Twitter owner Elon Musk notified in a Tweet on Wednesday that Twitter has interfered in past elections.
The comment from the billionaire came when he was responding to a Twitter user by the name of “Eva Fox” who said: “Twitter has shown itself to be not safe for the past 10 years and has lost users’ trust. The past team of “trust and safety” is a disgrace, so it doesn’t have any right to judge what is being done now. They had a chance, but they sold their souls to a corporation.”
Musk replied: “Exactly. The obvious reality, as long-time users know, is that Twitter has failed in trust & safety for a very long time and has interfered in elections. Twitter 2.0 will be far more effective, transparent and even-handed.”
Exactly. The obvious reality, as long-time users know, is that Twitter has failed in trust & safety for a very long time and has interfered in elections.
Twitter 2.0 will be far more effective, transparent and even-handed.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 30, 2022
See my reaction below:
BREAKING: Elon Musk says Twitter has interfered in elections.
You're telling me the people accusing Russia of interfering were really the ones interfering?
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) November 30, 2022
Follow me on Twitter @CollinRugg!
My speculation is that Musk was referring to how Twitter has banned thousands of right wing users on the app which would have major implications when it comes to election results.
According to a new report, Twitter is gearing up to reinstate 62,000 banned Twitter accounts. The news comes after Musk announced last week that he would be reinstating practically all banned accounts.
Casey Newton with ‘Platformer,’ reported that Twitter will reinstate 62,000 accounts, starting with accounts that have more than 10,000 followers.
The outlet reports: “In fact, since Musk’s poll, Twitter has begun the process of reinstating roughly 62,000 accounts with more than 10,000 followers, Platformer has learned, including one account that has over 5 million followers, and 75 accounts with over 1 million followers. (The identities of the accounts could not be learned before press time.) Internally, employees have referred to this event as “the Big Bang.”
Platformer continues:
The project could cause more instability at Twitter at a time when the company is hemorrhaging engineering talent, according to current employees. Each reinstatement requires Twitter to rebuild a social graph, activating data on who the account follows and who follows the account. For large accounts like Trump’s, with 88 million followers, that’s millions of lists that Twitter has to update and maintain.
The move also comes the same week that Musk plans to relaunch Twitter Blue, allowing anyone to buy a verified badge for $8 a month. An internal document about the launch, designed for employees in sales, says that impersonations have been “extremely rare,” despite all evidence to the contrary.
“We anticipated early efforts like this from bad actors, and we are adapting dynamically to prevent and detect them,” the document reads. What about “large scale coordinated misinformation attacks funded by wealthy organizations or governments?” the document asks. “Large-scale bad actors would also require a huge supply of unique credit card numbers and mobile phones,” the document says. “As we detect and suspend these, the logistical hurdles to re-offend at scale become insurmountable.”
Between the coming Big Bang and the remaining potential for brand impersonation, though, advertisers remain deeply skeptical. As they pull their spending from Twitter, Musk has called several CEOs to “berate” them for abandoning the platform, according to the Financial Times.
Follow me on Twitter @CollinRugg!