Right, I’ve got to go vote! Local by-election today. Hard fought between Labour and the Greens.
Voting was brisk... well, I voted quickly and it was cold. Not much sign of a high turnout, but what do you expect on a cold November day?
It was my first time voting with ID, although the Presiding Officer recognised me anyway. He said nearly everyone has been coming with ID, which is reassuring.
Are we going through this nonsense of everybody is off to Mastadon again...hows Threads doing these days, seems to have about as much popularity as Piers Morgan tv show.
Good point. Although I think Truth Social/Telegram provide the same functionality, unlike Bluesky/Mastodon. Neverthless a lot of people who leave Twitter come back. Zeihan's case is slightly different because he uses it to research and disseminate his stuff: the former is compromised by Muskery and the latter is not necessary
Enshittification is followed by high-value-users buggering off and founding their own communities. YouTube refuseniks are going to Nebula or Armchair History TV or that new gun one. Trump Twitniks went to Truth Social, Russians(?) went to Telegram. Threads/Mastodon didn't get traction because they were difficult to use(?). WhatsApp is its own thing.
We used to have megathings and now we don't: USENET went to newsgroups went to Geocities went to MySpace went to Facebook and fragmented to YouTube, Twitter, WhatsApp, Nebula, Truth Social, stuff, stuff, more stuff. Each year things become more difficult to analyse and summarise.
Most of the people on services like Nebula are on YouTube and use their YouTube videos to drive traffic to Nebula.
I know. Bloody annoying. Mustard's latest stuff is on Nebula not YT, I think Potential History has stopped publishing new stuff on YouTube.
Some of it is also YouTube censorship. Particularly history videos can be very tricky because the automated system get twitchy when talking about Nazis, Hitler, etc.
Youtube has all sorts of problems this year, they’re trying to avoid politically extreme content, but are instead tripping up a lot of legitimate content. There’s also thought to be political campaigners mass flagging current political content in an attempt to get it taken down, even if only temporarily.
I noticed that Rumble are making similar claims like Musk that Media Matters have been setting up profiles and engineering them to get the Nazi post next to an ad by following only the extremists, liking the posts etc, and those accounts are literally the only account that saw such an interaction out of millions / billions of ad serves.
Its a bit like going into a strip club, throwing money around like it is going out of fashion, accepting an invite to the VIP room, then clutching your pearls when the stripper ask if you might be interested in extras.
Speaking seriously...how else would you do it? There are 500 million tweets per day. Any given phenomenon can be found. If you wanted to demonstrate Nazi content next to, say, IBM (yes I know I know), then you'd have to either look for it or place a trap ad and wait. I don't know how to estimate frequency otherwise. How do you access, trawl and extract data from 500 million tweets?
Well they aren't using the system in a way that any normal person would be. And they report as if this heavily concocted incident is normal, when according to lawsuit twitter and Rumble say from their data they were 1 of single digit accounts that experienced this.
The profiles they open aren't even perhaps mirroring activity of say a more normal human, or even say a politically engaged Republican. You could certainly do something like that, look at individuals accounts, follow all the same people, do similar liking / retweeting etc.
They are pulling every lever possible to get the jackpot they desire, then pester advertisers with claims look, see, this is what happens when you advertise on twitter, everybody is seeing this kind of stuff.
Well, Twitter and Rumble would say that. Neither is exactly a reliable source.
But Media Matters, Check My Ads, and Stop Funding Hate, are perfectly reliable sources who never misspeak about the organisations they aggressively target?
Everyone who uses Twitter says the same thing: the user experience gets worse and worse, and there are more and more far right nutjobs. Musk, who regularly says antisemitic things, has explicitly said he wants Twitter to be more welcome to the nutjobs. Ergo, I find Media Matters’ claims quite plausible.
One analysis of Twitter's lawsuit I sae basically said that Twitter had admitted Media Mattters' claims in the lawsuit document, which will make it hard to win. It's also interesting that he's chosen to lodge the case in Texas, rather than states that Media Matters or Twitter are based in,
Others say that it's a case designed to make Musk - and Twitter - seem like victims amongst his fans, and move attention away from the fact that he's ****ed up Twitter. It's someone else's fault, you see. The massive rich bullyboy billionaire is a victim...
The Rumble lawsuit is quite different, they’re alleging that the campaign group has been making materially incorrect statements about the company’s sources of revenue, and refused to retract when given the opportunity. Rumble is a listed company, so this can affect the share price.
Company Backed by J.D. Vance Gives Platform for Russian Propaganda An interview of captive Americans done “under duress” appears on a web platform backed by J.D. Vance and Peter Thiel.
Are we going through this nonsense of everybody is off to Mastadon again...hows Threads doing these days, seems to have about as much popularity as Piers Morgan tv show.
Good point. Although I think Truth Social/Telegram provide the same functionality, unlike Bluesky/Mastodon. Neverthless a lot of people who leave Twitter come back. Zeihan's case is slightly different because he uses it to research and disseminate his stuff: the former is compromised by Muskery and the latter is not necessary
Enshittification is followed by high-value-users buggering off and founding their own communities. YouTube refuseniks are going to Nebula or Armchair History TV or that new gun one. Trump Twitniks went to Truth Social, Russians(?) went to Telegram. Threads/Mastodon didn't get traction because they were difficult to use(?). WhatsApp is its own thing.
We used to have megathings and now we don't: USENET went to newsgroups went to Geocities went to MySpace went to Facebook and fragmented to YouTube, Twitter, WhatsApp, Nebula, Truth Social, stuff, stuff, more stuff. Each year things become more difficult to analyse and summarise.
Most of the people on services like Nebula are on YouTube and use their YouTube videos to drive traffic to Nebula.
I know. Bloody annoying. Mustard's latest stuff is on Nebula not YT, I think Potential History has stopped publishing new stuff on YouTube.
Some of it is also YouTube censorship. Particularly history videos can be very tricky because the automated system get twitchy when talking about Nazis, Hitler, etc.
Youtube has all sorts of problems this year, they’re trying to avoid politically extreme content, but are instead tripping up a lot of legitimate content. There’s also thought to be political campaigners mass flagging current political content in an attempt to get it taken down, even if only temporarily.
I noticed that Rumble are making similar claims like Musk that Media Matters have been setting up profiles and engineering them to get the Nazi post next to an ad by following only the extremists, liking the posts etc, and those accounts are literally the only account that saw such an interaction out of millions / billions of ad serves.
Its a bit like going into a strip club, throwing money around like it is going out of fashion, accepting an invite to the VIP room, then clutching your pearls when the stripper ask if you might be interested in extras.
There’s a number of these nonprofit groups in the US, who appear to be very well funded and are trying to take down alternative media by going after their revenue sources. We know from filings that Media Matters took $1m from Soros a few years ago.
I have a feeling that the next 12 months is going to be very difficult for these companies, in the buildup to the election. On the other hand, there’s also organisations such as Public Square that have started up, recommending conservative businesses to the public and to each other. In the media space, there’s companies like Daily Wire throwing huge amounts of money at all sorts of random projects. DW now has 1m monthly subscribers, and annual revenue approaching $250m.
Oh, wow, straight to people being “very well funded” and Soros as a source of all evil?
He’s the Democrat version of the Koch brothers, willing to spend quite literally billions of dollars on politicians and political campaigns in the US over a period of decades.
It’s not controversial, that’s just how the US political system works, as much as it seems very weird to outsiders for presidential candidates to spend $1bn each in six months, and for every election down to the dog catcher (but mostly judges and DAs) to attract serious money to push a particular agenda.
Yes, that’s free speech. He can give his money to who he wants. Meanwhile, the US (and Hungarian) right have turned him into a hate figure, with lots of wink-wink conspiracy theories implied, lots of echoes of “Jews control the media”.
The problem obviously isn’t “Jews”, the problem is the likes of Soros, the Kochs, Murdoch, Gates et al controlling the media, and aggressively going after new media that doesn’t toe the line, telling lies to their advertisers and trying to deprive them of revenue. Hence the lawsuits.
I’m expecting it to get a lot worse in the next 12 months, with lots of pressure on large companies to not advertise on any platform that’s not considered mainstream.
I don't see anyone "aggressively going after new media that doesn't toe the line". I see people saying the obvious, that Nazis and antisemitism are commoner and commoner on Twitter. Soros does not control the media and his influence here is massively overstated. References to "Soros" by the US MAGA right are a dogwhistle referencing antisemitic conspiracy theories. See https://antisemitism.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Final-George-Soros-Briefing.pdf
Also, I am always baffled why you, personally, go in to bat for a bunch of people who back Putin over Ukraine.
Today’s news isn’t about Twitter, it’s about Rumble.
Soros as an individual has been funding Democrats for decades, trying to call any criticism of him as an individual antisemitic is half of the problem. Just as it’s possible to critisise Netanyahu without being anti-Semitic, yet few on the left seem to manage it.
Soros has funded the campaigns of judges and district attorneys in the US, who now oversee record crime rates in cities, and see Trump and other conservatives dragged through courts for what in many cases are clearly politically motivated charges.
I’m not going into bat for a bunch of Putinists, I’m trying to provide some balance to the debate here on US politics by following loads of people on all sides of the debate. It’s clear that the US focus is now on China as the primary enemy, and that European governments are going to need to step up and fund NATO properly, rather than relying on the US. On that matter, Trump was right.
Are we going through this nonsense of everybody is off to Mastadon again...hows Threads doing these days, seems to have about as much popularity as Piers Morgan tv show.
Good point. Although I think Truth Social/Telegram provide the same functionality, unlike Bluesky/Mastodon. Neverthless a lot of people who leave Twitter come back. Zeihan's case is slightly different because he uses it to research and disseminate his stuff: the former is compromised by Muskery and the latter is not necessary
Enshittification is followed by high-value-users buggering off and founding their own communities. YouTube refuseniks are going to Nebula or Armchair History TV or that new gun one. Trump Twitniks went to Truth Social, Russians(?) went to Telegram. Threads/Mastodon didn't get traction because they were difficult to use(?). WhatsApp is its own thing.
We used to have megathings and now we don't: USENET went to newsgroups went to Geocities went to MySpace went to Facebook and fragmented to YouTube, Twitter, WhatsApp, Nebula, Truth Social, stuff, stuff, more stuff. Each year things become more difficult to analyse and summarise.
Most of the people on services like Nebula are on YouTube and use their YouTube videos to drive traffic to Nebula.
I know. Bloody annoying. Mustard's latest stuff is on Nebula not YT, I think Potential History has stopped publishing new stuff on YouTube.
Some of it is also YouTube censorship. Particularly history videos can be very tricky because the automated system get twitchy when talking about Nazis, Hitler, etc.
Youtube has all sorts of problems this year, they’re trying to avoid politically extreme content, but are instead tripping up a lot of legitimate content. There’s also thought to be political campaigners mass flagging current political content in an attempt to get it taken down, even if only temporarily.
I noticed that Rumble are making similar claims like Musk that Media Matters have been setting up profiles and engineering them to get the Nazi post next to an ad by following only the extremists, liking the posts etc, and those accounts are literally the only account that saw such an interaction out of millions / billions of ad serves.
Its a bit like going into a strip club, throwing money around like it is going out of fashion, accepting an invite to the VIP room, then clutching your pearls when the stripper ask if you might be interested in extras.
Speaking seriously...how else would you do it? There are 500 million tweets per day. Any given phenomenon can be found. If you wanted to demonstrate Nazi content next to, say, IBM (yes I know I know), then you'd have to either look for it or place a trap ad and wait. I don't know how to estimate frequency otherwise. How do you access, trawl and extract data from 500 million tweets?
Well they aren't using the system in a way that any normal person would be. And they report as if this heavily concocted incident is normal, when according to lawsuit twitter and Rumble say from their data they were 1 of single digit accounts that experienced this.
The profiles they open aren't even perhaps mirroring activity of say a more normal human, or even say a politically engaged Republican. You could certainly do something like that, look at individuals accounts, follow all the same people, do similar liking / retweeting etc.
They are pulling every lever possible to get the jackpot they desire, then pester advertisers with claims look, see, this is what happens when you advertise on twitter, everybody is seeing this kind of stuff.
Well, Twitter and Rumble would say that. Neither is exactly a reliable source.
But Media Matters, Check My Ads, and Stop Funding Hate, are perfectly reliable sources who never misspeak about the organisations they aggressively target?
Everyone who uses Twitter says the same thing: the user experience gets worse and worse, and there are more and more far right nutjobs. Musk, who regularly says antisemitic things, has explicitly said he wants Twitter to be more welcome to the nutjobs. Ergo, I find Media Matters’ claims quite plausible.
One analysis of Twitter's lawsuit I sae basically said that Twitter had admitted Media Mattters' claims in the lawsuit document, which will make it hard to win. It's also interesting that he's chosen to lodge the case in Texas, rather than states that Media Matters or Twitter are based in,
Others say that it's a case designed to make Musk - and Twitter - seem like victims amongst his fans, and move attention away from the fact that he's ****ed up Twitter. It's someone else's fault, you see. The massive rich bullyboy billionaire is a victim...
The Rumble lawsuit is quite different, they’re alleging that the campaign group has been making materially incorrect statements about the company’s sources of revenue, and refused to retract when given the opportunity. Rumble is a listed company, so this can affect the share price.
Company Backed by J.D. Vance Gives Platform for Russian Propaganda An interview of captive Americans done “under duress” appears on a web platform backed by J.D. Vance and Peter Thiel.
LOL
Freedom of speech is a thing in the US.
That NY Times piece is exactly the sort of hit job I’ve been talking about, the MSM and their backers trying to shut down alternative platforms.
Are we going through this nonsense of everybody is off to Mastadon again...hows Threads doing these days, seems to have about as much popularity as Piers Morgan tv show.
Good point. Although I think Truth Social/Telegram provide the same functionality, unlike Bluesky/Mastodon. Neverthless a lot of people who leave Twitter come back. Zeihan's case is slightly different because he uses it to research and disseminate his stuff: the former is compromised by Muskery and the latter is not necessary
Enshittification is followed by high-value-users buggering off and founding their own communities. YouTube refuseniks are going to Nebula or Armchair History TV or that new gun one. Trump Twitniks went to Truth Social, Russians(?) went to Telegram. Threads/Mastodon didn't get traction because they were difficult to use(?). WhatsApp is its own thing.
We used to have megathings and now we don't: USENET went to newsgroups went to Geocities went to MySpace went to Facebook and fragmented to YouTube, Twitter, WhatsApp, Nebula, Truth Social, stuff, stuff, more stuff. Each year things become more difficult to analyse and summarise.
Most of the people on services like Nebula are on YouTube and use their YouTube videos to drive traffic to Nebula.
I know. Bloody annoying. Mustard's latest stuff is on Nebula not YT, I think Potential History has stopped publishing new stuff on YouTube.
Some of it is also YouTube censorship. Particularly history videos can be very tricky because the automated system get twitchy when talking about Nazis, Hitler, etc.
Youtube has all sorts of problems this year, they’re trying to avoid politically extreme content, but are instead tripping up a lot of legitimate content. There’s also thought to be political campaigners mass flagging current political content in an attempt to get it taken down, even if only temporarily.
I noticed that Rumble are making similar claims like Musk that Media Matters have been setting up profiles and engineering them to get the Nazi post next to an ad by following only the extremists, liking the posts etc, and those accounts are literally the only account that saw such an interaction out of millions / billions of ad serves.
Its a bit like going into a strip club, throwing money around like it is going out of fashion, accepting an invite to the VIP room, then clutching your pearls when the stripper ask if you might be interested in extras.
Speaking seriously...how else would you do it? There are 500 million tweets per day. Any given phenomenon can be found. If you wanted to demonstrate Nazi content next to, say, IBM (yes I know I know), then you'd have to either look for it or place a trap ad and wait. I don't know how to estimate frequency otherwise. How do you access, trawl and extract data from 500 million tweets?
Well they aren't using the system in a way that any normal person would be. And they report as if this heavily concocted incident is normal, when according to lawsuit twitter and Rumble say from their data they were 1 of single digit accounts that experienced this.
The profiles they open aren't even perhaps mirroring activity of say a more normal human, or even say a politically engaged Republican. You could certainly do something like that, look at individuals accounts, follow all the same people, do similar liking / retweeting etc.
They are pulling every lever possible to get the jackpot they desire, then pester advertisers with claims look, see, this is what happens when you advertise on twitter, everybody is seeing this kind of stuff.
Well, Twitter and Rumble would say that. Neither is exactly a reliable source.
But Media Matters, Check My Ads, and Stop Funding Hate, are perfectly reliable sources who never misspeak about the organisations they aggressively target?
Everyone who uses Twitter says the same thing: the user experience gets worse and worse, and there are more and more far right nutjobs. Musk, who regularly says antisemitic things, has explicitly said he wants Twitter to be more welcome to the nutjobs. Ergo, I find Media Matters’ claims quite plausible.
One analysis of Twitter's lawsuit I sae basically said that Twitter had admitted Media Mattters' claims in the lawsuit document, which will make it hard to win. It's also interesting that he's chosen to lodge the case in Texas, rather than states that Media Matters or Twitter are based in,
Others say that it's a case designed to make Musk - and Twitter - seem like victims amongst his fans, and move attention away from the fact that he's ****ed up Twitter. It's someone else's fault, you see. The massive rich bullyboy billionaire is a victim...
The Rumble lawsuit is quite different, they’re alleging that the campaign group has been making materially incorrect statements about the company’s sources of revenue, and refused to retract when given the opportunity. Rumble is a listed company, so this can affect the share price.
Company Backed by J.D. Vance Gives Platform for Russian Propaganda An interview of captive Americans done “under duress” appears on a web platform backed by J.D. Vance and Peter Thiel.
We can all play that silly game...the NYT employs and publishes the work of an antisemite who praises Hitler and only criticism is that he wasn't success in wiping out the Jews. Better close them down.
Are we going through this nonsense of everybody is off to Mastadon again...hows Threads doing these days, seems to have about as much popularity as Piers Morgan tv show.
Good point. Although I think Truth Social/Telegram provide the same functionality, unlike Bluesky/Mastodon. Neverthless a lot of people who leave Twitter come back. Zeihan's case is slightly different because he uses it to research and disseminate his stuff: the former is compromised by Muskery and the latter is not necessary
Enshittification is followed by high-value-users buggering off and founding their own communities. YouTube refuseniks are going to Nebula or Armchair History TV or that new gun one. Trump Twitniks went to Truth Social, Russians(?) went to Telegram. Threads/Mastodon didn't get traction because they were difficult to use(?). WhatsApp is its own thing.
We used to have megathings and now we don't: USENET went to newsgroups went to Geocities went to MySpace went to Facebook and fragmented to YouTube, Twitter, WhatsApp, Nebula, Truth Social, stuff, stuff, more stuff. Each year things become more difficult to analyse and summarise.
Most of the people on services like Nebula are on YouTube and use their YouTube videos to drive traffic to Nebula.
I know. Bloody annoying. Mustard's latest stuff is on Nebula not YT, I think Potential History has stopped publishing new stuff on YouTube.
Some of it is also YouTube censorship. Particularly history videos can be very tricky because the automated system get twitchy when talking about Nazis, Hitler, etc.
Youtube has all sorts of problems this year, they’re trying to avoid politically extreme content, but are instead tripping up a lot of legitimate content. There’s also thought to be political campaigners mass flagging current political content in an attempt to get it taken down, even if only temporarily.
I noticed that Rumble are making similar claims like Musk that Media Matters have been setting up profiles and engineering them to get the Nazi post next to an ad by following only the extremists, liking the posts etc, and those accounts are literally the only account that saw such an interaction out of millions / billions of ad serves.
Its a bit like going into a strip club, throwing money around like it is going out of fashion, accepting an invite to the VIP room, then clutching your pearls when the stripper ask if you might be interested in extras.
Speaking seriously...how else would you do it? There are 500 million tweets per day. Any given phenomenon can be found. If you wanted to demonstrate Nazi content next to, say, IBM (yes I know I know), then you'd have to either look for it or place a trap ad and wait. I don't know how to estimate frequency otherwise. How do you access, trawl and extract data from 500 million tweets?
As I've probably said on here before, advertisers are leaving Twitter because it has always been a fairly substandard advertising channel; miles behind meta and google in terms of creative formats and targeting, and therefore a very easy drop now that Elon is actively telling the people who ought to be paying the bills to go f*ck themselves (on top of everything else).
There's no conspiracy theory here. Twitter is a shit place to advertise, and you can by and large reach the same people more easily, accurately with better creative elsewhere; it's easy enough for a big campaign to write off that bit of additional audience cover Twitter might have given you. If Musk had bought Meta or Google, I doubt as many would be jumping ship as it would have a real-life effect on bottom lines.
There will be exceptions, of course - if I was running an NFT scam, for example, X would probably be my first port of call.
This is what some of us said way before Musk took over. The genius of Meta is how much they know about everybody, the genius of Google / Apple is they have become the top of pyramid when it comes to controlling ad market on the internet.
Twitter knows f##k all about them in comparison. TikTok has piss poor revenue despite being wildly popular.
EggProfile105353 isn't very valuable to an advertiser.
What twitter does have is oversized influence among people with power and influence. That is why they get so angry about Musk and Musk controlling it. He now owns "their" toy and they don't like what he is doing with it. The whole "its a private company, they can do what they like" line seems to have gone out of fashion rather quickly.
Has it ?
It seems to me that it's Musk who's complaining about private companies removing their advertising. He can, as far as the law and his urged shareholders allow, indeed do what he wants with Twitter. Complaining then about the self imposed consequences of his decisions is pathetic stuff.
I don't see why you have a problem with users of the site complaining that it's got worse ?
When it comes to social media, TikTok is the one we should first and foremost be focused upon, but all because Trump said he didn't like it, there is all this tiptoeing around it.
Its spyware on your phone for the Chinese government, their claims about data / servers have been found to be BS and lots of suspicion about what the algorithm is tweaked towards.
Are we going through this nonsense of everybody is off to Mastadon again...hows Threads doing these days, seems to have about as much popularity as Piers Morgan tv show.
Good point. Although I think Truth Social/Telegram provide the same functionality, unlike Bluesky/Mastodon. Neverthless a lot of people who leave Twitter come back. Zeihan's case is slightly different because he uses it to research and disseminate his stuff: the former is compromised by Muskery and the latter is not necessary
Enshittification is followed by high-value-users buggering off and founding their own communities. YouTube refuseniks are going to Nebula or Armchair History TV or that new gun one. Trump Twitniks went to Truth Social, Russians(?) went to Telegram. Threads/Mastodon didn't get traction because they were difficult to use(?). WhatsApp is its own thing.
We used to have megathings and now we don't: USENET went to newsgroups went to Geocities went to MySpace went to Facebook and fragmented to YouTube, Twitter, WhatsApp, Nebula, Truth Social, stuff, stuff, more stuff. Each year things become more difficult to analyse and summarise.
Most of the people on services like Nebula are on YouTube and use their YouTube videos to drive traffic to Nebula.
I know. Bloody annoying. Mustard's latest stuff is on Nebula not YT, I think Potential History has stopped publishing new stuff on YouTube.
Some of it is also YouTube censorship. Particularly history videos can be very tricky because the automated system get twitchy when talking about Nazis, Hitler, etc.
Youtube has all sorts of problems this year, they’re trying to avoid politically extreme content, but are instead tripping up a lot of legitimate content. There’s also thought to be political campaigners mass flagging current political content in an attempt to get it taken down, even if only temporarily.
I noticed that Rumble are making similar claims like Musk that Media Matters have been setting up profiles and engineering them to get the Nazi post next to an ad by following only the extremists, liking the posts etc, and those accounts are literally the only account that saw such an interaction out of millions / billions of ad serves.
Its a bit like going into a strip club, throwing money around like it is going out of fashion, accepting an invite to the VIP room, then clutching your pearls when the stripper ask if you might be interested in extras.
Speaking seriously...how else would you do it? There are 500 million tweets per day. Any given phenomenon can be found. If you wanted to demonstrate Nazi content next to, say, IBM (yes I know I know), then you'd have to either look for it or place a trap ad and wait. I don't know how to estimate frequency otherwise. How do you access, trawl and extract data from 500 million tweets?
As I've probably said on here before, advertisers are leaving Twitter because it has always been a fairly substandard advertising channel; miles behind meta and google in terms of creative formats and targeting, and therefore a very easy drop now that Elon is actively telling the people who ought to be paying the bills to go f*ck themselves (on top of everything else).
There's no conspiracy theory here. Twitter is a shit place to advertise, and you can by and large reach the same people more easily, accurately with better creative elsewhere; it's easy enough for a big campaign to write off that bit of additional audience cover Twitter might have given you. If Musk had bought Meta or Google, I doubt as many would be jumping ship as it would have a real-life effect on bottom lines.
There will be exceptions, of course - if I was running an NFT scam, for example, X would probably be my first port of call.
This is what some of us said way before Musk took over. The genius of Meta is how much they know about everybody, the genius of Google / Apple is they have become the top of pyramid when it comes to controlling ad market on the internet.
Twitter knows f##k all about them in comparison. TikTok has piss poor revenue despite being wildly popular.
EggProfile105353 isn't very valuable to an advertiser.
What twitter does have is oversized influence among people with power and influence. That is why they get so angry about Musk and Musk controlling it. He now owns "their" toy and they don't like what he is doing with it. The whole "its a private company, they can do what they like" line seems to have gone out of fashion rather quickly.
Has it ?
It seems to me that it's Musk who's complaining about private companies removing their advertising. He can, as far as the law and his urged shareholders allow, indeed do what he wants with Twitter. Complaining then about the self imposed consequences of his decisions is pathetic stuff.
I don't see why you have a problem with users of the site complaining that it's got worse ?
No there has also been this big push of twitter you aren't censoring people strongly enough. UK government have said it, Irish government have said it, the EU keep making a big noises about removing twitter from operating.
The its a private company, can't do nought about it deplatforming people, who it chooses to censor isn't our business, has turned into you must deplatform people, you must censor harder, disinformation yadda yadda yadda.
Sales of luxury kitchen and homeware brands have plummeted as the cost of living crisis continues to bite - with Aga cookers, Le Creuset cookware and Farrow & Ball wallpaper and paint among the goods falling out of favour.
Accounts for firms specialising in premium home products show, in some cases, a double digit decline in sales to the end of 2022, with no designer brand seemingly immune to the tightening of British wallets.
Seems like Mrs U might be the one propping up these companies.
I know folk like to sneer a bit at Le Creuset but honestly their baseline casserole pots could make for an alternate version of the Vimes Boots Theory. I inherited ours, already decades old, from my mother-in-law who wasn't using it any more and I've been using it at least once a week, usually more, ever since, for over a decade since then. They are probably overpriced, but still good value at that.
Scotch On The Rocks: From 1973. Armed Insurrection in Scotland. Never shown since considered inflammatory.
Missing two of the five episodes also cannot help.
I remember thoroughly enjoying it as a kid.
I didn't understand the fuss over it at the time (still don't) - it was obvious to a child that it was fiction, and if anything it gave me a twinge of sympathy to Scottish independence, since it presented a dramatic (albeit improbable) picture of the passions behind it.
When it comes to social media, TikTok is the one we should first and foremost be focused upon, but all because Trump said he didn't like it, there is all this tiptoeing around it.
Its spyware on your phone for the Chinese government, their claims about data / servers have been found to be BS and lots of suspicion about what the algorithm is tweaked towards.
It is pretty much a sackable offence to install/use TikTok on a work device.
Are we going through this nonsense of everybody is off to Mastadon again...hows Threads doing these days, seems to have about as much popularity as Piers Morgan tv show.
Good point. Although I think Truth Social/Telegram provide the same functionality, unlike Bluesky/Mastodon. Neverthless a lot of people who leave Twitter come back. Zeihan's case is slightly different because he uses it to research and disseminate his stuff: the former is compromised by Muskery and the latter is not necessary
Enshittification is followed by high-value-users buggering off and founding their own communities. YouTube refuseniks are going to Nebula or Armchair History TV or that new gun one. Trump Twitniks went to Truth Social, Russians(?) went to Telegram. Threads/Mastodon didn't get traction because they were difficult to use(?). WhatsApp is its own thing.
We used to have megathings and now we don't: USENET went to newsgroups went to Geocities went to MySpace went to Facebook and fragmented to YouTube, Twitter, WhatsApp, Nebula, Truth Social, stuff, stuff, more stuff. Each year things become more difficult to analyse and summarise.
Most of the people on services like Nebula are on YouTube and use their YouTube videos to drive traffic to Nebula.
I know. Bloody annoying. Mustard's latest stuff is on Nebula not YT, I think Potential History has stopped publishing new stuff on YouTube.
Some of it is also YouTube censorship. Particularly history videos can be very tricky because the automated system get twitchy when talking about Nazis, Hitler, etc.
Youtube has all sorts of problems this year, they’re trying to avoid politically extreme content, but are instead tripping up a lot of legitimate content. There’s also thought to be political campaigners mass flagging current political content in an attempt to get it taken down, even if only temporarily.
I noticed that Rumble are making similar claims like Musk that Media Matters have been setting up profiles and engineering them to get the Nazi post next to an ad by following only the extremists, liking the posts etc, and those accounts are literally the only account that saw such an interaction out of millions / billions of ad serves.
Its a bit like going into a strip club, throwing money around like it is going out of fashion, accepting an invite to the VIP room, then clutching your pearls when the stripper ask if you might be interested in extras.
There’s a number of these nonprofit groups in the US, who appear to be very well funded and are trying to take down alternative media by going after their revenue sources. We know from filings that Media Matters took $1m from Soros a few years ago.
I have a feeling that the next 12 months is going to be very difficult for these companies, in the buildup to the election. On the other hand, there’s also organisations such as Public Square that have started up, recommending conservative businesses to the public and to each other. In the media space, there’s companies like Daily Wire throwing huge amounts of money at all sorts of random projects. DW now has 1m monthly subscribers, and annual revenue approaching $250m.
Oh, wow, straight to people being “very well funded” and Soros as a source of all evil?
He’s the Democrat version of the Koch brothers, willing to spend quite literally billions of dollars on politicians and political campaigns in the US over a period of decades.
It’s not controversial, that’s just how the US political system works, as much as it seems very weird to outsiders for presidential candidates to spend $1bn each in six months, and for every election down to the dog catcher (but mostly judges and DAs) to attract serious money to push a particular agenda.
Yes, that’s free speech. He can give his money to who he wants. Meanwhile, the US (and Hungarian) right have turned him into a hate figure, with lots of wink-wink conspiracy theories implied, lots of echoes of “Jews control the media”.
The problem obviously isn’t “Jews”, the problem is the likes of Soros, the Kochs, Murdoch, Gates et al controlling the media, and aggressively going after new media that doesn’t toe the line, telling lies to their advertisers and trying to deprive them of revenue. Hence the lawsuits.
I’m expecting it to get a lot worse in the next 12 months, with lots of pressure on large companies to not advertise on any platform that’s not considered mainstream.
I don't see anyone "aggressively going after new media that doesn't toe the line". I see people saying the obvious, that Nazis and antisemitism are commoner and commoner on Twitter. Soros does not control the media and his influence here is massively overstated. References to "Soros" by the US MAGA right are a dogwhistle referencing antisemitic conspiracy theories. See https://antisemitism.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Final-George-Soros-Briefing.pdf
Also, I am always baffled why you, personally, go in to bat for a bunch of people who back Putin over Ukraine.
Today’s news isn’t about Twitter, it’s about Rumble.
Soros as an individual has been funding Democrats for decades, trying to call any criticism of him as an individual antisemitic is half of the problem. Just as it’s possible to critisise Netanyahu without being anti-Semitic, yet few on the left seem to manage it.
Soros has funded the campaigns of judges and district attorneys in the US, who now oversee record crime rates in cities, and see Trump and other conservatives dragged through courts for what in many cases are clearly politically motivated charges.
I’m not going into bat for a bunch of Putinists, I’m trying to provide some balance to the debate here on US politics by following loads of people on all sides of the debate. It’s clear that the US focus is now on China as the primary enemy, and that European governments are going to need to step up and fund NATO properly, rather than relying on the US. On that matter, Trump was right.
If Trump didn't want to be "dragged through courts" for fraud and insurrection, he shouldn't have committed fraud and insurrection.
Everton could be at risk of another points deduction this season after it was confirmed that any new breach of the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules should be dealt with by the end of May.
The club were deducted ten points by an independent commission after being found to have broken the Premier League’s financial rules, which allow for losses of no more than £105 million over three seasons.
Everton are preparing to submit their accounts from the 2022-23 season to the Premier League — clubs now have to do so before December 31 instead of March. Under new regulations brought in during the summer, straightforward breaches of financial rules will be fast-tracked so they are dealt with before the end of the season.
There are fears that if the same calculation system is used, Everton could find themselves sailing close to the wind again. The end-of-season deadline brought in by the new rules covers single or straightforward breaches of the financial rules — unlike the more complex cases involving Manchester City and Chelsea.
Are we going through this nonsense of everybody is off to Mastadon again...hows Threads doing these days, seems to have about as much popularity as Piers Morgan tv show.
Good point. Although I think Truth Social/Telegram provide the same functionality, unlike Bluesky/Mastodon. Neverthless a lot of people who leave Twitter come back. Zeihan's case is slightly different because he uses it to research and disseminate his stuff: the former is compromised by Muskery and the latter is not necessary
Enshittification is followed by high-value-users buggering off and founding their own communities. YouTube refuseniks are going to Nebula or Armchair History TV or that new gun one. Trump Twitniks went to Truth Social, Russians(?) went to Telegram. Threads/Mastodon didn't get traction because they were difficult to use(?). WhatsApp is its own thing.
We used to have megathings and now we don't: USENET went to newsgroups went to Geocities went to MySpace went to Facebook and fragmented to YouTube, Twitter, WhatsApp, Nebula, Truth Social, stuff, stuff, more stuff. Each year things become more difficult to analyse and summarise.
Most of the people on services like Nebula are on YouTube and use their YouTube videos to drive traffic to Nebula.
I know. Bloody annoying. Mustard's latest stuff is on Nebula not YT, I think Potential History has stopped publishing new stuff on YouTube.
Some of it is also YouTube censorship. Particularly history videos can be very tricky because the automated system get twitchy when talking about Nazis, Hitler, etc.
Youtube has all sorts of problems this year, they’re trying to avoid politically extreme content, but are instead tripping up a lot of legitimate content. There’s also thought to be political campaigners mass flagging current political content in an attempt to get it taken down, even if only temporarily.
I noticed that Rumble are making similar claims like Musk that Media Matters have been setting up profiles and engineering them to get the Nazi post next to an ad by following only the extremists, liking the posts etc, and those accounts are literally the only account that saw such an interaction out of millions / billions of ad serves.
Its a bit like going into a strip club, throwing money around like it is going out of fashion, accepting an invite to the VIP room, then clutching your pearls when the stripper ask if you might be interested in extras.
Speaking seriously...how else would you do it? There are 500 million tweets per day. Any given phenomenon can be found. If you wanted to demonstrate Nazi content next to, say, IBM (yes I know I know), then you'd have to either look for it or place a trap ad and wait. I don't know how to estimate frequency otherwise. How do you access, trawl and extract data from 500 million tweets?
Well they aren't using the system in a way that any normal person would be. And they report as if this heavily concocted incident is normal, when according to lawsuit twitter and Rumble say from their data they were 1 of single digit accounts that experienced this.
The profiles they open aren't even perhaps mirroring activity of say a more normal human, or even say a politically engaged Republican. You could certainly do something like that, look at individuals accounts, follow all the same people, do similar liking / retweeting etc.
They are pulling every lever possible to get the jackpot they desire, then pester advertisers with claims look, see, this is what happens when you advertise on twitter, everybody is seeing this kind of stuff.
Well, Twitter and Rumble would say that. Neither is exactly a reliable source.
But Media Matters, Check My Ads, and Stop Funding Hate, are perfectly reliable sources who never misspeak about the organisations they aggressively target?
Everyone who uses Twitter says the same thing: the user experience gets worse and worse, and there are more and more far right nutjobs. Musk, who regularly says antisemitic things, has explicitly said he wants Twitter to be more welcome to the nutjobs. Ergo, I find Media Matters’ claims quite plausible.
One analysis of Twitter's lawsuit I sae basically said that Twitter had admitted Media Mattters' claims in the lawsuit document, which will make it hard to win. It's also interesting that he's chosen to lodge the case in Texas, rather than states that Media Matters or Twitter are based in,
Others say that it's a case designed to make Musk - and Twitter - seem like victims amongst his fans, and move attention away from the fact that he's ****ed up Twitter. It's someone else's fault, you see. The massive rich bullyboy billionaire is a victim...
The Rumble lawsuit is quite different, they’re alleging that the campaign group has been making materially incorrect statements about the company’s sources of revenue, and refused to retract when given the opportunity. Rumble is a listed company, so this can affect the share price.
Company Backed by J.D. Vance Gives Platform for Russian Propaganda An interview of captive Americans done “under duress” appears on a web platform backed by J.D. Vance and Peter Thiel.
LOL
Freedom of speech is a thing in the US.
That NY Times piece is exactly the sort of hit job I’ve been talking about, the MSM and their backers trying to shut down alternative platforms.
Freedom of speech is a thing, yes. I've not said Rumble should be closed down. I'm just reminding people that Rumble is a major source of pro-Russia propaganda, supported by a bunch of US politicians who prefer Putin over Ukraine. It's their free speech right to have those opinions. It's my right to think less of them for doing so.
If you want to cheer on Rumble, that's your right.
Are we going through this nonsense of everybody is off to Mastadon again...hows Threads doing these days, seems to have about as much popularity as Piers Morgan tv show.
Good point. Although I think Truth Social/Telegram provide the same functionality, unlike Bluesky/Mastodon. Neverthless a lot of people who leave Twitter come back. Zeihan's case is slightly different because he uses it to research and disseminate his stuff: the former is compromised by Muskery and the latter is not necessary
Enshittification is followed by high-value-users buggering off and founding their own communities. YouTube refuseniks are going to Nebula or Armchair History TV or that new gun one. Trump Twitniks went to Truth Social, Russians(?) went to Telegram. Threads/Mastodon didn't get traction because they were difficult to use(?). WhatsApp is its own thing.
We used to have megathings and now we don't: USENET went to newsgroups went to Geocities went to MySpace went to Facebook and fragmented to YouTube, Twitter, WhatsApp, Nebula, Truth Social, stuff, stuff, more stuff. Each year things become more difficult to analyse and summarise.
Most of the people on services like Nebula are on YouTube and use their YouTube videos to drive traffic to Nebula.
I know. Bloody annoying. Mustard's latest stuff is on Nebula not YT, I think Potential History has stopped publishing new stuff on YouTube.
Some of it is also YouTube censorship. Particularly history videos can be very tricky because the automated system get twitchy when talking about Nazis, Hitler, etc.
Youtube has all sorts of problems this year, they’re trying to avoid politically extreme content, but are instead tripping up a lot of legitimate content. There’s also thought to be political campaigners mass flagging current political content in an attempt to get it taken down, even if only temporarily.
I noticed that Rumble are making similar claims like Musk that Media Matters have been setting up profiles and engineering them to get the Nazi post next to an ad by following only the extremists, liking the posts etc, and those accounts are literally the only account that saw such an interaction out of millions / billions of ad serves.
Its a bit like going into a strip club, throwing money around like it is going out of fashion, accepting an invite to the VIP room, then clutching your pearls when the stripper ask if you might be interested in extras.
Speaking seriously...how else would you do it? There are 500 million tweets per day. Any given phenomenon can be found. If you wanted to demonstrate Nazi content next to, say, IBM (yes I know I know), then you'd have to either look for it or place a trap ad and wait. I don't know how to estimate frequency otherwise. How do you access, trawl and extract data from 500 million tweets?
As I've probably said on here before, advertisers are leaving Twitter because it has always been a fairly substandard advertising channel; miles behind meta and google in terms of creative formats and targeting, and therefore a very easy drop now that Elon is actively telling the people who ought to be paying the bills to go f*ck themselves (on top of everything else).
There's no conspiracy theory here. Twitter is a shit place to advertise, and you can by and large reach the same people more easily, accurately with better creative elsewhere; it's easy enough for a big campaign to write off that bit of additional audience cover Twitter might have given you. If Musk had bought Meta or Google, I doubt as many would be jumping ship as it would have a real-life effect on bottom lines.
There will be exceptions, of course - if I was running an NFT scam, for example, X would probably be my first port of call.
This is what some of us said way before Musk took over. The genius of Meta is how much they know about everybody, the genius of Google / Apple is they have become the top of pyramid when it comes to controlling ad market on the internet.
Twitter knows f##k all about them in comparison. TikTok has piss poor revenue despite being wildly popular.
EggProfile105353 isn't very valuable to an advertiser.
What twitter does have is oversized influence among people with power and influence. That is why they get so angry about Musk and Musk controlling it. He now owns "their" toy and they don't like what he is doing with it. The whole "its a private company, they can do what they like" line seems to have gone out of fashion rather quickly.
Has it ?
It seems to me that it's Musk who's complaining about private companies removing their advertising. He can, as far as the law and his urged shareholders allow, indeed do what he wants with Twitter. Complaining then about the self imposed consequences of his decisions is pathetic stuff.
I don't see why you have a problem with users of the site complaining that it's got worse ?
Has it got worse?
The OpenAI saga unfolded entirely on TwiX. Unless you are a TwiX user, and following the right acccounts/stories, you’d have been days behind the narrative
When it comes to social media, TikTok is the one we should first and foremost be focused upon, but all because Trump said he didn't like it, there is all this tiptoeing around it.
Its spyware on your phone for the Chinese government, their claims about data / servers have been found to be BS and lots of suspicion about what the algorithm is tweaked towards.
It is pretty much a sackable offence to install/use TikTok on a work device.
Trump was 100% right on TikTok (I doubt from his own research, rather the intelligence community). But no government is strong enough on TikTok or the likes of Temu. When western companies do even a fraction of the shit they have, its a scandal of all scandals.
Sales of luxury kitchen and homeware brands have plummeted as the cost of living crisis continues to bite - with Aga cookers, Le Creuset cookware and Farrow & Ball wallpaper and paint among the goods falling out of favour.
Accounts for firms specialising in premium home products show, in some cases, a double digit decline in sales to the end of 2022, with no designer brand seemingly immune to the tightening of British wallets.
Seems like Mrs U might be the one propping up these companies.
I know folk like to sneer a bit at Le Creuset but honestly their baseline casserole pots could make for an alternate version of the Vimes Boots Theory. I inherited ours, already decades old, from my mother-in-law who wasn't using it any more and I've been using it at least once a week, usually more, ever since, for over a decade since then. They are probably overpriced, but still good value at that.
My parents have one they received as a wedding present. Still in regular use 47 years later.
When it comes to social media, TikTok is the one we should first and foremost be focused upon, but all because Trump said he didn't like it, there is all this tiptoeing around it.
Its spyware on your phone for the Chinese government, their claims about data / servers have been found to be BS and lots of suspicion about what the algorithm is tweaked towards.
It is pretty much a sackable offence to install/use TikTok on a work device.
Trump was 100% right on TikTok (I doubt from his own research, rather the intelligence community). But no government is strong enough on TikTok or the likes of Temu. When western companies do even a fraction of the shit they have, its a scandal of all scandals.
My prediction is that Chinese owned mobile phones will be banned in the 5 eyes countries within a couple of years.
Are we going through this nonsense of everybody is off to Mastadon again...hows Threads doing these days, seems to have about as much popularity as Piers Morgan tv show.
Good point. Although I think Truth Social/Telegram provide the same functionality, unlike Bluesky/Mastodon. Neverthless a lot of people who leave Twitter come back. Zeihan's case is slightly different because he uses it to research and disseminate his stuff: the former is compromised by Muskery and the latter is not necessary
Enshittification is followed by high-value-users buggering off and founding their own communities. YouTube refuseniks are going to Nebula or Armchair History TV or that new gun one. Trump Twitniks went to Truth Social, Russians(?) went to Telegram. Threads/Mastodon didn't get traction because they were difficult to use(?). WhatsApp is its own thing.
We used to have megathings and now we don't: USENET went to newsgroups went to Geocities went to MySpace went to Facebook and fragmented to YouTube, Twitter, WhatsApp, Nebula, Truth Social, stuff, stuff, more stuff. Each year things become more difficult to analyse and summarise.
Most of the people on services like Nebula are on YouTube and use their YouTube videos to drive traffic to Nebula.
I know. Bloody annoying. Mustard's latest stuff is on Nebula not YT, I think Potential History has stopped publishing new stuff on YouTube.
Some of it is also YouTube censorship. Particularly history videos can be very tricky because the automated system get twitchy when talking about Nazis, Hitler, etc.
Youtube has all sorts of problems this year, they’re trying to avoid politically extreme content, but are instead tripping up a lot of legitimate content. There’s also thought to be political campaigners mass flagging current political content in an attempt to get it taken down, even if only temporarily.
I noticed that Rumble are making similar claims like Musk that Media Matters have been setting up profiles and engineering them to get the Nazi post next to an ad by following only the extremists, liking the posts etc, and those accounts are literally the only account that saw such an interaction out of millions / billions of ad serves.
Its a bit like going into a strip club, throwing money around like it is going out of fashion, accepting an invite to the VIP room, then clutching your pearls when the stripper ask if you might be interested in extras.
Speaking seriously...how else would you do it? There are 500 million tweets per day. Any given phenomenon can be found. If you wanted to demonstrate Nazi content next to, say, IBM (yes I know I know), then you'd have to either look for it or place a trap ad and wait. I don't know how to estimate frequency otherwise. How do you access, trawl and extract data from 500 million tweets?
As I've probably said on here before, advertisers are leaving Twitter because it has always been a fairly substandard advertising channel; miles behind meta and google in terms of creative formats and targeting, and therefore a very easy drop now that Elon is actively telling the people who ought to be paying the bills to go f*ck themselves (on top of everything else).
There's no conspiracy theory here. Twitter is a shit place to advertise, and you can by and large reach the same people more easily, accurately with better creative elsewhere; it's easy enough for a big campaign to write off that bit of additional audience cover Twitter might have given you. If Musk had bought Meta or Google, I doubt as many would be jumping ship as it would have a real-life effect on bottom lines.
There will be exceptions, of course - if I was running an NFT scam, for example, X would probably be my first port of call.
This is what some of us said way before Musk took over. The genius of Meta is how much they know about everybody, the genius of Google / Apple is they have become the top of pyramid when it comes to controlling ad market on the internet.
Twitter knows f##k all about them in comparison. TikTok has piss poor revenue despite being wildly popular.
EggProfile105353 isn't very valuable to an advertiser.
What twitter does have is oversized influence among people with power and influence. That is why they get so angry about Musk and Musk controlling it. He now owns "their" toy and they don't like what he is doing with it. The whole "its a private company, they can do what they like" line seems to have gone out of fashion rather quickly.
Has it ?
It seems to me that it's Musk who's complaining about private companies removing their advertising. He can, as far as the law and his urged shareholders allow, indeed do what he wants with Twitter. Complaining then about the self imposed consequences of his decisions is pathetic stuff.
I don't see why you have a problem with users of the site complaining that it's got worse ?
No there has also been this big push of twitter you aren't censoring people strongly enough. UK government have said it, Irish government have said it, the EU keep making a big noises about removing twitter from operating.
The its a private company, can't do nought about it deplatforming people, who it chooses to censor isn't our business, has turned into you must deplatform people, you must censor harder, disinformation yadda yadda yadda.
This isn't about deplatforming people. It's about advertisers not wanting the platform to place adverts for their products and services next to some very dodgy views. Twitter used to be much better at this; and that's saying something. Twitter is allowing loads of dodgy people to post, and placing ads next to those posts because they need revenue.
That's utterly a decision made by Twitter; and that's up to them. But it's also fine for the advertisers to say: "Hmmm, perhaps we don't want out brand to be associated with this platform."
Are we going through this nonsense of everybody is off to Mastadon again...hows Threads doing these days, seems to have about as much popularity as Piers Morgan tv show.
Good point. Although I think Truth Social/Telegram provide the same functionality, unlike Bluesky/Mastodon. Neverthless a lot of people who leave Twitter come back. Zeihan's case is slightly different because he uses it to research and disseminate his stuff: the former is compromised by Muskery and the latter is not necessary
Enshittification is followed by high-value-users buggering off and founding their own communities. YouTube refuseniks are going to Nebula or Armchair History TV or that new gun one. Trump Twitniks went to Truth Social, Russians(?) went to Telegram. Threads/Mastodon didn't get traction because they were difficult to use(?). WhatsApp is its own thing.
We used to have megathings and now we don't: USENET went to newsgroups went to Geocities went to MySpace went to Facebook and fragmented to YouTube, Twitter, WhatsApp, Nebula, Truth Social, stuff, stuff, more stuff. Each year things become more difficult to analyse and summarise.
Most of the people on services like Nebula are on YouTube and use their YouTube videos to drive traffic to Nebula.
I know. Bloody annoying. Mustard's latest stuff is on Nebula not YT, I think Potential History has stopped publishing new stuff on YouTube.
Some of it is also YouTube censorship. Particularly history videos can be very tricky because the automated system get twitchy when talking about Nazis, Hitler, etc.
Youtube has all sorts of problems this year, they’re trying to avoid politically extreme content, but are instead tripping up a lot of legitimate content. There’s also thought to be political campaigners mass flagging current political content in an attempt to get it taken down, even if only temporarily.
I noticed that Rumble are making similar claims like Musk that Media Matters have been setting up profiles and engineering them to get the Nazi post next to an ad by following only the extremists, liking the posts etc, and those accounts are literally the only account that saw such an interaction out of millions / billions of ad serves.
Its a bit like going into a strip club, throwing money around like it is going out of fashion, accepting an invite to the VIP room, then clutching your pearls when the stripper ask if you might be interested in extras.
Speaking seriously...how else would you do it? There are 500 million tweets per day. Any given phenomenon can be found. If you wanted to demonstrate Nazi content next to, say, IBM (yes I know I know), then you'd have to either look for it or place a trap ad and wait. I don't know how to estimate frequency otherwise. How do you access, trawl and extract data from 500 million tweets?
As I've probably said on here before, advertisers are leaving Twitter because it has always been a fairly substandard advertising channel; miles behind meta and google in terms of creative formats and targeting, and therefore a very easy drop now that Elon is actively telling the people who ought to be paying the bills to go f*ck themselves (on top of everything else).
There's no conspiracy theory here. Twitter is a shit place to advertise, and you can by and large reach the same people more easily, accurately with better creative elsewhere; it's easy enough for a big campaign to write off that bit of additional audience cover Twitter might have given you. If Musk had bought Meta or Google, I doubt as many would be jumping ship as it would have a real-life effect on bottom lines.
There will be exceptions, of course - if I was running an NFT scam, for example, X would probably be my first port of call.
This is what some of us said way before Musk took over. The genius of Meta is how much they know about everybody, the genius of Google / Apple is they have become the top of pyramid when it comes to controlling ad market on the internet.
Twitter knows f##k all about them in comparison. TikTok has piss poor revenue despite being wildly popular.
EggProfile105353 isn't very valuable to an advertiser.
What twitter does have is oversized influence among people with power and influence. That is why they get so angry about Musk and Musk controlling it. He now owns "their" toy and they don't like what he is doing with it. The whole "its a private company, they can do what they like" line seems to have gone out of fashion rather quickly.
Has it ?
It seems to me that it's Musk who's complaining about private companies removing their advertising. He can, as far as the law and his urged shareholders allow, indeed do what he wants with Twitter. Complaining then about the self imposed consequences of his decisions is pathetic stuff.
I don't see why you have a problem with users of the site complaining that it's got worse ?
Has it got worse?
The OpenAI saga unfolded entirely on TwiX. Unless you are a TwiX user, and following the right acccounts/stories, you’d have been days behind the narrative
I definitely have the odd weirdo account pop up now that I wouldn't before. But was having bubble ecosystem good? Also Community Notes is absolutely brutal, you talk shit, you get recked. That is a great innovation.
What should definitely happen (I don't know if it does or is in the works) if you consistently get community noted, again the idea of you are free to scream, but you get down weighted even further. Reach reduction I think is a good balance between censorship and totally hands off free for all.
Are we going through this nonsense of everybody is off to Mastadon again...hows Threads doing these days, seems to have about as much popularity as Piers Morgan tv show.
Good point. Although I think Truth Social/Telegram provide the same functionality, unlike Bluesky/Mastodon. Neverthless a lot of people who leave Twitter come back. Zeihan's case is slightly different because he uses it to research and disseminate his stuff: the former is compromised by Muskery and the latter is not necessary
Enshittification is followed by high-value-users buggering off and founding their own communities. YouTube refuseniks are going to Nebula or Armchair History TV or that new gun one. Trump Twitniks went to Truth Social, Russians(?) went to Telegram. Threads/Mastodon didn't get traction because they were difficult to use(?). WhatsApp is its own thing.
We used to have megathings and now we don't: USENET went to newsgroups went to Geocities went to MySpace went to Facebook and fragmented to YouTube, Twitter, WhatsApp, Nebula, Truth Social, stuff, stuff, more stuff. Each year things become more difficult to analyse and summarise.
Most of the people on services like Nebula are on YouTube and use their YouTube videos to drive traffic to Nebula.
I know. Bloody annoying. Mustard's latest stuff is on Nebula not YT, I think Potential History has stopped publishing new stuff on YouTube.
Some of it is also YouTube censorship. Particularly history videos can be very tricky because the automated system get twitchy when talking about Nazis, Hitler, etc.
Youtube has all sorts of problems this year, they’re trying to avoid politically extreme content, but are instead tripping up a lot of legitimate content. There’s also thought to be political campaigners mass flagging current political content in an attempt to get it taken down, even if only temporarily.
I noticed that Rumble are making similar claims like Musk that Media Matters have been setting up profiles and engineering them to get the Nazi post next to an ad by following only the extremists, liking the posts etc, and those accounts are literally the only account that saw such an interaction out of millions / billions of ad serves.
Its a bit like going into a strip club, throwing money around like it is going out of fashion, accepting an invite to the VIP room, then clutching your pearls when the stripper ask if you might be interested in extras.
Speaking seriously...how else would you do it? There are 500 million tweets per day. Any given phenomenon can be found. If you wanted to demonstrate Nazi content next to, say, IBM (yes I know I know), then you'd have to either look for it or place a trap ad and wait. I don't know how to estimate frequency otherwise. How do you access, trawl and extract data from 500 million tweets?
As I've probably said on here before, advertisers are leaving Twitter because it has always been a fairly substandard advertising channel; miles behind meta and google in terms of creative formats and targeting, and therefore a very easy drop now that Elon is actively telling the people who ought to be paying the bills to go f*ck themselves (on top of everything else).
There's no conspiracy theory here. Twitter is a shit place to advertise, and you can by and large reach the same people more easily, accurately with better creative elsewhere; it's easy enough for a big campaign to write off that bit of additional audience cover Twitter might have given you. If Musk had bought Meta or Google, I doubt as many would be jumping ship as it would have a real-life effect on bottom lines.
There will be exceptions, of course - if I was running an NFT scam, for example, X would probably be my first port of call.
This is what some of us said way before Musk took over. The genius of Meta is how much they know about everybody, the genius of Google / Apple is they have become the top of pyramid when it comes to controlling ad market on the internet.
Twitter knows f##k all about them in comparison. TikTok has piss poor revenue despite being wildly popular.
EggProfile105353 isn't very valuable to an advertiser.
What twitter does have is oversized influence among people with power and influence. That is why they get so angry about Musk and Musk controlling it. He now owns "their" toy and they don't like what he is doing with it. The whole "its a private company, they can do what they like" line seems to have gone out of fashion rather quickly.
Has it ?
It seems to me that it's Musk who's complaining about private companies removing their advertising. He can, as far as the law and his urged shareholders allow, indeed do what he wants with Twitter. Complaining then about the self imposed consequences of his decisions is pathetic stuff.
I don't see why you have a problem with users of the site complaining that it's got worse ?
Has it got worse?
The OpenAI saga unfolded entirely on TwiX. Unless you are a TwiX user, and following the right acccounts/stories, you’d have been days behind the narrative
When it comes to social media, TikTok is the one we should first and foremost be focused upon, but all because Trump said he didn't like it, there is all this tiptoeing around it.
Its spyware on your phone for the Chinese government, their claims about data / servers have been found to be BS and lots of suspicion about what the algorithm is tweaked towards.
It is pretty much a sackable offence to install/use TikTok on a work device.
Trump was 100% right on TikTok (I doubt from his own research, rather the intelligence community). But no government is strong enough on TikTok or the likes of Temu. When western companies do even a fraction of the shit they have, its a scandal of all scandals.
My prediction is that Chinese owned mobile phones will be banned in the 5 eyes countries within a couple of years.
Again, COVID plus other things should have really produced a reset of thinking. Instead, for example in the UK, Boris closed down the group that he set up to look at reducing reliance on China for crucial products.
The West have been far too lax on the dangers of tech companies and the laws that compel them to interact with the Chinese state (if they aren't already a Chinese state company).
Someone I know knew him a little bit. He was a thoroughly nice fellah by all accounts.
Depends on your viewpoint , some consider him a real traitor
Still sad to pop your clogs at that age, would only give me 2 months to go.
Saw AD on the Victoria Line soon after the 2010 election, no doubt on his way to King's Cross and back home to civilisation. He looked perfectly content to be leaving London.
When it comes to social media, TikTok is the one we should first and foremost be focused upon, but all because Trump said he didn't like it, there is all this tiptoeing around it.
Its spyware on your phone for the Chinese government, their claims about data / servers have been found to be BS and lots of suspicion about what the algorithm is tweaked towards.
It is pretty much a sackable offence to install/use TikTok on a work device.
Trump was 100% right on TikTok (I doubt from his own research, rather the intelligence community). But no government is strong enough on TikTok or the likes of Temu. When western companies do even a fraction of the shit they have, its a scandal of all scandals.
My prediction is that Chinese owned mobile phones will be banned in the 5 eyes countries within a couple of years.
Again, COVID plus other things should have really produced a reset of thinking. Instead, for example in the UK, Boris closed down the group that he set up to look at reducing reliance on China for crucial products.
The West have been far too lax on the dangers of tech companies and the laws that compel them to interact with the Chinese state (if they aren't already a Chinese state company).
It's the sunk-cost fallacy in action. No-one likes to admit they may have made a mistake in using or endorsing Chinese products that are not independent of the Chinese government, even though that was well-known 10 or 15 years ago.
Are we going through this nonsense of everybody is off to Mastadon again...hows Threads doing these days, seems to have about as much popularity as Piers Morgan tv show.
Good point. Although I think Truth Social/Telegram provide the same functionality, unlike Bluesky/Mastodon. Neverthless a lot of people who leave Twitter come back. Zeihan's case is slightly different because he uses it to research and disseminate his stuff: the former is compromised by Muskery and the latter is not necessary
Enshittification is followed by high-value-users buggering off and founding their own communities. YouTube refuseniks are going to Nebula or Armchair History TV or that new gun one. Trump Twitniks went to Truth Social, Russians(?) went to Telegram. Threads/Mastodon didn't get traction because they were difficult to use(?). WhatsApp is its own thing.
We used to have megathings and now we don't: USENET went to newsgroups went to Geocities went to MySpace went to Facebook and fragmented to YouTube, Twitter, WhatsApp, Nebula, Truth Social, stuff, stuff, more stuff. Each year things become more difficult to analyse and summarise.
Most of the people on services like Nebula are on YouTube and use their YouTube videos to drive traffic to Nebula.
I know. Bloody annoying. Mustard's latest stuff is on Nebula not YT, I think Potential History has stopped publishing new stuff on YouTube.
Some of it is also YouTube censorship. Particularly history videos can be very tricky because the automated system get twitchy when talking about Nazis, Hitler, etc.
Youtube has all sorts of problems this year, they’re trying to avoid politically extreme content, but are instead tripping up a lot of legitimate content. There’s also thought to be political campaigners mass flagging current political content in an attempt to get it taken down, even if only temporarily.
I noticed that Rumble are making similar claims like Musk that Media Matters have been setting up profiles and engineering them to get the Nazi post next to an ad by following only the extremists, liking the posts etc, and those accounts are literally the only account that saw such an interaction out of millions / billions of ad serves.
Its a bit like going into a strip club, throwing money around like it is going out of fashion, accepting an invite to the VIP room, then clutching your pearls when the stripper ask if you might be interested in extras.
Speaking seriously...how else would you do it? There are 500 million tweets per day. Any given phenomenon can be found. If you wanted to demonstrate Nazi content next to, say, IBM (yes I know I know), then you'd have to either look for it or place a trap ad and wait. I don't know how to estimate frequency otherwise. How do you access, trawl and extract data from 500 million tweets?
As I've probably said on here before, advertisers are leaving Twitter because it has always been a fairly substandard advertising channel; miles behind meta and google in terms of creative formats and targeting, and therefore a very easy drop now that Elon is actively telling the people who ought to be paying the bills to go f*ck themselves (on top of everything else).
There's no conspiracy theory here. Twitter is a shit place to advertise, and you can by and large reach the same people more easily, accurately with better creative elsewhere; it's easy enough for a big campaign to write off that bit of additional audience cover Twitter might have given you. If Musk had bought Meta or Google, I doubt as many would be jumping ship as it would have a real-life effect on bottom lines.
There will be exceptions, of course - if I was running an NFT scam, for example, X would probably be my first port of call.
This is what some of us said way before Musk took over. The genius of Meta is how much they know about everybody, the genius of Google / Apple is they have become the top of pyramid when it comes to controlling ad market on the internet.
Twitter knows f##k all about them in comparison. TikTok has piss poor revenue despite being wildly popular.
EggProfile105353 isn't very valuable to an advertiser.
What twitter does have is oversized influence among people with power and influence. That is why they get so angry about Musk and Musk controlling it. He now owns "their" toy and they don't like what he is doing with it. The whole "its a private company, they can do what they like" line seems to have gone out of fashion rather quickly.
Has it ?
It seems to me that it's Musk who's complaining about private companies removing their advertising. He can, as far as the law and his urged shareholders allow, indeed do what he wants with Twitter. Complaining then about the self imposed consequences of his decisions is pathetic stuff.
I don't see why you have a problem with users of the site complaining that it's got worse ?
Has it got worse?
The OpenAI saga unfolded entirely on TwiX. Unless you are a TwiX user, and following the right acccounts/stories, you’d have been days behind the narrative
I definitely have the odd weirdo account pop up now that I wouldn't before. But was having bubble ecosystem good? Also Community Notes is absolutely brutal, you talk shit, you get recked. That is a great innovation.
What should definitely happen (I don't know if it does or is in the works) if you consistently get community noted, again the idea of you are free to scream, but you get down weighted even further. Reach reduction I think is a good balance between censorship and totally hands off free for all.
Twix has got BETTER for me
I used to be faced with an endless stream of pious left liberal bullshit. Now it is all mixed up. Still plenty of lefty nutters, some interesting, some fucking tedious, but now a good admixture of right wing nutters - again, some worth listening to, some off the wall
I get that: if you are used to Twitter being a comfortable silo of liberal opinions you agree with, then it will seem worse. But these people are intellectually mediocre fools, we see them on here daily
I love Community Notes, too
Musk is insanely rich. I believe he should try and make TwiX work without advertising altogether, fuck the corporates (as he says). He has the money to take the risk for a few years, and the prize - true free speech - is beyond compare. I also believe it would eventually pay off
What he does need is someone paid to sit by his laptop and say “Elon, do you really need to tweet that”? Every now and again. Like the guy who stood behind Caesar and whispered: Remember you are mortal, too
Are we going through this nonsense of everybody is off to Mastadon again...hows Threads doing these days, seems to have about as much popularity as Piers Morgan tv show.
Good point. Although I think Truth Social/Telegram provide the same functionality, unlike Bluesky/Mastodon. Neverthless a lot of people who leave Twitter come back. Zeihan's case is slightly different because he uses it to research and disseminate his stuff: the former is compromised by Muskery and the latter is not necessary
Enshittification is followed by high-value-users buggering off and founding their own communities. YouTube refuseniks are going to Nebula or Armchair History TV or that new gun one. Trump Twitniks went to Truth Social, Russians(?) went to Telegram. Threads/Mastodon didn't get traction because they were difficult to use(?). WhatsApp is its own thing.
We used to have megathings and now we don't: USENET went to newsgroups went to Geocities went to MySpace went to Facebook and fragmented to YouTube, Twitter, WhatsApp, Nebula, Truth Social, stuff, stuff, more stuff. Each year things become more difficult to analyse and summarise.
Most of the people on services like Nebula are on YouTube and use their YouTube videos to drive traffic to Nebula.
I know. Bloody annoying. Mustard's latest stuff is on Nebula not YT, I think Potential History has stopped publishing new stuff on YouTube.
Some of it is also YouTube censorship. Particularly history videos can be very tricky because the automated system get twitchy when talking about Nazis, Hitler, etc.
Youtube has all sorts of problems this year, they’re trying to avoid politically extreme content, but are instead tripping up a lot of legitimate content. There’s also thought to be political campaigners mass flagging current political content in an attempt to get it taken down, even if only temporarily.
I noticed that Rumble are making similar claims like Musk that Media Matters have been setting up profiles and engineering them to get the Nazi post next to an ad by following only the extremists, liking the posts etc, and those accounts are literally the only account that saw such an interaction out of millions / billions of ad serves.
Its a bit like going into a strip club, throwing money around like it is going out of fashion, accepting an invite to the VIP room, then clutching your pearls when the stripper ask if you might be interested in extras.
Speaking seriously...how else would you do it? There are 500 million tweets per day. Any given phenomenon can be found. If you wanted to demonstrate Nazi content next to, say, IBM (yes I know I know), then you'd have to either look for it or place a trap ad and wait. I don't know how to estimate frequency otherwise. How do you access, trawl and extract data from 500 million tweets?
As I've probably said on here before, advertisers are leaving Twitter because it has always been a fairly substandard advertising channel; miles behind meta and google in terms of creative formats and targeting, and therefore a very easy drop now that Elon is actively telling the people who ought to be paying the bills to go f*ck themselves (on top of everything else).
There's no conspiracy theory here. Twitter is a shit place to advertise, and you can by and large reach the same people more easily, accurately with better creative elsewhere; it's easy enough for a big campaign to write off that bit of additional audience cover Twitter might have given you. If Musk had bought Meta or Google, I doubt as many would be jumping ship as it would have a real-life effect on bottom lines.
There will be exceptions, of course - if I was running an NFT scam, for example, X would probably be my first port of call.
This is what some of us said way before Musk took over. The genius of Meta is how much they know about everybody, the genius of Google / Apple is they have become the top of pyramid when it comes to controlling ad market on the internet.
Twitter knows f##k all about them in comparison. TikTok has piss poor revenue despite being wildly popular.
EggProfile105353 isn't very valuable to an advertiser.
What twitter does have is oversized influence among people with power and influence. That is why they get so angry about Musk and Musk controlling it. He now owns "their" toy and they don't like what he is doing with it. The whole "its a private company, they can do what they like" line seems to have gone out of fashion rather quickly.
Has it ?
It seems to me that it's Musk who's complaining about private companies removing their advertising. He can, as far as the law and his urged shareholders allow, indeed do what he wants with Twitter. Complaining then about the self imposed consequences of his decisions is pathetic stuff.
I don't see why you have a problem with users of the site complaining that it's got worse ?
No there has also been this big push of twitter you aren't censoring people strongly enough. UK government have said it, Irish government have said it, the EU keep making a big noises about removing twitter from operating.
The its a private company, can't do nought about it deplatforming people, who it chooses to censor isn't our business, has turned into you must deplatform people, you must censor harder, disinformation yadda yadda yadda.
This isn't about deplatforming people. It's about advertisers not wanting the platform to place adverts for their products and services next to some very dodgy views. Twitter used to be much better at this; and that's saying something. Twitter is allowing loads of dodgy people to post, and placing ads next to those posts because they need revenue.
That's utterly a decision made by Twitter; and that's up to them. But it's also fine for the advertisers to say: "Hmmm, perhaps we don't want out brand to be associated with this platform."
No there are separate things in play here.
1) As you rightly say, Musk acts like a knob, companies not so happy to advertise. Plenty of us said at the time, absolutely stupid to go near twitter, as a business, it is really problematic. Him going Trump the other day, all a bit pathetic really.
2) The one I was specifically mentioning, the get out claim was already "well they are private company, nought to do with us", we are now seeing much bigger push to compel them to censor, far less of the nought we can do, they censor how they like. Also, definitely toys out the pram from some, e.g. see BBC reporter who made a twat of himself and general BBC slant, its always twitter / Musk BADDDDDDDD. The EU keep saying, we will compel Musk to change twitter to censor more, otherwise we will ban him from operating.
3) The contested claim, is more hands off approach is leading to adverts being placed by really extreme comments. Media Matter show examples, twitter / rumble claim they have proof those accounts did not act in a way that is at all indicative of normal users, so much so, they were the only one or one of a handful who had the experiences reported. Millions of those ads served, only once or twice served by the problematic tweet. Musk claims he is moving twitter to an approach where things are less likely to be censored, rather the reach is down weighted.
Someone I know knew him a little bit. He was a thoroughly nice fellah by all accounts.
Depends on your viewpoint , some consider him a real traitor
Still sad to pop your clogs at that age, would only give me 2 months to go.
“The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away." Psalm90
When it comes to social media, TikTok is the one we should first and foremost be focused upon, but all because Trump said he didn't like it, there is all this tiptoeing around it.
Its spyware on your phone for the Chinese government, their claims about data / servers have been found to be BS and lots of suspicion about what the algorithm is tweaked towards.
There was a rumour that Bezos is funding US politicians who will support banning TikTok.
Someone I know knew him a little bit. He was a thoroughly nice fellah by all accounts.
Depends on your viewpoint , some consider him a real traitor
Still sad to pop your clogs at that age, would only give me 2 months to go.
“The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away." Psalm90
If I can hit 70 still living the life I live now, = wine women and song (and insane amounts of free and exciting travel), I will shake hands with that. A life lived to the hilt, nut deep in experiences
When it comes to social media, TikTok is the one we should first and foremost be focused upon, but all because Trump said he didn't like it, there is all this tiptoeing around it.
Its spyware on your phone for the Chinese government, their claims about data / servers have been found to be BS and lots of suspicion about what the algorithm is tweaked towards.
There was a rumour that Bezos is funding US politicians who will support banning TikTok.
Are we going through this nonsense of everybody is off to Mastadon again...hows Threads doing these days, seems to have about as much popularity as Piers Morgan tv show.
Good point. Although I think Truth Social/Telegram provide the same functionality, unlike Bluesky/Mastodon. Neverthless a lot of people who leave Twitter come back. Zeihan's case is slightly different because he uses it to research and disseminate his stuff: the former is compromised by Muskery and the latter is not necessary
Enshittification is followed by high-value-users buggering off and founding their own communities. YouTube refuseniks are going to Nebula or Armchair History TV or that new gun one. Trump Twitniks went to Truth Social, Russians(?) went to Telegram. Threads/Mastodon didn't get traction because they were difficult to use(?). WhatsApp is its own thing.
We used to have megathings and now we don't: USENET went to newsgroups went to Geocities went to MySpace went to Facebook and fragmented to YouTube, Twitter, WhatsApp, Nebula, Truth Social, stuff, stuff, more stuff. Each year things become more difficult to analyse and summarise.
Most of the people on services like Nebula are on YouTube and use their YouTube videos to drive traffic to Nebula.
I know. Bloody annoying. Mustard's latest stuff is on Nebula not YT, I think Potential History has stopped publishing new stuff on YouTube.
Some of it is also YouTube censorship. Particularly history videos can be very tricky because the automated system get twitchy when talking about Nazis, Hitler, etc.
Youtube has all sorts of problems this year, they’re trying to avoid politically extreme content, but are instead tripping up a lot of legitimate content. There’s also thought to be political campaigners mass flagging current political content in an attempt to get it taken down, even if only temporarily.
I noticed that Rumble are making similar claims like Musk that Media Matters have been setting up profiles and engineering them to get the Nazi post next to an ad by following only the extremists, liking the posts etc, and those accounts are literally the only account that saw such an interaction out of millions / billions of ad serves.
Its a bit like going into a strip club, throwing money around like it is going out of fashion, accepting an invite to the VIP room, then clutching your pearls when the stripper ask if you might be interested in extras.
Speaking seriously...how else would you do it? There are 500 million tweets per day. Any given phenomenon can be found. If you wanted to demonstrate Nazi content next to, say, IBM (yes I know I know), then you'd have to either look for it or place a trap ad and wait. I don't know how to estimate frequency otherwise. How do you access, trawl and extract data from 500 million tweets?
As I've probably said on here before, advertisers are leaving Twitter because it has always been a fairly substandard advertising channel; miles behind meta and google in terms of creative formats and targeting, and therefore a very easy drop now that Elon is actively telling the people who ought to be paying the bills to go f*ck themselves (on top of everything else).
There's no conspiracy theory here. Twitter is a shit place to advertise, and you can by and large reach the same people more easily, accurately with better creative elsewhere; it's easy enough for a big campaign to write off that bit of additional audience cover Twitter might have given you. If Musk had bought Meta or Google, I doubt as many would be jumping ship as it would have a real-life effect on bottom lines.
There will be exceptions, of course - if I was running an NFT scam, for example, X would probably be my first port of call.
This is what some of us said way before Musk took over. The genius of Meta is how much they know about everybody, the genius of Google / Apple is they have become the top of pyramid when it comes to controlling ad market on the internet.
Twitter knows f##k all about them in comparison. TikTok has piss poor revenue despite being wildly popular.
EggProfile105353 isn't very valuable to an advertiser.
What twitter does have is oversized influence among people with power and influence. That is why they get so angry about Musk and Musk controlling it. He now owns "their" toy and they don't like what he is doing with it. The whole "its a private company, they can do what they like" line seems to have gone out of fashion rather quickly.
Has it ?
It seems to me that it's Musk who's complaining about private companies removing their advertising. He can, as far as the law and his urged shareholders allow, indeed do what he wants with Twitter. Complaining then about the self imposed consequences of his decisions is pathetic stuff.
I don't see why you have a problem with users of the site complaining that it's got worse ?
Has it got worse?
The OpenAI saga unfolded entirely on TwiX. Unless you are a TwiX user, and following the right acccounts/stories, you’d have been days behind the narrative
I definitely have the odd weirdo account pop up now that I wouldn't before. But was having bubble ecosystem good? Also Community Notes is absolutely brutal, you talk shit, you get recked. That is a great innovation.
What should definitely happen (I don't know if it does or is in the works) if you consistently get community noted, again the idea of you are free to scream, but you get down weighted even further. Reach reduction I think is a good balance between censorship and totally hands off free for all.
The Tweet from the White House, celebrating the highest increase in the state pension for decades and crediting Biden specifically, that got deleted after it was community noted that the pension goes up by inflation every year with no new legislation passed, was pretty brutal.
Are we going through this nonsense of everybody is off to Mastadon again...hows Threads doing these days, seems to have about as much popularity as Piers Morgan tv show.
Good point. Although I think Truth Social/Telegram provide the same functionality, unlike Bluesky/Mastodon. Neverthless a lot of people who leave Twitter come back. Zeihan's case is slightly different because he uses it to research and disseminate his stuff: the former is compromised by Muskery and the latter is not necessary
Enshittification is followed by high-value-users buggering off and founding their own communities. YouTube refuseniks are going to Nebula or Armchair History TV or that new gun one. Trump Twitniks went to Truth Social, Russians(?) went to Telegram. Threads/Mastodon didn't get traction because they were difficult to use(?). WhatsApp is its own thing.
We used to have megathings and now we don't: USENET went to newsgroups went to Geocities went to MySpace went to Facebook and fragmented to YouTube, Twitter, WhatsApp, Nebula, Truth Social, stuff, stuff, more stuff. Each year things become more difficult to analyse and summarise.
Most of the people on services like Nebula are on YouTube and use their YouTube videos to drive traffic to Nebula.
I know. Bloody annoying. Mustard's latest stuff is on Nebula not YT, I think Potential History has stopped publishing new stuff on YouTube.
Some of it is also YouTube censorship. Particularly history videos can be very tricky because the automated system get twitchy when talking about Nazis, Hitler, etc.
Youtube has all sorts of problems this year, they’re trying to avoid politically extreme content, but are instead tripping up a lot of legitimate content. There’s also thought to be political campaigners mass flagging current political content in an attempt to get it taken down, even if only temporarily.
I noticed that Rumble are making similar claims like Musk that Media Matters have been setting up profiles and engineering them to get the Nazi post next to an ad by following only the extremists, liking the posts etc, and those accounts are literally the only account that saw such an interaction out of millions / billions of ad serves.
Its a bit like going into a strip club, throwing money around like it is going out of fashion, accepting an invite to the VIP room, then clutching your pearls when the stripper ask if you might be interested in extras.
There’s a number of these nonprofit groups in the US, who appear to be very well funded and are trying to take down alternative media by going after their revenue sources. We know from filings that Media Matters took $1m from Soros a few years ago.
I have a feeling that the next 12 months is going to be very difficult for these companies, in the buildup to the election. On the other hand, there’s also organisations such as Public Square that have started up, recommending conservative businesses to the public and to each other. In the media space, there’s companies like Daily Wire throwing huge amounts of money at all sorts of random projects. DW now has 1m monthly subscribers, and annual revenue approaching $250m.
Oh, wow, straight to people being “very well funded” and Soros as a source of all evil?
He’s the Democrat version of the Koch brothers, willing to spend quite literally billions of dollars on politicians and political campaigns in the US over a period of decades.
It’s not controversial, that’s just how the US political system works, as much as it seems very weird to outsiders for presidential candidates to spend $1bn each in six months, and for every election down to the dog catcher (but mostly judges and DAs) to attract serious money to push a particular agenda.
Yes, that’s free speech. He can give his money to who he wants. Meanwhile, the US (and Hungarian) right have turned him into a hate figure, with lots of wink-wink conspiracy theories implied, lots of echoes of “Jews control the media”.
The problem obviously isn’t “Jews”, the problem is the likes of Soros, the Kochs, Murdoch, Gates et al controlling the media, and aggressively going after new media that doesn’t toe the line, telling lies to their advertisers and trying to deprive them of revenue. Hence the lawsuits.
I’m expecting it to get a lot worse in the next 12 months, with lots of pressure on large companies to not advertise on any platform that’s not considered mainstream.
I don't see anyone "aggressively going after new media that doesn't toe the line". I see people saying the obvious, that Nazis and antisemitism are commoner and commoner on Twitter. Soros does not control the media and his influence here is massively overstated. References to "Soros" by the US MAGA right are a dogwhistle referencing antisemitic conspiracy theories. See https://antisemitism.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Final-George-Soros-Briefing.pdf
Also, I am always baffled why you, personally, go in to bat for a bunch of people who back Putin over Ukraine.
Today’s news isn’t about Twitter, it’s about Rumble.
Soros as an individual has been funding Democrats for decades, trying to call any criticism of him as an individual antisemitic is half of the problem. Just as it’s possible to critisise Netanyahu without being anti-Semitic, yet few on the left seem to manage it.
Soros has funded the campaigns of judges and district attorneys in the US, who now oversee record crime rates in cities, and see Trump and other conservatives dragged through courts for what in many cases are clearly politically motivated charges.
I’m not going into bat for a bunch of Putinists, I’m trying to provide some balance to the debate here on US politics by following loads of people on all sides of the debate. It’s clear that the US focus is now on China as the primary enemy, and that European governments are going to need to step up and fund NATO properly, rather than relying on the US. On that matter, Trump was right.
If Trump didn't want to be "dragged through courts" for fraud and insurrection, he shouldn't have committed fraud and insurrection.
Putin loving Rumble, is most definitely not the same as Rumble loving Putin.
The fact that a bunch of racist idiots try and use Soros’ name as a conspiracy theory, doesn’t mean that valid critisicm of that particular individual is racist.
He's right. I listened to extracts from yesterday's HO Select Committee hearing. I normally defend Civil Servants, but the two who appeared yesterday (Rycroft + another) were embarrassingly hopeless - ill-prepared and incapable of answering basic questions. This led to the bizarre scenario of both the Chair (Diane Johnson, Lab) and Lee Anderson joining forces to tell them how useless they were.
It would appear that in their desperation to meet targets for removing the backlog, at least 17,000 asylum seekers have simply had their claims discontinued. When asked where they were, the response was simply "no idea".
I'm not sure on that one.
My MP Lee Anderson came across to me as a grandstanding barrack-room-lawyer - asking statistical questions based on multiple sub-categories, then having a go at Civil Servants for not having the answers immediately available in their heads.
Perhaps if he had given appropriate notice (eg 48-72 hours) of his complex questions Civil Servants would have been in a position to provide him with an answer.
I am not convinced that he actually wants answers, rather an opportunity to indulge in performative outrage on GB News / social media.
I'm open to correction by anyone with a more complete knowledge, but that is my impression from coverage I have seen.
@MattW. Quick follow-up: how is your chemo bearing up?
Bearing up thanks - more or less out and about again, and doing my first trip around friends in the south a week before Christmas.
Physically I'm slightly worse - not enough exercise, and on a routine asthma review for my asthna in remission this morning my blower test was a little down on the normal. But I was a trumpet player at school, which seems to have added resilience by giving extra lung capacity (really).
Someone I know knew him a little bit. He was a thoroughly nice fellah by all accounts.
Yes, that's what I thought, though we were never in close contact. Very much free of the ego-promoting self-centred approach of some.
I am not sure he got enough credit for his actions during the banking crisis. Many reports at the time that he was able to moderate Gordon Browns more irrational demands while still finding solutions.
Brown went on to claim he saved the world, Darling rather kept a lowish profile and retired without much fanfare both from MP and Lords.
Are we going through this nonsense of everybody is off to Mastadon again...hows Threads doing these days, seems to have about as much popularity as Piers Morgan tv show.
Good point. Although I think Truth Social/Telegram provide the same functionality, unlike Bluesky/Mastodon. Neverthless a lot of people who leave Twitter come back. Zeihan's case is slightly different because he uses it to research and disseminate his stuff: the former is compromised by Muskery and the latter is not necessary
Enshittification is followed by high-value-users buggering off and founding their own communities. YouTube refuseniks are going to Nebula or Armchair History TV or that new gun one. Trump Twitniks went to Truth Social, Russians(?) went to Telegram. Threads/Mastodon didn't get traction because they were difficult to use(?). WhatsApp is its own thing.
We used to have megathings and now we don't: USENET went to newsgroups went to Geocities went to MySpace went to Facebook and fragmented to YouTube, Twitter, WhatsApp, Nebula, Truth Social, stuff, stuff, more stuff. Each year things become more difficult to analyse and summarise.
Most of the people on services like Nebula are on YouTube and use their YouTube videos to drive traffic to Nebula.
I know. Bloody annoying. Mustard's latest stuff is on Nebula not YT, I think Potential History has stopped publishing new stuff on YouTube.
Some of it is also YouTube censorship. Particularly history videos can be very tricky because the automated system get twitchy when talking about Nazis, Hitler, etc.
Youtube has all sorts of problems this year, they’re trying to avoid politically extreme content, but are instead tripping up a lot of legitimate content. There’s also thought to be political campaigners mass flagging current political content in an attempt to get it taken down, even if only temporarily.
I noticed that Rumble are making similar claims like Musk that Media Matters have been setting up profiles and engineering them to get the Nazi post next to an ad by following only the extremists, liking the posts etc, and those accounts are literally the only account that saw such an interaction out of millions / billions of ad serves.
Its a bit like going into a strip club, throwing money around like it is going out of fashion, accepting an invite to the VIP room, then clutching your pearls when the stripper ask if you might be interested in extras.
There’s a number of these nonprofit groups in the US, who appear to be very well funded and are trying to take down alternative media by going after their revenue sources. We know from filings that Media Matters took $1m from Soros a few years ago.
I have a feeling that the next 12 months is going to be very difficult for these companies, in the buildup to the election. On the other hand, there’s also organisations such as Public Square that have started up, recommending conservative businesses to the public and to each other. In the media space, there’s companies like Daily Wire throwing huge amounts of money at all sorts of random projects. DW now has 1m monthly subscribers, and annual revenue approaching $250m.
Oh, wow, straight to people being “very well funded” and Soros as a source of all evil?
He’s the Democrat version of the Koch brothers, willing to spend quite literally billions of dollars on politicians and political campaigns in the US over a period of decades.
It’s not controversial, that’s just how the US political system works, as much as it seems very weird to outsiders for presidential candidates to spend $1bn each in six months, and for every election down to the dog catcher (but mostly judges and DAs) to attract serious money to push a particular agenda.
Yes, that’s free speech. He can give his money to who he wants. Meanwhile, the US (and Hungarian) right have turned him into a hate figure, with lots of wink-wink conspiracy theories implied, lots of echoes of “Jews control the media”.
The problem obviously isn’t “Jews”, the problem is the likes of Soros, the Kochs, Murdoch, Gates et al controlling the media, and aggressively going after new media that doesn’t toe the line, telling lies to their advertisers and trying to deprive them of revenue. Hence the lawsuits.
I’m expecting it to get a lot worse in the next 12 months, with lots of pressure on large companies to not advertise on any platform that’s not considered mainstream.
I don't see anyone "aggressively going after new media that doesn't toe the line". I see people saying the obvious, that Nazis and antisemitism are commoner and commoner on Twitter. Soros does not control the media and his influence here is massively overstated. References to "Soros" by the US MAGA right are a dogwhistle referencing antisemitic conspiracy theories. See https://antisemitism.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Final-George-Soros-Briefing.pdf
Also, I am always baffled why you, personally, go in to bat for a bunch of people who back Putin over Ukraine.
Today’s news isn’t about Twitter, it’s about Rumble.
Soros as an individual has been funding Democrats for decades, trying to call any criticism of him as an individual antisemitic is half of the problem. Just as it’s possible to critisise Netanyahu without being anti-Semitic, yet few on the left seem to manage it.
Soros has funded the campaigns of judges and district attorneys in the US, who now oversee record crime rates in cities, and see Trump and other conservatives dragged through courts for what in many cases are clearly politically motivated charges.
I’m not going into bat for a bunch of Putinists, I’m trying to provide some balance to the debate here on US politics by following loads of people on all sides of the debate. It’s clear that the US focus is now on China as the primary enemy, and that European governments are going to need to step up and fund NATO properly, rather than relying on the US. On that matter, Trump was right.
If Trump didn't want to be "dragged through courts" for fraud and insurrection, he shouldn't have committed fraud and insurrection.
Putin loving Rumble, is most definitely not the same as Rumble loving Putin.
The fact that a bunch of racist idiots try and use Soros’ name as a conspiracy theory, doesn’t mean that valid critisicm of that particular individual is racist.
Well, show me some valid criticism of Soros then. You just chucked his name in as if that proved Media Matters must be up to no good.
I hope, vainly, that the question of where the money went will eventually be addressed, at some length.
Which money?
In many cases subpostmasters put their own money in to make up the discrepancies. The PO took this money. It was effectively taking money it was not owed - theft in short.
Yes - iirc it was "There is this shortage (says the computer). YOU FIX IT, OR ELSE." Which meant that SPOs put their own savings in because they were scared.
Politico commented thus (don't know I wasn't there):
Disrupter of the Year Suella Braverman could not suppress her grin as she walked on to I Predict a Riot. The sacked home secretary said she’d won the title over the Supreme Court, the ECHR … and “for disrupting my plans to cut the numbers and deliver a manifesto pledge — the prime minister.”
The only problem … was her drive-by landed worse than a wet thud, with audible suckings of breath and not one laugh. “That’s her leadership hopes gone in 2 mins,” one of her many detractors texted gleefully. Said another: “I would say she bombed but you have to take off first.” One attendee called it as “avant-garde” … another described it using only wincing noises … and a Cabinet minister said simply: “Pathetic. Pathetic.”
I hope, vainly, that the question of where the money went will eventually be addressed, at some length.
You've got it the wrong way round.
No actual money went missing in most cases. The Horizon computer system was erroneously saying that money had gone missing when it hadn't. The interesting thing is that the investigators almost never tried to find out where the alleged stolen money had gone. If they had, they might have discovered that it didn't exist.
He's right. I listened to extracts from yesterday's HO Select Committee hearing. I normally defend Civil Servants, but the two who appeared yesterday (Rycroft + another) were embarrassingly hopeless - ill-prepared and incapable of answering basic questions. This led to the bizarre scenario of both the Chair (Diane Johnson, Lab) and Lee Anderson joining forces to tell them how useless they were.
It would appear that in their desperation to meet targets for removing the backlog, at least 17,000 asylum seekers have simply had their claims discontinued. When asked where they were, the response was simply "no idea".
I'm not sure on that one.
My MP Lee Anderson came across to me as a grandstanding barrack-room-lawyer - asking statistical questions based on multiple sub-categories, then having a go at Civil Servants for not having the answers immediately available in their heads.
Perhaps if he had given appropriate notice (eg 48-72 hours) of his complex questions Civil Servants would have been in a position to provide him with an answer.
I am not convinced that he actually wants answers, rather an opportunity to indulge in performative outrage on GB News / social media.
I'm open to correction by anyone with a more complete knowledge, but that is my impression from coverage I have seen.
@MattW. Quick follow-up: how is your chemo bearing up?
Bearing up thanks - more or less out and about again, and doing my first trip around friends in the south a week before Christmas.
Physically I'm slightly worse - not enough exercise, and on a routine asthma review for my asthna in remission this morning my blower test was a little down on the normal. But I was a trumpet player at school, which seems to have added resilience by giving extra lung capacity (really).
Jeez. McGowan’s last years sound grim. Serious paralysis, confined to a wheelchair, stuck in fucking Dublin, deep periods of depression
Shane, you should have bowed out around 45
And I say that as a true fan. One of my best ever gigs - maybe THE best - was the Pogues in Brixton on St Paddy’s day in about 1986. Magnificent
Getting his teeth fixed was the beginning of the end, those pearly whites in the sunken face of a dying man.
Rather an uncomfortable memory of a nurse telling me she’d tried to remove my dying mother’s teeth (which were fabulous and as nature intended) because she thought they were false. Funny what sticks in the mind.
Jeez. McGowan’s last years sound grim. Serious paralysis, confined to a wheelchair, stuck in fucking Dublin, deep periods of depression
Shane, you should have bowed out around 45
And I say that as a true fan. One of my best ever gigs - maybe THE best - was the Pogues in Brixton on St Paddy’s day in about 1986. Magnificent
Getting his teeth fixed was the beginning of the end, those pearly whites in the sunken face of a dying man.
Rather an uncomfortable memory of a nurse telling me she’d tried to remove my dying mother’s teeth (which were fabulous and as nature intended) because she thought they were false. Funny what sticks in the mind.
Ugh, sympathies
Knowing when to go is a fine art, especially for certified self-destructors
Are we going through this nonsense of everybody is off to Mastadon again...hows Threads doing these days, seems to have about as much popularity as Piers Morgan tv show.
Good point. Although I think Truth Social/Telegram provide the same functionality, unlike Bluesky/Mastodon. Neverthless a lot of people who leave Twitter come back. Zeihan's case is slightly different because he uses it to research and disseminate his stuff: the former is compromised by Muskery and the latter is not necessary
Enshittification is followed by high-value-users buggering off and founding their own communities. YouTube refuseniks are going to Nebula or Armchair History TV or that new gun one. Trump Twitniks went to Truth Social, Russians(?) went to Telegram. Threads/Mastodon didn't get traction because they were difficult to use(?). WhatsApp is its own thing.
We used to have megathings and now we don't: USENET went to newsgroups went to Geocities went to MySpace went to Facebook and fragmented to YouTube, Twitter, WhatsApp, Nebula, Truth Social, stuff, stuff, more stuff. Each year things become more difficult to analyse and summarise.
Most of the people on services like Nebula are on YouTube and use their YouTube videos to drive traffic to Nebula.
I know. Bloody annoying. Mustard's latest stuff is on Nebula not YT, I think Potential History has stopped publishing new stuff on YouTube.
Some of it is also YouTube censorship. Particularly history videos can be very tricky because the automated system get twitchy when talking about Nazis, Hitler, etc.
Youtube has all sorts of problems this year, they’re trying to avoid politically extreme content, but are instead tripping up a lot of legitimate content. There’s also thought to be political campaigners mass flagging current political content in an attempt to get it taken down, even if only temporarily.
I noticed that Rumble are making similar claims like Musk that Media Matters have been setting up profiles and engineering them to get the Nazi post next to an ad by following only the extremists, liking the posts etc, and those accounts are literally the only account that saw such an interaction out of millions / billions of ad serves.
Its a bit like going into a strip club, throwing money around like it is going out of fashion, accepting an invite to the VIP room, then clutching your pearls when the stripper ask if you might be interested in extras.
Speaking seriously...how else would you do it? There are 500 million tweets per day. Any given phenomenon can be found. If you wanted to demonstrate Nazi content next to, say, IBM (yes I know I know), then you'd have to either look for it or place a trap ad and wait. I don't know how to estimate frequency otherwise. How do you access, trawl and extract data from 500 million tweets?
As I've probably said on here before, advertisers are leaving Twitter because it has always been a fairly substandard advertising channel; miles behind meta and google in terms of creative formats and targeting, and therefore a very easy drop now that Elon is actively telling the people who ought to be paying the bills to go f*ck themselves (on top of everything else).
There's no conspiracy theory here. Twitter is a shit place to advertise, and you can by and large reach the same people more easily, accurately with better creative elsewhere; it's easy enough for a big campaign to write off that bit of additional audience cover Twitter might have given you. If Musk had bought Meta or Google, I doubt as many would be jumping ship as it would have a real-life effect on bottom lines.
There will be exceptions, of course - if I was running an NFT scam, for example, X would probably be my first port of call.
This is what some of us said way before Musk took over. The genius of Meta is how much they know about everybody, the genius of Google / Apple is they have become the top of pyramid when it comes to controlling ad market on the internet.
Twitter knows f##k all about them in comparison. TikTok has piss poor revenue despite being wildly popular.
EggProfile105353 isn't very valuable to an advertiser.
What twitter does have is oversized influence among people with power and influence. That is why they get so angry about Musk and Musk controlling it. He now owns "their" toy and they don't like what he is doing with it. The whole "its a private company, they can do what they like" line seems to have gone out of fashion rather quickly.
Has it ?
It seems to me that it's Musk who's complaining about private companies removing their advertising. He can, as far as the law and his urged shareholders allow, indeed do what he wants with Twitter. Complaining then about the self imposed consequences of his decisions is pathetic stuff.
I don't see why you have a problem with users of the site complaining that it's got worse ?
Has it got worse?
The OpenAI saga unfolded entirely on TwiX. Unless you are a TwiX user, and following the right acccounts/stories, you’d have been days behind the narrative
There's more spam. Replies are no good because blue ticks get hoisted to the top, so you have to wade through ten metric fucktons of fruitcakes before finding anything insightful (or even coherent). Stuff is randomly downranked without explanation - e.g. if you tweet a link to a story on a Substack-hosted site, it vanishes into oblivion because Musk doesn't like Substack. And the site itself is flakey - there's unexpected behaviour (basically JavaScript bugs) much more than there used to be.
I was genuinely taken aback by the Musk NYT Dealbook interview - he was clearly on something, though I'll bow to those with a greater knowledge of pharmaceuticals to say what it might have been.
Are we going through this nonsense of everybody is off to Mastadon again...hows Threads doing these days, seems to have about as much popularity as Piers Morgan tv show.
Good point. Although I think Truth Social/Telegram provide the same functionality, unlike Bluesky/Mastodon. Neverthless a lot of people who leave Twitter come back. Zeihan's case is slightly different because he uses it to research and disseminate his stuff: the former is compromised by Muskery and the latter is not necessary
Enshittification is followed by high-value-users buggering off and founding their own communities. YouTube refuseniks are going to Nebula or Armchair History TV or that new gun one. Trump Twitniks went to Truth Social, Russians(?) went to Telegram. Threads/Mastodon didn't get traction because they were difficult to use(?). WhatsApp is its own thing.
We used to have megathings and now we don't: USENET went to newsgroups went to Geocities went to MySpace went to Facebook and fragmented to YouTube, Twitter, WhatsApp, Nebula, Truth Social, stuff, stuff, more stuff. Each year things become more difficult to analyse and summarise.
Most of the people on services like Nebula are on YouTube and use their YouTube videos to drive traffic to Nebula.
I know. Bloody annoying. Mustard's latest stuff is on Nebula not YT, I think Potential History has stopped publishing new stuff on YouTube.
Some of it is also YouTube censorship. Particularly history videos can be very tricky because the automated system get twitchy when talking about Nazis, Hitler, etc.
Youtube has all sorts of problems this year, they’re trying to avoid politically extreme content, but are instead tripping up a lot of legitimate content. There’s also thought to be political campaigners mass flagging current political content in an attempt to get it taken down, even if only temporarily.
I noticed that Rumble are making similar claims like Musk that Media Matters have been setting up profiles and engineering them to get the Nazi post next to an ad by following only the extremists, liking the posts etc, and those accounts are literally the only account that saw such an interaction out of millions / billions of ad serves.
Its a bit like going into a strip club, throwing money around like it is going out of fashion, accepting an invite to the VIP room, then clutching your pearls when the stripper ask if you might be interested in extras.
There’s a number of these nonprofit groups in the US, who appear to be very well funded and are trying to take down alternative media by going after their revenue sources. We know from filings that Media Matters took $1m from Soros a few years ago.
I have a feeling that the next 12 months is going to be very difficult for these companies, in the buildup to the election. On the other hand, there’s also organisations such as Public Square that have started up, recommending conservative businesses to the public and to each other. In the media space, there’s companies like Daily Wire throwing huge amounts of money at all sorts of random projects. DW now has 1m monthly subscribers, and annual revenue approaching $250m.
Oh, wow, straight to people being “very well funded” and Soros as a source of all evil?
He’s the Democrat version of the Koch brothers, willing to spend quite literally billions of dollars on politicians and political campaigns in the US over a period of decades.
It’s not controversial, that’s just how the US political system works, as much as it seems very weird to outsiders for presidential candidates to spend $1bn each in six months, and for every election down to the dog catcher (but mostly judges and DAs) to attract serious money to push a particular agenda.
Yes, that’s free speech. He can give his money to who he wants. Meanwhile, the US (and Hungarian) right have turned him into a hate figure, with lots of wink-wink conspiracy theories implied, lots of echoes of “Jews control the media”.
The problem obviously isn’t “Jews”, the problem is the likes of Soros, the Kochs, Murdoch, Gates et al controlling the media, and aggressively going after new media that doesn’t toe the line, telling lies to their advertisers and trying to deprive them of revenue. Hence the lawsuits.
I’m expecting it to get a lot worse in the next 12 months, with lots of pressure on large companies to not advertise on any platform that’s not considered mainstream.
I don't see anyone "aggressively going after new media that doesn't toe the line". I see people saying the obvious, that Nazis and antisemitism are commoner and commoner on Twitter. Soros does not control the media and his influence here is massively overstated. References to "Soros" by the US MAGA right are a dogwhistle referencing antisemitic conspiracy theories. See https://antisemitism.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Final-George-Soros-Briefing.pdf
Also, I am always baffled why you, personally, go in to bat for a bunch of people who back Putin over Ukraine.
Today’s news isn’t about Twitter, it’s about Rumble.
Soros as an individual has been funding Democrats for decades, trying to call any criticism of him as an individual antisemitic is half of the problem. Just as it’s possible to critisise Netanyahu without being anti-Semitic, yet few on the left seem to manage it.
Soros has funded the campaigns of judges and district attorneys in the US, who now oversee record crime rates in cities, and see Trump and other conservatives dragged through courts for what in many cases are clearly politically motivated charges.
I’m not going into bat for a bunch of Putinists, I’m trying to provide some balance to the debate here on US politics by following loads of people on all sides of the debate. It’s clear that the US focus is now on China as the primary enemy, and that European governments are going to need to step up and fund NATO properly, rather than relying on the US. On that matter, Trump was right.
If Trump didn't want to be "dragged through courts" for fraud and insurrection, he shouldn't have committed fraud and insurrection.
Putin loving Rumble, is most definitely not the same as Rumble loving Putin.
The fact that a bunch of racist idiots try and use Soros’ name as a conspiracy theory, doesn’t mean that valid critisicm of that particular individual is racist.
Well, show me some valid criticism of Soros then. You just chucked his name in as if that proved Media Matters must be up to no good.
My criticism of Soros, is that he’s been funding campaigns for elected offices of people with whom I profoundly disagree.
For example, the DAs in San Francisco and Los Angeles who decided to effectively decriminalise shoplifting and vagrancy, and the DA in New York who campaigned on a platform of “Get Donald Trump”.
He's right. I listened to extracts from yesterday's HO Select Committee hearing. I normally defend Civil Servants, but the two who appeared yesterday (Rycroft + another) were embarrassingly hopeless - ill-prepared and incapable of answering basic questions. This led to the bizarre scenario of both the Chair (Diane Johnson, Lab) and Lee Anderson joining forces to tell them how useless they were.
It would appear that in their desperation to meet targets for removing the backlog, at least 17,000 asylum seekers have simply had their claims discontinued. When asked where they were, the response was simply "no idea".
I'm not sure on that one.
My MP Lee Anderson came across to me as a grandstanding barrack-room-lawyer - asking statistical questions based on multiple sub-categories, then having a go at Civil Servants for not having the answers immediately available in their heads.
Perhaps if he had given appropriate notice (eg 48-72 hours) of his complex questions Civil Servants would have been in a position to provide him with an answer.
I am not convinced that he actually wants answers, rather an opportunity to indulge in performative outrage on GB News / social media.
I'm open to correction by anyone with a more complete knowledge, but that is my impression from coverage I have seen.
@MattW. Quick follow-up: how is your chemo bearing up?
Bearing up thanks - more or less out and about again, and doing my first trip around friends in the south a week before Christmas.
Physically I'm slightly worse - not enough exercise, and on a routine asthma review for my asthna in remission this morning my blower test was a little down on the normal. But I was a trumpet player at school, which seems to have added resilience by giving extra lung capacity (really).
Are we going through this nonsense of everybody is off to Mastadon again...hows Threads doing these days, seems to have about as much popularity as Piers Morgan tv show.
Good point. Although I think Truth Social/Telegram provide the same functionality, unlike Bluesky/Mastodon. Neverthless a lot of people who leave Twitter come back. Zeihan's case is slightly different because he uses it to research and disseminate his stuff: the former is compromised by Muskery and the latter is not necessary
Enshittification is followed by high-value-users buggering off and founding their own communities. YouTube refuseniks are going to Nebula or Armchair History TV or that new gun one. Trump Twitniks went to Truth Social, Russians(?) went to Telegram. Threads/Mastodon didn't get traction because they were difficult to use(?). WhatsApp is its own thing.
We used to have megathings and now we don't: USENET went to newsgroups went to Geocities went to MySpace went to Facebook and fragmented to YouTube, Twitter, WhatsApp, Nebula, Truth Social, stuff, stuff, more stuff. Each year things become more difficult to analyse and summarise.
Most of the people on services like Nebula are on YouTube and use their YouTube videos to drive traffic to Nebula.
I know. Bloody annoying. Mustard's latest stuff is on Nebula not YT, I think Potential History has stopped publishing new stuff on YouTube.
Some of it is also YouTube censorship. Particularly history videos can be very tricky because the automated system get twitchy when talking about Nazis, Hitler, etc.
Youtube has all sorts of problems this year, they’re trying to avoid politically extreme content, but are instead tripping up a lot of legitimate content. There’s also thought to be political campaigners mass flagging current political content in an attempt to get it taken down, even if only temporarily.
I noticed that Rumble are making similar claims like Musk that Media Matters have been setting up profiles and engineering them to get the Nazi post next to an ad by following only the extremists, liking the posts etc, and those accounts are literally the only account that saw such an interaction out of millions / billions of ad serves.
Its a bit like going into a strip club, throwing money around like it is going out of fashion, accepting an invite to the VIP room, then clutching your pearls when the stripper ask if you might be interested in extras.
There’s a number of these nonprofit groups in the US, who appear to be very well funded and are trying to take down alternative media by going after their revenue sources. We know from filings that Media Matters took $1m from Soros a few years ago.
I have a feeling that the next 12 months is going to be very difficult for these companies, in the buildup to the election. On the other hand, there’s also organisations such as Public Square that have started up, recommending conservative businesses to the public and to each other. In the media space, there’s companies like Daily Wire throwing huge amounts of money at all sorts of random projects. DW now has 1m monthly subscribers, and annual revenue approaching $250m.
Oh, wow, straight to people being “very well funded” and Soros as a source of all evil?
He’s the Democrat version of the Koch brothers, willing to spend quite literally billions of dollars on politicians and political campaigns in the US over a period of decades.
It’s not controversial, that’s just how the US political system works, as much as it seems very weird to outsiders for presidential candidates to spend $1bn each in six months, and for every election down to the dog catcher (but mostly judges and DAs) to attract serious money to push a particular agenda.
Yes, that’s free speech. He can give his money to who he wants. Meanwhile, the US (and Hungarian) right have turned him into a hate figure, with lots of wink-wink conspiracy theories implied, lots of echoes of “Jews control the media”.
The problem obviously isn’t “Jews”, the problem is the likes of Soros, the Kochs, Murdoch, Gates et al controlling the media, and aggressively going after new media that doesn’t toe the line, telling lies to their advertisers and trying to deprive them of revenue. Hence the lawsuits.
I’m expecting it to get a lot worse in the next 12 months, with lots of pressure on large companies to not advertise on any platform that’s not considered mainstream.
I don't see anyone "aggressively going after new media that doesn't toe the line". I see people saying the obvious, that Nazis and antisemitism are commoner and commoner on Twitter. Soros does not control the media and his influence here is massively overstated. References to "Soros" by the US MAGA right are a dogwhistle referencing antisemitic conspiracy theories. See https://antisemitism.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Final-George-Soros-Briefing.pdf
Also, I am always baffled why you, personally, go in to bat for a bunch of people who back Putin over Ukraine.
Today’s news isn’t about Twitter, it’s about Rumble.
Soros as an individual has been funding Democrats for decades, trying to call any criticism of him as an individual antisemitic is half of the problem. Just as it’s possible to critisise Netanyahu without being anti-Semitic, yet few on the left seem to manage it.
Soros has funded the campaigns of judges and district attorneys in the US, who now oversee record crime rates in cities, and see Trump and other conservatives dragged through courts for what in many cases are clearly politically motivated charges.
I’m not going into bat for a bunch of Putinists, I’m trying to provide some balance to the debate here on US politics by following loads of people on all sides of the debate. It’s clear that the US focus is now on China as the primary enemy, and that European governments are going to need to step up and fund NATO properly, rather than relying on the US. On that matter, Trump was right.
Whether you regard his influence as benign or malign, George Soros and his organisation are intensely politically active, and should be open to criticism and/or praise on that basis.
It also makes me smile to myself when people lampoon the idea of 'those woke left-wing financial markets' bringing down Liz Truss, when you only have to look at Soros as an example of an investor who spends billions to achieve his desired political outcomes.
Are we going through this nonsense of everybody is off to Mastadon again...hows Threads doing these days, seems to have about as much popularity as Piers Morgan tv show.
Good point. Although I think Truth Social/Telegram provide the same functionality, unlike Bluesky/Mastodon. Neverthless a lot of people who leave Twitter come back. Zeihan's case is slightly different because he uses it to research and disseminate his stuff: the former is compromised by Muskery and the latter is not necessary
Enshittification is followed by high-value-users buggering off and founding their own communities. YouTube refuseniks are going to Nebula or Armchair History TV or that new gun one. Trump Twitniks went to Truth Social, Russians(?) went to Telegram. Threads/Mastodon didn't get traction because they were difficult to use(?). WhatsApp is its own thing.
We used to have megathings and now we don't: USENET went to newsgroups went to Geocities went to MySpace went to Facebook and fragmented to YouTube, Twitter, WhatsApp, Nebula, Truth Social, stuff, stuff, more stuff. Each year things become more difficult to analyse and summarise.
Most of the people on services like Nebula are on YouTube and use their YouTube videos to drive traffic to Nebula.
I know. Bloody annoying. Mustard's latest stuff is on Nebula not YT, I think Potential History has stopped publishing new stuff on YouTube.
Some of it is also YouTube censorship. Particularly history videos can be very tricky because the automated system get twitchy when talking about Nazis, Hitler, etc.
Youtube has all sorts of problems this year, they’re trying to avoid politically extreme content, but are instead tripping up a lot of legitimate content. There’s also thought to be political campaigners mass flagging current political content in an attempt to get it taken down, even if only temporarily.
I noticed that Rumble are making similar claims like Musk that Media Matters have been setting up profiles and engineering them to get the Nazi post next to an ad by following only the extremists, liking the posts etc, and those accounts are literally the only account that saw such an interaction out of millions / billions of ad serves.
Its a bit like going into a strip club, throwing money around like it is going out of fashion, accepting an invite to the VIP room, then clutching your pearls when the stripper ask if you might be interested in extras.
There’s a number of these nonprofit groups in the US, who appear to be very well funded and are trying to take down alternative media by going after their revenue sources. We know from filings that Media Matters took $1m from Soros a few years ago.
I have a feeling that the next 12 months is going to be very difficult for these companies, in the buildup to the election. On the other hand, there’s also organisations such as Public Square that have started up, recommending conservative businesses to the public and to each other. In the media space, there’s companies like Daily Wire throwing huge amounts of money at all sorts of random projects. DW now has 1m monthly subscribers, and annual revenue approaching $250m.
Oh, wow, straight to people being “very well funded” and Soros as a source of all evil?
He’s the Democrat version of the Koch brothers, willing to spend quite literally billions of dollars on politicians and political campaigns in the US over a period of decades.
It’s not controversial, that’s just how the US political system works, as much as it seems very weird to outsiders for presidential candidates to spend $1bn each in six months, and for every election down to the dog catcher (but mostly judges and DAs) to attract serious money to push a particular agenda.
Yes, that’s free speech. He can give his money to who he wants. Meanwhile, the US (and Hungarian) right have turned him into a hate figure, with lots of wink-wink conspiracy theories implied, lots of echoes of “Jews control the media”.
The problem obviously isn’t “Jews”, the problem is the likes of Soros, the Kochs, Murdoch, Gates et al controlling the media, and aggressively going after new media that doesn’t toe the line, telling lies to their advertisers and trying to deprive them of revenue. Hence the lawsuits.
I’m expecting it to get a lot worse in the next 12 months, with lots of pressure on large companies to not advertise on any platform that’s not considered mainstream.
I don't see anyone "aggressively going after new media that doesn't toe the line". I see people saying the obvious, that Nazis and antisemitism are commoner and commoner on Twitter. Soros does not control the media and his influence here is massively overstated. References to "Soros" by the US MAGA right are a dogwhistle referencing antisemitic conspiracy theories. See https://antisemitism.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Final-George-Soros-Briefing.pdf
Also, I am always baffled why you, personally, go in to bat for a bunch of people who back Putin over Ukraine.
Today’s news isn’t about Twitter, it’s about Rumble.
Soros as an individual has been funding Democrats for decades, trying to call any criticism of him as an individual antisemitic is half of the problem. Just as it’s possible to critisise Netanyahu without being anti-Semitic, yet few on the left seem to manage it.
Soros has funded the campaigns of judges and district attorneys in the US, who now oversee record crime rates in cities, and see Trump and other conservatives dragged through courts for what in many cases are clearly politically motivated charges.
I’m not going into bat for a bunch of Putinists, I’m trying to provide some balance to the debate here on US politics by following loads of people on all sides of the debate. It’s clear that the US focus is now on China as the primary enemy, and that European governments are going to need to step up and fund NATO properly, rather than relying on the US. On that matter, Trump was right.
If Trump didn't want to be "dragged through courts" for fraud and insurrection, he shouldn't have committed fraud and insurrection.
Putin loving Rumble, is most definitely not the same as Rumble loving Putin.
The fact that a bunch of racist idiots try and use Soros’ name as a conspiracy theory, doesn’t mean that valid critisicm of that particular individual is racist.
Well, show me some valid criticism of Soros then. You just chucked his name in as if that proved Media Matters must be up to no good.
My criticism of Soros, is that he’s been funding campaigns for elected offices of people with whom I profoundly disagree.
For example, the DAs in San Francisco and Los Angeles who decided to effectively decriminalise shoplifting and vagrancy, and the DA in New York who campaigned on a platform of “Get Donald Trump”.
Politico commented thus (don't know I wasn't there):
Disrupter of the Year Suella Braverman could not suppress her grin as she walked on to I Predict a Riot. The sacked home secretary said she’d won the title over the Supreme Court, the ECHR … and “for disrupting my plans to cut the numbers and deliver a manifesto pledge — the prime minister.”
The only problem … was her drive-by landed worse than a wet thud, with audible suckings of breath and not one laugh. “That’s her leadership hopes gone in 2 mins,” one of her many detractors texted gleefully. Said another: “I would say she bombed but you have to take off first.” One attendee called it as “avant-garde” … another described it using only wincing noises … and a Cabinet minister said simply: “Pathetic. Pathetic.”
I don't want to seem too po-faced, but it's a sad reflection of our times that 'the oldest and most venerable political magazine on earth' thinks that Braverman's antics are just jolly japery and deserving of a celebratory piss-up. The nation really is poorly served by these jokers.
Are we going through this nonsense of everybody is off to Mastadon again...hows Threads doing these days, seems to have about as much popularity as Piers Morgan tv show.
Good point. Although I think Truth Social/Telegram provide the same functionality, unlike Bluesky/Mastodon. Neverthless a lot of people who leave Twitter come back. Zeihan's case is slightly different because he uses it to research and disseminate his stuff: the former is compromised by Muskery and the latter is not necessary
Enshittification is followed by high-value-users buggering off and founding their own communities. YouTube refuseniks are going to Nebula or Armchair History TV or that new gun one. Trump Twitniks went to Truth Social, Russians(?) went to Telegram. Threads/Mastodon didn't get traction because they were difficult to use(?). WhatsApp is its own thing.
We used to have megathings and now we don't: USENET went to newsgroups went to Geocities went to MySpace went to Facebook and fragmented to YouTube, Twitter, WhatsApp, Nebula, Truth Social, stuff, stuff, more stuff. Each year things become more difficult to analyse and summarise.
Most of the people on services like Nebula are on YouTube and use their YouTube videos to drive traffic to Nebula.
I know. Bloody annoying. Mustard's latest stuff is on Nebula not YT, I think Potential History has stopped publishing new stuff on YouTube.
Some of it is also YouTube censorship. Particularly history videos can be very tricky because the automated system get twitchy when talking about Nazis, Hitler, etc.
Youtube has all sorts of problems this year, they’re trying to avoid politically extreme content, but are instead tripping up a lot of legitimate content. There’s also thought to be political campaigners mass flagging current political content in an attempt to get it taken down, even if only temporarily.
I noticed that Rumble are making similar claims like Musk that Media Matters have been setting up profiles and engineering them to get the Nazi post next to an ad by following only the extremists, liking the posts etc, and those accounts are literally the only account that saw such an interaction out of millions / billions of ad serves.
Its a bit like going into a strip club, throwing money around like it is going out of fashion, accepting an invite to the VIP room, then clutching your pearls when the stripper ask if you might be interested in extras.
There’s a number of these nonprofit groups in the US, who appear to be very well funded and are trying to take down alternative media by going after their revenue sources. We know from filings that Media Matters took $1m from Soros a few years ago.
I have a feeling that the next 12 months is going to be very difficult for these companies, in the buildup to the election. On the other hand, there’s also organisations such as Public Square that have started up, recommending conservative businesses to the public and to each other. In the media space, there’s companies like Daily Wire throwing huge amounts of money at all sorts of random projects. DW now has 1m monthly subscribers, and annual revenue approaching $250m.
Oh, wow, straight to people being “very well funded” and Soros as a source of all evil?
He’s the Democrat version of the Koch brothers, willing to spend quite literally billions of dollars on politicians and political campaigns in the US over a period of decades.
It’s not controversial, that’s just how the US political system works, as much as it seems very weird to outsiders for presidential candidates to spend $1bn each in six months, and for every election down to the dog catcher (but mostly judges and DAs) to attract serious money to push a particular agenda.
Yes, that’s free speech. He can give his money to who he wants. Meanwhile, the US (and Hungarian) right have turned him into a hate figure, with lots of wink-wink conspiracy theories implied, lots of echoes of “Jews control the media”.
The problem obviously isn’t “Jews”, the problem is the likes of Soros, the Kochs, Murdoch, Gates et al controlling the media, and aggressively going after new media that doesn’t toe the line, telling lies to their advertisers and trying to deprive them of revenue. Hence the lawsuits.
I’m expecting it to get a lot worse in the next 12 months, with lots of pressure on large companies to not advertise on any platform that’s not considered mainstream.
I don't see anyone "aggressively going after new media that doesn't toe the line". I see people saying the obvious, that Nazis and antisemitism are commoner and commoner on Twitter. Soros does not control the media and his influence here is massively overstated. References to "Soros" by the US MAGA right are a dogwhistle referencing antisemitic conspiracy theories. See https://antisemitism.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Final-George-Soros-Briefing.pdf
Also, I am always baffled why you, personally, go in to bat for a bunch of people who back Putin over Ukraine.
Today’s news isn’t about Twitter, it’s about Rumble.
Soros as an individual has been funding Democrats for decades, trying to call any criticism of him as an individual antisemitic is half of the problem. Just as it’s possible to critisise Netanyahu without being anti-Semitic, yet few on the left seem to manage it.
Soros has funded the campaigns of judges and district attorneys in the US, who now oversee record crime rates in cities, and see Trump and other conservatives dragged through courts for what in many cases are clearly politically motivated charges.
I’m not going into bat for a bunch of Putinists, I’m trying to provide some balance to the debate here on US politics by following loads of people on all sides of the debate. It’s clear that the US focus is now on China as the primary enemy, and that European governments are going to need to step up and fund NATO properly, rather than relying on the US. On that matter, Trump was right.
If Trump didn't want to be "dragged through courts" for fraud and insurrection, he shouldn't have committed fraud and insurrection.
Putin loving Rumble, is most definitely not the same as Rumble loving Putin.
The fact that a bunch of racist idiots try and use Soros’ name as a conspiracy theory, doesn’t mean that valid critisicm of that particular individual is racist.
Well, show me some valid criticism of Soros then. You just chucked his name in as if that proved Media Matters must be up to no good.
My criticism of Soros, is that he’s been funding campaigns for elected offices of people with whom I profoundly disagree.
For example, the DAs in San Francisco and Los Angeles who decided to effectively decriminalise shoplifting and vagrancy, and the DA in New York who campaigned on a platform of “Get Donald Trump”.
Yet you're a very keen fan of Musk.
Not at all, I’m just not someone who thinks of him as evil. The world would be better with more Elon Musks, but someone needs to take his phone off him when he’s on drugs.
Someone I know knew him a little bit. He was a thoroughly nice fellah by all accounts.
Yes, that's what I thought, though we were never in close contact. Very much free of the ego-promoting self-centred approach of some.
I am not sure he got enough credit for his actions during the banking crisis. Many reports at the time that he was able to moderate Gordon Browns more irrational demands while still finding solutions.
Brown went on to claim he saved the world, Darling rather kept a lowish profile and retired without much fanfare both from MP and Lords.
Nice words from Hunt on Darling; well done.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt described his predecessor in 11 Downing Street as "one of the great chancellors". Mr Hunt said: "He'll be remembered for doing the right thing for the country at a time of extraordinary turmoil. My deepest sympathies to his family."
Are we going through this nonsense of everybody is off to Mastadon again...hows Threads doing these days, seems to have about as much popularity as Piers Morgan tv show.
Good point. Although I think Truth Social/Telegram provide the same functionality, unlike Bluesky/Mastodon. Neverthless a lot of people who leave Twitter come back. Zeihan's case is slightly different because he uses it to research and disseminate his stuff: the former is compromised by Muskery and the latter is not necessary
Enshittification is followed by high-value-users buggering off and founding their own communities. YouTube refuseniks are going to Nebula or Armchair History TV or that new gun one. Trump Twitniks went to Truth Social, Russians(?) went to Telegram. Threads/Mastodon didn't get traction because they were difficult to use(?). WhatsApp is its own thing.
We used to have megathings and now we don't: USENET went to newsgroups went to Geocities went to MySpace went to Facebook and fragmented to YouTube, Twitter, WhatsApp, Nebula, Truth Social, stuff, stuff, more stuff. Each year things become more difficult to analyse and summarise.
Most of the people on services like Nebula are on YouTube and use their YouTube videos to drive traffic to Nebula.
I know. Bloody annoying. Mustard's latest stuff is on Nebula not YT, I think Potential History has stopped publishing new stuff on YouTube.
Some of it is also YouTube censorship. Particularly history videos can be very tricky because the automated system get twitchy when talking about Nazis, Hitler, etc.
Youtube has all sorts of problems this year, they’re trying to avoid politically extreme content, but are instead tripping up a lot of legitimate content. There’s also thought to be political campaigners mass flagging current political content in an attempt to get it taken down, even if only temporarily.
I noticed that Rumble are making similar claims like Musk that Media Matters have been setting up profiles and engineering them to get the Nazi post next to an ad by following only the extremists, liking the posts etc, and those accounts are literally the only account that saw such an interaction out of millions / billions of ad serves.
Its a bit like going into a strip club, throwing money around like it is going out of fashion, accepting an invite to the VIP room, then clutching your pearls when the stripper ask if you might be interested in extras.
There’s a number of these nonprofit groups in the US, who appear to be very well funded and are trying to take down alternative media by going after their revenue sources. We know from filings that Media Matters took $1m from Soros a few years ago.
I have a feeling that the next 12 months is going to be very difficult for these companies, in the buildup to the election. On the other hand, there’s also organisations such as Public Square that have started up, recommending conservative businesses to the public and to each other. In the media space, there’s companies like Daily Wire throwing huge amounts of money at all sorts of random projects. DW now has 1m monthly subscribers, and annual revenue approaching $250m.
Oh, wow, straight to people being “very well funded” and Soros as a source of all evil?
He’s the Democrat version of the Koch brothers, willing to spend quite literally billions of dollars on politicians and political campaigns in the US over a period of decades.
It’s not controversial, that’s just how the US political system works, as much as it seems very weird to outsiders for presidential candidates to spend $1bn each in six months, and for every election down to the dog catcher (but mostly judges and DAs) to attract serious money to push a particular agenda.
Yes, that’s free speech. He can give his money to who he wants. Meanwhile, the US (and Hungarian) right have turned him into a hate figure, with lots of wink-wink conspiracy theories implied, lots of echoes of “Jews control the media”.
The problem obviously isn’t “Jews”, the problem is the likes of Soros, the Kochs, Murdoch, Gates et al controlling the media, and aggressively going after new media that doesn’t toe the line, telling lies to their advertisers and trying to deprive them of revenue. Hence the lawsuits.
I’m expecting it to get a lot worse in the next 12 months, with lots of pressure on large companies to not advertise on any platform that’s not considered mainstream.
I don't see anyone "aggressively going after new media that doesn't toe the line". I see people saying the obvious, that Nazis and antisemitism are commoner and commoner on Twitter. Soros does not control the media and his influence here is massively overstated. References to "Soros" by the US MAGA right are a dogwhistle referencing antisemitic conspiracy theories. See https://antisemitism.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Final-George-Soros-Briefing.pdf
Also, I am always baffled why you, personally, go in to bat for a bunch of people who back Putin over Ukraine.
Today’s news isn’t about Twitter, it’s about Rumble.
Soros as an individual has been funding Democrats for decades, trying to call any criticism of him as an individual antisemitic is half of the problem. Just as it’s possible to critisise Netanyahu without being anti-Semitic, yet few on the left seem to manage it.
Soros has funded the campaigns of judges and district attorneys in the US, who now oversee record crime rates in cities, and see Trump and other conservatives dragged through courts for what in many cases are clearly politically motivated charges.
I’m not going into bat for a bunch of Putinists, I’m trying to provide some balance to the debate here on US politics by following loads of people on all sides of the debate. It’s clear that the US focus is now on China as the primary enemy, and that European governments are going to need to step up and fund NATO properly, rather than relying on the US. On that matter, Trump was right.
Whether you regard his influence as benign or malign, George Soros and his organisation are intensely politically active, and should be open to criticism and/or praise on that basis.
It also makes me smile to myself when people lampoon the idea of 'those woke left-wing financial markets' bringing down Liz Truss, when you only have to look at Soros as an example of an investor who spends billions to achieve his desired political outcomes.
Do you have any evidence of Soros being involved in any trading that brought down Truss? Or is this just more "Jews control the banks"?
Microsoft has unveiled plans to invest £2.5bn in Britain as executives seek to draw a line under a feud with regulators over the $69bn (£47bn) takeover of video game maker Activision.
The US tech giant said the investment package signals a “vote of confidence” in the UK and will be used to build a new data centre in North London and expand computer capacity in Cardiff.
Microsoft has unveiled plans to invest £2.5bn in Britain as executives seek to draw a line under a feud with regulators over the $69bn (£47bn) takeover of video game maker Activision.
The US tech giant said the investment package signals a “vote of confidence” in the UK and will be used to build a new data centre in North London and expand computer capacity in Cardiff.
Politico commented thus (don't know I wasn't there):
Disrupter of the Year Suella Braverman could not suppress her grin as she walked on to I Predict a Riot. The sacked home secretary said she’d won the title over the Supreme Court, the ECHR … and “for disrupting my plans to cut the numbers and deliver a manifesto pledge — the prime minister.”
The only problem … was her drive-by landed worse than a wet thud, with audible suckings of breath and not one laugh. “That’s her leadership hopes gone in 2 mins,” one of her many detractors texted gleefully. Said another: “I would say she bombed but you have to take off first.” One attendee called it as “avant-garde” … another described it using only wincing noises … and a Cabinet minister said simply: “Pathetic. Pathetic.”
I think there’s a good chance Braverman would have managed to become leader, if she hadn’t just taken it that step too far with ProtestGate and Lifestyle Choice.
I suspect she is now destined to forever be on the fringes, complaining endlessly to anyone who will listen.
Someone I know knew him a little bit. He was a thoroughly nice fellah by all accounts.
Depends on your viewpoint , some consider him a real traitor
Still sad to pop your clogs at that age, would only give me 2 months to go.
Saw AD on the Victoria Line soon after the 2010 election, no doubt on his way to King's Cross and back home to civilisation. He looked perfectly content to be leaving London.
Politico commented thus (don't know I wasn't there):
Disrupter of the Year Suella Braverman could not suppress her grin as she walked on to I Predict a Riot. The sacked home secretary said she’d won the title over the Supreme Court, the ECHR … and “for disrupting my plans to cut the numbers and deliver a manifesto pledge — the prime minister.”
The only problem … was her drive-by landed worse than a wet thud, with audible suckings of breath and not one laugh. “That’s her leadership hopes gone in 2 mins,” one of her many detractors texted gleefully. Said another: “I would say she bombed but you have to take off first.” One attendee called it as “avant-garde” … another described it using only wincing noises … and a Cabinet minister said simply: “Pathetic. Pathetic.”
I don't want to seem too po-faced, but it's a sad reflection of our times that 'the oldest and most venerable political magazine on earth' thinks that Braverman's antics are just jolly japery and deserving of a celebratory piss-up. The nation really is poorly served by these jokers.
Pace various PBers the Speccie has rather lost its way, mirroring the lack of coherence of the thoughtful centre right recently. Like the rest of us it has lots of criticisms to make in the general, and right minded, war on reality, and is more open than most to hosting its own critics, but as to its affirmative world view, underlying and consistent principles etc, other than a disdain for the wrong sort, it is rather confused.
Did it ever really recover from that time when it took Mark Steyn seriously? Will it ever recover from ditto Rod Liddle?
He's right. I listened to extracts from yesterday's HO Select Committee hearing. I normally defend Civil Servants, but the two who appeared yesterday (Rycroft + another) were embarrassingly hopeless - ill-prepared and incapable of answering basic questions. This led to the bizarre scenario of both the Chair (Diane Johnson, Lab) and Lee Anderson joining forces to tell them how useless they were.
It would appear that in their desperation to meet targets for removing the backlog, at least 17,000 asylum seekers have simply had their claims discontinued. When asked where they were, the response was simply "no idea".
I'm not sure on that one.
My MP Lee Anderson came across to me as a grandstanding barrack-room-lawyer - asking statistical questions based on multiple sub-categories, then having a go at Civil Servants for not having the answers immediately available in their heads.
Perhaps if he had given appropriate notice (eg 48-72 hours) of his complex questions Civil Servants would have been in a position to provide him with an answer.
I am not convinced that he actually wants answers, rather an opportunity to indulge in performative outrage on GB News / social media.
I'm open to correction by anyone with a more complete knowledge, but that is my impression from coverage I have seen.
@MattW. Quick follow-up: how is your chemo bearing up?
Bearing up thanks - more or less out and about again, and doing my first trip around friends in the south a week before Christmas.
Physically I'm slightly worse - not enough exercise, and on a routine asthma review for my asthna in remission this morning my blower test was a little down on the normal. But I was a trumpet player at school, which seems to have added resilience by giving extra lung capacity (really).
Are we going through this nonsense of everybody is off to Mastadon again...hows Threads doing these days, seems to have about as much popularity as Piers Morgan tv show.
Good point. Although I think Truth Social/Telegram provide the same functionality, unlike Bluesky/Mastodon. Neverthless a lot of people who leave Twitter come back. Zeihan's case is slightly different because he uses it to research and disseminate his stuff: the former is compromised by Muskery and the latter is not necessary
Enshittification is followed by high-value-users buggering off and founding their own communities. YouTube refuseniks are going to Nebula or Armchair History TV or that new gun one. Trump Twitniks went to Truth Social, Russians(?) went to Telegram. Threads/Mastodon didn't get traction because they were difficult to use(?). WhatsApp is its own thing.
We used to have megathings and now we don't: USENET went to newsgroups went to Geocities went to MySpace went to Facebook and fragmented to YouTube, Twitter, WhatsApp, Nebula, Truth Social, stuff, stuff, more stuff. Each year things become more difficult to analyse and summarise.
Most of the people on services like Nebula are on YouTube and use their YouTube videos to drive traffic to Nebula.
I know. Bloody annoying. Mustard's latest stuff is on Nebula not YT, I think Potential History has stopped publishing new stuff on YouTube.
Some of it is also YouTube censorship. Particularly history videos can be very tricky because the automated system get twitchy when talking about Nazis, Hitler, etc.
Youtube has all sorts of problems this year, they’re trying to avoid politically extreme content, but are instead tripping up a lot of legitimate content. There’s also thought to be political campaigners mass flagging current political content in an attempt to get it taken down, even if only temporarily.
I noticed that Rumble are making similar claims like Musk that Media Matters have been setting up profiles and engineering them to get the Nazi post next to an ad by following only the extremists, liking the posts etc, and those accounts are literally the only account that saw such an interaction out of millions / billions of ad serves.
Its a bit like going into a strip club, throwing money around like it is going out of fashion, accepting an invite to the VIP room, then clutching your pearls when the stripper ask if you might be interested in extras.
There’s a number of these nonprofit groups in the US, who appear to be very well funded and are trying to take down alternative media by going after their revenue sources. We know from filings that Media Matters took $1m from Soros a few years ago.
I have a feeling that the next 12 months is going to be very difficult for these companies, in the buildup to the election. On the other hand, there’s also organisations such as Public Square that have started up, recommending conservative businesses to the public and to each other. In the media space, there’s companies like Daily Wire throwing huge amounts of money at all sorts of random projects. DW now has 1m monthly subscribers, and annual revenue approaching $250m.
Oh, wow, straight to people being “very well funded” and Soros as a source of all evil?
He’s the Democrat version of the Koch brothers, willing to spend quite literally billions of dollars on politicians and political campaigns in the US over a period of decades.
It’s not controversial, that’s just how the US political system works, as much as it seems very weird to outsiders for presidential candidates to spend $1bn each in six months, and for every election down to the dog catcher (but mostly judges and DAs) to attract serious money to push a particular agenda.
Yes, that’s free speech. He can give his money to who he wants. Meanwhile, the US (and Hungarian) right have turned him into a hate figure, with lots of wink-wink conspiracy theories implied, lots of echoes of “Jews control the media”.
The problem obviously isn’t “Jews”, the problem is the likes of Soros, the Kochs, Murdoch, Gates et al controlling the media, and aggressively going after new media that doesn’t toe the line, telling lies to their advertisers and trying to deprive them of revenue. Hence the lawsuits.
I’m expecting it to get a lot worse in the next 12 months, with lots of pressure on large companies to not advertise on any platform that’s not considered mainstream.
I don't see anyone "aggressively going after new media that doesn't toe the line". I see people saying the obvious, that Nazis and antisemitism are commoner and commoner on Twitter. Soros does not control the media and his influence here is massively overstated. References to "Soros" by the US MAGA right are a dogwhistle referencing antisemitic conspiracy theories. See https://antisemitism.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Final-George-Soros-Briefing.pdf
Also, I am always baffled why you, personally, go in to bat for a bunch of people who back Putin over Ukraine.
Today’s news isn’t about Twitter, it’s about Rumble.
Soros as an individual has been funding Democrats for decades, trying to call any criticism of him as an individual antisemitic is half of the problem. Just as it’s possible to critisise Netanyahu without being anti-Semitic, yet few on the left seem to manage it.
Soros has funded the campaigns of judges and district attorneys in the US, who now oversee record crime rates in cities, and see Trump and other conservatives dragged through courts for what in many cases are clearly politically motivated charges.
I’m not going into bat for a bunch of Putinists, I’m trying to provide some balance to the debate here on US politics by following loads of people on all sides of the debate. It’s clear that the US focus is now on China as the primary enemy, and that European governments are going to need to step up and fund NATO properly, rather than relying on the US. On that matter, Trump was right.
Whether you regard his influence as benign or malign, George Soros and his organisation are intensely politically active, and should be open to criticism and/or praise on that basis.
It also makes me smile to myself when people lampoon the idea of 'those woke left-wing financial markets' bringing down Liz Truss, when you only have to look at Soros as an example of an investor who spends billions to achieve his desired political outcomes.
Do you have any evidence of Soros being involved in any trading that brought down Truss? Or is this just more "Jews control the banks"?
Sorry, I assume basic reading and comprehension skills in those who read my comments here. I don't see how you can possibly infer that I'm alledging any trading to bring down Truss on the part of Soros in my post, but for the avoidance of doubt, my point is that the milieu of Soros indicates that investors with significant clout can be i) politically motivated and ii) have left wing goals. Making the hilarious lampooning of 'left wing markets bringing down Truss' a miss, and one that reveals its authors to be fairly gauche.
Politico commented thus (don't know I wasn't there):
Disrupter of the Year Suella Braverman could not suppress her grin as she walked on to I Predict a Riot. The sacked home secretary said she’d won the title over the Supreme Court, the ECHR … and “for disrupting my plans to cut the numbers and deliver a manifesto pledge — the prime minister.”
The only problem … was her drive-by landed worse than a wet thud, with audible suckings of breath and not one laugh. “That’s her leadership hopes gone in 2 mins,” one of her many detractors texted gleefully. Said another: “I would say she bombed but you have to take off first.” One attendee called it as “avant-garde” … another described it using only wincing noises … and a Cabinet minister said simply: “Pathetic. Pathetic.”
I think there’s a good chance Braverman would have managed to become leader, if she hadn’t just taken it that step too far with ProtestGate and Lifestyle Choice.
I suspect she is now destined to forever be on the fringes, complaining endlessly to anyone who will listen.
Her plan was presumably to be leader after Sunak's post election resignation in disgrace. Unless you have new info on his chances in the GE, the plan seems fairly on track, wouldn't you say?
Politico commented thus (don't know I wasn't there):
Disrupter of the Year Suella Braverman could not suppress her grin as she walked on to I Predict a Riot. The sacked home secretary said she’d won the title over the Supreme Court, the ECHR … and “for disrupting my plans to cut the numbers and deliver a manifesto pledge — the prime minister.”
The only problem … was her drive-by landed worse than a wet thud, with audible suckings of breath and not one laugh. “That’s her leadership hopes gone in 2 mins,” one of her many detractors texted gleefully. Said another: “I would say she bombed but you have to take off first.” One attendee called it as “avant-garde” … another described it using only wincing noises … and a Cabinet minister said simply: “Pathetic. Pathetic.”
I think there’s a good chance Braverman would have managed to become leader, if she hadn’t just taken it that step too far with ProtestGate and Lifestyle Choice.
I suspect she is now destined to forever be on the fringes, complaining endlessly to anyone who will listen.
Her plan was presumably to be leader after Sunak's post election resignation in disgrace. Unless you have new info on his chances in the GE, the plan seems fairly on track, wouldn't you say?
Save for the big Liz Truss shaped obstacle in the way, her plan could be on course, but the Truss ain't for moving.
Well, "SSI senior researcher Hanne-Dorthe Emborg said the outbreak wasn't unusual and experts had been predicting one for some time in the wake of Covid", but that didn't stop the headline "Now DENMARK battles surge in same type of 'white lung syndrome' pneumonia sparking fears in China". Bit disappointed they didn't capitalise CHINA or add "HOME OF COVID, China".
Well, "SSI senior researcher Hanne-Dorthe Emborg said the outbreak wasn't unusual and experts had been predicting one for some time in the wake of Covid", but that didn't stop the headline "Now DENMARK battles surge in same type of 'white lung syndrome' pneumonia sparking fears in China". Bit disappointed they didn't capitalise CHINA or add "HOME OF COVID, China".
Are we going through this nonsense of everybody is off to Mastadon again...hows Threads doing these days, seems to have about as much popularity as Piers Morgan tv show.
Good point. Although I think Truth Social/Telegram provide the same functionality, unlike Bluesky/Mastodon. Neverthless a lot of people who leave Twitter come back. Zeihan's case is slightly different because he uses it to research and disseminate his stuff: the former is compromised by Muskery and the latter is not necessary
Enshittification is followed by high-value-users buggering off and founding their own communities. YouTube refuseniks are going to Nebula or Armchair History TV or that new gun one. Trump Twitniks went to Truth Social, Russians(?) went to Telegram. Threads/Mastodon didn't get traction because they were difficult to use(?). WhatsApp is its own thing.
We used to have megathings and now we don't: USENET went to newsgroups went to Geocities went to MySpace went to Facebook and fragmented to YouTube, Twitter, WhatsApp, Nebula, Truth Social, stuff, stuff, more stuff. Each year things become more difficult to analyse and summarise.
Most of the people on services like Nebula are on YouTube and use their YouTube videos to drive traffic to Nebula.
I know. Bloody annoying. Mustard's latest stuff is on Nebula not YT, I think Potential History has stopped publishing new stuff on YouTube.
Some of it is also YouTube censorship. Particularly history videos can be very tricky because the automated system get twitchy when talking about Nazis, Hitler, etc.
Youtube has all sorts of problems this year, they’re trying to avoid politically extreme content, but are instead tripping up a lot of legitimate content. There’s also thought to be political campaigners mass flagging current political content in an attempt to get it taken down, even if only temporarily.
I noticed that Rumble are making similar claims like Musk that Media Matters have been setting up profiles and engineering them to get the Nazi post next to an ad by following only the extremists, liking the posts etc, and those accounts are literally the only account that saw such an interaction out of millions / billions of ad serves.
Its a bit like going into a strip club, throwing money around like it is going out of fashion, accepting an invite to the VIP room, then clutching your pearls when the stripper ask if you might be interested in extras.
There’s a number of these nonprofit groups in the US, who appear to be very well funded and are trying to take down alternative media by going after their revenue sources. We know from filings that Media Matters took $1m from Soros a few years ago.
I have a feeling that the next 12 months is going to be very difficult for these companies, in the buildup to the election. On the other hand, there’s also organisations such as Public Square that have started up, recommending conservative businesses to the public and to each other. In the media space, there’s companies like Daily Wire throwing huge amounts of money at all sorts of random projects. DW now has 1m monthly subscribers, and annual revenue approaching $250m.
Oh, wow, straight to people being “very well funded” and Soros as a source of all evil?
He’s the Democrat version of the Koch brothers, willing to spend quite literally billions of dollars on politicians and political campaigns in the US over a period of decades.
It’s not controversial, that’s just how the US political system works, as much as it seems very weird to outsiders for presidential candidates to spend $1bn each in six months, and for every election down to the dog catcher (but mostly judges and DAs) to attract serious money to push a particular agenda.
Yes, that’s free speech. He can give his money to who he wants. Meanwhile, the US (and Hungarian) right have turned him into a hate figure, with lots of wink-wink conspiracy theories implied, lots of echoes of “Jews control the media”.
The problem obviously isn’t “Jews”, the problem is the likes of Soros, the Kochs, Murdoch, Gates et al controlling the media, and aggressively going after new media that doesn’t toe the line, telling lies to their advertisers and trying to deprive them of revenue. Hence the lawsuits.
I’m expecting it to get a lot worse in the next 12 months, with lots of pressure on large companies to not advertise on any platform that’s not considered mainstream.
I don't see anyone "aggressively going after new media that doesn't toe the line". I see people saying the obvious, that Nazis and antisemitism are commoner and commoner on Twitter. Soros does not control the media and his influence here is massively overstated. References to "Soros" by the US MAGA right are a dogwhistle referencing antisemitic conspiracy theories. See https://antisemitism.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Final-George-Soros-Briefing.pdf
Also, I am always baffled why you, personally, go in to bat for a bunch of people who back Putin over Ukraine.
Today’s news isn’t about Twitter, it’s about Rumble.
Soros as an individual has been funding Democrats for decades, trying to call any criticism of him as an individual antisemitic is half of the problem. Just as it’s possible to critisise Netanyahu without being anti-Semitic, yet few on the left seem to manage it.
Soros has funded the campaigns of judges and district attorneys in the US, who now oversee record crime rates in cities, and see Trump and other conservatives dragged through courts for what in many cases are clearly politically motivated charges.
I’m not going into bat for a bunch of Putinists, I’m trying to provide some balance to the debate here on US politics by following loads of people on all sides of the debate. It’s clear that the US focus is now on China as the primary enemy, and that European governments are going to need to step up and fund NATO properly, rather than relying on the US. On that matter, Trump was right.
If Trump didn't want to be "dragged through courts" for fraud and insurrection, he shouldn't have committed fraud and insurrection.
Putin loving Rumble, is most definitely not the same as Rumble loving Putin.
The fact that a bunch of racist idiots try and use Soros’ name as a conspiracy theory, doesn’t mean that valid critisicm of that particular individual is racist.
Well, show me some valid criticism of Soros then. You just chucked his name in as if that proved Media Matters must be up to no good.
My criticism of Soros, is that he’s been funding campaigns for elected offices of people with whom I profoundly disagree.
For example, the DAs in San Francisco and Los Angeles who decided to effectively decriminalise shoplifting and vagrancy, and the DA in New York who campaigned on a platform of “Get Donald Trump”.
Yet you're a very keen fan of Musk.
Not at all, I’m just not someone who thinks of him as evil. The world would be better with more Elon Musks, but someone needs to take his phone off him when he’s on drugs.
He has his uses, business disruptors like him can be a great thing, its just a worry he's both an idiot who believes anything he reads online and if not antisemitic someone who likes antisemitic conspiracies and then whinges about not being understood.
Comments
Apologies once again
https://twitter.com/search?q=margaret hodge&src=typed_query&f=top
It was my first time voting with ID, although the Presiding Officer recognised me anyway. He said nearly everyone has been coming with ID, which is reassuring.
Jason Beer KC: "So you were just following orders really?"
Jarnail Singh: "Yes".
Jason Beer KC: "Thank you very much."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoSsalkkW98
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/31/us/politics/jd-vance-peter-thiel-rumble.html
Company Backed by J.D. Vance Gives Platform for Russian Propaganda
An interview of captive Americans done “under duress” appears on a web platform backed by J.D. Vance and Peter Thiel.
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/rumble-files-federal-defamation-lawsuit-against-co-founders-of-purported-watchdog-group-1032858785?op=1
Soros as an individual has been funding Democrats for decades, trying to call any criticism of him as an individual antisemitic is half of the problem. Just as it’s possible to critisise Netanyahu without being anti-Semitic, yet few on the left seem to manage it.
Soros has funded the campaigns of judges and district attorneys in the US, who now oversee record crime rates in cities, and see Trump and other conservatives dragged through courts for what in many cases are clearly politically motivated charges.
I’m not going into bat for a bunch of Putinists, I’m trying to provide some balance to the debate here on US politics by following loads of people on all sides of the debate. It’s clear that the US focus is now on China as the primary enemy, and that European governments are going to need to step up and fund NATO properly, rather than relying on the US. On that matter, Trump was right.
Freedom of speech is a thing in the US.
That NY Times piece is exactly the sort of hit job I’ve been talking about, the MSM and their backers trying to shut down alternative platforms.
It seems to me that it's Musk who's complaining about private companies removing their advertising.
He can, as far as the law and his urged shareholders allow, indeed do what he wants with Twitter. Complaining then about the self imposed consequences of his decisions is pathetic stuff.
I don't see why you have a problem with users of the site complaining that it's got worse ?
Its spyware on your phone for the Chinese government, their claims about data / servers have been found to be BS and lots of suspicion about what the algorithm is tweaked towards.
The its a private company, can't do nought about it deplatforming people, who it chooses to censor isn't our business, has turned into you must deplatform people, you must censor harder, disinformation yadda yadda yadda.
I didn't understand the fuss over it at the time (still don't) - it was obvious to a child that it was fiction, and if anything it gave me a twinge of sympathy to Scottish independence, since it presented a dramatic (albeit improbable) picture of the passions behind it.
I'm not saying any criticism of Soros is antisemitic. I'm saying that most criticism of Soros from the US and Hungarian right clearly is antisemitic. I gave you one reference above. Here's the Times of Israel: https://www.timesofisrael.com/soros-targeted-by-antisemitic-conspiracy-theories-hatred-amid-trump-indictment/ Here's Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/sethcohen/2020/09/12/the-troubling-truth-about-the-obsession-with-george-soros/ Here are some more academic analyses: https://academic.oup.com/book/43056/chapter-abstract/361481462 and https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003048640-9/eternal-george-soros-armin-langer
Putin ❤️ Rumble: see https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/24/russia-state-media-rumble-00020184 and https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-russias-rt-is-embracing-canadian-video-site-rumble/
Everton could be at risk of another points deduction this season after it was confirmed that any new breach of the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules should be dealt with by the end of May.
The club were deducted ten points by an independent commission after being found to have broken the Premier League’s financial rules, which allow for losses of no more than £105 million over three seasons.
Everton are preparing to submit their accounts from the 2022-23 season to the Premier League — clubs now have to do so before December 31 instead of March. Under new regulations brought in during the summer, straightforward breaches of financial rules will be fast-tracked so they are dealt with before the end of the season.
There are fears that if the same calculation system is used, Everton could find themselves sailing close to the wind again. The end-of-season deadline brought in by the new rules covers single or straightforward breaches of the financial rules — unlike the more complex cases involving Manchester City and Chelsea.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/everton-at-risk-of-further-points-deduction-this-season-zzdcg8rfp
If you want to cheer on Rumble, that's your right.
The OpenAI saga unfolded entirely on TwiX. Unless you are a TwiX user, and following the right acccounts/stories, you’d have been days behind the narrative
That's utterly a decision made by Twitter; and that's up to them. But it's also fine for the advertisers to say: "Hmmm, perhaps we don't want out brand to be associated with this platform."
What should definitely happen (I don't know if it does or is in the works) if you consistently get community noted, again the idea of you are free to scream, but you get down weighted even further. Reach reduction I think is a good balance between censorship and totally hands off free for all.
The West have been far too lax on the dangers of tech companies and the laws that compel them to interact with the Chinese state (if they aren't already a Chinese state company).
Shane MacGowan
Henry Kissinger
Alaistar Darling
And Jimmy Corkhill!
I used to be faced with an endless stream of pious left liberal bullshit. Now it is all mixed up. Still plenty of lefty nutters, some interesting, some fucking tedious, but now a good admixture of right wing nutters - again, some worth listening to, some off the wall
I get that: if you are used to Twitter being a comfortable silo of liberal opinions you agree with, then it will seem worse. But these people are intellectually mediocre fools, we see them on here daily
I love Community Notes, too
Musk is insanely rich. I believe he should try and make TwiX work without advertising altogether, fuck the corporates (as he says). He has the money to take the risk for a few years, and the prize - true free speech - is beyond compare. I also believe it would eventually pay off
What he does need is someone paid to sit by his laptop and say “Elon, do you really need to tweet that”? Every now and again. Like the guy who stood behind Caesar and whispered: Remember you are mortal, too
1) As you rightly say, Musk acts like a knob, companies not so happy to advertise. Plenty of us said at the time, absolutely stupid to go near twitter, as a business, it is really problematic. Him going Trump the other day, all a bit pathetic really.
2) The one I was specifically mentioning, the get out claim was already "well they are private company, nought to do with us", we are now seeing much bigger push to compel them to censor, far less of the nought we can do, they censor how they like. Also, definitely toys out the pram from some, e.g. see BBC reporter who made a twat of himself and general BBC slant, its always twitter / Musk BADDDDDDDD. The EU keep saying, we will compel Musk to change twitter to censor more, otherwise we will ban him from operating.
3) The contested claim, is more hands off approach is leading to adverts being placed by really extreme comments. Media Matter show examples, twitter / rumble claim they have proof those accounts did not act in a way that is at all indicative of normal users, so much so, they were the only one or one of a handful who had the experiences reported. Millions of those ads served, only once or twice served by the problematic tweet. Musk claims he is moving twitter to an approach where things are less likely to be censored, rather the reach is down weighted.
We will see if that holds up in court.
He give the former much support over Tiananmen, of course, and found the time in his busy schedule to shill for Putin last year.
Henry Kissinger: Ukraine must give Russia territory
Former US Secretary of State warns against the defeat of Putin
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/05/23/henry-kissinger-warns-against-defeat-russia-western-unity-sanctions/
https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=364225
https://www.businessinsider.com/white-house-deletes-tweet-crediting-biden-twitter-fact-check-label-2022-11?op=1
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/suella-braverman-wins-disruptor-of-the-year-at-spectator-awards-rg9mlmdhz
The fact that a bunch of racist idiots try and use Soros’ name as a conspiracy theory, doesn’t mean that valid critisicm of that particular individual is racist.
Physically I'm slightly worse - not enough exercise, and on a routine asthma review for my asthna in remission this morning my blower test was a little down on the normal. But I was a trumpet player at school, which seems to have added resilience by giving extra lung capacity (really).
Docs are happy.
Shane, you should have bowed out around 45
And I say that as a true fan. One of my best ever gigs - maybe THE best - was the Pogues in Brixton on St Paddy’s day in about 1986. Magnificent
Brown went on to claim he saved the world, Darling rather kept a lowish profile and retired without much fanfare both from MP and Lords.
Disrupter of the Year Suella Braverman could not suppress her grin as she walked on to I Predict a Riot. The sacked home secretary said she’d won the title over the Supreme Court, the ECHR … and “for disrupting my plans to cut the numbers and deliver a manifesto pledge — the prime minister.”
The only problem … was her drive-by landed worse than a wet thud, with audible suckings of breath and not one laugh. “That’s her leadership hopes gone in 2 mins,” one of her many detractors texted gleefully. Said another: “I would say she bombed but you have to take off first.” One attendee called it as “avant-garde” … another described it using only wincing noises … and a Cabinet minister said simply: “Pathetic. Pathetic.”
No actual money went missing in most cases. The Horizon computer system was erroneously saying that money had gone missing when it hadn't. The interesting thing is that the investigators almost never tried to find out where the alleged stolen money had gone. If they had, they might have discovered that it didn't exist.
Rather an uncomfortable memory of a nurse telling me she’d tried to remove my dying mother’s teeth (which were fabulous and as nature intended) because she thought they were false. Funny what sticks in the mind.
Unless of course Jesus was flexing and his dad was rolling in it in his mansion.
Knowing when to go is a fine art, especially for certified self-destructors
My Dad went on about 5 years too long
I was genuinely taken aback by the Musk NYT Dealbook interview - he was clearly on something, though I'll bow to those with a greater knowledge of pharmaceuticals to say what it might have been.
For example, the DAs in San Francisco and Los Angeles who decided to effectively decriminalise shoplifting and vagrancy, and the DA in New York who campaigned on a platform of “Get Donald Trump”.
It also makes me smile to myself when people lampoon the idea of 'those woke left-wing financial markets' bringing down Liz Truss, when you only have to look at Soros as an example of an investor who spends billions to achieve his desired political outcomes.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/11/30/microsoft-invest-britain-data-centres-ai-infrastructure/
MS isn’t doing anything in the UK beyond extending the Azure data centers that serve the UK market
Dean Sullivan: Brookside actor dies aged 68: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-67575906
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt described his predecessor in 11 Downing Street as "one of the great chancellors".
Mr Hunt said: "He'll be remembered for doing the right thing for the country at a time of extraordinary turmoil. My deepest sympathies to his family."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67578993
There. Said it. Sue me
The US tech giant said the investment package signals a “vote of confidence” in the UK and will be used to build a new data centre in North London and expand computer capacity in Cardiff.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/11/30/microsoft-invest-britain-data-centres-ai-infrastructure/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12808991/Denmark-battles-surge-pneumonia-sparking-fears-China.html
I suspect she is now destined to forever be on the fringes, complaining endlessly to anyone who will listen.
Did it ever really recover from that time when it took Mark Steyn seriously? Will it ever recover from ditto Rod Liddle?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-nāṣir