After months of broke-ass clownery, Elon Musk has officially “bought” Twitter. He did so to A) avoid a background check and B) avoid a trial at the Court of Chancery. Musk arrived at Twitter HQ yesterday and began firing executives. I imagine in the coming days, there will be more firings and a mass exodus of staffers. The Nazis, propagandists and bigots are already celebrating and rejoining the platform. I really hoped that this wouldn’t go through in the end, that Musk would be too broke and too clownish to go through with it. But it looks like Twitter’s board was ready to take the money and run.
After months of waffling, lawsuits, verbal mudslinging and the near miss of a full blown trial, Elon Musk now owns Twitter.
On Thursday night, Mr. Musk closed his $44 billion deal to buy the social media service, said three people with knowledge of the situation. He also began cleaning house, with at least four top Twitter executives — including the chief executive and chief financial officer — getting fired on Thursday. Mr. Musk had arrived at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters on Wednesday and met with engineers and ad executives.
The closing of the deal, which followed months of drama and legal challenges as Mr. Musk changed his mind about buying the company, sets Twitter on an uncertain course. Mr. Musk, a self-described “free speech absolutist,” has said that he wants to make the social media platform a more freewheeling place for all types of commentary and that he would “reverse the permanent ban” of former President Donald J. Trump from the service.
Mr. Musk’s open approach to speech on Twitter could exacerbate long simmering issues of toxic content and misinformation, affecting political debates around the world. Early tests will come within days, when Brazil elects its president and American voters go to the polls on Nov. 8 for the midterm elections. Twitter said it would prohibit misleading claims about voting and the outcome of elections, but that was before Mr. Musk owned it.
The Twitter executives who were fired on Thursday include Parag Agrawal, the chief executive; Ned Segal, the chief financial officer; Vijaya Gadde, the top legal and policy executive; and Sean Edgett, the general counsel, said two people with knowledge of the matter. At least one of the executives who was fired was escorted out of Twitter’s office, they said.
Yeah, our dark timeline has gotten a hell of a lot darker. Where are you guys meeting up when the Nazis take over Twitter? Please don’t say TikTok. The only hope I have is that Musk f–ks up the platform so badly that he’ll be forced to sell the dried out Nazi husk to someone reasonable, and they’ll rebuild it. I don’t know. It’s super-depressing.
Apparently, the “let that sink in” thing is something to do with QAnon. Just FYI, that’s where we are now. All of this because Elon Musk wanted to buy clout and friends.
the bird is freed
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 28, 2022
Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in! pic.twitter.com/D68z4K2wq7
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 26, 2022
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.
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- Elon Musk attends The 2022 Met Gala Celebrating “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 02, 2022 in New York City,Image: 688277550, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Elon Musk, Credit line: – / JPI Studios / Avalon
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- Elon Musk attends The 2022 Met Gala Celebrating “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 02, 2022 in New York City,Image: 688277560, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Elon Musk, Credit line: – / JPI Studios / Avalon
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- Elon Musk attends The 2022 Met Gala Celebrating “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 02, 2022 in New York City,Image: 688277574, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Elon Musk, Credit line: – / JPI Studios / Avalon
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- New York, NY – Elon Musk attends the 2022 Met Gala in NYC. Pictured: Elon Musk BACKGRID USA 2 MAY 2022 USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- New York, NY – Elon Musk attends the 2022 Met Gala in NYC. Pictured: Elon Musk BACKGRID USA 2 MAY 2022 USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
Deactivating my account today… hoping another meeting place will emerge but until then, thank goodness for sites like this.
I deactivated and signed up with tribel.com for now.
Good to know- I started a Counter Social account a few months ago.
Tribel harvests user data and has atrocious security protocols and terms of service, I wouldn’t recommend anyone use that platform.
there are cyber security issues with Tribel that you may want to consider
https://twitter.com/travisakers/status/1584359435765710849
I signed up to Counter Social months ago, when this first started, and then completely forgot about it. LOL I guess I need to figure out how to get into my account now.
I read about the owners of Tribal and I won’t be signing up there.
I will stay on Twitter until it implodes. It is the biggest platform and we’ll lose all of the Blue Wave momentum if everyone scatters.
I am #BlueAndStaying.
I also got a Counter Social account when the talk of Muskrat buying Twitter started, but I’m damned if I know how to use it! lol
I’ve been on Counter.social for a little while now. It’s a friendly place and kind of laid back compared to other sites. It was like Grand Central Station though last night with all the new people coming aboard. A bunch of us were greeting them as they landed and some were trying to help them understand how the site works and how they can tweak it to suit their needs/interests.
I still have my bird account, but may let it go dormant if it gets bad. They recommend not abandoning your handle there because someone else can take it up and use it for god knows what.
Reddit, my friends, Reddit
Mine was deactivated when the rumours of him buying were first heard a few months ago.. I’m actually getting tired of social media in general…
I am experiencing social media fatigue too. The only one I have left is Instagram and I deleted a lot of the my following accounts that I rarely log on.
Let’s face it, the rapture happened and we’re the left behinds.
That’s it!
Comment of the week!
I read that people from many other blogs said that they are going to do the same thing–especially since Musky has made remarks about allowing Take-A-💩 to “return back and rejoin”! 😫😡 This is pushing me to think about following suit with other people who are tired of this lunacy!
Don’t do it. If you do you will let him win.
I deactivated, too.
I deactivated, too. I’ve had a Counter.Social account for several years though. It’s different than Twitter, but that’s not a bad thing. Trolls and bots don’t last, and the community is much kinder. I miss having ability to easily follow and engage w/ journalists and scientists and educators’ accounts, in the way I’ve grown accustomed to, and stay abreast of news, but each platform has its place and its adjustments.
Fun to see that other CBers are at CoSo!
Oh good, just in time to give the Nazis a bigger platform to incite violence and mayhem on election day.
Twitter has already been setting my teeth on edge lately because there are already some highly offensive accounts that I have reported for racism that they refuse to remove. Makes you wonder who is behind some of them and how much is paid to twitter. This just makes my mind up for me to get off completely.
I see a lot of blocking and muting in my future. I’ve already pulled mostly out of Facebook and Instagram but for pics of my adorable doggos and wishing the odd happy birthday. Silver lining, maybe I’ll be more productive if social media gets untenable.
My TL is highly moderated so I’m not going anywhere. That’s what the block button is for and I hit mine with regularity. Musk will f-ck this up or be forced to kowtow to his investors to make Twitter profitable, which means advertising dollars. Can’t make it a hell scape and hope the Nazis and MAGATs will be bring legit ad money. But we’ll see.
I could be wrong. And I mean no disrespect – however, the purpose of deactivating is to show the nazi’s you don’t support them, and will not financially contribute to their atrocity’s. Trump is probably already back on spreading conspiracy theories. This is truly a black and white issue.
I don’t have to deactivate to tell Nazis I don’t support them. I can just say it in my posts. I don’t give a flying f-ck if Trump is on Twitter. I’ve never followed him. I have him and all of his minions aka family blocked. I interact with whomever I want to interact with. If every anti-fascist leaves Twitter, what does that do but provide Nazis and their ilk with a sounding board. The same people crowing about having opposing views on Twitter in the form of Republicans and MAGAs are lying. They want everyone to leave so they can have free reign over one of the most powerful social media platforms. I’m not doing it. As a black woman, I refuse to cower to Musk. You do you. I’m staying put. I’ve cultivated a nice little section of Twitter that I enjoy.
Elon has already sent a message to the “business world” – Twitter is ultimately an advertising platform. So take that Jack and all your sms to EM.
I’m blocking every sponsored tweet/ad that shows up.
Isn’t all of social media ultimately an advertising platform?
All social media is an advertising platform. Even the ads on this site are so many that it makes it hard to use on mobile. When something is free, YOU are the product.
Same. I see what I want to see on Twitter. Frankly, even if he tried, I doubt Elon could make parts of Twitter more hellish than they already are. The ads are key–Elon is beholden to shareholders, so he can’t just tank the platform without facing consequences.
He’s the dog that caught the car.
The company is private, so beholden to stakeholders.
I’m less worried about trolls invading my timeline and way more worried about what Elon is going to do with the data, or who will now have carte blanche to plant disinformation. It could turn into another Cambridge Analytica-esque operation like on Facebook in 2015-16, in which Steve Bannon, Nigel Firage and their band of goons matched Facebook data with public voter records to microtarget users with bespoke propaganda and effectively brainwash them.
What @Jenna said above is valid as well. With Elon in charge it’s important to remember that for a free service like Twitter, *we* are the products being sold, and should think hard about who we’re allowing to profit off our engagement.
Deactivating today as well.
Deactivated account as soon as I heard.
My husband is on science Twitter a lot. In recent years, he and his like have been relentlessly attacked. He’s moved on to Mastadon, an open source platform, but he’ll be returning regularly to Twitter to show evidence to climate change deniers until the bitter end, he says. I suspect it will be quite bitter.
I’m impressed by his fortitude and hope he reaches at least a few people.
I’ve disengaged. My thought process has been that my life is going to be too short (and now so stressful) to engage with deniers.
I realize we need people to reach out but I just can’t.
When will karma bite Elon Musk in the ass? Can he please lose his billions like Kanye? Please let the Tesla stock start tanking. Please let the millions of “bots” he claims are on Twitter leave in droves. This man is nothing but a shady, disgusting cretin. Let him lose all advertising dollars that Twitter generates. Leave him alone with orange blob and the MAGA cult, the idiots he so desperately wants to allow back onto this platform because “free speech.” My personal account aside, I also have to decide what to do with my company’s Twitter account. I’ve already warned executive leadership and my boss that with Musk at the helm there may be changes to Twitter in which we cannot justify keeping our account. I’m ready to pull that plug.
He also launched a SpaceX rocket from a US military base yesterday. At this point it’s his world and we just live in it.
Working for him is a hell scape. He fires people at will (in one instance a man who missed an impromptu meeting he called because his father just died and he missed Elon’s after hours text). The problem with SpaceX is they are a cult that hires true believers and even when the cult burns them out (SpaceX is a sweatshop burning up employees) nobody talks about their horrible treatment.
It has been so depressing to watch it happen (i work in the space industry).
Seconding all of this.
I am not leaving Twitter! I will stay but I won’t let the fascist bigots get to me. I joined Tribel social the other day which is an alternative social media platform who has banned Trump and Trump Jr. from it. We can’t just leave Twitter we have to somehow fight back.
How are you going fight back when the owner is a nazi
I said it above and will say it again – Tribel is NOT a good alternative, it’s a data harvesting platform masquerading as social media, all with atrocious security measures.
agree. Louder for those in back: Tribel is owned by a place with incentive to data harvest and nobody stopping them from doing that.
The MAGA people want you to fight back. That’s their whole purpose. That’s the reason Truth Social and the other conservative sites don’t really work. There’s no one on there for them to fight with. They can’t “Own the Libs.” if there aren’t any libs on there. You staying only helps Musk.
This part! No impressions + no engagement + no clicks = fu*cking with their money.
I’m staying because the media still uses it so much.
No one is going to count the people who leave.
Musk already wildly overpaid for it and he’ll start losing advertisers as moderation gets worse.
People have the right to leave if they want to but I don’t think anyone should get angry at those who stay either.
I’m not leaving, but I have limited who I follow and also locked my account down. I used to follow a lot of political reporters but the constant barrage of news was not good for my mental health, so I stopped following a lot of them. Now I just follow entertainment and sports related stuff. I’m in Philly so about 100% of my feed this morning is people happy about the World Series. It makes for a better experience. But we’ll see how long that algorithm lasts.
I haven’t been on Twitter for years. My life is better for it.
Highly recommend this move both for your own mental health and to sink Twitters daily active users.
Yeah. I haven’t logged on since the news broke, and I’ve got to deactivate or flat out cancel my account now. This timeline is so scary.
I think Twitter is bad for people who are on it a lot anyway. I would love a return to old-school web forums and blogs, personally, but idk if that can happen. But if there’s a market for it, someone can easily make a Twitter-type app and people will go there instead. I don’t see Twitter lasting much longer, really. I’m thinking it’ll go the way of MySpace in the next couple years. It’ll still be there, but who will be on it?
I never really used Twitter but I just deactivated my account. Hoping number of users have a huge drop.
I signed on to The Hive Social app. The Hive app can be downloaded from any app store. The platform seems to combine the best features of Instagram and Twitter.
My DIL works at Twitter. They are horrified and alarmed in equal measure. They are assuming 75% of staff will be gone before the new year. She is trying to look at it as an interesting “historical era” – while they all scramble to find gainful employment. Does not help that she is pregnant…
Personally I enjoy Reddit.
Yeah, I’m addicted to Reddit. Huge time suck but I learn so much.
I’ve really gotten into Reddit since Twitter will no longer let you read much of it without an account (which I refuse to get).
reddit for me too.
I am no going to let that fool, Elon, drive me away from Twitter. I won’t leave until something better comes along.
Not on twitter for about 1 year. Don’t miss it either.
Musk in odd guy, strikes me as a huge self-promoter/snake oil salesman.
Stop with the Occupy Mars BS and work on saving planet Earth.
Deactivated.
Really smart move to fire your legal team on the first day, Elon! It guarantees you’re in for lots of fun surprises as you default on lawsuits because you missed court dates in cases you didn’t know existed. And you definitely won’t need them for all the upcoming unjust termination cases you’ll be facing. Maybe you should have used the term “lay-off” and not “fire?” Big difference in the legal world.
Ooh excellent points. People like him think they are geniuses who know everything. Hope he FAFOs very soon.
LP- yep. It’s also perfectly clear these folks have been let go due to politics. Not going to help his case.
I don’t think he’ll last until the 24 election.
When T**** was booted off twitter, the silence was so peaceful and golden. It was such a relief not to wake up and think “wtf did he say now? The media had been reporting every crazy thought and he used it to drum up coup support. I dread him using it again for voter control and petty grievances. Apartheid Clyde would just stoke the flames.
Where will y’all go? I’m mostly on twitter to read celebitchy.
A bunch of us moved to Counter Social. It’s pretty good!!
I started a Counter Social account when it was launched but my eyes can’t handle the white text/black background 🙁
There are ways to adjust that. Check your settings.
OtiginalMitch-
You can change that! I just saw someone post (toot) over there how to. I don’t mind it, so I didn’t pay close enough attention.
But you know how it is at Counter.Social: if you just ask, you’ll get your answer. Being welcoming and helpful has been the general vibe.
Before you use Tribal Social read this from Travis Akers (I copied it because I don’t know if a link will work. This is from his twitter acct):
“ If you’re thinking of signing up for TribelSocial, I’ll warn you now, DON’T. You are opening yourself up to significant cyber security issues and data harvesting by a social media network operated by two people with known deceitful fundraising activities and unethical practices.
It’s owned & operated by Omar & Rafael Rivero. In September 2022, they raised $800,000 for an election fund and donated none of the money to federal candidates, but donated $250,000 of the fund to Blue Deal LLC, a company allegedly women-owned but actually owned by Rafael Rivero.
Besides the Rivero brothers being troublesome enough, and the terms of services that allows them to alter and profit from user content, from a national security and cyber security perspective, TribelSocial is exploitable and extremely dangerous. Not a risk worth taking. Avoid it!”
Yes–the TOS are a nightmare. Assume all of your personal information will be harvested & exploited.
Thank you, you said it so much better than I did! These are the guys behind the Occupy Democrats account. People think just because they post liberal anti-GOP content that they’re the good guys when actually they’re the worst kind of grifters who are actually actively hurting democrats by soliciting donations from well meaning people to enrich themselves, thereby siphoning money from the candidates it was intended for.
I only use Twitter for fire updates in my area. Much faster than anything on the news. It has saved people’s lives over the past few years as people have had to flee in the middle of the night. I’m so angry right now.
Deactivated. Stand strong my Celebitchy friends.
I’m in PR and I’m already advising clients to rethink advertising on Twitter and move their ad spending to LinkedIn instead, since we do a lot of public policy campaigns. We don’t want ads displaying next to a bunch of right-wing nutjobs. Also, I think we won’t be able to reach our target markets anymore because they’re going to use Twitter even less than they’ve been doing before.
I guess we knew this was coming, but it’s so discouraging. I never joined Twitter but have often followed links on topics that interest me and am frequently delighted with how clever and funny people are.
Ugh.
Deactivated. Though truly I haven’t been active there for years.
To me…it’s the “same sh– different Owner”… Margalized folks were NEVA protected on Twitter…and that’s the ONLY thing that would bring equality on that app
This. We were never protected. Not with Jack Dempsey. Won’t be with Musk.
Twitter is my only social network, and as someone posted above I follow several people whose accounts I would miss – humor, authors, some website folks (like those at Celebitchy), NPR, etc. I’m not on it a lot but I get the basic headlines and the option to follow up with those. I would really miss it.
I guess i’ll stay on it for now and see how it goes.
Oh goodness! I’m glad I don’t have Twitter or Facebook. Insta is only for my dog and shoe pics. I got off social media years agai for my mental health and have never looked back. I don’t even have cable anymore. The world has gotten so f*cked and toxic that I have to limit the info I see. It’s pretty hard. Sucks that this man bought this platform.
A mass exodus by everyone who hates musk and everything he stands for would absolutely cripple Twitter but it’s an economic vehicle and people have bills to pay.
I understand why people who have a community on Twitter are staying but the truth is that continued participation, no matter how curated the feed, is supporting Twitter and therefore Musk himself.
Feels like there are only shitty choices right now in a lot of areas.
I am a big Twitter lurker, and not much of a commenter. I will stay for Black twitter, puppies, and for Musk’s net worth decline. My gut says it’s not gonna turn out like he thinks it is.
It may be just you and me, Nicole!
I have a friend who works at Twitter. This is an absolute garbage fire for the people who work there. If Twitter fails, so many people will loose their jobs and that’s sad
Yes. But I live in SF and know many Twitter employees, including one of the four execs named above. You guys, it’s SO much worse than you think. They would all encourage you to deactivate your account immediately. Most of them are resigning in protest anyway.
Saw a call to action yesterday from the Tumblr contingent. Since Yahoo lost a billion (or more) dollars in their I’ll-fated purchase of Tumblr, they figured it was worth a shot to do the same to Elon. At the very least it would be fun to hang around Twitter and give it the old college try.
Also, there was a wake of sorts on Twitter yesterday, and people were posting the old tweets they considered to be Hall of Fame worthy. I haven’t laughed so hard in months. Twitter has always tended toward dumpster fire, but there are times when it was glorious.
Holy cow it’s already worse. So many magats and trolls. I’ll keep blocking and muting for now but I’m not sure I can deal with the amount of hate already being spewed freely. This is not a good situation at all. Open fascism on one of the biggest platforms in the world. Humans really suck sometimes.
The minute my H read me the news, I laughed and said Bye, Twitter! and closed my Twitter tab, never to re-open it. Today I uninstalled the Twitter app from my phone. I’m not going to give Lex Luthor one second of my engagement.
The ultimate vanity is spewing to an audience for so called “likes”. Deactivated Twitter long ago; I don’t need the free flowing stream of nonsense, unsubstantiated opinion and misinformation from “Joe the Plumber” or “Jane the Celebutante”. Social media in this form is accelerating the societal decline we are in. If I need to “connect” I’ll make a phone call, if I need information, it certainly won’t be social media….
Proud to say I deactivated my account today. Let’s hope a better platform emerges from this mess. We cannot support people like him.
@Talos This is where I’ve always been. But I started the bird again to see if it’s something I wanna do and Elon sinks in. I don’t like that man. I don’t despise him like Loser or Florida’s Satan or Texas’s death angel, but when I think of what this douche spent to try and corral a platform (which is basically a public place to sit and have coffee with one or a thousand peeps using revolving doors) illustrates his narcissism and his stupidity.
Advice? I just deactivated my account, but it looks like my profile and past posts still exist on Twitter. What do I need to do to erase it all completely?
You need to ask Google. Your tweets don’t exist, it’s the shadow in Google that does… you’ve to collect all your links leading to the tweets and find a link to contact Google.
It can be done because I cleaned my digital footprint 4 years ago after leaving Twitter and I wanted a clean slate to apply for naturalisation. There wasn’t nothing groundbreaking in my tweets, however I thought some too opinionated stuff could damage my chances.
Sorry for not being more helpful, I don’t have the link saved anymore. Good luck!
Oh crap. And here we go again.
I think twitter is a cesspool, I hope he runs it into the ground.
Deactivated. I have a few friends who are intelligent, well educated, cosmopolitan go down rabbit holes and went off the deep end. Check your algorithms on ALL social media and question all.
Waiting for the download of my archive to be ready, and then I’m deactivating one of my two accounts. The second, I’m going to try and get my friend – who I primarily communicate with via DMs on there – to switch to something else, and then I’ll deactivate that one. We both despite Musk so it shouldn’t be too hard to get her to switch, it’s just a matter of where to go. I made friends on there, but this is a radioactive dumpster fire waiting to happen and for my own mental health, I’m not sticking around.
Elon already lost money because he overpaid, the stock lost $, and he gave the execs he fired a $125 million payout, he is losing $ hand over fist and Hal Sparks says Trump probably has a contract w/Truth Social he can’t join another site
Just deactivated my account! Never used it anyway.
Bwa ha ha! As if Twitter isn’t anything but a f***ing cesspool anyways! Good for him!
I am saddened by how many have deactivated twitter accounts. It’s like you are giving up. Don’t let them drive us away. Block them, ignore them, report them. Don’t let them silence us
His own father called him fat in a recent interview. Dad also said he’s rich in his own right and (I think) that he likes Elon’s brother better than Elon. I say we get Dad here and deport Elon.
So Elon’s Dad just had his second baby with Elon’s step-sister.
Whole family is gross !
Time to reactive Myspace. it was such a friendlier community anyway
I’ve never used Twitter because Twitter is a clusterf*ck I don’t have time for and always has been imo. Facebook is just as much of a disaster.
Normally I will advocate for leaving public platforms free for people, but sometimes people do need to be completely deplatformed. In Trump’s case, it’s necessary because he used Twitter to help incite a violent insurrection. When you have the power to incite violence with that platform and go through with that you shouldn’t have it. I don’t care who it is or what side of my personal or political beliefs you fall on, if you use a platform the way Trump did you should lose it.
Well, everybody, that cute little birdie icon flew away, and in its place flew in a large, ferocious VULTURE:
https://imgflip.com/i/56i82c
This BUZZARD has been waiting in the wings (pun intended) for a while to get to where he’s at right now, unfortunately! 😤🤬
I follow Angry Staffer on Patreon and a lot there are going to counter social
There’s a mass migration of folks on Twitter Germany to mastodon. The med bubble, the science bubble,… Someone mentioned mastodon above. I’m not sure yet how it works as a decentralized social network where you have many individual servers. But we’ll see.
I think that you can set up mastodon in a way that your posts are automatically cross-posted to Twitter.
I’m glad for people who don’t yet deactivate their Twitter accounts. Because: If you do, the wealth of information that you may have shared, and that others have bookmarked or want to refer to, will be lost.