{"id":29443,"date":"2023-10-28T12:43:49","date_gmt":"2023-10-28T19:43:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=29443"},"modified":"2023-10-28T12:43:50","modified_gmt":"2023-10-28T19:43:50","slug":"sink-sank-sunk-one-year-in-and-musks-twitter-is-down-the-drain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2023\/10\/28\/sink-sank-sunk-one-year-in-and-musks-twitter-is-down-the-drain\/","title":{"rendered":"Sink, Sank, Sunk: One Year in and Musk’s Twitter Is Down the Drain"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"This<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This video grab taken from a video posted on the Twitter account of billionaire Tesla chief Elon Musk on October 26, 2022 shows himself carrying a sink as he enters the Twitter headquarters in San Francisco. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Photo by Twitter account of Elon Musk\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Musk\u2019s distorted world view, his critics are to blame for Twitter\u2019s sinking fortunes. But if there’s anyone to blame, just look at the man holding… the sink.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

TIM KARR<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oct 27, 2023Common Dreams<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s one year to the day that Elon Musk took ownership of Twitter and proceeded to strip it of all its social value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let that sink in. When he took charge of the platform, Musk called Twitter the internet\u2019s \u201cde facto town square.\u201d Under his leadership, Musk insisted, the online forum would become \u201cimportant to the future of civilization.\u201d Very few people believed him at the time. Far fewer do now.

What most people still call Twitter on Oct. 27, 2023, is a lot worse than it was on Oct. 27, 2022, when Musk carried a porcelain sink into the company\u2019s San Francisco headquarters. (Get it? Me neither.) As it turns out, the joke\u2019s on Musk, and on the banks<\/a> that helped him finance this disastrous deal, and on anyone else who still believes he cares about protecting free speech and facilitating civil discourse online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That, of course, couldn\u2019t be farther from the truth. And Musk\u2019s biggest failings over a year of catastrophic decisions occurred during the very first days of his tenure, when he abandoned an early commitment to the sort of content moderation that makes civil discourse possible \u2026 and social-media enterprises successful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Musk\u2019s biggest mistake<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Within a week of taking over, Musk met with civil-rights leaders<\/a>, including Free Press Co-CEO Jessica J. Gonz\u00e1lez. He pledged to \u201ccombat hate and harassment\u201d on the network and \u201cenforce [Twitter\u2019s] election integrity policies.\u201d But soon after this meeting, Musk announced sweeping layoffs<\/a>, firing a large percentage of Twitter employees, including many of those responsible for upholding the company\u2019s critical brand-safety, election-integrity and content-moderation standards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We hoped Musk would have learned this lesson at the beginning: Twitter\u2019s business will live or die on the decisions he makes or doesn\u2019t make about content moderation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Things quickly went downhill from there. Free Press and our allies launched the #StopToxicTwitter coalition<\/a> soon after Musk reneged on his pledge to combat the spread of hate and disinformation. We urged the platform\u2019s top advertisers to pause all placements on Twitter until they received assurances that Musk would safeguard their brands. Advertisers left Twitter in droves: Within three months of the launch<\/a> of #StopToxicTwitter, more than 500 advertisers stopped their Twitter spending, sending a powerful message to Musk that they would not bankroll the unchecked spread of hate and disinformation. The advertiser exodus, which continued through the year, is a major contributor to the precipitous drop in revenue at Twitter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier this month, the marketing firm Ebiquity reported <\/a>that only two of its clients (which include 70 of the top-100 advertising brands in the United States) are now spending on Twitter \u2014 down from 31 the month before Musk took control. This aligns with Musk\u2019s own assessmen<\/a>t, made last month, that U.S. advertising revenue has sunk 60 percent since he acquired the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead of meeting advertiser and advocate demands for a safer and more civil public forum, Musk has responded by suing a research organization and #StopToxicTwitter partner \u2014 the Center for Countering Digital Hate<\/a> \u2014 that has documented the increased spread of vitriol and lies across his network. He threatened to sue another organization<\/a> that had led criticism about the dramatic rise in antisemitic content on Twitter over the last year.

Musk\u2019s decision to grant a \u201cgeneral amnesty<\/a>\u201d to thousands of previously banned accounts, including those belonging to the most vile neo-Nazis, white supremacists and conspiracy theorists, has further kept advertisers at bay. More recently, he’s used his blue-check, pay-for-engagement scheme to give a soapbox (and even revenues<\/a>) to all sorts of grifters and propagandists, including many people<\/a> seeking to drown legitimate public discourse about the Israel\/Gaza crisis in lies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The person who\u2019s most to blame<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In Musk\u2019s distorted world view, his critics are to blame for Twitter\u2019s sinking fortunes<\/a>. On top of that, this self-proclaimed \u201cfree-speech absolutist<\/a>\u201d has used his considerable resources to silence anyone who disagrees with him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat the wealthiest man on the planet is using his money, influence and even legal action to threaten and silence critics, including our coalition partners, is reprehensible,\u201d Jessica J. Gonz\u00e1lez said<\/a>. \u201cMusk bought an advertising platform and advertisers have made themselves clear: They want no part of the toxic stew of hate and lies that Musk has enabled. The only one Musk has to blame for X\u2019s declining fortunes is himself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through it all Musk has chosen to ignore a fundamental truth for social-media ventures: Effective content moderation is essential to growing healthy online communities and company revenues. As Musk\u2019s Twitter circles the drain toward insolvency<\/a>, he has repeatedly demonstrated this lack of basic business smarts about online platforms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s kind of a rite of passage for any new social media network,\u201d Mike Masnick wrote<\/a> about the content-moderation learning curve. \u201cThey show up, insist that they\u2019re the \u2018platform for free speech\u2019 without quite understanding what that actually means, and then they quickly discover a whole bunch of fairly fundamental ideas, institute a bunch of rapid (often sloppy) changes \u2026 and in the end, they basically all end up in the same general vicinity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Musk has yet to arrive there and after a year of failures he likely never will. The proof for Twitter is in its bottom line. The advertisers that have left Twitter have put their money where their values are. And they aren\u2019t likely to return in any significant way unless and until Twitter can make assurances that their brands aren\u2019t underwriting the amplification of hate and lies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We hoped Musk would have learned this lesson at the beginning: Twitter\u2019s business will live or die on the decisions he makes or doesn\u2019t make about content moderation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But one year after Musk carried a sink through Twitter\u2019s front door, all of his decisions have been wrong, with consequences that continue to undermine public discourse, imperil democracy, and harm people both at home and abroad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TIM KARR<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim Karr is the Senior Director of Strategy and Communications for Free Press and Save the Internet. Karr oversees campaigns on public broadcasting and noncommercial media, fake news and propaganda, journalism in crisis, and the future of the Internet. Before joining Free Press, Tim served as executive director of MediaChannel.org and vice president of Globalvision New Media and the Globalvision News Network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Full Bio ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This video grab taken from a video posted on the Twitter account of billionaire Tesla chief Elon Musk on October 26, 2022 shows himself carrying a sink as he enters the Twitter headquarters in San Francisco.  (Photo by Twitter account of Elon Musk\/AFP via Getty Images) In Musk\u2019s distorted world… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[890,529,846],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29443"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29443"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29444,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29443\/revisions\/29444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}