Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails has had quite enough of Twitter under the rule of new owner Elon Musk and has decided to leave the platform because it has become a “toxic environment.”
“We don’t need the arrogance of the billionaire class to feel like they can just come in and solve everything. Even without [Musk] involved, I just find that it has become such a toxic environment. For my mental health, I need to tune out. I don’t feel good being there anymore.”
That’s certainly fair and Reznor has every right to 86 whatever he feels isn’t in his own best interest. More and more people are deleting their Twitter accounts, which should have Musk worried because the number of users directly impacts his ad revenue, which the social media platform badly needs to help pay off the $44 billion Musk spent to acquire Twitter in October.
Rather than respect Reznor’s decision, however, Musk decided he’d attack the musician.
That led to an immediate reaction from some of Reznor’s fans, one of whom called Musk out, which elicited another snarky reaction from the billionaire.
But Musk got more than he bargained for, with actor Wil Wheaton posting a lengthy diatribe aimed squarely at the Twitter CEO in which he accused him of being an insecure and arrogant child.
“I can not fathom the emptiness, the insecurity, the insatiable need for attention and validation, the staggering arrogance, the malevolence and total void of human experience that is Elon Musk.
He’s the richest man on the planet. You can’t go anywhere or do anything without interacting with something he’s part of in some way. There are literal millions of people who uncritically worship him, in spite of overwhelming evidence that he’s a douchebag. Some number of them will come after me, as they come after anyone who points at their naked emperor. They’ll spend entire days going after me and people like me, slavishly serving a man who does not even know they exist. They are his army of fools, uncritically serving his every whim. And it still isn’t enough.
He can have any material thing he wants, and he will *never* be happy or satisfied. He has no real friends. Every single person around him is either a viper, a parasite, or both.
So what does he do? He bullies and threatens and harasses and trolls and behaves like the weak, scared, insecure child he has always been. That’s a tragedy for him, but it’s dangerous for us. He doesn’t care what he destroys or who he hurts as he chases this existential thing he can not ever have.
You know the saying “hurt people hurt people”? He’s a hurt person who is hurting our society, making people I care about less safe. The consequences of this one man’s midlife crisis are global, and that terrifies me.
Rock star Jack White has left Twitter and has a message for the site’s CEO, Elon Musk, who purchased the social media giant in October of last year for $44 billion.
White’s move comes in response to Musk’s reinstatement of the Twitter account belonging to disgraced, one-term, twice-impeached former president Donald Trump.
“Absolutely disgusting, Elon. That is officially an asshole move.”
White added that he believed Musk was “trying to help a fascist have a platform so you can eventually get your tax breaks.”
Making it clear that he’s a “believer in free speech,” but would never “let the KKK hold a rally at our record label’s performance stage.”
“That’s one of the platforms we control and have a say in, it’s not town square operated by the government,” White explained. “And if I owned a gas station, I wouldn’t be selling the KKK gasoline to burn crosses either and then wash my hands as if I didn’t help facilitate hatred.
“You took on a big responsibility with your purchase, and ‘free speech’ isn’t some umbrella that protects you from that.”
White acknowledged that he had worked with Musk in the past when it came to Tesla Motors, but suggested the entrepreneur is using his money to “promote horrible, violence-inducing liars who are taking the country and the world backwards and endangering the democracy that made you rich and successful in the first place.”
Recent reports suggest that Twitter has descended into complete disarray as Musk makes deep cuts to the site’s staff and continues to lose massive sums of money as advertisers abandon the platform.
Twitter, once a dominant force in the world of social media, is on the verge of collapse, and the question of when it will finally vanish from the internet is being measured in hours, not days, according to experts.
Having paid $44 billion for Twitter, Elon Musk continues to send out positive tweets suggesting that he has full confidence in the site. But his decision on Saturday to reinstate the account of failed former president Donald Trump could be the fatal cut that causes the site to hemorrhage the remainder of its staff and value because many users are calling for advertisers to boycott the site unless Trump is again banned.
According to The Washington Post, even the smallest technical problems at Twitter threaten to send it into a death spiral.
Several critical teams essential to keeping the site functioning were cut to a single engineer or none by the departures Thursday, leaving the company partially on autopilot and likely to crash sooner or later, engineers said.
While there were no widespread reports of outages on Friday, “Every mistake in code and operations is now deadly” said a former engineer who departed the company this week. Those left “are going to be overwhelmed, overworked and, because of that, more likely to make mistakes.”
For example, the team which monitors runs a service known as Gizmoduck, which stores all of the information found in user profiles, is now gone, meaning that one minor blip or operational hiccup could leave 450 million users without access to the information connected to their accounts and profiles, which just so happens to be the lifeblood of the site.
Jessica González, CEO of the advocacy group Free Press, noted Friday, “Musk has swiftly decimated Twitter’s ability to maintain the platform’s integrity, health, and safety,” adding:
“His reckless actions, including sacking most of his staff and compelling others to leave, have caused an explosion of hate speech, conspiracy theories, and fraud on the site. If there is one lesson that all social media platforms must take away from this debacle, it’s that without protecting users from hate and lies, you have no company at all. Invest in the health and integrity of your platforms or risk extinction.”
Meanwhile, Musk continues to post tweets that make it sound as if he’s living in a parallel universe where logic, reason, and common sense don’t exist.
It’s safe to assume that Twitter CEO Elon Musk loves it when postings go viral on the social media site he paid $44 billion to acquire. After all, that’s good for his bottom line.
But a new nickname for Musk that was hatched on Twitter is almost certain to irritate him because it paints him as a shallow, thin-skinned little snowflake who complains about everything.
Ladies and gentleman, meet “Space Karen” a.k.a. Elon Musk, which HuffPost explains is what many on social media think about the billionaire.
The term — a mashup reference to Musk’s ambitions with rocket company SpaceX and a pejorative label usually used to describe a white woman showing privileged behavior — has been tweeted before. But it was turbocharged Friday and early Saturday after a man reportedly calling himself a “projection activist” cast a series of mocking monikers onto the company’s San Francisco headquarters, with photos and video of his projections going viral.
As Space Karen was going viral, other monikers were also applied to Musk:
Bankruptcy Baby
Mediocre Manchild
And, as Space Karen gained traction on Twitter, hashtags also began to proliferate that are likely to upset Musk: #RIPTwitter, #Goodbye Twitter, and #TwitterDown.
But perhaps the best part of Musk’s new nickname was the reaction it received on Twitter. Take a look:
"Space Karen" If I hadn't fired everyone, I'd want to talk to a manager https://t.co/2E6XV1hd9Z
When he purchased Twitter for $44 billion, Elon Musk probably thought it was a brilliant business move. But as he’s finding out, no only is his social media site losing money hand over fist, he’s also managing to alienate people who have the power to impose all sorts of pain on him and his company.
Take, for example, the case of Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), who complained about someone creating a fake account that was attempting to pass itself off as his. According to The Washington Post, the showdown between Markey and Musk began on Friday.
The spat began after a Washington Post columnist wrote Friday that he had impersonated Markey, with his permission, to show how easy it is to get a blue check mark under Twitter’s new verification system. “In a few minutes, I got a blue check mark on an impersonation of the lawmaker,” Geoffrey A. Fowler wrote.
Markey then wrote a letter to Musk criticizing the new policy.
“Safeguards such as Twitter’s blue checkmark once allowed users to be smart, critical consumers of news and information in Twitter’s global town square,” he said. “But your Twitter takeover, rapid and haphazard imposition of platform changes, removal of safeguards against disinformation, and firing of large numbers of Twitter employees have accelerated Twitter’s descent into the Wild West of social media.”
Markey said he would like a response explaining the process by Nov. 25.
Markey also posted his complaint on Twitter, writing:
“I’m asking for answers from Elon Musk, who is putting profits over people and his debt over stopping disinformation.”
A @washingtonpost reporter was able to create a verified account impersonating me—I’m asking for answers from @elonmusk who is putting profits over people and his debt over stopping disinformation. Twitter must explain how this happened and how to prevent it from happening again. pic.twitter.com/R4r7p6mduP
But rather than apologize and assure the senator he would look into the matter, Musk decided he’d fire off a terse and sarcastic reply.
“Perhaps it is because your real account sounds like a parody?”
That was a big mistake, as Markey quickly reminded Musk, because the senator just so happens to sit on a Senate committee with direct oversight of Twitter and other social media platforms.
“One of your companies is under an FTC consent decree. Auto safety watchdog NHTSA is investigating another for killing people. And you’re spending your time picking fights online. Fix your companies. Or Congress will.”
One of your companies is under an FTC consent decree. Auto safety watchdog NHTSA is investigating another for killing people. And you’re spending your time picking fights online. Fix your companies. Or Congress will. https://t.co/lE178gPRoM
Brilliant. Nothing keeps away government investigation and intervention like mocking a Senator for legitimate concerns, all while degrading the utility of this platform. You're killing it. Literally.
