Twitter

[GuitarStv]

"trashed its reputation" - and that reputation was...

Well, for one thing, a haven for free speech....

Unless you're a conservative. Or just anyone who dares to question the narrative.

There has actually been research done on the matter.

In response to intense pressure from policy makers and the public, technology companies have enacted a range of policies aimed at reducing the spread of misinformation online. The enforcement of these policies has, however, led to technology companies being regularly accused of political bias. We argue that even under politically neutral anti-misinformation policies, such political asymmetries in enforcement should be expected, as there is a political asymmetry in the sharing of misinformation. We support this argument with an analysis of Twitter data from 9,000 politically active users during the U.S. 2020 presidential election. While Republicans were indeed substantially more likely to be suspended than Democrats, the Republicans also shared far more links to low quality news sites – even when news quality was determined by politically-balanced groups of laypeople, or groups of only Republicans – and were estimated to have a far higher likelihood of being bots. We also find widespread evidence of ideological asymmetries when analyzing sharing intentions data from 8,597 people across 16 countries. These results demonstrate that social media platforms face a trade-off between effectively reducing the spread of misinformation and maintaining political balance in enforcement.

https://psyarxiv.com/ay9q5

Turns out that right leaning people were suspended more often under pre-Musk Twitter because they were demonstrably more full of shit.

[Herbert Derp]

I find it interesting that Musk has rallied so hard against corporate media for a long time now but yet has chosen a corporate media executive to become CEO of Twitter. Not what I would expect as his first choice!

[Travis]

I find it interesting that Musk has rallied so hard against corporate media for a long time now but yet has chosen a corporate media executive to become CEO of Twitter. Not what I would expect as his first choice!

The far right crowd that has been singing his praises went kinda nuts on him this week for picking her since she hosts a committee in the World Economic Forum.

[FireLane]

On the eve of an election in Turkey, Mr. Free Speech Absolutist obeys an eleventh-hour demand from the Turkish government to censor tweets that are critical of Erdogan:

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/05/twitter-musk-censors-turkey-election-erdogan

[Herbert Derp]

On the eve of an election in Turkey, Mr. Free Speech Absolutist obeys an eleventh-hour demand from the Turkish government to censor tweets that are critical of Erdogan:

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/05/twitter-musk-censors-turkey-election-erdogan

In Elon’s defense, he has always maintained that Twitter will obey the laws of the countries in which it operates:
https://time.com/6230338/twitter-india-elon-musk-free-speech/

Musk has called himself a “free speech absolutist,” and has committed to bolstering freedom of expression on the platform. But he has also said he wants Twitter to follow local laws in the countries where it operates. “There’s this deep tension in the way that Elon Musk has talked about how he’s going to run the platform,” says Evelyn Douek, an assistant professor at Stanford Law whose research focuses on online speech. “His proclamations about being a free speech platform would suggest standing up to authoritarians, who are the biggest threat to free speech. But he has also said he will obey local laws—which in many areas of the world, means being far more restrictive than Twitter’s current content moderation rules.”

[GuitarStv]

On the eve of an election in Turkey, Mr. Free Speech Absolutist obeys an eleventh-hour demand from the Turkish government to censor tweets that are critical of Erdogan:

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/05/twitter-musk-censors-turkey-election-erdogan

In Elon’s defense, he has always maintained that Twitter will obey the laws of the countries in which it operates:
https://time.com/6230338/twitter-india-elon-musk-free-speech/

Musk has called himself a “free speech absolutist,” and has committed to bolstering freedom of expression on the platform. But he has also said he wants Twitter to follow local laws in the countries where it operates. “There’s this deep tension in the way that Elon Musk has talked about how he’s going to run the platform,” says Evelyn Douek, an assistant professor at Stanford Law whose research focuses on online speech. “His proclamations about being a free speech platform would suggest standing up to authoritarians, who are the biggest threat to free speech. But he has also said he will obey local laws—which in many areas of the world, means being far more restrictive than Twitter’s current content moderation rules.”

I mean . . . he also shrank Twitter's regulatory compliance teams to the point that they're not able to follow  the laws that the FTC and GDPR require.  So it really sounds like everything else that has happened at Twitter - Musk just does whatever makes himself happy.

[NorCal]

On the eve of an election in Turkey, Mr. Free Speech Absolutist obeys an eleventh-hour demand from the Turkish government to censor tweets that are critical of Erdogan:

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/05/twitter-musk-censors-turkey-election-erdogan

In Elon’s defense, he has always maintained that Twitter will obey the laws of the countries in which it operates:
https://time.com/6230338/twitter-india-elon-musk-free-speech/

Musk has called himself a “free speech absolutist,” and has committed to bolstering freedom of expression on the platform. But he has also said he wants Twitter to follow local laws in the countries where it operates. “There’s this deep tension in the way that Elon Musk has talked about how he’s going to run the platform,” says Evelyn Douek, an assistant professor at Stanford Law whose research focuses on online speech. “His proclamations about being a free speech platform would suggest standing up to authoritarians, who are the biggest threat to free speech. But he has also said he will obey local laws—which in many areas of the world, means being far more restrictive than Twitter’s current content moderation rules.”

I mean . . . he also shrank Twitter's regulatory compliance teams to the point that they're not able to follow  the laws that the FTC and GDPR require.  So it really sounds like everything else that has happened at Twitter - Musk just does whatever makes himself happy.

I have to ask the question. Was there anyone at Twitter remaining that even has the knowledge base to understand whether Erdogan’s demand was legal or illegal under Turkish law?

That’s the crux of the issue. Countries have different frameworks for deciding what is legal or not.

It’s one thing if Twitter censored something based on a court order and established law. It’s VERY different if Twitter caved to an illegal demand to censor information.  I don’t claim to understand Turkish law on the matter.

Let’s try a closer to home hypothetical. What if Florida’s legislature passed a law requiring Twitter to censor anything critical of DeSantis?  It would be the law in Florida the moment it was signed.  How should Twitter respond?  Should they throw up their hands and claim it’s the law?

[GuitarStv]

On the eve of an election in Turkey, Mr. Free Speech Absolutist obeys an eleventh-hour demand from the Turkish government to censor tweets that are critical of Erdogan:

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/05/twitter-musk-censors-turkey-election-erdogan

In Elon’s defense, he has always maintained that Twitter will obey the laws of the countries in which it operates:
https://time.com/6230338/twitter-india-elon-musk-free-speech/

Musk has called himself a “free speech absolutist,” and has committed to bolstering freedom of expression on the platform. But he has also said he wants Twitter to follow local laws in the countries where it operates. “There’s this deep tension in the way that Elon Musk has talked about how he’s going to run the platform,” says Evelyn Douek, an assistant professor at Stanford Law whose research focuses on online speech. “His proclamations about being a free speech platform would suggest standing up to authoritarians, who are the biggest threat to free speech. But he has also said he will obey local laws—which in many areas of the world, means being far more restrictive than Twitter’s current content moderation rules.”

I mean . . . he also shrank Twitter's regulatory compliance teams to the point that they're not able to follow  the laws that the FTC and GDPR require.  So it really sounds like everything else that has happened at Twitter - Musk just does whatever makes himself happy.

I have to ask the question. Was there anyone at Twitter remaining that even has the knowledge base to understand whether Erdogan’s demand was legal or illegal under Turkish law?

That’s the crux of the issue. Countries have different frameworks for deciding what is legal or not.

It’s one thing if Twitter censored something based on a court order and established law. It’s VERY different if Twitter caved to an illegal demand to censor information.  I don’t claim to understand Turkish law on the matter.

Let’s try a closer to home hypothetical. What if Florida’s legislature passed a law requiring Twitter to censor anything critical of DeSantis?  It would be the law in Florida the moment it was signed.  How should Twitter respond?  Should they throw up their hands and claim it’s the law?

Twitter under Musk would do what DeSantis wants . . . because that's in line with what Musk wants.  As we've seen, legality and freedom of speech are not at all important when they conflict with his personal desires.

[Metalcat]

On the eve of an election in Turkey, Mr. Free Speech Absolutist obeys an eleventh-hour demand from the Turkish government to censor tweets that are critical of Erdogan:

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/05/twitter-musk-censors-turkey-election-erdogan

In Elon’s defense, he has always maintained that Twitter will obey the laws of the countries in which it operates:
https://time.com/6230338/twitter-india-elon-musk-free-speech/

Musk has called himself a “free speech absolutist,” and has committed to bolstering freedom of expression on the platform. But he has also said he wants Twitter to follow local laws in the countries where it operates. “There’s this deep tension in the way that Elon Musk has talked about how he’s going to run the platform,” says Evelyn Douek, an assistant professor at Stanford Law whose research focuses on online speech. “His proclamations about being a free speech platform would suggest standing up to authoritarians, who are the biggest threat to free speech. But he has also said he will obey local laws—which in many areas of the world, means being far more restrictive than Twitter’s current content moderation rules.”

I mean . . . he also shrank Twitter's regulatory compliance teams to the point that they're not able to follow  the laws that the FTC and GDPR require.  So it really sounds like everything else that has happened at Twitter - Musk just does whatever makes himself happy.

I have to ask the question. Was there anyone at Twitter remaining that even has the knowledge base to understand whether Erdogan’s demand was legal or illegal under Turkish law?

That’s the crux of the issue. Countries have different frameworks for deciding what is legal or not.

It’s one thing if Twitter censored something based on a court order and established law. It’s VERY different if Twitter caved to an illegal demand to censor information.  I don’t claim to understand Turkish law on the matter.

Let’s try a closer to home hypothetical. What if Florida’s legislature passed a law requiring Twitter to censor anything critical of DeSantis?  It would be the law in Florida the moment it was signed.  How should Twitter respond?  Should they throw up their hands and claim it’s the law?

Twitter under Musk would do what DeSantis wants . . . because that's in line with what Musk wants.  As we've seen, legality and freedom of speech are not at all important when they conflict with his personal desires.

Yeah, a better question would be if a jurisdiction passed a law that protected some "woke" value that Musk maligns, would he comply with that?

[FireLane]

From McSweeney's: I Will Defend Free Speech to the Death, Or Until an Autocrat Asks Me to Stop.

"They say that if you stand for nothing, you’ll fall for anything. So today, I’m drawing a line in the sand and standing up for free speech. Let every enemy of freedom know, let every would-be tyrant be warned, and let every petty dictator take notice: If you want Twitter to censor its users, just send me an email."

[dividendman]

The good news is that twitter seems to be fine since the Elon Musk and Ron DeStanis interview/presidential announcement went off without a hitch...


edit for link: https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/24/tech/twitter-desantis-meltdown/index.html

[Metalcat]

The good news is that twitter seems to be fine since the Elon Musk and Ron DeStanis interview/presidential announcement went off without a hitch...


edit for link: https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/24/tech/twitter-desantis-meltdown/index.html

Apparently, you only mock him because you fail to understand him.

https://www.thestreet.com/technology/elon-musk-sends-a-loud-message-to-the-world

[LennStar]

The good news is that twitter seems to be fine since the Elon Musk and Ron DeStanis interview/presidential announcement went off without a hitch...


edit for link: https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/24/tech/twitter-desantis-meltdown/index.html

Apparently, you only mock him because you fail to understand him.

https://www.thestreet.com/technology/elon-musk-sends-a-loud-message-to-the-world

"call him an attention-seeker, even pigeonhole him as right wing."

WOW! That cognitive dissonance pain was so big it jumped over to me and I was unable to read further. And here I thought "Soros hates humanity" Musk was a communist! How can anyone think otherwise???

[Metalcat]

The good news is that twitter seems to be fine since the Elon Musk and Ron DeStanis interview/presidential announcement went off without a hitch...


edit for link: https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/24/tech/twitter-desantis-meltdown/index.html

Apparently, you only mock him because you fail to understand him.

https://www.thestreet.com/technology/elon-musk-sends-a-loud-message-to-the-world

"call him an attention-seeker, even pigeonhole him as right wing."

WOW! That cognitive dissonance pain was so big it jumped over to me and I was unable to read further. And here I thought "Soros hates humanity" Musk was a communist! How can anyone think otherwise???

The article literally just becomes a collection of Musk-worshipping memes, cited as if they're evidence. It's one of the most bizarre articles to ever pop up in my feed and at first glance it looked like a real article and I expected to read something significant that Musk recently did, but nooooope, it was some weird Musk-worship fever dream.

[ChpBstrd]

Twitter quits a pact with the EU to combat online misinformation:
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/twitter-has-quit-pact-to-fight-online-disinformation-says-european-union-official-6edb24fe?mod=mw_latestnews

Twitter's transition to becoming just another 4-chan/8-chan/Telegram/Truth Social is mostly done. Also mostly done is the rationale for regulating social media corporations differently than any other type of media. I would not blame the EU if they were to block Twitter.

[SotI]

I have to ask the question. Was there anyone at Twitter remaining that even has the knowledge base to understand whether Erdogan’s demand was legal or illegal under Turkish law?

That’s the crux of the issue. Countries have different frameworks for deciding what is legal or not.

Twitter maintains - or at least used to - regional offices in most if its markets incl regional legal assessments (I  know this for EU, I expect this to hold true also for Middle-East, but maybe s.o. from that region can confirm). I guess they are able to check back w/ US HQ but running EMEA market and legal regional experts (and lobbyist) is pretty much standard for tech firms - I used to deal w/ quite a few if these guys in one of  my previous jobs.

There  have not been any news about layoffs in my region, so it may have been US centric.

[FireLane]

Fidelity has marked down its investment in Twitter for the third time. It now estimates that Twitter is worth one-third of what Musk paid for it seven months ago:

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/twitter-worth-musk-paid-fall-fidelity-marks-investment-99723540

[jinga nation]

Fidelity has marked down its investment in Twitter for the third time. It now estimates that Twitter is worth one-third of what Musk paid for it seven months ago:

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/twitter-worth-musk-paid-fall-fidelity-marks-investment-99723540

still over-valued. real value somewhere between buck-fiddy and tree-fiddy. That's USD 1.50-3.50, for those who speak English. :p

[Psychstache]

Fidelity has marked down its investment in Twitter for the third time. It now estimates that Twitter is worth one-third of what Musk paid for it seven months ago:

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/twitter-worth-musk-paid-fall-fidelity-marks-investment-99723540

still over-valued. real value somewhere between buck-fiddy and tree-fiddy. That's USD 1.50-3.50, for those who speak English. :p

Dammit, Loch Ness Monster! I ain't givin' you no tree-fiddy for Twitter!

[Travis]

https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/twitter-employee-lawsuit-v/e5d27a60a7b7d51e/full.pdf


Latest lawsuit against Musk. Musk firing executives and withholding their severances, refusing to pay rent on real estate, refusing to pay termination fees on contracts, refusing to pay supply vendors, and ordering the construction/alteration of the internal spaces in violation of state building codes.

[dividendman]

https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/twitter-employee-lawsuit-v/e5d27a60a7b7d51e/full.pdf


Latest lawsuit against Musk. Musk firing executives and withholding their severances, refusing to pay rent on real estate, refusing to pay termination fees on contracts, refusing to pay supply vendors, and ordering the construction/alteration of the internal spaces in violation of state building codes.

No wonder he gets along with Trump so well.

[GuitarStv]

https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/twitter-employee-lawsuit-v/e5d27a60a7b7d51e/full.pdf


Latest lawsuit against Musk. Musk firing executives and withholding their severances, refusing to pay rent on real estate, refusing to pay termination fees on contracts, refusing to pay supply vendors, and ordering the construction/alteration of the internal spaces in violation of state building codes.

No wonder he gets along with Trump so well.

Both Killian and Hawkins were told that for Musk, the fact that Twitter was
legally or contractually obligated to pay a particular sum would be irrelevant to the decision of
whether to actually pay it when that amount came due that Musk operated on a zero cost
basis and that Twitter would therefore simply decide afresh, for each significant expense,
whether or not it wanted to pay what it owed.

Musk's business acumen and genius appears to know no bounds.

[ChpBstrd]

https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/twitter-employee-lawsuit-v/e5d27a60a7b7d51e/full.pdf


Latest lawsuit against Musk. Musk firing executives and withholding their severances, refusing to pay rent on real estate, refusing to pay termination fees on contracts, refusing to pay supply vendors, and ordering the construction/alteration of the internal spaces in violation of state building codes.

No wonder he gets along with Trump so well.

Both Killian and Hawkins were told that for Musk, the fact that Twitter was
legally or contractually obligated to pay a particular sum would be irrelevant to the decision of
whether to actually pay it when that amount came due that Musk operated on a zero cost
basis and that Twitter would therefore simply decide afresh, for each significant expense,
whether or not it wanted to pay what it owed.

Musk's business acumen and genius appears to know no bounds.

Isn't this usually the point where most companies are forced into bankruptcy? Perhaps both Trump and Musk are exploiting a legal system that is no longer capable of forcing debtors to pay their creditors or liquidate. I.e. if their lawyers can hold things up effectively forever, they can outlive their liabilities or their creditors. Maybe this is the new longtermism?

[Michael in ABQ]

Musk's business acumen and genius appears to know no bounds.

He is the richest person in the world and has successfully run two companies valued at 100 billion+ for 15-25 years (including the #9 by market cap in the US) - so yes, I would say he's pretty good at business by any objective measure.

Businesses break contracts all the time. It may not be the morally right thing to do, but as far as legality goes, that will be decided in court.

Isn't this usually the point where most companies are forced into bankruptcy? Perhaps both Trump and Musk are exploiting a legal system that is no longer capable of forcing debtors to pay their creditors or liquidate. I.e. if their lawyers can hold things up effectively forever, they can outlive their liabilities or their creditors. Maybe this is the new longtermism?

Bankruptcy is for when a company can't pay its bills because it has no more money - and usually is done before the company is totally out of money but when it can foresee that there's no reasonable path to be able to pay its debts. The bankruptcy process means some debts may be eliminated, others may be reduced or just amended and in the end the creditors may get something instead of nothing. No bankruptcy court is going to reasonably conclude that the best way to handle a debt in the millions of dollars is to force a multi-billion-dollar company into bankruptcy. The individual debts will go to court and Twitter will win some and lose some. In the meantime, they're not spending cash on those obligations in the present and even if they lose a case it will be months or years before they would be forced to pay any of those debts - at which point some of the creditors may have just given up.

[Travis]

Musk's business acumen and genius appears to know no bounds.

He is the richest person in the world and has successfully run two companies valued at 100 billion+ for 15-25 years (including the #9 by market cap in the US) - so yes, I would say he's pretty good at business by any objective measure.

Businesses break contracts all the time. It may not be the morally right thing to do, but as far as legality goes, that will be decided in court.

Are we counting stealing company resources on the list of objective measurements? He's being accused of not paying his employees, not paying bills, and taking essentially free labor from a publicly traded company to work at one of his pet projects.

[LennStar]

Musk's business acumen and genius appears to know no bounds.

He is the richest person in the world and has successfully run two companies valued at 100 billion+ for 15-25 years (including the #9 by market cap in the US) - so yes, I would say he's pretty good at business by any objective measure.

Businesses break contracts all the time. It may not be the morally right thing to do, but as far as legality goes, that will be decided in court.

Are we counting stealing company resources on the list of objective measurements? He's being accused of not paying his employees, not paying bills, and taking essentially free labor from a publicly traded company to work at one of his pet projects.

Sounds very libertarian for me. Which he seems to be based on his tweets and conspiracy theories.

[FireLane]

Twitter, which is owned by the richest man on earth, is being evicted from its Colorado office for failure to pay rent:

https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-being-evicted-from-colorado-office-not-paying-rent-report-2023-6?op=1

[GuitarStv]

Twitter, which is owned by the richest man on earth, is being evicted from its Colorado office for failure to pay rent:

https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-being-evicted-from-colorado-office-not-paying-rent-report-2023-6?op=1

I wonder what happens to the 200ish Colorado employees when they're kicked out?  Musk is very anti work from home.  Will he force them to move to San Francisco until evicted from that office too?  :P

[jinga nation]

Not paying rent leads to offices being closed, which is Elon's 4D chess move to fire employees because they aren't "coming to the office".

Also, Twitter might be stiffing bigger companies:

In what might be another blow to the stability of Twitter's trust and safety efforts, the company has allegedly stopped paying for Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services (AWS), which host tools that support the platform's safety measures, Platformer reported this weekend.

No platform safety tools, no need for content moderation. Muh freeze peach!

[scottish]

Weird, it's almost like Elon Musk has been possessed by the spirit of Donald Trump...

[LennStar]

Not paying rent leads to offices being closed, which is Elon's 4D chess move to fire employees because they aren't "coming to the office".

Also, Twitter might be stiffing bigger companies:

In what might be another blow to the stability of Twitter's trust and safety efforts, the company has allegedly stopped paying for Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services (AWS), which host tools that support the platform's safety measures, Platformer reported this weekend.

No platform safety tools, no need for content moderation. Muh freeze peach!

Isn't your normal place of work written in your contract in the US?

Ah, I forgot, a few month earlier I was told many don't have any written contract. Like cheques that's something so middle ages...

[Radagast]

LOL I signed up for twitter to follow the war in Ukraine. As of today Musk unilaterally limited my ability to read more than 300 or 600 tweets in a day (not sure which). So I spent about 45 minutes catching up and was just getting toward the latter part of the European day when people generally post some of the more general overview and trend stuff, and POOF! Shut down. No more twitter until tomorrow. Now I had been observing that twitter was taking too much of my time and had resolved to delete my account after the war was over. So this is actually a sorta good thing. I unfollowed about 7 people who often post uninteresting or irrelevant stuff, and will unfollow more in the future.

This is a bonehead move on the level of what Putin is doing now. Twitters use will instantly drop by at least 50%, probably 80% or more. It will probably cease to be a viable company by the end of the week if they don’t reverse it.

This is like a drug dealer passing out pills that remove the addiction.

[Michael in ABQ]

I had been following several accounts on Twitter about Ukraine and had each saved in a tab in the browser on my phone. Now I can't access any of them. I'm not planning to create a Twitter account though.

Musk claims it was because some companies started scraping all their publicly facing data and it was overwhelming their servers. However, it seems like limiting the IP addresses accessing thousands of pages would be pretty straightforward.

One thing I noticed is in reading some of those accounts for the last year or so I don't think I ever saw any ads.

[Travis]

Musk claims it was because some companies started scraping all their publicly facing data and it was overwhelming their servers. However, it seems like limiting the IP addresses accessing thousands of pages would be pretty straightforward.

This has always been the case though. The only thing that changed since this time last year is that Elon fired most of the staff, shut down data centers, and is in the process of changing cloud hosts from Google to AWS (and he may not be paying either of them right now). There's a theory going around today that Google is throttling Twitter for lack of payment.

This view limit that Musk imposed affects paying subscribers as well, so first you paid Twitter to have increased access, but starting today until a date TBD your viewer/customer base is hamstrung on seeing your content. If you were an advertiser, you're paying for reduced visibility on that front as well.

https://vxtwitter.com/filmthepolicela/status/1675243929451765760?s=46&t=OB1aqkwLTSooE-6G_Bc8mA

[Travis]

Elon Tweeting that view caps slowly rising.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1675214274627530754

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1675260424109928449

If I had to guess, they're gradually restoring capacity because of this Google issue.

[Radagast]

Elon Tweeting that view caps slowly rising.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1675214274627530754

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1675260424109928449

If I had to guess, they're gradually restoring capacity because of this Google issue.

Nobody can access those links :D

[MustacheAndaHalf]

Elon Musk himself hit his own rate limits... while reading people's replies about rate limits.  I believe current limits are 500 (unverified) and 1000 (verified).

ChatGPT is fueled by downloading everything on Twitter, Reddit, and other websites.  I suspect ChatGPT and other AI bots are increasing the amount of downloading ("scraping").  That in turn increases Twitter's costs (bandwidth, and more servers to handle more traffic)... but how does ChatGPT benefit Twitter?  I think the lack of benefit, versus rising cost, is why Twitter is imposing rate limits.  I know Reddit is also taking action, but I haven't followed that closely (and some areas are protesting, so the outcome remains to be seen).

[nick663]

Elon Musk himself hit his own rate limits... while reading people's replies about rate limits.  I believe current limits are 500 (unverified) and 1000 (verified).

ChatGPT is fueled by downloading everything on Twitter, Reddit, and other websites.  I suspect ChatGPT and other AI bots are increasing the amount of downloading ("scraping").  That in turn increases Twitter's costs (bandwidth, and more servers to handle more traffic)... but how does ChatGPT benefit Twitter?  I think the lack of benefit, versus rising cost, is why Twitter is imposing rate limits.  I know Reddit is also taking action, but I haven't followed that closely (and some areas are protesting, so the outcome remains to be seen).

Wouldn't ChatGPT's views be exponentially higher than a human user though?  The limits put in place were very low if that was the issue they were trying to solve.  They have all the user viewing data so this type of limit should have been invisible to end users if their target was competitors downloading extreme amounts of data.

I think it's far more likely that they had to institute this for stability due to ending contracts with google/AWS recently.

[Michael in ABQ]

Elon Musk himself hit his own rate limits... while reading people's replies about rate limits.  I believe current limits are 500 (unverified) and 1000 (verified).

ChatGPT is fueled by downloading everything on Twitter, Reddit, and other websites.  I suspect ChatGPT and other AI bots are increasing the amount of downloading ("scraping").  That in turn increases Twitter's costs (bandwidth, and more servers to handle more traffic)... but how does ChatGPT benefit Twitter?  I think the lack of benefit, versus rising cost, is why Twitter is imposing rate limits.  I know Reddit is also taking action, but I haven't followed that closely (and some areas are protesting, so the outcome remains to be seen).

ChatGPT only has data through 2021 or 2022. It's not scraping new data from the web, at least not version 3.5 which is the main one people are using. I'm not sure about 4.0 or some other similar programs.

[LennStar]

Even then those programs would read everything once. And then MAYBE every new tweet, but compared to all the users doing that this would be a few %, if at all, for all the AI companies and secret service of the world.

[MustacheAndaHalf]

nick663 - ChatGPT doesn't do live searches of the internet.  It gets trained on data downloaded from the internet.  So the downloading is in the past.  But in order to improve it, they need to feed it new data.


Michael in ABQ - I can't vouch for this source, but I have the impression Reddit was used in the training of ChatGPT.  I believe Wikipedia was another source of ChatGPT data.
"The publication also mentioned that both OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard have been trained using Reddit’s data one way or the other."
https://www.outlookindia.com/business/is-reddit-behind-chatgpt-and-bard-s-success-here-is-why-openai-google-may-start-paying-reddit-news-280191

LennStar - How do you know they only download data once?

[LennStar]

Why should ChatGPT download TBs of data more than once? There is no profit in it, only cost.

Of course, as I said, they might scrape new data, but again that means every tweet get's read once. I don't know how many tweets are send each day, but I am sure on average each gets read at least a 100 times by human users.

[maizefolk]

I would be shocked if scraping for training language models is more than a single digit percentage of twitter's total processing/bandwidth load. But the biggest driver wouldn't be OpenAI (ChatGPT) scraping the same tweets over and over again.

It would be the dozens and dozens of other startups trying to build their own large language models to compete with ChatGPT/Bard/etc. Recently there has been a big pulse of concern about how the widespread availability of those two early models means it is already impossible to collect new training datasets for large language that are guaranteed to be free of the output of previous large language models. That problem will only get worse with time, so it wouldn't surprise me if a bunch of companies are running way more web scrapping than they actually need at the moment to try to get comparatively uncontaminated training data (like the people who need to source "low background steel" from before the detonation of atomic bombs for super radiation sensitive use cases).

But again, even in the worse case scenario there shouldn't be enough of this scraping to significantly move the needle on twitter's overall usage.

[FireLane]

I'm extremely skeptical that the rate limit was a carefully considered decision made in response to scraper bots. Making tweets harder to view strikes at the entire rationale for Twitter's existence. It specifically punishes the most prolific power users, as well as the few advertisers who haven't been chased off yet.

It's more likely that Twitter is starting to break down from lack of maintenance, and this is a hail-mary measure to keep the site running. It's like driving your car at 30 MPH because you can't afford to change the oil.

"This was not your average fail whale. It was the social-media equivalent of Costco implementing a 10-items-or-fewer rule, or a 24-hour diner closing at 7 p.m.—a baffling, antithetical business decision for a platform that depends on engaging users (and showing them ads) as much as possible. It costs $44 billion to buy yourself a digital town square. Breaking it, however, is free."
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/07/twitter-outage-elon-musk-user-restrictions/674609/

[Fru-Gal]

Starting to break down, or as someone upthread said, behind on paying their AWS and Google Cloud bills.

The flat out lying is so distasteful. Musk is an inveterate liar.

But this scraping scenario (and the “dead Internet theory”) makes me wonder: Just how much new Internet content is on social media today (including video) vs on blogs, websites, forums…

[ChpBstrd]

Recall that Musk tried to get out of buying Twitter when he learned how many accounts were bots. The rationale was that there were a lot fewer actual eyeballs to advertise to, so when advertisers wise up to this fact they'll have less willingness to pay for Twitter ads.

Musk's problem with scraper bots might have a similar rationale. They may only account for a few accounts, but they could over time account for a large percentage of ad impressions, eroding the value of the ad platform.

[bacchi]

Recall that Musk tried to get out of buying Twitter when he learned how many accounts were bots. The rationale was that there were a lot fewer actual eyeballs to advertise to, so when advertisers wise up to this fact they'll have less willingness to pay for Twitter ads.

Musk's problem with scraper bots might have a similar rationale. They may only account for a few accounts, but they could over time account for a large percentage of ad impressions, eroding the value of the ad platform.

It's been a while but, from my web dev days, Google Ads is very good about not counting bots or crawlers as impressions. Looking at the server logs would show a LOT more hits then Google Ads would credit. I'm sure any other ad network is the same.

I doubt Google Ads is fooled by @ben947941 from a .ru source.

[MustacheAndaHalf]

Why should ChatGPT download TBs of data more than once? There is no profit in it, only cost.

Of course, as I said, they might scrape new data, but again that means every tweet get's read once. I don't know how many tweets are send each day, but I am sure on average each gets read at least a 100 times by human users.

Doesn't that ignore the cost of a software engineer to make the scraper avoid old data?  ChatGPT was created by OpenAI, which is located in San Francisco.  A quick search says the average software engineer in SF gets paid $20,000 per month.  Amazon Web Services charges $170/month per TB of bandwidth.  I suspect saving bandwidth is not a cost effective use of a software engineer's time.

A second problem - where is the "new data" section of Wikipedia?  I always see new content added to existing pages.  When you visit a page, you get everything together - the old data and new data.  It's not clear how you would scrape Wikipedia and only download new content.  There may be solutions for Reddit or Twitter, but those solutions require additional effort and testing by a software engineer paid $1,000 a day to save $170 per TB.

[MustacheAndaHalf]

I doubt Mr Musk lied and got Reddit to go along with it.  A simpler explanation is that both companies are feeling a surge in scraping.

Musk said hundreds of organizations or more were scraping Twitter data "extremely aggressively," affecting user experience.

https://cybernews.com/news/twitter-blocks-non-users-reading-tweets-ai-scraping/

Shortly, we will begin enforcing the previously announced, updated API rate limits

https://www.reddit.com/r/redditdev/comments/14nbw6g/updated_rate_limits_going_into_effect_over_the/


That said, Mr Musk is not a disinterested spectator of ChatGPT.  He provided a disputed amount of funding for OpenAI, which created ChatGPT.  There's a history there, so his attacks and lawsuits may have personal motives.

"We absolutely will take legal action against those who stole our data & look forward to seeing them in court, which is (optimistically) 2 to 3 years from now," he said.

https://cybernews.com/news/twitter-blocks-non-users-reading-tweets-ai-scraping/

Backstory about Musk and funding of OpenAI:
https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/17/elon-musk-used-to-say-he-put-100m-in-openai-but-now-its-50m-here-are-the-receipts/

[seattlecyclone]

A second problem - where is the "new data" section of Wikipedia?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:RecentChanges?hidebots=1&hidecategorization=1&hideWikibase=1&namespace=0&limit=500&days=30&urlversion=2

Dozens of pages edited every minute. It's truly a marvelous human achievement.

I always see new content added to existing pages.  When you visit a page, you get everything together - the old data and new data.  It's not clear how you would scrape Wikipedia and only download new content.  There may be solutions for Reddit or Twitter, but those solutions require additional effort and testing by a software engineer paid $1,000 a day to save $170 per TB.

How fresh do you want the data to be? How much CPU time do you want to burn? The crawling strategy matters. Using Wikipedia as an example you could just start at the main page, randomly follow links, and repeat indefinitely. You'll eventually get some version of all the pages in your database that way, but you'll be burning a lot of CPU time and bandwidth re-crawling pages where you already have the latest version. Simply tweak the amount of cloud resources up or down based on your budget and the average frequency of crawling each page will be adjusted accordingly.

If you want to make sure you have every page up to date within the past 24 hours, with the naive strategy you'll need to crawl every page on the entire site every day, and again most of the time it will be many hours before new changes show up in your data set. Change the crawler to follow the list of recent changes and you only need to crawl the pages that have changed today. Most won't be! And furthermore by using this data feed to queue up the recent changes you'll generally be able to pull in changes within a few minutes after they happen, for much fresher data. That's what you pay the software engineer for.