X.COM on the Path to Profitability

[Pesala]

According to X CEO Linda Yaccarino, the company formerly known as Twitter will be profitable by early 2024.

“Now that I have immersed myself in the business, and we have a good set of eyes on what is predictable, what’s coming is that it looks like in early ’24, we will be turning a profit,” Yaccarino said on stage at the Code Conference. (Techcrunch.com)

90% of the top 100 advertisers have now returned. Obviously, there is still work to be done to remove spammers, and improve the features, but the future is bright for x.com.

I am looking forward to the court-case, suing the ADL for defamation. The irony of that is delicious.

[greybeard]

@Pesala said in X.COM on the Path to Profitability:

90% of the top 100 advertisers have now returned. Obviously, there is still work to be done to remove spammers, and improve the features, but the future is bright for x.com.

Sad but true, in my opinion.
Most top 100 - 500 companies rely on the misinformation provided by twitter and are reluctant to move to Mastodon / Discord or similar platforms simply for fear of losing audience.
I have never been a fan or had an account and rumours abound that it will go behind a paywall. That would make it a Never for “moi”.

[ugly]

Yes, it is ironic how easily a free speech absolutist who freely calls people a 'pedo guy' immediately starts crying to the courts when anything is said about him. The eagerness for ideologically motivated thought leaders like Musk to play the victim nicely fills in the grievance narrative that his creduluous audience finds appealing.

Of course, the ADL is not wrong. It is well known that disinformation and hate speech have proliferated on Twitter/X. Often directly from Musk himself. It's quite an accomplishment to be worse than Facebook as a source of disinformation and conspiracy theories. And conspiracy theories lean hard into antisemitism, even if those repeating them are not aware of those roots.

And we're seeing this with other groups as well. Scientists are leaving the platform.

Nature obtained the e-mail addresses of thousands of scientists who were identified through a social-media research project as having tweeted about papers on which they were a corresponding author1. The survey from Nature asked whether people had changed their use of Twitter in the past six months and why. The reasons respondents gave varied, but many of those who had markedly reduced or stopped their activity on X mentioned Musk’s management of the platform. Many said that they had noticed an uptick in the amount of fake accounts, trolls and hate speech on the platform.

Scientists publishing their work that goes against conspiratorial narratives regularly receive death threats. And Musk directly plays into this as well, with examples such as his idiotic Prosecute Fauci pronouns tweet.

Furthermore, he encourages far-right influencers through his payment system, and reinstating accounts that post child sex abuse content like Dom Lucre.

[LonM]

@greybeard I suppose if it does go behind a paywall, then that might help to convince users to give up on it. And if they stay and are desperate for misinformation and ads, well, there's probably no hope for them.

[Pesala]

reluctant to move to Mastodon / Discord or similar platforms simply for fear of losing audience.

It is well known that

Disinformation is the problem of our times, but it is not new. If the MSM media is what you read, you are easily misled.

A lie gets around the world before the truth has the time to get its pants on. (Sir Winston Churchill).

[terepashi]

I doubt that most of their users will start paying if they decide to paywall the entire site. Some definitely will (though I think most of them already do pay); I don't see how this wouldn't drive the advertisers away again or get them to lower their bids (considering, well, even fewer eyes). Which is probably how they'll still be making most of their money.

Admittedly, I dislike that site. So I'm biased towards hoping that it burns out. It'd be very funny if this turned into another MySpace, limping along forever, not dead, but not really knowing what to do with itself, slowly being forgotten.

[Ayespy]

@Pesala said in X.COM on the Path to Profitability:

Disinformation is the problem of our times, but it is not new.

Still, some people combat it, and some promote it. MSM, for all its faults, and all the demonization against it that has become so popular of late, is not a promoter of disinfo on the whole. Yes, they mis-emphasize, sensationalize, scandalize, promote conflict, (all to attract eyeballs and the money that follows) but they don't make up fantasy outright, lie every day, every hour on the hour, as do the majority of "alternative" media, and they don't consciously promote hatred.

I have been a vociferous critic of the MSM for the last 50 years, but I accurately asses my adversary, and it is not an unabashed disinformation machine. When taken to task, it adjusts course. (Fox et al do not qualify as MSM).

Under Musk, "X" has become a haven for both (disinfo and hatred). That doesn't make him a "bad man." It does make him a "bad manager." Defense of his missteps in this arena are ill-considered. One must assess one's idols with clear eyes.

[Ayespy]

@Pesala said in X.COM on the Path to Profitability:

A lie gets around the world before the truth has the time to get its pants on. (Sir Winston Churchill).

This is a 1710 (earliest citation) quote that passed through a couple of dozen authors in different forms before it reached Churchill.

Its most popular version is "by Mark Twain" (who cannot be proved to have said or written it) and goes: "...a lie will fly around the whole world while the truth is getting its boots on." This was attributed to him in 1919. He died in 1910 without having left evidence that he authored it.

[Pesala]

@Ayespy said in X.COM on the Path to Profitability:

Yes, they mis-emphasize, sensationalize, scandalize, promote conflict, (all to attract eyeballs and the money that follows)

What is that, if not disinformation?

but they don't make up fantasy outright, lie every day, every hour on the hour, as do the majority of "alternative" media, and they don't consciously promote hatred.

On x.com, members are free to post anything that is legal in their country. X does not promote conspiracy theories; on the contrary, they de-emphasise it. They also offer community notes to call out disinformation. To lump all members of X together as liars and conspiracy theorists is defamatory.

Other social media platforms, and the former Twitter, actively censor opinions that are contrarian. If no one is allowed to state an unpopular POV, that is not free speech. If anyone posts something defamatory, of course, they can be sued, but they should be free to say it on an open platform.

When Elon took over Twitter, many here said it would fail. They will probably be proved wrong within a year, when it is making good money.

[Ayespy]

@Pesala Disinformation is an active intelligence technique. It is knowing lies to manipulate an adversary into self-harm to the benefit of the teller. It's not mere sensationalism. It's intentional and knowing harm. Permitting this on a platform is tacit consent to that harm. Promulgators of disinformation are treating everyone who is not their ally, as their puppet or their enemy. This is the act of a personality that believes they can only be strong if others are weak. They can only be safe if others are on defense. They can only succeed if other fail. It is a social cancer.

[Ayespy]

@Pesala Misinformation is lying irrespective of knowledge or intent. Disinformation is lying with knowledge, and with intent to harm.

[Pesala]

@Ayespy said in X.COM on the Path to Profitability:

Permitting this on a platform is tacit consent to that harm.

I accept that it is the right of everyone to believe in an imaginary being who created the Universe. It is a very harmful belief that I cannot condone. I do not therefore tacitly consent to their harm.

The problem is, who gets to decide what is accurate information, and what is disinformation? Read the Twitter files and the Hunter Biden laptop story and how the FBI got involved on the former Twitter.

[ugly]

To refer to sensationalization and click-chasing of the mainstream media as disinformation on one hand, and then point to the Twitter files on the other hand to describe accurate information being suppressed is a bizarre take. The people behind the Twitter Files - Taibbi, Shellenberger and Weiss - are nothing but click-chasing, fabulists that claim to be independent investigators. They regularly promote unverified and unsourced information. They have promoted climate change denialism, UFO conspiracies, and the origins of SARS-CoV-2, including completely fabricating a story about patient zero. They are media manipulators.

Releasing cherry-picked internal communications to sensationalize the benign is an age-old disinformation tactic. We've seen it with climate change denialism. We've just seen it again with the origin of SARS-CoV-2, and the Twitter Files is more of the same.

[Ayespy]

@Pesala said in X.COM on the Path to Profitability:

...who gets to decide what is accurate information, and what is disinformation?

There is nothing to decide. Thigs are true or they are not. False claims are mistaken, or they are malicious. They are not potentially true.

I have the benefit of working in a field where opinion is irrelevant. Everything is provable truth, provable falsity, or yet-to-be-proved. Opinion or belief are not in any case truth. They are only opinion and belief. There is no voice of authority which determines truth or falsity. There is only what is.

But the great tragedy here is the erroneous monotone assignment of importance to fact and opinion (or alternative "fact") - and the parallel fact that lies fed to and accepted by people cause blindness and stupidity. So lying to people is, defacto, harm. (It can be harm by mistake or by intent.)

But truth is discerned by direct perception. The lies fed to and accepted by a person can inhibit or prohibit that perception.

[Pesala]

@Ayespy said in X.COM on the Path to Profitability:

Misinformation is lying irrespective of knowledge or intent.

In my book, lying requires intent to deceive, even if only for a moment, as in telling jokes.

Misinformation is just something that is false or imperfect due to incomplete knowledge, or lack of context.

If someone expresses an opinion that is contrary to widely held beliefs, they are accused of spreading disinformation.

There is nothing to decide

You have already decided that you know truth from falsehood, but you may be misinformed or deluded. We are not talking about flat-earthers here, but opinions and beliefs that many take to be the truth, such as Elon Musk is an anti-Semite, condones conspiracy theories, etc.

[Ayespy]

@Pesala said in X.COM on the Path to Profitability:

You have already decided that you know truth from falsehood,

Not true. I have decided that it is knowable what is or is not true. Things can be perceived or demonstrated. A concatenation of facts can serve to demonstrate a fact one did not directly observe (a 10-inch intrusion across the front of a 1995 Kia Sportage is demonstrative of a 30-mph delta V even if you were not looking at the speedo in the Kia when the accident happened). But I also can acknowledge what I don't know, without at the same time claiming it is unknowable - or that those persons whose livelihood consists of direct observation of the evidence couldn't possibly know it any better than a political commentator with an agenda to push.

[Pesala]

Ben Shapiro Talks to Elon Musk

Free Speech, ADL and Anti-Semitism

[Ayespy]

@Pesala Ben Shapiro is a major king of disinformation and toxic content. There is no chance that a conversation between him and Musk could produce any valid and informative data. You could hardly have posted a less productive link.

https://popular.info/p/facebook-allows-prominent-right-wing

[Pesala]

@Ayespy Ben Shapiro seems to be a very successful Jewish journalist. How about listening to the dialog instead of denigrating the speakers?

He seems to be just the kind of free speech advocate who would upset the liberal left.

[Ayespy]

@Pesala Shapiro is not a journalist. He is an advocate. As to whether he is "successful," there are two potential measures: Whether he makes money - he does. Whether he swings opinion to the position of his advocacy - he does not. Whether he is Jewish is an open question. Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro would hold that he is not. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKRSiqBWqNM

It is not his identity as a "source" that defeats his credibility, but rather his content.