Elon Musk’s business journey began with an X. After co-founding Zip2 and X.com (which later became PayPal), he continues to favor “X”.
As soon as tonight he says Twitter’s bird will be gone and the new logo will be an X.
Meanwhile on TikTok, he has a new account, or at least someone with access to new private looking videos has posted them using his name.
Less than 24 hours ago 12 new clips were posted simply under the name Elon Musk, with a profile link to the Wikipedia page for Elon Musk.
Likes, views and follows are exploding, as can be expected- and will likely be viral in a matter of hours, as happened with Billie Eilish, when she launched a private account.
The videos are almost all shot by a person, whose voice is sometimes heard, that appears to have close access to Musk. They tour Space X facilities, and even seem to go to various public events together.
There’s a voyeuristic quality to many of the clips, shot sometimes from backstage, following Elon as he strides into the spotlight- the footage is interesting if only for the mysterious nature of the source. Like a home made, amateur styled peek into the daily life of the world’s richest human being.
One clip of Elon testing a flame thrower is particularly eerie.
There appears to be a doubling of views, likes and follows every 12 hours or so, and this will likely accelerate. It will be interesting, indeed, to see what, if any, new videos are added and what they hold in the way of secret views and content.
The story gets weirder but continues to entertain
Elon Musk has not been immune to controversies throughout his career. One of the most notable controversies revolves around his use of social media. Musk’s tweets have often landed him in hot water, from making bold claims about Tesla’s stock prices to sharing controversial statements without considering the potential consequences.
Concerns have been raised about the work environment at Tesla’s factories. Reports of intense work pressure, employee safety issues, and high turnover have drawn attention to labor practices within the company.
Elon Musk’s outspoken nature and unorthodox behavior have also attracted controversy. His comments about certain socio-political issues and public figures have occasionally drawn criticism, leading some to question his judgment and use of social media.
Hilarious history or serious fun?
In 2002, Elon founded SpaceX, determined to make space exploration affordable and sustainable. Amid numerous setbacks, he persisted, and in 2008, SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon 1 rocket into orbit, marking a pivotal moment in his journey.
Around the same time, Elon became CEO and product architect of Tesla Motors, aiming to revolutionize the automotive industry with electric vehicles. Tesla faced challenges, but Elon’s vision of a sustainable future kept him pushing forward.
Over the years there has been some measure of mutual admiration between Elon Musk and Greta Thunberg. More recently, however, Musk’s shift to the right has put them at odds, clearly.
Also, Greta has not hesitated to criticize the “Techno King” when she thought he was off-base regarding the climate and his actions and statements regarding his support for an accelerated transition to sustainable energy.
After Greta Thunberg’s tweet (and a monumental follow up) became one of the most popular tweets in history (278M views and 3.8M likes, as of this writing), it seems that fame was just too strong of an aphrodisiac for Elon Musk to resist.
Hence the return to her bandwagon:
The sheer amount of brand awareness achieved by Greta within a few years is astounding. I think she’s cool tbh.
Though both are climate positive, there have been disagreements
Elon Musk and Greta Thunberg have had a number of interactions in the media over the past few years. These interactions have ranged from supportive tweets and praise to public disagreements and criticism.
The tweet heard round the globe:
yes, please do enlighten me. email me at smalldickenergy@getalife.com https://t.co/V8geeVvEvg
One of the first interactions between Musk and Thunberg occurred in 2019, when Musk tweeted his support for Thunberg’s efforts to raise awareness about climate change. In the tweet, Musk wrote: “Greta, you are a hero. Keep going. You are doing a great job.” Thunberg later responded to the tweet, thanking Musk for his support.
In 2020, Musk and Thunberg had a more public interaction when Thunberg criticized Musk’s plans to build a tunnel to alleviate traffic congestion in Los Angeles. Thunberg tweeted that the tunnel was “not the solution” to the problem of climate change and that “we must focus on the real solutions and not let ourselves be sidetracked by shiny distractions.”
Musk responded to the tweet, saying that the tunnel would “help with traffic & create jobs” and that “sustainability must be at the forefront of all decisions.”
Later that year, Thunberg criticized Musk again when he announced that Tesla would be selling carbon credits to other companies as a way to offset their carbon emissions. Thunberg tweeted that the sale of carbon credits was “not a solution” and that it was “a way for companies to avoid cutting their own emissions.”
Musk responded to the tweet, saying that the sale of carbon credits was “better than nothing” and that it was “a first step towards a greener future.”
In 2021, Musk and Thunberg had another public disagreement when Musk tweeted that “the last thing the world needs is a new type of gasoline” in response to Thunberg’s call for a ban on fossil fuels.
Thunberg responded to the tweet, saying that “the last thing the world needs is a Tesla owner who ignores the fact that burning fossil fuels is the main driver of the climate crisis and continues to spread misinformation about renewable energy.”
Despite these disagreements, Musk and Thunberg have also found common ground on some issues. For example, both have expressed support for renewable energy as a way to combat climate change. In 2019, Musk tweeted that “solar and storage are a critical part of the solution” to the climate crisis, and Thunberg has frequently called for a transition to renewable energy as a way to reduce carbon emissions.
Overall, the interactions between Musk and Thunberg in the media have been complex and varied. While they have had public disagreements on some issues, they have also found common ground on others and have expressed support for each other’s efforts to raise awareness about climate change.
After a tweet heard ‘round the globe Romanian Police intervene
This week saw an epic Twitter battle that led to a fairytale tale conclusion nearly too perfect to imagine.
It started with an attempt at a burn by Andrew Tate, bragging about his pollution and GHG spewing 33 unit car collection. He thought she’d be an easy target for his misogynistic drivel. Mistake.
yes, please do enlighten me. email me at smalldickenergy@getalife.com https://t.co/V8geeVvEvg
After she quietly hit back with the trashing of the century he went so far as to shoot a video trying to get the upper hand.
This led, to the immense satisfaction of most of the planet, to some elementary sleuthing by Romanian police – using the pizza boxes from the video to ascertain his current location (at the time).
This led to his arrest for a host of offenses related to human trafficking and rape.
Greta Thunberg is a Swedish environmental activist who rose to prominence in August 2018, when at the age of 15 she began protesting outside of the Swedish parliament to demand action on climate change. Her protests, which consisted of her sitting alone with a sign that read “Skolstrejk för klimatet” (School strike for climate), quickly gained attention and inspired other students around the world to join in.
Thunberg was born on January 3, 2003, in Stockholm, Sweden. She is the daughter of actor Svante Thunberg and opera singer Malena Ernman. Thunberg has Asperger syndrome, and has spoken about her struggles with depression and anxiety.
Thunberg first became interested in the environment at the age of eight, after learning about the devastating effects of climate change in a documentary. However, it wasn’t until she learned about the 2015 Paris Agreement, a global agreement to combat climate change, that she became determined to take action. Despite the agreement, Thunberg saw little progress being made in addressing the issue, and so she decided to take matters into her own hands.
In August 2018, Thunberg began protesting outside of the Swedish parliament every Friday, refusing to attend school until the Swedish government took action on climate change. Her protests quickly gained attention and inspired other students around the world to join in. The movement, known as Fridays for Future, has since grown into a global phenomenon, with students in over 100 countries participating in strikes and protests to demand action on climate change.
Thunberg has become a leading voice in the fight against climate change, and has given numerous speeches at international conferences and events. In December 2018, she was invited to speak at the United Nations climate conference in Poland, where she delivered a powerful speech that gained widespread attention. In the speech, Thunberg condemned world leaders for their lack of action on climate change, saying “You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say: We will never forgive you.”
In 2019, Thunberg was named one of Time magazine’s most influential people and was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. She also became the youngest person to be named a United Nations Messenger of Peace, and was invited to address the United Nations General Assembly in September of that year.
Thunberg has continued to speak out about the need for urgent action on climate change, and has inspired millions of people around the world to join the fight. She has been praised for her courage and determination, and has become a role model for young people everywhere. Despite facing criticism and backlash from some quarters, Thunberg remains undaunted in her mission to bring about change, and continues to inspire others to join the fight for a better future.
According to Romanian newspaper Libertatea Andrew Tate has been arrested in Romania by anti-terrorism authorities. Tate was reportedly detained together with his brother, Tristan, on suspicion of forming an organized crime group that exploits girls for adult videos.
The report states that they are being taken to DIICOT (Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism) for questioning. Separately, DIICOT has confirmed the arrests in a statement which did not name any suspects. The Attorney for the brothers, according to Reuters, confirmed they had been detained.
This news is particularly bizarre coming on the heels of a twitter exchange that went viral between Tate and and Greta Thunberg:
yes, please do enlighten me. email me at smalldickenergy@getalife.com https://t.co/V8geeVvEvg
Stories that reported on the exchange have been searched over 2 million times according to trend.google.com, as of Thursday night in the Pacific time zone.
The Twitter feud between world renown activist Greta Thunberg and Tate began when he tagged her tweet with boasts about his 33 gas guzzling car collection, looking to brag about how little interest he has in anything other than his own infantile pleasures. Her comeback was monumental and caused a tsunami of praise and viral retweets.
Andrew Tate is a British kickboxer and entrepreneur. He is known for his successful career in kickboxing, as well as for his business ventures and media appearances.
Tate began kickboxing at a young age and quickly made a name for himself in the sport. He has won numerous titles and tournaments, including the WAKO World Championships and the ISKA World Championships.
In addition to his kickboxing career, Tate has also pursued a number of business ventures, including a fitness company and a property development company.
In recent years, Tate has gained additional notoriety for his media appearances, including on reality TV shows such as Celebrity Big Brother and Love Island. He is also known for his controversial social media presence and for making controversial statements on a variety of topics.
Despite his success in kickboxing and business, Tate has faced legal and personal issues, including allegations of domestic abuse and assault, which he has denied.
In yet another mad twist Elon Musk posted the tweet below, asking in a poll if he should step down as head of Twitter. Then, he says in a subsequent tweet that he will abide by the results!?
Apparently, a lot of people are looking for his resignation with a clear majority voting yes. With 6.2 million votes already and a bit under 10 hours to go, 58% are choosing to give him the boot.
Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.
It’s been a wild ride recently with journalists suspended, reinstated, and chaos galore. Then today another bombshell dropped when links to external social media sites were banned, with sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Mastodon, specifically listed. The Mastodon Twitter account was also suspended.
With a bit less than 10 hours remaining: Almost 60% yes!
In a bizarre twist Elon tweets a “threat” to sell phones if Apple or Google ban Twitter from App stores
This article is the third in a series that was never intended to be one. The question of why, other than lack of impulse control and way too much money, Elon Musk would buy Twitter and take it over himself is still unknown. Our first two articles chronicled two possible motivations, each put forth by someone claiming to have inside information. This story is based on Elon Musk’s direct reply to a tweet.
With Twitter getting more dangerous daily, if you are an advertiser or stake your reputation on the content not being toxic (good luck!), and now speculation is mounting that Apple and/or Google might ban downloads for the app.
Elon Musk actually responded to these thoughts with a tweet saying, “…yes, if there there’s no other choice, I will make an alternative phone.”
I certainly hope it does not come to that, but, yes, if there is no other choice, I will make an alternative phone
Oddly, this idea has been around a long time as a sort of fake news thread – various YouTubers have a continuous output of made-up stories about Elon Musk, Tesla and SpaceX. One of the most circulated is one claiming that there is already a solar-powered, Starlink connected phone from Tesla, which some claim is called the “Model Pi”.
Spoofs that become real?
There are many, many reasons, beyond the fact that the whole thing was a spoof, that make it very unlikely that this could ever happen. It’s true that the various capabilities that would be needed to make an iPhone like product are generally within the scope of what Tesla already does.
Manufacturing, supply chains, software, all of these are within the general scope of what Tesla has done very well up until now. It is, on the other hand, more than a bit crazy to think that, literally overnight, a new product could overtake or even compete with the incredibly mature capabilities of the iPhone or a top Android unit.
The iPhone has been evolving for fifteen years and the resources that Apple brings to bear in improving it are not small. The spoof version invents a few bombshell features such as built in crypto mining (presumably where the name “Pi” comes from ), Solar charging, Starlink internet, and others to ad believability to the joke.
Even if these features were available (crypto less of a incentive now lol) it’s extremely unlikely that a large number of people would jump on the trend with so many other features delayed (Cybertruck, anyone?).
The genius is that people think that Elon Musk can make the impossible happen
Getting away from the negative, what Tesla has accomplished in changing perception of EVs from a dead on the shelf product, to one that has forced the entire automotive industry to adopt a similar path is amazing.
And, even at Twitter, it is possible that, after a lot of pain and tumult there could be a new Twitter that is no worse that the pre-Musk version. It could even be bigger and, eventually, not a cesspool.
One thing that is abundantly clear, however, is that the ongoing drama will continue and maybe even accelerate. Watch this space for the next chapter.
Ok. So it will be what you make of it. There’s not going to be a seamless leap from a heavy web2 monstrosity like what Twitter has become to a clean alternative overnight.
It makes sense, though. A platform that’s built to monetize your life, and does so on a massive scale, can’t be replaced easily by an entirely different beast.
Mastodon is not based on blockchain, for a social platform that is blockchain based, check out Lens Protocol, but does have an open source, ad-free structure that is controlled by users. It is also a microblogging network based on a UX that somewhat resembles Twitter.
As a “Federated” network system, Mastodon has various servers, each of which run by users, and differentiated, for the most part, by affinity.
Basically, rather than having a centralized corporate entity controlling and monetizing your account and data, you trust a peer who has set up a server. You can choose and join a group (server) based on the theme, rules and configuration of that server / moderator. In some cases you will need to be invited or prove worthiness, but such stipulations are set by the moderator and group.
Are we, ex-Twits, sophisticated enough to take on digital self-determination?
The challenge lies in the trade off that is built into the systems, one vs. the other. On a highly commercialized, slick, UX optimized platform like twitter there are lots of addictive, albeit shallow, reasons to participate. And the downsides can be seen everywhere – massive bot harassment, constant DMs from unwanted scammers, hate and ugliness, you get the picture.
A user controlled, open source platform, on the other hand, requires more real engagement from everyone for it to work. This is a double-edged sword – all that extra effort can seem overwhelming, but the benefits, particularly longer term can be magical.
Imagine a place where you are free to communicate with others that share your interests, and those that may not, but without an algorithm to force you to see whatever it wants you to see, or to shadow-block you from being seen, only because you didn’t pay or play its preferred game.
Losing the algorithm that serves the centralized commercial platform’s agenda is, ultimately, the only way forward, but not an easy place to get to.
In the end it is a question of realizing the potential of the internet (web2, 3 or 4) for deeper and more effective communication, not just to create a hellscape of fluff and vitriol that benefits a Zuckerberg and now, potentially, Elon Musk.
By now the shortcomings of Facebook (Meta), Twitter and the various Google services are glaringly obvious and, for the most part, agreed on nearly as much as global warming. However, just like the solutions to that other soon-to-be hellscape, the possibility of millions or even billions of people (in the case of Facebook) spontaneously migrating to a new platform or platforms is slim.
Ultimately, it will take a change in the people that comprise the network itself, not a top down makeover or feature-set rollout.
That is the most interesting point that can be gleaned from the current Mastodon moment; those that have pre-migrated before the current Twitter melt-down era seem to be acutely aware of the challenges, but also of the potential benefits, of growing into the new experiences that are only available there.
This underscores the potential irony of the current Twitter meltdown, intentional or not. Is Elon Musk doing the world a favor by pushing many of the best and brightest communicators out of the nest at the precise moment that it might be possible for another platform to gain a foothold?
Or will this be more akin to the moment that Clubhouse had which was seemingly diluted and washed away by copycat offerings (like the audio services Twitter added) and demoted to near irrelevance?
As has been the case in the past, even with the initial adoption of Facebook and Twitter by the masses, it is user sophistication and need that drives huge new platforms and activities.
Whenever a new platform for online communication is able to meet the moment and the new needs of a critical mass of users, that will be the place and time for the past to fade and something, hopefully better, to emerge.
And, perhaps, learning how to better interact with one-another online, even at the cost of taking more responsibility for learning and co-managing the platform itself, will begin with Mastodon and the Twitter devolution phase.
The following excerpt from TheMarkup.Org, from an interview by Julia Angwin of Adam Davidson gives a bit of a view into what some might find worthwhile at Mastodon:
Angwin: What would you say your biggest takeaway from this experience has been so far?
Davidson: I would say the screaming headline for me is, “Wow, this was awesome. This was amazing.” The Mastodon community was amazing. The journalism community was amazing. It’s really one of the best professional experiences of my life. I just love it.
What I’m finding most satisfying about Mastodon, and I’m seeing a lot of other journalists feel this, is that it actually forces you to ask and confront some of these questions and to make active choices. Even if Mastodon were to remain Twitter’s very tiny stepbrother, I would still like to be part of a Mastodon journalist community because I think we got lazy as a field, and we let Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, and, god help us, Elon Musk and their staff decide all these major journalistic questions. I don’t know for how many people that’s a good siren call to join Mastodon, but for me that’s been pretty exciting.
Straight from a follower named “Spam Bot” the real reason…
Yesterday we published a story featuring a theory floated by a lady who, apparently, worked for Tesla for a decade, who believes that Elon is a “humanist” and wants to save the planet and needs Twitter to help him better communicate his ideas and solutions. No, not reinstating Trump, but she claimed it was all about global warming.
Not long after that article hit the airwaves, “Spam Bot”, reacted and posted a message (see photo below) where he (or she? or they?) outlined what’s really goin’ on:
Here’s the posted text in its entirety:
“Elon’s plan will soon be clear. Setting aside the fact the guy is an Alien (he literally admitted it) the ultimate plan is frightening. Twitter is key.
He needed to get rid of the engineers to rewrite the app.
After the re-engineering Twitter will be re-coded to subliminally force everyone to either buy a Tesla, Cybertruck or generate an uncontrollable urge to get into a Boring company pod.
Then, using the vast Starlink constellation a signal will be sent and all the Teslas, trucks and Boring pods will suddenly lock trapping the passengers inside.
The controls will freeze and they will autonomously head to the nearest Starbase launch site where flamethrower bearing a highly advanced version of the recently previewed ‘Musk clone robots will force NeuraLink implants deep into each persons cerebral cortex and then send them, like lame zombie sheep into waiting Starships for the journey to Mars.
Controlling everyone via NeuraLink, humanity will quickly devolve into a slave species, serving the Mars overlords for all of eternity. (Except for brunette Goth virgins. Virgins will be celebrated as honored guests and taken to a great feast within the Martian temple.
Afterwards they will be stripped naked, tied up and boiled alive to be consumed by the festive Martians).
Earth will be plundered for its remaining natural resources and die off becoming just another sphere of lifeless space rock eventually breaking apart into smaller and smaller pieces until turning to dust, scattering, and finally leaving the galaxy to drift into the abyss. It’s all so clear – you just need to put the pieces together.”
If anyone is offended (or frightened ) by that, apologies on behalf of Lynxotic. As a writer it is important to always have something to say. This, text, this outpouring of strung together amalgamation of brand names and alien motivations has rendered this scribe… almost speechless…
To unpack this, in spite of being dumbfounded, the first thing that comes to mind is that “Spam Bot” gives Elon too much credit. Sure, he has admitted to being an alien, yes he is the wealthiest person on the planet, sure, his companies do all seem to fit together in a neat little puzzle that could enable exactly such a scenario…. But, no, it is not likely (hahaha) that this scenario is true, at least not all of it.
Actually, the idea that it was Elon’s intention all along to fire nearly all of Twitter and the mass exodus was what he wanted all along, does kind of make sense. If he really does want to rebuild it from the ground up, what better way to get rid of nearly all the employees than to find a clever (?) way to get everyone to quit (without looking really bad for firing everyone just before the holidays) .
And it will be quite entertaining to see how this plays out. For example, as we note in a new article coming today, Mastodon is growing fast and there’s an interesting possibility that a migration en mass over there could be a major upgrade.
According to her LinkedIn page Kyrstin Munson worked at Tesla for over 10 years. In her twitter feed she lays out her (obviously unauthorized) idea of the “real” reason Elon Musk bought Twitter.
With all the political and random madness surrounding the short time since Musk took over the bird, this explanation, is in a strange way perhaps the least crazy of all.
Perhaps (probably?) she is projecting the Tesla philosophy, one that has been extremely successful, onto this new seemingly spontaneous endeavor, but as odd as it sounds, it could very well be the thinking behind it all.
Buying Twitter to try to improve communication, and in particular, communication around climate change and how we can overcome its massive challenges, but couched in a format that is “disguised … as something awesome and way more fun”, does seem like something a guy hoping to “die on mars” might do.
Crazy like a Shiba Inu
This bizarre take on his motives is perhaps just crazy enough to make some kind of sense. Only thing is with polls measuring how many bots want Trump’s account re-instated and various other insane actions and ultimatums, it’s harder than ever to picture any kind of real communication going on, “awesome and way more fun” or not!
The full extremely long series of tweets (twenty tweets and self-replies) can be seen at her account @ThisisKyrstin and, it does ramble on with little to offer other than a sort of pro Elon take on the whole debacle. Accordingly, the replies to her tweet barrage were mostly mildly negative, if not out and out slams. Some, very positive, and all in all another oddball ride into the current chaos on the platform.
Blink 2 times if Musk is holding you hostage and made you type this.
While you all are crying over Twitter’s death, maybe I can help reframe for you all whats happening and why. I worked with Elon for 10+ years at Tesla & here’s my take. 1/20 #RIPTwitter
“we r hot” show dance rehearsal with commentary (hilarious sexy fun)
After her wild Ukulele post popped up on her crazy subterranean TikTok account and a couple of random posts since, today Billi Eilish posted what appears to be a impromptu reversal video with some hilarious commentary. Set to the song “Lost Cause” (very hot now).
The account which only has 8 videos since it first popped up has 29.6 million followers (of course!) and 122.2 millions likes, and the video (below) already has 3.2 million in the first hour. Today’s video dropped around 4:30 PM Pacific time on June 3, 2021. The first full video on the account – other than the Ukulele post mentioned above. That one went live on November 13, 2020.
It’s pretty clear from the humor, voice over and the attitude that Billie loves the vibe and spontaneity of TikTok and this video and her rogue account style fits right in!
Even at the relatively elderly summit of 19 her sultry, dark style along with top of the world presence continues to command loyalty and love for her music and style. Her recent biographical photo book was also a hit and the new songs will likely continue at the top of our summer list. The documentary is great also.
Oh, and the WORLD TOUR starts in September! Starting off, where else? Las Vegas.
Bitcoin’s history and origination is an important factor for more than just true believers and maximalists. Created in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, and with evidence that it was intended, by its founder, known only as Satoshi Nakamoto, as remedy for the failed system that had nearly collapsed the world economic system at that time.
In a recent CoinDesk post, Nathan Thompson wrote: Bitcoin’s genesis block is historic, not just because it contained the first 50 bitcoins, but because it had a message coded in the hash code: “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.”
The bank bailouts and various financial system failures were integral, then, in the creation and purpose of bitcoin, and one could even say, coins and systems that followed, starting with Ethereum in 2015.
After a few weeks of tweets revolving around the Twitter buyout brouhaha, Elon Musk, in a reply, added, in a more introspective tone than has been seen of late, some of his thoughts on the subject;
The axiomatic error was that housing prices only go up. I don’t support predatory lending, but many of those lenders were severely wounded or didn’t survive.
They dug their own graves – a lesson we should all take to heart, including me.
Interesting timing and a nice shift from the obsession with prices
The recent “crash” and panicked voices over the drop of the bitcoin price below $30k is the unspoken background addressed in this exchange, it appears.
Decrying the erroneous belief that “prices only go up” held by the public at large during the doomed run up to the 2008-2009 crisis could be seen as a hint that, perhaps, prices of assets like Bitcoin, and Tesla shares, for that matter, can not “only go up” and anyone who seeks such a preposterous nirvana is digging their own graves, having failed to learn from all the times in history that fools took the path of peak greed and self-delusion.
Worse, and worth being singled out specifically, are those that profited from the delusion of others in “predatory lending” practices, which Elon Musk “doesn’t support”.
Ultimately for this tweet thread, it was Elon Musk’s Twitter buddy @BillyM2k that nailed it with a series of tweets explicitly spelling out the divergence between the founders and believers in the original, positive, intent of bitcoin and the massive bubble of speculators and scammers that has, in his view unfortunately, grown up around it.
Pointing out that DogeCoin, as an example, was created to highlight the stupidity of speculation and excess greed that came with the avalanche of meme-coins and “shitcoins” etc, that flooded the market and, to a great degree, obscured the original, positive force that bitcoin and decentralized finance was invented to be.
Maybe, some of the various challenges and stumbles that Elon Musk is experiencing lately, seemingly for the first time, after a string of incredible triumphs, culminating with the Person of the Year designation and the buyout launch that is now in limbo, will inspire him to be more reflective and use his powerful position as a “Twitter-sage” to draw more attention to the need for a voice of “reason”, rather than as a cheerleader for the bonfires of vanity and speculation.
Perhaps in a moment of incoherence, this three-tweet set was launched. It is just plain goofy (unless he is buttering up “the right” for after mid-terms…?)
In what looks like some kind of twisted attempt at being diplomatic, Elon Musk’s latest tweet manages to clarify his stance regarding “free-speech“ about as much as a mud bath clarifies a cupcake.
Leading off with a bizarre attack on what he Calls “the far left “, he explains that it is his contention that they “hate everyone including themselves”.
Standing alone this is already a bizarre statement, which seems like a far right talking point, typical of the Joe Rogan school of anti-cancel culture and anti-so-called “woke-mob”.
He follows this up with a disclaimer of sorts, as bland as it can be stating that he is “no fan” of the far right, either.
One would have to be forgiven if they thought that this implied, in its very wording, an actual bias toward the far right which is what many already believe.
Ending his three-tweet soufflé on the flat “Let’s have less hate and more love” the responses, not surprisingly, were a very loving mix of WTF and ????
To be fair, there were also lots like this:
If you ever run for President of United States 🇺🇸 you definitely have my vote 🗳 You are awesome my friend 🙏
But, the way his tweets were so oddly posted, there was definitely a sense among “lefties” that he was biased. And it didn’t take a genius, but merely @cjwalker21, to retort:
It actually seems odd, that Elon Musk would wade (or dive head first) into a “left vs. right” argument that has no hope of any kind of resolution. And pretending that the disagreements are equal on some level and love can just be ratcheted up as if it was cheap rocket fuel, seems odd…
In the US, far left is free healthcare and education, far right is no abortions allowed.
Honestly, if you just look at the numbers, maybe you don’t see taxes as the answer, but considering the company Elon is in (Zuckerberg and Bezos?) there’s clearly something wrong with this picture?
Even for Twitter the reaction is bizarre to the extreme
Wow. The big news came, simple and straightforward, on Monday afternoon. Eastern time. From the official press release: “Twitter, Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by an entity wholly owned by Elon Musk, for $54.20 per share in cash in a transaction”
What came next was a tsunami of extreme emotions – mostly negative by casual observation. The happiest seemed to be MAGA dreamers that somehow think that Elon Musk will be all about enabling Trump and his minions to get back into social media shenanigans, a.k.a. “free speech’. Which is, to put it mildly, doubtful.
To get the color of this intense reaction here are just a few example headlines:
Oddly, the most ferocious detractors of this deal are the “left” and those that are also believing the nonsense that somehow this is a big win for the right and for Trump (huh?) and therefore – the friend of my enemy is my enemy, or some such thing.
Naturally, Trump says he would not tweet again even if invited since he has his own useless and failed app. This is the basic problem of 90% of the reactions – the more extreme they are the more ridiculous the assumptions as to what Elon Musk will actually do.
Bots, often controlled by foreign actors, were the issue in 2020, not the tweets by actual people
If you were on twitter in 2020 during the run-up to the election, or in 2016 for that matter, the biggest issue was not the real tweets from Trump and others of his ilk, no matter how stupid and deranged those tweets were.
It was, instead, the thousands of fake accounts amplifying the “message” and creating a wall of lies and disinformation. Those bots would attack any anti-Trump or Pro-Biden (or Pro-Hillary) tweets and applaud all pro-Trump messages with likes, re-tweets etc. And they still exist to today.
They were ridiculously obvious as fake, for anyone who bothered to check, but the massive number and the fact they they were allowed to run-rampant made this stupid, primitive method of perverting actual free speech and behavior bizarrely successful.
This is just one small point. The idea that Elon Musk bought Twitter so that he can re-instate Trump and his bot-army goes against literally everything that is known about him as well as what he has actually said.
Of course anyone can say that Musk is not sincere, etc. But stating unequivocally that he will defeat the bots is a step in the right direction. Bots and fake accounts are epidemic in all social media and are likely tolerated for nefarious reasons – the least negative of which would be that it’s too expensive to care.
The fact that he would make mention of the “shadow ban council” also shows an awareness of the problems associated with algorithms that have agendas that punish and shadow ban at the whim of those in charge as being important- < it is > – that’s a huge plus, at least in terms of transparency or dialog about actual problems that exist.
And let’s not forget that Elon Musk is not beholden to a specific political party (everyone accuses him of being on the other side or of being a libertarian, and that maybe a good fit for some of his expressed views, but he has not specifically aligned himself with a particular party).
What this all boils down to – as alluded to in the title, is that there’s a strong sense that nearly all these opinions and much of the outrage is dead wrong about what will actually happen.
Can Elon Musk ‘Fix’ Twitter?
It would be equally insane, however, to assume that anyone, even the world’s richest person, can just buy Twitter, or any other huge tech platform (Web2 platform) and then fix all the problems.
The idea and service is all that matters to me, and I will do whatever it takes to protect both. Twitter as a company has always been my sole issue and my biggest regret. It has been owned by Wall Street and the ad model. Taking it back from Wall Street is the correct first step.
Can anyone even agree on what Twitter is or what it should be? And so many of the problems that twitter has are baked-in to the whole huge-Web2-platform-defacto-monopoly thing that makes life online so frustrating and, at times, hopeless.
But what a private company, run by a “brash” gazillionaire is, at least, is something different. Well, sort of. That’s where it comes down to a probably crazy experiment in just how much worse can it get… Zuckerberg, Bezos, the Google Twins? Tough acts to follow?
Some have pointed out that Elon Musk will have even more power and control over Twitter than, for example, Zuckerberg has over FaceBook-er-Meta. And that is, for some, a scary and infuriating concept. On the other hand, what if more control, in the hands of someone who at least appears to have a sincere desire to see Twitter succeed as a “Town Square” and communication tool for humanity is actually what it takes to get things on the road to betterville…?
It’s hard to give a guy with $350 billion the benefit of the doubt, I get it
In other words, instead of seeing Twitter as a battleground between left and right, where one or the other should “win”, there is at least the possibility that Elon Musk sees it as much more than that.
That he sees it a bit closer to what it was created to be – a tool for people to communicate is a novel way.
Call it micro-blogging or shit-posting or memeifycation of life or what you will, the idea is, that if it were possible to create a tool that did indeed allow and even encourage actual online free speech is one that could at least be an experiment worth trying.
Is ‘this guy’ the right person to do it? Maybe not. Is a public company, with the explicit primary goal of enriching shareholders a better way? Not so far in any known example.
In fact this seems to be the ‘secret’ that is hiding in plain sight, that an altruistic goal by a super-rich private individual who decides to take over a social media company, to try to do something never done before – might actually be exactly what it takes to begin a new way for people to communicate online.
And, regardless of how skeptical we may be of that idea, the fact is that extreme change is urgently needed – leads to the reality that anything new and different should at least be tolerated and tried before it is condemned and attacked.
Freedom of Speech is declared driving force for Takeover
Twitter Inc. announced that it has agreed to be acquired by an entity that is wholly owned by Elon Musk. The news comes after it was widely leaked that negotiations were underway over the weekend and that a deal was imminent.
Going forward the company will be privately held and current stockholders will be compensated at $54.20 for each share of common stock that they own as of completion of the deal. This represents a 38% premium over the closing price on April 1st when Musk’s 9% stake was announced.
The board voted unanimously to the proposal and, though subject to the approval of Twitter’s shareholders, and applicable regulatory approvals the agreement is expected to go through in 2022.
What will follow is unknown, but speculation is rampant
Since the announcement on April 1st that Elon Musk had purchased approximately 9% of Twitter and this Saga began, there has been a busier than usual frenzy of speculation regarding the possibility that has now come to pass.
On the most superficial level, there was an odd kind of measured jubilation on the political Right, with speculation that Musk might re-instate Trump and others who have been permanently banned (although Trump himself indicated that he would decline if invited back) and a sense of horror on the Left – with an implied mistrust of the world’s richest human, connecting this situation to ongoing debates over wealth taxes and economic inequality overall.
On a deeper track are those closer to the situation – such as Jack Dorsey, who expressed support and openly criticized the current board and public structure in elucidating tweets, such as the one below.
it’s consistently been the dysfunction of the company
Looking back at some of the harmony and love shared over bitcoin and other major topics an alliance, or at least a consulting status for @Jack could be amazing in terms of what could come of this – a private Twitter with Musk at the helm, in terms of a new direction for social media and all online business and how they evolve going forward.
While it may seem presumptuous to think it won’t be a disaster, there are deeper issues that would indicate that a lot more thought might have gone into this than a superficial look reveals.
I have zero interest in making money. I have every interest in fixing it. I also have zero interest in cryptocurrencies.
Elon Musk has proved, and explained to anyone that will listen, that his motives and goals for any business endeavor are in a new category of entrepreneur, and his success, often against incredible odds, are a testament to the power of this mindset.
With Tesla, he took on nothing less than the most powerful, entrenched (and arguably corrupt) special interest group in history, the fossil fuel industry, and somehow, due perhaps as much to timing as to any particular strategy or plan, prevailed.
That this takeover could mark the beginning of real change in “Web2” and social media, regarding of the risk of a private individual excepting near absolute control, it is a welcome change, based on the reality that the status quo, at Twitter and basically all the so-called internet giants could not be any worse.
Let’s hope that the public and very visible lead up to this deal will be followed in the near future by a continuation of that openness and that changes and plans will be announced as they happen, which would be entertaining at the least, and exhilarating at best.
There’s a lot more to unpack in this, not just in the reactions and opinions that will surely flood now that the next step is upon us. but in a fruitful and valuable deeper look into the real motivations and potential of this new deal.
For that, please stay tuned, and for now, please let me know what you think about Twitter’s decision and new owner.
“Despite half of U.S. and U.K. adults getting their news from social media, social media companies have not taken the steps necessary to fight industry-backed deception,” reads the report.
Weeks after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change identified disinformation as a key driver of the planetary crisis, three advocacy groups published a report Wednesday ranking social media companies on their efforts to ensure users can get accurate data about the climate on their platforms—and found that major companies like Twitter and Facebook are failing to combat misinformation.
The report, titled In the Dark: How Social Media Companies’ Climate Disinformation Problem is Hidden from the Public and released by Friends of the Earth (FOE), Greenpeace, and online activist network Avaaz, detailed whether the companies have met 27 different benchmarks to stop the spread of anti-science misinformation and ensure transparency about how inaccurate data is analyzed.
“Despite half of U.S. and U.K. adults getting their news from social media, social media companies have not taken the steps necessary to fight industry-backed deception,” reads the report. “In fact, they continue to allow these climate lies to pollute users’ feeds.
⚠️NEW RESEARCH: Fossil fuel industry-backed climate disinformation pollutes our social media feeds and fans the flames of the #ClimateCrisis. This is why tech companies must take responsibility and stop leaving the public in the dark! https://t.co/7h0rI2jAKWpic.twitter.com/rYEtNETJrY
The groups assessed five major social media platforms—Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, and TikTok—and found that the two best-performing companies, Pinterest and YouTube, scored 14 out of the 27 possible points.
As Common Dreams reported earlier this month, Pinterest has won praise from groups including FOE for establishing “clearly defined guidelines against false or misleading climate change information, including conspiracy theories, across content and ads.”
“One of the key objectives of this report is to allow for fact-based deliberation, discussion, and debate to flourish in an information ecosystem that is healthy and fair, and that allows both citizens and policymakers to make decisions based on the best available data.”
The company also garnered points in Wednesday’s report for being the only major social media platform to make clear the average time or views it allows for a piece of scientifically inaccurate content before it will take action to combat the misinformation and including “omission or cherry-picking” of data in its definition of mis- or disinformation.
Pinterest and YouTube were the only companies that won points for consulting with climate scientists to develop a climate mis- and disinformation policy.
The top-performing companies, however, joined the other firms in failing to articulate exactly how their misinformation policy is enforced and to detail how climate misinformation is prioritized for fact-checking.
“Social media companies are largely leaving the public in the dark about their efforts to combat the problem,” the report reads. “There is a gross lack of transparency, as these companies conceal much of the data about the prevalence of digital climate dis/misinformation and any internal measures taken to address its spread.”
Twitter was the worst-performing company, meeting only five of the 27 criteria.
“Twitter is not clear about how content is verified as dis/misinformation, nor explicit about engaging with climate experts to review dis/misinformation policies or flagged content,” reads the report. “Twitter’s total lack of reference to climate dis/misinformation, both in their policies and throughout their enforcement reports, earned them no points in either category.”
TikTok scored seven points, while Facebook garnered nine.
The report, using criteria developed by the Climate Disinformation Coalition, was released three weeks after NPRreported that inaccurate information about renewable energy sources has been disseminated widely in Facebook groups, and the spread has been linked to slowing progress on or shutting down local projects.
In rural Ohio, posts in two anti-wind power Facebook groups spread misinformation about wind turbines causing birth defects in horses, failing to reduce carbon emissions, and causing so-called “wind turbine syndrome” from low-frequency sounds—a supposed ailment that is not backed by scientific evidence. The posts increased “perceptions of human health and public safety risks related to wind” power, according to a study published last October in the journal Energy Research & Social Science.
As those false perceptions spread through the local community, NPRreported, the Ohio Power Siting Board rejected a wind farm proposal “citing geological concerns and the local opposition.”
Misinformation on social media “can really slow down the clean energy transition, and that has just as dire life and death consequences, not just in terms of climate change, but also in terms of air pollution, which overwhelmingly hits communities of color,” University of California, Santa Barbara professor Leah Stokes told NPR.
As the IPCC reported in its February report, “rhetoric and misinformation on climate change and the deliberate undermining of science have contributed to misperceptions of the scientific consensus, uncertainty, disregarded risk and urgency, and dissent.”
Wednesday’s report called on all social media companies to:
Establish, disclose, and enforce policies to reduce climate change dis- and misinformation;
Release in full the company’s current labeling, fact-checking, policy review, and algorithmic ranking systems related to climate change disinformation policies;
Disclose weekly reports on the scale and prevalence of climate change dis- and misinformation on the platform and mitigation efforts taken internally; and
Adopt privacy and data protection policies to protect individuals and communities who may be climate dis/misinformation targets.
“One of the key objectives of this report is to allow for fact-based deliberation, discussion, and debate to flourish in an information ecosystem that is healthy and fair, and that allows both citizens and policymakers to make decisions based on the best available data,” reads the report.
“We see a clear boundary between freedom of speech and freedom of reach,” it continues, “and believe that transparency on climate dis/misinformation and accountability for the actors who spread it is a precondition for a robust and constructive debate on climate change and the response to the climate crisis.”
I don’t know if this is legitimate or some kind of food prank or food “trend”, however, a TikTok video has been getting some major attention surrounding the mysterious “pizza” dish supposedly from Spokane.
The ingredients are not anything that I would ever think to put on my pizza. The following ingredients are purportedly piled atop the pizza dough: fry sauce, canned salmon, green bell peppers, onions and fresh strawberries.
Real or a monumental spoof, it’s hard to say, check the evidence below
This is almost 100% not a real thing but you can certainly check out the original video below to see for yourself.
In another weekend explosion, this time, revealing the hands on bent of ideas for TWX project
Once again the weekend is seeing a barrage of tweets from Elon Musk, this time with a solid bulls-eye on Twitter itself and changes he has on his wishlist. Implementation schedule appears to be, well, immediate.
The first tweet we are featuring was a preview of just how much of an activist shareholder he is planning to be.
Looking forward to the first board meeting he will attend since his $2.9 billion 9.2% stake in the bird platform – Musk reposted a meme of his infamous “Ganja weed” interview – essentially creating an instant meme of memes:
**note – on Sunday night (April 10th, 2022) it was revealed that Elon Musk joining the board would not be a thing, after all. Most likely reason sited in the avalanche of reactions? A board seat would have capped the maximum investment / stake percentage at 14.9% and brought potentail legal issues. As the largest shareholder the door remains open to his acquiring the company outright, and continuing the activist direction clearly indicated in the tweets below…
Next, the constructive criticism started, first taking note (perhaps already up his sleeve as he contemplated shelling out 3 bil of pocket change) of how many of the accounts with the most followers post “very little content”. Summing up his thoughts with the question “Is Twitter dying?”
Most of these “top” accounts tweet rarely and post very little content.
Next, in replies to himself he got granular, citing two very specific examples, how @taylorswift13 and @justinbieber are remiss when it comes to staying active and tweeting on a regular basis…
Apparently, the day was just beginning to get interesting, cause he posted a Yogi Berra-like conundrum next, pointing out that statistics, including this very one, presumably, are very often false. Posted at 1:14 PM he may have had a siesta and found himself ready to rumble cause with the next tweet at 5:03 PM things started to cook…
He dug into his infographic trove of insights and pulled out this re-tweeted gem, showing how the Weather Channel is distrusted by nearly 50% of Republicans and about 35% percent of Democrats.
This tweet is an interesting one as there has been a lot of hand wringing and dire predictions made in the “media” that Elon Musk, known as having a Libertarian prediliction, will somehow be Trump’s savior and that his idea of “free speech” is similar to those that are somewhere to the Right of Q-anon.
This, I would venture, is highly unlikely. It’s far more likely that his idea of free speech might actually be closer to, well what it sounds like, less censorship. Oddly both the left and the right are anticipating disappointment, and perhaps, that is one of those be-careful-what-you-wish-for things.
The tweets of April 9th, seem to bear out the idea that he will be active, vocal and, above all, amusing, but unlikely to follow any faction or party.
Next came more specific and sort of practical tweets, like this one suggesting twitter “sell” the authentication checkmark as part of the Twitter Blue $3 subscription package. This, bizarrely, is a great business concept, and might actually happen, crazy as it sounds.
After reflecting briefly on the idea, it became clear that the invention of a new plebian version of the coveted mark is needed, lest it be confused with the rare and hard to acquire “public figure” or “official” accounts.
A quick followup tweet with self replies included the observation that the edit tweet feature that has had much action this week is already a done deal in the future paid Twitter landscape.
Then, as if out of the blue like a bolt of lightening Elon decides that there should be no ads! Ok, so this does make sense in a genius billionaire kind-of-way here’s the new breakdown:
Everybody pays $3 per moth
Advertising is cancelled
We all get checkmarks and an edit tweet feature
Corporations stop “dictating policy”
Twitter SF HQ is converted into a homeless shelter (unhoused refuge)
Then, in a semi-final, inspired burst of sunshine, there’s a great suggestion – actually a tweet from earlier in the am – 7:39 to be exact but pinned for now, the man who must be heeded points out that “crypto scam accounts” represent a large percentage that should be subtracted from the real accounts. ow if they can just remove the 3 billion fake accounts across all social media…
Apparently not able to quit while ahead, or maybe under the influence of jet lag or substances, this gem dropped:
So many topics, reactions, memes and insights, so little time!
Sunday April 3, 2022 will, perhaps be remembered in the history of twitter as the day that Elon Musk finally came out of his shell (wink). Tweeting, replying, commenting, liking, a quick look at all the activity and it’s apparent that, even for the prolific techno king, this was a day of days.
Nor has it only been the quantity of engagement and activity, the breath and wingspan of the subject matter was truly epic. The storm has finally slowed, with the following cryptic tweet at approximately 1:45 PM PDT, meaning shortly before 11pm in Berlin (in case that’s where he’s been tweeting and responding from.
On Saturday there was a series of somewhat typical (a-typical really, which is typical) meme and humor oriented tweets. These were interesting enough for us to post the report below with, in our estimation, the Dogecoin video repost as the highlight.
Next a unique and unexpected shift toward un-twitter-like substance and gravitas
Soon after the activity took a turn towards the profound and thoughtful. First Elon started a thread (or joined it’s hard to tell) about a favorite subject, the lack of population growth and referenced an article from Scientific American entitled ‘The Pandemic caused a Baby Bust, Not a Boom“.
Naturally this created an ongoing explosion of reactions and retweets that continues as we go to press:
Next came the topic of “peace” and why people who actually aspire towards it reject the word and its, presumable, inappropriate use:
Peace. Peace? I hate the word. Those who do care about peace (myself aspirationally included) don’t need to hear it. And those who don’t care about peace? Well …
Somehow, amidst this clarity and provocative yet introspective message, he also took the time to comment, positively on a variety of replies and tweets where he had been tagged (which no doubt happens thousands of times per minute).
His fairly straightforward endorsement, for example, of this video posted by Popular Mechanics, will be a huge boost for that publication and no doubt cause the video views to hit the stratosphere tonight… ‘Good summary’ was Elon’s take on the clip.
Check out the clip of Elon Musk responding thoughtfully on “zero-sum mindset” during a recent interview with Lex Fridman and edited for length and content by our own video dept.:
Or this video, that Elon also praised in a reaction tweet when tagged by the author, Cleo Abram. This video is, indeed, fantastic and relates to sustainable energy infrastructure, and how it must be rapidly expanded. Not just to stave off a climate catastrophe, but as the initial baseline towards increased energy use, which it is pointed out in the clip, will have a highly beneficial effect on humanity, since green renewables are, by definition, unlimited.
Using Language that evokes his well known comments regarding the reasons why a mission, and eventually colony, on Mars is his passion, Elon Musk just tweeted that he is inspired by curiosity.
Further, that it is curiosity that drives him.
And then, in a more generalized summation of his thoughts regarding human consciousness, he implores us to join him in a journey leading to an expansion of the ‘scope and scale of consciousness’, “that we may aspire to understand the universe”.
I am inspired by curiosity.
That is what drives me.
So let us expand the scope & scale of consciousness so that we may aspire to understand the Universe.
After a weekend barrage of humorous and meme oriented tweets and replies such a serious and thoughtful note comes across as a rare and special occurrence.
Although just an anecdotal and non-scientific study a random browsing of his account also shows a seemingly large increase in the number of replies comments and other interactions with accounts of all types.
He seems to be in a truly jovial and generous mood this weekend showering compliments on random posts related or even unrelated to him personally.
It’s fantastic to see this, and must be incredible for some of the lucky individuals and organizations that he is bringing attention to via his 80 million followers. He even posted replies to his initial tweet above:
George Lucas once told me that the only reason Star Wars got made is because the old studio heads died
Given the thousands of hours of content that Rogan has produced, the scrutiny is unlikely to stop there. As we argue in our forthcoming book, Rogan’s podcast has long promoted right-wing comedy and libertarian political voices, including some who trade quite gleefully in racism and misogyny.
However, what makes Rogan’s rise particularly important is that it goes beyond the standard partisan political battling that Americans have grown accustomed to in social and broadcast media.
Rogan is not just a purveyor of right-wing ideologies. He is also someone who has built an empire by introducing these ideas – and a wide range of others – to listeners from across the political spectrum. His truly unique skill is drawing in from that spectrum a massive, young, largely male audience that advertisers highly covet.
Ideological whiplash
When the Federal Communications Commission introduced the Fairness Doctrine in 1949, radio and television broadcasters were required to present controversial ideas in a manner that reflected multiple perspectives. However, the combination of cable television, niche consumer targeting and President Ronald Reagan’s deregulatory FCC succeeded in toppling the mandate.
By 1987, conservative talk radio figures such as Rush Limbaugh embraced fully partisan approaches to content creation and audience accumulation. Ignoring their political opponents as potential listeners, they veered further and further to the right, garnering an increasingly homogeneous audience whom advertisers could easily target.
Later, as Fox News’ popularity and reach grew, it took a similar tack, promoting conservative media personalities like Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Greg Gutfeld to preach to the right-wing choir.
Today, some conservative voices such as Ben Shapiro and Steven Crowder take this logic a technological step further, embracing the silo-ing effects of social media algorithms to connect with those users most likely to engage with and disseminate their content. Although such figures certainly offend those who disagree with them, their place in the mediasphere is well-established and mostly ignored by opponents.
Rogan, by contrast, is prone to ideological whiplash.
There is no political commonality among these people. But there is a demographic connection. For one, they are all men, as are the vast majority of guests on “The Joe Rogan Experience.”
While Fox News sells politics to TV watchers, Rogan sells a sense of edgy authenticity to podcast listeners. His blend of comedy and controversy certainly has political implications, but from his perspective, it isn’t politics. It’s demographics.
Rogan is, for worse and for better, a true outlier in the world of contemporary talk media. Most political and many comedy podcasts employ the business model of finding an ideological space, connecting via cross-promotion and guest selection with similar shows, and allowing the algorithms of social media to drive traffic their way.
“The Joe Rogan Experience” takes this idea and pulls it in multiple, contradictory directions. Media figures left and right have – until now, at least – coveted opportunities to appear on the show. Once a comedian or podcaster has saturated their own political space, Rogan offers a chance to win over new converts and, in principle, have a discussion that breaks free of partisan constraints. For many Rogan fans, this breadth of discussion and freedom from norms is the heart of the show.
Rogan, however, is far from a neutral host of a new public sphere. His feigned naiveté is all too often a cover to promote edgy, offensive and irresponsible theories that appeal to his audience’s self-styled suspicion of authority.
He pushes the boundaries of political discourse by “just asking questions,” but then hides behind his background as just a comedian to distance himself from any undesirable repercussions.
Spotify, like other streaming services, is primarily built on a wide range of content creators, each of whom attracts a small, dedicated audience, but none of whom are, on their own, particularly powerful.
Rogan is the closest thing to a mass cultural product to be found in the podcast world. He is also one of the only names in podcasting big enough to garner headlines, good or bad. For a company like Spotify trying to boost subscriptions, Rogan’s cross-partisan, youthful, mass appeal is very hard to resist.
Rogan’s recent apologies, however, prove that he is not impervious to pressure. We suspect Spotify will try to thread the needle: covering up Rogan’s penchant for misinformation and offensive provocation just enough to meet the minimum standard of acceptable corporate citizenship without tarnishing the comedian’s brand and demographic appeal.
But is it really necessary for you to know that I am female, love only cats (no dogs) and just got engaged?
No? Good, cause none of that is true. (Except the female part) That’s only one example of the odd twists that can come with the current trend of people going viral when they show “realness” and vulnerability.
Heard of acting? That’s what Meryl Streep does when she plays a person that never went to Yale and is not a rich famous actor, wink wink.
I suppose, as with so many online phenomena these days, it’s TikTok leading the way. No longer a place for young girls to dominate using only dancing, beauty and feminine wiles, it’s now a place where less objectively attractive people can blow up by showing, ostensibly, who they are.
This trend towards realness has, based on informal research, also spilled over into places like LinkedIn, Medium and even Twitter.
On the whole, I think it’s a great thing. If Meryl Streep was only able to play herself, movies would be much less interesting, no doubt!
And maybe at least half of all the realness really is real. Just take it with a grain of salt if you see posts of someone getting engaged 3 times. In the same week.
All kidding aside this trend is part of a bigger, important evolution in digital communication
The evolution from journalistic norms, such as never referring to yourself directly but only as “your scribe”, “the writer”, “your correspondent” or just “one”, as in “one can only wonder…” to today’s norm of writing like the whole world wants to read your diary….
These journalistic conventions seem archaic and even ridiculous when the formerly forbidden “I” is commonplace and the authenticity of direct TikTok style casual presentation is already dominant and growing as a trend.
But the overall shift has more than just a style preference behind it, if you ask this writer (me).
It’s also far more than just the outgrowth of armies of non-journalists communicating spontaneously in every format and on every platform.
It’s really the early beginnings of what has become a common topic of late: the transition to the so-called Metaverse.
Not the Zuckerbergian Metaverse where people run around without legs and have joyless celebrations of themselves.
But rather, the real life cyber world where billions are on their phones communicating in various ways basically all the time. Even while jaywalking.
And as we do this more in every imaginable format, the desire to see “beautiful” landscape photos that have been photoshopped to death, instagram style, is eventually diminished to zero.
And what follows in a new hunger for the “real” or at least the honest seeming portrayal of the real (hi there Meryl!) and content that pushes an entirely different layer of psychological buttons.
As I mentioned above, dear reader, I love this! In spite of the fact that it leads to really scary TikToks (just check out the posts of some of the people that follow you on Tiktok (to see what I mean, the ones that follow 8753 people and get followed by like, 23 have nice videos…) where the frightening reality that’s out there (the banality of empirical unattractiveness you might call it) is already on full display, and how.
But that’s just the price to pay for a deeper and more authentic experience. And for the benefit of the real and valuable advice and knowledge you can get directly from “non-professional” actors who are not acting (presumably). We are reaping the profits of real life experiences, in exchange for nothing more than our attention, and clicks, likes and follows. And I say, Amen to that, bro.
Facebook insists that mainstream news sites perform the best on its platform. But by other measures, sensationalist, partisan content reigns
In early November, Facebook published its Q3 Widely Viewed Content Report, the second in a series meant to rebut critics who said that its algorithms were boosting extremist and sensational content. The report declared that, among other things, the most popular informational content on Facebook came from sources like UNICEF, ABC News, or the CDC.
But data collected by The Markup suggests that, on the contrary, sensationalist news or viral content with little original reporting performs just as well as—and often better than—many mainstream sources when it comes to how often it’s seen by platform users.
Data from The Markup’s Citizen Browser project shows that during the period from July 1 to Sept. 30, 2021, outlets like The Daily Wire, The Western Journal, and BuzzFeed’s viral content arm were among the top-viewed domains in our sample.
Citizen Browser is a national panel of paid Facebook users who automatically share their news feed data with The Markup.
To analyze the websites whose content performs the best on Facebook, we counted the total number of times that links from any domain appeared in our panelists’ news feeds—a metric known as “impressions”—over a three-month period (the same time covered by Facebook’s Q3 Widely Viewed Content Report). Facebook, by contrast, chose a different metric, calculating the “most-viewed” domains by tallying only the number of users who saw links, regardless of whether each user saw a link once or hundreds of times.
By our calculation, the top performing domains were those that surfaced in users’ feeds over and over—including some highly partisan, polarizing sites that effectively bombarded some Facebook users with content.
These findings chime with recent revelations from Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, who has repeatedly said the company has a tendency to cherry-pick statistics to release to the press and the public.
When presented with The Markup’s findings and asked whether its own report’s statistics might be misleading or incomplete, Ariana Anthony, a spokesperson for Meta, Facebook’s parent company, said in an emailed statement, “The focus of the Widely Viewed Content Report is to show the content that is seen by the most people on Facebook, not the content that is posted most frequently. That said, we will continue to refine and improve these reports as we engage with academics, civil society groups, and researchers to identify the parts of these reports they find most valuable, which metrics need more context, and how we can best support greater understanding of content distribution on Facebook moving forward.”
Anthony did not directly respond to questions from The Markup on whether the company would release data on the total number of link views or the content that was seen most frequently on the platform.
The Battle Over Data
There are many ways to measure popularity on Facebook, and each tells a different story about the platform and what kind of content its algorithms favor.
For years, the startup CrowdTangle’s “engagement” metric—essentially measuring a combination of how many likes, comments, and other interactions any domain’s posts garner—has been the most publicly visible way of measuring popularity. Facebook bought CrowdTangle in 2016 and, according to reporting in The New York Times, has since largely tried to downplay data showing that ultra-conservative commentators like The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro produce the most engaged-with content on the platform.
Shortly after the end of the second quarter of this year, Facebook came out with its first transparency report, framed in the introduction as a way to “provide clarity” on “the most-viewed domains, links, Pages and posts on the platform during the quarter.” (More accurately, the Q2 report was the first publicly released transparency report, after a Q1 report was, The New York Times reported, suppressed for making the company look bad and only released later after details emerged.)
For the Q2 and Q3 reports, Facebook turned to a specific metric, known as “reach,” to quantify most-viewed domains. For any given domain, say youtube.com or twitter.com, reach represents the number of unique Facebook accounts that had at least one post containing a link to a tweet or a YouTube video in their news feeds during the quarter. On that basis, Facebook found that those domains, and other mainstream staples like Amazon, Spotify, and TikTok, had wide reach.
When applying this metric, The Markup found similar results in our Citizen Browser data, as detailed in depth in our methodology. But this calculation ignores a reality for a lot of Facebook users: bombardment with content from the same site.
Citizen Browser data shows, for instance, that from July through September of this year, articles from far-right news site Newsmax appeared in the feed of a 58-year-old woman in New Mexico 1,065 times—but under Facebook’s calculation of reach, this would count as one single unit. Similarly, a 37-year-old man in New Hampshire was shown 245 unique links to satirical posts from The Onion, which appeared in his feed more than 500 times—but again, he would have been counted just once by Facebook’s method.
When The Markup instead counted each appearance of a domain on a user’s feed during Q3—e.g., Newsmax as 1,065 instead of 1—we found that polarizing, partisan content jumped in the performance rankings. Indeed, the same trend is true of the domains in Facebook’s Q2 report, for which analysis can be found in our data repository on GitHub.
We found that outlets like The Daily Wire, BuzzFeed’s viral content arm, Fox News, and Yahoo News jumped in the popularity rankings when we used the impressions metric. Most striking, The Western Journal—which, similarly to The Daily Wire, does little original reporting and instead repackages stories to fit with right-wing narratives—improved its ranking by almost 200 places.
“To me these findings raise a number of questions,” said Jane Lytvynenko, senior research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Shorenstein Center.
“Was Facebook’s research genuine, or was it part of an attempt to change the narrative around top 10 lists that were previously put out? It matters a lot whether a person sees a link one time or if they see it 20 times, and to not account for that in a report, to me, is misleading,” Lytvynenko said.
Using a narrow range of data to gauge popularity is suspect, said Alixandra Barasch, associate professor of marketing at NYU’s Stern School of Business.
“It just goes against everything we teach and know about advertising to focus on one [metric] rather than the other,” she said.
In fact, when it comes to the core business model of selling space to advertisers, Facebook encourages them to consider yet another metric, “frequency”—how many times to show a post to each user on average—when trying to optimize brand messaging.
Data from Citizen Browser shows that domains seen with high frequency in the Facebook news feed are mostly news domains, since news websites tend to publish multiple articles over the course of a day or week. But Facebook’s own content report does not take this data into account.
“[This] clarifies the point that what we need is independent access for researchers to check the math,” said Justin Hendrix, co-author of a report on social media and polarization and editor at Tech Policy Press, after reviewing The Markup’s data.
