If you think things can’t get worse… Think Again!!
But with the recent firing of Carlson, who raked in millions of views, Fox’s recent ratings have slumped and its grip on the Republican base is slipping, presenting a ripe opportunity for another platform to surpass the network’s reign.
The Billionaire’s Game and Game Plan
Billionaire Twitter owner Elon Musk offered a scornful dismissal of the news media on Saturday, tweeting, “Some of the smartest people I know actively believe the press … amazing.”
But the following night, TV cameras captured him hanging out in a Super Bowl box with Rupert Murdoch, perhaps the single most powerful media mogul on the planet. The latter’s empire includes a slew of major newspapers and TV news networks on three continents; his U.S. assets include the New York Post and The Wall Street Journal, Fox News — the nation’s most-watched cable news network — numerous Fox-owned and -operated broadcast stations, and the Fox broadcast network that aired Sunday’s game. Musk’s actions may seem like hypocrisy or oversight, but they actually fit into a consistent strategy — one Murdoch himself knows well.
Source: Elon Musk is cribbing from Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing media playbook | Media Matters for America
Soundproofing the Twitter
I got suspended from Twitter yesterday. I’m one of at least eight journalists who were casualties of Elon Musk’s “Thursday Night Massacre,” after the billionaire went on a power-hungry suspension spree. Twitter didn’t explain what rules I allegedly broke — but that’s to be expected under the new management, whose transparency has mostly consisted of Musk personally replying to tweets explaining his decision-making. My suspension is likely temporary, or it could be permanent. Who knows?
Source: Elon Musk Is Taking Aim at Journalists. I’m One of Them.
Journalist Aaron Rupar, who had 789,000 followers and was critical of Elon, just had his Twitter account suspended on the self-entitled billionaire’s behemoth platform — whose fall from the public’s grace seems to be happening at a fast pace. Tesla’s stocks are plummeting, and Elon doesn’t know how to use his new Twitter toy.
Source: Elon Throws A Tantrum, Bans Journalists For Hurting His Feels | Crooks and Liars
I woke up yesterday, looked at my to-do list and saw that the top item was “delete your Twitter account”. I hadn’t tweeted in years, so it was something of a quiet protest, but Elon Musk giving Donald Trump the green light to use the blue bird was the final straw.
Source: Elon Musk’s idea of Twitter free speech could cost him $61 billion
Privately owned COMMUNICATION
What’s Musk going to do with Twitter? After months of trying to walk away from his commitment to buy the platform, and just before entering what was looking to be a long, potentially embarrassing and costly court battle to enforce his original agreement, Twitter is now privately owned.
Source: Why Elon Musk’s first week as Twitter owner has users flocking elsewhere
Just three days after Elon Musk bought Twitter, he posted a tweet advancing the baseless allegation that Paul Pelosi, the husband of the Speaker of the House, who was assaulted Friday at the couple’s home, had been drunk and in a fight with a male prostitute.
News Max declared the attack “staged” America is a mental minefield and Musk is happy to lay them
It couldn’t possibly be that DePape had been driven to extremes by a firehose diet of lies — all laid out on his personal blog, where he ranted against transgender people and Jewish people, and mucked around in conspiracies, including that an alien race of lizards has infiltrated society, albeit mostly Democrats.
It had to be something else, something the far-right finds abhorrent, even evil. Musk’s post was in response to Hillary Clinton, one of the far-right’s most hated figures. Clinton had tweeted Saturday, attaching a Times article about DePape’s online ravings: “The Republican Party and its mouthpieces now regularly spread hate and deranged conspiracy theories. It is shocking, but not surprising, that violence is the result. As citizens, we must hold them accountable for their words and the actions that follow.”
Source: Column: Elon Musk takes Twitter into the sewer – Los Angeles Times
Shareholders in US social media giant Twitter have voted almost unanimously to approve a deal struck with Elon Musk earlier in the year to purchase the company.
Based on a preliminary tabulation of the stockholder vote, some 98.6 per cent of the votes cast at the Tuesday special meeting approved the proposal to adopt the deal.
This paves the way for Twitter to attempt to legally compel the Space X and Tesla head to go through with his acquisition of the company after he unilaterally terminated the deal in July.
Source: Twitter shareholders approve Musk deal – Michael West
Twitter, the platform was quickly dominated by a global outpouring of both grief and glee, a heated mixture of paeans to the queen’s 70-year tenure and angry denunciations of the British monarchy’s legacy of colonial violence and exploitation. Among the latter was Carnegie Mellon’s Uju Anya, an associate professor of second language acquisition. “I heard the chief monarch of a thieving raping genocidal empire is finally dying. May her pain be excruciating,” Anya tweeted.
Source: Twitter Censored Post for “Abusive Behaviour” Toward Queen
Trump will abandon his own failed site and it’s shareholders
Ads account for 90% of Twitter’s revenue, and now that advertisers know exactly what Twitter would look like under Elon Musk’s leadership — they should be terrified
Source: Elon Musk says he would reverse Twitter’s ban on Donald Trump. | Media Matters for America
When the history of this horror is written, NATO and Joe Biden will get enormous credit as well. Their steady hands and steadfast strategy appear to be working. Patience, tenacity, and careful use of every tool available to them — short of putting NATO or American troops into Ukraine — is turning the tide. We have no way of knowing how this will turn out (and I continue to fear what a cornered Putin may resort to), but the courage and intelligence of Ukraine, NATO, and Biden deserve our commendation and thanks.
Instead of counting on an allegedly benevolent billionaire like Elon Musk to guard free speech online by buying companies like Twitter, we should just take our digital public square out of rich people’s hands and into public ownership.
Here comes Trump
With over 82 million followers, Musk has been a prolific Twitter user and a sharp critic of its use of content moderation, saying that he favors temporary suspensions over permanent bans. It remains unclear what changes, technical or philosophical, Musk’s stewardship will bring to the platform. In interviews, he’s floated a series of potential ideas, including installing an edit button, allowing for longer tweets, culling bots, and making Twitter’s algorithm open source.
Money over truth
Conservative commentators use Musk’s investment in Twitter to push for Trump’s return to the platform and rehash old false claims of right-wing censorship on social media
Big differences when it comes to policing “Free Speech” Political speech and whistleblowing are significantly different from Racial Discrimination and sexual abuse yet the LNP right-wing declared all speech should be free as speech is speech and it’s all equivalent. Tony Abbott certainly supported Andrew Bolt and was prepared ti rid us of the RDA, Racial Discrimination Act. However not any more says Scott Morrison and it’s no longer so! However, he’s not going to police it but says he will force Twitter and Facebook etal to dance to his tune. Mandatory ID of the Twitterati will be required is his threat but not so across the board. Those “sources” unnamed in the media supporting him and his party over and above, say Dan Andrews will be ok and of course that privileged protection he has when he’s in parliament will continue. Politicians should be allowed and encouraged to sue the electorate.
Morrison personally isn’t what might be regarded as an “action man”. He’s a wordsmith and has a team of highly paid elves on call constructing his words, slogans, and catchy sentences and he believes that’s should be an exclusive and protected by executive privilige.
Once again politicians and journalists are talking up the bad side of social media and threatening to police our Twitter identities. However, as Dr Martin Hirst argues, this is just another attack on our right to political speech.
However, this is the nature of political speech. The one thing that politicians hate – along with their media cheer squad – is being held to account for their words and their actions. They hate that we use social media to call out their lies and deceit.
In fact, they hate it so much that outgoing-ABC news boss Gaven Morris is encouraging journalists to quit the platform.
Said Morrison:
“I increasingly have told people at ABC News that I certainly don’t want them on there for their job. I’d have no problem if they choose to be there, personally, but we don’t need journalists to be on Twitter or to be on social media as part of their job.”
He’s fudging of course. The ABC – and all media – need the engagement, but they like it better when we keep quiet.
Twitter has complied with government requests to censor 52 tweets that mostly criticised India’s handling of the second surge of the COVID-19 pandemic. These tweets, which are now inaccessible to Indian users of the social media website, include posts by Revanth Reddy, a sitting Member of Parliament; Moloy Ghatak, a West Bengal state minister; actor Vineet Kumar Singh; and two filmmakers, Vinod Kapri and Avinash Das.
“Our policies don’t allow people to come back,” Segal stated.
‘When you’re removed, you’re removed’: Twitter chief says Trump ban is PERMANENT even if he’s re-elected — RT USA News
I analyzed all of Trump’s tweets to find out what he was really saying
The tally was in, it was clear Donald Trump had lost – and he tweeted: “either a new election should take place or … results nullified.” It sounds familiar, but it wasn’t November 2020. It was February 2016. Trump was just months into his presidential campaign, and was already telling a story he would tell countless times over the following five years, hinting to the world at the character of the man the U.S. Senate will soon evaluate in the impeachment trial. Back then, Trump was seeking to nullify Ted Cruz’s victory. And he was accusing Iowa of bungling the primary vote counting.
I analyzed all of Trump’s tweets to find out what he was really saying
Contrary to suggestions otherwise, Voltaire would have applauded the decision by Twitter and Facebook to suspend the access of Donald Trump to their platforms. Much like John Stuart Mill, the British philosopher and guru of classical liberalism, Voltaire supported criminal laws against libel, slander, incitement to violence and treason. Mill is credited with developing “the harm principle” under which laws restricting personal freedom should be promulgated “to prevent harm to others”.
Freedom of speech: Voltaire would applaud Trump Twitter ban
Australia’s Disgusting Leadership (ODT)
Members of the Morrison government have saved their loudest outrage for Twitter, the social media platform Trump used to incite his followers, and the platform that has finally banned Trump for life. This, it appears, is the great injustice, an affront to “free speech,” and, wait for it, censorship.
When your government thinks banning Trump from Twitter is the real injustice – » The Australian Independent Media Network
In reaction to Twitter’s announcement that it will be permanently suspending Donald Trump’s account, Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters for America issued the following statement:
Angelo Carusone: Twitter banning Trump now is “a lot like senior administration officials resigning with only days left” | Media Matters for America
Twitter says it permanently suspended a QAnon account belonging to a family friend of the prime minister, Scott Morrison, for “engaging in coordinated harmful activity”. Twitter is in the middle of a broader crackdown on QAnon content and is attempting to reduce the amplification of accounts spreading “clear and well-documented informational, physical, societal and psychological offline harm on our service”. BurnedSpy34, a prominent and prolific member of the Australian QAnon scene, was recently permanently suspended.
Twitter permanently suspends QAnon account belonging to friend of Scott Morrison for ‘harmful activity’ | US news | The Guardian
Donald Trump’s bloodthirsty threat to have protesters in Minneapolis shot by the military, issued in a tweet early Friday morning, prompted Twitter to restrict access to the president’s message, ruling that it violated the social network’s policy against “glorifying violence.”
via The Racist History Behind Trump’s Threat to Shoot Protesters
Background: Trump as Liar in Chief
Trump posted a Tweet stating that mail-in ballots will be ‘substantially fraudulent’. Two points here: first there is no evidence that mail-in ballots are any more or less fraudulent than in-person voting. Second, the last time an election used mail-in ballots for a special election, the Republican won. It truly is remarkable how quickly Trump can utterly contradict himself. Vote by mail is totally fraudulent but the Republican won. Amazing. This is analogous to his 2016 claims that the electoral college was a disaster for democracy – when it looked like he would lose.
One man’s step closer to a Fascist State. Twitter didn’t block or stop Trump’s Tweets (ODT)
via Trump Signs Social Media Executive Order | HuffPost Australia
The federal Reserve, Impeachment, The Democrats Trump blames everything but himself for the crash. He’s gone Twittering Mad (ODT)
via Trump blames ‘impeachment nonsense’ for Wall Street rout
Twitter should ban Trump (ODT)
President Donald Trump has criticised social media companies after Facebook banned a number of extremist figures, declaring it was getting “worse and worse for Conservatives on social media!” and he was “monitoring and watching, closely!!”
via Trump attacks social media companies after Facebook bans
In simple terms, the interaction rate is a calculation of how many likes and retweets you get compared with your number of tweets and followers.
Think of it as a proxy for how much people are vibing with your content.
And Mr Trump is going backwards — dropping from 0.27 per cent over the previous 12-month period.
So as the President racks up followers, he’s not necessarily gaining new supporters.
In all, Mr Trump comes 16th for interaction rate compared with all the declared Democrat candidates.
In a country like the United States that doesn’t have compulsory voting, one of the key challenges for a candidate is to get voters engaged and to the ballot box.
Mr Trump might enjoy having millions of followers, but that doesn’t mean much if they’re peppered across the world and made up of looky-loos and journalists on the POTUS beat.
If a rival politician with even a fraction of the followers can mobilise an engaged base on social media, it could build.
if the president’s Twitter feed is any indication, he isn’t handling it well. He took to his favorite medium Friday morning to accuse Mueller of “Conflicts of Interest” and criticize a potential forthcoming public report from Mueller as being part of a “Witch Hunt.” He also pushed back on an Atlantic article yesterday suggesting that Trump and his team were unprepared to respond to Mueller’s findings.
You can read the nearly 1,000-character freak-out here:
via Two Big Mueller Filings Are Coming. Donald Trump Is Freaking Out. – Mother Jones
President Donald Trump on Sunday lashed out at the media for publishing leaks about chaos in the White House and revealing that his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, had become a focus of the FBI investigation.
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