Twitter was never the largest social network, but it remained one of the most influential as a home to celebrities, journalists, and influencers of all sorts and the go-to network for breaking news. Since Elon Musk purchased it, Twitter’s employee count has dropped by more than half, advertisers have tightened budgets, and it’s charging money for access to verified checkmarks and Tweetdeck. Oh, and now it’s called X instead of Twitter.
As 404 Media and others note, Elon Musk’s X has inserted itself into The Onion’s acquisition of Infowars, arguing that neither Alex Jones nor the estate handling his bankruptcy owns the associated social media accounts.
Since X simply grants a license for their use, the lawyers say that can’t be transferred without permission.
A federal judge said Friday that sanctioning Musk was unnecessary “because he already agreed to reimburse the SEC $2,923 to cover airfare for the trio of agency lawyers he stood up in Los Angeles in September,” Bloomberg writes.
The agency sought to sanction him after he ditched a testimony over his Twitter acquisition to watch a SpaceX launch.
The Elon Musk-run social media company is trying to stop a California law that would require platforms to block “materially deceptive” election content during set periods before and after voting, Bloomberg reports. X is arguing the law violates the First Amendment, pointing to “a long history” of Constitutional protections for critiques of government “that includes tolerance for potentially false speech made in the context of such criticisms.”
The Center for Countering Digital Hate, which X sued for allegedly driving away advertisers, says it’s leaving the platform ahead of its terms of service changes. While that lawsuit was dismissed, CCDH says X’s new terms will “ensure that future legal assaults are presided over by judges [Elon Musk] feels will be on his side,” by bringing disputes to his preferred court.
[Center for Countering Digital Hate | CCDH]
Lemon cited, among other things, the site’s new terms of service that require disputes to be brought in Texas courts, where a Tesla stock-owning judge recently recused himself from an advertiser lawsuit against X.
Lemon, who recently sued Elon Musk and X for canceling his talk show, pointed to his other accounts, like on the fast-growing Bluesky, where he posted for the first time today.
The news outlet says it will no longer post on any official Guardian accounts:
This is something we have been considering for a while given the often disturbing content promoted or found on the platform, including far-right conspiracy theories and racism. The US presidential election campaign served only to underline what we have considered for a long time: that X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse.
[The Guardian]
“Social media is doing harm to our kids and I’m calling time on it,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said. “The onus will be on social media platforms to demonstrate they are taking reasonable steps to prevent access. The onus won’t be on parents or young people. There’ll be no penalties for users.”
Legislation will be introduced this month and would come into force 12 months after ratification.
During his interview with Joe Rogan yesterday, Musk confirmed that X’s business is still suffering from an advertiser boycott and that he thinks “there’s no way that a Kamala regime would allow X to exist.”
“I think, if Trump wins, we’ll see most of the boycott lift,” he said. “But if Kamala wins, we’ll see that boycott get stronger.”
A new wave of layoffs has hit X, primarily affecting its engineering department, according to two sources inside X and posts on the workplace forum Blind. The exact scale of the job cuts remains unknown.
These cuts come just two months after staffers were required to submit a one-page summary telling leadership their contributions to the company (but it’s unclear if those one-pagers played a role).
Our friends Casey Newton and Kevin Roose at Hard Fork make the obvious point.
Meta’s X.com competitor now has 275 million monthly users, up from 200 million in August, according to Mark Zuckerberg. On Meta’s Q3 earnings call just now, he says Threads is seeing more than one million sign-ups per day and is on track to becoming “our next major social app.”
The time people spend in Threads “also continues to grow,” and Meta is working to “make it easier to stay up to date on topics,” adds CFO Susan Li.
We’ve been sounding the alarm about Elon’s great replacement posts for a while, and Bloomberg just ran the numbers. Musk posts about the supposed link between immigration and voter fraud more than any other topic.
To be clear, Noncitizen voting is virtually nonexistent, despite Musk’s claims to the contrary. Even a Heritage Foundation analysis shows just 68 instances of noncitizen voting in elections since 1980.
The Washington Post tracked down Metro, who attended a high school where Democratic VP nominee Tim Walz taught, and confirmed somebody on X made false sexual misconduct allegations in his name in a since-deleted video from last week:
It’s obviously not me: The teeth are different, the hair is different, the eyes are different, the nose is different.
The video was widely called out as AI, but experts told the Post it was more likely a “cheap fake” — like a human actor doing an impersonation.
[The Washington Post]
NPR’s Bobby Allyn spotted that X’s new Terms of Service, which go into effect on November 15th, say that disputes must be brought before the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas, where the judge who owns Tesla stock presides.
While platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and the App Store deal with Digital Markets Act regulations put on powerful digital gatekeepers, the service formerly known as Twitter won’t have that problem:
Following a thorough assessment of all arguments, including input by relevant stakeholders, and after consulting the Digital Markets Advisory Committee, the Commission concluded that X does indeed not qualify as a gatekeeper in relation to its online social networking service, given that the investigation revealed that X is not an important gateway for business users to reach end users.
A preprint study confirms a widely held understanding: thanks to unusually harsh US laws for hosting pirated content, reporting nonconsensual sexual imagery as copyright infringement gets results.
All the images reported as copyright violations were removed within 25 hours, and the accounts that posted them received temporary suspensions. All images reported as non-consensual nudity were not removed from the site even after three weeks, and the accounts that posted them faced no consequences nor received any notifications from X.
There’s white smoke from ESPN’s HQ in Bristol, CT, today, as Shams Charania broke the news of his own free agent signing, saying:
I am honored to join ESPN as the company’s Senior NBA Insider.
He will take over the spot from his one-time mentor and longtime rival, Wojnarowski, who announced his retirement last month.
On Friday, the social media company once again asked Brazil to lift its ban on X, saying it had paid the roughly $5 million in fines it owed from its tiff with the nation’s Supreme Court.
But the court said that will have to wait until the money is transferred to the correct bank, reports Reuters.
The company claimed that it’s not liable for failing to fully answer a notice asking how it handles child abuse imagery because Twitter “ceased to exist” after the notice was sent, as ArsTechnica writes.
The judge didn’t buy the argument, though, so X still must pay a $610,500 AUD (about $414,100 USD) fine Australia issued last year.
Focus grouping upcoming films is a pretty standard practice. But according to Variety, the rise of toxic online fandoms who treat review bombing and leading harassment campaigns like it’s their job has prompted many of Hollywood’s studios to start soliciting feedback from “superfans” about how to avoid potential backlash from trolls who “are just out for blood, regardless.”
He’s also removed about 78 percent of X’s value since he bought it. (You all know what I’m going to say.)
The markdown comes courtesy of Fidelity which now values its initial $19.66 million investment in X at just $4.18 million.
The asset manager, which helped Musk acquire the social network formerly known as Twitter, has further reduced the value of its holding in X to a total markdown of 78.7 percent as of August’s end, based on newly released disclosures from Fidelity’s Blue Chip Growth Fund.
