Censorship: Twitter Takeover Totally Panics Political Regime of LeftLibDemSocMediaTechPol

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News from the bathroom sink...


Musk Calls 'Lords & Peasants' Blue Check System 'Bullshit' - Will
Charge $8 Per Month

After new Twitter owner Elon Musk responded to a temper tantrum by
leftist horror author Stephen King over a rumored $20 per month charge
to keep one's coveted 'blue check' status symbol on the platform, Musk
has clarified what's going to happen; it'll be $8 per month (or $96
per year, or an inverted 69).

    We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on
advertisers. How about $8?
    — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 1, 2022

In a series of Tuesday tweets, Musk said "Twitter’s current lords &
peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is
bullshit."

"Power to the people! Blue for $8/month," he added.

    Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t
have a blue checkmark is bullshit.

    Power to the people! Blue for $8/month.
    — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 1, 2022

He then tweeted that prices 'by country' would be proportionate to
purchasing power, and added that subscribers will receive 'priority in
replies, mentions & search," and the "ability to post long video &
audio" as well as "Half as many ads."

    You will also get:
    - Priority in replies, mentions & search, which is essential to
defeat spam/scam
    - Ability to post long video & audio
    - Half as many ads
    — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 1, 2022

    This will also give Twitter a revenue stream to reward content creators
    — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 1, 2022

Earlier Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Twitter would
be ending the ability for Twitter Blue subscribers to access ad-free
articles from publishers.

    Twitter Blue is a roughly year-old monthly subscription that
offers premium features, such as an “undo tweet” option and access to
ad-free articles from hundreds of publishers, including Vox, Los
Angeles Times and Insider.

    The move comes as the company’s new owner, Tesla Inc. Chief
Executive Elon Musk, makes sweeping changes from high-profile firings
to product updates since closing the $44 billion deal last week.
Tuesday morning, Sarah Personette, Twitter’s chief customer officer,
said on Twitter that she resigned on Friday. -WSJ

No word on whether verified users will have 90 days to sign up for the
$8 service or lose their coveted 'blue checks.'

Last week former Twitter CFO suggested people would be willing to pay
$49/month, and if not, shouldn't have been verified in the first
place.

    None of these answers are high enough. People will pay $49/mth &
if they won’t they should not have been verified to begin with. Perhap
a better model is to charge a base verification fee then a per
follower fee above a certain scale. Both ideas create many 2nd order
benefits.
    — Anthony Noto (@anthonynoto) October 31, 2022

*  *  *

Fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation may recall the episode where
extra-dimensional dickhead "Q" is stripped of his powers for spreading
chaos throughout the universe.

Well, Elon Musk just did that to Twitter's content moderation thought
police with just weeks to go before midterms - cutting the number of
employees who can access censorship tools from hundreds to around 15
people last week, and reducing their ability to influence discussion
on the platform.

According to Bloomberg, Musk and his 'war cabinet' have frozen some
employee access to internal tools used for content moderation and the
enforcement of other policies, neutering staff's abilities to 'alter
or penalize accounts that break rules around misleading information,
offensive posts and hate speech.'

They also won't be able to banish highly credentialed doctors and
researchers posting divergent Covid-19 narratives.

All but the most 'high-impact violations set for manual review' will
remain on the platform, according to people familiar with the matter.

    Twitter staff use dashboards, known as agent tools, to carry out
actions like banning or suspending an account that is deemed to have
breached policy. Detection of policy breaches can either be flagged by
other Twitter users or detected automatically, but taking action on
them requires human input and access to the dashboard tools. Those
tools have been suspended since last week, the people said.

    This restriction is part of a broader plan to freeze Twitter’s
software code to keep employees from pushing changes to the app during
the transition to new ownership. Typically this level of access is
given to a group of people numbering in the hundreds, and that was
initially reduced to about 15 people last week, according to two of
the people, who asked not to be named discussing internal decisions.
Musk completed his $44 billion deal to take the company private on
Oct. 27. -Bloomberg

On Sunday,Twitter employees had limited access to the internal tools
to police Brazil's presidential election.

Meanwhile, the company is still using automated enforcement technology
as well as third-party contractors.

The restricted ability to restrict free speech has given Twitter's
Trust and Safety Team the vapors - with employees worried that the
company will be short-handed during the runup to the Nov. 8 midterm
election. Recall the Trust and Safety Team was headed by now-fired
Vijaya Gadde - who would have had a large role (perhaps even the final
decision) to ban ZeroHedge in February, 2020 for suggesting that
Covid-19 was the result of a lab leak (and that we 'doxxed' a Wuhan
lab employee using publicly available data - aka not doxxing).
Photo via Latestfinancenews

    Internally, employees say, Musk has raised questions about a
number of the policies, and has zeroed in on a few specific rules that
he wants the team to review. The first is Twitter’s general
misinformation policy, which penalizes posts that include falsehoods
about topics like election outcomes and Covid-19. Musk wants the
policy to be more specific, according to people familiar with the
matter.

    Musk has also asked the team to review Twitter’s hateful conduct
policy, according to the people, specifically a section that says
users can be penalized for “targeted misgendering or deadnaming of
transgender individuals.” -Bloomberg

On Monday, Yoel Roth, Twitter's head of safety and integrity, tweeted
on Monday that the company was addressing an increase in offensive
posts.

"Since Saturday, we’ve been focused on addressing the surge in hateful
conduct on Twitter. We’ve made measurable progress, removing more than
1500 accounts and reducing impressions on this content to nearly
zero," he wrote, adding "We’re primarily dealing with a focused,
short-term trolling campaign."