Hello, senior tech reporter Kylie Robison here. When Elon Musk purchased Twitter, now called X, for $44 billion, he claimed it had a serious bot problem. The problem was so serious, he claimed, that it was enough of a reason to back out of the deal altogether. That didn’t pan out for him, so when he purchased the platform he vowed to banish all bots. A part of Musk’s plan was to completely reform the verification system, by charging users $8 per month for the blue check that confers “verified” status. He said, “It is the only way to defeat the bots and trolls.”
I think about this grand vision of his often. Many journalists, including myself, can admit that we’re hopelessly addicted to the platform. And what I’ve noticed lately when I get my fix and scroll through my feed, is a whole lot of advertisements from users who have no posts, and are selling fake luxury goods. As a reporter on this beat, I’m of course thinking: How does Musk not have a massive issue with this?
There are also bots that reply to tweets with nonsense, have you ever noticed that? Recently, I got an Ethereum bot that replied to my tweet linking (what I assumed) was the owner to the bot. Against my better judgment, I messaged the bot owner.
“I spam and make money with it,” they told me when I reached out. I replied that I think it’s fascinating that people own these bots on a platform that lauds itself for preventing bots with blue checks. They responded, “Elon did a great job to prevent bots. Some things are just not possible, but he eliminated already 80% of spammer[s]. These blue checks accounts are hacked. It’s like you give your password to [someone], nothing to do with ‘bot account.’”
Well, that’s great. It’s not a “bot account” situation, it’s an undisclosed number of users getting hacked situation. Yet those blue check accounts are now buying ads in bulk. I came across a dozen or so ads just this week of these blue check accounts, all with little to no posts, scamming fake luxury goods. Has Musk forgotten this mission, or just given up?
What I’m thinking as I see these scammy marketers is just how desperate the company is for advertisers. X has seriously bled essential advertisers—losing potentially $75 million in revenue just this quarter, according to the New York Times. Disney, IBM, Apple, and more have paused advertising. Meanwhile, Musk took the stage at the New York Times DealBook Summit, and literally said “f–ck you” to advertisers. He called out Disney CEO Bob Iger specifically, too. Great strategy we have here!
Then there’s X CEO Linda Yaccarino, who, we reported exclusively last week, told staff to “put your heads together to bring new revenue into the company” due to so many advertisers fleeing thanks to Musk’s anti-Semitic comments. Yaccarino has publicly and internally praised the “candid” comments Musk made at the conference, yet they’re still working to get these advertisers back. Quite odd?
“What this advertising boycott is going to do is, it’s going to kill the company,” Musk said on the DealBook stage. “The whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company, and we’ll document it in great detail.”
He definitely has that right. As I watch spam accounts overtake my timeline, the same users Musk claimed to fight against, I wonder if he’s lost one of the only business plans for X he had. I guess I can buy a nice luxury purse for $100. Thanks, Elon!
Kylie Robison
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NEWSWORTHY
Google vs. Microsoft. Continuing the grand tradition of U.S. Big Tech firms attacking one another in Europe, Google has urged the U.K.’s antitrust regulator to crack down on Microsoft over its cloud practices. “With Microsoft’s licensing restrictions in particular, U.K. customers are left with no economically reasonable alternative but to use Azure as their cloud services provider, even if they prefer the prices, quality, security, innovations, and features of rivals,” sniffed Google in a letter to the Competition and Markets Authority, which is investigating both Microsoft and Amazon over possibly anticompetitive cloud tactics, according to Reuters.
Blue Origin suit. A whistleblower has sued Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’s space company, for allegedly retaliating against him for highlighting safety issues and a hostile work environment. As TechCrunch reports, Craig Stoker complained about then-CEO Bob Smith in mid-2022, and claims Smith was cleared after an inadequate HR investigation—Stoker was terminated months later.
TikTok block blocked. A federal judge has blocked Montana’s ban on TikTok, saying the measure, set to take effect on Jan. 1, is unconstitutional. As the Associated Press notes, this isn’t the final ruling on the first-in-the-U.S. ban, but anyhow, here’s U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy: “Despite the state’s attempt to defend [the law] as a consumer protection bill, the current record leaves little doubt that Montana’s legislature and attorney general were more interested in targeting China’s ostensible role in TikTok than with protecting Montana consumers.”
ON OUR FEED
“We have the technologies to avoid the worst of climate chaos, if we act now … The economics are clear: The global shift to renewables is inevitable. The only question is how much heating our planet will endure before it happens.”
—UN Secretary-General António Guterres, addressing delegates at COP28 in Dubai
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Jewish tech leaders met with TikTok’s CEO to raise concerns that the platform is biased toward pro-Palestine content, by Michal Lev-Ram
‘If you’re ever in an argument with another car, you will win’—Elon Musk begins selling Cybertrucks as the ‘finest in apocalypse technology,’ by Christiaan Hetzner
Cathie Wood just had her best month ever—but investors aren’t convinced the ARK boom is going to last, by Bloomberg
Lucid dream startup says engineers can write code in their sleep. Work may never be the same, by Rachyl Jones
Meta closes nearly 4,800 accounts it says China-based actors were exploiting to repost Twitter content and polarize U.S. voters, by the Associated Press
BEFORE YOU GO
Cybersecurity rules. EU lawmakers have struck a deal on the bloc’s new Cyber Resilience Act, which will introduce new requirements for everything from smart home gadgets to toys. Manufacturers will have to conduct cybersecurity risk assessments of their wares from the design process on, be transparent with customers about that security, and follow official bug-handling processes.
As Euronews reports, the legislation was tabled just over a year ago, in the context of fears over Russian and Chinese hacking. The rules come into force in a few years’ time, and will of course affect companies around the world who sell their connected products in the EU. But it won’t cover cloud-based software.
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