EU stops advertising on X over hate speech. Fines could follow next year::The European Union is pulling its advertisements from Elon Musk’s X for now, citing an “alarming increase” in hate speech and disinformation on the platform formerly known as Twitter.

  • seananigans@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    78
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    1 year ago

    This comment will make me sound like an idiot, but I’m just coming to believe that all of Musk’s decisions with X were targeted to this very outcome. To be the world’s centre of alt right propaganda. It just makes too much sense now.

    • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      37
      ·
      1 year ago

      He’s not that smart. He got stuck having to buy Twitter after his pump and dump backfired. His solution to having to buy Twitter was to cut costs by firing staff and use his celebrity to manufacturer engagement with troll posts.

      The problem he missed was that staff was necessary to keep hate speech under control and his trolling meant to drive engagement would backfire from advertisers and regulators.

    • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      35
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      I wouldn’t say idiot, just very naive when it comes to your assessment of Musk’s ability to think ahead. He’s basically a South African Alex Jones who started out rich(er) 🤷

    • camr_on@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      I think it’s not impossible that the goal was simply to discredit Twitter entirely

    • Zoboomafoo@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      You’d be right. 10 days before he bought it, Musk got linked a plan to buy twitter and turn it into right-wing American WeChat.

      I heard about it on Rachel Maddow’s October 2 show (has it really been 2 months since then?)

    • thejml@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      Not sure why you’d assume you sound like an idiot. You’re just coming to a hypothesis based on all available information. It seems like a sane train of reasoning based on all the empirical evidence we’ve seen thus far.

      It’s likely that he didn’t mean for it to happen the way it did, or that he hoped there’s a bigger appetite or marketplace for X in this capacity. It’s also possible he didn’t think it all through as was made more likely by the way he was trying to come up with reasons to get out of the deal.

    • Bremmy@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      He’s just a stupid narcissist that came into money. They don’t think that far ahead, and it makes him look bad so he wouldn’t want this outcome