Guess we actually do stay in a simulation.
On Tuesday, as an airplane sponsored by a coalition of civil rights group circled above the Fontainebleau in Miami Seashore trailing the message “Musk is unhealthy for enterprise #StopToxicTwitter,” Elon Musk appeared on the inaugural Potential convention to (kind of) woo an viewers of advertisers, advert tech firms and publishers.
In dialog with Linda Yaccarino, NBCU’s chair of worldwide promoting and partnerships, Musk nonchalantly defended his stance on “free speech,” the rise of citizen journalism (concurrent with the demise of conventional publishers) and Twitter’s supposed dedication to belief and transparency.
Yaccarino kicked off the dialog by asking Musk the way it’s been going because the acquisition final yr, to which Musk replied, “It’s going nicely. … It’s entertaining. … It’s a trainwreck typically.”
That’s really a moderately honest evaluation. The remainder was a wierd mélange of jokes, offhanded commentary and a collection of very specific, facetious and arguably spurious POVs.
Musk on Twitter’s new “freedom of speech, not attain” content material enforcement coverage:
“If anyone has one thing hateful to say, that doesn’t imply it is best to give them a megaphone. They need to nonetheless be capable of say it, however it shouldn’t be pushed on folks. … We’re not going to advertise that to folks or advocate it. We’ll put it behind a warning label.
“That is one thing we’ve to be very cautious with as we roll it out … but when individuals are saying issues that make you unhappy or they’re encouraging negativity, then we’re not going to amplify that, which Twitter had achieved previously.”
On whether or not he’s been in a position to derisk Twitter for advertisers:
“We’ve adjacency controls in place which are actually fairly efficient. Adverts won’t seem subsequent to something remotely damaging. … However you should put controls in place as a result of there may be an extra of stock that’s damaging.”
On his disdain for conventional media:
“I lately had an interview with just a little group referred to as the BBC. That was entertaining. The reporter was claiming he’d seen all of this hate speech on Twitter, so I requested, ‘Are you able to give me a single instance?’ And he couldn’t – not even one.
“It’s essential to remember that conventional media is a competitor to Twitter. They compete towards Twitter to your advert {dollars}. … You shouldn’t take your competitor’s phrase for it.”
[Author’s note: You can, quite literally, search for racial and ethnic slurs and hateful phrases like “Hitler was right,” if you are so inclined, and the results are there.]
On whether or not he’s open to suggestions from advertisers:
“Authentic considerations advertisers have – that I wish to hear. Issues needs to be mentioned in an open discussion board.”
On promoting basically:
“When promoting is related to customers and, particularly, the message is entertaining and fascinating, it’s content material. But when an advert isn’t related to customers, that’s spam. Promoting can go all the best way from spam to high quality content material, and we wish to concentrate on content material.”
Nonetheless, although …
— Marktech (@Marktech) February 19, 2023
