収束ゾーンでのライフ: Life in the Convergence Zone

Work has been A Thing Again, so once again, I’m way behind. I’m doing little themed updates as I can to catch up.

I do come back to Twitter (nee “X”) a lot, don’t I? Well, it is the single largest bullhorn for fascist disinformation and propaganda outside of Fox News, so you can imagine why I think it’s relevant.

Where we gonna start today? Well, Jewish Leaders and Rabbis Call Out Elon Musk for Spreading ‘Overt Antisemitism’ is where we left off, so don’t think that’s gone anywhere. After all, this is the same service that told Media Matters for America that users who posted “Hitler was right” and urged a “final solution” for Jewish people didn’t break “our safety policies” and also repeatedly places ads next to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories blaming “the Jews” for “9/11.”

Perhaps this is related to his Anti-Semitic, Apartheid-Loving Grandfather who moved from Canada to South Africa because he loved apartheid so much.

But let’s talk about some of the other disinformation, particularly starting with more items clearly intended for the 2024 election, which is what all this is about regardless.

Musk’s X [Twitter] disabled feature for reporting electoral misinformation. Well, obviously; that goes against the point. He also (reportedly) laid off yet another round of people in moderation – including the “last man standing” in threat assessment – so it’s not like it was going to get done anyway. But it’s not just political disinfo, of course; X ranks last on climate change misinformation scorecard too.

If someone’s excuse for staying on Twitter is “but mah news” then there are better alternatives, and they’d better be ready to distrust everything you see even more than usual. Because it’s literally the worst alternative. See also:

EU warns Elon Musk after Twitter found to have highest rate of disinformation, with a particular emphasis on Russian propaganda and disinfo. This is also unsurprising; he’s got a history of going silent on his relationship with Putin, but we all know it’s close.

Musk Twitter is still throttling links to whatever other websites – particularly competitors – that Elon decides he doesn’t like. But he’s still responding quickly and regularly to favoured-government demands for identifying information about accounts, like this teenaged girl in Saudi Arabia who just got sentenced to 18 years in prison for her tweets. (Tho’ I don’t know if that was relevant in this particular case, it has been relevant in many, many others. Twitter really works to help Saudi Arabia crush dissent.)

Apparently there’s also some illegal failure to disclose ads as ads, but I don’t know whether this was just another glitch or whether it was some A/B testing or what.

Finally, there’s one good thing this update. Remember that whole “Elon decides to fuck up Ukraine’s attacks on Crimea” debacle? And how I said that was a huge mistake for him personally, that he was fucking around, and that he would find out?

Well, he’s found out, and won’t get to do that anymore.

Do not fuck with the DoD, particularly not when you have contracts with the DoD.