Rising fascism in the US

Twitter’s risky plan to save its ads business

A month ago, when Elon Musk’s Twitter first set out to revamp the Twitter Blue subscription, workers at the company identified a problem. Musk had promised that subscribers to the $8-a-month service would see half as many ads as free users. But that would cost the company about $6 in ad revenue per user per month, according to internal estimates. Factor in Apple’s App Store fees — something Musk would later go briefly to war with the company over — and the new Blue promised to lose the company money.

The launch of Blue was quickly derailed by abuse of the new verification system and mass impersonation of brands, just as employees had predicted, and Twitter went back to the drawing board. After a series of delays, on Monday the company relaunched Blue for a second time. Once again, it promised subscribers that benefits will include soon seeing 50 percent fewer ads than regular users.

It’s a bold move for a company that has already been forced to offer advertisers huge concessions to prevent them from fleeing. But behind the scenes, Twitter has been working on a plan that executives hope will make Blue profitable – forcing all Twitter users to opt in to personalized ads in order to keep using the app, Platformer has learned.

Jay Rosen
@jayrosen_nyu
24m
I said I would go down with this ship — meaning stick around until the implosion came — but now I can see that's going to be impossible.

As could have been predicted, Fox News is fully onboard with Elon Musk’s effort to cast pre-Musk Twitter as a cesspool of left-leaning machinations. Since Musk began pairing with right-leaning writers to plunk internal documents from the company into a stew of unproven allegations, Fox News and Fox Business have mentioned the efforts of two of those writers more than 1,000 times. CNN, MSNBC, Bloomberg and CNBC, recognizing the limited scope of the revelations, have mentioned them 100 times — combined.

Which is pretty much what Henry Ford did to himself and Ford when he bought a newspaper to promote his views.

There were virologists who spoke up early in the pandemic and were then silenced. (...) those virologists who are still living are speaking out again.

They’ve been dubbed the “Disinformation Dozen”: 12 individuals or organizations are tied to up to 65 percent of anti-vaccine content circulating on major social media networking sites, according to an analysis of popular anti-vaccine content on Facebook and Twitter.

“Disinformation has become a direct threat to public health,” said Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), which released the report in partnership with the Anti-Vax Watch, in a release. “In the midst of a global pandemic, the Anti-Vaccine Industry has executed a targeted campaign to mislead Americans about the safety of the COVID-19 vaccines. Social media is enabling anti-vaxxers to recruit millions of Americans and indoctrinate them with fear and doubt. If Big Tech companies don’t act now, the pandemic will be prolonged, and more lives will be lost.” 

The report accuses Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — who was banned from Instagram last month — Joseph Mercola, Ty and Charlene Bollinger — whose Twitter accounts were briefly suspended at the beginning of the pandemic — Sherri Tenpenny, Rizza Islam, Rashid Buttar, Erin Elizabeth, Sayer Ji, Kelly Brogan, Christiane Northrup, Ben Tapper and Kevin Jenkins of spreading disinformation and claims that their social media accounts “have repeatedly violated Facebook and Twitter’s terms of service agreements.” And the CCDH has receipts — the report is full of screenshots of “example violations” that range from misleading to antisemitic. 

Several of these users have responded online, calling the report a “hitlist” and accusing the CCDH of trying to “control us with tricks & lies.” 

NEW:

Anti-vaxxers are instructing their followers to “give CCDH a piece of your mind.”

Why? Because our campaign to get anti-vaccine propagandists off social media is working.

Please help defeat dangerous anti-vaxx lies by supporting our campaign https://t.co/esPdibPMUi pic.twitter.com/7xVy6PUzuT

— Center for Countering Digital Hate (@CCDHate) March 19, 2021

 But the CCDH said the responses were only proof that their “campaign to get anti-vaccine propagandists off social media is working.” The timing of the report also coincides with a joint hearing in Congress that will put Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg back in the hot seat over the spread of misinformation on their platforms, this time for its role in the insurrection on the United States Capitol in January. 

A spokesperson for Twitter noted that the platform has removed over 20,000 posts from the platform and challenged nearly 12 million accounts under its coronavirus misinformation policy.

“We will not take action on every instance of misinformation. In order for content related to COVID-19 to be labeled or removed under this policy, it must: advance a claim of fact, expressed in definitive terms; be demonstrably false or misleading, based on widely available, authoritative sources; and be likely to impact public safety or cause serious harm,” they explained.

Facebook spokesperson Kevin McAlister told The Hill that the platform has “already taken action against some of the groups in this report.”

“Since research shows that the best way to combat vaccine hesitancy is to connect people to reliable information from health experts, we’ve also connected over 2 billion people to resources from health authorities, including through our COVID-19 Information Center,” he added. 

Public health officials have warned against misinformation spread by the anti-vaccine movement, which began even before COVID-19 vaccines had been developed and grown online amid mixed messages from officials.   

“This week, the CEOs of Facebook, Twitter and Google will appear before the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee to discuss the role of social media in the spread of disinformation,” Ahmed said in the release. “Members of the committee must use this opportunity to hold these companies accountable and urge them to follow through with their commitments to crack down on life-threatening disinformation. A clear and immediate way to stop the spread of anti-vaccine messages is to remove the Disinformation Dozen from their platforms.” 

I don't even know why people are on Twitter. Or how they can be influenced by any tweets. Think for yourself!

After social media companies removed a viral video showing doctors spreading unsubstantiated information about the novel coronavirus, a phrase inspired by one doctor’s past claims began trending on Twitter: demon sperm. It turns out Stella Immanuel has a history of making particularly outlandish statements — including that the uterine disorder endometriosis is caused by sex with demons that takes place in dreams.

The Democrats have done a fantastic job convincing their minions that the truth is a conspiracy theory and further, that those minions needed to do to this wrong-headed, illogical PR for them as their valiant tribal duty to somehow fight…something? Trump?

Nothing any of you say will change the reality of the facts.

Re: blatham (Post 7288813)
Notice how true believers react when they’re beliefs are questioned.

What do you think about Merkel’s recent public comments about Minsk II regarding the West’s role in the Ukraine/ Russian war in Die Zeit?