FluTrackers withdraws from Twitter - September 16, 2020 - Updated Nov. 2024

[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

 

[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

 

[sharon sanders]

FluTrackers will not pay one penny to post on X. We are a content provider. Hopefully Musk re-thinks his comment.




Elon Musk: Social media platform X, formerly Twitter, could go behind paywall

• Published
  9 hours ago

​
Elon Musk has suggested that all users of X, formerly called Twitter, may have to pay for access to the platform.

In a conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the billionaire said a payment system was the only way to counter bots.

"We're moving to having a small monthly payment for use of the system," the Tesla and SpaceX boss said.

The BBC approached X for further details but has not yet received a statement from the company.
​

more.... https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-66850821


​

 

[sharon sanders]

Hi Everyone.

Several people have asked me if we are moving from X to Blue Sky.

No, we are not. The reasons we are not moving are:

1) All of the world's health departments are still posting on X. We use some of those posts to update our threads here. For instance, I posted one from the Kenya MoH and several from the Rwanda MoH in the last couple of weeks. The US CDC is there. So is WHO.

2) Blue Sky is not public. Registration is required to open the full site. X was public when we initially joined but it is now only open to registered accounts. I do not like this about X.

3) Learning to use another site is not something I am looking to do. We have not participated on fb for years and do not participate on any other 2nd party site except X.

4) X already takes a majority of my day while long over due maintenance projects remain idle on this site. Coordinating 3 sites daily (FT, X, Blue Sky) + news hunt + admin duties...there is not the time.


I posted on this thread so people can see that for years we have had a 2nd site policy and will leave X if the site becomes a crazy flame war site, or they begin to financially charge participants. In some of the earlier posts on this thread (since 2020) you can see our policy.

Through the different US administrations (Biden, Trump, Obama, Bush), over almost 19 years, we have remained the same. We are consistent. We are steadfastly non-political.

Thank you to everyone who has mentioned Blue Sky.