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 Seaside trailing the message “Musk is dangerous for enterprise #StopToxicTwitter,” Elon Musk appeared on the inaugural Potential convention to (form of) woo an viewers of advertisers, advert tech corporations 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 12 months, to which Musk replied, “It’s going properly. … It’s entertaining. … It’s a trainwreck typically.”
That’s really a relatively honest evaluation. The remaining was an odd 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 any person has one thing hateful to say, that doesn’t imply you must give them a megaphone. They need to nonetheless have the ability to say it, however it shouldn’t be pushed on folks. … We’re not going to advertise that to folks or suggest it. We’ll put it behind a warning label.
“That is one thing we now have to be very cautious with as we roll it out, … but when persons are saying issues that make you unhappy or they’re encouraging negativity, then we’re not going to amplify that, which Twitter had accomplished previously.”
On whether or not he’s been in a position to derisk Twitter for advertisers:
“We’ve adjacency controls in place which can be actually fairly efficient. Adverts is not going to seem subsequent to something remotely adverse. … However it’s essential to put controls in place as a result of there’s an extra of stock that’s adverse.”
On his disdain for conventional media:
“I just lately had an interview with somewhat 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 vital to remember that conventional media is a competitor to Twitter. They compete in opposition to 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:
“Official issues advertisers have – that I need to hear. Issues must be mentioned in an open discussion board.”
On promoting usually:
“When promoting is related to customers and, particularly, the message is entertaining and attention-grabbing, 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 need to deal with content material.”
Nonetheless, although …
— Marktech (@Marktech) February 19, 2023
