#Elon Musk on Coronavirus

[flipocrite]

3 hours, 37 minutes

[odinsblog]

I see Elon Musk’s disinformation machine™ is out in full force again. This time helping to spread antivaxxer propaganda. And ofc the bot army is using a Black man’s alleged illness (Jamie Foxx) to give the lies some extra zing.

Anyway, since Musk has fired most of Twitter’s Trust and Safety team, and because he has repeatedly doubled down on treating misinformation & disinformation as “free speech,” please verify everything that you see and read online—especially on Twitter.

This has always been sage advice, but it’s especially true now, when so many paid social media armies (AI, bots & trolls) are being used to intentionally spread misinformation.

Honestly, Elon Musk is more of a threat to American democracy than Russia, China or any foreign country’s propaganda could ever be.

[lamajaoscura]

Twitter is no longer enforcing its Covid misinformation policy | CNN Business

[tomorrowusa]

When Elon Musk took over Twitter he proclaimed, “The bird is free.” Apparently, so is the coronavirus at Twitter. 

Twitter will no longer enforce its policy against COVID-19 misinformation, raising concerns among public health experts and social media researchers that the change could have serious consequences if it discourages vaccination and other efforts to combat the still-spreading virus.

Eagle-eyed users spotted the change Monday night, noting that a one-sentence update had been made to Twitter's online rules: "Effective November 23, 2022, Twitter is no longer enforcing the COVID-19 misleading information policy."

With Trump back at Twitter, we may soon see him again recommend COVID-19 remedies like bleach and livestock dewormer.

If you haven’t formulated a post-Twitter contingency plan, now is the time to start doing so. The platform will only continue to get worse.

It’s delusional to think Twitter will somehow fix itself without seeing any evidence of that.

[head-post]

Elon Musk slammed by critics for sharing vaccine-denying meme on X

Musk, who previously said he nearly ended up in hospital after his third vaccine shot, has been heavily criticised by several X users.

The founder of X (formerly known as Twitter) shared a meme bordering on vaccine denial, for which he was attacked by several users. Elon Musk shared a meme on X’s website that read:

Imagine having a vaccine so safe that you have to threaten to take it, for a disease so deadly that you have to get tested to learn about it.

Doctors also found his meme to be deeply insensitive to those who lost their families to Covid. One X user wrote:

A disease so deadly you have to be tested to know you have it”. You know they have to test for cancer too right.”

Another pointed out:

“Other diseases you have to be tested for to know if you’ve got it; Cancers, HIV/AIDS and Coronary Heart Disease.

Read more HERE

[covid-safer-hotties]

Harris, Trump Mum on Present-Day COVID-19 Situation Amid Summer Surge - Published Aug 13, 2024

The U.S. is in the middle of a summer wave of COVID-19 – though you wouldn’t know it from listening to the candidates running for president.

Former President Donald Trump has brought up COVID on the campaign trail, but his comments have mostly been related to the past.

“We got over that bad period where it was – everybody was dying, and it was just not a good period,” Trump told Elon Musk during a talk broadcasted on social platform X Monday evening. “Interestingly, you know, during his administration, many more people died during his administration of COVID than during my administration, and we really got the brunt of it,” Trump said, referring to President Joe Biden.

Trump’s only recent acknowledgement of present-day COVID was an unfounded accusation that Biden faked his recent infection. “Does anybody really believe that Crooked Joe had Covid? No, he wanted to get out ever since June 27th, the night of The Debate, where he was completely obliterated,” Trump posted on Truth Social in late July.

Biden, for his part, made light of his diagnosis with a dig at Trump and Musk.

“I’m sick,” Biden posted on X in July, quickly following up with another message: “Of Elon Musk and his rich buddies trying to buy this election.”

Vice President Kamala Harris, though she has only been running for president for less than a month, hasn’t made COVID – past or present – a significant part of her platform.

Her pick for vice president, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, however, has notably brought up Trump’s record on the pandemic in his very short time on the ticket.

“He froze in the face of the COVID crisis,” Walz said during a campaign event in Philadelphia last week.

But all these political digs are looking in the rearview window while the U.S. is in the middle of a coronavirus surge.

“Most areas of the country are experiencing consistent increases in COVID-19 activity, with substantial increases in the southern United States,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a recent post.

Of course, the coronavirus has become less of a concern as variants became less severe and the U.S. gained access to vaccines and treatments.

Still, the latest month of fully available weekly coronavirus death data put the total four-week toll at more than 1,600 deaths. Test positivity, which is a measure of how many COVID tests are coming back positive, as well as emergency department visits and COVID-19-associated hospitalizations are “elevated,” according to the CDC. The agency warns the trend is particularly true among adults aged 65 and older.

“Surges like this are known to occur throughout the year, including during the summer months,” the agency said.

The surge doesn’t appear to have peaked yet, and new COVID variants are spreading. Two strains – KP.3.1.1 and KP.3 – were responsible for nearly half of new coronavirus infections in recent weeks, according to CDC estimates. The strains, which are both descendents of the JN.1 variant that was dominant at the beginning of this year, don’t appear to be more severe than previous ones so far. Experts expect vaccines to remain effective against the circulating variants.

[mariacallous]

The COVID-19 pandemic’s sudden onset in 2020 and its persistent impacts in ensuing years posed new challenges for large U.S. cities and metropolitan areas.

Some of the initial challenges were related to the specific nature of the coronavirus and public health responses. In March 2020, residents of cold, dense cities seemed at greater risk of contracting the airborne illness than those in more spread-out, temperate communities where people could spend time outside year-round.1 More persistent challenges are related to the rapid adoption of remote work technologies, which enable certain kinds of work to be done anywhere with a high-speed internet connection, and not necessarily in big-city downtowns dominated by what today are increasingly vacant office buildings.

In an increasingly hyper-polarized country, some of these dynamics intersected with partisan politics. Republican-led states such as Florida and Texas positioned themselves as refuges for movers seeking escape from “Covid lockdowns” in Democratic-led states. In response to these and other political factors, Elon Musk moved Tesla’s headquarters from Silicon Valley to Austin, Texas, and a prominent Chicago financier moved his hedge fund to Miami after his employees started working from a high-end hotel there during the height of the pandemic.

The housing market also played a role in fueling migration during this time. As more people worked from home, demand for homeownership rose, particularly for larger homes. For example, in San Diego County—which for many years had built little new housing—median home prices skyrocketed from $660,000 in January 2020 to $860,000 just two years later, according to Zillow. Prices also rose in more affordable, flexible markets, but much more modestly; in Houston over that same time, the median home price increased from $195,000 to $240,000.

My colleague William H. Frey was among the first to document significant migration away from big metro areas during the pandemic. His analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data showed accelerated domestic out-migration from large, coastal metro areas such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, and Seattle between 2020 and 2021. Domestic in-migration, meanwhile, remained strong in Sun Belt metro areas such as Phoenix, Dallas, Tampa, Fla., San Antonio, and Raleigh, N.C. Frey’s subsequent analysis showed these trends moderated through 2022 and 2023 as the initial impacts of the pandemic subsided.

Even if they are temporary in some respects, these recent migration patterns could have lasting impacts. Richard Florida, for instance, points to the rise of “meta cities”—large U.S. metro areas distant from each other yet linked closely by the ties of remote work and Covid-era movers, such as New York and Miami (finance), the Bay Area and Austin (tech), and Los Angeles and Nashville, Tenn. (entertainment). The Economic Innovation Group chronicled a loss of high earners from major urban centers such as New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. during the first two years of the pandemic. The home listing service Redfin, meanwhile, noted rising housing demand in affordable markets proximate to major metro areas (e.g., New Haven, Conn. outside New York; Richmond, Va. outside Washington, D.C.; Worcester, Mass. outside Boston), suggesting the growing prominence of hybrid (versus fully remote) work arrangements. How these dynamics play out could have significant implications for the economic and social health of cities, and for America’s urban hierarchy in the 21st century.

To better understand these dynamics, this report analyzes data from the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) Statistics of Income program on U.S. population migration at the county level. The data tracks individual income tax filers who changed addresses from one year to the next, and reports the number of tax filers moving between counties (a proxy for households), the number of personal exemptions among those filers (a proxy for individuals), and the total adjusted gross income reported on their returns (a proxy for household income). While the IRS migration data is only currently available through 2022 (versus 2023 in Census Bureau migration data), it has the advantages of tracking movements between specific counties and revealing something about the economic status of migrating households.2

This report uses the IRS county-level migration data to track movement before and after the pandemic’s onset among U.S. metropolitan areas, which are collections of counties that approximate regional economies and labor markets.3 The analysis assigns each county in the dataset to its corresponding metro area based on the latest Census Bureau metropolitan delineations.4 An important limitation of the IRS data is that it suppresses county-to-county flows of fewer than 20 tax filers to protect taxpayer privacy. In 2021-22, for instance, the data reflects a total of 7.6 million U.S. filers moving to metropolitan counties, with the source county indicated for 5.8 million of them. This means that the county-to-county data misses 1.8 million households (or 23% of all households) moving to metropolitan counties in 2021-22. Many of these households likely moved from small, non-metropolitan counties, but the flows among metro areas charted here inevitably miss moves occurring between smaller counties in metro areas of all sizes.

Despite this limitation, the IRS data is useful for answering basic questions about domestic migration and the possible impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Focusing on the nation’s metropolitan areas, this analysis specifically asks if and how the pandemic may have altered the:

Overall level of migration within and among metro areas

Key metropolitan origins and destinations of movers

Economic character of movers, and/or their sending/receiving communities

In general, the analysis confirms that the pandemic made an impact on metropolitan migration patterns, but also finds that these changes did not significantly alter the demographic or economic trajectory of metro regions. The analysis concludes with thoughts on the implications of these patterns as the economy returns to a “new normal” in the pandemic’s aftermath.

[kp777]

By Olivia Rosane

Common Dreams

Dec. 26, 2023

"If people don't ultimately trust information related to an election, democracy just stops working," said a senior fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy.

As 2024 approaches and with it the next U.S. presidential election, experts and advocates are warning about the impact that the spread of artificial intelligence technology will have on the amount and sophistication of misinformation directed at voters.

While falsehoods and conspiracy theories have circulated ahead of previous elections, 2024 marks the first time that it will be easy for anyone to access AI technology that could create a believable deepfake video, photo, or audio clip in seconds, The Associated Press reported Tuesday.

"I expect a tsunami of misinformation," Oren Etzioni, n AI expert and University of Washington professor emeritus, told the AP. "I can't prove that. I hope to be proven wrong. But the ingredients are there, and I am completely terrified."

"If a misinformation or disinformation campaign is effective enough that a large enough percentage of the American population does not believe that the results reflect what actually happened, then Jan. 6 will probably look like a warm-up act."

Subject matter experts told the AP that three factors made the 2024 election an especially perilous time for the rise of misinformation. The first is the availability of the technology itself. Deepfakes have already been used in elections. The Republican primary campaign of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis circulated images of former president Donald Trump hugging former White House Coronavirus Task Force chief Anthony Fauci as part of an ad in June, for example.

"You could see a political candidate like President [Joe] Biden being rushed to a hospital," Etzioni told the AP. "You could see a candidate saying things that he or she never actually said."

The second factor is that social media companies have reduced the number of policies designed to control the spread of false posts and the amount of employees devoted to monitoring them. When billionaire Elon Musk acquired Twitter in October of 2022, he fired nearly half of the platform's workforce, including employees who worked to control misinformation.

Yet while Musk has faced significant criticism and scrutiny for his leadership, co-founder of Accountable Tech Jesse Lehrich told the AP that other platforms appear to have used his actions as an excuse to be less vigilant themselves. A report published by Free Press in December found that Twitter—now X—Meta, and YouTube rolled back 17 policies between November 2022 and November 2023 that targeted hate speech and disinformation. For example, X and YouTube retired policies around the spread of misinformation concerning the 2020 presidential election and the lie that Trump in fact won, and X and Meta relaxed policies aimed at stopping Covid 19-related falsehoods.

"We found that in 2023, the largest social media companies have deprioritized content moderation and other user trust and safety protections, including rolling back platform policies that had reduced the presence of hate, harassment, and lies on their networks," Free Press said, calling the rollbacks "a dangerous backslide."

Finally, Trump, who has been a big proponent of the lie that he won the 2020 presidential election against Biden, is running again in 2024. Since 57% of Republicans now believe his claim that Biden did not win the last election, experts are worried about what could happen if large numbers of people accept similar lies in 2024.

"If people don't ultimately trust information related to an election, democracy just stops working," Bret Schafer, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Alliance for Securing Democracy, told the AP. "If a misinformation or disinformation campaign is effective enough that a large enough percentage of the American population does not believe that the results reflect what actually happened, then Jan. 6 will probably look like a warm-up act."

The warnings build on the alarm sounded by watchdog groups like Public Citizen, which has been advocating for a ban on the use of deepfakes in elections. The group has petitioned the Federal Election Commission to establish a new rule governing AI-generated content, and has called on the body to acknowledge that the use of deepfakes is already illegal under a rule banning "fraudulent misrepresentation."

"Specifically, by falsely putting words into another candidate's mouth, or showing the candidate taking action they did not, the deceptive deepfaker fraudulently speaks or act[s] 'for' that candidate in a way deliberately intended to damage him or her. This is precisely what the statute aims to proscribe," Public Citizen said.

The group has also asked the Republican and Democratic parties and their candidates to promise not to use deepfakes to mislead voters in 2024.

In November, Public Citizen announced a new tool tracking state-level legislation to control deepfakes. To date, laws have been enacted in California, Michigan, Minnesota, Texas, and Washington.

"Without new legislation and regulation, deepfakes are likely to further confuse voters and undermine confidence in elections," Ilana Beller, democracy campaign field manager for Public Citizen, said when the tracker was announced. "Deepfake video could be released days or hours before an election with no time to debunk it—misleading voters and altering the outcome of the election."

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

[mediamonarchy]

https://mediamonarchy.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/20240402_MorningMonarchy.mp3 Download MP3 Swipe-fee settlements, palm payments and apocalyptic eclipse colliders + this day in history w/Coronavirus comet drives command teams to Cheyenne Mountain and our song of the day by K-Rino on your #MorningMonarchy for April 2, 2024. Notes/Links: Fans bid farewell to giant moving Gundam in Yokohama https://japantoday.com/category/national/update1-fans-bid-farewell-to-giant-moving-gundam-in-yokohama US-59 south of Sallisaw at the Kerr Reservoir is completely shut down at this time due to a barge that has struck the bridge. Troopers are diverting traffic away from the area. The bridge is going to be shut down until inspections of the bridge can be made. https://vxtwitter.com/OHPDPS/status/1774163632303079885 Video: Another bridge struck by a barge. U.S. 59 Bridge in Sallisaw Oklahoma; Dayton Holland and her family captured this video as they were fishing near the bridge. https://vxtwitter.com/HighImpactFlix/status/1774167830792941737 Family Dollar, Dollar Tree to close about 1,000 stores https://www.fox5ny.com/news/dollar-tree-closing-stores-family-dollar-march-13-2024 Here ye here ye: SWIFT planning launch of new central bank digital currency platform in 12-24 months https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/swift-planning-launch-new-central-bank-digital-currency-platform-12-24-months-2024-03-25/ Visa and Mastercard’s swipe-fee settlement could lead to a rewards fallout https://sherwoodmedia.com/snacks/business/visa-and-mastercards-swipe-fee-settlement-could-lead-to-a-rewards-fallout/ Video: Visa, Mastercard settle swipe fee lawsuit, agree to reduce rates and halt increases until 2030 (Audio) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOMBnFcd_vU FBI agent says he hassles people ‘every day, all day long’ their Facebook posts https://reason.com/2024/03/29/fbi-agent-says-he-hassles-people-every-day-all-day-long-over-facebook-posts/ Facebook Used “Man-in-the-Middle” Approach To Snoop on Users’ Encrypted Traffic in Secret Project https://reclaimthenet.org/facebook-used-man-in-the-middle-approach-to-snoop-on-users-encrypted-traffic-in-secret-project Feds subpoena YouTube viewers for certain videos https://www.pcworld.com/article/2278729/feds-demanded-id-of-youtube-users-who-watched-certain-videos.html Elon Musk announces more changes to X – after claims user numbers have plummeted https://news.sky.com/story/elon-musk-announces-more-changes-to-x-following-claims-user-numbers-have-plummeted-13103101 AT&T Says Data From 73 Million Current and Former Account Holders Leaked on Dark Web; Data from roughly 7.6 million current account holders and 65.4 million former account holders were released on the dark web, AT&T said. https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/att-says-leaked-data-set-impacts-about-73-million-current-former-account-holders-5618644 AT&T is investigating a leak that put millions of customers’ data on the dark web https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/30/att-investigating-breach-that-put-customer-data-on-dark-web.html Room 641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A Updates to Discord’s Policies https://search.brave.com/news?q=Updates%20to%20Discord%E2%80%99s%20Policies Video Game Publisher Take-Two Interactive to Acquire ‘Borderlands’ Maker Gearbox for $460M https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/take-two-interactive-borderlands-maker-gearbox-deal-1235861917/ Experts Warn of ‘Digital Enslavement’ as Amazon Pushes Palm-Scan Payment Service; Amazon has rolled out tech to facilitate palm-scanning payments, drawing criticism from experts on privacy and social surveillance and control. https://www.theepochtimes.com/business/experts-warn-of-digital-enslavement-as-amazon-pushes-palm-scan-payment-service-5618084 Video: Amazon Launches Sign-Up App For Its Palm Payment Service (Audio) https://www.youtube.com/shorts/XgHM6yDnNTs Image: Perspective is everything – Soyjack: Looking at the night sky makes me realize how puny and insignificant I am. // Based Chad: I am the result of 14 billion yea...

[beardedmrbean]

The second part of the Twitter Files revelations dropped on Thursday night, revealing the social media giant did, in fact, engage in the suppression of conservatives and skeptics of lockdowns during the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, but questions remain about the extent of the suppression.

"A new #TwitterFiles investigation reveals that teams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics—all in secret, without informing users," journalist Bari Weiss revealed in a Twitter thread on Thursday, referring to the suppression as "shadow-banning." 

Several conservative users, including Stanford University's Dr. Jay Bhattacharya — a longstanding opponent of a COVID groupthink during the pandemic who expressed opposition to lockdowns — and Fox News’ Dan Bongino were named in the files as having been placed on the site’s secret blacklists.

"Twitter denied that it does such things," Weiss noted. "In 2018, Twitter's Vijaya Gadde (then Head of Legal Policy and Trust) and Kayvon Beykpour (Head of Product) said, ‘We do not shadow ban.’ They added, ‘And we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.’"

However, questions remain about the extent of the suppression and whether left-wing accounts faced similar restrictions. It is currently unknown just how many accounts have been subject to what Twitter calls "visibility filtering." 

ELON MUSK’S SECOND INSTALLMENT OF ‘TWITTER FILIES’ REVEALS ‘SECRET BLACKLISTS,’ BARI WEISS REPORTS

"'Think about visibility filtering as being a way for us to suppress what people see to different levels. It’s a very powerful tool,' one senior Twitter employee told us," Weiss tweeted. 

"'VF' refers to Twitter’s control over user visibility. It used VF to block searches of individual users; to limit the scope of a particular tweet’s discoverability; to block select users’ posts from ever appearing on the ‘trending’ page; and from inclusion in hashtag searches. All without users’ knowledge."

Twitter did not return Fox News Digital's inquiries about the extent of "visibility filtering," as well as the partisan breakdown of the practice. 

Bongino reacted the revelations, tweeting, "We ALWAYS knew we were a target of the Twitter suppression machine. ALWAYS. Yet liberals insisted it was another 'conspiracy theory.' Tonight is vindication, yet I expect no apologies from liberals. They live to abuse power and they’ll make no apologies for doing so."

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Twitter CEO Elon Musk on Sunday called to prosecute Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to President Biden who has led the U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic since it started during the Trump administration, and drew swift backlash for his comment.

“My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci,” Musk said on Twitter. He later shared a meme edited to show Fauci telling Biden, “Just one more lockdown, my king.”

Lawmakers and other officials jumped to Fauci’s defense online.

“I’m a big fan of Dr. Fauci and how he’s calmly guided our country through crisis. Re Musk tweet? Courting vaccine-deniers doesn’t seem like a smart business strategy, but the issue is this: could you just leave a good man alone in your seemingly endless quest for attention?” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said on Twitter.

Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) wrote on Twitter, “It’s America. You can select any pronouns you damn well please. But Anthony Fauci has likely saved more human lives than any living person in the world. Shame on you.”

Former CIA Director John Brennan called Fauci a “national hero” and accused Musk of stoking hatred.

“Dr. Fauci is a national hero who will be remembered for generations to come for his innate goodness & many contributions to public health Despite your business success, you will be remembered most for fueling public hate & divisions. You may have money, but you have no class,” Brennan said in a reply to Musk.

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) said Musk “wants to criminalize Anthony Fauci because he disagrees with him” and hit at the Twitter CEO for hypocrisy in his free-speech claims.

Since Musk’s controversial takeover of the social media platform, concerns about content moderation on the site have surged, with reports of an uptick in racist and antisemitic messages on the site.

Musk has tried to situate himself as a champion of free speech and a mouthpiece for the public, using the Latin phrase “Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” which means “The voice of the people is the voice of God.” He also polled users on reinstating the banned Twitter account of former President Trump and on whether suspended users should get “amnesty.”

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, Musk called concern over the virus “dumb,” and after he took over the company in late October of this year, he did away with Twitter’s policies about COVID-19 misinformation.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) replied to to Musk’s comment about Fauci on Sunday, writing, “I affirm your pronouns Elon.”

Greene’s personal Twitter account was banned in January for violating the COVID-19 misinformation policies, but Musk reinstated her her last month in his amnesty move.

“Fauci’s resignation should not prevent a full-throated investigation into the origins of the pandemic. He must be required to testify under oath regarding any discussions he participated in concerning the Wuhan lab leak. His policies destroyed lives,” wrote Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) in response to Musk’s post.

Fauci is preparing to step down from his government roles at the end of the year and has long said he is not concerned about Republicans’ increasing calls to investigate him over the U.S. handling of the pandemic.

“I have nothing to hide at all, despite the accusations that I’m hiding something. I have nothing that I could not explain clearly to the country and justify,” Fauci told The Hill’s “In The Know” last month.

In his final appearance in the White House briefing room a few weeks ago, Fauci lamented the partisan divide that has complicated the country’s response to the COVID-19 virus.

“As a physician, it pains me because I don’t want to see anybody get infected. I don’t want to see anybody hospitalized. And I don’t want to see anybody die from COVID. Whether you’re a far-right Republican or a far-left Democrat doesn’t make any difference to me,” Fauci said.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Why Musk’s meltdown matters. ::  December 12,2022

Robert B. Hubbell

         Over the weekend, Musk’s delusional rantings reached orbital velocity as he escaped the pull of reality and entered the weightlessness of fact-free conspiracies. After Dr. Anthony Fauci penned an op-ed in the NYTimes on Saturday, Opinion | Anthony Fauci: A Message to the Next Generation of Scientists, Musk tweeted

My pronouns are Prosecute / Fauci.

         Musk’s tweet was dangerous, ignorant, and insulting to Dr. Fauci and LGBTQ people. Should we care? Why should we pay attention to a man-child who seems to delight in provoking people who care about democracy, truth, and decency?

         Yes, we should care. Consider the following:

Musk has over 100 million followers on Twitter. (Many may be bots, but he is an outsized presence on Twitter.)

Nearly 40% of Twitter users are 25 to 34 years old.

25% of the US male adult population uses Twitter.

55% of Twitter users regularly get news on the platform, amounting to 15% of the US adult population.

         How many 25 to 34-year-old males do you know who read a daily newspaper? Or watch a cable news program? Or watch broadcast news? You get the point: The strong probability is that the young adult males you know hear more frequently from Elon Musk than from any mainstream journalist.

         When Musk adopts a conspiracy theory or attacks a vulnerable group, his sycophant followers retweet Musk’s original disinformation and add their own snarky, cynical, and misinformed opinions. Repetition creates the illusion of fact without regard to the veracity of the original tweet.

         The attack on Fauci and related LGBTQ attack matter because millions of young adult males in the US will believe (wrongly) that Dr. Fauci helped to “create” the SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for COVID-19. And they will believe it is acceptable to mock LGBTQ people. Why? Because Elon Musk said so.

         To be clear, despite his wealth, Musk is often spectacularly wrong when he ventures beyond his areas of expertise. In March 2020, Musk assured Americans that “The coronavirus panic is dumb,” and “Based on current trends, probably close to zero cases in US by April [2020].”

         One million deaths later, Musk’s flippant tweets have not aged well. So, what is the response of Musk and his conspiracy-minded followers to the truth of a pandemic they sought to deny? Answer: Blame the scientists who fought to control the pandemic, especially Dr. Fauci.

         The GOP conspiracy theory about Dr. Fauci’s responsibility for “creating” SARS-CoV-2 involves a deliberate misinterpretation of an NIH letter denying that claim, a deliberate ignorance of virology and related research, and an intense hatred of Dr. Fauci because he refused to support Trump’s buffoonish effort to fool the American people into believing that Covid-19 was “just like a bad flu.” See generally, FactCheck.Org,  Republicans Spin NIH Letter About Coronavirus Gain-of-Function Research.

         House Republicans intend to hold hearings into the response of NIH and Dr. Fauci to the pandemic. McCarthy and his political thugs will ignore the facts. Their goal is to create soundbites of illiterate Republicans yelling at Dr. Fauci—to be shared on Twitter and Fox News. See ABC News, Republicans vow to investigate Fauci after he steps down in December.

         It is difficult to overstate the harm that such hearings will inflict on the trust of Americans in future efforts by NIH scientists to control new viruses against which we have no natural immunity. By demonizing Dr. Fauci, Republicans will kill tens or hundreds of thousands of Americans in future epidemics by undermining trust in the NIH, CDC, and other federal agencies. We have already seen the effect of weaponized disinformation in the 2023 funding authorization for the US military: The budget explicitly removed mandatory Covid vaccinations for new recruits. See Military Times, Military COVID-19 vaccine mandate repealed in defense bill compromise.

         This brings us back to Musk’s tweet on Saturday: “My pronouns are Prosecute / Fauci.” Musk’s tweet endorses the conspiracy theory that Fauci “created” SARS-CoV-2 and “covered up” an alleged virus leak from a lab in China. Musk is spreading vile disinformation to American adult males between the ages of 24 to 34 who regularly get their “news” from Twitter. That is bad—to say the least.

         But it is made worse by the fact that Musk wrapped his dangerous conspiracy theory in a tweet intended to mock LGBTQ people who identify themselves by pronouns other than “he” or “she.” Choices meant to express gender identity should be respected, not mocked—especially at a time when MAGA extremists are attacking LGBTQ people.

         While Musk undoubtedly believes that his schoolyard humor passes for “witticism” on Twitter, it is in fact transphobia. Decent people do not caricature immigrants by mocking their names, customs, or appearance. Why, then, is it acceptable for Musk to mock LGBTQ people for their choice of pronouns? It is not.

         Musk plays an important leadership role in three companies that undoubtedly employ gay and trans people who do not identify by the pronouns “he” and “she.” He just told all of those employees that he believes their sincere effort to express their gender identity is a laughing matter. The NYPost said that Musk’s tweet “poked fun” at people who identified by the pronouns “they” and “them.” The NYPost likely believes that people who dress in blackface and adopt an exaggerated accent are “poking fun” at Black Americans.

         Some readers may be saying, “Enough! We get it! Musk used bad judgment in making fun of trans people. Move on!” While some may be tired of hearing about this subject, I want you to know that every time I write about it, I hear from mothers (always mothers) and mental health professionals who express thanks for condemning discrimination against LGBTQ people. Mothers write in anguish about the fear, anxiety, and depression that afflicts their children and teens who hear and see the pervasive messages that try to make them “other” or “different” or “wrong.” If we don’t stand up to Musk and the NYPost and Ron DeSantis, those young people will believe (rightly) that they have been abandoned. We cannot let that happen.

And that is why Musk’s emotional and mental meltdown on Twitter matters.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[dwagom]

The news appeared to deepen the turmoil that has beset the company following Musk’s takeover. Also on Monday, it was reported that Twitter’s former top safety official, Yoel Roth, was forced to flee his home amid escalating personal attacks, including from Musk himself.

Outlets including the Washington Post and CNN reported on Monday that Roth and his family fled after Musk’s tweets misrepresented Roth’s academic writing about sexual activity and children.

As head of trust and safety at Twitter, Roth was involved in many of the platform’s decisions about what posts to remove and what accounts to suspend. His communications with other Twitter officials have been posted in recent days as part of what Musk has dubbed “the Twitter files,” a series of internal documents that Musk has shared and disseminated on the platform via journalists including Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss.

Musk’s tweets to his tens of millions of followers have for years prompted his supporters to deluge the targets of his ire with online threats – famously, a participant in the rescue of a boys soccer team trapped in a cave in Thailand who Musk branded “pedo guy.” But now that Musk owns one of the most powerful social networks in the world and has gutted the division that previously policed online harassment, the stakes are even higher.

Musk’s recent condemnation of Anthony Fauci, the top US health official, has also drawn rebuke. Musk over the weekend tweeted: “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci.”

Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, called Musks’ comment “dangerous” and “disgusting” in a press briefing on Monday.

“They are disgusting, and they are divorced from reality, and we will continue to call that out and be very clear about that,” Jean-Pierre said on Monday. She praised Fauci’s handling of public heath crises, including the coronavirus pandemic.

elon musk is a facilitator of internationalised far-right terrorism

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From Iron man to Icarus - how Musk's popularity plunged deeper than the Mariana trench

It is a sunny day in the 1980’s Pretoria, South Africa. In the local school, a young, white boy lies on the floor, covering his head with his hands as the older boys continue beating him. After some time, someone finally calls an ambulance, and he is rushed to the hospital where he has to stay until he has recovered from being nearly beaten to death. Sadly, the incident did not surprise him, he was used to the constant bullying and escaped more and more into his Sci-fi novels and comic books. One day, he says to himself, I will be like them. An Inventor, revolutionizing the world, a hero who is celebrated for his fight against injustice. He starts holding his ground, calling out his white classmates when they smear racist slurs on the cafeteria walls, even though it worsens the bullying. With twelve, he sells his first game to a magazine for $500. At 17 he leaves Africa and enrols in Queen’s University in Ontario, studies there for two years, before he gets a scholarship for the UPenn and graduates in Physics and Economics. In 2002, he sells his Company PayPal to eBay for $1.5 Billion and uses the money to found SpaceX and fund a start-up called Tesla. He has finally made it! He is an inventor, an entrepreneur and people started seeing him as a hero who will make space travel available for anybody! People call him the “real-life Tony Stark” only with an assuredly moral domain instead of selling weapons like the Marvel Hero did. His brand: "Saviour of the human race". By now, you probably guessed that the little, bullied boy is Elon Reeve Musk.

He was incredibly popular, especially with environmental protecting liberals. His revolutionizing electronic car, the Tesla, has become the symbol of “liberal do-goodery” and many eco-conscious people buy it just for this reason. He initially donates exclusively to the Democratic Party, supporting political figures like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, which makes perfect sense as he is one of the largest purveyors of renewable energy tech world-wide. His economic values, his striving towards making the world a better place, align naturally with the values of liberals and the Democratic party.

The younger generations celebrate him after he starred as a guest in PewDiePie’s Meme-review on YouTube in 2019. He starts tweeting memes daily, editing himself on the body of The Rock and replying to his young followers in the comment section. He turns into a Meme lord, despite being forty-eight years old. In 2021, The Times declares him the person of the year, the New York Post characterises him as “gloriously capitalistic [and] irreverent” and as “the hero we need today”. Forty years after nearly being beaten to death, he became one of the characters he read about as a child. He is the richest man in the world and an inspiration for many aspiring engineers and entrepreneurs. And I admit, I shared their opinions of him, to me he was simple ‘the Tesla guy’ who occasionally popped-up as a new, funny meme on my Instagram feed. But now, only a year after his peak, he is on Icarus-like decent worse than any other he had before.

See, Musk has had controversies before, only that the public forgot and forgave them shortly after they happened. The first backlash comes, as he spreads a massive amount of misinformation on the Coronavirus during the course of 2020. From stating that the panic around the deadly virus is over the top, to alleging politicians of publishing enlarged numbers of death, and even suggesting that people should consider the anti-malaria drug chloroquine to battle COVID. This last suggestion was also made by Donald Trump and Laura Ingraham and resulted in the death of at least one person.

It was during this period, that he began to lean more to the right-winged political side for example by challenging his followers to “Take the red pill”. The red pill is a reference to the matrix movie and taking it frees the hero, Neo, “from a dream-world imposed on humanity and let him see reality”. A reference which is now a metaphor often used by right-winged conspiracy theorists. Many republicans, including Ivanka Trump, reply with “Taken” and congratulate him on finally seeing the truth.

 But he did not stop there and went so far as to call the lockdown “fascist”. He believed the safety measures taken by the government desperately trying to slow down the exploding death rates and attempting to relieve the collapsing health-system are “not Democratic. This is not Freedom. Give people back their goddamn freedom.”. The fuss around him died down eventually after he announced in 2021 that he believes in the COVID vaccine and in vaccines in general. A tweet which was received with mixed emotions. Especially Trump-supporters and republicans reacted negatively, disagreeing with his opinion on it being safe or asking if he was being blackmailed or even kidnapped. But alas, all was forgotten, until he created his latest and biggest controversy.

In February of 2022, he buys 9.2% of the Twitter shares, a purchase which makes him the biggest shareholder of the company. Soon after the news came out, he started posting polls on Twitter and rambles about ideas on how to improve the platform. While some people are concerned about his purchase and the consequential influence over the social media company, many celebrate him, calling him the next CEO of Twitter and start requesting changes from him. The people celebrating him are once again mostly republican, like the republican congressional candidate Lavern Spicer which even goes so far as to thank Musk under his first tweet after buying the shares for “helping to save western civilization”. The board of Twitter itself is not as ecstatic as his followers and feels threatened by the multi-billionaire. As a result, they create a deal: Musk gets appointed to the board if he agrees to not buy more than 15% of the Twitter shares. Elon does agree and on the 5th of April, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announces, that he will officially join the board four days later.

Elon replies very optimistic, stating that he is “Looking forward to working with Parag & Twitter board to make significant improvements to Twitter in coming months!”. The replies to both tweets are mixed and show a clear separation. While some people simply ask him to install an edit button, the republican followers get louder and many ask him to unban Trump from Twitter, fire Parag and praise him for bringing back free speech to the platform. The other side is concerned about his purchase and look migrate to other platforms such as Tumblr.

But his approval was only a façade that crumbles as he declares on the day of his appointment, that he will no longer join the board. Instead, he publicly ponders in a tweet whether Twitter is dying. And maybe his pondering, as well as many republicans replying it is due to ‘censorship’, resulted in the conclusion, that only he can be the hero that saves Twitter because he makes his first offer to purchase it on the 14th of April. He is willing to pay $43 billion, which later turns into $44 billion, to take the company private. The Twitter board, in an attempt to prevent him from buying the company, turns to the poison pill strategy but without success. After Twitter accepts the offer, he pulls back and pauses negotiations, claiming that Twitter is withholding regarding the number of spam accounts on their platform. Twitter sues Musk, alleging him not only of breaching their contract which would cost him a whopping $1 billion if the judge ruled for Twitter, as well as causing major damage to the company’s internal structure and value. Their complaint criticises how “Musk apparently believes that he — unlike every other party subject to Delaware contract law — is free to change his mind, trash the company, disrupt its operations, destroy stockholder value, and walk away”. Looks like someone is unpopular at the Twitter headquarters. His reaction is as expected. He counter-sues the company under the claims that “[the key metrics] contain numerous, material misrepresentations or omissions that distort Twitter’s value”. This game of cat and mouse continues for three more months, until he eventually buys the company in October. And whilst legal experts hypothesis that he did it because it is very hard to break a merging agreement and the first hearing did not sound good for Musk and his legal team, 2.4 million users liked his first tweet after finally going through with the merge.

The political direction in his comment section is now unmistakably right-winged, with Councilwoman Inna Vernikov thanking him “for making sure the USA does not turn into USSR”. Many advocate his role as the hero, saving the free speech on Twitter and asking him to reinstate accounts which have been banned for hate-speech and spreading of misinformation in the past. But where did all this talk about Twitter no longer supporting ‘free speech’ and censoring its users come from anyway?

It all started when the platform rewrote its rule after realising that “so-called free speech can actually be used as a weapon to silence the vulnerable and dispossessed” and that sometimes you must censor your users in order to maintain your position as a platform for free discourse. Thus, speech inciting violence against people “on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, age, or disability” were banned. But the ‘absolutely unjustified’ censorship (which is apparently enough to turn the USA into the USSR) does not stop there. In  March of 2021, Twitter announces that they “will start labelling misleading tweets about COVID vaccines and ban users who continue to spread such misinformation” and further introduced a “strike system” which “will gradually escalate to a permanent ban after the fifth offending tweet”.

To conclude the debate, the republican users of Twitter miss their old free speech and have found in the now openly republican Musk the perfect hero to safe them from being banned for spreading misinformation on a deadly virus or making racist and offensive tweets.

Because the new Twitter owner conveniently does it himself!

And he does not disappoint their expectations. The rules against spreading misinformation on the ever-killing virus are taken down in November of 2022, making the CEO once again highly unpopular with public health officials and the people who fought at the front lines during the pandemic. But his quest for ‘free speech’, instating himself even more as the new republican social-media leader, and garnering even more outrage and unpopularity amongst non-republicans is not yet completed. On Jan. 6, the second anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Capitol, he reinstates Micheal Flynn who is “one of the most prominent supporters of false claims that [the election] had been stolen by Biden”. He is additionally a prominent believer of the Trump QAnon conspiracy theory and has called Ukraine’s president Zelensky a “Dangerous fool” whilst strongly praising Putin and his Security Council Deputy Chairman for being “bold leaders who have everything at stake in terms of protecting their country”. Yes, protecting their country, because apparently Russia is now the endangered country and not Ukraine, the country they invaded. But everything for free speech, I guess. Musk himself seems to be on Russia’s side, tweeting a ‘suggestion’ on how to end the war which align with Russia’s own requests

Now, Musk has made a 180 degree transformation and turned from a symbol for the eco-conscious democrat into a full-fletched republican who allows misinformation and reinstates very controversial public figures. However, while he has a strong base of right-wing followers, the public criticism increases steadily, and he has now successfully managed to turn Ukrainian officials and political commentators against him.

During the November of 2022, Musk launched the $8-blue-verification, the inevitable wave of impersonation made him now also unpopular amongst companies and stars who had fallen victim to the predicted havoc.  But there is one group in his orbit that we have not yet looked at: his employees. Or should I in Twitters case rather say ex-employees? After his purchase, he not only fired the former CEO but also 3700 employees, more than half of the entire company. Even more followed after his famous hardcore-email, and the remaining employees are now begging for toilet paper as the stench from the bathrooms is flooding the offices, due to recent financial cuts.

Unfortunately though, the mistreatment of his employees is anything but new. In February of 2022, Tesla was sued after hundreds of complaints were filed by its employees due to experiencing racism and systematic harassment against black workers. Racist graffiti could be found all around the building and one worker “heard 50 to 100 racial slurs a day”. Soon after, investor Solomon Chau files a lawsuit because Musk and his executive directors at Tesla breached “fiduciary duty by enabling a toxic work environment”. He is reported to have a habit of “blowing up at those beneath him”, his humiliating and anger-driven behaviour has even become so common, that Executives would joke how “Musk would devour a worker by erupting at them in anger” instead of eating food. After Tesla executive Peter Rawlinson quit, like because of these temper tantrums, another executive failed to bring him back and was thus fired by Musk.

Somehow Musk even avoided the repercussions of the #MeToo movement as several women sued Tesla for sexual harassment without consequences at the workplace. Male workers took pictures of a women’s backside, sharing it with the rest of the workforce. Female employees were objectified on a daily basis, or touched by male co-workers who then lied about their position to dissuade them from reporting the harassment. But apparently they are all just following their CEO, given that Musk exposed himself to a flight attendant in 2016, asking her for an erotic massage in exchange for buying her a horse, leaving the flight attendant traumatized. After declining the generous offer, he cuts back her shifts and later proceeds to pay her $250.000 to silence her. He now calls the claims wild and a “concerted effort to silence him”.

And while Media psychologist Jo Groeble speculates that his image could recover, I am of the firm belief and sincerly hope that it won’t. After all this, you cannot help but wonder, if Musk looks back on his childhood and believes that the small, bullied, and beaten boy who fiercely fought against racism, would have been proud of the person he is now. What do you think?  

TL;DR: In the name of 'free speech', Musk legalizes hate-speech and misinformation on Twitter and reinstates highly dangerous political figures on the anniversary of the tragedy which they promoted. All whilst banning journalists, politicians and anti-fascist accounts/organizations because they disagree with his opinions. Apparently, free speech only applies to people who share his opinion. Throwing temper-tantrums and erupting at workers is just as normal as inciting a toxic work-environment, racism, and sexual harassment. In the span of a year, he has made himself unpopular with his employees, democrats, feminists, people of colour, yes, even entire countries if we take a look at Ukraine.