Discussion

• @mmasnick@mastodon.social Mike Masnick on mastodon

  Hey, look what's starting to trend over on the other site.

• @lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org Lauren Weinstein on mastodon

  Musk limiting the “For You” section of #Twitter to his pay-to-play blue accounts sounds like a fine idea to me.  I always found the timeline that wasn't restricted to users I chose to follow to be basically worthless. …

• @dangillmor@mastodon.social Dan Gillmor on mastodon

  That journalists continue to support Elon Musk should be astonishing.  What's incredibly sad is that it's just what you expect at this point.

• @mmasnick@mastodon.social Mike Masnick on mastodon

  @caseynewton @zoeschiffer fwiw, it looks like the main criteria for many of these is basically “does Elon like interacting with them”

• @caseynewton@mastodon.social Casey Newton on mastodon

  Every day is like “starting tomorrow only people who post ‘Elon is cool’ will be eligible to have their tweets appear in English” and the entire press corps and all of my friends continue to post there like nothing has changed

• @sharearea@mastodon.online @sharearea@mastodon.online on mastodon

  So pretty much on #Twitter you will be able to hide your #BlueCheck.. but you also get bumped up in replies and added to the #ForYou list...  ..technically making it bone easy to spot people wanting to obfuscate …

• @rodhilton@mastodon.social Rod Hilton on mastodon

  Nobody cool would pay for Twitter.  —  So on April 15th, every single user's For You feed becomes unreadable.  Literally, every single user's timeline is irreparably broken. …

• @hunterwalk@mastodon.cloud @hunterwalk@mastodon.cloud on mastodon

  @Techmeme The Real Twitter Files

• @mmasnick@mastodon.social Mike Masnick on mastodon

  HAHAHAHAH. @caseynewton and @zoeschiffer got Elon's secret “twitter accounts to boost” list and it is so bizarre.  —  Meanwhile, remember how Elon complained about the former folks doing this in secret? …

• @zoeschiffer @zoeschiffer on x

  New: For months, Twitter has maintained a list of VIP users, including LeBron James, Glenn Greenwald, Ben Shapiro, AOC, and Marc Andreessen, that it monitors and gives increased visibility to on the platform. 1/ https://www.platformer.news/ ...

• @mehdirhasan Mehdi Hasan on x

  “The secret list of Twitter VIPs getting boosted over everyone else” Oh the hypocrisy. And the ridiculous far-right account ‘Catturd’ is part of this? You cannot make this stuff up. https://www.platformer.news/ ...

• @islivingston Ian Livingston on x

  Stupidest website Elon is such an incel wannabe https://twitter.com/...

• @thelincoln Lincoln Michel on x

  So weird Taibbi didn't scoop this 🤔 https://twitter.com/...

• @stokel @stokel on x

  Oh look, a heating button to non-transparently manipulate the working of the algorithm that dictates what content we see. I'm sure this will be treated as a concern by everyone. https://twitter.com/...

• @notcapnamerica Chris Evans on x

  In case you were wondering why you keep seeing the same people on your timeline that you don't follow 👇🏾 https://twitter.com/...

• @boringstein @boringstein on x

  no, this is one of maybe the only instances of the musk era twitter knowing its audience— this is a near-perfectly curated list of accounts that can function as jangling keys in some form for 80% of twitter https://twitter.com/...

• @timodc Tim Miller on x

  Kinda self-defeating to lift Andreesen's tweets when he blocks more people than anyone else on this site. Maybe it's some kind of billionaire spite thing where Elon wants to tire out Marc's blocking finger. https://twitter.com/...

• @vanessa_abee @vanessa_abee on x

  shocked that matt taibbi missed this https://twitter.com/...

• @priyamvadagopal Priyamvada Gopal on x

  So much for ‘equalising’ and not privileging celebs https://twitter.com/...

• @scottjohnson Scott Johnson on x

  A kind of reverse Twitter files. https://twitter.com/...

• @teri_kanefield Teri Kanefield on x

  The VIP users stir strong emotions, which (as the Facebook whistleblower explained) increases engagement. More engagement = more $ I suspect that the future of social media is decentralized and federated. https://twitter.com/...

• @katie_roof Katie Roof on x

  I guess that's one way for @pmarca to get ROI on his investment https://twitter.com/...

• @edburmila Ed Burmila on x

  Free speech is when a billionaire manipulates a social media site to drive traffic to my substack https://twitter.com/...

• @banikarim Susie on x

  probably just a coincidence that there's only one woman on this list and it's a woman he's clearly desperate to impress. https://twitter.com/...

• @silvermanjacob Jacob Silverman on x

  That explains why Greenwald has 2m followers now. https://twitter.com/...

• @carnage4life Dare Obasanjo on x

  That Twitter artificially boosts the tweets of Ben Shapiro, AOC & Catturd2 is both hilarious and sad. https://www.platformer.news/ ...

• @wongmjane Jane Manchun Wong on x

  It's interesting how most of these people don't show up on my timelines (except those whom I follow) https://twitter.com/...

• @adhutchinson Andrew Hutchinson on x

  Particularly interesting to note the strong US bias in this list. Twitter has more US users than any other region, but they still only make up 17.5% of the platform's overall audience. The emphasis on US politics makes little sense for the majority of users. https://twitter.com/.…

• @caseynewton Casey Newton on x

  There's a secret list of Twitter VIPs whose accounts the company has been boosting over everyone else's. And @ZoeSchiffer got it. Congrats to Ben Shapiro, AOC, and ... LeBron? Subscribe to read: https://www.platformer.news/ ...

• @hunterw Hunter Walker on x

  So, basically, the exact kind of manipulations of viewership that conservatives have always complained was going on here is only really happening under Elon. https://twitter.com/...

• @lorakolodny Lora Kolodny on x

  among the favored vips - massive TSLA promoters, an investor in deals with Elon Musk, as well as content creators (jounalistish) featured on a platform run by another Musk friend & backer https://twitter.com/...

• @joshtpm Josh Marshall on x

  hmmm. Totally a cross section of people on Twitter. Lol https://twitter.com/...

• @trashtaeks @trashtaeks on x

  @ZoeSchiffer boost dril and only dril

• @edzitron Ed Zitron on x

  At least 5 people on this list have complained about biased algorithms https://twitter.com/...

• @daveleeft Dave Lee on x

  Twitter Files UPDATE https://twitter.com/...

• @oalexanderdk Oliver Alexander on x

  I thought that Musk was all about treating all users equally now? The fact that Glenn Greenwald and CatTurd are on the booster “VIP” list is equal parts hilarious and pathetic. https://twitter.com/...

• @kurtwagner8 Kurt Wagner on x

  Not shocked by this one. Twitter has long granted special treatment to VITs (very important tweeters), including better protection against trolls/abuse. It makes businesssense for the most famous people on Twitter to get more amplification than the rest of us https://twitter.com/…

• @jangles Neville Hobson on x

  What a manipulative #untrustworthy platform #Twitter is now turning out to be https://twitter.com/...

• @johnpaczkowski John Paczkowski on x

  They sure made short work of that “lords and peasants” system ... https://twitter.com/...

• @chrisfralic Chris Fralic on x

  Shadow Promoting https://twitter.com/...

• @mollymckew Molly McKew on x

  Twitter was powerful was bc real valuable information—from historians, revolutionaries, reformers, emergencies, issue experts, OSINT, what have you—could come from ground level & have breakthru influence Now it will just be another elite influence box crowding out real people /1 …