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☆ Twitter is less safe due to Elon Musk’s management style, says former top official
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-29 | by ( Brian Fung | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +9 min

CNN Business —Twitter owner Elon Musk’s dictatorial management style risks driving the company headlong into unforced business blunders, content moderation disasters and the degradation of core platform features that help keep vulnerable users safe, according to a former top Twitter official who led the company’s content moderation before abruptly resigning this month. For two weeks after Musk closed his purchase of Twitter, Roth presented himself as a voice of stability and calm at the center of a company undergoing dramatic change. Roth knew that by remaining at the company, Musk was using him to help keep advertisers from abandoning the platform. In a subsequent New York Times op-ed, Roth said his reason for leaving came down to Musk’s highly personal and improvisational approach to content moderation. Before Musk took over Twitter, Roth wrote down several commitments to himself that would trigger the decision to quit.

☆ Elon Musk gives ultimatum to Twitter employees: Do ‘extremely hardcore’ work or get out
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-16 | by ( Donie O'Sullivan | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +1 min

“Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore,” Musk wrote in the memo. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.”In the memo, Musk goes on to outline how Twitter will be “much more engineering-driven” and then gives staff an ultimatum. The email, with the subject line “A fork in the road,” comes as Musk has publicly and privately clashed with Twitter employees over his approach to running the company. It also comes after Musk pushed out Twitter’s top execs, eliminated the board of directors and laid off roughly half the staff. “Whatever decision you make,” Musk said in the memo, “thank you for your efforts to make Twitter successful.”

The public termination came after Frohnhoefer tweeted evidence suggesting that Musk was “wrong” about his claims that Twitter was running, in the billionaire’s words, “super slow” in various countries. Sources have indicated to CNN that employees in recent days had been very candid in criticism of Musk in the company’s Slack. (CNN has attempted to contact fired employees to confirm.) In addition to the public pushback from employees, some Twitter staff appear to have tried to appeal to Musk and his inner circle privately as they weigh numerous disruptive changes to the platform. The paid subscription service was suspended on Friday with little warning.

☆ WATCH: CNN's Donie O'Sullivan clarifies viral video of Arizona election official explaining a voting machine problem
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-08 | by ( ) edition.cnn.com time to read: 1 min

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☆ Kathy Griffin suspended from Twitter for impersonating Elon Musk
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-07 | by ( Donie O'Sullivan | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

New York CNN Business —Twitter has suspended comedian Kathy Griffin for impersonating the company’s new owner, Elon Musk. Musk has made an $8 Twitter subscription plan his signature bid to bolster the company’s revenue. Comedian Sarah Silverman used her verified account to troll Musk, copying his profile picture, cover image and name. “This will be clearly identified as a condition for signing up to Twitter Blue,” he tweeted. Musk mocked Griffin Sunday, quipping that “she was suspended for impersonating a comedian.” Musk also tweeted that Griffin could get her account back by paying $8 a month for Twitter Blue, although it wasn’t clear whether Musk was serious.

☆ Analysis: Midterm elections present a big test for newsrooms in the era of election lies and misinformation
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-07 | by ( Oliver Darcy | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

New York CNN Business —The first major test of the election denialism era has arrived. Tuesday’s midterms will be the first significant contest since conspiracy theories and lies about the US election process swallowed one of its two major parties whole. It’s difficult to put into words how dominant election lies are in the information universe in which Republicans almost exclusively get their news. There are different machines to cast and count ballots, there are different local election laws and procedures. Bad-faith media organizations and personalities, however, will exploit such situations to draw sweeping and incorrect conclusions that serve to benefit their political worldview.

☆ Twitter delays $8 ‘blue check’ verification plan until after the midterms
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-06 | by ( Jennifer Korn | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

New York CNN Business —Twitter is delaying the rollout of account verifications for its paid Twitter Blue subscription plan until after the midterm elections, a source with knowledge of the decision confirmed to CNN. A fresh Twitter account created by CNN that opted for the paid feature did not show the checkmark on its public profile. The decision to delay the rollout comes as the entire decision to charge users for verification has faced wide public backlash. Television actress Valerie Bertinelli similarly changed her account name to the Twitter CEO’s, tweeting Friday that “[t]he blue checkmark simply meant your identity was verified. Musk has also said he will limit the company’s content restrictions and require the paid subscription for account verification.

☆ Elon Musk’s Twitter informs staff layoffs are set to begin
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-03 | by ( Donie O'Sullivan | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: 1 min

It’s also unclear if some verified users may be exempt from paying the fee; many international organizations and charities, for example are verified on Twitter. The changes would update an existing paid Twitter feature known as “Twitter Blue, which currently costs $4.99 a month and is available in four countries including the United States, to include the verification feature. “The whole verification process is being revamped right now,” Musk tweeted on Sunday. “Interesting,” Musk tweeted in response to the poll. Even before the deal was completed, Musk suggested the possibility of tying verification to a paid subscription service.

CNN —Elon Musk on Sunday gave credence to a fringe conspiracy theory about the violent attack on Paul Pelosi. The new Twitter owner tweeted a link to an article full of baseless claims about Pelosi. Musk, who has 112 million followers on the platform he now owns, posted the baseless story about Pelosi in response to a tweet from Hilary Clinton at 8:15 am ET. He later deleted the tweet around 2 pm, but not before racking up more than 28,000 retweets and 100,000 likes. Linking to a Los Angeles Times story about Pelosi’s alleged attacker, Clinton wrote, “The Republican Party and its mouthpieces now regularly spread hate and deranged conspiracy theories.

New York CNN Business —Elon Musk has completed his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, the company confirmed in a securities filing Friday, putting the world’s richest man in charge of one of the world’s most influential social media platforms. The confirmation comes after a source familiar with the deal told CNN the deal had closed Thursday night. But Musk’s takeover now raises a host of new questions for the future of the social media platform, and the many corners of society impacted by it. Despite multiple news outlets confirming the changes Thursday night, Twitter staff had still not formally been informed of the changes as of Friday morning, two Twitter employees told CNN. Now he controls a social media platform that shapes how hundreds of millions of people communicate and get their news.

☆ Elon Musk has taken control of Twitter and fired its top executives
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-27 | by ( Donie O'Sullivan | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: 1 min

New York CNN Business —Elon Musk plans to visit Twitter’s San Francisco office this week ahead of the expected close of his deal to buy the company, Twitter Chief Marketing Officer Leslie Berland told staff in an email Wednesday. For everyone else, this is just the beginning of many meetings and conversations with Elon.”Berland added that all Twitter (TWTR) employees will hear directly from Musk on Friday. Musk on Wednesday also changed his Twitter bio to “Chief Twit.”Musk is likely to face many questions from nervous employees when he addresses Twitter’s staff. The Washington Post last week reported that Musk told prospective investors in the deal that he planned to cut nearly 75% of the company’s staff, and that Twitter had already planned massive layoffs even if the deal did not go through. Musk had previously discussed dramatically reducing Twitter’s workforce in text messages with friends about the deal, which were revealed in court filings, and didn’t dismiss the potential for layoffs in a call with Twitter employees in June.

☆ Premarket stocks: Markets are starting to act super strange
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-06 | by ( Nicole Goodkind | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

A weakening labor market puts downward pressure on wages and inflation. The labor market is still tight with about 1.7 job openings for every unemployed worker in the US. New private employment data on Wednesday by payroll services firm ADP suggested that the labor market isn’t losing any steam. The rise in oil gave a lift to energy stocks, helping to boost the overall market, reports Paul R. La Monica. Plus: US Department of Labor reports weekly jobless claims at 8:30 a.m.

☆ Meta shuts down covert influence campaigns it says were run from China and Russia
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-27 | by ( Donie O'Sullivan | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

New York CNN Business —Facebook parent company Meta announced Tuesday it had detected and shut down two separate networks of fake accounts engaged in covert influence operations run from China and Russia. Meta publicly detailed the takedown as it remains on high alert for foreign interference in the US midterm elections, a Meta spokesperson told CNN. The company has shared details of the Chinese accounts with the FBI, a Meta spokesperson said. More than 2,000 Facebook accounts and pages were part of the effort to push pro-Kremlin narratives about the war in Ukraine, Meta said. “This was the first Chinese network we disrupted that focused on US domestic politics ahead of the midterm elections,” Meta said.

☆ The Truss tax plan cushions the wealthy while pushing borrowers toward a financial cliff
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-27 | by ( Allison Morrow | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

That’s because the Bank of England is now widely expected to hike interest rates even further to tackle inflation that will be exacerbated by the government’s sweeping tax cuts. That means many as 1.8 million borrowers are now hurtling toward a financial cliff as they prepare to refinance next year, when the mortgage rate may well have doubled. The vast majority (nearly two-thirds) of the tax gains go to the wealthiest one-fifth of households, according to one think tank estimate. According to the US Treasury, tax cuts reduced federal revenues by about 9% in the first couple of years. However, Congress eventually decided the sweeping tax cuts were unsustainable and, with Reagan’s approval, raised taxes by a lot in 1982.

Earlier court filings had indicated Musk would be deposed starting on Sept. 26, while a filing Saturday said Agrawal was also due to be questioned starting Monday morning. That day, Musk’s team learned of Agrawal’s rescheduling, the person said. Agrawal’s deposition could be a chance for Musk’s team to question him about Zatko’s whistleblower allegations. Agrawal also turned down an invitation to testify at a Senate committee hearing alongside Zatko earlier this month citing the litigation with Musk, according to Sen. Chuck Grassley. Twitter and Musk are set to go to trial over the acquisition dispute in mid-October.

☆ Watch: QAnon fans celebrate Trump's latest embrace of the conspiracy theory
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-21 | by ( ) edition.cnn.com time to read: 1 min

QAnon supporters on former President Donald Trump's social media platform have celebrated what they see as his renewed embrace of the conspiracy theory after he shared a meme that was viewed as one of his most brazen nods to QAnon yet. CNN's Donie O'Sullivan reports.

The complaints, obtained by CNBC, were filed by nonprofit law firm Whistleblower Aid, which is representing Twitter's former head of security, Peiter "Mudge" Zatko. Whistleblower Aid, which also represented Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, verified the authenticity of the documents with CNBC. A Twitter whistleblower is alleging "extreme, egregious deficiencies by Twitter" related to privacy, security and content moderation, according to complaints filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice. If government regulators were to find Twitter misled consumers about its security protocols, that may be considered a violation of its 2011 agreement with the FTC. At the time, Twitter was barred for 20 years from misleading consumers about how it protects their security and private information.

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