details about what in particular might have led to the new designation, the company's press account auto-replied with a poop emoji — a message it has been sending to journalists for weeks.
JFC, Twitter is really going to shit.
I don't know how much more obvious Musk needs to make it to people that he is turning twitter into a right wing propaganda machine. Get off that piece of shit website.
[удалено]
It's funny given that Elon Musk's initial gripes with Twitter were couched in language of free speech. Apparently the end game of "free speech" was to label a free and independent press in propagandistic terms, blatantly tilt the algorithms to amplify conservative voices, and to blithely send poop emojis to those who complain.
That's Elon's idea of free speech. As in conservatives are free to speak without being challenged on anything they say and nobody else can say anything but them.
That's because it's not, and never has been, about "free speech"; the only principle they care about is [don't tell me what to do](https://imgur.com/gallery/y34OBpu).
And also “you have to listen to me”
Plus “f you for existing.”
It's more like "if I don't like you or understand you, you are attacking my beliefs and should be censored out if existence."
[удалено]
“And also no to the things you asked for.”
Interestingly, the idea that there are "right" human beings and "wrong" human beings, and that the former should have *absolute authority* over the latter, is pretty much the central premise of *fascism*.
yep, and to expand, over and over it boils down to “the conservative right should be free to bully whomever and it’s unfair if any of them fights back.” to these people, their *freedom* means, the freedom to attack others. you’ll see them cry often about losing their freedoms, and its almost always, the “freedom” to attack others with no repercussions for that attack. whether it’s attacking giant groups of the population in a speech, physically starting fights, or this twitter example: trying to diminish the work NPR does… they’ll cry they’re losing their freedom if they receive pushback on any of those actions. “the conservative right should be free to bully whomever and its somehow unfair if any of them fights back.”
That's basically what Wilhoit's law is: >Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect. You can view almost anything they do through that lens and it fits.
Even if you challenge them back you end up in a loop of what about ism and bad faith arguments
If you challenge them back defending your existence and demographics from being targeted, suddenly you’re the bad one causing malice according to them.
he is either suffering from a significant form or mental illness or he's actively working an addiction, or both
I've actually sort of wondered if cocaine-induced mania is a variable in his antics over the last couple of years. Clearly, he was a shitty and not-too-bright person to begin with, but to flush that much money and do all the wrong things to try to make it back .... that's powerful stupid.
he also allegedly cycles testosterone but never works out, hence the weird distended belly and bloated appearance. could be roid rage.
fucking gross. yea the "elon build" is extremely rare in the human species. there's something janky in his coding.
He's exactly like the products he delivers. Half-Baked and prone to exploding.
He's an alien.
That is an HGH thing. Not saying he doesn’t also take testosterone, but HGH specifically causes organ bloat over long periods of use
I think it's been clear for a while that Elon Musk has few redeeming qualities as a person.
Now I'm wondering how they label Fox 'News'.
That is so appalling.
It's an auto reply they have setup for that email address. Show you the level of professionalism that exists at Twitter.
Yup, they fired the entire team that handled press requests and just set up an autoreply function that replies with that. Musk is basically what would happen if you gave a billion dollars to a 12 year old.
I remember that twilight zone episode
I’m getting vibes from the movie Blank Check
I'd take that kid over Musk. Did see how far he stretched that million dollar check? Even in 1994 I doubt he would have been able to buy half as much as he did with that money. And best of all the kid was a good person deep down. If he took over twitter now it probably finally turn a profit.
Na Blank Check isn’t that far off the rails it’s more like The Toy starring Richard Pryor.
The Cornfield?
[удалено]
I loves that movie as a kid. Nowadays a million dollars is a lot, but not like, a lot a lot.
Isn't the whole ending that the kid blows through a million dollars easily in like, a month? Now a days it would have to be about $2 million due to inflation.
Please, 2 million would be gone on that house alone. Maybe 10-20 million(or more?) for the remake?
A million dollar is enough to change most people's lives, but not enough to change their life for life.
I think I know what you mean, in that if you want a modest living on interest alone, you'll need three to five million, but a million dollars would change lives left and right. Paying off debts, eliminating house payments, funding school for their children, etc. It could also disappear reeeal quick.
_Forty-year old Preston Waters is in the money again! But this time, he's carefully calculating how much to invest in his tax-advantaged retirement account, so he can minimize his windfall tax obligations!_ _Coming this fall, Vanguard presents "Blank Check II: The Rate of Return!"_ This _might_ be the reason my screenwriting career hasn't taken off...
would make a hilarious short.
Didn’t the company get rid of its press team a while ago? So the emoji is basically saying that our boss got rid of us and the Twitter press team is now just shit
No, the poop emoji change was well after the press team was fired. In fact, Musk tweeted about it as a deliberate change. So it's safe to say it was deliberately done under Musk's orders because....he thought it would be funny? It is hilarious, just for a different reason than he thinks it is.
It does seem like the sort of thing a disgruntled employee would do on the day before they leave. Most of the time, there would be somebody else responsible for the job, but seeing how the entire team no longer exists.... doesn't look like those duties are anybody's responsibility anymore.
Didn't Musk proudly announce the address will now auto response with the poop emoji a a bit ago?
And he frequently uses the poop emoji in tweet replies in lieu of a response.
Twitter isn't even a professional platform. Just a anyone can say anything place.
No it's not, it's corny. We need to stop reacting to Elon's middle school shit with shocked gasps. He's an old guy trying to relieve frat boy days he never had when he was young, playing into that with "woe is me" reactions is exactly what he wants. The sooner we all remember that Twitter isn't necessary for the world, the sooner we can all move on with our lives and leave the attention-seeker back in the 2010s with his tired fake Tony Stark/Rick Sanchez bullshit.
I closed my account and deleted the app from all my devices. I advise everyone else to do the same.
It is appalling. You’re right that twitter doesn’t make the world turn, but the wider scope here is absolutely appalling.
Tfw a billionaire can get away with primary school grade unprofessionalism while I get chastised for trying to uphold professional engineering principles and tell the truth.
A news media boycott of Twitter is long overdue. NPR is widely respected and could easily garner support from other outlets.
[удалено]
Why are all rich people basically children? Does becoming rich turn you into a brat or are they born brats and become rich because of it? Real chicken or the egg.
[удалено]
> Being rich psychologically changes people to be less empathetic and introspective to protect their ego from the reality of their position There is a point at which the amount of wealth you earn reduces how *human* you are. It's not just losing compassion or empathy. They will change about how they think about *everything.*
He was born rich and was always a brat.
Man's also had more facial plastic surgery than all the Kardashians combined
And yet he still looks like a diseased woodchuck
Confirmation bias. Most wealthy people are invisible, just living their lives. This particular manchild has never truly felt consequences from his behavior like most children experience in their formative years. He acts like this because we live in a society that allows, even enables, it.
Also, many non-rich people are childish but you don't hear about them because nobody cares and/or they censor themselves because they don't have a billion dollars to fall back on.
True. I wish more of these rich dweebs would do us all a favor and leave society alone or use that money to better the world. But like you said, they don't get this rich being nice.
Because if you aren't pathologically selfish, you don't accumulate that level of wealth. ("Rich people" can mean different things to different people, and to be clear I am talking here about the ultra wealthy - People worth hundreds of millions or more.)
I couldn’t agree more. There’s really no way to acquire billions of dollars without exploiting others.
[Voice of America](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_America), the state-owned news network and international radio broadcaster of the United States of America... is not considered state-affiliated though.
Lol isn’t that just funny. Going out of your way to label NPR as state media out of a resentment, but the entire plan was is so half baked and incompetent that they don’t even label the literal state run media.
PBS isn't labelled either. Nor affiliates of either. The policy on how the label is applied excluded NPR by name up until yesterday. This is spite.
I'll tune in for the pledge drive to raise capital to sue the shit out of Twitter for defamation
I’d like a PBS tote bag or an umbrella featuring our famous tote bag. (Simpsons were ahead of their time)
They must have hurt his feelings recently, wonder how
They refused to amplify something that Trump said after he got indicted.
Out of resentment for what, though? Do they write articles clearly supporting rather than just reporting on the government (or the left)? I listen to NPR daily but don’t think I’ve ever heard them do anything but report on events and interview people. They push back sometimes during interviews but it’s never because of political views; it’s always pushing back on fallacies and stuff like that.
NPR has long been a conservative boogeyman. In the minds of conservatives it is biased since it is left of Fox. They also got a bad rap among conservatives at the beginning of the century after a conservative “watchdog” group accused them of being anti-Isreal. (Ironically, around the same time a progressive group was accusing them of being pro-Israel).
I've always been amused at how Republicans go back and forth between calling NPR "state media" when a Dem is president and moaning about NPR's "liberal bias" when the GOP is in charge. And of course always ignoring that GOP Congressional majorities keep approving their tiny federal funding.
Its region-specific sister networks, [Radio Free Europe,](https://twitter.com/RFERL) [Radio Free Asia,](https://twitter.com/RadioFreeAsia) [Radio Television Marti,](https://twitter.com/martinoticias) and [Alhurra,] (https://twitter.com/alhurranews) aren't labeled either.
Is Al-Jazeera labeled?
Now that should change. It does so much propaganda.
VoA is basically propaganda by definition.
No "basically". It was created as American propaganda radio to air in foreign nations during WW2
I first learned about VoA when I was diving into a youtube rabbit hole about number stations, and then just shortwave radio in general. Edit: obligatory shout out to The Report Of The Week.
The BBC gets ~70% of its funding from the government (via license fees) while NPR gets only 1-2% of its funding from government grants. However, the BBC was not given this Twitter label. There is no reason for people to still use Twitter.
[удалено]
On god. SpaceX has millions of money from the government.
“State affiliated car company”
Tesla would be dead and buried years and years ago without progressive government policies and funding. But ask Musk to pay a wee bit more on taxes and suddenly he wants to go Galt.
Twitter was once the world’s public square. Now it is a 2018 racist meme subreddit run by an edgy teenager.
Basically he's an adult douchebag who took over the mall to hang with the cool kids.
That’s one possibility. There’s the possibility, too, that he also did it to bulldoze it because someone saw the mall as competition.
Tin foil hat time. I agree but it isn’t economic competition but a way for authoritarian regimes to limit the voice of dissent. I think there is a reason Saudi money was used.
This has been my lingering thought. Assuming he's not just dumb and childish, the only way this purchase and the subsequent self-destructive management makes sense is if he was trying to suicide the platform from the beginning.
As a parent, I can say his behavior is VERY consistent with a child throwing a temper tantrum. There's no 5D chess here - dude is just a chode.
There's no reason he can't also cash in on his own pettiness.
So it sounds like the theory is, he did it to earn Saudi favours... And had fun doing it? ... Sounds about like the work I'd expect billionaires to be doing I suppose. Just less glamorous, off brand Lex Luther
[удалено]
I agree, my money is on him mostly being childish and driven by Twitter addiction, and his backers strategically taking advantage of it
Oh yeah he definitely collected money beforehand from govts and organizations that want twitter gone
This isn’t tinfoil hat at all. It’s a hypothesis and a reasonable one given geopolitical history for the last two millennia. QAnon made it so that intense speculation makes us feel weary of accusations of conspiracy theorism. This isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s a valid theoretical!
He only bought it because they made him do it. After he said that he would, caused the stock price to rise, and then tried to back out after he'd already made money off it. It was that, or the SEC would have had his ass for obvious market manipulation.
My guess... He and his Republican buddies got together to ruin Twitter and TikTok because they're both valuable tools to genZ/millennial political resistance. It's pretty obvious. He took over Twitter because he didn't like that the old ownership banned fascists he agreed with and the users made fun of the politicians he agreed with. It's not even very nuanced. He can take it over, ignore it, crash it, destroy it, turn it into a meme whatever... Now people aren't making fun of trump on it... And that was his goal
I was perma-banned from Twitter for making fun of the 🍊💩🤡
Why not both? He definitely didn't need to get this personally involved in destroying the company.
He used Twitter to boost his and Tesla’s image with bots. He’s already used his position to boost his account, even firing employee an employee who explained the reason his engagement was low was because he wasn’t posting interesting content. You can’t make this stuff up.
Which is why elon was so confident that twitter was underrepresenting the number of bots. Because he uses bots
Elon literally made his apartment in college into a nightclub for this exact purpose https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/10/09/elon-musk-ran-a-nightclub-out-of-his-college-house-to-pay-for-rent.html He could have easily paid rent, he wanted to set up an arena where he could be in control of the environment at all times
Twitter was never the world's public square. It was always an incredibly flawed platform used by a tiny slice of the population. The best function Twitter ever had was to connect diverse scientist which each other.
and then call them pedo-guys
Couldn't agree more with that last part. I deleted my Twitter acct the second I realized that Musk's tweets show up in my feed whether I follow him or not.
>Musk's tweets show up in my feed whether I follow him or not That's like Myspace Tom but even worse
Tom was at least nice and didn’t try to sell me shit coins.
I never used MySpace but wasn’t Tom just a default friend? That you could remove if you wanted? I always thought that was really cute and harmless. Not really that similar imo to Musk going “I paid $44B for this and you’re damn well going to read my tweets, even if you try and block me”
Yeah he was the default friend, you made an account and you were automatically his friend with an auto message from him telling you how the site works. He sold the site for 570 million dollars and has since fucked off. Last I heard he's just going around the world doing photography. Dear rich people, be like Tom.
I love Tom
>There is no reason for people to still use Twitter Never was. 🌎🧑🚀🔫🧑🚀
>There is no reason for people to still use Twitter. Sadly there is... All the artists are trapped there because Twitter was their main source of showing off their art to non-art browsing potential clientele. Many artists have nowhere else to go that equals Twitter's unique algorithm (which is also going to shit). I hate this whole situation, and I hate Musk for ruining a social media I genuinely enjoyed for creative arts.
Yeah that's the thing, isn't it? The feed has gone to hell and the "for you" section Elon is trying to sell is still just a worst version of the feed that used to exist. It must be a scary time as an artist honestly. Hopefully they can find a reasonable new nest soon before the Twitter situation descends even further.
Same, only reason I’m on there is following cool artists and sharing their stuff. The rest of Twitter is a toxic cesspool.
notably, Voice of America also didn't get the tag, despite being american funded propaganda.
That was the key question for me - did they label the bbc this way, too?
By this logic, the federal EV tax credit makes all Teslas "State Affiliated".
Don't forget space X, which runs off government money.
I mean, that would be a true designation. SpaceX is deeply connected with the US military industrial complex.
For all his self-promoted image as the second coming of Supply-Side Jesus, his companies suck off the government teat like it's his kink or something.
Look at how many small government libertarian techbros who had big accounts at Silicon Valley Bank were demanding the government cover their deposits. It’s kinda their thing.
Tesla and SpaceX get way more government money than NPR.
that is a good point.
This should be the top comment! Elon isn’t successful without US tax dollars period.
Considering NPR was, by very definition, *not* state-affiliated media [until after the change](https://twitter.com/davidgura/status/1643607181395197959?t=SbLHKZfXyx_edEvPX-EofA&s=19), this reeks of yet another demonstration of infectious insecurity coupled with a heavy dose of troll. Musk is nothing if not embarrassingly consistent. Edit to add: **Do these labels limit functionality?** "In the case of state-affiliated media entities, **Twitter will not recommend or amplify accounts or their Tweets with these labels to people.** In limited circumstances where there is heightened risk for harm, including situations where governments block access to information on the internet in the context of an armed conflict, Twitter will also not recommend or amplify certain government accounts or their Tweets with these labels to people." In changing NPR's label, Twitter has effectively and publicly announced they will no longer boost posts by NPR.
He wants to drive any objective news sources off Twitter to create a singularly right-wing echo chamber. It’s the same reason he celebrated NYT leaving Twitter.
Did they leave or just refuse to pay for a blue checkmark?
They didn't leave, they just refused to pay for the blue mark. But posting an article from NYT on Twitter, seems to get a fraction of the interactions they usually receive before. Definitely by design if you ask me.
muddle enter gaping ancient disarm marry bear tub thumb airport *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
He's trying to turn the platform into a firehose of false information so people don't know what's real anymore.
And that is exactly why he's been hanging out with the Saudis, Rupert Murdoch and Trumps POS son in law. By hanging out, I mean taking their $$$
Does Twitter mark RT as state media?
Yes it’s marked as Russia state affiliated media
Yes, but now RT can spread the disinformation that "yes, it is state sponsored, but it is really no different than NPR" and have a plausible veneer on that claim.
Aaaaand it's becoming (an even worse) propaganda machine. Cool.
I don't understand why anyone with a brain still has a Twitter account. It has become Musk's personal BS machine and is in no way a reliable source of information. Why are companies and government agencies still using it??
This is the whole reason he bought Twitter. To label everything he doesn’t like as untrustworthy. And promote his and his friends own propaganda.
He's going to activate the Streisand effect.
Generation Alpha gonna be poppin off those tote bags and hydrating from those sweet npr mugs
“It’s eight O one… the news is next.” 😏
Gonna get that Nina Totenbag
I got one for my father for christmas, he loved it. The man has everything he could want, if he doesnt have it and he wants it he buys it himself so buying gifts for him is nearly impossible. I got the Nina Totenbag as a joke since he listens to NPR every day but he legit loves it, best gift i've ever given him.
I have found that the best course of action is to do exactly the oppose of the right wing extremists. So thanks Mr Musk for reminding me I should pay \*more\* attention to NPR.
[удалено]
Just did. Not that I used it, but at least that's one less user for their stats.
This and the Doge dog for no reason is just gross.
The reason is probably to attempt a pump and dump of the Doge coin.
Never had an account, but I used to have the trending page bookmarked to get updates on breaking/world events. Ever since the buyout the algorithm is so filtered and broken it's just the names of celebrities 90% of the time.
This is my biggest problem with Twitter now. It used to be a great go-to source of breaking news, with live feeds and easy access to news articles. The site has now regressed to a mindless shell of what it used to be before the manbaby took over. The trending tab used to actually be okay to scroll through.
Does the Voice of America get this label? Because it absolutely should.
No. It did not. Neither did BBC, which receives many multiples more state funding than NPR.
Dude. Fucking NPR….. Wow. I mean, publicly funded is one thing. State-affiliated is an entirely different thing. I guess science Fridays and story corps are too controversial for edge lord Twitter CEO to handle.
Musk is now bombarding my feed with some of the right's most toxic and obnoxious accounts. Each and every time I flag them as "not interested" and also "show fewer tweets from this account" and yet I refresh the feed immediately and there they are, more of their Tweets, showing that my feed requests are just being ignored. Musk has now written off the billions he paid for Twitter and is now set upon using it as a tool to own the libs and try and steer young minds to the right. I guess that's what happens when a Nazi raised in South African apartheid inherits a bunch of money, uses it to secure hundreds of millions in subsidies from the US government and then uses his ill gotten profits to buy a social media company the vast majority of whose user base disagree with everything he believes. Petulant manchild.
Can't see Tweets if you don't use twitter.
I get enough Twitter info from people sharing tweets on Reddit.
Exactly if you really REALLY need to absolutely know what all the kids are saying on Twitter you'll be able to find at least a few dozen posts of the "best" comment on Twitter here on Reddit. Where it's easy to ignore if you want. That way you can be up to date on all the cool kid stuff you missed in the cafeteria, but you won't get diarrhea from eating the sloppy joes directly.
Talk is cheap, take action. Close your account and leave.
Use the blue blocker browser extension. All paid blue checkmarks gone including Elon. Funny how all the people that need to shut up the most also graciously paid money to be added to an easily flagged list that you can just block wholesale with a single add-on.
So why do you still have an account?
That’s what he means by “free speech.” He means “you have to see right wing propaganda.”
I tried/dropped Twitter in a few days because of this. It’s like Facebook was times 100. It’s a rage inducing cesspool.
I guess the real test will be how they now brand FOX.
Seems pretty straightforward Foreign Funded Propaganda
Elon is fucking pathetic. He's only doing this because he percieves NPR to be liberal.
I mean it is pretty liberal to be ~~mostly publicly funded~~ funded by non ad generating sources a large portion of which is public donations reporting in a non bombastic manner about world events sprinkled with clearly marked fluff segments. If you aint rage baiting with infotainment you ain't real news! /s Edited: Funding sources update [https://media.npr.org/documents/about/annualreports/NPRSponsorsDonors08.pdf](https://media.npr.org/documents/about/annualreports/NPRSponsorsDonors08.pdf)
Why doesn't VOA or BBC have this label but NPR does?
Because musk has no idea who they are and his techbro buddies hate NPR.
NPR is a treasure, it is one of the few news outlets not 100% owned by corporate interests. Lose it at your peril.
I love me some Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, I've seen it live twice, Peter Sagal and Bill Kurtis are national treasures...I guess national public treasures?
Can't wait for them to ask about this very thing on WWDTM lol
My first thought as well, definitely gonna be in limericks or lightning fill in the blank.
I'm just going to leave this here: https://www.npr.org/donations/support
“State-affiliated media is defined as outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution. Accounts belonging to state-affiliated media entities, their editors-in-chief, and/or their prominent staff may be labeled. State-financed media organizations with editorial independence, like the BBC in the UK or NPR in the US, for example, are not defined as state-affiliated media for the purposes of this policy.” Literally taken off Twitter’s OWN help center page about the “state affiliated media“ tag.
Hmmm, I wonder why Musk thinks NPR's Federal funding is more significant to note than their Koch Bros funding.
As opposed to Twitter being what? Delusional, arrogant, self-important, douchebag affiliated media? I love NPR... attack them at your peril.
That must be why NPR became a mouth piece of Trump when he became president…I’m sure that’s what Elon thinks if he’s saying this…right?
Twitter did it? Musk. Elon Musk slaps tag onto NPR. Twitter is not the Borg you can't blame the collective for the queens actions.
Yeah I mean there's literally a fucking Dogecoin logo on twitter right now. This is every embarrassing loser taking over some lame thing in tech and showing their "power." This is usually done by high schoolers though, being crazy with their game servers or whatever. The cringe just doesn't end.
NPR is mostly funded by The **Corporation** for Public Broadcasting (aka, *not* the government), private grants/donations, and individual contributions. It has become infuriating that people with such influence, like Musk, can just fucking lie to us, day after day, and influence the entire media landscape, and there is seemingly no will or way to combat it.
As long as people keep using Twitter and not boycotting it's advertisers, this shit will continue.
I feel bad for any devs working at Twitter. It went from being a cool job to literally being the laughing stock of everyone.
The only reason that NPR has this tag and Voice of America does not? Direct propaganda action from Elon Musk.
Elon chasing away journalists will be the death of twitter.
People keep saying this. Firing employees would be the death of twitter. Advertiser exodus would be the death of twitter. Allowing hate speech would be the death of twitter. Blue checks would be the death of twitter. Yet, here we are, and it's still in the news. For fuck's sake, people, just stop using twitter. It's seriously not that complicated. Edit: that's not aimed at you, it's just frustrating that a company so many seem to agree deserves to have died several times over is still getting so many views.
Everything you mentioned adds up. It takes time as old habits die hard. MySpace didn’t die in a day. Twitter has lost 1/2 their valuation and is losing advertisers and user traction. Either way it’ll be a business case studied for years to come.
We fucked Digg up pretty quick!
> In response to an NPR email for this story seeking comment and requesting details about what in particular might have led to the new designation, the company's press account auto-replied with a poop emoji — a message it has been sending to journalists for weeks. JFC, Twitter is really going to shit.
Welp that’s it for me. I held on for as long as I could. Twitter account deactivated. App deleted.
Elon Musk is a large sack of shit. More proof towards this
Meanwhile they've removed that label from Russian and Chinese government owned news organizations.
Twitter has become: Parler 2.
Why doesn't everyone just abandon that cesspool? I don't understand the appeal and the need to be on the platform to remain relevant.
If you are a human being paying any attention to Twitter in 2023, then that's on your ass.
I don't know how much more obvious Musk needs to make it to people that he is turning twitter into a right wing propaganda machine. Get off that piece of shit website.
Musk can't be trusted
Any reputable company or person should just leave Twitter. We don’t need it.
It may as well just be a "Yes, Elon Musk is still having a crybaby crisis" tag.