News About Twitter

[GURPS]

The Shadowy Source of the Twitter Advertising Boycott Targeting Elon Musk Has Been Exposed​

Elon Musk has now settled in as the new owner of Twitter and his rule has delivered a renewed respect for free speech. While there have been some bumps in the road, the differences between what you can say now and what would get you banned under the old regime are night and day.

It seems almost unbelievable to reflect back on, but there was a time when saying a man can’t become a woman would earn you an account suspension and demand, in the best case, that you delete the tweet in question. And who could forget the bans that resulted from making truthful statements about COVID-19 vaccine efficacy and mask-wearing?

But while such an environment of openness and respect for various viewpoints doesn’t offend normal people, it sends the far-left into an apoplectic rage. They lost one of their most valued ways to influence political opinion via underhanded censorship and algorithmic promotion, and their response has been to organize an advertiser boycott of Twitter in order to punish Elon Musk for his radical embrace of free speech.

Until this point, though, it’s been a bit of a mystery who is behind the campaign. Well, now we know. According to the Free Beacon, it is none other than notorious left-wing bagman Pierre Omidyar.

The left-wing billionaire and media donor Pierre Omidyar is behind the dark-money group that has kept its donors secret for nearly a year and is leading a corporate boycott campaign against Twitter owner Elon Musk.
Omidyar, the eBay founder and financial backer of the Intercept and ProPublica, donated $509,500 to Accountable Tech in 2021 and 2022, according to a recently updated list of grants disclosed by Omidyar’s foundation. Omidyar also gave $2 million to at least six other organizations that targeted Musk, criticizing him in letters and op-eds as “uniquely ill-suited for the job of running a social media platform” and warning that he would turn Twitter into a “free-for-all of hate and harassment.”

 

[GURPS]

Twitter Execs Testify That Their Election-Meddling Decisions Were Even Flimsier Than Previously Claimed



Rep. Kelly Armstrong, R-N.D., was incredulous: “After 2016, you set up all these teams to deal with Russian interference, foreign interference, having regular meetings with the FBI, you have connections with all of these different government agencies, and you didn’t reach out to them once?”

“That’s right,” Roth said, noting he didn’t think it would be appropriate.

Instead, Twitter relied on the tweets of supposed national security experts.

Who those experts were, Roth didn’t say, but here we have another strange coincidence: In his testimony on Wednesday, Roth told the committee that a few weeks before the Post story dropped, he had participated in an exercise hosted by the Aspen Institute, with other media outlets and social media companies, that posed a hack and leak October surprise involving Hunter Biden. Roth testified that Garrett Graff facilitated that event.

 

[GURPS]

Twitter discloses another possible government censorship effort​

That may sound familiar. Just a few weeks ago, I wrote here that the congressionally created, federally funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED) had supported the British-based Global Disinformation Index (GDI). The index was widely ridiculed for targeting ten conservative and libertarian sites as the most dangerous sources of disinformation; it sought to persuade advertisers to withdraw support for those sites, while listing their most liberal counterparts as among the most trustworthy.

At the time, I noted that the Biden administration had played us for chumps. As we celebrated the demise of the infamous Disinformation Governing Board with its “Disinformation Nanny,” the Biden administration never disclosed a larger censorship program.

Shortly after my column posted in The Hill, the NED wrote to me to say that it was discontinuing support for the GDI. Microsoft also was forced into retreat after it was shown to be pushing the GDI’s biased blacklist.

Again, many celebrated a victory for free speech.

Yet, here we are again staring down at a trout in our milk. This week, Taibbi reported that the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) may have supported a different disinformation blacklisting operation.

 

[GURPS]

The Journal noted that the agency “routinely seeks information that companies under a consent order provide third parties, including journalists, on grounds that the company couldn’t withhold that same information from the FTC,” according to Farrar.

These demands are being led by Lina Khan, a Democrat, and come after Musk initiated a series of layoffs that supposedly raise concerns about Twitter’s ability to “comply with a $150 million settlement related to alleged privacy violations.”

The House Judiciary Committee’s report, which was compiled by a Republican-led subcommittee looking into the “weaponization” of federal agencies against political opposition, alleged that the FTC was engaging in overreach at the behest of progressive organizations who are upset by the fact that Musk now controls the company.

“There is no logical reason, for example, why the FTC needs to know the identities of journalists engaging with Twitter,” the report argued. “There is no logical reason why the FTC, on the basis of user privacy, needs to analyze all of Twitter’s personnel decisions. And there is no logical reason why the FTC needs every single internal Twitter communication about Elon Musk.”

The report, titled “The Weaponization of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC): An Agency’s Overreach to Harass Elon Musk’s Twitter,” explains that the agency, in the “span of less than three months,” made “more than 350 specific demands.”

“The timing, scope, and frequency of the FTC’s demands to Twitter suggest a partisan motivation to its action,” the report continued. “When Musk took action to reorient Twitter around free speech, the FTC regularly followed soon thereafter with a new demand letter.”

The Federal Trade Commission Is Harassing Elon Musk Again

redstate.com

 

[GURPS]

Twitter just let its privacy- and security-protecting Tor service expire​

Twitter has allowed the certificate for its Tor onion site to expire, effectively killing off a privacy- and speech-protecting service that it introduced last year. Visiting the Tor-specific onion site address will now deliver a warning that the certificate verifying the site’s authenticity has lapsed; proceeding past that point (which is highly not recommended) currently delivers a Twitter error page. The certification expired on March 6th, just shy of two days before the site’s one-year launch anniversary.

Twitter no longer has a communications department to ask about the change, but the Tor Project confirmed the service’s lapse to The Verge. “The onion site is no longer available seemingly with no plans to renew. The Tor Project has reached out to Twitter to look into bringing the onion version of the social media platform back online,” said communications director Pavel Zoneff in a statement. “People who rely on onion services for an extra layer of protection and guarantee that they are accessing the content they are looking for now have one fewer way of doing so safely.” You can still visit Twitter.com via a browser running Tor, but you won’t get the added benefits a Tor-specific onion site confers.

Onion sites, sometimes called hidden services or “dark web” sites, must be accessed via a browser that uses the anonymous and encrypted Tor network. (This keeps the user’s web traffic and point of origin secret, and it also lets users get around government censorship efforts like those of Russia and China.) The services’ perks include an extra layer of security and an aid for distinguishing good-faith encryption users from malicious botnets. While onion sites are far from mainstream, you can access ones for Facebook, Reddit, and several major news organizations, among other sites. Twitter, until now, was a welcome addition to their ranks.

 

[stgislander]

Interested to get Elon's thoughts.

 

[GURPS]

Interested to get Elon's thoughts.

On ?

 

[GURPS]

The worm is turning, or something. MediaIte ran a delicious story yesterday headlined, “Elon Musk Makes His First Big Strike in the Great Blue Check Purge, Pulls the NY Times’ Badge: ‘Their Propaganda Isn’t Even Interesting’.”

The “blue check” is the little colored circle with the blue check mark that appears right after folks’ names on Twitter. Pre-Musk, Twitter called it a “verification” mark, and while anyone could apply to receive it, not everyone got one. But every corporate media account and reporter, every Democrat politician, every government-aligned covid expert, and nearly every celebrity received one of the highly-desired “blue checks.”

Blue-checked accounts enjoyed special Twitter privileges; their posts were more prominent (so their accounts grew faster), were immune to shadow-ban penalties for being blocked, and so forth. The blue check was free — or more accurately, government-subsidized — a special benefit bestowed by Twitter on what it deemed “relevant” accounts, supposedly measured by the numbers of right-thinking followers.

But conservatives couldn’t get a blue check, no matter how many followers they had, or how influential they were. Even after Twitter’s algorithm marked me as a “social media influencer” for having enough followers, they still denied my application. The liberal bot army often mocked us for lacking the little badges in scoffing posts like, “this guy doesn’t even have a blue check,” or “no blue check!”

☕️ CRACKED ☙ Monday, April 3, 2023 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Musk repossesses Times' prized blue check; OPEC responds to Biden broken promise; Fla Senate busting teachers' unions; McDonald's layoffs; Cracker Barrel flees Portland; and lots more.

www.coffeeandcovid.com

 

[spr1975wshs]

I paid the yearly fee and got a Blue Checkmark on my Twitter profile.
I am not interested in being an "Influencer," but my followers have gone to over 250 from 6 in the past few weeks.
I usually post about Role Playing Games, Cancer or Animals.

 

[GURPS]

Twitter Code Included ‘Government Requested’ Intervention Tool

pjmedia.com

Tey further found that Twitter’s algorithm favors Twitter Blue subscribers, boosting them. The Twitter algorithm also divides users into four groups to track and compare their posts, Tey said: Musk, Power users, Democrat users, and Republican users. Tweets with video or images get a two-times boost, and “following to follower ratio matters.”

The key question remains, however — what does the “Government Requested” intervention involve, and does it still exist? Will Musk remove that intervention feature in the future? The Twitter Files revealed deep collusion between Twitter and the federal government to censor Americans and suppress certain narratives, including on the topics of COVID-19 and the 2020 election. Government agencies that colluded with Twitter include the FBI, the CDC, the Biden White House, the CIA, and the supposedly foreign-focused Global Engagement Center (operating under the oversight of the State Department).

The censorship allegations tie in with some of Tey’s findings. Among the highlights was the code citing “Misinfo,” i.e., misinformation around COVID-19 and presidential elections. These included the French, Brazilian, Philippines, and U.S. elections.

 

[GURPS]

Elon Musk Says Government Access To Twitter ‘Blew’ His Mind​

Some of the disclosures laid bare deliberations by top Twitter brass about how to handle hot-button issues, including the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story in the run-up to the 2020 election, and outreach by the government, campaigns, and elected officials, including the office of Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) making suspension requests aimed at specific accounts.

While Republican lawmakers have raised concerns about unethical coordination and the stifling of free speech, former Twitter officials who testified before Congress denied there being collusion with the government.

The FBI released a statement in December, following revelations about its contacts with Twitter employees flagging posts that may have violated the company’s terms of service, pushing back on “conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.”

In addition to a Securities Exchange Commission inquiry into Musk, the Federal Trade Commission is conducting an investigation focused on the large-scale layoffs at Twitter following Musk’s takeover and whether the company has sufficient resources to protect the privacy of users. The New York Times reported last week that a lawsuit claimed that the Justice Department also looked into Twitter.

 

[GURPS]

 

[GURPS]

Twitter quietly drops bans on 'misgendering', 'deadnaming' transgender individuals​

"Deadnaming" refers to the use of someone's name they used prior to transitioning and assuming a new one. "Misgendering" refers to identifying someone by biological sex rather than by their gender identity, when the two do not correspond. It might also include using pronouns in reference to a transgender person other than those they prefer.

LGBT advocates argue that such practices constitute hateful conduct and forms of harassment.

The platform enacted the bans in 2018 but now appears to have deleted the lines in its policies that forbade "targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals," according to the Associated Press. Twitter further announced on Monday that it would no longer delete tweets that "potentially" run afoul of its hate speech rules and instead merely attach warning labels on some of them.

 

[GURPS]

Elon Finally Drops the Hammer on the Legacy Blue Checks, the Liberal Fits Are Hilarious​

We may already have the most over-the-top reaction from a freelance journalist who’s written for the NY Times. So you know where she stands:






Exactly how is anyone going to die from this? They’re certainly not going to die from not seeing a blue check on the account of this “journalist.”

Let’s hear more crying from the execrable “journalist” Aaron Rupar.






Some are trying to adjust to the nakedness of no nice elitist checkmark. Here’s Keith Olbermann trying to pretend with an arrow in his profile. That’s pretty hilarious that he’s so desperate.





This lady Tara Dublin is so desperate to tell you how special she is she put a “legacy verified” all over her profile. This profile is a festival of leftist nonsense.






Then just to show you what a nasty human being she is, she tweets about Elon’s starship blowing up.

 

[Kyle]

"People Will Die!!!" "People Will Die!!!"


Democrats really love that one as much as everything is "RACIST!!!"

 

[Kyle]

I might have to pop back on Twitter now to watch the Marxist Meltdown.

 

[spr1975wshs]

I have a blue checkmark.
BUT, most of my Twitter activity is tabletop RPG conversations, looking for animal pictures and schmoozing with other cancer survivors and patients.

 

[GURPS]

 

[stgislander]

Listened to that last night. I enjoy his take on things.

 

[GURPS]

Twitter’s VP of Trust and Safety Ella Irwin reportedly leaves the company amid Daily Wire debacle​

Head of Twitter Trust and Safety is reported to have resigned on Thursday. This comes after a deal between Twitter and The Daily Wire to promote the year anniversary of Matt Walsh's What Is a Woman? documentary was collapsed over "misgendering."

A report from Forbes stated that "Ella Irwin, twitter’s VP of trust and safety and one of Elon Musk’s top lieutenants, is no longer in Twitter’s internal slack, according to a source familiar and a screenshot of her deactivated account viewed by Fortune."

Reuters reporter Sheila Dang said that Irwin's resignation was confirmed.

"Confirmed," Dang wrote, "Ella Irwin tells me she resigned today." She shared a tweet on the scoop from Fortune.