FluTrackers withdraws from Twitter - September 16, 2020 - Updated

[sharon sanders]

Apparently there are mass layoffs going on at twitter today with everyone locked out of the buildings. In addition.....


Elon Musk

@elonmusk
·
2h
Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists. Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America.


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It looks like everything is falling apart. Apparently Musk is ignoring the content providers and concentrating on the revenue situation. Without decent content there is nothing to advertise. It is a huge disincentive to be a quality and consistent content provider when you know in advance that your content will hard to find on that platform. FluTrackers can not "compete" for good search placement with governments and corporations that can pay any price for a set of benefits on twitter.

I had really high hopes for the new owner.

First - he needs to stop tweeting. His jokes are not funny and are making the situation worse. 2) He needs to follow state and federal employment laws. 3) He needs to hire the very best in site administration - people WITH NO POLITICAL BIAS and with proven successful track records in internet communication and crowd sourcing. 4) He needs to ask his customers - THE CONTENT PROVIDERS - what they need to continue to provide his site with FREE and PERTINENT content. 5) Stop chasing advertisers. They will pursue a good site. FluTrackers gets offers all the time. I decline them. 6) Let the activists do their thing. Who cares? A great quality site is immune to boycott pressure.

Bottom line - he needs to re-establish twitter trust among the stakeholders. Sadly after 100k tweets, I think the line has been crossed and it will be very hard to get things back on track at twitter.

No one cares about free speech on a platform that is defunct.

Apparently Musk lost in his own poll. I felt since the beginning that a real site administrator needed to be in charge of twitter. Musk has zero experience in crowd sourcing. He can still tweet, and steer the company, but someone with at least 10 years experience needs to take over the daily operations. As I said above - someone with no political bias and no agenda except providing great platform service. Our account did not participate in the poll since we have a long standing policy not to participate in petitions.

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Elon Musk

@elonmusk
·
14h
Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.

• Yes
  57.5%
• No
  42.5%

17,502,391 votes·Final results

[Emily]

Bringing back an open discussion of vaccine safety issues seems a good thing for Twitter.

Cathie Wood on FTX, Crypto, Elon Musk, Fed Policy

Bloomberg Markets and Finance

1.42M subscribers

[Emily]

Too raunchy. Maybe we shouldn't even link to that one? Just report it and block him if it continues.

[Mary Wilson]

‘Verified’ anti-vax accounts proliferate as Twitter struggles to police content

Platform’s paid verification system is being used to give sense of validity to accounts pushing health misinformation

Mon 21 Nov 2022 06.00 EST
Melody Schreiber

As the troubled social media platform Twitterrolled out a paid verification system and laid off thousands of content moderators, health misinformation accounts on the social network began pushing their messages to a wider audience than ever.

Under Elon Musk’s new direction for Twitter, several anti-vaccine accounts with tens of thousands of followers are now verified by paying $7.99 a month for Twitter Blue.

Social media sites have long struggled with misleading information and content moderation.

... But “now it looks like Twitter’s giving these accounts some legitimacy”, said Peter Hotez, a vaccine scientist and dean of tropical medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.

“It looks like now they’re going to move in the wrong direction, and actually help promote groups that are touting anti-vaccine, anti-science disinformation.”

Users have already tested the new system by impersonating leading brands, like the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, leading to sharp dips in the company’s stock price and a call to re-evaluate insulin prices.

... More than 300,000 Americans have died from Covid-19 because they didn’t get vaccinated, according to one analysis – more than six times the number of Americans who died by gun violence in 2020, for instance.

The vaccines to prevent severe disease and death from Covid-19 are extremely safe and effective, with millions of people around the world vaccinated. ...

https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...P=share_btn_tw
____________________________________

Twitter reinstates Marjorie Taylor Greene’s personal account

BY REBECCA KLAR - 11/21/22 2:41 PM ET

Twitter reinstated the personal account for Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) Monday, reversing the ban put in place in January over Greene violating the platform’s COVID-19 misinformation policy. ...

https://thehill.com/policy/technolog...sonal-account/

[sharon sanders]

I was just tweeting and then saw this. The image attached to the tweet below is completely unacceptable by anyone in a senior leadership position at twitter.

Honestly....disgusting.


Elon Musk

@elonmusk

4h
And lead us not into temptation …

(edited out a s exual image of a woman)

That disgusting tweet is still there. Added to all of the other incidents, I am beginning to wonder if Musk is ruining twitter on purpose. If he is, how can he afford the financial loss?...unless his other projects are going to take up the slack. Within the 1st week he was talking about twitter bankruptcy. Who benefits from that?

What is going on here???

Always follow the $.

[sharon sanders]

Even on this very much smaller site - if I posted that image of a woman everyone would think I have lost my mind.

[sharon sanders]

I was just tweeting and then saw this. The image attached to the tweet below is completely unacceptable by anyone in a senior leadership position at twitter.

Honestly....disgusting.


Elon Musk

@elonmusk

4h
And lead us not into temptation …

(edited out a s exual image of a woman)

[sharon sanders]

bump this

[sharon sanders]

I am not sure what all of this means.....




Elon Musk

@elonmusk
·
2m

3,3883,396
8,003
26.1K
Elon Musk

@elonmusk
·
5m

6,443
6,3666,401
27.7K27.9K
Elon Musk

@elonmusk
·
18m
And … we just hit another all-time high in Twitter usage lol
12.9K
19.3K
89.2K
Elon Musk

@elonmusk
·
12m
Let that sink in …
3,957
2,970

[sharon sanders]

Apparently more turmoil.....

snip

A former Twitter executive who recently exited the company described Thursday’s employee exits as a “mass exodus.”

On Thursday evening following the exits, employees remaining at the company received an email alerting them that the company’s offices will be temporarily closed and badge access will be restricted through Monday, according to a copy of the email obtained by CNN from a current Twitter employee. Musk’s team similarly shuttered offices during the mass layoffs earlier this month out of a concern for safety and an apparent fear that exiting employees could attempt to sabotage the company on their way out.

Two Twitter employees told CNN ahead of the deadline on Thursday that they planned to reject the ultimatum, citing a toxic work environment they say the billionaire has introduced. Another Twitter employee told CNN Wednesday they were still weighing the decision, saying the email from Musk “felt like a punch in the gut because no matter how you felt about wanting to stay or wanting to go, you were forced to make a decision and feel like you’re up against the time clock to make the best decision for you and your family.”

more...

https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/17/tech/...ine/index.html

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Elon Musk

@elonmusk
·
34m
How do you make a small fortune in social media?

Start out with a large one.

[Pathfinder]

Many advertisers still using Twitter despite Musk’s chaos
...
Constantine von Hoffman on November 16, 2022 at 1:45 pm | Reading time: 5 minutes

Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter caused the biggest brands to pause their advertising on the social media platform. However, many smaller ones remain and are still glad to be there. Kaela Green, VP of paid social at Basis Technologies, says that’s because both the audience and the content protections are still there.
...
“The reality of where it stands is there have been no changes to content moderation policies,” she says. “There have been no changes to brand safety, to the algorithms and tools that control and monitor, and make sure that the inventory maintains currency.”
...
“The engagement rates that we’re seeing … have maintained pretty steady and in some cases it’s even increased and not necessarily in a negative way,” says Green. “The engagement is not due to some of the negativity or concern around the platform.”

The stability of audience size and engagement may be Twitter’s biggest strength right now. Another is that it occupies a unique place. Although some users talk about going to another platform — like Mastodon, neither that nor any other social media platform provides the immediacy and real-time response Twitter does.

“Sure, advertisers can pull away,” says Green, “but [they] are never going to want to if they’re still getting what they want out of the deal.”

However, even if all the advertisers returned today it wouldn’t fix the company’s core problem: It doesn’t make money. Twitter has turned a profit only twice in the last 10 years.

Musk has made that harder to do. Last April, when he agreed to buy the company, the market was hot. He paid $44 billion, twice its market value at a time when social media stocks were overvalued. Since the amount being spent on digital advertising has fallen off a cliff. If Twitter somehow brought in as much money as it did last year, it wouldn’t be nearly enough to service the debt Musk has saddled it with.

https://martech.org/many-advertisers...e-musks-chaos/

[sharon sanders]

No matter what happens to twitter we are not going to join any other social media site.



FluTrackers.com
@FluTrackers
·
6m
There is a lot of speculation re: twitter. Our acct is still active here & we are
watching developments.

We are not going to join any other social media sites.

We have had our own site since 2006.

Please add us to your browser bookmarks/favorites: https://flutrackers.com/forum/

[sharon sanders]

The verification system started in 2009 did not stop the wild atmosphere at twitter but it was the beginning of some moderation efforts to cut down on the spam. Over a few years I noticed our account was getting maybe 1/10 of the original nasty stuff. At this time we are not getting any ridiculous spamming. I also notice a lot less scientific tweets. We are getting a fraction of the retweets on our content. It would appear a lot of science and medicine has left twitter or is in a wait and see mode. Hard to know. FluTrackers is not joining any other social media no matter what happens to twitter.

[Emily]

Nobody cared until the Musk purchase was in play.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/e...ts-2022-09-28/
Exclusive: Brands blast Twitter for ads next to child pornography accounts

By Sheila Dang

and Katie Paul
Sept 28 (Reuters) - Some major advertisers including Dyson, Mazda, Forbes and PBS Kids have suspended their marketing campaigns or removed their ads from parts of Twitter because their promotions appeared alongside tweets soliciting child pornography, the companies told Reuters.

DIRECTV and Thoughtworks also told Reuters late on Wednesday they have paused their advertising on Twitter.

Brands ranging from Walt Disney Co (DIS.N), NBCUniversal (CMCSA.O) and Coca-Cola Co (KO.N) to a children's hospital were among more than 30 advertisers that appeared on the profile pages of Twitter accounts peddling links to the exploitative material, according to a Reuters review of accounts identified in new research about child sex abuse online from cybersecurity group Ghost Data...

[Emily]

I don't understand how the verification system could have stopped hateful comments. There were still plenty of those on Twitter, coming from both anonymous and verified accounts. The block feature was free to use and I can see that helping to some extent. Some users limit visibility to trusted accounts, but that might cost money and you probably don't wanted limited visibility.
Verification will be necessary for some entities. I don't know that the system was any more secure before Musk. It seems some people are doing everything they can to damage the company due to political issues.