The Elon Musk rorting continues ...

[onetrack]

So, now that Elon Musk has gained control of Twitter, he's mulling over an arrangement that sees Twitter users having to pay an $8 monthly recurring "verification" fee, to acquire the Twitter "blue tick" (of approval) as a verified and worthy user of the site.

 

Despite the fact that I don't often agree with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, I am in 100% agreement with her savaging of Musk, and his American Corporate greed attitude.

 

This is a bloke who has garnered a $200B fortune in a bit over 20 years, simply by rorting everyone on the planet. Firstly via PayPal, and its outrageous charges and fees, then the major rorting with Tesla car pricing.

 

Now he's continuing his corporate rorting by charging a major monthly access fee, that has no reference to actual operating costs - just like banks charging $25 for a credit card over-limit fee.

 

I would love to see Musk come a gutser and everyone abandon Twitter, so that Musk's investment in the company founders. But, knowing America, millions will gladly suck up the Twitter monthly fee and contribute more squillions to Musks already-staggering wealth, in a relatively short period of time.

 

Musk typifies the typical American corporate rort artist - from scheming such as underpaying staff, right through to excessive fees for everything they do. I'm thoroughly sick of this approach, where these corporate operators treat users as the "product", pay them nothing, but extract huge value out of their freely-given data (most of which is simply stolen), and then turn around and charge outrageous fees for anything they provide.

 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-04/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-elon-musk-twitter-account-problems/101615094

[Yenn]

I have lived all my life without Twitter, so I don't care what Elon Musk screws from his Twits. It is not necessary or even desirable.

[old man emu]

I've got my personal email address; one for my business and one for the museum. I have a FB account which keeps me informed of lunches with my old school mates, and I watch a local buy/sell/swap Fb group. Then I spend hours on a couple of crazy aviation forums run by a bloke in Melbourne. And instead of TV I watch documentatires on Youtube. I don't have time for Twitter, Tik-Tok or following the antics of some carcrashian self promoters.

 

Unless Elon buys Google or Wikipedia, he won't get a brass razoo out of me.

[willedoo]

Twitter is an important world wide platform, used by government, business and the public. There is a lot of misinformation spread on it, but it's also one of the most valuable sources of information if the false can be separated from the believable. A lot of video that people see on the nightly news main stream media channels had it's origin as a post on twitter. It's just that it's very hard to sort the verified, unverified and the fake. The MSM is basically lazy. Breaking news will appear on twitter and do the rounds there for two or three days, after which time the MSM will present it as factual news. Between it first appearing on twitter and appearing in the MSM, the subject may have been verified, or it may have been proven false, but the MSM doesn't really back check and retract once something has aired.

 

Musk taking it over has been very controversial. Some people reporting on the Ukraine war are concerned that Musk will allow more Russian propaganda bots to operate on twitter under his idea of freedom of speech. Musk upset a lot of people with his pro Kremlin idea of appeasing Putin by giving away Ukrainian land in a peace deal. Some critics of Musk's ideas on Twitter have reported losing hundreds of followers since Musk took over, theorising that  bots are deleting them. Time will tell how Twitter goes under his ownership. Either way, Putin probably sees him as a useful idiot.

[willedoo]

Twitter account users can still use Twitter without paying the fee. Most accounts don't bother with the verification tick. It looks like Musk is trying to screw a few dollars out of those that want to have a verified account.

[rgmwa]

`Chief Twit' is a very appropriate description in my opinion.

[Jerry_Atrick]

Ubiquitous social media are in it for the money and they don't intrinsically care too much about what is on their platform as long as it bring eyeballs and advertising revenue. There have been a few whistleblowers who have confirmed this. Social media can harm society by allowing the spreading of lies, prejudices, hate speech,  etc., appealing to many people, especially those looking for someone to blame for their plight. So, while Musk won't see a penny from me (unless he makes Ian an incredible offer), it is still concerning to me what he may do in terms of relaxing rules and surveillance, and allowing content on the site not currently allowed. I think he has been quoted as saying he will allow Trump back on.

 

The EU has already spoken to him to alert him that they will come down hard if he breaches their requirements in terms of moderation, data protection, etc.

[onetrack]

Quote

I think he has been quoted as saying he will allow Trump back on

This is exactly what I fear is going to happen once Musk gained control of Twitter. The last thing we need is Trump blasting the world again daily, with his lying, vicious, nasty tweets.

[red750]

Twitter employees who were laid off over the past 24 hours aren’t leaving quietly.

 

“Last Thursday in the SF office, really the last day Twitter was Twitter,” Rachel Bonn, a content marketing manager, tweeted, beside a photo of herself. “8 months pregnant and have a 9 month old. Just got cut off from laptop access.”

 

Another former employee, Rumman Chowdhury, who worked on machine learning at the company posted a photo that showed that she had been locked out of her email. A message on her login screen read: “your password was changed less than an hour ago.” Alongside the photo, she tweeted, “Has it already started? Happy layoff eve!”

 

And a senior engineering manager, Joan Deitchman, on the same team shared on Twitter what she called her last Slack message to a team that she said is now “gone.”

 

“Know that this was a special team. One that stuck together to the end, full of integrity, supporting each other, and willing to stand up and do the right thing,” the message said. “There will probably never be a team like Twitter META again,” a reference to her team’s name.

 

The layoffs come nearly a week after Tesla CEO Elon Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion and set about to quickly overhaul the social media giant. He hasn’t tweeted about the layoffs since they started. Instead he lashed out on Twitter about activists “trying to destroy” free speech by pressuring companies to stop advertising on his service. He said the exodus has resulted in a huge drop in Twitter’s revenue. Meanwhile, the profile language on Twitter’s corporate Twitter account, as if shocked by all the upheaval, has been switched to ask no one in particular: “What’s happening?!”

 

In the weeks leading up to the takeover, several news outlets reported about Musk’s layoff plans, including one that said Musk was planning to cut 75% of Twitter’s workforce of 7,500. The actual total is expected to be 50% of the company, or 3,700 workers.

[red750]

Amber Heard’s Twitter account appears to have been removed just days after her ex-boyfriend, Elon Musk, took ownership of the social media platform.

 

Story continues behind paywall.

[old man emu]

Isn't Trump trying to start up a social media platform? Looks like qualified staff will be easy to come by.

[facthunter]

Those who work for trump have a quick path to obscurity once their purpose has been served, He has his own show called Truth or something ridiculous, which is pretty Moribund.  Nev

[facthunter]

He's America's "Arthur Daley" without the appeal. IF you don't aid Trump HE will try to get even forever. ASK Pence. The GOP don't show much collective BRAINS. Trump just uses them.   Nev

[onetrack]

Trumps social media platform (Truth Social), is in disarray and facing bankruptcy, and hasn't been paying its bills. A proposed merger has fallen over, as investors start to realise that Trump only amplifies his extreme fringe following set.

This downturn also started right after Trump realised he wasn't going to get the instant worldwide exposure for his narcissistic outbursts, on a platform that he built, and which was only ever going to be followed by the Trump True Believers.

 

This has effectively resulted in Trump losing interest in continuing to push the Truth Social platform development. It's typical Trump, once Trump has decided someone or something is no longer of use to him, it's discarded like a used tissue.

On top of that, many of the "leftie commies" of the East that Trump despises, are IT specialists or tech company CEO's and senior executives, so his Truth Social platform is struggling to recruit staff.

 

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-trump-truth-social/

 

https://time.com/6216670/trump-truth-social-struggles/

[red750]

He said today it was "very,very,very possible" he would run for a third term.

[facthunter]

It's about time a few said WHO BL@@DY CARES? He's full of himself to think he's that important. . Nev

[red750]

Even with ads like this protesting the overturn of Rowe V Wade flooding social media, the GOP is still polling ahed.

 

[facthunter]

Who can explain why America does what it does?. About 85% believe the bible is "The ABSOLUTE word of God" . and the latest version of God want you to be a greedy Capitalist. That's  a 'suited for Purpose invented God" surely?  Nev

[willedoo]

Here's a bit more on Musk's $8 blue tick.

 

https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/twitter-launches-us8-monthly-subscription-with-blue-check-20221106-p5bvvq.html

[onetrack]

Musks troubles with Twitter are only just beginning. The sacked employees - nearly all of whom were fired summarily - as well as many not even knowing they'd been sacked, until they found they'd been locked out of their company accounts - are now launching a class action, stating they weren't given proper notice, and under U.S. labour laws applying to mass sackings at large companies, their employer is obliged to give sacked employees 60 days notice.

 

I guess that fortune of Musks is going to take another hit, once the dust settles, and the employees get their rightful termination payouts.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/04/twitter-sued-by-former-staff-as-elon-musk-begins-mass-sackings

 

Another factor is - how is the "new" Twitter actually going to "verify" satisfactorily, the ID of anyone using the platform? They would need access to Govt databases to cross-match user details - then how would you go trying to verify users in places such as Russia, 3rd world countries where ID is bought and sold like a commodity, and countries where people use only one name?

 

This has stopped all the other global Internet companies in their tracks when trying to keep out scammers, criminals, bots, underground drugs and weapons dealers, disinformation agents, and the 100 other undesirables that haunt the deep dark web.

[Jerry_Atrick]

When I worled for a US company (under UK labour laws), I was shocked at the little protections and benefits offered by US labour laws for professionals. Here are some of the things I noticed:

• Leave is called paid time off in the US. I see this as a psychological ply to tell employees they are getting something for nothing and should be grateful. They are entitled to 2 weeks hjoliday and 2 weeks sick leave per year. A great attraction for people to come and work for us in the US was our company offered 4 weeks PTO - take it as you like. In other words, even if you weren't sick, you could still have that 2 weeks PTO. The yanks loved it as it ment they didn't have to get fake medical certs to take a couple of weeks off. However, there was no safety net after that. As I recall, there was no paid paternity leave at the time.
• The most time they could take off at any point was a week.. When I took 4 weeks off to go to Aus, the US account exec who I was working with at the time was mortified that someone would allow me to do it.
• Virtually all professional employees (i.e. non-union) are "at will" employees, meaning they can terminate or be terminated at any time with no reason given and no recourse to appeal. There was a redundancy payment due, but at the time, it was 2 weeks pay. I guess it ius 6 weeks now. The act they refer to in the article must have been brought in after I stopped working for this company (20 years ago now), as one employee, the PA to the CEO, got to her desk one day and couldn't sign in.. When she called the help desk, the response was, "Haven't you been told you've been fired?" She left in tears (I was there that week). The CEO was new.. and took the company to new lows.
• You can expect medical and dental insurance, though...
• Generally, it wasn't a bad place to work, but basically if your boss didn't like you, you were probably out the door.

[old man emu]

There must be something pathalogically wrong with these people whose sole aim in life is to gain for themselves such incredible amounts of money that could never be spent, yet they never stop wanting more. The "Normal" person would be happy with a few tens of millions to do with as they wished. 

 

In November 2021, Musk became the first person worth over $300 billion. Musk has repeatedly described himself as "cash poor", and has "professed to have little interest in the material trappings of wealth". In May 2020, he pledged to sell almost all physical possessions.  Musk defended his wealth by saying he is accumulating resources for humanity's outward expansion to space.

 

Musk's behaviour in summarily sacking a large proportion of the Twitter workforce must be prooff that he has never heard of "Do unto others ..."

[facthunter]

Like an alcoholic  one glass is too many and a thousand not enough..  Nev

[Bruce Tuncks]

I find it amazing that Trump seems to have the numbers to get back in.....   Surely after pissing off Pence etc he no longer had as much support?

Even given the god stuff they seem to suffer from, how could Trump and his religious republicans expect to get any votes?

At our last election, I reckoned that Palmer was a little bit like Trump, a billionaire who had support among rednecks, and he got very few votes here.

[facthunter]

Trump has the GOP by the balls (If they had any).. Everyone Trump uses gets Humped and Dumped.. Nev