Crybaby Commentary: Elon Musk bought Twitter just to break it. With a new war, we're paying the price

[Domingo the Avenger]

The lefties are all pissed because they no longer have exclusive
control over content in their favorite pissing platform.


“Social media is always trustworthy,” said no one, ever. But a new
war in the Middle East is making longtime users of the platform
acutely aware of the damage that the SpaceX CEO and former chairman
of Tesla has wrought on the digital public square. An unprecedented
level of unchecked misinformation across X has made it exponentially
more difficult to get credible information, according to fact-
checking groups and researchers.


Worse yet, the garbage is raining from the top down.

On Sunday, Musk suggested that his more than 159 million followers
check out a couple of accounts “good” for “following the war in
real-time.” His advice, unfortunately, featured one handle known for
disseminating a fake report of an explosion at the Pentagon earlier
this year, and another that had aimed antisemitic comments at a
fellow user. (Musk has since deleted his recommendation.)

The flood of fake news was inevitable given Musk’s ongoing efforts
to deregulate the space. He recently laid off half the team
dedicated to flagging misinformation and election fraud on the site,
which had already been pared down when he first acquired the site.
And just last week, X began removing headlines from news articles,
making it easier to mislead users about the content of a story and
harder for users to distinguish between a link from a reputable news
outlet and a random photo posted by an individual.

These are just the latest in a string of moves by Musk that appear
designed to cast doubt on the work of legitimate sources like the
BBC and NPR and boost the visibility of “alternative” voices — such
as white supremacists and election deniers. And maybe it’s no
surprise, given that one of the first actions Musk took after
assuming control of Twitter was to reinstate many accounts that had
previously been suspended for hateful conduct (former Ku Klux Klan
leader David Duke), promoting baseless conspiracy theories about
election fraud (Mike Flynn) or about COVID-19 (Georgia Rep. Marjorie
Taylor Greene).

Musk’s Wild West may have been a year in the making, but the last
few days have underscored that the platform formerly known as
Twitter — where most newshounds have gathered to circulate,
celebrate and bemoan breaking news for more than a decade — no
longer allows even highly discerning users to discern fact from
fiction. Hundreds of thousands of users amplified a fake White House
news release posted Saturday that falsely claimed the U.S. was
sending billions of dollars in new aid to Israel.

And a video that purported to show Israeli generals captured by
Hamas, and that had been viewed more than 1.7 million times by
Monday, actually depicted, as CNN reported, the detention of
separatists in Azerbaijan. X’s denuded misinformation team did flag
some misleading or false posts, including a video allegedly
portraying Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. But the same video and
caption continued to proliferate across other accounts on the
platform.


Now that the little blue bird is gone, the tenor of the place has
changed — and things are much uglier. GLAAD called it “the most
dangerous platform for LGBTQ people.” The ADL cited a 61.3% increase
in antisemitic tweets two weeks after Musk bought the site compared
to the two weeks before he took over. The Center for Countering
Digital Hate reports a 202% increase in tweets using the N-word
since Musk took the reins. Last month, Musk accused the Anti-
Defamation League (ADL) of “trying to kill this platform by falsely
accusing it & me of being anti-Semitic” and hinted that he might sue
the anti-hate organization for defamation.

For Musk and those who’ve turned the place into a toxic dump of
hate-fluencers and bad info, the goal is no longer sharing
information. It’s about screaming into the void, no matter how ill-
informed the message or baseless the accusation. It’s about eroding
confidence in trustworthy sources, individual or institutional, and
elevating nefarious users who must stoke fear, doubt and confusion
in order to thrive.

And as he nears his one-year anniversary, it’s never been clearer
that Musk will go to great lengths to deliver.

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2023-10-
10/elon-musk-twitter-takeover

[Siri Cruise]

For Musk and those who’ve turned the place into a toxic dump of
hate-fluencers and bad info, the goal is no longer sharing
information. It’s about screaming into the void, no matter how ill-
informed the message or baseless the accusation. It’s about eroding
confidence in trustworthy sources, individual or institutional, and
elevating nefarious users who must stoke fear, doubt and confusion
in order to thrive.
And as he nears his one-year anniversary, it’s never been clearer
that Musk will go to great lengths to deliver.

Freedom means Musk can use his properties as he wants. Freedom of
the press doesn't create a good press. Competition might.