Nilay Patel
Hey, where are all the angry Congressional hearings about X being politically biased?
Our friends Casey Newton and Kevin Roose at Hard Fork make the obvious point.
Twitter Archive
Archives for October 2024
Alex Heath
Threads hits 275 million users.
Meta’s X.com competitor now has 275 million monthly users, up from 200 million in August, according to Mark Zuckerberg. On Meta’s Q3 earnings call just now, he says Threads is seeing more than one million sign-ups per day and is on track to becoming “our next major social app.”
The time people spend in Threads “also continues to grow,” and Meta is working to “make it easier to stay up to date on topics,” adds CFO Susan Li.
Gaby Del Valle
X’s biggest anti-immigrant poster is... Elon Musk.
We’ve been sounding the alarm about Elon’s great replacement posts for a while, and Bloomberg just ran the numbers. Musk posts about the supposed link between immigration and voter fraud more than any other topic.
To be clear, Noncitizen voting is virtually nonexistent, despite Musk’s claims to the contrary. Even a Heritage Foundation analysis shows just 68 instances of noncitizen voting in elections since 1980.
Richard Lawler
The real Matthew Metro speaks up about a viral fake video.
The Washington Post tracked down Metro, who attended a high school where Democratic VP nominee Tim Walz taught, and confirmed somebody on X made false sexual misconduct allegations in his name in a since-deleted video from last week:
It’s obviously not me: The teeth are different, the hair is different, the eyes are different, the nose is different.
The video was widely called out as AI, but experts told the Post it was more likely a “cheap fake” — like a human actor doing an impersonation.
Viral attack on Walz features fake former student making false claim
[The Washington Post]
Jay Peters
As Elon Musk would say: “Concerning.”
NPR’s Bobby Allyn spotted that X’s new Terms of Service, which go into effect on November 15th, say that disputes must be brought before the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas, where the judge who owns Tesla stock presides.
Richard Lawler
The EU deems X not “important” enough for DMA regulations.
While platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and the App Store deal with Digital Markets Act regulations put on powerful digital gatekeepers, the service formerly known as Twitter won’t have that problem:
Following a thorough assessment of all arguments, including input by relevant stakeholders, and after consulting the Digital Markets Advisory Committee, the Commission concluded that X does indeed not qualify as a gatekeeper in relation to its online social networking service, given that the investigation revealed that X is not an important gateway for business users to reach end users.
Justine Calma
Umar Shakir