SOCIAL
Twitter’s blue ticks start vanishing

Twitter’s blue ticks — predominately used by celebrities, journalists and politicians — have been disappearing – Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP Sean Rayford
Twitter began the mass removal of its blue ticks on Thursday, as the symbol previously used to signify a verified account vanished from users including the Pope, Donald Trump and Justin Bieber.
Owner Elon Musk, who has seen his $44 billion investment in the site shrivel, earlier pledged to get rid of what he described as a “lords & peasants system.”
He offered instead to sell the blue badge to anyone who would pay $8 a month, in a move he said last year would “democratize journalism & empower the voice of the people.”
Earlier dates set for the rollback of the ticks — predominately used by celebrities, journalists and politicians — have slipped by without noticeable action.
But on Thursday high-profile accounts, as well as those of many reporters at AFP and other news organizations, appeared to have had the checkmarks removed.
Politicians and official bodies also appeared to have been hit, with US Senator Brian Schatz objecting to the possible effect on public confidence in the event of disasters.
“There really ought to be a way for emergency managers to verify that they are real on this website or imposters will cause suffering and death,” he tweeted.
“I am not complaining about my own check mark, I just think during natural disasters it’s essential to know that FEMA is actually FEMA,” he wrote, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency that steps in after hurricanes and deadly storms.
Some celebrities still had the blue tick, despite not signing up for it.
Musk said in response to a news article about those check marks that he was “paying for a few personally.”
In response to another tweet, he said it was only for Star Trek’s William Shatner, basketball superstar LeBron James and author Stephen King.
– Media labels gone –
The removals followed spats between Twitter and various news organizations that have objected to labels appended to their accounts indicating they were “state affiliated” or “government funded.”
But those too had disappeared from many high-profile media accounts, according to a review by AFP.
As of 0600 GMT Friday, they no longer appeared on the Twitter accounts of US radio station NPR, Canadian broadcaster CBC, China’s official news agency Xinhua and RT of Russia.
Twitter had long labelled accounts linked to state media or government officials, especially from China and Russia, saying the policy focused on entities that were “the official voice of the nation state abroad”.
Recently, however, the labels were applied to news organisations that received public funding but were not controlled by any governments.
NPR stopped using Twitter after it got that tag, and CBC followed suit.
Radio New Zealand also threatened to leave Twitter this week over the “government-funded” label, while Sweden’s public Sveriges Radio said it would stop tweeting.
It was not immediately clear why the labels were removed, but the change was praised in some quarters.
“I support Twitter’s removal of all ‘State-affiliated media’ labels,” tweeted Hu Xijin, the former editor of Chinese state tabloid Global Times who rose to prominence on the platform as a voice of strident nationalism.
His account was no longer tagged as affiliated with the Chinese state.
– Ad income plunges –
Musk’s tumultuous ownership of Twitter has seen thousands of staff made redundant and advertisers fleeing the platform.
Users complain that hate speech and misinformation have proliferated and accounts with extreme views are gaining traction due to less content moderation.
This month, a closely watched forecast said Twitter’s income from advertising will fall by a large margin in 2023.
Analysts at Insider Intelligence said they were slashing an earlier worldwide revenue estimate of $4.74 billion by more than a third to $2.98 billion as trust deteriorates.
According to research firm Pathmatics, 14 of the top 30 advertisers on Twitter have stopped advertising on the platform since Musk took charge on October 27.
Insider Intelligence noted that Musk’s efforts to build up a subscription service “won’t make up for the lost ad revenue.”
burs-hg/bgs/qan/dva
SOCIAL
Musk regrets controversial post but won’t bow to advertiser ‘blackmail’

Elon Musk’s comments at the New York Times’ Dealbook conference drew a shocked silence – Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP Slaven Vlasic
Elon Musk apologized Wednesday for endorsing a social media post widely seen as anti-Semitic, but accused advertisers who are turning away from his social media platform X of “blackmail” and said anyone who does so can “go fuck yourself.”
The remark before corporate executives at the New York Times’ Dealbook conference drew a shocked silence.
Earlier, Musk had apologized for what he called “literally the worst and dumbest post that I’ve ever done.”
In a comment on X, formerly Twitter, Musk on November 15 called a post “the actual truth” that said Jewish communities advocated a “dialectical hatred against whites,” which was criticized as echoing longtime conspiracy theory among White supremacists.
The statement prompted a flood of departures from X of major advertisers, including Apple, Disney, Comcast and IBM who criticized Musk for anti-semitism.
“I’m sorry for that tweet or post,” Musk said Wednesday. “It was foolish of me.”
He told interviewer Andrew Ross Sorkin that his post had been misinterpreted and that he had sought to clarify the remark in subsequent posts to the thread.
But Musk also said he wouldn’t be beholden to pressure from advertisers.
“If somebody’s gonna try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money?” Musk said. “Go fuck yourself.”
But the billionaire acknowledged that there were business implications to the advertiser actions.
“If the company fails… it will fail because of an advertiser boycott” Musk said. “And that will be what will bankrupt the company.”
Musk, who met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a visit to Israel earlier this week, insisted in the interview that he holds no discrimination against Jews, calling himself “philo-Semitic,” or an admirer of Judaism.
During the interview, Musk wore a necklace given to him by a parent of an Israeli hostage taken in the Hamas attack on October 7. The necklace reads, “Bring Them Home.”
Musk told Sorkin that the Israel trip had been planned earlier and was not an “apology tour” related to the controversial tweet.
SOCIAL
TikTok Encourages Creators To Make Longer Videos, With Focus On Ad Revenue 11/30/2023

A new report by The Information shows the company’s recent efforts to convince
creators to put out longer videos in order to provide more room for ad placements.
According to the …
SOCIAL
X Adds Option To Embed Videos in Isolation From Posts

Next time you go to embed an X post, you may notice a new step:
Now, X will enable you to choose whether you want to embed the video element in isolation, or the whole post, as normal.
And if you do choose to embed just the video (or GIF), it’ll look like this:
Which could be a helpful way to present X-originated video on third-party websites, and add context to, say, your blog post, without the clutter of the full X framing.
But it could also reduce brand exposure for X, which is likely why Twitter didn’t enable this before, though it did once provide an “embedded video widget” which essentially served the same purpose.

Twitter gradually seemed to phase that out as the platform evolved, and there’s no specific reason that I can find as to why it removed it as an option. But either way, now, it’s back, so you have more options for using X-originated content, and putting more focus on video elements specifically.
Though I don’t know why they didn’t also take the opportunity to remove the ‘Tweet’ reference. Since the re-brand to X, the platform seems to have gone to little effort to weed out all the tweet and bird terminology, but then again, with 80% fewer staff, that’s probably understandable as well.
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