Twitter - X

Even as big advertisers exit, sports Twitter has continued going strong. But now the official Threads account announced that sports/NBA Twitter’s newsbreaker Adrian Wojnarowski “has landed” and is doing a Q&A Friday.

Amicus briefs in the big First Amendment case against the bad Texas and Florida social media laws are getting filed, and Public Knowledge’s submission contains a citation to Welcome to hell, Elon as support for the idea that the real product of any social platform is content moderation. I truly hope Clarence Thomas reads this thing.

According to Instagram boss Adam Mosseri, doing so would open the app up to “spammers and other bad actors” who would “pummel the view with content by simply adding the relevant words or tags.”

After Elon Musk’s endorsement of an antisemitic post led Apple, Disney, IBM, and other major companies to pull advertising from the platform, now an X spokesperson tells the Financial Times it will target smaller businesses instead:

Verge alum Zoë Schiffer just announced her new book, Extremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk’s Twitter, which will expand on her reporting from Platformer, New York Magazine, and of course, this very website. Here’s what Bloomberg’s Matt Levine has to say about it:

On Wednesday, X owner, executive chair, and chief technical officer Elon Musk used his interview at the DealBook Summit 2023 event to antagonize advertisers (singling out Disney CEO Bob Iger, who was present) that paused doing business with the company, as well as clarifying his previous statements in ways that probably made them worse.

We’re nearing the end of this interview, but Sorkin hasn’t yet asked Musk about X’s lawsuit against Media Matters, which reported that ads were appearing next to Nazi content.

This came right in the middle of a discussion around “free speech” on X. Over the summer, Times links on X took longer to load — Musk didn’t directly answer Sorkin’s question on whether he made a choice to punish the Times.

Sorkin is interjecting and pushing back less, the discussion is meandering, and we’re about 30 minutes over schedule. I’ve lost count of the number of times Sorkin has said, “let me ask you a different question” in order to pivot to something else.

Musk says he hasn’t found anyone who knows why Sam Altman was ousted (and eventually brought back) — but believes a recent AI breakthrough could have caused the power struggle. A recent report suggested that OpenAI may have made progress towards AGI.

The DealBook stage sits in front of floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Manhattan. The balloon letters are floating in and out of view behind the background screen outside. It’s unclear who’s behind them.

In a strange turn, we’re now watching Sorkin and Musk talk about the interior “storm” in Musk’s mind.

Here’s Musk responding onstage at DealBook:

That’s Musk’s on-stage message to advertisers who he says are “blackmailing” him — i.e. the companies like Disney, Apple, IBM, and many more that are pulling ads from the platform after his antisemitic posts.

“[The trip to Israel] wasn’t in response to that at all,” Musk says of his post — it wasn’t an “apology tour.”

The room here at DealBook is packed for the last session of the day — and perhaps the most anticipated one. Nobody has come up in more sessions throughout the day than Musk. X CEO Linda Yaccarino is here, too.

Disney is one on a growing list of companies that have stopped advertising on X, formerly known as Twitter, following antisemitic posts from Elon Musk.

Tobias van Schneider has it exactly right: a five-star rating is actually four options that all mean “this sucks,” varying levels of “it’s good” between 4.1 and 4.9, and then 5 stars just means you’re a liar. This is... not a good system, and it’s the same confusing mess everywhere on the internet!

I’m here in New York at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit, an annual gathering of some of the most powerful people in the world.

Hilton’s entertainment company has pulled an advertising campaign from Elon Musk’s X over concerns about antisemitism and pro-Nazi content on the site previously known as Twitter, but the NFL is sticking around because its “fans are clearly there.” Guess we know who has more integrity.

The Washington Post reports that the Senate Judiciary Committee dispatched subpoena-armed US Marshals to CEOs Linda Yaccarino of X (formerly Twitter) and Jason Citron of Discord for December 6th testimony about online child sexual exploitation. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel was also subpoenaed but without the use of Marshals.

Company CEO Linda Yaccarino has tasked her son, Matt Madrazo, with getting the ads. Semafor’s sources say he’s been quietly probing Republican political ad firms ahead of the 2024 elections, while former Pandora veteran Jonathan Phelps tries for Democrat spenders.

The Financial Times reports that X is representing a university student who got in trouble for claiming on X that an event was open and had free food. The event was actually a closed conference.

The CEO of OpenAI has weighed in on the new chatbot from Elon Musk— on Musk’s own social platform, no less!