Twitter - X

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.”

It’s another example of how Threads continues to resist the real-time nature of the platform formerly known as Twitter.

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:

‘Small and medium businesses are a very significant engine that we have definitely underplayed for a long time,’ the company told the Financial Times. ‘It [was] always part of the plan — now we will go even further with it.’

Musk had some choice words for the advertisers who fled the platform during NYT’s DealBook event on Wednesday and said their boycott will “kill” the company.

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:

Zoë Schiffer has written the definitive book on perhaps the weirdest business story of our time. A fast-paced and riveting account of a hilarious and tragic mess.

The book comes out next February. Pre-order 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.

Now the company’s CEO Linda Yaccarino has chimed in with... this in a post on X:

Today @elonmusk gave a wide ranging and candid interview at @dealbook 2023. He also offered an apology, an explanation and an explicit point of view about our position. X is enabling an information independence that’s uncomfortable for some people. We’re a platform that allows people to make their own decisions. And here’s my perspective when it comes to advertising: X is standing at a unique and amazing intersection of Free Speech and Main Street — and the X community is powerful and is here to welcome you. To our partners who believe in our meaningful work — Thank You.

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.

His response: “Free speech is not exactly free. It costs a little bit.” He referenced the Times not being a paying X user.

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.

“Is it a happy storm?” No, says Musk. I’m not sure how we got here.

Here’s Musk responding onstage at DealBook:

I should in retrospect not have replied to that one person and should have written in greater length what i meant. But those clarifications were ignored by the media and essentially I handed a loaded gun to those who hate me and arguably to those who are antisemitic. And for that I’m quite sorry, that was not my intention.

He later called it, “One of the most foolish — if not the most foolish — thing I’ve done on the platform.”

Of course, when it comes to how Musk feels about the advertiser boycott in response, he isn’t so willing to acknowledge his role in the matter.

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.”

“I have no problem being hated.”

Musk tells Sorkin the only reason he’s here is because he’s a friend. Musk keeps laughing. The vibe is chaotic.

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.

During his interview at the DealBook 2023 event, Bob Iger didn’t comment on whether Disney would ever go back to advertising on X, but he had this to say about the decision:

By him taking the position he took, we felt that the association with that position, and Elon Musk and X, was not a positive one for us.

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.

Over the course of the day we’ll be hearing from people like Bob Iger, David Zaslav, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and FTC chair Lina Khan — and we’ll close out the day with an interview with Elon Musk. Check back in for news as the day goes on.

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.

Lawmakers expect Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and TikTok’s Shou Zi Chew to testify voluntarily as Congress continues to try to child-proof the internet with regulation.

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 play comes as money from Apple, Disney, and others dries up.

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.

X owner Elon Musk claimed in August that the company would “fund your legal bill” for users that feel they “were unfairly treated by your employer due to posting or liking something on this platform,” so it seems the company is starting to do so in one of the dumbest possible cases.

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

For those who don’t know the backstory here, Musk was instrumental in the creation of OpenAI but walked away from it and is now trying to compete with ChatGPT. (And GPTs are custom AI bots that OpenAI just started letting ChatGPT subscribers create.)

X (formerly Twitter) has been steadily improving its features for live streams and broadcasts. Based on this screenshot, chat looks a lot like it does on Twitch.

X is also going to let you add timestamps to posts containing video.

From Kara Swisher’s interview with Ben Mezrich, author of Breaking Twitter: 

In the book, there’s a scene when Musk signs the papers to take over Twitter, the first thing he screams out is, “Fuck Zuck! Fuck Zuck!” — which I haven’t seen reported anywhere else.

Not reported, but easily imagined.

He says users will need a $16-a-month X Premium Plus subscription to access "Grok," and that it will get real-time information from posts on X.

Musk was a co-founder of OpenAI but left in 2018 over the company’s for-profit shift, and has called ChatGPT “WokeGPT.” He launched xAI earlier this year. Musk’s posts come a few days ahead of OpenAI’s first developer conference on Monday.

Forbes obtained emails that indicate that X, formerly Twitter, has started to work on a marketplace to buy handles that are no longer in use. Also, “in at least some cases, X/Twitter has emailed solicitations to potential buyers requesting a flat fee of $50,000 to initiate a purchase,” Forbes reports.

That’s one way to make more money, I guess.