The Canadian government is “assessing next steps” in deciding whether it will pay to keep its Twitter accounts verified, the Prime Minister’s Office confirmed on Monday.
Billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently purchased Twitter for $44 billion, and has since pledged to make major changes to the way the company hands out its blue checkmarks — the badge that identifies users as the real deal, not an impersonation or fake.
I could live without Junior on Twitter
Elon Musk has promised to investigate why several far-right personalities in Brazil were removed from Twitter after some high-profile names, including the grandson of a former military dictator, complained they were being denied free speech.
Twitter Brasil suspended profiles of three rightwing politicians recently elected to congress: Carla Zambelli, Gustavo Gayer, and Nikolas Ferreira, a 26-year-old who won 1.5m votes and has 2 million followers.
Billionaire Elon Musk urged undecided voters to back Republican candidates ahead of critical midterm elections on Tuesday that will determine control of Congress.
“To independent-minded voters: Shared power curbs the worst excesses of both parties, therefore I recommend voting for a Republican Congress, given that the Presidency is Democratic,” Musk said.
“Hardcore Democrats or Republicans never vote for the other side, so independent voters are the ones who actually decide who’s in charge!” Musk added.
Federal government advised to pause Twitter ads after mass layoffs at company
A media and marketing agency that is responsible for buying and planning much of the government’s advertising has advised federal departments to pause activity on Twitter, citing mass layoffs at the company.
Cossette, which is the government’s “media agency of record,” issued guidance Friday to “pause activity immediately and monitor the situation over the weekend” due to “unknown continuity plans for moderation” and a “heightened risk of brand safety,” according to an internal document seen by CBC News.
The “heightened risk of brand safety.” Yea right.
Twitter will be a more free platform, but it won’t be a truly free one.
Let’s remember who Elon Musk is. He’s a guy who got very rich peddling technofuturism to elites while cashing in on government subsidies. He’s a throwback to a libertarian Silicon Valley and he believes in free speech and debate… in principle.
The Joe Rogan political wing likes the idea of speech. It likes that speech to be on its own terms and it wants to be in charge. It likes controversy, but the kind it agrees with, and that makes it money.
Elon Musk on Saturday confirmed claims that Twitter employees were selling verification badges for certain users.
“Twitter employees were selling verification for upwards of $15,000. For certain accounts, mine included, they would refuse to verify you through the standard application and then privately offer to verify you for $$ behind the scenes. Investigation needed,” a user, WSBChairman—which has 900,000 followers—claimed Saturday on the platform. Musk confirmed that users claim, responding: “Yup.”
“I actually wanted to get laid off.”
… “In general, the culture at Twitter is pretty politically progressive. For the supermajority of people, the sentiment toward Elon is negative—and now this, it’s hellish. The company culture is going to change a lot under Elon. When he brought his own people in, it felt like [how] Obama employees must have felt when they were going through the Trump transition. That sense of intrusion. None of the people coming back are people who Twitter employees would like to work with.
“Twitter occupies an interesting part of the social-media landscape. I don’t think there’s any service I know of that can replace it. Using Twitter is kind of like a Rorschach test: your feed is going to look like the kind of people you follow. I love Twitter, because I think I follow the right kind of people. I don’t think any other platform has the same number of academics, writers, poets, and movie directors who just hang out and post whatever thing they like to post. It’s smart, witty, dumb, funny.
More … Antifa protester among those who lost job in Elon Musk’s massive Twitter layoffs
As promised, Elon Musk’s Twitter announced Saturday that users can get verified with the once sought-after blue check for $7.99 a month.
“Get Twitter Blue if you sign up now,” the announcement said. “Blue checkmark: Power to the people. Your account will get a blue checkmark, just like the celebrities, companies and politicians you follow.”
“Coming soon… Half the ads & much better ones,” the statement added. “Since you’re supporting Twitter in the battle against the bots, we’re going to reward you with half the ads and make them twice as relevant.”
Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk says he had “no choice” but to slash the company’s workforce as the firm is losing more than $4m (£3.5m) a day.
Half of the company’s staff are being let go, a week after Mr Musk bought Twitter in a $44bn (£38.7bn) deal.
Twitter staff have been using the platform to talk about their dismissal.
There are concerns Twitter could water down content moderation but Mr Musk said the firm’s policies remain “absolutely unchanged”.
General Mills and Audi recently stated that they are pausing advertising on Twitter following Elon Musk’s acquisition of the platform. Musk responded to advertisers in general stopping their ad buys, saying the company has a “massive drop in revenue,” adding that he feels the drop is “Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America.”
BREAKING: Twitter’s *board of right wing meme censorship* engineer was fired today! pic.twitter.com/kYBB0pcGF0
— Damon Imani🔅 (@damonimani) November 4, 2022
Nov 3 (Reuters) – Twitter will tell employees by email on Friday about whether they have been laid off, temporarily closing its offices and preventing staff access, following a week of uncertainty about the company’s future under new owner Elon Musk.
The social media company said in an email to staff that it will alert employees by 9 a.m. Pacific time on Friday (12 p.m. EDT/1600 GMT) about staff cuts.
“In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday,” said the email sent on Thursday, seen by Reuters.
Twitter layoffs begin in 12 hours. They have so many employees folks just have to sit in front of their computers and wait. Building has been locked down. Badges have been disabled. pic.twitter.com/JQvIpIb2a8
— TheQuartering (@TheQuartering) November 4, 2022
Even for a guy like Elon Musk, $44 billion is quite a chunk of money to spend on anything, even for the most valuable and influential social media platform in the world.
As often happens in the business world, cost-cutting measures are typically deployed upon acquiring a new business. According to a bombshell Bloomberg report Wednesday night, it appears the first money-saving cuts could come Friday in the way of firing roughly half of Twitter’s entire workforce.
Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter has shaken the fascist Left to its core; nothing seems to be more frightening to Leftists than the prospect of free and open discourse. But the euphoria among patriots and fear and rage among Leftists may both have been premature: Musk announced early Wednesday morning that he had talked with a group of “civil society leaders” about how “Twitter will continue to combat hate & harassment & enforce its election integrity policies.”
Watch what he does, not what he says.
It has now been a week since Elon Musk took over Twitter, and the wailing and gnashing of teeth is still audible across the legacy media landscape. In one sense, that’s rather shocking: Why, precisely, should members of the media be so apoplectic about a billionaire taking over a social media company from other millionaires, pledging to loosen restrictions on dissemination of speech? In another sense, the outrage is perfectly predictable: The legacy media oligopoly is now under threat.
