Twitter

Saturday

Katherine Dee

Andrew Tate and the making of an internet villain

Andrew Tate, that rascally misogynist everyone loves to hate, has been in the news for the better part of this holiday season. First, the World Economic Forum’s favorite climate change influencer, Greta Thunberg, “clapped back” at him on Twitter, suggesting he had a small penis. This galvanized Tate to publish an insane response video. The story didn’t stop there, though, because how could it? In this video, a pizza box was in view, and according to Twitter conspiracy theorists, it alerted Romanian authorities to Tate’s location, where he was taken into custody for sex trafficking. What a neat narrative arc!

andrew tate

Friday

Zoe Strimpel

Joyce Carol Oates intellectualizes Yellowstone

A neo-Western drama set on a vast ranch in Montana run through with trashy romance plot lines and violent disputes about land and legacy — "who owns the West?" — has made Yellowstone the most-watched TV series in America. The season four finale drew over 11 million viewers. And yet, while millions of Americans are lapping up the epic sprawl of violence, lust, family and wilderness, many — particularly the coastal intelligentsia — don’t watch it. One vocal exception is Joyce Carol Oates, the Pulitzer-nominated author of fifty-nine novels and one of the great chroniclers of the last American century.

Monday

Jennifer Sey

The Twitter Files reveal an unholy alliance

With the recent release of the “Twitter Files,” we’ve learned what so many of us already knew. Or I should say, strongly suspected. The government has been colluding with social media companies — in this case Twitter — to censor people and content that do not support the agenda of the Democratic Party. The primary focus of the Twitter Files thus far has been on election interference and the banishment of President Trump from the platform. Multiple government agencies — including the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security — were involved in tracking individual citizens and pressuring Twitter to de-platform them. What remains to be clearly laid out is why and how more than 11,000 people were banned for questioning Covid policy: lockdowns, masks and vaccine mandates.

anti-woke twitter

Wednesday

Cockburn

Who should be the next Twitter CEO?

Another day, another headline about Elon Musk. But as the new Twitter CEO has announced plans to resign in the future — only after finding a suitable candidate to replace him — we may see a bit less of him soon. But who would be foolish enough to replace him? Cockburn has put together a list of potential heirs. Jared Kushner The former senior advisor and current son-in-law to Donald Trump may not be accustomed to the tech world, but he does have the face for it. Kushner also is a proven ally of Musk, after appearing alongside him at the Qatar World Cup final last week. He’s also in the market for a job after turning down his father-in-law’s offer to help run Trump 2024...

twitter big tech west elm caleb douglas murray

Monday

Cockburn

Elon Musk’s weird weekend

He may have been racking up the hours at the office lately, but even Elon Musk knows when to take a break. The world’s second richest man was spotted in Qatar yesterday at the FIFA World Cup final between Argentina and France. What’s weird about a rich man going to a rich-person-thing, you ask? The fact that he was in the same box as Jared Kushner… Watching Argentina beat France on penalties capped off a frenetic few days for the new Twitter chief. Earlier, he had kicked a number of tech and "disinformation" journalists off his app for supposed breaches of Twitter policy.

elon musk twitter jared kushner

Friday

Stephen L. Miller

Elon Musk makes it up as he goes

Since Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, the script has been flipped. Pontificators at all points of the ideological spectrum are spinning to figure out what his intentions are with the platform and how that pertains to platform moderation going forward. Musk is seemingly making up Twitter policy on the spot by tweet — and then asking his team to come up with a justification post-tweet. This has happened on several occasions. His actions all came to a head Thursday night when Twitter, apparently under the direct instruction of Musk, suspended the accounts of several high-profile journalists from the New York Times (Ryan Mac), the Washington Post (Drew Harwell), the Intercept (Micah Lee), Mashable (Matt Binder), Voice of America (Steve Herman) and CNN (Donie O’Sullivan).

elon musk

Tuesday

Ben Domenech

The Twitter Files communication breakdown

The gradual release of the Twitter Files is impressive in its scale and its revelations about the internal workings of Twitter over the past several years. The cooperative release of information was driven by new Twitter chieftain Elon Musk, via a collection of heterodox thinkers such as Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss and Michael Shellenberger.

elon musk twitter files

Monday

Rich Cromwell

What Jordan Peterson gets wrong about anonymous Twitter accounts

“The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed.” So sayeth not Grendel69 on Twitter, but Alexander Hamilton, writing under the name Publius, the handle he adopted along with James Madison and John Jay when they were writing The Federalist Papers. But if Twitter had existed, well, Hamilton may well have been a shitposter, one who made Grendel69 look like a lightweight. Anonymity, pseudonymity, whatever you want to call it, is oft maligned, particularly in the digital square. The debate about it will likely always be with us, unless, somehow, the internet magically ceases to exist, forcing mankind up out of its sitting position. (As that wouldn’t be good for my income streams, I’m going to have to hope it keeps on keeping on.

jordan peterson
elon musk
Cockburn

Elon Musk loudly booed on stage at Dave Chappelle gig

Is Elon Musk losing his appeal? Cockburn concedes that being the richest man in the world must be pretty sweet. But, what if you were phenomenally unpopular at the same time? That’s Elon Musk. The Dave Chappelle show last night in San Francisco proved that. The comedian invited Twitter boss Musk to join him on stage. “Ladies and gentlemen, make some noise for the richest man in the world,” Chappelle said near the end of his set at the Chase Center. And the crowd did — most of them opting to loudly boo the billionaire. The booing only intensified as Musk wandered around onstage, pacing and waving, looking visibly embarrassed. The video, which was initially posted to Twitter, has since mysteriously been deleted. Ahem.  https://twitter.

Robert Jackman

What are the best alternatives to Twitter?

From our UK edition

From the moment Elon Musk suggested buying Twitter, users began threatening to leave – and the Tesla kingpin's erratic behaviour since he took over hasn't exactly helped his case, with thousands of workers laid off and hundreds more resigning. The MIT Technology Review estimates that more than a million Twitter users have jumped ship since Musk took the reins. Today the social network is launching a revamped version of Twitter Blue, its paid-for verification system, after a previous attempt last month was marred by a flood of imposters and fake accounts. So for those who decide not to stick around to see how this one turns out, what alternatives are out there – and are any of them any good?

Monday

Stephen L. Miller

Why is the mainstream media ignoring the Twitter Files?

The most telling thing about Matt Taibbi’s Twitter Files release at Elon Musk’s behest was not so much what was or wasn’t salacious about internal Twitter communications involving their decision to block the New York Post’s exposé on Hunter Biden’s laptop. It was the reaction from mainstream journalists for Comcast/NBC Universal and Conde Nast, many of whom claimed Taibbi was doing “PR” for the billionaire Musk. Musk said in a Twitter Spaces Q&A that he is not overseeing the release, and had the information turned over to Taibbi and former New York Times columnist Bari Weiss, handing them the reins and allowing them to decide what they believed to be newsworthy or not.

anti-woke twitter

Thursday

Stephen L. Miller

Farewell to Chris Cillizza, king of the Twitter ratios

Twitter Ratio King Chris Cillizza joined his friends Chris Cuomo, Brian Stelter and former boss Jeff Zucker in the long line of dismissed CNN employees on Thursday. While Cillizza may still offer up heaped dishes of bad takes on social media, he will no longer be doing so under the banner of the supposed new direction of CNN under CEO Chris Licht. What exactly do people like me mean when we call Cillizza the "Ratio King”? The ratio is what happens on Twitter when the number of comments on a tweet vastly outweighs its likes, retweets and quote tweets, meaning people are criticizing the tweet far more than endorsing it. And Cillizza, who may have accidentally even given birth to this unit of measurement, has owned the mantle for years now.

Wednesday

Cockburn

Ron Klain ruins Thanksgiving

Top Twitter user Ron Klain is at it again. This time, the terminally online White House chief of staff tweeted out a list of talking points to bring up when your Uncle goes after Joe Biden at Thanksgiving dinner. Putting aside the fact that uncle should only be capitalized when it is being used as a proper noun, Cockburn is stunned at the daftness of the compilation. https://twitter.com/WHCOS/status/1595414110438662144 Klain claims that “gas prices are down by $1.35/gallon since June and inflation is moderating”, which while technically true, requires you to ignore the fact that gas prices were over $4.90/gallon in June. He uses the same laughable logic regarding inflation: it has "moderated" from a multiple-decade’s high of 9.1 percent in June to a still painful 7.

ron klain

Monday

Spectator Editorial

How to survive the ‘permacrisis’

Are we in a permanent state of crisis? The Britain-based lexicographers at the Collins Dictionary think so. Last month they chose “permacrisis” as their word of the year. Defining the neologism as “an extended period of instability and insecurity,” Collins explained that their selection “sums up quite succinctly how truly awful 2022 has been for so many people.” It’s easy to see why the word has particular resonance for the Brits, now onto their third prime minister this year. But the sense that we are stuck in an endless cycle of crises is a global one. As 2022 draws to a close, the world faces a daunting set of overlapping disasters.

permacrisis
twitter
Ashley Rindsberg

Can Twitter still be saved?

A philosopher once famously said that Hell is other people. What the world has learned from Twitter is that Hell is other people’s opinions. It’s no wonder, then, that when Elon Musk came bounding into Twitter headquarters in late October — after changing his Twitter bio to “Chief Twit” — a popular response, on Twitter and off, was, “welcome to Hell.” When Musk, in an open letter to Twitter advertisers, wrote that he doesn’t want the site to become a “free-for-all hellscape,” he touched a debate concerning a much larger issue — balancing free speech against the need to keep hate, propaganda and manipulation out of public forums, particularly digital ones that can spread malicious content around the world instantly.

Saturday

Ben Sixsmith

In defense of Twitter

Twitter probably isn’t going anywhere. Major platforms don’t just vanish, after all. If we’re not still posting in 2023, then I’ll buy you all a drink — a bet you poor saps won’t be able to hold me to because you won’t be able to find me on Twitter. Still, if Musk’s “decimate and innovate” plans don’t work then Twitter will decline. It might get slower and buggier and more prone to crashing. Platforms don’t have sudden deaths, but they do have slow and painful ones. Even Myspace still exists. Will Twitter follow it into online obscurity? Not soon, perhaps, but it will in the end. Nothing lasts forever. So our thoughts turn meditative. Writers sometimes comment on Twitter as if it has trapped them in a toxic relationship.

taliban twitter
Bill Zeiser

Left-wing Twitter goes full Apocalypse Now

In the film Apocalypse Now, Martin Sheen’s Captain Willard comes upon a remote outpost defending a bridge. Hoping to confer with the commander, he instead finds a delirious state of chaos. A machine gunner fires heavy caliber rounds into the night while trading taunts with an unseen member of the Viet Cong. “Who’s the commanding officer here?” Willard asks. “Ain’t you?” returns the bewildered gunner. After being awakened by his compatriots, “The Roach,” an apparently stoned soldier with a tiger-striped grenade launcher, advises that the VC is close. He propels a grenade off into the distance and the taunts of the enemy are silenced. “Hey, soldier. Do you know who’s in command here?” asks Willard. “Yeah,” answers the Roach before walking away.

Thursday

Damian Reilly

Why I couldn’t wait to buy a Twitter blue tick

From our UK edition

I’ve just given Elon Musk $8 a month to get a blue tick by my name on Twitter. The fact I haven't been able to secure one of these ticks on merit like so many other nonentities has been a source of near-constant irritation for the past half decade, particularly given how much time I spend on the site. My assumption had been that a Spectator-reading Twitter employee would eventually accept my brilliance – perhaps after reading something rude I'd written about Meghan Markle – and press the required button to make it happen. But when I finally accepted this wasn't likely, about two years ago, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I began filling out the website's online verification request form.

Wednesday

Cockburn

Is Mastodon the new Twitter?

It’s been less than two weeks since Elon Musk took over Twitter — and Cockburn is finding the app more chaotic than ever. The news of the tech takeover really separated the kids from the grown-ups. One by one, the haughtiest users have bravely announced their departure from the bird website. Ciao! The latest to go is the British actor Stephen Fry, who posted a picture of Scrabble letters spelling out "goodbye" to his 12.5 million followers. He’s since headed over to Mastodon. Never heard of it? Neither had Cockburn until he got his tech-savvy nieces to give him a hand. And now he can say, with authority, that it is even worse than Twitter. When signing up to Mastodon, users choose a "server," which is based on your interests. "Mindly.

mastodon

Thursday

Cockburn

Is Elon Musk’s Twitter conspiring against AOC?

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is blaming Elon Musk for gumming up the works of her Twitter account. The New York congresswoman thinks that her criticism of Musk has “gotten under a certain billionaire’s skin,” leading him to mess with her notifications and mentions. Cockburn wonders whether this might be wishful thinking on the congresswoman’s part, because it is unlikely that Musk cares enough about her criticism to waste his time trying to punish her. Ocasio-Cortez, ever the card-carrying democratic socialist, went on to say that “money will never by [sic] your way out of insecurity, folks.” Cockburn is pleased to learn that AOC can steward us down the true path out of insecurity.

aoc twitter