New, from me: Elon Musk once lashed out at a critic by calling him "pedo guy." The incident warned us of the traits that are leading Musk to use his control of Twitter to amplify conspiracies.
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Don Moynihan
@donmoyn
Policy Professor
Immigrant. Administrative burdens guy.
Mastodon: @[email protected]
Free newsletter: donmoynihan.substack.com
Don Moynihan’s Tweets
Just a reminder that Ted Cruz filibustered Americans getting healthcare but is silent when it comes to issues he actually cares about
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Mike Lee (R) has just introduced a bill that would fine or imprison any American who posts any “sexual content” on the internet. wfla.com/news/politics/
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Tesla’s stock collapse is partly due to Musk selling shares and “brand deterioration” because of his Twitter antics, like banning journalists.
Tesla’s stock has dropped by 57.4% in 2022 compared to 18.3% for the S&P 500.
marketwatch.com/amp/story/tesl
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Thread: Musk could have generated a nice PR story over the ElonJet guy, but his ego came first, damaging his credibility as well as the reputation of not just Twitter but Tesla also
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One thing that's worth remembering:
The guy who set up the ElonJet account was a fan of Musk's. Musk asked him to take it down, he half-jokingly asked for a Tesla; Musk countered with $5,000 in exchange for taking it down; he asked for $50k or a SpaceX internship.
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Here's my segment with about getting my Twitter account reinstated and why I think the suspension of Linette Lopez, a reporter who has done hard-hitting investigations of Tesla, is even more outrageous than my banishment.
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See. You only have to be worried about being banned on Twitter if you “doxx” the site’s owner, something the site’s owner can just pretend you did whenever he feels like it.
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1. Musk’s claims that reporters doxxed him were false washingtonpost.com/media/2022/12/
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Media companies need to re-evaluate their participation on a website where the new owner is opposed to journalistic values, esp. when they clash with his business interests or worldview.
They have more leverage than any individual user here. Do better.
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The most aggressive action any media company took in relation to its reporters and Musk over the past few days was to…suspend one of their reporters for not being nice enough to Musk. Pathetic.
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Great to see media companies stand up for their journalists in the midst of pretty obvious censorship on Twitter.
Oh, wait. NBC suspended Ben Collins for accurately characterizing the guy censoring journalists. semafor.com/article/12/16/
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4. Media companies faced a test when their reporters were unfairly banned. They failed it by not pushing back more aggressively, eg by suspending their participation on the site as long as the suspensions held. No-one did. They need to get ready for the next test now.
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3. No direct relationship between Musk’s bans and his claimed motivation, which he characterized as a stalker endangering his kid.
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Uh, so the stalker thing Musk is misusing to justify his bans on journalists is bullshit? Did not happen near an airport or on a day his jet was flying per this report.
gizmodo.com/elon-musk-kill
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2. One of the reporters (still) suspended wrote nothing about his flight data. They simply have covered Musk critically.
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New research by John Marvel shows managers allocating credit among group members tend to do so suboptimally in demographically & geographically dispersed groups - overlooking contributions of women, people of color & remote team members
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How will traditional higher ed survive against this sort of competition?
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if you'd like to witness something truly deranged I would encourage you to check out the frequency with which Elon Musk replies to an unaffiliated twitter blue account called "musk university" that just quotes him twitter.com/search?q=from%
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Just the opposite. You are presuming there will be a balance in perspective among blue checks. I would bet against that. My guess is the blue checks lean pro-elon and will use the impact of blocks, mutes and likes to create intentional echo chambers that reflect Elon’s positions
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Cool that these are the people who will be deciding on deamplification now
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The Twitter Files is basically the business case for monetizing deamplification: why pay staff to do it according to some general public value principles when people will pay you to do it according to their partisan principles?
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Journalist covering Tesla still suspended
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Suspended accounts are back! Some seem to have their followers erased for now tho
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Elon Musk's team is seeking new investors for Twitter, offering the same $54.20-a-share deal and trying to close by the end of the year. Scoop w/ @ReedAlbergotti semafor.com/article/12/16/
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I think we can figure out how to distinguish between Donie O'Sullivan & Andrew Anglin
Before anyone says I'm trapped in a woke bubble, let me be clear: I 1) have eaten squirrel dumplins at family reunion and 2) can throw a football better than all of you
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I don't need to dwell on how mesmerizing it is to watch those journalists who defended—even celebrated!—Twitter's bans under the old regime under the guise of "safety" now call it censorship, and say it infringes on freedom of expression. It did then as it does now.
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Seizing the means of production and dismantling the system from within
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Elon has now erased $600 bil of tesla wealth and still nothing from the Tesla BOD. It’s wholly unacceptable. $tsla
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What happens when Elon Musk comes onto your Spaces and is not tossed softball questions
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It seems my account is banned… but only from Spaces. (This is what I get if I try to join or start a Space)
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What should be included in the inaugural Bernie Man festival in Vermont?
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Meanwhile, unrepentant liars who peddle conspiracy theories that endanger American democracy and defame public servants are back on Twitter. Because certain types of damaging speech get a pass.
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A lot of traditional media companies still don’t fully understand the digital ecosystem and that to do a certain kind of (by necessity) adversarial journalism, you need to do what was doing with Musk. You can’t wait for formal buttoned down opportunities.
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Great to see media companies stand up for their journalists in the midst of pretty obvious censorship on Twitter.
Oh, wait. NBC suspended Ben Collins for accurately characterizing the guy censoring journalists. semafor.com/article/12/16/
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Guys, setting aside the conspiracy stuff, I’m skeptical you should trust in this guys knowledge of manufacturing processes when making your pillow choices
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I'm back!! Thank you @elonmusk and by the way MELT DOWN THE ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES AND TURN THEM INTO PRISON BARS!
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I talked to 7 women, all Asian international students, who said Dybvig sexually harassed them. From flirty emails to unwanted kissing and touching, their stories span at least a decade. Many said it was an open secret among female Chinese students.
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Yesterday, some of the older kids in lil X's daycare were making fun of him for the rapid drop in the Tesla stock price.
Any account doxxing Tesla stock's price will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation.
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One way of understanding what Musk is doing is that it represents capital reasserting control of information sources, even when it’s costly to do so
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"In recent weeks, many tech executives, founders and investors have expressed their admiration for" Elon Musk, "even as the billionaire has flailed at Twitter," our columnist, Kevin Roose, writes. nyti.ms/3HLSuoW
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Opinion | By halving his net worth in nine months, Elon Musk has done more to reduce income inequality than Bernie Sanders ever did.
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Giving the volume of academics fleeing twitter now, I will be covering public administration but also anthropology and physics. Thanks for your patience during these staffing issues.
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Whatever you do, don't retweet this archive list of tweets from Linette Lopez, an reporter who was just suspended from Twitter after many months of reporting about Tesla's problems.
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"Is it reasonable for Musk to ban people doxxing him?" is a very different question from "Is it reasonable for Musk to ban tech reporters covering him?" but the latter question better reflects what is happening.
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Elon Musk just suspended Business Insider reporter Linette Lopez for documenting the times Elon had his enemies tracked and doxxed
She did not post anything related to Elon’s jet
She has done amazing investigative reporting on Tesla
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Gonna sell all my Tesla stock and Dogecoin to grab this once in a lifetime opportunity to get poorer
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Elon Musk's team is seeking new investors for Twitter, offering the same $54.20-a-share deal and trying to close by the end of the year. Scoop w/ @ReedAlbergotti semafor.com/article/12/16/
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Taibbi literally just tweeting through it
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It's incredible how quickly "Musk and his family were doxxed by journalists" has become a conventional wisdom on here based on...nothing.
If you want to debate the appropriateness of a tweet, be honest and show the tweet. This is the last tweet that got Donie booted. Not doxxing!
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Sorry about Spaces being taken offline. I wasn't personally involved in the decision and hopefully Spaces will be back soon.
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Ezra Klein on administrative burdens: "Democrats have not focused correctly on your relationship with the state, particularly if you are poor and you need help, and does it make you feel empowered and respected, or disempowered, and henpecked and watched over."
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