“Yeah, they’re gone”: Musk confirms cuts to X’s election integrity team — “‘Election Integrity’ Team… was undermining election integrity,” Musk writes::“‘Election Integrity’ Team… was undermining election integrity,” Musk writes.

  • @Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    I have a hunch that in the terrifyingly near future, we’re going to see the internet absolutely dominated by enshitification.

    Don’t get me wrong, it’s bad now …because like the frogs in hot water, we collectively just tolerate changes for the worse. But it used to be small incremental changes over a long period.

    Then this Musk asshole comes along, looks at the frogs ever so slowly cooking… and cranks the stove to max, pisses in the frog-pot, supplements the heating element with a welding torch, and flips the frogs off as he pours gasoline all over the kitchen.

    And the frogs JUST FUCKING TAKE IT.

    What message does that send to the rest of the internet?

    • @thisisnotgoingwell@programming.dev
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      2 years ago

      Most everyone I know doesn’t have a Twitter or Instagram. Obv I deleted my reddit. What are people supposed to do except just not use the platform? Most authors I want to follow are on substack or mastodon.

      I think that as the platforms further enshittify, people will realize there are no intelligent conversations happening on platforms like X, Instagram, Facebook, etc. Ragebait content can only captivate audiences for so long before they either abandon it or are brainwashed by it. If everyone on X is a musk dickrider right wing lunatic then it makes it easier for sane people to stay off of it. Honestly it might be better to give them their safespace echo chamber as long as Democrats, liberals and libertarians mobilize and make their arguments where it matters.

      • @HRDS_654@lemmy.world
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        52 years ago

        There never was intelligent conversation. People mostly used Twitter to talk about the news. Twitter has gotten worse, but it’s always been full of L takes.

      • prole
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        92 years ago

        It’s like Trump running for president because Obama and Seth Meyers roasted him in front of the world… So much awful shit in our world is a direct result of rich, whiney narcissists making things worse for everyone as collateral damage in whatever petty feud they’ve mostly invented in their heads.

    • @mibo80@lemm.ee
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      132 years ago

      Let’s hope the FCC and whatever other agencies applicable, get teeth and clamp down hard on how these social media giants. the way they operate its damn near treasonous at this point how open they are with allowing other governments to influence their policies. Especially with advertising and to children.

    • vasametropolis
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      72 years ago

      It has been predicted for years that the Internet would split and I’m all for it at this point.

      • @Willy@sh.itjust.works
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        22 years ago

        That’s an interesting take. I’m kind of curious what you mean by the split. It seems like it’s already split a few times, and I sort of see Lemmy as another split. I think the biggest craziness that will get thrown into the mix is serious amounts of AI content, which I know people are tired of hearing about now, but it’s a huge deal. I think people are underestimating its power.

    • @LucidNightmare@lemm.ee
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      32 years ago

      Your point still stands, but as far as I can tell in my city, no one really cared about or used Twitter. Even more so after Elongated Muskrat took over. Twitter was always an echo chamber for the most part when it came to mainstream stuff. Sure, there are a few niche cases, but with those cases there was usually already an alternative. Twitter was never as popular to normal people as it is to influencers, celebs, and for some weird reason government personnel or groups. That’s just my experience with the platform at least. I do not know a single person who even used Twitter once in my entire life.

  • @Nurse_Robot@lemmy.world
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    932 years ago

    conservative doesn’t like being treated like an equal, decides to abolish the group that produced evidence suggesting equality

    Sounds about right

    • @A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Right Wingers have always gotten preferential treatment and soft touch moderation on social media, because…

      1. Their user base is fucking morons who click every ad, and buy tons of stupid shit (specially if it has their team name on it) bringing in disproportionate income

      2. They know the bulk of their moderation problems are from Right wingers, and don’t want to look biased and drive them away by holding them to the same standard they hold everyone else, So they just let the right wingers get away with shit that would get cracked down and account bans handed out for anyone else.

      3. Their own algorithms have been proven to amplify right wing tweets, thus making it easier to find hate messages than it is to find anything else, because they are in bed with the right.

      • @fubo@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        The commercial platforms had a dilemma: (1) They had existing policies against hate propaganda, incitement of violence, and harassment. (2) They wanted to seem at least mostly neutral on matters of partisan politics. And then (3) happened: one of the major parties started doing a lot of hate propaganda, incitement of violence, and harassment.

        If Facebook, Twitter, etc. had been following their own stated policies, they would have taken down Trump much earlier. However, those policies were never obligations enforceable against the platform, and would have required those platform companies to explicitly state that they were taking down one of the major parties for not following the platform’s rules on hate, violence, and harassment.

        Eventually, advertisers communicated with their dollars, that they were not seeing a benefit to their brands from having their ads appear beside the increasingly deranged, criminal, and traitorous Trump.

      • @HowManyNimons@lemmy.world
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        22 years ago

        Maybe that was the plan all along.

        1. Turn Twitter into a turd soup

        2. Educated people who don’t click ads stop using Twitter

        3. Save unproductive bandwidth

        By quitting twitter I’ve gone along with Musk’s plan. Damn it.

        • @A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world
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          52 years ago

          Musk isnt that smart.

          Besides, a lot of those big advertisers don’t mind advertising to racists/fashies/terrorists, as long as they have the plausible deniability of “Oh, we advertise on twitter, it has a vibrant user base, lets not let the unsavory types ruin it for everyone”.

          A deniability that goes away now that its been bought by a fashy white supremacist who is actively purging the site of anyone critical to fashy white supremacism.

          No one but scummy companies like MyPillow and some asshole selling “gold” trump coins (totally legal tender!*) want to advertise to the creme of that crop.

          ⁽*ᶜᵒᶦⁿˢ ʰᵃᵛᵉ ⁿᵒ ˡᵉᵍᵃˡ ᵗᵉⁿᵈᵉʳ ᵃⁿᵈ ᵃʳᵉ ᶦⁿᵗᵉⁿᵈᵉᵈ ᶠᵒʳ ᶜᵒˡˡᵉᶜᵗᶦᵒⁿ ᵒⁿˡʸ⁾

      • @clausetrophobic@sh.itjust.works
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        372 years ago

        Pessimism literally helps nobody, it just makes people more depressed and less likely to do anything about a bad situation. Don’t forget that last election had one of the highest young voter turnouts ever recorded, and was by far a huge swing to liberal. Since then the Republican party hasn’t even been close to as organised as they were during 2016 and 2020.

        Change can and will happen. It already is, albeit slowly and with bumps along the road, just like any progression in society.

        • Cosmic Cleric
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          132 years ago

          Pessimism literally helps nobody, it just makes people more depressed and less likely to do anything about a bad situation.

          Change can and will happen. It already is, albeit slowly and with bumps along the road, just like any progression in society.

          Yep. Seriously, keep the faith. And fight the good fight.

        • @Deiskos@lemmy.world
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          2 years ago

          I’m glad you have some optimism left in you. I don’t.

          Trump or that clown Sunak winning your election will have catastrophic effects for my country who’s been in full scale war for almost 2 years. All the while the “allies” drag this war out by giving bullshit reasons to not send long range missiles and aircraft (uwu 5-8 months basic proficiency for fighter pilots proficient on a different platform , also known as “if they started even last year, f16s would be flying at least SEAD by now and not relying on a jank adaptor to launch HARM”), and decide that sending 31 Abrams tanks is good enough for a 1200km long frontline.

          I had some optimism in March 2022, despite how bad everything looked at the time, it slowly diminished to what it is now by Spring of 2023 when it became clear that goal #1 for our “allies” is NOT to end this war, as quickly as possible, but to bleed russia out, death by a thousand cuts, all with our lives.

          • @Deiskos@lemmy.world
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            72 years ago

            rant (cont.)

            I can even understand unwillingness to give ATACMS, you don’t have a lot of them and need them all to fight Mexican drug cartels or whatever you would use ballistic missiles for in 2023.

            You don’t even use f16 anymore, and just sold some to Vietnam recently.

            There’s at least few hundreds Abrams tanks sitting in the desert in dry storage. But no, 31 is all we get.

            And the total clownery of political debate where at least two candidates build their platform on being friends with russia and china and stopping all support to Ukraine.

            And the total clownery of passing a lend lease act in 2022 and then not using it - trusting Ukraine to win so as to not burden us with returning leased hardware, but not trusting enough to give enough to win.

      • @set_secret@lemmy.world
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        32 years ago

        but there well be a brief period where we can swim in late autumn and early spring. so won’t that be nice.

    • @LurkNoMore@lemmy.world
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      112 years ago

      No, I’m banking on the younger generations coming out of the woodwork. They’ve dealt with so much and really hoping they realize their vote could really send these dinosaurs into extinction.

      • @Hoomod@lemmy.world
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        52 years ago

        Taylor Swift seems to be doing a good job with that.

        Didn’t she get like 150k people to register in a day with an Instagram story or something

      • @gsfraley@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        I agree, I have some hope as common folk get more and more tuned in, especially as obscure runs like the Wisconsin Supreme Court judgeship and votes against the Ohio constitutional amendment process change result in overwhelming positive outcomes.

    • Queen HawlSera
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      192 years ago

      I think they will and the history books will say “In retrospect, having politicians use a privately owned platform to speak to their constituents was a bad call, as Traitor and Child Murderer Elon Musk demonstrated.”

  • @AndreTelevise@lemm.ee
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    532 years ago

    If 4chan made Trump win in 2016, Twitter might make Trump win in 2024. Which is a scary thought. Just imagine the level of control one rich man can have over the information highway, Twitter, one of the biggest social media sites in the world, used still by many politicians, journalists and reporters on both sides. It’s happening.

    • @CosmoNova@feddit.de
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      652 years ago

      Twitter made Trump win in 2016. Like, did people seriously forget about „Trump tweeted“ headlines that dominated daily news for years? The same news that would then claim a small obscure website like 4Chan made Trump president single-handedly. I mean I almost can‘t blame you for memory holing those years, but claiming Twitter wasn‘t absolute dog water before Musk is simply wrong.

      • @Weirdfish@lemmy.world
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        142 years ago

        In a documentary made during the 2016 election cycle Trump talks about how much better his PR team is because he doesn’t have to use traditional channels to reach his base, he can just tweet it when ever he wants to tell the world something.

        He was very much using twitter as a primary communication channel from the begining, and this time around, he has both twitter and truth social as his basically his own.

      • JackbyDev
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        42 years ago

        Mueller has me convinced Russian social media farms made Trump win.

    • @Noite_Etion@lemmy.world
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      192 years ago

      Just imagine the level of control one rich man can have over the information highway.

      Rupert Murdoch 2: Information Highway to Hell.

    • @whofearsthenight@lemm.ee
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      22 years ago

      This week’s On with Kara Swisher has back to back interviews with Yoel Roth (the guy in the TAL ep) and the new CEO of Twitter, Linda Yaccarino and it’s worth a listen.

      The juxtaposition of the two interviews is something. Roth comes across as a smart, serious person trying to (and admittedly sometimes failing) be a good steward of the internet and tackles the challenges using facts and data. Yaccarino follows up by literally being the definition of a stooge. Very clearly not attached to reality, doesn’t know things that Musk has tweeted in spite of saying at the top of the interview they’re 100% attached and in the loop with everything Elon’s doing. Absolute clown show.

      So yeah, expect literally everyone to have a hand in the cookie jar come the '24 election. There isn’t enough competence in the company to fill a thimble at this point, and leadership at the company probably is either entirely ignorant of the problem(Yacco), or actively engaging in sabotage in tandem (Musk.)

  • Doctor xNo
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    392 years ago

    Wait, so the team in charge of misinformation got misinformed about getting fired instead of expanded?

    Guy sure loves his irony…

  • Kalkaline
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    382 years ago

    I’m going to be so happy when Musk gets brought up on election charges.

      • @vagrantprodigy@lemmy.whynotdrs.org
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        32 years ago

        Same when I bought mine last year. I’m very irked by the fact that most manufacturers are changing to their charging plug too. I want nothing to do with anything Tesla/Musk.

    • @Uncle_Bagel@midwest.social
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      62 years ago

      They can’t because the company is propped up entirely by his cult of personality. If he goes, Tesla and SpaceX will collapse

      • @bemenaker@lemmy.world
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        52 years ago

        Tesla at this point is fine standing on its own. The management at Tesla for years has run interference between musk and the actual engineers. Musk did a lot of necessary fund raising early.on but at this point he is a mass.liability and sales are falling. Tesla has more competition than ever, and he is driving away people who.would buy tesla cars. The right doesn’t buy electric vehicles.

      • @Zetta@mander.xyz
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        42 years ago

        I don’t know where you got the idea that SpaceX is propped up by musks personality, SpaceX is propped up by currently being the most revolutionary space company in the world.

        Musk is a dickhead but the spaceX engineers are doing incredible things and advancing humanities space access forward. What SpaceX has done for the global space access can’t be understated.

      • @whofearsthenight@lemm.ee
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        42 years ago

        I think SpaceX will be fine, Tesla I think you’re mostly right. Tesla’s valuation has been almost entirely his cult, but the shine is pretty much off that apple. There has already been some vocal outcry over his antics, and if he had a real board instead of his brother and sycophants, he’d probably already be gone. Any responsible board at this point would see that Tesla is having massive internal struggles (they ship about 60/40 cars to vaporware and have increasing issues with QA and service) and the thing it mostly had going for it was first mover advantage which they’ve now mostly squandered. They still have a good business with the supercharger network, and with proper leadership could still be a big player in the space, but they’re about to be inundated with competition they’ve never really had. They’ve sort of already lost the cool kid premium status to Rivian and Lucid, and Model 3 is about to face competition in a way it never really has.

        So all that, and the CEO is shitposting conspiracy theories on his pet project social media app that he’s publicly mismanaging by basically all measures. Like I said, any real board, he’d already be out. I suspect that unless something changes, it won’t be long before there will be real moves to remove him.

  • Queen HawlSera
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    252 years ago

    Elon Musk is a fucking Neo Nazi aka “The Modern Day Republican”, anything that even acknowledges the Democrats as a viable political party is “Extremist Far Left Nonsense” to these deplorables.