By monetizing disinformation, Musk has now effectively crowdsourced Russia’s Internet Research Agency.
According to advertising data from Sensor Tower, Twitter’s top 5 advertisers in June — Mondelez International, The Wall Street Journal, HBO, Apple, and FinanceBuzz.io (Buzzery, LLC) — spent nearly $17 million on Twitter ads.
I wonder how proud of the Nazi/KKK mouthpieces Apple is. Something tells me that this money isn’t going to be sticking around very long.
Apple doesn’t give a shit. Any time a corporation “cares” it’s for money-making potential only. Starbucks abandoned Pride as soon as it could have affected their profit margins.
Starbucks abandoned pride at least partially because people were getting assaulted. I agree about performative capitalism but it’s a little different.
I’m sure there could be some level of implied safety in the reasoning, but a local Starbucks was shut down “due to violence near the location” and when the staff were interviewed by local news about the closure they made 2 points: a) they had no idea what “violence” corporate was talking about b) it coincided with multiple stores being closed due to the possibility of unionizing, which that store apparently had been discussing.
Starbucks pulled back Pride right about the same time as Bud Lite taking a sales hit for supporting LGBT. Target did something similar. Seems a little too coincidental, but that’s just my opinion based on the factors at play.
The thing about it, though… all the pride merch, lattes, beers were not because the corpos care if your lgbtq and being disenfranchised and harassed and all that.
They just wanted to sell more merch and lattes and beers. “Slap a rainbow on it- they will eat it up!” Was literally their thought process.
Reasonable take
Your mere eyeballs on the content posted by these people – even if just to see what is being said and not because you like it – is being transformed into direct financial support.
You are the product on Twitter, and that product is being sold to advertisers with the proceeds going to Andrew Tate.
Leave the platform.
I don’t understand how a company that isn’t profitable with free content expects to make money by paying people to give content, especially if its any content. It is going to be filled with the stupidest, most cringeworthy content of all time at this point with no advertisers wanting to join. I can’t wait to continue to not being on twitter
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As if they can stop the people that literally stood up these sites. But yea - money has a way to wrap left leaning people too. I don’t think Spez or Dorsey started out dumb.
Elon… moreso given his privilege & weird connections early on. Just glad my gf stopped swooning over him. She didn’t want to believe me about him till more stuff came out that she could relate - wasn’t enough that he he was an asshole to nerds that worked for & with him. Plus discrediting the actual founder of Tesla & pretending the guy never existed.
I don’t think Spez or Dorsey started out dumb.
Can’t speak for Dorsey but Spez started out standard libertarian tech dude dumb vis a vis making reddit “free speech” and enabling the jailbait and racism subs to exist.
Musk didn’t actually start out dumb. It’s pretty disheartening to watch his descent into far right idiocy. Huffman was always a moron, on the other hand.
I remember hearing about Musk first at the time of the PayPal and X.com merger. There were a few persistent rumours around he was an arrogant idiot. At the time I thought there might well be merit to his argument that they were just competitors out to get him.
After the PayPal sale there was talk he hired a PR firm, and the rumour mill went quiet. Most people forgot about it. Then he started popping up in movies and TV all over the place. At the time I thought maybe he had grown or those original rumours were just malicious like he had said.
But then the Thai Cave fiasco happened and it was clear to me the rumours were accurate, but his PR firm did do an excellent job of concealing it until he fucked it all up for them.
Musk was always an idiot. He’s just also always had enough money to conceal it until he can’t help but announce it loudly.
He was always an asshole. But not an idiot. Those are two different things.
The rumours I remember indicated that it was both. Both a bad programmer and a bad manager. I think the ‘bad at people’ part was just mentioned less because it was part of the nerd techbro stereotype and everyone expected it.
He didn’t start out smart. The only thing that changed is he fired his PR team.
Huffman rode Swartz’s coattails for engineering. People give a lot more knowledge credit to tech CEOs than they’re due, Dorsey is the only one you mentioned who is known to have any programming skill at all.
Musk was apparently the worst at it though, with systems being set up to prevent him contributing code because it was so bad.
Spez isn’t tanking Reddit for leftist speech alone. That’s not the whole picture.
Reddit is A) Trying to go IPO and B) Investment chickens are coming home to roost. The main reason Spez is tanking is for monetary gain and a better-looking public offering. Yeah, discourse is there but also not stifled like on Twitter, I think it’s EXTREMELY reductionist to paint all of Spez’s actions as being against leftist speech when there’s a dozen other factors that have been documented
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And why does it have to be stopped exactly? Or did I misread and that’s sarcasm?
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Liberal discourse is inherently antiauthoritarian. Leftist discourse, including progressive and far-left rhetoric, is inherently authoritarian.
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No, I have never believed that Russia and China tried leftism. It sounds like you’re using a different definition of “liberal”. Liberals comprise the majority of voters in the Democratic party and are not in favor of imposing their viewpoints on others. They are referred to with contempt and derision by the the right.
The “anti-hierarchy” faction is defined with the term “progressive” and is probably the group you are calling left wing. Progressives tend to be illiberal and favor the imposition of their social philosophies on others. They are anti-free-speech and support a more powerful, more intrusive government. Many also support alternate economic models, such as communism or socialism.
Keep trying to read my mind, maybe if you guess enough times you’ll get it right.
Liberal discourse is at most anti-regulation, but it’s fully supportive of wealthy powerful people being as oppressive as they may feel like. It calls it “freedom” when corporations submit people to their demands, by glossing over power disparities.
In this case, I’m using the contemporary definition of liberalism. I call the type of liberalism you’re referring to “classical liberalism”. It is the political philosophy that created the United States.
That doesn’t change it. Classical liberalism puts the most focus on the importance of a free market, and in a free market the largest financial interests can rule however they see fit.
Economic freedom and individual autonomy are often at odds with each others. Often people even need to change their off-work habits to suit the demands and image that their employers expect.
And this is considering an ideal scenario, not even like, unpaid overtime or prejudice-driven market practices and so forth. Not to mention that monopolies and cartel practices are pretty much inevitable, it’s only out of idealism that it’s assumed that they are a result of not following the political philosophy properly.
Oh, I thought you were stating that as your position, so was curious to hear the take. I totally get why that’s in their interest though.
I was just reading multiple articles about how Twitter can’t pay their bills.
Probably not even stupidest or cringeworthy, just something that gets the most views/engagement. And usually that’s the most controversial or hateful stuff, that vile people flock to agree with and others come to defend/voice their disagreements with.
Yeah exactly. Rage bait in all forms. Political, cringe, stupid-food, hate-porn, misinformation, etc.
Can be a money laundering scheme if they indeed see it unprofitable.
So much money to be made from grifting right wingers.
This is grifting advertisers.
If a company is advertising on Twitter they are paying these people. One step removed, it isn’t even a stretch. Advertisers on Twitter need to be bombarded with complaints. It’s the only way anything changes.
“Misinformers” “Bad actors”
Do people actually take these terms seriously?
Yeah, I don’t know what’s wrong with “fucking nazi dimwits”
I don’t support them at all but I seriously believe that by calling them things they are not, you open up the term for more moderate but right leaning people. “If everyone is a Nazi, Naziism must not be so bad.”
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I personally don’t even care about rhetoric pushback, it just makes american political discourse impossible to read or interact with. I don’t know how americans deal with this on a daily basis without just giving up and noping out of politics.
When people talk about Nazis in my country’s political scene, they usually mean actual Nazis, skinheads covered in swastikas touting about and committing acts of violence on minorities, genuinely the worst kind of people you can possibly imagine. The same goes for fascists, probably because we got rid of fascism not that long ago. When americans (on the internet, at least) talk about Nazis or fascists, it’s a coin toss whether the person they’re talking about shares actual Nazi ideals, or is just someone very slightly right of center who they disagree with on some very specific issue. It just makes it impossible to interact with any american political discourse. Which would be fine if it was contained in specific communities, but it eventually spreads out to any community which has a large american user base.
In the Fediverse, my experience has been that any person or idea that is right-of-center on the American political spectrum is speedily labeled a Nazi and harassed into silence.
Good, since they associate with and support white nationalists.
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If everyone is a Nazi, Naziism must not be so bad.
I don’t know how you’d make that leap. Nazism is bad. Hence the people I called nazis are bad.
moderate but right leaning people.
There’s no such thing. lol.
If your definition of moderate is anything right of anarchism, I’m sorry to break it to you but you don’t understand the definition of the word. Conservatives are not Nazis.
Many of them still act as apologists for some pretty despicable ideas & groups nonetheless.
That can be true and then still not be Nazis. Additionally, you pushing them that way doesn’t help the issue at all.
Then maybe discuss the ideas & groups to get them to either explain themselves or expose themselves… instead of calling them “national socialists” when that’s not what they are.
Otherwise why stop at “nazis”? Might as well straight up call them murderers or rapists.
A moderate who voted to put a Nazi in power is no better than the Nazi who voted to put a Nazi in power.
What should I call you then when you are encouraging them with your language?
I think that anybody even considering that thought is probably already beyond help.
At least that wouldn’t carry the pretext of objectivity.
“People who missed out on the slave trade”
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Are you quoting someone or did that pure cringe emanate from your own being?
Better way to say it imo, is that you have the extremist on the right expanding at a faster clip than the left. And most people do want to be moderate, they want to believe the middle road is justified & yet it puts them solidly conservative w/o them realizing it.
It sucks it does imo & if I saw equal reactions on the left then I’d call it out but I don’t.
The right has done nothing but contract for the past 150 years. “Conservatives” have continually met leftists in the middle and conserved nothing. In my country even the state church allows gay and female clergy now. I’m not a christian, but that’s the perfect example of the Right relenting even in their supposedly most sacred institution (though I suppose the bank has taken over that role for conservatives of the past century). Meanwhile, the Left has expanded at such a rate that the revolutionaries of two generations ago sound like today’s reactionaries.
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“Disagree with me!? Life devoid of value!”
Typical heckin wholesome leftist.
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All right, I’ll put it in as simple terms as possible, as you seem to need it.
I disagreed with that quote so intensely that I couldn’t even bring myself to explain why. I just needed you to know that the act of sharing that quote, let alone coming up with it, was pure cringe. Seriously “in this moment I am euphoric”-tier. I mean “the unjust man”… just cmon. It’s basically just telling you to be unyielding. Nothing but banal, vapid propaganda that could just as easily adorn the walls of the NSDAP as the NAACP.
“I simply asked if you have value.” All right, let me “simply ask” you if colored people have value. Infer anything from that?
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No. It just means people you disagree with.
@stopthatgirl7 I’m not well informed. When I read something about the new revenue program about Twitter, I thought it was sarcasm and a joke. 2023 is a really interesting year.
The system works as designed.
Left wing DNC shill Krassenstein got paid thousands.
ew
Not surprising since that is who bought the verification mostly.
