Twitter board agrees to $44 billion sale to billionaire Tesla founder Elon Musk

[Solauren]

The more I read of Musk's attempts to keep Twitter going, the more I hear Megatron's voice "Coronation Starscream? THIS IS BAD COMEDY!"

Odd, I was hearing Starscreams voice going "Who disrupts my Coronation?"

also, fixed the quote for you.

I left the name out deliberately

But Elon Musk is basically a Cobra Commander/Star Scream knock-off at this point.
Some technical skill, but apparently is inept as a supervillan.

So, who's betting Apple wins this round?

No bet.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Basically, Mirror!Worf is Elon Musk, and his flagship is Twitter. As for the other ships and their crews, take your pick!

[Batman]

I'm taking that bet. Musk wins. Not that I seriously EXPECT to win but IF I were to the Odds would be so ridiculously stacked I could buy Twitter myself.

[Ralin]

That has to be a back of the napkin calculation.
Ignoring any other lliabilities, the cost saved by firing half the staff and the loss in ad revenue, assuming he left the revenue exactly stable (a BIIIIG assumption), he still burdened the company with a 1.2 BILLION in annual debt payment for the financing he pushed onto their books...

So he assumed that 150 MILLION (roughly 11 million, as it is monthly) people, out of a total user base of ~300 million, and a daily active base of 160 million would spend 8$ a month for a blue check? A service that had less than half a million users when it was still free?

As I said. Without consulting anyone. And possibly while high.

[bilateralrope]

Parler and Twitter both cut ties with Kanye West as he says, “I like Hitler”

Parler announced deal termination after Ye told Alex Jones, "I also love Nazis."
JON BRODKIN - 12/3/2022, 6:11 AM

Kanye West's deal to buy the self-described "free speech" social network Parler lasted only a month. Parler's owner announced the termination of the deal shortly after West—who now goes by Ye—praised Adolf Hitler and Nazis in an appearance yesterday on Alex Jones' Infowars show.

Despite Parler making the announcement yesterday, it said the deal was terminated in mid-November. In a statement emailed to Ars and other news organizations Thursday afternoon, Parlement Technologies said it "mutually agreed with Ye to terminate the intent of sale of Parler. This decision was made in the interest of both parties in mid-November. Parler will continue to pursue future opportunities for growth and the evolution of the platform for our vibrant community."

Parler and Ye had announced a merger agreement on October 17. The deal was struck after Ye made antisemitic posts that got his Twitter account locked, putting it into a read-only mode while leaving it visible to the public.

Ye's Twitter account was unlocked in late October just as Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter was finalized. Musk supported Ye publicly but said the account unlocking happened before the acquisition and that Twitter "did not consult with or inform me."

Ye suspended after swastika tweet

But now Ye may have lost his Twitter account for good after tweeting an image of a swastika inside the Star of David last night. Ye "again violated our rule against incitement to violence," Musk wrote. This time, the account was suspended, removing his profile and tweets completely.

Hate speech on Twitter against Black people, gay men, and Jews has increased significantly since Musk bought the company, according to research by the Center for Countering Digital Hate and the Anti-Defamation League described in a New York Times article today.

As Deadline noted, "West's Twitter account was initially locked temporarily for 12 hours after the offensive tweet, which was deleted," but the "account then disappeared with a 'suspended' label over it." Ye has started posting on Truth Social, the social network launched by former President Donald Trump. Ye's Parler account is still online, but he hasn't posted in a week.

The swastika tweet came a few hours after the interview with Jones in which Ye said, "I like Hitler" and "I love Jewish people, but I also love Nazis," among various other antisemitic statements. "Every human being has something of value that they brought to the table, especially Hitler," Ye said, while denying that Hitler killed 6 million Jews in the Holocaust. Ye also claimed that Hitler invented highways and microphones.

Ye said he’d protect conservative opinions at Parler

When his now-terminated deal to buy Parler was announced, Ye said he intended to protect conservative opinions. "In a world where conservative opinions are considered to be controversial, we have to make sure we have the right to freely express ourselves," Ye said in the deal announcement. Ye also said in an interview with Bloomberg that "when I got kicked off of Instagram and Twitter at the time, I knew it was time to acquire my own platform."

Parler said on October 17 that it expected Ye to complete the purchase during the fourth quarter of 2022. "The proposed acquisition will assure Parler a future role in creating an uncancelable ecosystem where all voices are welcome," Parler said at the time.

Apple kicked Parler off its app store in January 2021 after Trump supporters attacked the US Capitol. With Parler users' role in the attack under scrutiny, Parler told Congress that "in the days and weeks leading up to January 6th, Parler referred violent content from its platform to the FBI for investigation over 50 times, and Parler even alerted law enforcement to specific threats of violence being planned at the Capitol."

Apple allowed Parler back on its app store in April 2021 after the social network changed its content moderation. Google also booted Parler in January 2021 and didn't allow the company back until September 2022.

Turns out it is possible to be too much of a Nazi for Musk.

Also, that "swastika inside the Star of David" image sounds a lot like the official symbol of Raëlism.

[Ralin]

I read elsewhere that this was after Musk and Ye got into it via DM and Kanye posted part of it.

Also that the Parler deal had already fallen through because Ye didn't have enough money and this was just an excuse to save face.

[bilateralrope]

Elon Musk Has Outfitted Twitter’s Headquarters With Bedrooms For Employees

Cyrus FarivarForbes Staff
Senior Writer, Tech & Innovation
Katharine SchwabForbes Staff
I edit staff reporters on the tech & innovation desk.

Dec 5, 2022,08:35pm EST

Several rooms in the office have been converted into small sleeping quarters, according to two sources.

Elon Musk's “extremely hardcore” vision for Twitter seems to have manifested itself in conference-room sleeping quarters reminiscent of sad hotel rooms at the company's recently depopulated headquarters.

On Monday, employees returning to work at the company’s San Francisco location were greeted by modest bedrooms featuring unmade mattresses, drab curtains and giant conference-room telepresence monitors — a significant upgrade over the Therm-a-Rest+sleeping bag situation showcased by one Twitter employee in November. One room even has a plant.

A photo of one converted bedroom shared with Forbes showed bright orange carpeting, a wooden bedside table and what appears to be a queen bed, replete with a table lamp and two office armchairs just begging for convivial workplace collaboration.

One source said that no announcement or context was provided to employees, and presumed that the beds are for remaining “hardcore” staffers to be able to stay overnight at the office. “It’s not a good look,” they said. “It’s yet another unspoken sign of disrespect. There is no discussion. Just like, beds showed up.”

Last month, CEO Elon Musk gave the thousands of employees that remained with the company the opportunity to leave or remain on the condition that they work intensely under the so-called “Twitter 2.0.” Since he took over as owner and CEO, Musk has fired at least half of Twitter’s employees, and more have left of their own volition.

It is not clear how many such bedroom pods exist, but the source, whose identity Forbes is withholding over fear of reprisal, speculated that there were maybe “four to eight per floor,” adding “they look comfortable.”

Another source who was similarly granted anonymity added that several of the rooms were on a floor that is largely empty. They noted that there was trash in one room’s trash can, which made it seem like someone had stayed there. “People are already putting in late nights, so it makes sense to an extent,” the source said.

Meanwhile, several ex-employees, upset over what they say is the company going back on agreements surrounding severance packages, have begun bringing multiple lawsuits and arbitration claims against Twitter. Contract workers are also frustrated with Musk: On Monday, a group of janitors whose contract with Twitter was not renewed went on strike and demonstrated outside the office.

In mid-November, Musk tweeted that he would be working and sleeping at the corporate offices along Market Street “until the org is fixed.” However, that tweet has since been deleted.

Musk has previously claimed to have slept at company properties before – he once tweeted about “sleeping at factory” in 2018, referring to the Tesla factory in nearby Fremont, Calif.

Twitter’s CEO did not respond to a request for comment, nor did its communications department, which appears to have been completely disbanded since Musk’s takeover.

That's a depressing look for Twitter. I wonder if Musk will make it worse by explaining the beds.

Twitter’s credit rating was just withdrawn by S&P because of a ‘lack of sufficient information’

BYJILL R. SHAH AND BLOOMBERG
December 3, 2022 at 11:48 AM GMT+13

Twitter Inc.’s credit grade was withdrawn by S&P Global Ratings, which said it lacked sufficient information to continue covering the Elon Musk-owned social media company.

The rating firm, which is among the top in the US, said the action was “due to a lack of sufficient information to maintain the rating” in a release on Friday. At the time of the withdrawal, both Twitter and its debt were on “CreditWatch,” suggesting an imminent rating action.

Twitter’s massive about $13 billion debt load was funded directly by banks led by Morgan Stanley when Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of the social media giant closed. Since then, Musk’s takeover of Twitter has brought sweeping changes to the company’s operations and product. Those changes included mass layoffs, changes in features and a raft of companies pulling advertising dollars from the platform.

The group of banks that funded the buyout now face the challenge of syndicating the debt to investors, many of whom use rating companies to determine the risk involved in buying credit.

S&P downgraded the company five notches to B- from BB+ on Nov. 1 as a result of its high leverage post-acquisition. The rating firm expected to “obtain more information regarding the final capital structure and any potential changes to the operating strategy,” according to the November research update.

Still, the rating firm said at the time, that “may not occur until the company’s new debt is syndicated.”

This sounds like it hurts the banks who loaned Musk the money more than it hurts Twitter directly.

[Solauren]

Maybe this will lead to problems that will see the government step in and regulate the financial sector properly.....
.... and pigs will fly without external aid.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

[Solauren]

Twitter is going to become a case study for schools on how not to purchase a company and then run it afterwards.

[bilateralrope]

That's just the legal problems Twitter is facing in the US.

[bilateralrope]

More lawsuits for the pile.

Twitter sued for targeting women and staff on family leave in layoffs

Twitter laid off 63% of women in engineering roles compared to 48% of men.
ASHLEY BELANGER - 12/9/2022, 9:39 AM

In photos taken before and after Twitter’s mass layoffs, it appeared to many that Musk’s widespread staff cuts severely reduced the number of women on Twitter staff. Now, women laid off by Twitter have filed a class-action lawsuit, alleging that Musk violated employment laws by discharging significantly more women than men.

“Women at Twitter never had a decent shot at being treated fairly once Elon Musk decided to buy the company,” the attorney representing women suing, Shannon Liss-Riordan, said in a press statement provided to Ars. “Instead, they had targets on their backs and regardless of their talent and contributions, they were at greater risk of losing their jobs than men.”

Lead plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit are Miami-based Carolina Bernal Strifling, who worked at Twitter for seven years, and California-based Willow Wren Turkal, an engineer who joined Twitter in 2021 after four years at Facebook and LinkedIn. They’re suing Twitter “on their own behalf and on behalf of other female Twitter employees across the country who have been discharged or constructively discharged from their jobs during the chaotic weeks since multi-billionaire Elon Musk purchased the company.”

Their complaint cites calculations provided by Mark Killingsworth, an economics professor at Rutgers University, to allege that, overall, “57 percent of female employees were laid off on November 4, 2022, while 47 percent of male employees were laid off.”

This disparity, the complaint alleges, “cannot be explained based upon a justification that Musk intended to retain more employees in engineering-related roles.” Killingsworth estimated that Musk terminated 63 percent of female employees in engineering-related roles, compared to 48 percent of male employees in engineering-related roles.

Musk’s own tweets are cited in the complaint as evidence of alleged sexism at Twitter. The complaint points to one tweet Musk deleted, naming a school using the acronym “TITS,” as well as a more recent tweet, where the billionaire said, “Testosterone rocks ngl.” The complaint also links to media reports from PC Mag and Futurism discussing the impact of Musk’s alleged misogyny on women who work for him.

Alleging that Musk’s layoffs violated Title VII protections prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex, women suing have requested a jury trial. They are seeking “lost back pay, front pay, lost benefits, bonuses, and equity, as well as emotional distress damages, punitive damages, interest, and any other appropriate relief.” They also want the court to require Twitter to reinstate female employees who wish to return to work.

Twitter did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment.

Other discrimination allegations

On top of allegedly laying off more women than men, the class-action lawsuit alleges that Musk has discriminated against female employees in other ways.

The complaint alleges that when Musk asked employees to agree to work in the office 24/7 or else voluntarily leave their jobs, “Musk would certainly have known that these policy changes and expectations would have a disproportionate impact on women, who are more often caregivers for children and other family members, and thus not able to comply with such demands.”

On the same day the women filed their class-action lawsuit, disabled employees and employees taking family or medical leave hit by layoffs also filed a class-action suit, represented by Liss-Riordan. Their complaint alleges that Twitter violated the Americans with Disabilities Act and the federal Family and Medical Leave Act.

Lead plaintiffs in that complaint are California-based Dmitry Borodaenko, who joined Twitter in 2021 after four years at Facebook, and Abhijit Mehta, a Twitter engineer since 2017 who, according to their LinkedIn profile, was the founding engineer lead for Twitter Blue. They’re suing “on behalf of employees who have taken or planned soon to take a family or medical leave, as well as disabled employees who can perform their jobs with or without reasonable accommodation but who were not permitted to continue their jobs, either through termination or forced resignation after being required to accept working under unreasonable circumstances for an employee with a disability.”

Borodaenko has a disability that puts him at extra risk of health complications if he contracts COVID-19. The complaint says he was assured when he was hired in 2021 that “he would always have the option to work remotely,” but Musk’s takeover changed those terms. After Musk required all employees to return to the office, Borodaenko sent an email to his manager, explaining, "In case I didn't mention it before, as [a] cancer survivor I'm at extra risk from Covid (it also counts as a disability), so I'm definitely not working from [the] office until the pandemic is over."

Shortly after sending that email, Twitter human resources notified Borodaenko that he was laid off, with allegedly no explanation other than: “Your recent behavior has violated company policy.”

In Mehta’s case, after his wife became pregnant, he had previously gotten family leave approved by Twitter management, set to start this upcoming December 28 until next May. Instead, Mehta was laid off, which shocked him.

“He was very surprised to hear this news, as he was a very high performer at the company, had recently received a promotion, and was working on an important project for Twitter,” the complaint says.

The complaint estimates that Twitter laid off “approximately 60 percent of employees who were on leave” at the time of the November 4 layoffs.

In this case, employees have also requested a jury trial. They’re asking the court to award damages and require Twitter to “reinstate disabled employees who wish to return to their jobs with reasonable accommodations” and “employees who have taken or plan to take family or medical leave who wish to return to their jobs.”

[loomer]

There's also the possibility that Musk may have breached some fairly serious privacy laws when he handed Weiss, Taibbi and fucking Abigail Shrier what appears to be total access to all internal data, including DMs, IP addresses, and email addresses for users.

[bilateralrope]

Fired Twitter cleaning staff 'treated like garbage'

13 hours ago
By James Clayton & Ben Derico
BBC News, San Francisco

Cleaners at Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco have told the BBC they were sacked without severance pay.

One of them told the BBC a member of Elon Musk's team had said their jobs would be replaced by robots.

A California state senator said Mr Musk was treating the former staff "like garbage".

San Francisco's city attorney, David Chiu, said he's investigating if Mr Musk broke the law. Twitter has not responded to a BBC request for comment.

"Elon Musk has had a long history of flouting labour laws," Mr Chiu told the BBC.

"While I'm not surprised this happened, I feel for these workers. We will be looking into this further."

The BBC spoke to four cleaners who say they were fired from Twitter on Monday - their interviews were conducted in Spanish.

Adrianna Villarreal, who worked for Twitter for four years, said she's now worried she won't have enough money to feed her family over Christmas.

"It's a sad and frustrating thing for our families and children," she said.

The cleaners were working at Twitter last week until they were told their jobs were under threat.

Olga Miranda, president of the cleaners' union, said they organised a strike on Monday to protest. The cleaners were then told they had been laid off effective immediately, she says.

"They did this three weeks before Christmas," she said. "I think we were fired because we're a union."

Julio Alvarado had been a cleaner for 10 years at Twitter. He says the environment was always friendly during his time there.

But he says things changed when Elon Musk took over Twitter in October.

"People worked without worries," he told the BBC. "Now we are afraid."

Since Mr Musk acquired the company, Mr Alvarado says he was escorted by private security while cleaning parts of the office.

He also says he was told by someone from Mr Musk's team that his job would be obsolete soon anyway because robots would eventually replace human cleaners.

Without his job, Mr Alvarado says he's worried about paying his bills. He also says he's supporting his family back in Mexico.

"I can only tell you, I don't have money to pay the rent," he says. "I'm not going to have medical insurance. I don't know what I'm going to do."

Juana Laura Chavero Ramirez said she had worked for five years at Twitter. A diabetic, she's concerned she won't be able to get her medication.

"It's just horrible," she said. "We're not only losing our job, we're losing our income."

Adrianna Villarreal, who had worked at Twitter since 2018, said she was worried she would not be able to afford Christmas gifts.

"We are supposed to have Christmas presents for our children," she said, "a plate of food on our table and overnight we don't have anything."

The cleaners say they do not know what to do - as there are few available cleaning vacancies in San Francisco at the moment.

A small group of cleaners have protested outside San Francisco's Twitter headquarters since Monday.

California state senator Scott Wiener told the BBC the cleaners had been treated "horribly".

"In the short term, I'd like to see him [Elon Musk] treat his janitors like human beings," said Mr Wiener, "and get them back working - not just throw them out right before Christmas."

Fired because they took part in a union strike. How illegal is that ?

How difficult will it be for Twitter to hire new cleaners before their absence attracts more problems ?

[bobalot]

There is a barrage of lawsuits heading Twitter's way in the US and Europe.

[Broomstick]

Musk has brought that on himself.

Many would like to see the might fall.

[Zaune]

The comment about how all the janitors will soon be replaced by robots immediately brought to mind this scene from Red Dwarf...



Although overall I think Musk would be more directly comparable to Gordon Brittas.

[bilateralrope]

Members of Twitter’s Trust & Safety Council Resign in Protest Against Elon Musk’s ‘Safety’ Messages to Date

We are announcing our resignation from Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council because it is clear from research evidence that, contrary to claims by Elon Musk, the safety and wellbeing of Twitter’s users are on the decline. The question has been on our minds: Should Musk be allowed to define digital safety as he has freedom of expression? Our answer is a categorical “no.”

Eirliani Abdul Rahman and Anne Collier have been members of Twitter’s Trust & Safety Council since its inception in 2016. Eirliani was the first female representative from Asia and had served on the Council’s Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) Prevention advisory group. Anne has been working with social media platforms on youth digital safety for more than 20 years and served on the Twitter Council’s Online Safety and Harassment Prevention group.

We know that, even after the resignations and dismissals of thousands of employees, there are people working at Twitter who care about reducing hate speech and protecting users on the platform. We are deeply saddened by this decision because Twitter has been a place of joy in many ways: our work with fellow Council members, interacting with our professional networks, and supporting the public discussion about our respective passions.

Despite a lack of acknowledgment on the part of Twitter’s new ownership, we would like to acknowledge the hard work of all members of its Trust and Safety Council over the past six years. The establishment of the Council represented Twitter’s commitment to move away from a US-centric approach to user safety, stronger collaboration across regions, and the importance of having deeply experienced people on the safety team. That last commitment is no longer evident, given Twitter’s recent statement that it will rely more heavily on automated content moderation. Algorithmic systems can only go so far in protecting users from ever evolving abuse and hate speech before detectable patterns have developed.

Anne: “Having followed the research on youth online risk since 1999, I know how hard it is for platforms to get it right, honoring young users’ rights of protection, participation and privacy simultaneously. But some progress has been made in the industry. Tragically, the research shows that Twitter is going in the opposite direction, and I can no longer find a reason to stay in tacit support of what Twitter has become.”

Eirliani: “I have watched with, dare I say, trepidation, the negotiations over Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter. I had written down some commitments to myself at the time. Should Musk step over those thresholds, I told myself I would resign. Those red lines have been crossed. We know from research by the Anti-Defamation League and the Center for Countering Digital Hate that slurs against Black Americans and gay men have jumped 195 percent and 58 percent respectively since Musk’s takeover. Antisemitic posts have soared more than 61 percent in the two weeks after Musk’s acquiring of Twitter. Another red line for me was when previously banned accounts such as those on the far right, and those who had incited others to violence, such as then US President Donald Trump’s, were reinstated.”

We fear a two-tiered Twitter: one for those who can pay and reap the benefits, and another one for those who cannot. This, we fear, will take away the credibility of the system and the beauty of Twitter, the platform where anyone could be heard, regardless of the number of their followers.

We cannot therefore, in full conscience, remain on Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council for reasons above. A Twitter ruled by diktat is not a place for us. Content moderation is a nuanced business that requires full transparency, adherence to policies informed by best practices and advice from trusted partners on the ground as well as dedicated resources. This is in no way a disavowal of our friends who remain on the Council. They choose to do so for their own reasons, including continued safeguarding and the hope that reason will prevail.

Eirliani Abdul Rahman
Co-Founder
YAKIN (Youth, Adult survivors & Kin In Need)
Email: eirliani@gmail.com
Twitter: @eirliani

Anne Collier
Founder and Executive Director
The Net Safety Collaborative
Email: anne@netfamilynews.org
Twitter: @annecollier

Lesley Podesta
Young and Resilient Research Center
Western Sydney University
Email: lesleypodesta@gmail.com
Twitter: @podesta_lesley

Unsurprising.

But this is a big signal for any advertiser who left Twitter because it's too damaging for their brand. Also a big signal for EU regulators.

[Ralin]

He's also apparently been trying to sic the usual harassment and doxxing types on them with accusations that they're pedophile enablers and so on: https://twitter.com/a_h_reaume/status/1 ... 3200114688

[bilateralrope]

He's also apparently been trying to sic the usual harassment and doxxing types on them with accusations that they're pedophile enablers and so on: https://twitter.com/a_h_reaume/status/1 ... 3200114688

So he's engaging in the kind of harassment that EU law requires social media to suppress ?

That's going to make it very entertaining when those regulators take action.

[Ralin]

So he's engaging in the kind of harassment that EU law requires social media to suppress ?

That's going to make it very entertaining when those regulators take action.

You have to understand though. He has a lot of money and is very important.

Do you think this is how the Romans felt when the emperor declared he was going to flood the Colosseum and personally kill a whale to demonstrate his virility or something?

[Mastr Blastr]

He's also apparently been trying to sic the usual harassment and doxxing types on them with accusations that they're pedophile enablers and so on: https://twitter.com/a_h_reaume/status/1 ... 3200114688

So he's engaging in the kind of harassment that EU law requires social media to suppress ?

That's going to make it very entertaining when those regulators take action.

Of course, he wouldn't be able to do it if there weren't a market for it.

[loomer]

It's not great that Musk is going full chud right now, right down to asserting that pronouns are bad. I'm really not looking forward to the degree this is going to keep empowering the right to go full steam on the rhetoric of genocide.

[bilateralrope]

Now for the leak that always happens when a leader of a group is unpopular with the people underneath.

Leaked email shows Musk threatened to sue Twitter employees who leak to media

Musk email complains of "many detailed leaks of confidential Twitter information."
JON BRODKIN - 12/13/2022, 6:55 AM

A leaked email sent by Elon Musk to Twitter staff shows that he threatened to sue employees who leak confidential information to the media.

Musk's emails and other internal communications have repeatedly been leaked to media outlets since he bought the company in late October. The leaked email about leaks said Twitter will aggressively enforce non-disclosure agreements going forward.

"As evidenced by the many detailed leaks of confidential Twitter information, a few people at our company continue to act in a manner contrary to the company's interests and in violation of their NDA," the Musk email said, according to a Twitter thread by journalist Zoë Schiffer of tech news site Platformer.

"This will be said only once: If you clearly and deliberately violate the NDA that you signed when you joined, you accept liability to the full extent of the law & Twitter will immediately seek damages," Musk wrote, according to Schiffer's account posted Saturday. Schiffer wrote that she was "choosing not to post the actual email as it's clear Twitter is doing everything it can to catch sources."

According to Schiffer, the Musk email said that "occasional slipups are understandable 'but breaking your word by sending detailed info to the media' with the intent to harm Twitter 'will receive the response it deserves.'"

Musk tells staff to sign another pledge

Musk also asked staff "to sign a pledge indicating they've understood" and gave them a deadline of Saturday at 5 pm, Schiffer wrote. The pledge requirement is similar to how Musk handled an earlier ultimatum demanding that employees agree to an "extremely hardcore" approach that involves "working long hours at high intensity." In that previously leaked email, Musk ordered employees to sign the "hardcore" pledge or resign with three months of severance.

Twitter reportedly no longer has a public relations department, but a company source confirmed that Musk sent the email about NDA violations to Twitter staff, according to a report by Business Insider on Saturday.

One leak on Saturday showed that Twitter reduced the visibility of an account that tracks Musk's private jet on December 2. Jack Sweeney, who runs the @ElonJet account, said today that the account's visibility was restored after he published internal screenshots about the visibility filtering. "I think Twitter noticed my tweets and back tracked. Guilty in my book," he wrote. Musk had previously written that his "commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk."

Musk authorized leaks of other information to reporters, giving Twitter's new trust and safety chief Ella Irwin the green light to provide screenshots of user accounts flagged in internal content moderation systems. Journalist Bari Weiss published screenshots from Musk's "Twitter Files" leak, alleging they show "Twitter's secret blacklists" of conservative accounts. Musk pointed his followers to the "secret blacklists" thread last week in a tweet with two popcorn emojis.

"The Twitter Files on free speech suppression soon to be published on Twitter itself. The public deserves to know what really happened," Musk wrote in late November before the first of several document releases. But even in conservative circles, some commentators met the actual details from Musk's Twitter files with a shrug, describing them as underwhelming.

[bilateralrope]

How Elon botched his war on bots

Casey Newton
and
Zoë Schiffer
8 hr ago

On Sunday, Elon Musk tweeted a vague warning: “the bots are in for a surprise tomorrow.” He didn’t say what the surprise was. But in the hours that followed, Twitter blocked traffic from roughly 30 mobile carriers around the world, effectively cutting off access to hundreds of thousands of accounts, primarily in the Asia-Pacific region, including vast swaths of Russia, Indonesia, India, and Malaysia.

The project was part of Elon Musk’s attempt to rid Twitter of spam. But rather than work to remove individual offenders, the company identified mobile networks associated with large spam networks in specific countries, and blocked users who relied on those networks from receiving SMS messages from Twitter, impacting people with two-factor authentication. Then it blocked traffic from those carriers completely.

From 5:35 AM to 6:45 AM PT on Sunday, Twitter shut down access to the primary telecom providers in India and Russia, as well as the second biggest telecom company in Indonesia, Platformer has learned.

Almost immediately, complaints started to roll in, as legitimate users found they were unable to access Twitter.

In Slack, a Twitter engineer shared an email from one telecom provider who said users were complaining that Twitter had stopped working. “I expect more emails like this to hit our peering queue tomorrow,” an employee said. “We blocked a fair few [sic] huge carriers, so I would expect so,” another responded.

The company quickly unblocked the carriers, and told them the service issues were due to “routing configuration changes.”

The incident highlights growing confusion within Twitter as the company struggles to carry out Musk’s erratic commands with his ever-shrinking pool of engineers. In some cases, as with the telecom issue, the company has been charged with making huge changes without doing due diligence on their potential consequences.

In others, employees are being asked to scramble to answer questions about individual tweets.

Over the weekend, Musk asked Twitter employees to explain why a tweet about a crypto scam, shared from an account impersonating him, had not been identified as such by the company’s systems. “I believe it is because this account is legacy verified,” an employee explained in Slack. They later added: “The legacy verified account was hacked” and noted the account was now locked and “EM’s image has been removed from the profile.”

“Is it safe to let Elon know that we are making modifications that will downrank these kind of accounts/situations in the future?” asked Twitter’s head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin. An employee responded that Smyte, a content moderation tool that Twitter acquired to identify abnormal behavior, “has been unstable for at least a week now.” Irwin thanked the employee and said that the fact that an account was verified under the old system “should not be an exception criteria for taking action fast.”

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal published today, Irwin tried to spin Twitter’s increasing reliance on automated systems as “biasing towards moving quickly and figuring out the details in some of these areas after.”

But the truth is that Twitter has little choice but to rely on automated tools: it continues to fire employees seen as insufficiently loyal to Musk, even if they do crucial work for the company.

On Friday, Musk sent an email to Twitter employees threatening to sue people who leak confidential information to the press, Platformer was the first to report. “If you clearly and deliberately violate the NDA that you signed when joining Twitter, you accept liability to the full extent of the law and Twitter will immediately seek damages,” he wrote. Employees had until 5 PM PT on Saturday to sign a pledge indicating they understood.

Some Twitter employees failed to respond because they were not checking their email over the weekend. On Sunday, they found their access to Twitter’s systems had been cut off.

Then a second email went out: this time, employees were asked to email the people team reaffirming their commitment to stick to their NDAs by December 15, 2022.

By Sunday afternoon, more than 100 employees had been deactivated from Slack.

The company also on Monday disbanded its trust and safety council, which once advised Twitter on content moderation issues, according to an email shared with Platformer.

“Our work to make Twitter a safe, informative place will be moving faster and more aggressively than ever before and we will continue to welcome your ideas going forward about how to achieve this goal,” the unsigned email to council members read. “We will also continue to explore opportunities to provide focussed and timely input into our work, whether through bilateral or small group meetings.”

It continued: “Your regional points of contact will remain the best people to contact to escalate concerns, please let us know if you need reconnecting.”

Three members of the council quit last week in response to Twitter no longer engaging with their requests.

The email was sent to members less than an hour before they were scheduled to have their first meeting since May.

Blocking all Twitter traffic from major carriers that have a lot of spam. I'm not surprised that Musk failed to ask why an idea simple hadn't been tried before.

Also: An employee responded that Smyte, a content moderation tool that Twitter acquired to identify abnormal behavior, “has been unstable for at least a week now.”
Even the automated moderation systems are showing signs of damage caused by Musk's firings.