Uncool Blue Checks

Since anyone can get the blue check now, for $8.00, they're not that glamorous any more.

At the New York Times, "Are Blue Checks Uncool Now?":

Once a coveted status symbol, Twitter’s verification badge — which can be purchased for a monthly fee — is no longer fashionable, according to some users.

Twitter’s blue check mark was once a coveted status symbol. Now, some users are calling it “the dreaded mark” or that “stinking badge.”

Last week, Twitter began stripping the verification symbols from the profiles of thousands of celebrities, media personalities and politicians. The shift came as Elon Musk, the company’s chief executive, continued to roll out Twitter Blue, a subscription service that offers special features like tweet-editing in addition to the blue badge — for $8 a month.

Now that anyone can purchase a blue check, many users find the symbol newly uncool. The icon makes its owner appear “desperate for validation,” according to the rapper Doja Cat. To others, it signals support for Mr. Musk amid his bumpy takeover of the platform. Users who value the symbol enough to pay for it are being shouted over by a chorus of prominent users who say verification is no longer worth it.

Can the blue check remain desirable now that it has lost its air of exclusivity?

“The idea that you would pay for status, and that it’s something that’s not conferred upon you, seems to be fundamentally undesirable for people who have status,” said Robyn Caplan, a senior researcher at the Data & Society Research Institute.

Jacob Sartorius, 20, a musician and content creator, said he was elated to get a blue check in 2016. “It was an honor. It was kind of a symbol of, wow, something’s happening,” he said.

Mr. Sartorius said he would now rather spend $8 on a sandwich from Subway than on Twitter Blue. “It’s not something that’s cool anymore,” he said.

Twitter users’ self-consciousness when it comes to their blue checks speaks to the symbol’s evolution from a tool designed to prevent impersonation into a fickle marker of cultural relevance. Twitter introduced verification badges in 2009 during what Dr. Caplan called the “red carpet era” of social media, when companies were trying to coax celebrities and brands onto their platforms. The badges reassured public figures that they would not be impersonated, and the recognition served as an ego boost.

Because so many public figures received badges, and the faceless masses did not, jockeying for verification became something of a blood sport — and the blue check a symbol of victory. Guides proliferated online advising users on how to gain entry to the club.

Mr. Musk sought to undermine that two-tiered approach, which he called a “lords & peasants system.” He has framed Twitter Blue as a move to democratize the platform.

Waves of blue-check paranoia began to sweep across the platform last year, when Mr. Musk said he would soon start removing check marks from users’ profiles. After allowing the expected judgment day to come and go at the start of this month, Mr. Musk began removing the badges on April 20. (Mr. Musk has long shown an affinity for the number 420, which is often used to allude to marijuana, once dropping it into a tweet that landed him in hot water with the Securities and Exchange Commission.)

Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment, and an email to Twitter’s communications department was automatically replied to with a poop emoji...

Now that Musk let the rabble in, Twitter's no longer an insider's club of elite bad actors who have no interest in preserving the regular, majoritarian values of the this country. 

 

Elon Musk on Real Time with Bill Maher (VIDEO)

A great interview. The more I see Elon unfiltered the more I love the guy. He doesn't get ruffled.

Matt Taibbi to Use Substack Notes

If you've by chance been following the Twitter files.

Here's Matt Taibbai with his latest predicament.

See, "The Craziest Friday Ever: On staying at Substack, and leaving Twitter, I guess."

Twitter's Transgender Ideology Problem

From Amuse, "Twitter's Transgender Day of Rage":

Twitter suspended more than 5,000 conservative accounts for sharing evidence of far-left incitement from The Trans Radical Activist Network (its account wasn't suspended).

Not since the conservative purges related to January 6th and Covid-19 have so many Twitter accounts been locked and suspended in such a short period of time. Twitter’s head of trust and safety said she suspended more than 5,000 accounts for sharing evidence of an event titled “The Trans Day of Vengence” scheduled on Saturday by a group called The Trans Radical Activist Network in Washington DC. Many of us who didn’t share the details of the event got caught up in Twitter’s pro-trans dragnet. In my case, my account was locked for tweeting this:

The left’s constant narrative to children and individuals who struggle with identity is that anyone who opposes surgical intervention for children is “literally trying to kill” them making violence like we saw yesterday in Nashville ‘justified’ in the eyes of many Democrats.

~ @amuse

Eventually, I was allowed to delete the offending tweet and my account was restored. Out of an abundance of caution, I deleted every tweet and retweet related to the transgender movement I had made since the Nashville shooting—clear evidence of the chilling effect of Twitter’s continued censorship regime. I wasn’t alone. Federalist CEO Sean Davis was locked out of his Twitter account after reporting on the “Trans Day Of Vengeance”. Davis wrote,

“The cold-blooded mass murder at a Christian school in Nashville by an apparent transgender person came just days before a planned ‘Trans Day Of Vengeance’ organized by the Trans Radical Activist Network.” ~ @seanmdav

Davis chose not to manually delete the tweet as I did. Twitter already removed the tweet but requires in some sort of “Orwellian re-education exercise” that users ALSO delete the tweet—Davis has refused.

Twitter also locked Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's congressional account @RepMTG after she criticized The Trans Radical Activist Network’s plan to hold their "Trans Day of Vengeance" despite the Nashville school shooting by a transgender activist.1 Ironically, the group’s own Twitter account @Trans_Radical was not suspended despite using it to promote their planned vengeance event in Washington DC on Saturday.2

Independent journalist Andy Ngô’s @MrAndyNgo account was locked after he pointed out that The Trans Radical Activist Network had locked its own account after it was caught promoting its vengeance event outside the Supreme Court...

Keep reading.

 

Note From San Francisco

From Matt Taibbi, "On the way home after the holidays, notes on "cherry-picking" and a few other odds and ends":

Having seen the redwoods with the boys by day, sampled dim sum last evening, and overdosed nights on San Francisco movies (Bullitt, Vertigo, the underrated Zodiac), I’m headed home tonight. A terrific trip, which I won’t forget.

In the coming days you’ll find a new thread on Twitter, along with a two-part article here at TK explaining the latest #TwitterFiles findings. Even as someone in the middle of it, naturally jazzed by everything I’m reading, I feel the necessity of explaining why it’s important to keep hammering at this.

Any lawyer who’s ever sifted though a large discovery file will report the task is like archaeology. You dig a little, find a bit of a claw, dust some more and find a tooth, then hours later it’s the outline of a pelvis bone, and so on. After a while you think you’re looking at something that was alive once, but what?

Who knows? At the moment, all we can do is show a few pieces of what we think might be a larger story. I believe the broader picture will eventually describe a company that was directly or indirectly blamed for allowing Donald Trump to get elected, and whose subjugation and takeover by a furious combination of politicians, enforcement officials, and media then became a priority as soon as Trump took office.

These next few pieces are the result of looking at two discrete data sets, one ranging from mid-2017 to early 2018, and the other spanning from roughly March 2020 through the present. In the first piece focused on that late 2017 period, you see how Washington politicians learned that Twitter could be trained quickly to cooperate and cede control over its moderation process through a combination of threatened legislation and bad press.

In the second, you see how the cycle of threats and bad media that first emerged in 2017 became institutionalized, to the point where a long list of government enforcement agencies essentially got to operate Twitter as an involuntary contractor, heading into the 2020 election. Requests for moderation were funneled mainly through the FBI, the self-described “belly button” of the federal government (not a joke, an agent really calls it that).

The company leadership knew as far back as 2017 that giving in to even one request to suspend this or that set of accused “hostile foreign accounts” would lead to an endless cycle of such demands. “Will work to contain that,” offered one comms official, without much enthusiasm, after the company caved for the first time that year. By 2020, Twitter was living the hell its leaders created for themselves.

What does it all mean? I haven’t really had time to think it over. Surely, though, it means something. I’ve been amused by the accusation that these stories are “cherry-picked.” As opposed to what, the perfectly representative sample of the human experience you normally read in news? Former baseball analytics whiz Nate Silver chimed in on this front:

People don't distinguish enough between:

1) A ~random cross-section of communications from person/organization X
2) A cherry-picked set of favorable examples from a ~comprehensive set of communications from X

The threshold to move your priors should be **MUCH** higher under 2.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) December 26, 2022

Still more at that top link.

How Twitter Rigged the Covid Debate

It's David Zweig, at the Free Press, "The platform suppressed true information from doctors and public-health experts that was at odds with U.S. government policy."

In Response to the Twitter Files, Establishment Media Rushes to Defend the FBI

It's Leighton Woodhouse, on Substack, "The Hunter Biden laptop story shows the extent to which the corporate media has become the propaganda arm of the state."

Real-Time Doxxing and the Littlest Musk

From Abigail Shrier, on Substack, "Policies to Discourage Stalking Do Not Equal Suppression of Political Speech":

Whether Musk is in fact a free-speech warrior or simply a self-interested CEO with incomprehensible power to shape public debate remains to be seen. But those of us who published pieces about the Twitter Files never claimed nor implied he was a “free speech warrior.” Musk himself did.

The systemic suppression of anti-Woke speech on a social media platform that sets the news agenda for our largest media companies and hundreds of millions of users remains a critical revelation. When Nikita Khrushchev took power in the Soviet Union and in 1956, began revealing Stalin’s purges of his political enemies and ethnic cleansing, Krushchev did history a service whether or not his regime turned out to be more liberal and freedom-affording than the one it replaced. (Of course, it did; anybody’s would have.)

Musk is a strange man. A consummate jokester and an undeniable genius. He bought a company for which, by his own estimation, he paid three times what it was worth. “At least,” he said, when I and Michael Shellenberger and Bari Weiss asked him about this.

“I thought this was important to the future of civilization,” he said. “I told investors that too…. And I thought this was important to the future of civilization to have a digital Town Square that people thought was fair and a level playing field and that, I don’t know, pro civilization essentially.” He told us he bought Twitter to protect the “expansion of consciousness.”

I pressed him on this. Were President Donald Trump’s tweets really necessary for the “expansion of consciousness?”

I expected Musk to back off of this claim. He didn’t. “If we are to understand more about, I don't know, the world, then we do have to have like freedom of expression and freedom of speech. If we constrain it, then we are limiting our understanding of the universe or of reality,” he said.

So is suspending the journalists, as Musk did in the last twenty-four hours, the first indication that the new regime is as bad as the old? Doubtful. That Musk is no “free speech warrior” after all? Maybe...

RTWT.

 

Twitter Files 8: Twitter's Joint Propaganda Efforts With CENTCOM and the Pentagon

At AoSHQ, "The new disclosures detail Twitter's active participation in CENTCOM/Pentagon propaganda efforts against Iran, China, Russia, and other miscreants."

Also, "The FBI Paid Twitter Three and a Half Million Dollars to 'Help' It Censor 'Misinformation'." 

And from yesterday, "Twitter Files Part 7: The Guns Begin to Smoke."

See also, Michael Shellenberger, from yesterday:

We expect the FBI, our highest law enforcement organization, to be above politics. The Twitter Files show that it isn't.

We need a serious congressional investigation and perhaps a special counsel to get to the bottom of its apparent corruption. https://t.co/AtU08zfsYS

— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 20, 2022

The Obligatory Taylor Lorenz Suspended From Twitter Post

Lorenz is headlining on Memeorandum. 

She long ago blocked me, but it's not hard to find out what evils she's up to on the platform. 

Elon's suspended her. Haven't heard yet if it's a permanent ban, but if anyone deserves it, it's Lorenz. 

Too bad, though, because apparently she's been reinstated. 

At Fox News, "Taylor Lorenz suspended from Twitter, claims Elon Musk personally removed her from platform: Elon Musk recently suspended several journalists before restoring their accounts."

Her message to followers before the reinstatement, full of self-aggrandizement and unearned self-importance. Gawd:

Presstitutes https://t.co/mtFqUEuUX6

— 🍁 Bean 🍁 (@BeanFromPA) December 18, 2022

Elon Musk, Matt Taibbi, and a Very Modern Media Maelstrom

I was wondering when this story would hit the big MSM. 

CNN had a piece a day or two ago, but besides that, I've seen no coverage at the other major networks and newspapers.

See, "A release of internal documents from Twitter set off intense debates in the intersecting worlds of media, politics and tech:"

The sleazy, pro-censorship pack of liberal employees of media corporations united last night to attack @mtaibbi -- as they do to any journalist who breaks a real story about real power centers -- and, because they were so desperate to discredit it, showed what they are. Watch: pic.twitter.com/DWEIL70G1h

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 3, 2022

It was, on the surface, a typical example of reporting the news: a journalist obtains internal documents from a major corporation, shedding light on a political dispute that flared in the waning days of the 2020 presidential race.

But when it comes to Elon Musk and Twitter, nothing is typical.

The so-called Twitter Files, released Friday evening by the independent journalist Matt Taibbi, set off a firestorm among pundits, media ethicists and lawmakers in both parties. It also offered a window into the fractured modern landscape of news, where a story’s reception is often shaped by readers’ assumptions about the motivations of both reporters and subjects.

The tempest began when Mr. Musk teased the release of internal documents that he said would reveal the story behind Twitter’s 2020 decision to restrict posts linking to a report in the New York Post about Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s son, Hunter.

Mr. Musk, who has accused tech companies of censorship, then pointed readers to the account of Mr. Taibbi, an iconoclast journalist who shares some of Mr. Musk’s disdain for the mainstream news media. Published in the form of a lengthy Twitter thread, Mr. Taibbi’s report included images of email exchanges among Twitter officials deliberating how to handle dissemination of the Post story on their platform.

Mr. Musk and Mr. Taibbi framed the exchanges as evidence of rank censorship and pernicious influence by liberals. Many others — even some ardent Twitter critics — were less impressed, saying the exchanges merely showed a group of executives earnestly debating how to deal with an unconfirmed news report that was based on information from a stolen laptop.

And as with many modern news stories, the Twitter Files were quickly weaponized in service of a dizzying number of pre-existing arguments.

The Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who often accuses liberals of stifling speech, made the claim that the “documents show a systemic violation of the First Amendment, the largest example of that in modern history.” House Republicans, who have called for an investigation into the business dealings of Hunter Biden, asserted with no evidence that the report showed systemic collusion between Twitter and aides to Joe Biden, who was then the Democratic nominee. (Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive at the time, later reversed the decision to block the Post story and told Congress it had been a mistake.)

Former Twitter executives, who have lamented Mr. Musk’s chaotic stewardship of the company, cited the documents’ release as yet another sign of recklessness. Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, said that publicizing unredacted documents — some of which included the names and email addresses of Twitter officials — was “a fundamentally unacceptable thing to do” and placed people “in harm’s way.” (Mr. Musk later said that, in hindsight, “I think we should have excluded some email addresses.”)

The central role of Mr. Taibbi, a polarizing figure in journalism circles, set off its own uproar.

Once a major voice of the political left, Mr. Taibbi rose to prominence by presenting himself as an unencumbered truth teller. He is perhaps best known for labeling Goldman Sachs a “vampire squid” in an article that galvanized public outrage toward Wall Street. But his commentary about former President Donald J. Trump diverged from the views of many Democrats — for instance, he was skeptical of claims of collusion between Russia and Mr. Trump’s campaign — and his fan base shifted.

Skeptics of Mr. Taibbi seized on what appeared to be an orchestrated disclosure. “Imagine volunteering to do online PR work for the world’s richest man on a Friday night, in service of nakedly and cynically right-wing narratives, and then pretending you’re speaking truth to power,” the MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan wrote in a Twitter post.

Mr. Taibbi clapped back on Saturday, writing: “Looking forward to going through all the tweets complaining about ‘PR for the richest man on earth,’ and seeing how many of them have run stories for anonymous sources at the FBI, CIA, the Pentagon, White House, etc.”

Mr. Musk and Mr. Taibbi did not respond to requests for comment.

That Mr. Musk is a fan of Mr. Taibbi, who left Rolling Stone to start a newsletter on Substack, is no big surprise; Mr. Musk often hails the virtues of citizen journalism. On Saturday, in a live audio session on Twitter, Mr. Musk said he was disappointed that more mainstream media outlets had not picked up Mr. Taibbi’s reporting.

The New York Times requested copies of the documents from Mr. Musk, but did not receive a response.

Mr. Musk said on Saturday that he had also given documents to Bari Weiss, a former editor and columnist at The Times whose Substack newsletter, Common Sense, bills itself as an alternative to traditional news outlets. Ms. Weiss declined to comment on Sunday.

The commotion has also generated some odd bedfellows. Mr. Taibbi once compared former President George W. Bush to a “donkey.” On Sunday, his reporting was defended by the House Republican leader, Representative Kevin McCarthy, during an interview on Fox News. “They’re trying to discredit a person for telling the truth,” Mr. McCarthy said of Mr. Musk...

 

Elon Musk: I Agreed to Let a Group of Leftwing Censors Advise Twitter on Content Moderation If They Agreed Not to Conspire to Pressure Advertisers to Boycott Twitter to Kill the Site. I Did That, But Then They Pressured Advertisers to Drop Me Anyway.

At AoSHQ, "A few weeks ago, conservatives were disappointed when Elon Musk announced Twitter would be consulting with leftwing censorship groups such as the noxious Southern Poverty Grifting Center, I mean Law Center, and the Democrat front group the ADL. A couple of days ago, the head of the ADL complained that Twitter had restored Donald Trump's twitter account. Donald Trump -- who has Jewish grandchildren. And then he asked, 'Is it time for Twitter to go?'"

Twitter Workers Say Farewell After Musk Ultimatum Over Terms of Employment Passes

It was a bad day for Elon Musk, it turns out. Folks on the platform are talking like it's the end of the world. If goes down, it goes down. RIP. WTF. 

At the Wall Street Journal, "Company follows up with practical details after billionaire challenges remaining employees to be ‘hardcore’ or leave: ‘This is not a phishing attempt’."

And Paige Spirinac is ready, "Here’s my cleavage for the last time on twitter if it shuts down."

Election Deniers: Some Democrats Believe the Polls are All Lies and Part of a Conspiracy Theory to Make Abortion Appear Less Popular Than It Is

At AoSHQ, "Optimistic Democrats insist the polls are wrong, says The Hill."

BONUS: "#TheSnap: Half of Twitter's " " " Workers " " " Are Unemployed, Starting Now (9 am Pacific Time)."

Twitter Turmoil Poses Risks to the Company’s Brand

At the Wall Street Journal, "The social-media company is under a spotlight in the early days of Elon Musk’s ownership":

Twitter Inc.’s reputation among consumers and advertisers is at risk from the tumult unfolding under new owner Elon Musk, some branding executives and other observers say, even as some Twitter users think the change in leadership could improve the platform.

Mr. Musk, who closed his acquisition of the social-media company on Oct. 27, fired Twitter’s top executives, laid off about half its staff and floated several ideas for changes to the way the platform works. Some advertisers have paused their advertising on Twitter, largely either out of concern that Mr. Musk might weaken content moderation, potentially leading to more hate speech on the platform, or because of the uncertainty surrounding the company’s direction.

“This uncertainty and instability, entirely of Musk’s making, will quickly damage Twitter’s brand and unsettle users,” said Darren Savage, chief strategy officer of Omnicom Group Inc. -owned digital marketing agency Tribal Worldwide London.

But the new era at Twitter could also be an opportunity for the company to redefine its brand for the better.

Sixty-four percent of Twitter users said Mr. Musk will have a positive impact on the product, according to a survey of 1,212 adults who use the platform by polling firm Harris Insights & Analytics between Oct. 28 and 30.

The platform also has gotten an incredible amount of publicity since Mr. Musk’s takeover, said Tim Calkins, marketing professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. “And in many ways, that’s great news for Twitter, because now people are thinking about Twitter for the first time in a very long time,” he said.

But it remains unclear what Twitter under Mr. Musk will actually be, Mr. Calkins said.

Twitter didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Musk has indicated that he wants Twitter to be less restrictive about what users can share, and in his first weekend as owner posted a link to a conspiracy theory about the assault on the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He later deleted the tweet, and more broadly has said he would form a special council to tackle questions of content moderation.

Twitter will likely have to prove it can keep advertisers “safe” from appearing near content they might find concerning, while assuring those advertisers that they aren’t helping to fund a platform that allows racist or hateful content to flourish, ad executives said.

“Advertisers are thinking about how their dollars spent on the platform could be perceived as their direct support of Elon’s personal views,” said Toni Box, senior vice president of social media at media agency Assembly, part of ad holding company Stagwell Inc. “And Musk’s own personal tweets are being questioned in regard to brand safety and adjacency, so this could be very damaging if it’s not addressed quickly.”

Howard Belk, co-CEO of Omnicom Group brand consultancy Siegel + Gale, said the events at Twitter are likely changing the way people view it. “Recent turmoil at the company has had the effect of objectifying Twitter, raising the question with users and advertisers of whether Twitter is a safe media channel to desired consumers, or merely a plaything for Musk and a misinformation tool for bad actors domestically and around the world,” he said.

Twitter will now need to work to communicate with users in an attempt to mollify them, or risk potentially losing them, Mr. Belk added.

Twitter before Mr. Musk weathered a number of controversies that rattled some advertisers and users.

The number of Twitter’s monetizable average daily active users increased to 237.8 million in the second quarter this year from 229 million in the first quarter and 206 million a year earlier.

The company’s marketing team over the years developed advertising campaigns that positioned Twitter as a place for people who wanted to quickly know what was happening in the world and bring their most authentic selves to the internet. Ads aimed to boost the platform’s active user base by mimicking or reproducing the often-irreverent copywriting displayed by users on the platform. It ran a commercial during the Oscars in 2018.

But news coverage and Mr. Musk’s tweets could continue playing a big role in perceptions of Twitter because the company’s ad spending is relatively modest, and recently declining.

The company spent $1.4 million to advertise itself in the U.S. from January through August of this year, down from $2.2 million in the equivalent period a year earlier, according to estimates by research firm Kantar Media. Those figures include media such as TV, radio, outdoor ads, magazines and the internet, but exclude social media.

By comparison, advertising to promote the hot social-media platform TikTok in the U.S. from January through August totaled $51.6 million, up from $32.7 million in the same months of 2021.

“The brand drives strong engagement and relevance with their core users and has achieved significant presence in culture,” said Andrew Miller, an executive strategy director at Interbrand, a brand consultancy owned by Omnicom that annually ranks companies’ brand values.

But this is a potential inflection point for Twitter, Mr. Miller said. “When brands go through business change, either being acquired, merging, or going private in this case, one of the most important near-term objectives is to assuage the concerns of the user and customer base to minimize attrition through the transition.”

Twitter’s brand would benefit if its new owner took a step back from micromanaging day-to-day operations and avoided unhelpful tweets, including a new one Friday about a “massive drop in revenue” from advertiser cutbacks, said Aaron Kwittken, founder and chairman of Stagwell public-relations firm KWT Global...

 

Democrats Mad They Might Lose Power to Censor (VIDEO)

It's Saagar Enjeti:

Lauren Boebert: 'Two Words'

Yesterday she posted "Two Words: Let’s Go Brandon!"

Obviously the two words were "fuck you" to Joe Biden (or just Joe Biden?), or at least that's the easiest account for her tweet, which she's not deleted. It's got over 10,000 RTs.  

At Twitchy, "George Takei tries to mock Lauren Boebert’s ‘2 words’ tweet about Biden but drops the mic on his own head (AND Biden’s)."

Federal Magistrate Bruce Reinhart, Who Issued Warrant for FBI's Raid on Mar-a-Lago, Is Democratic Donor Who Represented Jeffrey Epstein After Leaving Justice Deparment in 2008

On Twitter, "BREAKING; Florida Federal Magistrate Bruce Reinhart, who approved the FBI raid on Trump's home, is also a Democratic presidential donor who previously represented several Jeff Epstein Associates after leaving the US Attorney's office in 2008."

Hmm.

At AoSHQ, "A Federal Judge Would Never, Ever Show Political Bias In Authorizing a Raid on a President * Except It Wasn't a Federal Judge -- It Was a Mere Magistrate * Who Was an Obama Donor * Who Was an Epstein Lawyer."

Judge Reinhart's page at the United States District Court Southern District of Florida is inaccessable: "Access denied."

Wait WTF????

THIS BRUCE REINHART???

Wtf!!! https://t.co/9fWqKeeUA2 https://t.co/f7LJqkZvmB pic.twitter.com/l9W1S1Eigk

— Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) August 9, 2022

Twitter Says It's Going to Sue Elon Musk for Trying to Back Out of Takeover Deal

Folks see Musk as a free-speech savior, so it'd be a bummer if the deal doesn't go through. That said, frankly, Twitter's valuation was below $44 billion when Musk first made the bid. It's dropped precipitously since then, not to mention the market value of Musk's Tesla electric car company, whose stock was being used to leverage the deal. 

We'll see, in any case. It's still awful bad on that hellsite. 

At the Verger, "Twitter says it’s going to sue Elon Musk for trying to back out of the deal."

Twitter Freaks Debate Deplatforming Libs of TikTok, Again, In Leaked Thread; Taylor Lorenz, Who Cries About Her Own Alleged 'Death Threats,' Mocks the Death Threats Libs of TikTok Receives

At AoSHQ, "The Purplehair Nosering Genderfux of Twitter are at it again, reports Libs of TikTok on her blog."