My Twitter following normally goes up by a dozen or two a day, especially at this time of the year right before an election. Since Musk has taken over, I haven’t just not gained any followers, I’ve lost a net of about 1,000 followers. And more and more people I speak with— some on Twitter and some not— have asked me why I’m still on the platform. Judd Legum at Popular Information noted this morning that after just 5 days Elon Musk “has already inflicted serious damage on Twitter— pushing conspiracy theories and catering to the far right. The account account he uses to promote Popular Information has lost more than 8,000 followers as increasing numbers of people are bailing from Twitter. He posted a review of Twitter during Musk’s first 5 days, panning the rocky start. “Musk,” he noted, “dissolved Twitter's board of directors and named himself the CEO. He already runs four other companies. And yet Musk has found time to act as a personal concierge to far-right political figures seeking to undermine American democracy,” reinstating sociopaths who have been booted off Twitter for spreading misinformation like Mark Finchem, in the midst of losing an election for Arizona Secretary of State.
He also noted that Musk personally promoted a conspiracy theory that is part of a far right disinformation campaign aimed against the American people. The absurd article he retweeted— and then took down 3 hours later— came from a fake news site which claimed, without evidence, that Paul Pelosi was assaulted in his home while "in a dispute with a male prostitute."
Musk pushed this conspiracy theory after it circulated among far-right political figures. It was never credible and was completely debunked by the criminal complaint against Pelosi's attacker, David Depape. The complaint states that Pelosi did not know Depape. Further, Depape told investigators he broke into the house to kidnap Speaker Pelosi and, as punishment for lying, break her kneecaps.
Musk quietly deleted the tweet, but never acknowledged his mistake or apologized. Instead, he sarcastically attacked the New York Times for reporting on his role in pushing disinformation about the attack.
…Musk is CEO of one of the world's most powerful communications platforms. In just a few days, he has used that role to promote disreputable news sources and disparage legitimate news sources.
Musk is the world's richest man, but he does not have access to a ton of cash. Most of his wealth is tied up in Tesla stock. He financed the Twitter deal, in part, by taking out massive loans that will require Twitter to make $1 billion per year in payments. Prior to the acquisition, Twitter was not a reliable source of any profits. It frequently lost money. So Musk is under a lot of pressure to produce cash that Twitter can use to make its loan payments. Otherwise, Musk might be forced to sell more Tesla stock, tanking the value of his most profitable company.
Musk's primary idea is to charge verified users, who receive a small blue check next to their account names, to remain verified and allow people who aren't verified to pay for the privilege. Musk originally floated a price of $20 per month for verification but, after complaints from novelist Stephen King, lowered the proposed price to $8 per month.
There are a few problems with this plan. First, it has no chance of generating meaningful revenue for Twitter. Even if 20% of currently verified users decided to pay $20 per month to remain verified, it would only generate $15 million per year. Currently, Twitter brings in $5 billion per year in revenue, mostly from advertising. In other words, "Musk’s apparent plan would generate about 30 hours’ worth of annual revenue."
More fundamentally, it misunderstands the purpose of verification. The verification system started after Twitter was sued by former St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa for allowing an account to impersonate him on the platform. Other celebrities were also complaining about fake accounts. The verification system created trust, attracted more prominent users, and helped grow the site.
Putting the blue verification badge up for sale erodes this trust. Scam artists will be able to easily purchase verification to lend credibility to their schemes. It will be "easier for fake accounts posing as banks, government agencies or notable people to fool innocent users and spread fake news." The verification badge will no longer signify anything, other than the willingness to pay Musk $8 per month.
Advertisers, which represent Twitter's only consistent source of revenue, are eyeing Musk's action wearily. IPG, a major advertising agency, is reportedly recommending that all their clients institute a "temporary pause" of Twitter ads.
Last night Will Oremus and Gerrit De Vynck reported on Musk’s Twitter paywall for Washington Post readers adding that he plans to start charging for content. “Twitter is working on a feature that would let people post videos and charge users to view them, with the company taking a cut of the proceeds, according to an internal email obtained by the Washington Post. The company appears to be aiming to rush out the feature, referred to as Paywalled Video, with a target of one to two weeks before launch… The timeline could signal Musk’s intent to move far more quickly in building and launching new features than Twitter has in the past— even if that means taking on greater risks of abuse or liability. While Twitter makes most of its money from advertising, Musk has said he wants to charge users, including for the blue check mark of verification.”
The paid video feature would mark a significant shift for the platform, which is best known as a place for users to publicly share short thoughts, memes and links. Twitter recently branched into live audio with a feature called Spaces and has begun experimenting with premium features, such as a “tip jar” for content creators and a “Super Follow” option that lets popular tweeters charge a subscription fee for bonus content.
The video shift could also push Twitter, which is unusual among major social networks for allowing nudity and consensual pornography, into competition with sites that specialize in adult content.
According to the internal email describing the new video feature, which has not yet been announced, “When a creator composes a tweet with a video, the creator can enable the paywall once a video has been added to the tweet.” They can then choose from a preset list of prices, such as $1, $2, $5 or $10.
Mock-ups of the feature viewed by The Post show a tweet with four images. Three are immediately viewable, while the fourth is obscured, with a lock icon and the message “view for $1.” Paying that amount would unlock the video, with the creator receiving money via Stripe while Twitter takes an unspecified amount.
Users who haven’t paid would not be able to see the video but could like or retweet the tweet.
The email doesn’t specify what types of videos creators might post, though it does raise the concern that users might post copyrighted content or use the feature to scam others. One Twitter employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal plans, said it seemed like a feature that would probably be used at least partly for adult content.
Though Twitter is no longer public, it is on the hook for around $1 billion in annual interest payments on the debt Musk accrued when buying the company. He has also said he plans on charging $8 a month for users to keep their blue check mark that signals the company has verified them as who they say they are, while giving them added features like priority in search results.
…Twitter estimates that about 13 percent of its content is NSFW, or “not safe for work,” according to Reuters, which included the figure in a story last month about how Twitter was losing its most active users. NSFW content, along with cryptocurrency content, were the fastest-growing areas of English-speaking Twitter, according to an internal presentation viewed by The Post and first reported by Reuters.
Most big advertisers shun NSFW content and are hesitant to advertise on platforms that have a reputation for containing pornography. The marketing industry has had conversations about the issue with Twitter over the years, according to an executive at one of the largest advertising agencies who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Rivals such as Facebook and TikTok do not allow pornographic content.
In August, the Verge reported that Twitter had developed and then shelved plans for a subscription service explicitly focused on adult content, reminiscent of the lucrative adult platform OnlyFans. But the project went through an intensive review by an internal “Red Team” tasked with evaluating all the possible risks and was ultimately derailed by concern that Twitter would be unable to ensure that it wasn’t monetizing child pornography or sexual abuse.
Musk has been in New York this week, partly to meet with advertisers. Last week, he posted a note on his Twitter account promising advertisers the site wouldn’t become a “free-for-all hellscape.”
49 year old German model and Queen of Drags judge, Heidi Klum, couldn't resist inviting the world's richest billionaire to her Halloween party for the Beautiful People on Monday at Sake No Hana At Moxy on the Lower East Side. She dressed as a worm and he dressed in a $7,500 Devil's Champion outfit.
Speaking of which, yesterday Patriotic Millionaires asked if America’s billionaires are oligarchs and answered their own question in the affirmative. “Russian oligarchs, a small group of extremely wealthy (and notoriously corrupt) individuals that have strong ties to Putin, wield enormous influence over the Russian government. These oligarchs may not be actual members of the Russian government, but there is no doubt that they are complicit in Russia’s actions. Russian billionaires like Roman Abramovich and Oleg Deripaska use their wealth and privilege to puppeteer politicians and control the political scene, and ultimately directly benefit from the government actions they play a role in shaping. Sound familiar?
America’s 735 billionaires are no different. Most people might think of Russians when they think of oligarchs, but if we’re talking about a shadowy mix of private wealth and public power, there’s no place like home. American billionaires are not shy about using their wealth to influence American politics.
…Just look at how billionaires have been behaving ahead of next week’s midterm elections. The 50 biggest donors this election cycle— including high-profile billionaires like Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, George Soros, Kenneth Griffin, and Jeffrey Yass— have collectively given $1.1 billion to political committees and groups.
According to a report from Americans for Tax Fairness, almost half of the $190 million raised by the House and Senate Republican SuperPACs in the first 16 months of the 2022 campaign cycle came from just 27 billionaires. (Democratic SuperPACs raised far less from billionaires— $26 million out of $154 million total — in the same time frame.)
…What, you may ask, have America’s billionaires gotten in return for their massive political investments over the years? They are not spending for the fun of it— they’re investing in politicians, and the return on their investment has been incredible. We now have a system of government where public policy outcomes almost exclusively reflect the interests and preferences of the wealthy rather than those of the public.
We can see this in many policy areas, but nowhere more so than in the tax code. Today, billionaires pay much lower effective tax rates than everyday Americans who work for a living. Between 2014 and 2018, the richest 25 billionaires— including the likes of Elon Musk, Warren Buffett, and Jeff Bezos— paid an average effective tax rate of just 3.4% on over $400 billion in gains, while the average American pays 13.3%. And sometimes, these billionaires actually get away with paying nothing at all in taxes.
Considering all this, is there any denying that we live in an oligarchy? America’s billionaires may not speak Russian or be friends with Vladimir Putin (well, some of them are), but the enormous influence they wield over our government makes them oligarchs all the same. And that makes our entire country worse off. The late Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once said, “We must make a choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.” He was right— we as a country have to choose what kind of future we want.
