SOCIAL
‘Terrified’: Musk Twitter buyout bid rattles tech world

Elon Musk’s bid to take over Twitter left tech world unnerved – Copyright POOL/AFP/File Britta Pedersen
Joshua MELVIN
Elon Musk’s shock offer to buy Twitter drew immediate fears Thursday – and some cheers – over putting the platform in the hands of a mercurial billionaire who advocates fewer limits on what people can post.
Tech watchers reacted to the Tesla chief’s proposal for one of the world’s most influential information exchanges with immediate worries about accountability, public discourse and even how it could impact democracy.
“Twitter is too important to be owned and controlled by a single person,” tweeted venture capitalist Fred Wilson. “The opposite should be happening. Twitter should be decentralized.”
However, the $43 billion pitch faces uncertainty on several fronts, including potential board or shareholder resistance, as well as lack of information on how Musk would actually fund the all-cash offer.
Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has already come out against the proposal, saying it’s too low, drawing a sharp reply from Musk questioning Saudi Arabia’s “views on journalistic freedom of speech.”
Still, Musk provided some detail Thursday on his vision, saying he’d like to lift the veil on the algorithm that runs on the platform, even allowing people to look through it and suggest changes.
He also reiterated his stance favoring a more hands-off approach to policing the platform’s content, a thorny matter that has fueled criticism of Twitter, especially for the highest-profile instances of violations of its terms of service.
Donald Trump’s critics had long called for him to be kicked off the site, yet his supporters then voiced their outrage after he was barred over worries his tweets could spur violence.
“I do think that we want to be just very reluctant to delete things and just be very cautious with permanent bans. Timeouts, I think are better,” Musk told a conference on Thursday, without addressing Trump directly.
“I think we want to really have, like a sort of obsession and reality, that speech is as free as reasonably possible,” he added.
– ‘Sounds ridiculous’ –
Critics argued that free speech absolutism on social media can be very messy in the real world.
“I am frightened by the impact on society and politics if Elon Musk acquires Twitter,” tweeted Max Boot, a Washington Post columnist.
“He seems to believe that on social media anything goes. For democracy to survive, we need more content moderation, not less,” Boot added.
Yet supporters of Musk’s hostile takeover bid came to the exact opposite conclusion, welcoming the prospect.
“This is the best news for free speech in years!” tweeted Nigel Farage, a populist British politician who helped lead the campaign for Brexit.
American conservatives like Senator Ted Cruz also voiced their backing for less moderation.
“If the left thinks they’re right, why are they so terrified of free speech?” he tweeted in reply to Boot’s criticism.
Yet both left and right of the political spectrum in the United States have been skeptical of the power concentrated in the hands of social media platforms and their lack of accountability.
US national lawmakers have been deadlocked for so long over how to regulate Big Tech that individual states have launched their own rules, probes and lawsuits.
“Twitter as a private company just reduces the little public accountability social media have as fiduciaries to the public,” tweeted Maya Zehavi, a tech entrepreneur.
Facebook’s parent firm Meta is public, but founder Mark Zuckerberg has effective control over the company because of the shares he owns.
Critics have repeatedly argued that a barrier to Facebook evolving past its reputation as a troubled but profitable social network is the ability for its head to remain in power.
The idea of taking Twitter, which is currently publicly owned, toward a structure that would concentrate power in Musk’s hands struck some as contradictory.
It has been called the world’s town square for the exchange of ideas, and thus a place where the right to speak is primary.
“‘I have to buy and take the public square private in order to save it!’ Try saying it out loud. It sounds ridiculous,” tweeted Renee DiResta, technical research manager at Stanford Internet Observatory.
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SOCIAL
How to Train ChatGPT to Write in Your Brand’s Tone of Voice [Infographic]
![How to Train ChatGPT to Write in Your Brand’s Tone of Voice [Infographic] How to Train ChatGPT to Write in Your Brand’s Tone of Voice [Infographic]](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1702266964_How-to-Train-ChatGPT-to-Write-in-Your-Brands-Tone.jpg)
Are you looking for ways to improve your ChatGPT output? Want to train it to write in a more unique tone of voice, in order to better suit your branding?
The Creative Marketer shares his ChatGPT prompt tips in this infographic. To enact these, add “Write like [INSERT CHARACTER]” at the start of your ChatGPT instructions.
TCM breaks things down into the following categories:
- Innocent
- Sage
- Explorer
- Ruler
- Creator
- Caregiver
- Lover
- Hero
- Everyman
- Magician
- Jester
- Outlaw
Check out the infographic for more information.
A version of this post was first published on the Red Website Design blog.
SOCIAL
Elon Musk reinstates far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on X

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has been reinstated on X, formerly known as Twitter, by company owner Elon Musk – Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File Joe Buglewicz
Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, on Sunday reinstated far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on the social media platform, a year after vowing never to let him return.
Jones, who claimed that a December 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut that killed 20 children and six educators was a hoax, was banned from the platform — then still known as Twitter — in 2018 for violating its “abusive behavior policy.”
He was also sued by families of the victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting and ordered by a judge in the case to pay up more than a billion dollars in damages last year.
Musk had himself promised never to let the Infowars host back on the social media platform, which he bought last year for $44 billion.
But following a poll Musk conducted on X asking whether Jones should be reinstated, to which some two million users responded, he flipped that decision.
“I vehemently disagree with what he said about Sandy Hook, but are we a platform that believes in freedom of speech or are we not?” the SpaceX founder said on X.
But Shannon Watts, founder of the group Moms Demand Action group which pushes for tighter gun laws, said that “defamation is not free speech.”
Musk’s decision comes the same week that the Sandy Hook families commemorate the 11th anniversary of the December 14 shooting, which Jones alleged was staged to allow the government to crack down on gun rights.
Jones’ followers harassed the bereaved families for years, accusing parents of murdered children of being “crisis actors” whose children had never existed.
It also came a week after Musk had responded to advertisers pulling out of X because of far-right posts and hate speech, including an apparent endorsement by Musk himself of an anti-Semitic tweet.
Asked whether he would respond to the advertising exodus, Musk said in an interview with journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin that the advertisers could “go f*** yourself.”
Jones, who has a million followers on X, returned to the site with his first post re-tweeting Andrew Tate, the controversial former kickboxer facing rape and human trafficking charges in Romania, in which he hailed Jones’ “triumphant return”
US media reported that as of Sunday, the account of Jones’ controversial show Infowars was still banned.
SOCIAL
Instagram Launches New ‘Close Friends Only’ Podcast to Showcase Celebrity Users

Not sure if this will be a valuable addition, or another stream that’ll fade out pretty quick, as Meta stops paying attention to it.
Today, Instagram has launched a new podcast called “Close Friends Only”, which it says will present “the latest on culture – from memes and icks, to fashion and friendship – all from your favorite celebrities.”
And they’ve gone big out of the gate, with the first episode featuring Ice Spice in conversation with Doja Cat.
The conversation sees the two stars discuss their favorite memes, their favorite animals, celebrity crushes, experiences in flirting on IG, their juiciest DMs, and more.
Which will no doubt get a heap of attention, and will help make Instagram a bigger focus for youngsters seeking to replicate their idols. But in terms of practical advice or tips, yeah, there might not be a heap there.
But it could be worth tuning in anyway, in order to get the lowdown on the latest trends, from some of the people that are leading the way on cultural shifts.
But then again, as noted, it’ll be interesting to see how IG follows this first episode up, and whether they keep running regular episodes of the podcast with more celebrities.
Either way, it’s an interesting promotional vehicle for IG, especially given that it’s focusing on musicians, as TikTok becomes an even more critical platform for music promotion.
Maybe, then, this will be Instagram’s counter to that, but again, we’ll have to wait and see whether more episodes arrive.
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