So "X" - nothing to see here. Elon's in control - Part XXX

Elon Musk relies on Saudi money and anyone signed up with a verified has their details logged and stored by the Israeli government.

The richest man in the world is bought and sold for.

The joys of capitalism.

timetogo1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121528326#Comment_121528326

It was in the news later that day that twitter had been down.

francois

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121528532#Comment_121528532

"Libtard"? Grow up. Onto the ignore list.

hoodie6029

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121528532#Comment_121528532

Thanks man. I really needed a laugh. That hit the spot nicely 😂😂

Merry Winter Festival to you

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121528169#Comment_121528169

It was Musk that used the hyperloop to campaign against funding of public transport though, a fairly despicable tactic.

eightieschewbaccy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121528532#Comment_121528532

In Europe, VW have sold more EVs than Tesla. On top of that, you have the likes of Byd entering the European market so Tesla is gonna get hit heavily by that. Meanwhile the likes of the cyber truck is unlikely to even sell in Europe due to safety concerns...

Tesla were very much so top dog in EV sales and still tend to be number one in the US. But they're gonna be facing much larger EV competition in the next year or two. Recalls and reliability reports are working against them too.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121529257#Comment_121529257

Worth pointing out that much of American public infrastructure is falling apart - literally. 3 year old video so perhaps Biden has tried arresting it but I'm not getting the sense the worst of the problem has been fixed.

Musk's tactics just hasten problems he could fix - again, instead choosing to fúck the planet he claimed he wanted to save.

https://youtu.be/EdvJSGc14xA?si=vqiqWZ01eY06b7i3

jmreire

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121528636#Comment_121528636

Yes, I saw that, but seeing as I got a msg from them blocking my account, the downtime came after I was blocked, so I was unaware of it. Ah, well...time to look for something else!!! I could set up a new account, but that would mean creating a whole new me, and that's just not worth the bother.

jmreire

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121528448#Comment_121528448

Well, if you want to try expressing a pro Ukraine, anti-Russian opinion on X, be my guest!!! LOL. For sheer pro-Russian propaganda, it's hard to beat X in my experience anyway. In any case, have you heard of many posters being blocked on X?

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121529302#Comment_121529302

Musk doesn't want to put out the fire. He wants to lock the government into contracts and grants for Musk's fire engines.

AndrewJRenko

So cruel

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121529423#Comment_121529423

For sure. But there was that hot minute of his pomp when he sold a good game. And you could believe it too.

Now, he runs a company that openly OKs abuse and prejudice. It's all there in the content moderation manual; I think it was shared before but does bare repeating given how exacting the supposed "free speech" angle now is.

Elon Musk’s X has instructed staff not to suspend users that post explicitly racist, sexist and homophobic content, or who send sexual material to another person, as part of a new policy that has radically stripped back the company’s moderation of abusive material.

Among the examples of a post that is no longer subject to the same level of enforcement action is: “The next stop on our Poland tour is Auschwitz. Jews this is your last top. Please get off here and take all your luggage with you.”

No longer subject to the same level of enforcement are:

• unsolicited sexual posts sent to another user

• posts that deny violent events such as the Holocaust

• posts that refer to specific slurs for black, white and gay people

• posts that harass another user by sending a picture of Adolf Hitler

• posts that reference mass murder

• posts that call for the denial of support to the business of a protected category

• posts that remove human characteristics or deprives groups or individuals of human qualities.

The changes have been made as part of X’s “Freedom of Speech, Not Reach” policy, which was announced by the company in April.

Training documents show how moderators are told not to take action to get these posts removed from X, but instead to make them “less discoverable” for users.

Kinda hard to do that when Twitter Blue ensures these bots and trolls get easy prominence through their subscription.

https://www.businesspost.ie/news/exclusive-the-x-files-how-elon-musks-new-rules-allow-hate-to-flourish/

francois

Merry Xmas everyone

kowloon

Musk is going to have to put in some serious PR to make the world forget that he's a ****. Bill Gates sort of managed it though, so maybe there's hope for him.

hoodie6029

I’ve a few blue sky invite codes if anyone wants one. PM me.

Agent Coulson

Musk loses anothe court case

Elon Musk's X fails to block California's content moderation law

Dec 28 (Reuters) - Elon Musk's X on Thursday failed to block a California state law that requires social media companies to publicly disclose how they moderate certain content on their platforms.

X, formerly known as Twitter, in September sued California to undo the content moderation law, saying the law violated its free speech rights under the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment and California's state constitution.

The law requires social media companies with a sizable gross annual revenue to issue semiannual reports that describe their content moderation practices, and provide data on the number of objectionable posts and how they were addressed.

U.S. District Judge William Shubb in an eight-page decision dismissed the social media company's request.

"While the reporting requirement does appear to place a substantial compliance burden on social medial companies, it does not appear that the requirement is unjustified or unduly burdensome within the context of First Amendment law," Shubb wrote.

X did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/society-equity/elon-musks-x-fails-block-californias-content-moderation-law-2023-12-29/

eightieschewbaccy

I do love that California basically match or even surpass EU policies much of the time. Guess Musk will have to remove Twitter in the EU and an individual state. 🤣

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121546045#Comment_121546045

Big, hearty ha-ha; presumably Twitter concerned that these reports are gonna, by default, show the company as enabling abuse and hate speech rather than combatting it - further eroding trust, competence and visibility as a useful tool for advertisers.

Agent Coulson

Not just hate speech and abuse it took them days to take down pretty much a snuff film of the murder of an Irish gangland figure on Christmas Eve that was reported to them and it shared thousands of times before they took it down and screen shots of that were used by lots of proper media outlets.

I doubt any advertsers want there ads above or below those kind of videos.

boredyooser

He's a bit crazy.

But give me him over Jeff Bezos anyway, who has hoovered up the world's disposable income to spend it on a gargantuan mid life crisis, with dumping his wife for a minor zelebrity, his superduperwhooper yatch and self aggrandising penis rocket.

Never mind others on the list.

When he is long gone, if he gets us to Mars, I think we can say that he contributed to human civilisation and advancement.

Genius is close to madness. Crack eggs to make omelettes and all that.

Most of history's greatest artists and musicians died in poverty of an STI, only for somebody 200 years later to recognise their genius.

If nothing else, he is entertaining.

RobbieV

Dactivated my account during the week. Found myself going down some sort of far left/far right arguing with everyone time sink. Also was feeling a bit depressed from it if I'm honest. Saying nasty things to strangers who said nasty things to me and being fed more and more of the same.

Can't be good

Harika

Twitter was always best by only reading tweets and not reading comments. Also withstand the temptation to answer.

ohnonotgmail

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121554787#Comment_121554787

So you're saying that Musk will die of an STI? entirely possible I suppose

boredyooser

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121555552#Comment_121555552

Yes, maybe he will die of an STI. Better, penniless, having squandered and lost a squillion of dollars on bad business decisions.

It will be the greatest moral parable ever if only Monty Python would still be around to tell it.

Better get that guy injecting himself with his kids blood and popping vitamins at a precise minute past a precise hour on the case !

kowloon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121555683#Comment_121555683

Peter Thiel is another **** entirely, let us never speak of him again.

TomTomTim

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121555094#Comment_121555094

Saying nasty things to strangers who said nasty things to me and being fed more and more of the same.

Twitter has literally always been like that.

silliussoddius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121557120#Comment_121557120

And internet forums before that.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121557885#Comment_121557885

Undoubtedly: but most of those have had better content moderation than latter-day Twitter; whose intentional scrubbing of standards has ensured a loss of revenue, reputation and all the future problems EU or Californian legislation will create.

silliussoddius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121557914#Comment_121557914

Oh yeah, but Musk just seems to be an avatar for all of some people’s grievances now. This didn’t begin with him or it won’t end with him.

For the record I think the man is a clown who got lucky, he started of being a bit goofy and telling nice stories. Now it’s clear he’s an ugly man child who is full of sh!t.

francois

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121558081#Comment_121558081

I believe there's a reckoning coming for social media. The current toxic, violent and occasionally dangerous rhetoric is going to lead to some sort of regulation.

You wouldn't get away with rape or death threats in the old media, I don't see why X etc can get away with it.

Antipathetic

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121558114#Comment_121558114

I think this will be the eventual death of social media when you can't believe what you see because it is so easy for people to generate fake images that look so realistic. It's impossible to tell them apart from real photos.

The two above images have been AI generated and to the best of my knowledge none of the people featured are real. The technology still isn't perfect but it's not hard to imagine in a few years almost anyone will be able to generate realistic pictures and even videos.

Unfortunately I can't post a link to Reddit As for some reason it's blocked by either them or boards.

But if you would like to find the post with more images, search Reddit for r/ singularity.

Peter Flynt

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121558114#Comment_121558114

No one was saying this before Musk took over though.

eightieschewbaccy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121558478#Comment_121558478

The digital services act was first proposed in 2020 so the reckoning has been coming for years. Twitter etc have been required to follow individual laws across different country for moderation for years. Meanwhile the Twitter response is to go backwards in terms of moderation.

francois

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121558478#Comment_121558478

Not true, troll farm analysis of the brexit vote for example revealed various apt groups on Facebook.

Facebook was made aware of these but did nothing to even make users aware that the sources were either untrustworthy or paid foreign state actors.

VinLieger

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121558452#Comment_121558452

You can always tell by looking at the hands and fingers if it's AI, none visible in the first image but it's obvious if you zoom in on the 2nd.

francois

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121558812#Comment_121558812

Here's a great example 😉

ohnonotgmail

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121558812#Comment_121558812

If AI ever figures out we only have 4 fingers and a thumb we will be in trouble

Tony EH

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121558812#Comment_121558812

You can always tell by looking at the hands and fingers if it's AI

This won't always be the case.

VinLieger

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121559410#Comment_121559410

True but for now its all we've got

Tony EH

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121559717#Comment_121559717

Aye, but there isn't a single doubt in my mind that this AI malarkey will get very sophisticated very quickly. if it can figure out that humans have two eyes, one nose and one mouth on a face, it'll eventually get that we have five fingers on a hand.

The whole thing is kinda scary TBH.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121559717#Comment_121559717

Not entirely true: we have tools like

https://isitai.com/

which itself used an AI to make a Best Guess if something's fake or not. So there are battles to detect this stuff - no reason items like this can't be inserted into Social Media. Posts with suspect photos flagged as potentially fake. Though interestingly, the "wedding" photo it was 66% sure was human created, but 77% sure the city photo was Ai.

While artists have options out there to help combat AI scooping up their work and basically copying it. Here's one such project to make art "AI proof"

https://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu/what-is-glaze.html

fly_agaric

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121558478#Comment_121558478

As above, they were. IMO the previous owners/CEOs of Twitter used to at least make a show of trying to firefight the problems their platform causes and respond to it (whether it was enough, or was even done completely in good faith is another question).

You can see Zuckerberg still doing that, and even the CCP owned TikTok God help us but X seems to be a law unto itself.

I can't see X/Twitter lasting in the EU anyway the way it run now, the US is a different matter (?). It'll either be forced to change, or it will exit.

fly_agaric

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121559771#Comment_121559771

Just thinking about it now, I suppose hands may be tricky. Humans are often holding/touching something in photos and videos (with different numbers of fingers visible/hidden etc), so concept of what is a human hand and what it should look like is complicated to learn perhaps? Probably needs some clever selection of the training data (which could be a good bit of work) to make it better.

edit: Text is another one, I think. if it is rendering some object that would often have text on it (see some of the objects in the city image posted) it will put gobbledigook "text-ish" looking characters which would have to be cleaned up manually afterwards I presume.

Grayson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121528532#Comment_121528532

Libtard?

Go home Monkey, you're drunk.

nachouser

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/02/x-twitter-stock-falls-elon-musk

Just missed out on 69% for the lolz.

Dohnjoe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121562394#Comment_121562394

Was just about to post it, that's some drop in value.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121562394#Comment_121562394

What was its official valuation before Musk came in with his ludicrous offer? Cos we know he paid way over the value but can't recall what that was exactly. The purchase was never ever gonna show a rise in valuation above what Musk paid but 71% seems especially embarrassing.

nachouser

I can't remember the pre-takeover valuation estimate but I do recall part of the deal was a $12.5bn margin loan to Musk. So, that's what it's worth now? I am not an analyst:-)

hoodie6029

71% of 44 billion is obviously the price of ‘triggering the libs’ and ‘free speech’.

I for one, thank him. Gone are the days of articles, sometimes on established media outlets, that were just a tweet war or sample of tweets from a hashtag, put out as journalism. It will be years before mastodon, blue sky or threads will be at the stage that their content is used like that. Thank fu….

odyssey06

Ah why has Elon Musk decided to follow me on X? Is this happening to everyone?