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  • Cesspool or civility? Elon Musk’s Twitter at a crossroads

    Cesspool or civility? Elon Musk’s Twitter at a crossroads

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    The discourse was never all that civil on Twitter. The loudest voices have often drowned out softer, more nuanced takes. After all, it’s much easier to rage-tweet at a perceived enemy than to seek common ground, whether the argument is about transgender kids or baseball.

    In the chaos that has enveloped Twitter the platform — and Twitter the company — since Elon Musk took over, it has become clear this isn’t changing anytime soon. In fact, it’s likely to get much worse before it gets better — if it gets better at all.

    Musk, with his band of tech industry loyalists, arrived at Twitter just over a week ago ready to tear down the blue bird’s nest and rebuild it in his vision with breakneck speed. He quickly fired top executives and the board of directors, installed himself as the company’s sole director (for now) and declared himself “Chief Twit,” then “Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator” on his bio.

    On Friday, he began mass layoffs at the San Francisco-based company, letting go about half of its workers via email to return it to staffing levels not seen since 2014.

    All the while, he’s continued to tweet a mix of crude memes, half-jokes, SpaceX rocket launches and maybe-maybe not plans for Twitter that he seems to be workshopping on the site in real time. After floating the idea of charging users $20 a month for the “blue check” and some extra features, for instance, he appeared to quickly scale it back in a Twitter exchange with author Stephen King, who posted, “If that gets instituted, I’m gone like Enron.”

    “We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?” Musk replied. On Saturday, the company announced a subscription service for $7.99 monthly that allows anyone on Twitter to pay a fee for the check mark “just like the celebrities, companies and politicians you already follow” as well as some premium features — not yet available — like getting their tweets boosted above those coming from accounts without the blue check.

    The billionaire Tesla CEO also has repeatedly engaged with right-wing figures appealing for looser restrictions on hate and misinformation. He received congratulations from Dimitry Medvedev, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top associate, and tweeted — then deleted — a baseless conspiracy theory about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, who was attacked in his home.

    More than three dozen advocacy organizations wrote an open letter to Twitter’s top 20 advertisers, calling on them to commit to halting advertising on the platform if Twitter under Musk undermines “brand safety” and guts content moderation.

    “Not only are extremists celebrating Musk’s takeover of Twitter, they are seeing it as a new opportunity to post the most abusive, harassing, and racist language and imagery. This includes clear threats of violence against people with whom they disagree,” the letter said.

    One of Musk’s first moves was to fire the woman in charge of trust and safety at the platform, Vijaya Gadde. But he has kept on Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety and integrity, and has taken steps to reassure users and advertisers that the site won’t turn into a “free-for-all hellscape” that some fear it might.

    On Friday, he tweeted that “Twitter’s strong commitment to content moderation remains absolutely unchanged. In fact, we have actually seen hateful speech at times this week decline (asterisk)below(asterisk) our prior norms, contrary to what you may read in the press.” A growing number of advertisers are nevertheless pausing spending on Twitter while they reassess how Musk’s changes might increase objectionable material on the platform.

    Musk also met with some civil rights leaders “about how Twitter will continue to combat hate & harassment & enforce its election integrity policies,” according to a tweet he sent Nov. 1.

    But representatives of the LGBTQ community were notably absent from the meeting, even though its members are far more likely to be victims of violent crime than those outside of such communities. Twitter did not respond to a message for comment on whether Musk plans to meet with LGBTQ groups.

    The mercurial billionaire has said he won’t make major decisions about content or restoring banned accounts — such as that of former President Donald Trump — before setting up a “content moderation council” with diverse viewpoints. The council, he later added, will include “the civil rights community and groups who face hate-fueled violence.” But experts have pointed out that Twitter already has a trust and safety advisory council to address moderation questions.

    “Truly I can’t imagine how it would differ,” said Danielle Citron, a University of Virginia law professor who sits on the council and has been working with Twitter since its infancy in 2009 to tackle online harms, such as threats and stalking. “Our council has the full spectrum of views on free speech.”

    Some amount of chaos is expected after a corporate takeover, as are layoffs and firings. But Musk’s murky plans for Twitter — especially its content moderation, misinformation and hate speech policies — are raising alarms about where one of the world’s most high-profile information ecosystems is headed. All that seems certain is that for now, at least, as Elon Musk goes, so goes Twitter.

    “I hope that responsibility and maturity will win the day,” said Eddie Perez, a former Twitter civic integrity team leader who left the company before Musk took over. “It’s one thing to be a billionaire troll on Twitter and to try to get laughs with memes and to yuk it up. You are now the owner of Twitter and there’s a new level of responsibility.”

    For now, though, the memes appear to be winning. This concerns experts like Perez, who worry Musk is moving too fast without listening to people who have been working to improve civility on the platform and instead using his own insular experience as one of the platform’s most popular users with millions of fawning fans who hail his every move.

    “You have a single billionaire that is controlling something as influential as a social media platform like Twitter. And you have entire nation states (whose) political goals are inimical to our own, and they are trying to create chaos and they are directly courting favor” with Musk, Perez said.

    “There’s just no world in which all of that is normal,” he added. “That should absolutely concern us.”

    Twitter didn’t start out as a cesspool. And even now there are pockets of funny, weird, nerdy subgroups on the platform that remain somewhat insulated from the messy and confrontational place it can appear to be if one follows too many hotheaded agitators. But as with Facebook, Twitter’s rise also coincided with growing polarization and a measurable decline in online civility in the United States and beyond.

    “The big understanding that occurred between 2008 and 2012 is that the way to get traction, the way to get attention on any social media, Twitter included, was to use incendiary language — to challenge the basic humanity of the opposition,” said Lee Rainie, director of internet and technology research at the Pew Research Center.

    Things continued to devolve as the 2016 U.S. presidential election approached and passed, and the new president cemented his reputation as one of Twitter’s most incendiary users. After it was revealed that Russia used social media platforms to try to influence elections in the U.S. and other countries, the platforms themselves became central figures in the political debate.

    “Do they have too much power? Do their content moderation policies privilege one side or another?” Rainie said. “The companies themselves found themselves in the thick of the most intense arguments in the culture. And so that’s the environment that Elon Musk is entering now.”

    And beyond the bluster and the outsized personality, Musk’s own description of his new job — “Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator” — may turn out to be his biggest challenge yet.

    ———

    AP Technology Writer Frank Bajak contributed to this story.

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  • Twitter slashes its staff as Musk era takes hold on platform

    Twitter slashes its staff as Musk era takes hold on platform

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    Twitter began widespread layoffs Friday as new owner Elon Musk overhauls the company, raising grave concerns about chaos enveloping the social media platform and its ability to fight disinformation just days ahead of the U.S. midterm elections.

    The speed and size of the cuts also opened Musk and Twitter to lawsuits. At least one was filed alleging Twitter violated federal law by not providing fired employees the required notice.

    The San Francisco-based company told workers by email Thursday that they would learn Friday if they had been laid off. About half of the company’s staff of 7,500 was let go, Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety & integrity, confirmed in a tweet.

    Musk tweeted late Friday that there was no choice but to cut the jobs “when the company is losing over $4M/day.” He did not provide details on the daily losses at the company and said employees who lost their jobs were offered three months’ pay as a severance.

    No other social media platform comes close to Twitter as a place where public agencies and other vital service providers — election boards, police departments, utilities, schools and news outlets — keep people reliably informed. Many fear Musk’s layoffs will gut it and render it lawless.

    Roth said the company’s front-line moderation staff was the group the least impacted by the job cuts.

    He added that Twitter’s “efforts on election integrity — including harmful misinformation that can suppress the vote and combatting state-backed information operations — remain a top priority.”

    Musk, meanwhile, tweeted that “Twitter’s strong commitment to content moderation remains absolutely unchanged.”

    But a Twitter employee who spoke with The Associated Press Friday said it will be a lot harder to get that work done starting next week after losing so many colleagues.

    “This will impact our ability to provide support for elections, definitely,” said the employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concerns for job security.

    The employee said there’s no “concrete sense of direction” except for what Musk says publicly on Twitter.

    “I follow his tweets and they affect how we prioritize our work,” said the employee. “It’s a very healthy indicator of what to prioritize.”

    Several employees who tweeted about losing their jobs said Twitter eliminated their entire teams, including one focused on human rights and global conflicts, another checking Twitter’s algorithms for bias in how tweets get amplified, and an engineering team devoted to making the social platform more accessible for people with disabilities.

    Eddie Perez, a Twitter civic integrity team manager who quit in September, said he fears the layoffs so close to the midterms could allow disinformation to “spread like wildfire” during the post-election vote-counting period in particular.

    “I have a hard time believing that it doesn’t have a material impact on their ability to manage the amount of disinformation out there,” he said, adding that there simply may not be enough employees to beat it back.

    President Joe Biden, at a campaign event in Illinois Friday night, said: “Now what are we all worried about? Elon Musk, who goes out and buys an outfit that sends and spews lies all across the world. … How do we expect kids to be able to understand what is at stake?”

    Twitter’s employees have been expecting layoffs since Musk took the helm. He fired top executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal, and removed the company’s board of directors on his first day as owner.

    As the emailed notices went out, many Twitter employees took to the platform to express support for each other — often simply tweeting blue heart emojis to signify its blue bird logo — and salute emojis in replies to each other.

    A Twitter manager said many employees found out they had been laid off when they could no longer log into the company’s systems. The manager said the way the layoffs were conducted showed a “lack of care and thoughtfulness.” The manager, who spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity out of concerns for job security, said managers were not given any notice about who would be getting laid off.

    “For me as a manager, it’s been excruciating because I had to find out about what my team was going to look like through tweets and through texting and calling people,” the employee said. “That’s a really hard way to care for your people. And managers at Twitter care a lot about their people.”

    A coalition of civil rights groups escalated their calls Friday for brands to pause advertising buys on the platform. The layoffs are particularly dangerous ahead of the elections, the groups warned, and for transgender users and other groups facing violence inspired by hate speech that proliferates online.

    In a tweet Friday, Musk blamed activists for what he described as a “massive drop in revenue” since he took over Twitter late last week.

    Insider Intelligence analyst Jasmine Enberg said there is “little Musk can say to appease advertisers when he’s keeping the company in a constant state of uncertainty and turmoil, and appears indifferent to Twitter employees and the law.”

    “Musk needs advertisers more than they need him,” she said. “Pulling ads from Twitter is a quick and painless decision for most brands.”

    A lawsuit was filed Thursday in federal court in San Francisco on behalf of one employee who was laid off and three others who were locked out of their work accounts. It alleges Twitter violated the law by not providing the required notice.

    The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification statute requires employers with at least 100 workers to disclose layoffs involving 500 or more employees, regardless of whether a company is publicly traded or privately held, as Twitter is now.

    Twitter filed notifications late Friday in California for its offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Jose. The layoffs affected 983 employees in the state, according to the filings. Twitter said it will continue to pay wages and benefits to the workers through Jan. 4 and employees were notified on Friday.

    The layoffs affected Twitter’s offices around the world. In the United Kingdom, it would be required by law to give employees notice, said Emma Bartlett, a partner specializing in employment and partnership law at CM Murray LLP.

    The speed of the layoffs could also open Musk and Twitter up to discrimination claims if it turns out, for instance, that they disproportionally affected women, people of color or older workers.

    ___

    AP Business Writers Mae Anderson, Alexandra Olson and Ken Sweet in New York, James Pollard in Columbia, S.C., Frank Bajak in Boston and Danica Kirka in London contributed to this story.

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  • Macron welcomes French questions on climate ahead of COP27

    Macron welcomes French questions on climate ahead of COP27

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    PARIS (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron released a selfie video on social media platforms Saturday asking the public to send him questions about what France should do about climate change and biodiversity.

    Thousands of responses quickly poured in. Several were hostile or questioned his sincerity, but they also included rigorous questions about fossil fuel subsidies, sea pollution and nuclear energy.

    Macron, who will take part in the U.N. climate talks opening in Egypt on Sunday, promised to respond to the questions starting next week.

    In the video, he read from a letter from the public asking why he doesn’t declare an “environmental state of emergency.” He said the letter “prompted me to ask questions about what we are doing about this ecological challenge, the challenge of our generation.”

    Early in his presidency, Macron pledged to make tackling climate change issues a top priority, but he has come under widespread criticism for not instituting enough tangible change.

    At the COP27 talks in Egypt on Monday, Macron is expected to discuss climate-related financing, protecting forests, Africa’s Great Green Wall, and other climate adaptation measures, according to his office.

    He’s also expected to raise the importance — and challenge — of sticking to climate commitments as Europe faces an energy crisis stemming from Russia’s war in Ukraine.

    Those are all key issues at the climate talks at the Red Sea coastal resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, which are expected to include more than 120 world leaders and run from Nov. 6-18.

    Laurent Fabius, the French diplomat who presided over the U.N. talks in 2015 that produced the Paris climate agreement, made a plea Saturday to those gathering in Egypt: “Keep in mind that the most beautiful announcements mean nothing if they’re not backed up by precise and rapid policies and actions.”

    ___

    Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

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  • Twitter users can soon get blue check for $7.99 monthly fee

    Twitter users can soon get blue check for $7.99 monthly fee

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    SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter has announced a subscription service for $7.99 a month that includes a blue check now given only to verified accounts as new owner Elon Musk works to overhaul the platform’s verification system just ahead of U.S. midterm elections.

    In an update to Apple iOS devices available in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.K., Twitter said users who “sign up now” for the new “Twitter Blue with verification” can receive the blue check next to their names “just like the celebrities, companies and politicians you already follow.”

    But Twitter employee Esther Crawford tweeted Saturday that the “new Blue isn’t live yet — the sprint to our launch continues but some folks may see us making updates because we are testing and pushing changes in real-time.” Verified accounts did not appear to be losing their checks so far.

    It was not immediately clear when the subscription would go live. Crawford told The Associated Press in a Twitter message that it is coming “soon but it hasn’t launched yet.” Twitter did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

    Anyone being able to get the blue check could lead to confusion and the rise of disinformation ahead of Tuesday’s elections, but Musk tweeted Saturday in response to a question about the risk of impostors impersonating verified profiles — such as politicians and election officials — that “Twitter will suspend the account attempting impersonation and keep the money!”

    “So if scammers want to do this a million times, that’s just a whole bunch of free money,” he said.

    But many fear widespread layoffs that began Friday could gut the guardrails of content moderation and verification on the social platform that public agencies, election boards, police departments and news outlets use to keep people reliably informed.

    The change will end Twitter’s current verification system, which was launched in 2009 to prevent impersonations of high-profile accounts such as celebrities and politicians. Twitter now has about 423,000 verified accounts, many of them rank-and-file journalists from around the globe that the company verified regardless of how many followers they had.

    Experts have raised grave concerns about upending the platform’s verification system that, while not perfect, has helped Twitter’s 238 million daily users determine whether accounts they get information from are authentic. Current verified accounts include celebrities, athletes and influencers, along with government agencies and politicians worldwide, journalists and news outlets, activists, businesses and brands, and Musk himself.

    “He knows the blue check has value, and he’s trying to exploit it quickly,” said Jennifer Grygiel, a social media expert and associate professor of communications at Syracuse University. “He needs to earn the trust of the people before he can sell them anything. Why would you buy a car from a salesman that you know has essentially proved to be chaotic?”

    The update Twitter made to the iOS version of its app does not mention verification as part of the new blue check system. So far, the update is not available on Android devices.

    Musk, who had earlier said he wants to “verify all humans” on Twitter, has floated that public figures would be identified in ways other than the blue check. Currently, for instance, government officials are identified with text under names stating they are posting from an official government account.

    President Joe Biden’s @POTUS account, for example, says in gray letters it belongs to a “United States government official.”

    Seven-time Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton, who has 7.8 million Twitter followers, told the AP, “I could actually just delete my Twitter account, I never use it. I find it really healthy to delete social media from my phone for periods of time.”

    “But it’s also a really powerful tool to connect with people, so I appreciate that and I try to use it as that and not as something that’s veering me off course of the journey that I’m on in life,” he said.

    The announcement comes a day after Twitter began laying off workers to cut costs and as more companies are pausing advertising on the platform as a cautious corporate world waits to see how the platform will operate under its new owner.

    About half of the company’s staff of 7,500 was let go, tweeted Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety and integrity.

    He said the company’s front-line content moderation staff was the group the least affected by the job cuts and that “efforts on election integrity — including harmful misinformation that can suppress the vote and combatting state-backed information operations — remain a top priority.”

    Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey took blame for the job losses.

    “I own the responsibility for why everyone is in this situation: I grew the company size too quickly,” he tweeted Saturday. “I apologize for that.”

    Musk tweeted late Friday that there was no choice but to cut jobs “when the company is losing over $4M/day.” He did not provide details on the daily losses at Twitter and said employees who lost their jobs were offered three months’ pay as severance.

    He also said Twitter has already seen “a massive drop in revenue” as advertisers face pressure from activists to get off the platform, which heavily relies on advertising to make money.

    United Airlines on Saturday became the latest major brand to pause advertising on Twitter, joining companies including General Motors, REI, General Mills and Audi.

    Musk tried to reassure advertisers last week, saying Twitter would not become a “free-for-all hellscape” because of what he calls his commitment to free speech.

    But concerns remain about whether a lighter touch on content moderation at Twitter will result in users sending out more offensive tweets. That could hurt companies’ brands if their advertisements appear next to them.

    U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk on Saturday urged Musk to “ensure human rights are central to the management of Twitter.” In an open letter, Türk said reports that the company’s whole human rights team and much of the ethical AI team were laid off was not “an encouraging start.”

    “Like all companies, Twitter needs to understand the harms associated with its platform and take steps to address them,” Türk said. “Respect for our shared human rights should set the guardrails for the platform’s use and evolution.”

    Meanwhile, Twitter cannot simply cut costs to grow profits, and Musk needs to find ways to raise more revenue, said Dan Ives, an analyst with Wedbush. But that may be easier said than done with the new subscription program for blue checks.

    “Users have gotten this for free,” Ives said. “There may be massive pushback.”

    He expects 20% to 25% of Twitter’s verified users to sign up initially. The stakes are high for Musk and Twitter to get this right early and for signups to work smoothly, he added.

    “You don’t have a second chance to make a first impression,” Ives said. “It’s been a train-wreck first week for Musk owning the Twitter platform. Now you’ve cut 50% (of the workforce). There are questions about just the stability of the platform, and advertisers are watching this with a keen eye.”

    ———

    AP Business Writer Stan Choe in New York and Associated Press Writer Jenna Fryer in Charlotte, N.C., contributed to this story.

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  • Macron welcomes French questions on climate ahead of COP27

    Macron welcomes French questions on climate ahead of COP27

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    PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron released a selfie video on social media platforms Saturday asking the public to send him questions about what France should do about climate change and biodiversity.

    Thousands of responses quickly poured in. Several were hostile or questioned his sincerity, but they also included rigorous questions about fossil fuel subsidies, sea pollution and nuclear energy.

    Macron, who will take part in the U.N. climate talks opening in Egypt on Sunday, promised to respond to the questions starting next week.

    In the video, he read from a letter from the public asking why he doesn’t declare an “environmental state of emergency.” He said the letter “prompted me to ask questions about what we are doing about this ecological challenge, the challenge of our generation.”

    Early in his presidency, Macron pledged to make tackling climate change issues a top priority, but he has come under widespread criticism for not instituting enough tangible change.

    At the COP27 talks in Egypt on Monday, Macron is expected to discuss climate-related financing, protecting forests, Africa’s Great Green Wall, and other climate adaptation measures, according to his office.

    He’s also expected to raise the importance — and challenge — of sticking to climate commitments as Europe faces an energy crisis stemming from Russia’s war in Ukraine.

    Those are all key issues at the climate talks at the Red Sea coastal resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, which are expected to include more than 120 world leaders and run from Nov. 6-18.

    Laurent Fabius, the French diplomat who presided over the U.N. talks in 2015 that produced the Paris climate agreement, made a plea Saturday to those gathering in Egypt: “Keep in mind that the most beautiful announcements mean nothing if they’re not backed up by precise and rapid policies and actions.”

    ———

    Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

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  • Musk’s past tweets reveal clues about Twitter’s new owner

    Musk’s past tweets reveal clues about Twitter’s new owner

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    He may be good with rockets and electric cars, but don’t turn to Elon Musk for public health predictions.

    “Probably close to zero new cases in US too by end of April,” the world’s richest man tweeted about COVID-19 in March 2020, just as the pandemic was ramping up.

    It’s one of many tweets that offer a glimpse into the mind of Twitter’s new owner and moderator in chief. Playful, aggressive and sometimes reckless, Musk’s past tweets show how he has used social media to tout his businesses, punch back at critics and burnish his brand as a brash billionaire who is unafraid to speak his mind.

    Musk joined Twitter in 2009 and now has more than 112 million followers — the third most of any account after former president Barack Obama and Canadian singer Justin Bieber. He had long mused about purchasing the platform before the $ 44 billion deal was finalized last week.

    Musk hasn’t detailed the changes he intends to make at Twitter, though he wasted no time in making widespread layoffs. But he has said he wants to make Twitter a haven for free speech. He’s said he disagrees with the platform’s decision to ban ex-President Donald Trump for inciting violence ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol.

    “I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means,” Musk tweeted earlier this year when he announced his intention to buy the platform.

    As the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, Musk uses his Twitter account to make business announcements and promote his enterprises. He muses about technology and trade, but has also posted jokes about women’s breasts and once compared Canada’s prime minister to Hitler. He regularly weighs in on global events, as he did in March 2020 when he tweeted that “The coronavirus pandemic is dumb.”

    That same month, he tweeted that children were largely immune from the virus and predicted that cases would soon disappear.

    Musk has also used his Twitter account to weigh in other big news events — with mixed results.

    This fall, Musk infuriated leaders in Ukraine when he went on Twitter to float a potential peace deal. Under Musk’s plan, Russia would get to keep Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014, and Ukraine would have to drop its plans to join NATO.

    Musk also suggested that people living in other areas illegally annexed by Russia should vote on whether Russia or Ukraine should get control over the territories — a move that Ukraine supporters said would reward Russia for its illegal aggression.

    “The danger here is that in the name of ‘free speech,’ Musk will turn back the clock and make Twitter into a more potent engine of hatred, divisiveness, and misinformation,” said Paul Barrett, a disinformation researcher and the deputy director of New York University’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights.

    Stern singled out Musk’s comments about Ukraine as particularly concerning. “This is not going to be pretty,” he said.

    Just days after purchasing Twitter Musk waded into yet another firestorm when he posted a link to an article advancing a bizarre conspiracy theory about the attack on the husband of U.S. Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The article suggested that Paul Pelosi and his assailant were lovers, even though authorities said the suspect confessed to targeting the speaker and did not know her husband.

    Musk later deleted the tweet without explanation.

    Musk has long used the megaphone of his Twitter account to punch back at critics or people he opposes, such as when he attacked a diver working to rescue boys trapped in a cave in Thailand by calling him a “pedo,” short for pedophile. The diver had previously mocked Musk’s proposal to use a sub to rescue the boys. Musk, who won a defamation suit filed by the diver, later said he never intended “pedo” to be interpreted as “pedophile.”

    Three days before Elon Musk agreed to buy Twitter, the world’s richest man tweeted a photo of Bill Gates and used a crude sexual term while making a joke about his belly.

    Earlier this year he criticized the Twitter executive in charge of the platform’s legal, policy and trust divisions. In response to his tweets about the executive, many of Musk’s followers piled on with misogynistic and racist attacks, in addition to calls for Musk to fire her when his purchase of Twitter was approved.

    Musk fired the executive on day one.

    Musk’s use of Twitter has at times led to problems for his own companies. In one August 2018 tweet, for instance, Musk asserted that he had the funding to take Tesla private for $420 a share, although a court has ruled that it wasn’t true. That led to an SEC investigation that Musk is still fighting.

    Last year another federal agency, the National Labor Relations Board, ordered Musk to delete a tweet that officials said illegally threatened to cut stock options for Tesla employees who joined the United Auto Workers union.

    Those tweets helped cement Musk’s reputation as a brash outsider. But that doesn’t mean he is equipped to run a social media platform with more than 200 million users, said Jennifer Grygiel, a Syracuse University professor who studies social media. Grygiel has assigned Musk’s tweets as reading material for students.

    “Look at the feed: It’s all over the place. It’s erratic. At times it’s pretty extreme,” Grygiel said. “It paints him as some sort of rebel leader who will take control of the public square to save it. That is a myth he has constructed.”

    ___

    Follow the AP’s coverage of Elon Musk at https://apnews.com/hub/elon-musk and follow its coverage of misinformation at https://apnews.com/hub/misinformation.

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  • Twitter founder Jack Dorsey to remain invested in the company under Elon Musk | CNN Business

    Twitter founder Jack Dorsey to remain invested in the company under Elon Musk | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey stepped down from the company’s board earlier this year, but he’s staying involved with the social platform following its takeover by Elon Musk.

    Dorsey rolled over his more than 18 million shares in Twitter (a roughly 2.4% stake) into the new Musk-owned company as an equity investor, rather than receiving a cash payout, according to a Thursday securities filing.

    The transfer means that Dorsey effectively contributed just under $1 billion to Musk’s $44 billion Twitter purchase. It also makes him one of the largest investors in the new company, behind Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and Qatar’s Investment Authority.

    The decision by Dorsey makes him one of the few stakeholders in Musk’s Twitter with ties to prior leadership. Almost immediately after taking over the company, Musk dissolved Twitter’s board of directors. Much of the company’s C-suite has also either been fired or resigned in recent days.

    Dorsey and Musk have long had a billionaire bromance. In 2020, Dorsey called Musk at an employee conference and asked his advice about improving Twitter. Later that year, Musk defended Dorsey when he was facing pressure from an activist investor, saying on Twitter, “I support @Jack as Twitter CEO. He has a good ❤️.”

    After the Telsa CEO initially agreed to buy Twitter in April, Dorsey tweeted that he doesn’t “believe anyone should own or run Twitter,” explaining that he believes it should be a public good. “Solving for the problem of it being a company, however, Elon is the singular solution I trust,” he added.

    Dorsey stepped down as Twitter CEO last November and left its board of directors in May. He has publicly criticized the company’s former board, and has also privately questioned the company’s future.

    In text messages with Musk in March, after the world’s richest man had built up a large stake in Twitter but before announcing it publicly, Dorsey said, “a new platform is needed. It can’t be a company. This is why I left.” Musk responded by asking what the platform should look like. Dorsey explained his view that it should be “an open source protocol” and not rely on “an advertising model,” as Twitter currently does.

    Dorsey added that Twitter “should never have been a company,” saying, “that was the original sin,” according to the text messages, which were revealed last month in court filings.

    “I think it’s worth both trying to move Twitter in a better direction and doing something new that’s decentralized,” Musk told Dorsey.

    Dorsey earlier this month launched a beta test of a new, decentralized social media app called Bluesky that could eventually compete with Twitter. As of Oct. 20, the app had a wait list of more than 30,000 people, it said on Twitter.

    In April, after Musk agreed to buy the company, Dorsey pledged his support for the takeover. “I appreciate you. This is the right and only path. I’ll continue to do whatever it takes to make it work,” the Twitter founder told Musk.

    Dorsey has not publicly commented on Musk’s takeover since the deal closed last week.

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  • Twitter users can soon get blue check for $7.99 monthly fee

    Twitter users can soon get blue check for $7.99 monthly fee

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    SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter has announced a subscription service for $7.99 a month that includes a blue check now given only to verified accounts as new owner Elon Musk works to overhaul the platform’s verification system just ahead of U.S. midterm elections.

    In an update to Apple iOS devices available in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.K., Twitter said users who “sign up now” for the new “Twitter Blue with verification” can receive the blue check next to their names “just like the celebrities, companies and politicians you already follow.”

    But Twitter employee Esther Crawford tweeted Saturday that the “new Blue isn’t live yet — the sprint to our launch continues but some folks may see us making updates because we are testing and pushing changes in real-time.” Verified accounts did not appear to be losing their checks so far.

    It was not immediately clear when the subscription would go live, and Crawford did not immediately respond to a message to clarify the timing. Twitter also did not immediately respond to a message for comment.

    Anyone being able to get the blue check could lead to confusion and the rise of disinformation ahead of Tuesday’s elections, but Musk tweeted Saturday in response to a question about the risk of impostors impersonating verified profiles — such as politicians and election officials — that “Twitter will suspend the account attempting impersonation and keep the money!”

    “So if scammers want to do this a million times, that’s just a whole bunch of free money,” he said.

    But many fear widespread layoffs that began Friday could gut the guardrails of content moderation and verification on the social platform that public agencies, election boards, police departments and news outlets use to keep people reliably informed.

    The change will end Twitter’s current verification system, which was launched in 2009 to prevent impersonations of high-profile accounts such as celebrities and politicians. Twitter now has about 423,000 verified accounts, many of them rank-and-file journalists from around the globe that the company verified regardless of how many followers they had.

    Experts have raised grave concerns about upending the platform’s verification system that, while not perfect, has helped Twitter’s 238 million daily users determine whether accounts they get information from are authentic. Current verified accounts include celebrities, athletes and influencers, along with government agencies and politicians worldwide, journalists and news outlets, activists, businesses and brands, and Musk himself.

    “He knows the blue check has value, and he’s trying to exploit it quickly,” said Jennifer Grygiel, an associate professor of communications at Syracuse University and an expert on social media. “He needs to earn the trust of the people before he can sell them anything. Why would you buy a car from a salesman that you know has essentially proved to be chaotic?”

    The update Twitter made to the iOS version of its app does not mention verification as part of the new blue check system. So far, the update is not available on Android devices.

    Musk, who had earlier said that he wants to “verify all humans” on Twitter, has floated that public figures would be identified in ways other than the blue check. Currently, for instance, government officials are identified with text under names stating that they are posting from an official government account.

    President Joe Biden’s @POTUS account, for example, says in gray letters it belongs to a “United States government official.”

    The announcement comes a day after Twitter began laying off workers to cut costs and as more companies are pausing advertising on the platform as a cautious corporate world waits to see how it will operate under its new owner.

    About half of the company’s staff of 7,500 was let go, tweeted Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety and integrity.

    He said the company’s front-line content moderation staff was the group the least affected by the job cuts and that “efforts on election integrity — including harmful misinformation that can suppress the vote and combatting state-backed information operations — remain a top priority.”

    Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey took blame for the job losses.

    “I own the responsibility for why everyone is in this situation: I grew the company size too quickly,” he tweeted Saturday. “I apologize for that.”

    Musk tweeted late Friday that there was no choice but to cut jobs “when the company is losing over $4M/day.” He did not provide details on the daily losses at Twitter and said employees who lost their jobs were offered three months’ pay as severance.

    He also said Twitter has already seen “a massive drop in revenue” as advertisers face pressure from activists to get off the platform, which heavily relies on advertising to make money.

    United Airlines on Saturday became the latest major brand to pause advertising on Twitter, joining companies including General Motors, REI, General Mills and Audi.

    Musk tried to reassure advertisers last week, saying Twitter would not become a “free-for-all hellscape” because of what he calls his commitment to free speech.

    But concerns remain about whether a lighter touch on content moderation at Twitter will result in users sending out more offensive tweets. That could hurt companies’ brands if their advertisements appear next to them.

    U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk on Saturday urged Musk to “ensure human rights are central to the management of Twitter.” In an open letter, Türk said reports that the company’s whole human rights team and much of the ethical AI team were laid off was not “an encouraging start.”

    “Like all companies, Twitter needs to understand the harms associated with its platform and take steps to address them,” Türk said. “Respect for our shared human rights should set the guardrails for the platform’s use and evolution.”

    Meanwhile, Twitter can not simply cut costs to grow profits, and Musk needs to find ways to raise more revenue, said Dan Ives, an analyst with Wedbush. But that may be easier said than done with the new subscription program for blue checks.

    “Users have gotten this for free,” Ives said. “There may be massive pushback.”

    He expects 20% to 25% of Twitter’s verified users to sign up initially. The stakes are high for Musk and Twitter to get this right early and for signups to work smoothly, he added.

    “You don’t have a second chance to make a first impression,” Ives said. “It’s been a train-wreck first week for Musk owning the Twitter platform. Now you’ve cut 50% (of the workforce). There are questions about just the stability of the platform, and advertisers are watching this with a keen eye.”

    ———

    AP Business Writer Stan Choe contributed from New York.

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  • Twitter rolls out changes for some users ahead of launching new paid verification system

    Twitter rolls out changes for some users ahead of launching new paid verification system

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    Elon Musk’s Twitter account displayed on a phone screen and Twitter logo displayed on a laptop screen are seen in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on November 1, 2022.

    Jakub Porzycki | Nurphoto | Getty Images

    Twitter began rolling out changes to its platform for some users on Saturday in preparation for the launch of its revamped subscription service Twitter Blue.

    Updates outlined in the App Store confirmed that users will be able to purchase Twitter Blue and receive a blue checkmark for $7.99 per month. The updates are listed as available for users in the U.S., Canada, Australia, the UK and New Zealand, according to the description in the Apple online store.

    Esther Crawford, director of product management at the social media company, said in a series of tweets that the new version of the subscription service isn’t available for everyone yet, but a “small early group” may see updates to the platform.

    “The new Blue isn’t live yet — the sprint to our launch continues but some folks may see us making updates because we are testing and pushing changes in real-time,” she wrote. “The Twitter team is legendary.  New Blue… coming soon!”

    Elon Musk, who became the new owner of Twitter on Oct. 28, has laid out a series of ideas for a new user verification process for Twitter, which he acquired for $44 billion.

    In an earlier thread of tweets, Musk criticized the current system, which gives a blue checkmark, or verification, to notable users like politicians, members of the press, executives and organizations. Historically, the checkmark has let readers know that the account is legitimate. Other social networks, like Meta‘s Facebook and Instagram, have similar verification systems.

    Musk said he plans to give “power to the people” by offering verification to anyone on the platform through Twitter Blue for $8 a month. He said subscribers will get priority in mentions, replies and search, receive half as many ads and will be able to tweet long videos and audio.

    Those changes were confirmed Saturday in the updated App Store listing. The updated version of the app also promised Blue members “a better reading experience” and “early access to select new features.”

    Musk said in a tweet Saturday that Twitter Blue will roll out worldwide once it is confirmed to be working in the initial set of countries.

    The changes follow an earlier report from The Verge that said the Musk was considering charging as much as $19.99 per month for the subscription. Twitter employees working on the project were reportedly told they had until Nov. 7 to launch the feature, or risk being fired, according to the report.

    Nov. 8 is the date of midterm elections in the U.S.

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  • Twitter launches subscription service for $8 a month that includes blue checkmark now given to verified accounts

    Twitter launches subscription service for $8 a month that includes blue checkmark now given to verified accounts

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    Twitter launches subscription service for $8 a month that includes blue checkmark now given to verified accounts

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  • Want a blue check mark on Twitter? It may soon cost you $19.99 a month | CNN Business

    Want a blue check mark on Twitter? It may soon cost you $19.99 a month | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    Twitter is considering offering verified accounts to users who are willing to pay $19.99 a month for a subscription service, and it may take away the coveted blue check marks of existing users if they don’t start paying for the product within 90 days, according to internal Twitter documents viewed by CNN.

    It’s possible the plan and pricing could change, as Twitter’s new billionaire owner Elon Musk works to put his stamp on one of the world’s most important social media platforms. It’s also unclear if some verified users may be exempt from paying the fee; many international organizations and charities, for example are verified on Twitter.

    The changes would update an existing paid Twitter feature known as “Twitter Blue, which currently costs $4.99 a month and is available in four countries including the United States, to include the verification feature. According to internal Twitter planning documents viewed by CNN, it appears the pay-for-verification feature would only be rolled out in those four countries to start and would be priced at $19.99 a month.

    The Verge first reported the proposed pricing plan on Sunday. Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    “The whole verification process is being revamped right now,” Musk tweeted on Sunday. Later that day, Musk engaged with a poll tweeted out by Jason Calcanis, a member of the billionaire’s inner circle, asking how much they would pay to be verified on the platform. A large majority of responders selected the “wouldn’t pay” option.

    “Interesting,” Musk tweeted in response to the poll.

    Musk has moved quickly to shake up Twitter, including by firing its top execs. In tweets over the weekend, Musk polled his followers about whether to bring back Vine, Twitter’s defunct short-form video service, and said “absolutely” in response to a user’s suggestion to rethink the platform’s character limits. It’s unclear how committed Musk is to pursuing any or all of these changes.

    Even before the deal was completed, Musk suggested the possibility of tying verification to a paid subscription service. In April, Musk said Twitter’s paid subscribers “should get an authentication checkmark.” In another tweet, he said: “Price should probably be ~$2/month, but paid 12 months up front & account doesn’t get checkmark for 60 days (watch for CC chargebacks) & suspended with no refund if used for scam/spam.”

    While the blue check mark has emerged as a status symbol for users, it’s also designed to ensure users can determine which accounts are authentic and which are not, particularly for celebrities, brands and other influential accounts. If Musk were to create a paid barrier for verification, it could make it harder to distinguish whether a notable name is a bot or not.

    Musk, who previously said he wants to “defeat the spam bots,” made the prevalence of spam and fake accounts on Twitter central to his effort to get out of the deal, before reversing course earlier this month and moving forward with the acquisition.

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  • Megan Thee Stallion, Alexis Ohanian respond to disses on Drake’s new album | CNN

    Megan Thee Stallion, Alexis Ohanian respond to disses on Drake’s new album | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Drake’s newest album includes jabs at multiple other artists and public figures – and some have their own choice words for the Canadian rapper.

    Drake released “Her Loss,” a 16-track collaboration with 21 Savage, on Friday. On one song, “Circo Loco,” he seems to imply that Megan Thee Stallion’s allegations that she was shot by Tory Lanez were false. In 2020, Megan stated that she was shot in the foot by Lanez, who has been charged with felony assault with a firearm and pleaded not guilty.

    “This b—- lie ‘bout getting shots but she still a stallion,” Drake raps on the cut.

    On Twitter, Megan asked other artists to “stop using my shooting for clout” shortly after the album was released. She asked why it was acceptable to joke about women being shot and seemed to compare the reaction to her shooting to the ongoing outcry over Kanye West’s antisemitic comments.

    “Ready to boycott bout shoes and clothes but dog pile on a black woman when she say one of y’all homeboys abused her,” she wrote.

    Megan Thee Stallion has been vocal about critiquing the societal acceptance of violence against Black women, penning a New York Times op-ed in 2020 that reflected on her shooting and the intersection of sexism and racism.

    And Megan isn’t the only public figure speaking out against Drake’s newest disses.

    On “Middle of the Ocean,” the album’s 12th track, the rapper throws a barb at Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, who married tennis superstar Serena Williams in 2017.

    “Sidebar, Serena, your husband a groupie,” the artist raps.

    But in a Twitter thread about his new investments and business success, Ohanian said that being a groupie isn’t such a bad thing.

    “The reason I stay winning is because I’m relentless about being the absolute best at whatever I do — including being the best groupie for my wife & daughter,” he wrote.

    Williams responded to the tweet with several heart-covered emojis.

    Drake is a longtime fan of Williams, attending her matches since at least 2011. He also name-dropped her in his 2013 track “Worst Behavior.”

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  • Twitter co-founder Dorsey apologizes for growing the company ‘too quickly’ in wake of mass layoffs

    Twitter co-founder Dorsey apologizes for growing the company ‘too quickly’ in wake of mass layoffs

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    Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey addresses students during a town hall at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in New Delhi, India, November 12, 2018.

    Anushree Fadnavis | Reuters

    Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey apologized Saturday for growing the company “too quickly,” a day after the company laid off approximately half of its employees under new owner Elon Musk.

    “Folks at Twitter past and present are strong and resilient. They will always find a way no matter how difficult the moment,” Dorsey wrote in a tweet. “I realize many are angry with me. I own the responsibility for why everyone is in this situation: I grew the company size too quickly. I apologize for that.”

    As of June 30, 2013, shortly before the social media company went public, Twitter had approximately 2,000 employees, according to documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. By the end of last year, the company reported more than 7,500 full-time employees.

    After Tesla and SpaceX CEO Musk took ownership of Twitter on Oct. 28, the company embarked on a steep reduction in its workforce. Twitter informed employees Thursday evening that it would begin laying off staff members, according to communications obtained by CNBC. 

    The cuts affected a total of 983 employees in California, its home state, according to three letters of notice that the company sent to regional authorities, which were obtained by CNBC.

    Musk wrote in a tweet on Friday afternoon, “Regarding Twitter’s reduction in force, unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day. Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required.”

    Twitter’s reduction in force extended beyond California, and CNBC could not immediately confirm whether Musk’s description is accurate. A loss of $4 million per day at the company would represent an annual loss around $1.5 billion.

    Dorsey co-founded Twitter in 2006 alongside Noah Glass, Biz Stone and Evan Williams. Dorsey held the top job twice throughout leadership changes and stepped down as CEO last year. The company’s then-chief technology officer Parag Agrawal succeeded Dorsey as CEO before leaving as part of Musk’s takeover.

    Dorsey has since shifted his focus to solely managing his payments company Block, formerly known as Square. He has been an outspoken advocate of Musk’s takeover, writing in a tweet that “This is the right path… I believe it with all my heart.”

    —CNBC’s Lora Kolodny and Jonathan Vanian contributed to this report.

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  • With Twitter in chaos, Mastodon is on fire | CNN Business

    With Twitter in chaos, Mastodon is on fire | CNN Business

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    CNN Business
     — 

    In the week since Elon Musk took over Twitter, the number of people signing up for a small social network called Mastodon has surged.

    You may not have heard of Mastodon, which has been around since 2016, but now it’s growing rapidly. Some are fleeing Twitter for it or at least seeking out a second place to post their thoughts online as the much more well-known social network faces layoffs, controversial product changes, an expected shift in its approach to content moderation and a jump in hateful rhetoric.

    There may be no clear alternative to Twitter, a uniquely influential platform that is fast-moving, text-heavy, conversational and news-oriented. But Mastdon scratches a certain itch. The service has a similar look to Twitter, with a timeline of short updates sorted chronologically rather than algorithmically. It lets users join a slew of different servers run by various groups and individuals, rather than one central platform controlled by a single company like Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.

    Unlike larger social networks, Mastodon is both free to use and free of ads. It’s operated by a nonprofit run by Mastodon creator Eugen Rochko, and is supported via crowdfunding.

    Rochko said in an interview Thursday that Mastodon gained 230,000 users since October 27, when Musk took control of Twitter. It now has 655,000 active users each month, he said. Twitter reported in July that it had nearly 238 million daily active monetizable users.

    “It is not as large as Twitter, obviously, but it is the biggest that this network has ever been,” said Rochko, who originally created Mastodon as more of a project than a consumer product (and, yes, its name was inspired by the heavy metal band Mastodon).

    Mastodon’s new sign-ups include some Twitter users with big followings, such as actor and comedian Kathy Griffin, who joined in early November, and journalist Molly Jong-Fast, who joined in late October.

    Sarah T. Roberts, an associate professor at UCLA and faculty director of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry, started using Mastodon in earnest on October 30, just after Musk took over Twitter. (She had created another account years ago, she said, but didn’t really get into it until recently because of the popularity of Twitter among people in academia.)

    Roberts, who worked at Twitter as a staff researcher earlier this year while taking a leave from UCLA, said she was inspired to start using Mastodon due to concerns about how Twitter’s content moderation may change under Musk’s control. She suspects some newcomers are simply sick of social media companies that capture lots of user data and are driven by advertising.

    And she pointed out that Twitter users may migrate to Mastodon in particular because its user experience is pretty similar to Twitter’s. A lot of Mastodon’s features and layout (particularly in its iOS app) will look and feel familiar to current Twitter users, though with some slightly different verbiage; you can follow others, create short posts (there’s a 500 character limit, and you can upload images and videos), favorite or repost other users’ posts, and so on.

    “It’s about as close as it gets,” she said.

    I’ve been a Twitter user since 2007, but as a growing number of the people I follow on the social network began posting their Mastodon usernames in recent weeks, I got curious. This week, I decided to check out Mastodon for myself.

    There are some key differences, particularly in how the network is set up. Because Mastodon users’ accounts are hosted on a slew of different servers, the costs of hosting users is spread among many different people and groups. But that also means users are spread out all over the place, and people you know can be hard to find — Rochko likened this setup to having different email providers, like Gmail and Hotmail.

    This means the entirety of the network isn’t under any one person or company’s control, but it also introduces some new complications for those of us used to Twitter — a product that has also been criticized over the years for being less intuitive than more popular services like Facebook and Instagram.

    On Mastodon, for instance, you have to join a specific server to sign up, some of which are open to anyone, some of which require an invitation (you can also run your own server). There is a server operated by the nonprofit behind Mastodon, Mastodon.social, but it’s not accepting more users; I’m currently using one called Mstdn.social, which is also where I can sign in to access Mastodon on the web.

    And while you can follow any other Mastodon user, no matter which server they’ve signed up with, you can only see the lists of who follows your Mastodon friends, or who your Mastodon friends follow, if the followers happen to belong to the same server you’re signed up with (I realized this while trying to track down more people I know who recently signed up).

    At first, it felt as if I was starting over, in a sense, as a complete newcomer to social media. As Roberts said, it is quite similar to Twitter in terms of its look and functionality, and the iOS app is easy to use.

    But unlike on Twitter, where I can easily interact with a large audience, my Mastodon network is less than 100 followers. Suddenly I had no idea what to post — a feeling that never nags me on Twitter, perhaps because the size of that network makes any post feel less consequential. I got over it quickly, though, and realized the smaller scale of Mastodon can be calming compared to Twitter’s endless stream of stimulation.

    I’m not quite ready to close my Twitter account, though; for me, Mastodon is a sort of social-media escape hatch in case Twitter becomes unbearable.

    Roberts, too, hasn’t yet decided if she will close her Twitter account, but she was surprised by how quickly her following grew on Mastodon. Within a week of signing up and alerting her nearly 23,000 Twitter followers, she has amassed over 1,000 Mastodon followers.

    “It might be pretty soon that people don’t want to be caught on Twitter,” she said.

    In some ways, starting over can also be fun.

    “I thought, ‘What’s it going to be like to start over again?’” she asked. “It’s kind of interesting: Oh that person is here! Here’s so-and-so! I’m so glad they’re here so we can be here together.”

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  • Kyrie Irving will begin suspension of at least 5 games Friday over antisemitism controversy. The NBA star has since apologized | CNN

    Kyrie Irving will begin suspension of at least 5 games Friday over antisemitism controversy. The NBA star has since apologized | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Kyrie Irving will miss the first of several Brooklyn Nets games Friday after he was suspended for comments regarding his tweet linking to an antisemitic documentary.

    The Nets suspended Irving Thursday after he initially doubled down on his decision to share the content on his Twitter account. The star point guard issued an apology hours later on his verified Instagram account, in which he said he takes full accountability for his action.

    “To All Jewish families and Communities that are hurt and affected from my post, I am deeply sorry to have caused you pain, and I apologize,” Irving wrote. “I initially reacted out of emotion to being unjustly labeled Anti-Semitic, instead of focusing on the healing process of my Jewish Brothers and Sisters that were hurt from the hateful remarks made in the Documentary.

    “I had no intentions to disrespect any Jewish cultural history regarding the Holocaust or perpetuate any hate. I am learning from this unfortunate event and hope we can find understanding between us all,” Irving continued.

    On Friday, criticism of Irving continued to mount with Nike suspending its relationship with the NBA star.

    “At Nike, we believe there is no place for hate speech and we condemn any form of antisemitism,” Nike said in a statement to CNN. “To that end, we’ve made the decision to suspend our relationship with Kyrie Irving effective immediately and will no longer launch the Kyrie 8. We are deeply saddened and disappointed by the situation and its impact on everyone.”

    The company’s move comes after Irving defended his decision to share a link to the 2018 film “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America” last week. The movie, based on Ronald Dalton’s book of the same name, has been blasted by civil rights groups for its antisemitism.

    Reporters asked Irving earlier Thursday – before he posted his apology – if he holds antisemitic beliefs or if he was sorry. At the time, he replied saying he respects “all walks of life” and that he didn’t mean to cause any harm.

    The Nets later said they were “dismayed” when the player “refused to unequivocally say he has no antisemitic beliefs, nor acknowledge specific hateful material in the film,” during a media session.

    “Such failure to disavow antisemitism when given a clear opportunity to do so is deeply disturbing, is against the values of our organization, and constitutes conduct detrimental to the team,” the Nets said in their statement before Irving apologized.

    The team also said they made repeated attempts to help Irving “understand the harm and danger of his words and actions.”

    Irving’s suspension without pay means he will not play in Friday’s game against the Washington Wizards. The suspension will last for at least four additional games, and Irving is also required to satisfy “a series of objective remedial measures that address the harmful impact of his conduct,” the Nets said.

    When asked Friday if there was any consideration of releasing Irving, Nets general manager Sean Marks replied, “No. Not at this particular time.”

    “There is going to be some remedial steps and measures that have been put in place for him to obviously seek some counseling … from dealing with some anti-hate and some Jewish leaders within our community,” Marks said while speaking to reporters before the Nets-Wizards game.

    “He’s going to have to sit down with them, he’s going to have to sit down with the organization after this, and we’ll evaluate and see if this is the right opportunity to bring him back,” Marks added.

    Irving’s Nets teammate Kevin Durant described this week’s matters as “unnecessary” and expressed his belief that the team could have “kept quiet” about Irving’s comments.

    “I ain’t here to judge nobody or talk down on nobody … I just didn’t like anything that went on. I feel like it was all unnecessary,” Durant said about Irving’s team-issued suspension during the Nets’ pre-game availability on Friday. “I feel like we could have just kept playing basketball and kept quiet as an organization. I just don’t like none of it.”

    Asked whether he thought the suspension was unfair, Durant said, “I believe and trust in the organization to do what’s right.”

    Shortly after his media availability, Durant tweeted, “Just wanna clarify the statements I made at shootaround, I see some people are confused..I don’t condone hate speech or anti-semitism, I’m about spreading love always.”

    “Our game Unites people and I wanna make sure that’s at the forefront,” he added.

    Irving’s remarks during the media session with reporters Thursday have escalated the controversy.

    When asked if he was apologizing, he said, “I didn’t mean to cause any harm. I’m not the one that made the documentary.”

    Asked if he was surprised by the reaction, Irving said, “I take my full responsibility, again I’ll repeat it, for posting something on my Instagram or Twitter that may have had some unfortunate falsehoods in it,” Irving replied.

    Asked if he had any antisemitic beliefs, Irving responded: “I respect all walks of life. I embrace all walks of life. That’s where I sit.”

    Pressed further to answer yes or no to a question on whether Irving had any antisemitic beliefs, he replied: “I cannot be antisemitic if I know where I come from.”

    When Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, learned of how the NBA star answered that question, he pointed out that Irving has “a lot of work to do.”

    “The answer to the question ‘Do you have any antisemitic beliefs’ is always ‘NO’ without equivocation. We took @KyrieIrving at his word when he said he took responsibility, but today he did not make good on that promise,” Greenblatt wrote.

    After Irving was suspended Thursday, the ADL refused to accept a $500,000 donation that Irving and the Nets had previously announced. The ADL’s decision to decline the donation was before Irving apologized late Thursday.

    The star’s comments also garnered reproach from NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, who said he was “disappointed” in Irving.

    “Kyrie Irving made a reckless decision to post a link to a film containing deeply offensive antisemitic material,” Silver said in a statement before Irving apologized.

    The controversy comes as antisemitism has been on the rise in the US over the past few years. At least 2,717 antisemitic incidents were reported in the US in 2021, an increase from 942 such incidents in 2015, according to the ADL.

    Irving has run into controversy in recent years that has affected his playing time. Last season, Irving did not play in many of Brooklyn’s home games because he was not vaccinated against Covid-19, which was a hindrance to playing in indoor arenas due to a New York City workplace vaccine mandate. The rule was later lifted and he returned to Barclays Center in March.

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  • 11/4: CBS News Weekender

    11/4: CBS News Weekender

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    11/4: CBS News Weekender – CBS News


    Watch CBS News



    Weijia Jiang reports on the timing for former President Trump’s possible 2024 White House announcement, Oprah’s endorsement of Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman, and Twitter’s mass layoffs.

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  • Twitter slashes its staff as Musk era takes hold on platform

    Twitter slashes its staff as Musk era takes hold on platform

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    Twitter began widespread layoffs Friday as new owner Elon Musk overhauls the company, raising grave concerns about chaos enveloping the social media platform and its ability to fight disinformation just days ahead of the U.S. midterm elections.

    The speed and size of the cuts also opened Musk and Twitter to lawsuits. At least one was filed alleging Twitter violated federal law by not providing fired employees the required notice.

    The San Francisco-based company told workers by email Thursday that they would learn Friday if they had been laid off. About half of the company’s staff of 7,500 was let go, Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety & integrity, confirmed in a tweet.

    Musk tweeted late Friday that there was no choice but to cut the jobs “when the company is losing over $4M/day.” He did not provide details on the daily losses at the company and said employees who lost their jobs were offered three months’ pay as a severance.

    No other social media platform comes close to Twitter as a place where public agencies and other vital service providers — election boards, police departments, utilities, schools and news outlets — keep people reliably informed. Many fear Musk’s layoffs will gut it and render it lawless.

    Roth said the company’s front-line moderation staff was the group the least impacted by the job cuts.

    He added that Twitter’s “efforts on election integrity — including harmful misinformation that can suppress the vote and combatting state-backed information operations — remain a top priority.”

    Musk, meanwhile, tweeted that “Twitter’s strong commitment to content moderation remains absolutely unchanged.”

    But a Twitter employee who spoke with The Associated Press Friday said it will be a lot harder to get that work done starting next week after losing so many colleagues.

    “This will impact our ability to provide support for elections, definitely,” said the employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concerns for job security.

    The employee said there’s no “concrete sense of direction” except for what Musk says publicly on Twitter.

    “I follow his tweets and they affect how we prioritize our work,” said the employee. “It’s a very healthy indicator of what to prioritize.”

    Several employees who tweeted about losing their jobs said Twitter eliminated their entire teams, including one focused on human rights and global conflicts, another checking Twitter’s algorithms for bias in how tweets get amplified, and an engineering team devoted to making the social platform more accessible for people with disabilities.

    Eddie Perez, a Twitter civic integrity team manager who quit in September, said he fears the layoffs so close to the midterms could allow disinformation to “spread like wildfire” during the post-election vote-counting period in particular.

    “I have a hard time believing that it doesn’t have a material impact on their ability to manage the amount of disinformation out there,” he said, adding that there simply may not be enough employees to beat it back.

    President Joe Biden, at a campaign event in Illinois Friday night, said: “Now what are we all worried about? Elon Musk, who goes out and buys an outfit that sends and spews lies all across the world. … How do we expect kids to be able to understand what is at stake?”

    Twitter’s employees have been expecting layoffs since Musk took the helm. He fired top executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal, and removed the company’s board of directors on his first day as owner.

    As the emailed notices went out, many Twitter employees took to the platform to express support for each other — often simply tweeting blue heart emojis to signify its blue bird logo — and salute emojis in replies to each other.

    A Twitter manager said many employees found out they had been laid off when they could no longer log into the company’s systems. The manager said the way the layoffs were conducted showed a “lack of care and thoughtfulness.” The manager, who spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity out of concerns for job security, said managers were not given any notice about who would be getting laid off.

    “For me as a manager, it’s been excruciating because I had to find out about what my team was going to look like through tweets and through texting and calling people,” the employee said. “That’s a really hard way to care for your people. And managers at Twitter care a lot about their people.”

    A coalition of civil rights groups escalated their calls Friday for brands to pause advertising buys on the platform. The layoffs are particularly dangerous ahead of the elections, the groups warned, and for transgender users and other groups facing violence inspired by hate speech that proliferates online.

    In a tweet Friday, Musk blamed activists for what he described as a “massive drop in revenue” since he took over Twitter late last week.

    Insider Intelligence analyst Jasmine Enberg said there is “little Musk can say to appease advertisers when he’s keeping the company in a constant state of uncertainty and turmoil, and appears indifferent to Twitter employees and the law.”

    “Musk needs advertisers more than they need him,” she said. “Pulling ads from Twitter is a quick and painless decision for most brands.”

    A lawsuit was filed Thursday in federal court in San Francisco on behalf of one employee who was laid off and three others who were locked out of their work accounts. It alleges Twitter violated the law by not providing the required notice.

    The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification statute requires employers with at least 100 workers to disclose layoffs involving 500 or more employees, regardless of whether a company is publicly traded or privately held, as Twitter is now.

    The layoffs affected Twitter’s offices around the world. In the United Kingdom, it would be required by law to give employees notice, said Emma Bartlett, a partner specializing in employment and partnership law at CM Murray LLP.

    The speed of the layoffs could also open Musk and Twitter up to discrimination claims if it turns out, for instance, that they disproportionally affected women, people of color or older workers.

    ———

    AP Business Writers Mae Anderson, Alexandra Olson and Ken Sweet in New York, James Pollard in Columbia, S.C., Frank Bajak in Boston and Danica Kirka in London contributed to this story.

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  • Twitter cut more than 950 California employees after Elon Musk took over, WARN notice shows

    Twitter cut more than 950 California employees after Elon Musk took over, WARN notice shows

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    The Twitter profile page belonging to Elon Musk is seen on an Apple iPhone mobile phone.

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    After Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk took ownership of Twitter last week, the social networking giant embarked on a steep reduction in its workforce. The cuts affected a total of 983 employees in California, its home state, according to three letters of notice that the company sent to regional authorities, which were obtained by CNBC.

    The company’s new owner, CEO and sole director Musk, wrote in a tweet on Friday afternoon, “Regarding Twitter’s reduction in force, unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day. Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required.”

    Twitter’s reduction in force extended beyond California, and CNBC could not immediately confirm whether Musk’s description is accurate. A loss of $4 million per day at the company would represent an annual loss around $1.5 billion.

    The federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act requires employers to provide advance notice, generally within 60 days, of mass layoffs or plant closings in California.

    According to the letters from Twitter, shared by the California Employment Development Department, Twitter notified affected employees on Nov. 4. Many of those workers described losing access to email, and other internal systems at Twitter, overnight on Nov. 3 in public posts on social media, including on Twitter itself.

    This kind of arrangement may serve as “payment in lieu of notice,” in California depending on specific terms of employment. Permanent terminations are expected to begin Jan. 2023, according to the WARN notices.

    In three different California WARN notice letters, signed by the Twitter Human Resources Department but no individual executives, the company wrote: “Affected employees will be paid all wages and other benefits to which they are entitled through their date of termination.”

    According to the WARN notice, Twitter cut approximately 784 workers in San Francisco, including nine executive and senior level officials or managers, 147 mid-level employees who typically reported directly to top execs, 592 other professionals and 36 sales and administrative support workers combined.

    At the company’s satellite locations in Santa Monica, Twitter cut approximately 93 employees including 17 mid-level officials and managers, 66 professionals and 10 combined sales and administrative support workers, the WARN notice showed.

    At a San Jose office, Twitter cut approximately 106 employees, including one executive or senior-level official or manager, 18 mid-level officials and managers, 85 professionals and two administrative support workers, according to the WARN notice.

    Twitter was sued Thursday by former employees in a proposed class action filed by worker’s rights attorney Shannon Liss Riordan and others who were concerned that employees were not given proper notice, under federal and California law, that they would be terminated in the mass layoffs.

    Shannon Liss-Riordan, a worker’s rights attorney representing the terminated Twitter employees, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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  • Elon Musk begins Twitter overhaul with mass layoffs

    Elon Musk begins Twitter overhaul with mass layoffs

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    Elon Musk begins Twitter overhaul with mass layoffs – CBS News


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    Thousands of Twitter employees found out via email that they were let go, just one week after Elon Musk took control of the social media giant. Carter Evans reports.

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  • Musk says Twitter will charge $8 a month for account verification after criticism for $19.99 plan | CNN Business

    Musk says Twitter will charge $8 a month for account verification after criticism for $19.99 plan | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    After facing criticism for his plan to charge Twitter users $19.99 a month to get or keep a verified account, Elon Musk has a counteroffer.

    Musk on Tuesday said he planned to charge $8 a month for Twitter’s subscription service, called “Twitter Blue,” with the promise to let anyone pay to receive a coveted blue check mark to verify their account.

    In a tweet, the world’s richest man used an expletive to describe his assessment of “Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark.” He added: “Power to the people! Blue for $8/month.”

    CNN previously reported Twitter was working to update its existing subscription product, which currently costs $4.99 a month, to include the verification feature, According to internal Twitter planning documents viewed by CNN, Twitter could also take away the blue check marks of currently verified users if they don’t start paying the higher $19.99 price for the subscription product within 90 days.

    The news quickly prompted outrage and disbelief among some longtime Twitter users, including author Stephen King, who has nearly seven million followers on the platform.

    “$20 a month to keep my blue check?” he tweeted on Monday, followed by an expletive. “They should pay me. If that gets instituted, I’m gone like Enron.” Following up later in a reply, King wrote, “[i]t ain’t the money, it’s the principle of the thing.”

    Musk replied to King early Tuesday morning with his most explicit acknowledgment yet of the proposal to charge for account verification. “[W]e need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers,” he said. “How about $8?”

    On Tuesday, Musk reiterated the $8 price point and shared more details for his new plan. He said subscribers would get priority in replies, mentions and search, as well as the ability to post longer video and audio content while getting half as many ads as free users. Publishers that work with the platform will also get to bypass the paywall, according to Musk.

    “This will also give Twitter a revenue stream to reward content creators,” he added.

    The remarks highlight both how tenuous some of Musk’s initial plans for Twitter may be and also the urgency he faces to boost the revenue and profit for a company that lost money for most of its history. Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion, an amount that he admitted is “obviously overpaying” for the company. He also lined up a substantial amount of debt financing to pay for the deal.

    Since completing the acquisition of the social media platform on last week, the billionaire has moved quickly to shake up Twitter, including disbanding the board and firing its top execs. In tweets over the weekend, Musk polled his followers about whether to bring back Vine, Twitter’s defunct short-form video service, and said “absolutely” in response to a user’s suggestion to rethink the platform’s character limits. It’s unclear how committed Musk is to pursuing any or all of these changes.

    On Sunday, Musk tweeted: “The whole verification process is being revamped right now.”

    Even before the deal was completed, Musk suggested the possibility of tying verification to a paid subscription service. In April, Musk said Twitter’s paid subscribers “should get an authentication checkmark.” In another tweet, he said: “Price should probably be ~$2/month, but paid 12 months up front & account doesn’t get checkmark for 60 days (watch for CC chargebacks) & suspended with no refund if used for scam/spam.”

    While the blue check mark has emerged as a status symbol for users, it’s also designed to ensure people can determine which accounts are authentic and which are not, particularly for celebrities, brands and other influential accounts. If Musk were to create a paid barrier for verification, there are concerns it could make it harder to distinguish whether a notable name is a bot or not.

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