Twitter was never the largest social network, but it remained one of the most influential as a home to celebrities, journalists, and influencers of all sorts and the go-to network for breaking news. Since Elon Musk purchased it, Twitter’s employee count has dropped by more than half, advertisers have tightened budgets, and it’s charging money for access to verified checkmarks and Tweetdeck. Oh, and now it’s called X instead of Twitter.
How Elon Musk and xAI are putting a nail in the coffin of content moderation.
Similar to starter packs on Bluesky, Threads, and Mastodon, X’s take on the feature will provide you with lists of accounts to follow based on what they post about, such as sports, video games, food, and more. Starter packs will roll out to all users in “the coming weeks.”
The solution is using Bluesky, of course. Naturally, a user with a blue check next to their name told Grok to put a bikini on the butterfly and the AI did — which seems like an even stronger advertisement for Bluesky than the one Bluesky itself posted.
Ofcom says the probe will establish whether X has failed to comply with Online Safety Act obligations, over concerns its Grok AI chatbot is generating sexualized deepfakes of adults and minors. The investigation is “a matter of the highest priority,” and may result in hefty fines or even X being banned in the UK.
X’s deepfake porn feature clearly violates app store guidelines. Why won’t Apple and Google pull it?
That incredible Financial Times quip above, is supported by newly released data from deepfake researcher Genevieve Oh, published by Bloomberg. Over a 24-hour period from January 5th to the 6th, Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot generated “about 6,700” images every hour “identified as sexually suggestive or nudifying.”
For context, “The other top five websites for such content averaged 79 new AI undressing images per hour,” according to Oh.
“Prediction markets” continue to appear everywhere, including CNN and CNBC, and Polymarket is shitposting about citizen journalism.
Meanwhile, The Athletic is the latest (following Awful Announcing and Front Office Sports) reporting on sports misinformation X accounts like “Emma Vance” and “Scott Hughes” have spread while sporting those site’s affiliate badges.
Elon Musk’s company has filed a lawsuit against Operation Bluebird, a new startup hoping to claim the “abandoned” Twitter trademark, but its legal argument is a little unorthodox.
lowmess:
“well technically it isn’t abandoned because we did such a shitty rebrand that people still call our product by its old name”
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Kind of a “no duh” conclusion, but Petter Törnberg, Assistant Professor in Computational Social Science at University of Amsterdam, has the data to back it up. His new study (which has yet to be peer reviewed) is about shifts in social media usage in the last four years, with the biggest shifts being on the platform formerly known as Twitter.
The Financial Times has a good rundown of the extensive executive churn across Elon Musk’s companies in recent months, from Tesla’s robotics team to xAI’s CFO. Musk’s “24/7 campaign-style work ethos” is apparently a little difficult to keep up with.
Former staffers took legal actions against X following Elon Musk’s mass layoffs after he took over the company once known as Twitter.
[The New York Times]
After stepping down from X in July, Yaccarino is taking the CEO job at eMed Population Health, which makes a digital health platform for managing GLP-1 weight loss drugs.
