ReportWire

Tag: social networks

  • ICE becomes one of the most-blocked accounts on Bluesky after its verification | TechCrunch

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    ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) has now become the No. 3 most-blocked account on Bluesky, after receiving its official verification on Friday, according to third-party trackers. Bluesky users, unsurprisingly, are angry about the government account being hosted on the platform. Many are recommending that others block the account directly or subscribe to a block list that includes all of the U.S. government’s official accounts.

    The blocklist was introduced after the White House and other government agencies under the Trump administration signed up for Bluesky last October to post messages blaming Democrats for the government shutdown. The accounts that joined at the time included the Departments of Homeland Security, Commerce, Transportation, the Interior, Health and Human Services, State, and Defense, in addition to the White House itself.

    The move made the White House one of the most-blocked accounts on Bluesky, and today it remains in the No. 2 position, just behind Vice President J.D. Vance, per stats shared on the tracking site Clearsky. (The site leverages Bluesky’s API to track which accounts are the most blocked and other blocking activity.)

    ICE, however, did not join Bluesky in October. According to Bluecrawler’s Join Date Checker, the account @icegov.bsky.social joined the social network on November 26, 2025.

    The account was verified a few days ago according to the independently-run Verified Account Tracker, which suggests that either Bluesky’s team didn’t have enough information to apply the verification checkmark, was somehow unaware of the account’s existence (doubtful!), or was internally debating how to handle the issue. Bluesky hasn’t responded to a request for comment.

    One tracker now shows the ICE account as being over 60% of the way to being the most-blocked Bluesky account.

    Image Credits:https://bsky.app/profile/verified.evil.gay/post/3mcla755rbs24

    ICE today has many accounts across other social media sites, including X, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. These accounts tend to be verified on platforms that have a verification mechanism, with YouTube being an exception.

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    The decision from Bluesky to host and verify ICE establishes the social network as one that’s now fitting in more with other, larger social media giants, rather than with the original ethos of the open social web known as fediverse, where the user community is more in control of which accounts gain attention and traction.

    The fediverse, which represents a network of independent but interconnected social media platforms, includes apps like Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, Flipboard, and, to some extent, Instagram Threads, though Meta’s app isn’t fully federated. The U.S. government doesn’t have Mastodon accounts, but users can follow accounts like @potus on Threads from their Mastodon accounts, if they choose.

    One reason for avoiding Mastodon, an open source federated app that runs on the ActivityPub protocol, could be its smaller size. But also, any government account joining this network could be easily blocked by individual server operators. This wouldn’t prevent the account from setting up its own server to post to the fediverse, but other communities could refuse to federate (interoperate) with that server, greatly diminishing its reach.

    Mastodon’s founder Eugen Rochko, who stepped down as CEO in November, citing burnout, recently posted an anti-ICE message on Mastodon, noting that “Abolish ICE” doesn’t go “nearly far enough” to address the problem in the U.S.

    A day later, he announced he was opting his account out of the bridge that connects Mastodon with Bluesky.

    Bridging technology, which includes the project known as Bridgy Fed, is meant to allow different decentralized platforms to connect with each other, even if they run different protocols, as is the case with Bluesky, which runs on AT Protocol. Coincidentally, Bridgy Fed today launched a way to add domain blocklists to bridged accounts, which would conceivably allow fediverse users to block the government agencies posting on Bluesky.

    Reached for comment, Rochko wouldn’t confirm whether or not ICE’s participation on Bluesky was a factor in his decision to leave the bridge, saying that the decision was a “personal” one.

    However, there has often been tension between the fediverse and the atmosphere, or the decentralized social platform that includes Bluesky and other, newer networks and apps like Blacksky, Northsky Social, and more. Because the networks have different approaches to decentralization, they each have their own supporters and critics, some of whom can’t even agree that the networks should be bridged in the first place.

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    Sarah Perez

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  • Mastodon has a new plan to make money: Hosting and support services for the open social web | TechCrunch

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    Mastodon, the non-profit organization that maintains the software powering the decentralized alternative to social networks like Threads and X, has a new plan to make money.

    Instead of relying entirely on donations and grants as before, the company announced this morning it will now offer paid hosting, moderation, and support services for organizations that want to join the open social web.

    That network, also called the fediverse, offers a way for individuals and organizations to set up their own servers that interconnect with others that run the same protocol, ActivityPub.

    ActivityPub powers a number of different software applications, including Mastodon, Meta’s Threads, Pixelfed, PeerTube, Misskey, Lemmy, and others, and has been integrated into larger platforms like WordPress, Ghost, and Drupal through plugins.

    While anyone can establish an account on a public Mastodon server, some organizations and entities would prefer to run their own so they can set their own rules and manage the service as they see fit. However, server setup and management require at least some technical knowledge. It’s comparable, perhaps, to deciding to run your own installation of WordPress versus opting for a hosted version of WordPress from a service like WordPress.com, Bluehost, DreamHost, or others.

    To solve this problem and potentially generate revenue to maintain its operations, Mastodon will launch hosting services. Customers can choose to run their own servers through this model, where Mastodon’s team will manage the servers and optionally offer moderation services.

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    Another option will see Mastodon offering support contracts to aid with customers’ in-house tech teams focused on server management and maintenance. The latter would be an option for those companies and organizations that already have their own IT department, but are new to running Mastodon’s federated software.

    Mastodon says the servers it’s offering often operate accounts for brands or institutions, and are not general-purpose servers with external, open sign-ups.

    The company did not share its pricing, noting it offers a custom billing model that’s flexible, depending on the options they select, like hosting, support, and moderation.

    Hosted customers will still be able to define their own rules and policies, however.

    Mastodon has already been exploring this solution ahead of today’s launch by partnering with clients like the European Commission, the state of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany, the city of Blois in France, and AltStore, a software company making an alternative app store. Through these relationships, Mastodon has been able to establish a more predictable revenue stream, compared with its Patreon donations.

    However, the company stresses that the goal is to diversify Mastodon’s revenue streams, not replace the current model of donations, grants, and sometimes, merch. The company will also continue to operate its own server, mastodon.social, as a well-established entry point for consumers interested in exploring the fediverse.

    “We are excited to expand our services to organisations that share our vision of a free, open, and decentralised social web,” said Felix Hlatky, Mastodon’s chief financial officer, in a prepared statement.

    “These offerings will provide financial stability for our team while ensuring the Fediverse remains a resilient, community-driven ecosystem.”

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    Sarah Perez

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  • AI Will Understand Humans Better Than Humans Do

    AI Will Understand Humans Better Than Humans Do

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    Michal Kosinski is a Stanford research psychologist with a nose for timely subjects. He sees his work as not only advancing knowledge, but alerting the world to potential dangers ignited by the consequences of computer systems. His best-known projects involved analyzing the ways in which Facebook (now Meta) gained a shockingly deep understanding of its users from all the times they clicked “like” on the platform. Now he’s shifted to the study of surprising things that AI can do. He’s conducted experiments, for example, that indicate that computers could predict a person’s sexuality by analyzing a digital photo of their face.

    I’ve gotten to know Kosinski through my writing about Meta, and I reconnected with him to discuss his latest paper, published this week in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. His conclusion is startling. Large language models like OpenAI’s, he claims, have crossed a border and are using techniques analogous to actual thought, once considered solely the realm of flesh-and-blood people (or at least mammals). Specifically, he tested OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 to see if they had mastered what is known as “theory of mind.” This is the ability of humans, developed in the childhood years, to understand the thought processes of other humans. It’s an important skill. If a computer system can’t correctly interpret what people think, its world understanding will be impoverished and it will get lots of things wrong. If models do have theory of mind, they are one step closer to matching and exceeding human capabilities. Kosinski put LLMs to the test and now says his experiments show that in GPT-4 in particular, a theory of mind-like ability “may have emerged as an unintended by-product of LLMs’ improving language skills … They signify the advent of more powerful and socially skilled AI.”

    Kosinski sees his work in AI as a natural outgrowth of his earlier dive into Facebook Likes. “I was not really studying social networks, I was studying humans,” he says. When OpenAI and Google started building their latest generative AI models, he says, they thought they were training them to primarily handle language. “But they actually trained a human mind model, because you cannot predict what word I’m going to say next without modeling my mind.”

    Kosinski is careful not to claim that LLMs have utterly mastered theory of mind—yet. In his experiments he presented a few classic problems to the chatbots, some of which they handled very well. But even the most sophisticated model, GPT-4, failed a quarter of the time. The successes, he writes, put GPT-4 on a level with 6-year-old children. Not bad, given the early state of the field. “Observing AI’s rapid progress, many wonder whether and when AI could achieve ToM or consciousness,” he writes. Putting aside that radioactive c-word, that’s a lot to chew on.

    “If theory of mind emerged spontaneously in those models, it also suggests that other abilities can emerge next,” he tells me. “They can be better at educating, influencing, and manipulating us thanks to those abilities.” He’s concerned that we’re not really prepared for LLMs that understand the way humans think. Especially if they get to the point where they understand humans better than humans do.

    “We humans do not simulate personality—we have personality,” he says. “So I’m kind of stuck with my personality. These things model personality. There’s an advantage in that they can have any personality they want at any point of time.” When I mention to Kosinski that it sounds like he’s describing a sociopath, he lights up. “I use that in my talks!” he says. “A sociopath can put on a mask—they’re not really sad, but they can play a sad person.” This chameleon-like power could make AI a superior scammer. With zero remorse.

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    Steven Levy

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  • Why the EU’s Vice President Isn’t Worried About Moon-Landing Conspiracies on YouTube

    Why the EU’s Vice President Isn’t Worried About Moon-Landing Conspiracies on YouTube

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    When European Union vice president Věra Jourová met with YouTube CEO Neal Mohan in California last week, they fell to talking about the long-running conspiracy theory that the moon landings were fake. YouTube has faced calls from some users and advocacy groups to remove videos that question the historic missions. Like other videos denying accepted science, they have been booted from recommendations and have a Wikipedia link added to direct viewers to debunking context.

    But as Mohan spoke about those measures, Jourová made something clear: Fighting lunar lunatics or flat-earthers shouldn’t be a priority. “If the people want to believe it, let them do,” she said. As the official charged with protecting Europe’s democratic values, she thinks it’s more important to make sure YouTube and other big platforms don’t spare a euro that could be invested in fact-checking or product changes to curb false or misleading content that threatens the EU’s security.

    “We are focusing on the narratives which have the potential to mislead voters, which could create big harm to society,” Jourová tells WIRED in an interview. Unless conspiracy theories could lead to deaths, violence, or pogroms, she says, don’t expect the EU to be demanding action against them. Content like the recent fake news report announcing that Poland is mobilizing its troops in the middle of an election? That better not catch on as truth online.

    In Jourová’s view, her conversation with Mohan and similar discussions she held last week with the CEOs of TikTok, X, and Meta show how the EU is helping companies understand what it takes to counter disinformation, as is now required under the bloc’s tough new Digital Services Act. Its requirements include that starting this year the internet’s biggest platforms, including YouTube, have to take steps to combat disinformation or risk fines up to 6 percent of their global sales.

    Civil liberties activists have been concerned that the DSA ultimately could enable censorship by the bloc’s more authoritarian regimes. A strong showing by far-right candidates in the EU’s parliamentary elections taking place later this week also could lead to its uneven enforcement.

    YouTube spokesperson Nicole Bell says the company is aligned with Jourová on preventing egregious real-world harm and also removing content that misleads voters on how to vote or encourages interference in the democratic processes. “Our teams will continue to work around the clock,” Bell says of monitoring problematic videos about this week’s EU elections.

    Jourová, who expects her five year term to end later this year, in part because her Czech political party, ANO, is no longer in power at home in Czechia to renominate her, contends that the DSA is not meant to enable anything more than appropriate moderation of the most egregious content. She doesn’t expect Mohan or any other tech executive to go a centimeter beyond what the law prescribes. “Overusage, overshooting on the basis of the EU legislation would be a big failure and a big danger,” she says.

    On the other hand, she acknowledges that if the companies aren’t seen to be stepping up to mitigate disinformation, then some influential politicians have threatened to seek stiffer rules that could border on outright censorship. “I hate this idea,” she says. “We don’t want this to happen.”

    But with the DSA offering guidelines more than bright lines, how are platforms to know when to act? Jourova’s “democracy tour” in Silicon Valley, as she calls it, is part of facilitating a dialog on policy. And she expects social media researchers, experts, and the press to all contribute to figuring out the fuzzy borders between free expression and destructive disinformation. She jokes that she doesn’t want to be seen as the “European Minister of the Truth,” as tempting as that title may be. Leaving it to politicians alone to define what’s acceptable online “would pave the way to hell,” she says.

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    Paresh Dave

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  • LinkedIn Has Games Now

    LinkedIn Has Games Now

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    LinkedIn, the social network that is ostensibly about work, now has a space just for playing games. The company launched LinkedIn Games this week after testing the gaming waters earlier this year. The new puzzle and logic games are free, straightforward, and only a little bit of a ripoff of The New York Times’ very popular game offerings.

    In a blog post attributed to LinkedIn VP Daniel Roth, the company said the goal of the games is to give users a short mental break while on the platform. (And, of course, the unspoken part: Games keep people on the platform longer and drive engagement.)

    Currently, there are three games available. Pinpoint feels like playing a single row of the The New York Times’ Connections games. Crossclimb is a Wordle-esque matching game where you answer clues to solve a larger riddle. Queens is a mashup of chess and Sudoku that annoyed me just enough to ensure that I felt spitefully compelled to finish it no matter what. (I filed this story to my editor late because of it. It’s pretty good.)

    Like The New York Times’ games, LinkedIn’s games can be played just once per day. Users can share their scores directly on the platform, in case anyone needs to make posting on LinkedIn even more competitive.

    Here’s some other consumer tech news from this week.

    Face Plant

    Surprise surprise, Razer’s not-so-futuristic light-up face mask is bad, actually. Razer is known for its use of colorful RGB lightning in just about all of its products, even though the flashy display scheme proved somewhat underwhelming on its Zephyr face mask. Even worse, the company claimed the mask had the equivalent filtration qualities of an N95 mask, which can filter out harmful particles as well as viruses.

    Turns out, that capability was never formally tested. Now, the Federal Trade Commission has ordered the company to pay for making these claims about the mask’s capabilities, forcing the company to refund the money of every customer who bought one—to the tune of over a million dollars. ($1,071,254.33 to be exact.)

    The company first sold its $99 device in October 2021, deep in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Zephyr capitalized on a fear of infection that was still very much top of mind for many people. Razer claimed the mask could filter out particles, including Covid-carrying particles, just as well as any standard N95 mask. But, as the FTC says, the company never submitted it for certification with NIOSH, the US safety agency that certifies all N95 standards. Now the company has to pay for that error.

    Peloton Problems

    Peloton, the connected-exercise-equipment company that became a huge hit with wealthy people confined in their homes during the pandemic, has had some trouble in recent years. Peloton first rolled into financial issues in 2021, when demand for its products waned and its stock price plummeted. Now the company has hit an even slipperier slope.

    In the space of a couple of days, Peloton announced the departure of its CEO, Barry McCarthy, and that it would be laying off 15 percent of its workforce—nearly 400 employees. It’s not a great look for a company that once seemed set to revolutionize the home-exercise-equipment industry.

    Hybrid Theory

    Used to be that when someone said “hybrid” you’d think of the Toyota Prius, for better or worse. Hybrids were always the pudgy, weird little vehicle that maybe didn’t fit the typical idea of a “cool car.” At least that’s how the category was defined before a new wave of hybrid vehicles started to swell into the market. Now, hybrids are becoming cool; there’s even a souped-up Lamborghini plug-in hybrid. These gas-electric machines are also more popular than ever in the US, thanks to some government mandates that urge automakers to move toward a zero-emission future.

    This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED staff writer Aarian Marshall joins the show to talk about how hybrids are taking over the American vehicle market.

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    Boone Ashworth

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  • Claim, a social network that lets users earn and trade rewards with friends, raises $4M | TechCrunch

    Claim, a social network that lets users earn and trade rewards with friends, raises $4M | TechCrunch

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    Claim, a platform that is both a rewards app and a social network, has raised $4 million in a seed funding round led by Sequoia Capital. The startup is on a mission to make shopping fun, rewarding and social. The app launched on an invite-only beta in January and is currently focused on university and college students in Boston.

    With Claim, users and their friends can earn cash back, exchange rewards and even redeem them together. The platform is a social network that aims to focus on real-world value and communal experiences rather than manufactured content and reposts.

    The startup was founded by CEO Sam Obletz and CTO Tap Stephenson in November 2021. The duo met when they became roommates at Yale and came up with the idea for Claim when they reunited in business school at Harvard. Obletz and Stephenson originally started out by thinking about what it means to own something digital.

    “We started Claim because we were really interested in what it meant to own something online,” Stephenson told TechCrunch in an interview. “We saw this in web3 and we see this sports, which is in collectibles. There’s always been places where you can own something online, but there was no generalized form of it. And so we started asking: what would it mean to remove all friction to actually owning something online? And that over time, led to Claim.”

    The pair started off by envisioning a platform where you can earn rewards that are usable in the real world and linked to your credit card. They then decided that users should be able to use the rewards with their friends or exchange them. As they came up with these ideas, Obletz and Stephenson realized that they were embarking on a social mechanism that doesn’t widely exist today.

    Claim brings consumers a new kind of experience based on value that is somewhat similar to the idea of trading cards, but for brands. The startup says it has turned consumer rewards into a multiplayer game by allowing users to have new experiences together while saving money.

    An image of Claim founders Sam Obletz and Tap Stephenson

    Image Credits: Claim / Claim co-founders Sam Obletz and Tap Stephenson

    If you love a brand and your friend hasn’t checked it out yet, you can send them a special reward like a free acai bowl from your favorite coffee shop or a t-shirt from your favorite streetwear brand. You can exchange rewards, try new places together, and earn status from spending at brands. Claim also does a “drop” once a week where users unwrap a new reward at the same time. Users can decide to redeem the reward, gift it or trade it with friends.

    Although Claim aims to be beneficial for consumers, the startup is also focused on helping marketers and brands reach new customers in a way that doesn’t involve bombarding them with ads on Google, Instagram and TikTok. On Claim, consumers discover brands via rewards from friends. The startup believes that the ability to actually try a product is more beneficial than an ad when trying to reach new customers.

    “We make it so much easier for marketers,” Obletz said. “We can find customers based on where they shop and where their friends shop. If they haven’t gone before we can give them a reward to try their brand for the first time, which is super critical because we’re bringing in real new customers, and we can show them how effective that reward was based on spend. And so it’s just this insanely simple marketing tool that we’ve created.”

    The startup is currently working with merchants ranging from Fortune 500 companies, like PepsiCo, and local restaurants, such as Life Alive in Boston.

    Claim’s early results have been promising, as it says one partner on its platform hit 97% of their new customer goal in half the expected time, while another acquired customers with a 35% repeat rate within 30 days.

    Claim is currently focused on Gen Z as its entire user base because it believes this group of people are interested in authenticity and are tired of advertising, especially when every other post on social media these days appears to be sponsored. The startup wants to continue testing in Boston, where it currently has more than 10,000 users, before eventually expanding nationally.

    As for the new funding, the company plans to use it to hire new talent and grow its eight-person team over the next year. Claim will also use the funding to focus on testing and learning from an engineering perspective before expanding into new markets.

    The startup’s seed round follows its unannounced $2 million pre-seed round led by Susa Ventures and Box Group. Claim’s funding rounds included participation from 6th Man Venture, Reflexive Capital, A* Capital, GSW Ventures, The Kraft Group and more.

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    Aisha Malik

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  • Elon Musk wants Twitter users to pay an even higher subscription fee to not see ads

    Elon Musk wants Twitter users to pay an even higher subscription fee to not see ads

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    In tweets posted Saturday, the mercurial billionaire wrote, “Ads are too frequent on Twitter and too big. Taking steps to address both in coming weeks. Also, there will be a higher priced subscription that allows zero ads.”

    A user replied that using Instagram is a “complete garbage experience” because it shows “an ad every 3 pictures,” adding, “If you make ads less intrusive here and offer features that appeal visual communities, there are millions of users over there ready to migrate.”

    Musk replied “That’s the plan!”

    Currently the company sells its Twitter Blue premium offering for $11 per month when users sign up through the iOS or Android app. Otherwise it’s $8 per month, since the commission on in-app purchases doesn’t apply.

    Fewer or no ads on Twitter?

    Seeing fewer ads, as opposed to none, has been a selling point of Twitter Blue. Another has been the ability to get a blue check mark, which before Musk’s takeover indicated Twitter had verified the identity of a prominent user.

    In November, Musk’s company paused Twitter Blue after verified trolls used it to impersonate celebrities and brands like Eli Lilly. The latter appeared to announce, “We are excited to announce insulin is free now,” forcing the drugmaker to release an awkward apology over something it never said.

    It wasn’t the only misstep since Musk too over Twitter for $44 billion in late October. Last month, he admitted in a Twitter Spaces conversation that suspending the account of respected venture capitalist Paul Graham had been “a mistake.” Graham had run afoul of a short-lived policy banning links to competing social networks. 

    Advertiser exodus

    Another misstep might have been alienating advertisers, who left in droves after his takeover, worried about Musk, a self-described “free-speech absolutist,” reducing content moderation. Last month, Musk claimed advertisers were returning.

    But revenue at Twitter, which relies heavily on advertising, was down 35% year-over-year in the fourth quarter, according to a report this week by The Information, and a similar result could be in store for this quarter. 

    In other changes this week, Twitter quietly updated its developer agreement to make clear it was cutting off makers of apps like Tweetbot and Twitterific, as reported by Engadget. That came after such services were abruptly cut off with no warning.

    Twitterrific’s Sean Heber wrote in a blog post on Thursday: “We are sorry to say that the app’s sudden and undignified demise is due to an unannounced and undocumented policy change by an increasingly capricious Twitter.”

    Learn how to navigate and strengthen trust in your business with The Trust Factor, a weekly newsletter examining what leaders need to succeed. Sign up here.

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    Steve Mollman

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  • Mastodon Social Reaches 2.5 Million Users Amid Twitter Shakeup

    Mastodon Social Reaches 2.5 Million Users Amid Twitter Shakeup

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    There’s a new social network in town, and it’s coming for Twitter.


    Photo Illustration by Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

    Mastodon Social — a decentralized text-based social media platform where people can chat in interest groups or “servers” — reached a new 2.5 million monthly user milestone in the wake of Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover.

    According to a blog post written by the platform’s founder Eugen Rochko, the network “recently exploded in popularity;” it had just 300,000 monthly users in October.

    “We are excited to see Mastodon grow and become a household name in newsrooms across the world, and we are committed to continuing to improve our software to face up to new challenges that come with rapid growth and increasing demand,” Rochko wrote in the post.

    Mastodon’s sudden growth came as Musk purchased Twitter in October and took the company private. Since then, he’s tried to implement several controversial changes, including banning accounts (including those of journalists) that link to competitors like Mastodon. According to CNN, the policy was suspended less than 24 hours after it was enacted following accusations that Musk was walking back on his stance on free speech.

    “This is a stark reminder that centralized platforms can impose arbitrary and unfair limits on what you can and can’t say while holding your social graph hostage,” Rochko wrote in his blog post. “At Mastodon, we believe that there doesn’t have to be a middleman between you and your audience and that journalists and government institutions especially should not have to rely on a private platform to reach the public.”

    It’s unclear how many Twitter users have left the platform since Musk’s takeover — the company hasn’t released any new metrics since July. It reported 238 million monetizable daily users at that time.

    However, several notable figures have announced their departures from the app as a result of Musk’s leadership, including Elton John, Jim Carrey and Shonda Rhimes.

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    Sam Silverman

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  • Elon Musk demands Twitter employees pledge they won’t leak information to the press—and is threatening to sue them if they do: Report

    Elon Musk demands Twitter employees pledge they won’t leak information to the press—and is threatening to sue them if they do: Report

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    Elon Musk has given Twitter employees another ultimatum.

    Last month Musk told them to either sign up for “long hours at high intensity” or leave the company. Many decided to leave.

    Now, he’s demanding they not leak confidential information to the press and is threatening to sue them if they do. What’s more, he’s demanding they sign pledge today to indicate they’ve understood. 

    That’s according to Platformer journalist Zoe Schiffer, who has been closely tracking the turmoil at Twitter since Musk’s $44 billion takeover in late October. 

    Ironically, it appears Schiffer learned of Musk’s latest demands via the very kind of leak he’s addressing, and posted her findings on the platform he now owns.

    Fortune reached out to Twitter on Saturday but did not receive an immediate reply outside of normal business hours.

    “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 reportedly warns employees in an email. Occasional slip-ups 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.” 

    Schiffer included a link to The Tech Worker Handbook, adding, “If you’re a tech worker considering sharing information with the media, you have rights.” 

    She also shared tweet from Musk himself reading, “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”

    Musk has pledged to make Twitter more transparent and has described himself as a “free-speech absolutist.” 

    Earlier this month, he touted the release of curated internal company communications from before his takeover involving what he described as the “Hunter Biden story suppression by Twitter.”

    Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter, tweeted in response: “If the goal is transparency to build trust, why not just release everything without filter and let people judge for themselves? Including all discussions around current and future actions? Make everything public now.”

    Musk today tweeted, “Twitter is both a social media company and a crime scene.”

    Last month, Musk had nearly two dozen employees who publicly or privately pushed back against him fired, according to the New York Times.

    Not long after taking over the company, Musk laid off about half its workforce. He then told the remaining workers that the company could go bankrupt in the “difficult times ahead” and demanded they work with a “maniacal sense of urgency.”

    Last month, Chris Kelly, an early investor of SpaceX and a former Facebook executive, said Musk’s “chainsaw” approach to Twitter would not likely work and “does not bode well for its future.”

    Our new weekly Impact Report newsletter examines how ESG news and trends are shaping the roles and responsibilities of today’s executives. Subscribe here.

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    Steve Mollman

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  • Elon Musk ‘wanted to punch’ Kanye West after deeming the rapper’s swastika tweet an ‘incitement to violence’ 

    Elon Musk ‘wanted to punch’ Kanye West after deeming the rapper’s swastika tweet an ‘incitement to violence’ 

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    Elon Musk explained on Saturday why he suspended Kanye West’s Twitter account on Friday following an antisemitic post from the rap mogul. The suspension occurred just days Musk allowed West back on Twitter. A few months earlier, West had been locked out of his account because of hate speech toward Jews.

    Musk has described himself as a “free-speech absolutist,” vowing to be less restrictive with content moderation than Twitter’s previous leadership. Advertisers, fearful of their brands appearing alongside hateful content, paused their advertising after Musk’s $44 billion takeover of Twitter on Oct. 27.

    Musk’s reasoning regarding West’s suspension might offer insights into where he’ll draw the lines on content moderation in the future.

    West’s account was suspended Friday after he posted an image of a swastika inside a Star of David. That followed West repeatedly praising Adolf Hitler while appearing live on far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars program, where he said “I love Nazis,” whom he insisted “did good things too.”

    Incitement to violence ‘against the law’

    “At some point you have to say what is incitement to violence because it is against the law in the U.S.,” Musk said Saturday during a live Q&A on Twitter Spaces. “Posting swastikas in what obviously is not a good way is an incitement to violence.”

    He added, “I personally wanted to punch Kanye, so that was definitely inciting me to violence. That’s not cool.”

    Musk had earlier tweeted of West, “I tried my best. Despite that, he again violated our rule against incitement to violence. Account will be suspended.”

    Musk also said in the Q&A that Apple had “fully resumed” advertising on Twitter, adding that the iPhone maker is the platform’s largest advertiser. He thanked other advertisers for returning, too. (Amazon plans to restart advertising on Twitter to the tune of about $100 million a year, according to a tweet on Saturday from a Platformer reporter, citing anonymous sources.)

    Musk’s content moderation plans for Twitter

    Musk has fired many Twitter employees involved in content moderation, increasing concerns about hateful content running rampant on the platform.

    The company told Reuters this week that it’s leaning heavily on automation to moderate content, favoring restrictions on distribution over outright removal of certain speech. 

    “Hate speech impressions (# of times tweet was viewed) continue to decline, despite significant user growth,” Musk tweeted. “Freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom of reach. Negativity should & will get less reach than positivity.”

    That followed the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a London nonprofit, saying on Friday that the number of daily tweets containing slurs was substantially higher compared to the monthly rate before Musk’s takeover. 

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    Steve Mollman

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  • Shonda Rhimes tells her 1.9M Twitter followers, ‘Not hanging around for whatever Elon has planned. Bye.’

    Shonda Rhimes tells her 1.9M Twitter followers, ‘Not hanging around for whatever Elon has planned. Bye.’

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    Shonda Rhimes isn’t impressed with Elon Musk’s plans for Twitter, and she isn’t stick around. Best known for creating and writing Grey’s Anatomy, the TV mogul shared what might be her last tweet Saturday, telling her nearly 2 million followers, “Not hanging around for whatever Elon has planned. Bye.”

    Musk, a self-described free-speech absolutist, completed his $44 billion takeover of the social media platform on Thursday and promptly fired top executives he had criticized for being too suppressive. 

    While he was quick to reassure advertisers on Thursday that the platform wouldn’t become a “free-for-all hellscape,” not everyone was convinced. General Motors said it would temporarily pause advertising on Twitter, adding, “We are engaging with Twitter to understand the direction of the platform under their new ownership.” 

    Advertisers, of course, are not keen on appearing near offensive content, and there’s been a sharp increase in that since Musk took control, with Twitter trolls flooding the platform with racial slurs and Nazi memes.

    “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 about elections, public health policy, and international affairs,” Paul Barrett, deputy director of the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, told the Associated Press.

    On Friday, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO tweeted, “To be super clear, we have not yet made any changes to Twitter’s content moderation policies.” That followed him tweeting earlier: “Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints. No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes.” 

    He also offered glimpses into his thinking about the platform’s future on Friday and early Saturday while replying to Twitter suggestions. When a user noted Facebook has something similar to the content moderation council but still angers both the left the right, Musk replied, “Good point. Being able to select which version of Twitter you want is probably better, much as it would be for a movie maturity rating. The rating of the tweet itself could be self-selected, then modified by user feedback.”

    As Musk toys with ideas, however, an increase in hateful content may in the meantime drive some users away from the platform—including prominent ones like Rhimes.

    According to the Network Contagion Research Institute, which analyzes social media content and predicts emerging threats, instances of the N-word increased by nearly 500% in the 12 hours immediately after Musk’s takeover was finalized. 

    Rhimes, an African-American, didn’t elaborate on why she was leaving the platform. But up until now she’s been a prolific user of Twitter, building a large following since joining the platform in November 2008.

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    Steve Mollman

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