The Bane That Is Social Media

[LFC]

Gettr is dying an ugly death. It was bankrolled by Steve Bannon's close personal friend from China.

Employees recently laid off from Gettr—the so-called "free speech" site launched in July 2021 by Jason Miller, a previous adviser to former Republican President Donald Trump—are blaming the platform's key Chinese investor Guo Wengui for Gettr's recent instability.

Guo and his "hand-picked" chief technology officer, Joe Wang, have reportedly and repeatedly disagreed with Gettr's information technology and cybersecurity teams regarding the best ways to maintain and improve the site's security protocols, former employees told the Washington Examiner.

These clashes have occurred amid monetary issues, a "major restructuring" and resulting lay-offs among Gettr's online security and infrastructure teams, the publication added. At least 13 members of those teams—including the chief information officer and chief information security officer—have been removed from the platform since December 28, 2021.

The two officers were let go barely three months after they were first hired, according to former executives. The other team members haven't been replaced, "leaving the company vulnerable to online threats," the Examiner reported.

I like the description that it was run "like a high school operation."

Three former employees of social media platform Gettr said the pro-Trump site may be vulnerable to security threats after it laid off its entire IT and security teams on December 28, the Washington Examiner reported.

Thirteen staff members — including the company's chief information officer and chief information security officer — were laid off by Gettr less than three months after they were hired, the three former employees told the Examiner.

None of these employees were replaced, the Examiner reported, citing the three former employees.

"In all honesty, in all my years of doing cybersecurity, I've never seen a company this poorly run from business operations all the way to IT," a former top employee told the Examiner. "It looks like a high school operation."

[goldenvalley]

Feb 16, 2022 17:24:37 GMT LFC said:

Gettr is dying an ugly death. It was bankrolled by Steve Bannon's close personal friend from China.

I like the description that it was run "like a high school operation."

Three former employees of social media platform Gettr said the pro-Trump site may be vulnerable to security threats after it laid off its entire IT and security teams on December 28, the Washington Examiner reported.

Thirteen staff members — including the company's chief information officer and chief information security officer — were laid off by Gettr less than three months after they were hired, the three former employees told the Examiner.

None of these employees were replaced, the Examiner reported, citing the three former employees.

"In all honesty, in all my years of doing cybersecurity, I've never seen a company this poorly run from business operations all the way to IT," a former top employee told the Examiner. "It looks like a high school operation."

I'm sure the Devon Nunez run Trump social media stuff will be much better. 

[LFC]

This. Now excuse me while I hurl.

Employees of Meta, the freshly rebranded parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, have a new term to refer to themselves: Metamates.

During a virtual all-hands meeting at the company on Tuesday, according to Verge senior reporter Alex Heath, CEO Mark Zuckerberg rattled off a list of new corporate values that Meta will go by. One of the most important is the catchphrase “Meta, Metamates, me,” designating the order of importance by which Meta employees should rank their own interests vs. their colleagues’ and the company’s well-being. The Washington Post subsequently confirmed Heath’s account of the presentation.

Metamates—not to be confused with Metamucil, a fiber supplement for those experiencing gastrointestinal distress—will have some other new values moving forward. Zuckerberg told staffers that Meta’s directive to “move fast” is being extended to “move fast together,” “be bold” is now “build awesome things,” and that the values statement now includes a “focus on long term impact.” Facebook’s corporate value of “be open” is now “live in the future,” while “be direct and respect your colleagues” has been changed to... “be open.” Finally, Zuckerberg added, Meta staff should not “nice ourselves to death.”

These are the values, it should be said, that every Micronaut Megatron Metazoan Metamate will hold.

[pnwguy]

Meta is substantially responsible for the rise of MAGAmates, disinformation, and inane crap.

In the future United States of Trump, there will be a Zuckenberg Memorial along the Potomac. Oh wait, that will have been renamed the Ivanka River.

[LFC]

A reporter at TDB tested Gettr's free speech claim. Turns out rumors about their sugar daddy will get you banned really, really quickly.

In an attempt to test the claims that even so much as mentioning the allegations of Guo being a “spy” would result in a permanent suspension from the platform, The Daily Beast created six separate Gettr accounts critical of Guo over the past two weeks.

These accounts posted variations on the question of whether the platform’s billionaire benefactor is a “Chinese spy.” For example, one of the accounts asked, “Does Chinese spy Miles Guo fund Gettr?” It was banned from the platform just 19 minutes after its creation. “Guo a spy??” another Daily Beast-operated account asked in response to a post from the businessman.

All six accounts were promptly banned, with 83 minutes being the longest span of time a single critical post remained live. They were banned without notice of wrongdoing or explanation for the permanent suspensions.

Two other accounts were established to post only praise for the Gettr financier. “Mr. Guo. Thank you for your service to the United States,” wrote one such Daily Beast-operated account, which remains live on Gettr. “You are a brave man.” That same account also wrote: “Thank you, Mr. Guo. TAKE DOWN THE CCP!” Neither of the pro-Guo accounts were banned by Gettr.

[goldenvalley]

Feb 20, 2022 1:46:32 GMT LFC said:

A reporter at TDB tested Gettr's free speech claim. Turns out rumors about their sugar daddy will get you banned really, really quickly.

In an attempt to test the claims that even so much as mentioning the allegations of Guo being a “spy” would result in a permanent suspension from the platform, The Daily Beast created six separate Gettr accounts critical of Guo over the past two weeks.

These accounts posted variations on the question of whether the platform’s billionaire benefactor is a “Chinese spy.” For example, one of the accounts asked, “Does Chinese spy Miles Guo fund Gettr?” It was banned from the platform just 19 minutes after its creation. “Guo a spy??” another Daily Beast-operated account asked in response to a post from the businessman.

All six accounts were promptly banned, with 83 minutes being the longest span of time a single critical post remained live. They were banned without notice of wrongdoing or explanation for the permanent suspensions.

Two other accounts were established to post only praise for the Gettr financier. “Mr. Guo. Thank you for your service to the United States,” wrote one such Daily Beast-operated account, which remains live on Gettr. “You are a brave man.” That same account also wrote: “Thank you, Mr. Guo. TAKE DOWN THE CCP!” Neither of the pro-Guo accounts were banned by Gettr.

Miles Guo filed for bankruptcy.

Exiled Chinese billionaire and Steve Bannon ally Guo Wengui filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Tuesday days after a court ordered him to pay $134 million for attempting to avoid debt collection.

In the petition, Guo, who also goes by Miles Kwok and Kwok Ho Wan, claims that his debts are not consumer or business-related, rather “litigation expenses, claims and judgments.” His legal issues are rooted in a $30 million loan from the Pacific Alliance Asia Opportunity Fund that was never repaid.

Last week, a judge ruled that Guo had five days to pay a fine after arranging for a yacht to move out of the U.S. to the Bahamas despite a court order requiring that it remain in New York. Guo claims he doesn’t own the yacht, but if he didn’t pay the fine in time, he’d risk being arrested.

“I was given only five days after the verdict came out [to pay the fine],” Guo said in a video posted on GETTR, a social media site that he funds and is run by allies of former President Donald Trump. “How could I possibly accept this? Thus I have to apply for personal bankruptcy.”

Guo noted in the filing that he owes money to between 50 to 99 creditors. He estimates that his assets are currently worth between $50,000 and $100,000, while his liabilities range between $100 million and $500 million.

Really?  Did he go to the Trump University of financing business?

[LFC]

Apple's added user protection has cut enough into Facebook's tracking schemes that it's been noticed. I hope Android follows suit but I'm not holding my breath.

And all of those stories have a degree of truth. But the idea that Apple has hurt Facebook’s revenue in a direct and meaningful way seems the truest: Facebook says changes Apple made that affect how ads work on iOS apps — namely, that it’s now much harder for app-makers and advertisers to track user behavior — will cost it $10 billion in revenue this year.

For context: Facebook is still making an enormous amount of money from advertising — analyst Michael Nathanson estimates the company will generate $129 billion in ad revenue in 2022. But that would mean its ad business will only grow about 12 percent this year, compared to a 36 percent increase the previous year. Wall Street has prized Facebook for its ability to grow at a rocket velocity, and now that rocket may be sputtering.

What can Facebook do about it?

The background: The seeds for last week’s news were planted many months ago. In June of 2020, Apple announced changes to its mobile operating system that would give iPhone users a chance to tell app-makers not to follow them around the internet. That tracking system is the backbone of the internet’s advertising infrastructure, and you’re familiar with it even if you never think about it: It’s why, for instance, you see ads for shoes you’ve already looked at on Zappos when you’re visiting other sites. And in Facebook’s case, it’s crucial for finding people advertisers want to reach and, importantly, telling them what happens after those people see or interact with their ads.

A month later, Facebook began warning investors that those changes would hurt their ad business. The fight between the two companies got more intense after that, with both sides lobbing public attacks at each other.

While there were lots of signs that Apple’s change was in fact hurting Facebook’s ad sales, people in and out of the company also assumed that Facebook would figure out how to handle it because Facebook is a giant company flush with cash and bright engineers. And while Facebook continued to warn investors in its quarterly updates that Apple’s moves would be a problem, it used generic terms like “headwinds” when it did. More cynical observers wondered if Facebook was overplaying the problem in order to get sympathy from regulators looking to rein in Facebook’s power — or to get them to focus their attention on Apple, which is also under antitrust scrutiny.

Now Facebook is saying, in public, that Apple’s ad changes have been a really big deal, after all. The short version, as COO Sheryl Sandberg told investors last week: Facebook’s ad targeting became less accurate because it now knows less about its users. Which means Facebook advertisers have to spend more money in the hope of reaching people on iPhones — and that Facebook advertisers, who had been used to measuring the effectiveness of their campaigns down to the penny, now have to make much-less-informed guesses about whether their ad dollars are working

Another way of putting it, via Alex Austin, the CEO of Branch, a company that helps advertisers figure out how their campaigns are working: After Apple introduced its anti-tracking changes in the spring of 2021, advertisers who used Branch’s services to measure paid ads on iOS dropped by 20 percent. Instead, Branch customers spent more time using the company’s services that track “organic” marketing campaigns using tools like email, and on services for advertisers who used Google’s Android phones — where those anti-tracking measures don’t exist. “It’s clear that the market is still figuring out how to handle [Apple’s new rules] on iOS, and shifting focus to Android and organic channels on iOS,” he told Recode.

[goldenvalley]

Trump Social Media not getting off to a good start:

His long-promised social network, Truth Social, has been almost entirely inaccessible in the first days of its grand debut because of technical glitches, a 13-hour outage and a 300,000-person waitlist.

--snip--

But early glimpses at Truth Social suggest its offerings are almost identical to what Twitter and other sites have offered for years — except tweets are called “truths,” and retweets “retruths.” The site’s early struggles also have fueled doubts that Trump’s company will be able to handle tougher long-term challenges, such as policing for dangerous content and guarding against cyberattacks.

“The basic thing they needed to actually get right, to get someone in the door, they couldn’t get right,” said Bill Fitzgerald, a privacy researcher. The “ineptitude of the rollout,” he added, could be a warning of future issues ahead: “There is no better sign of a rushed implementation than the fact that you can’t onboard anybody. So I’m hard-pressed to understand why anyone would trust that these people would keep their information safe.”

And oops!

The site’s problems extend beyond its waitlist: Its logo — a broken capital 'T' with a period — is identical to the logo of Trailar, a British seller of truck solar panels. A company executive told The Washington Post that it is “seeking legal advice to understand next steps and options available to protect our brand.

[LFC]

I can't get to the WaPo story on Truth Social's hideously bad debut but this article has details as well. Remember that the CEO is Devin Nunes and apparently any mentions of "Devin Nunes's Cow" in this beautiful free speech world earn instant banishment.

Don’t make fun of Devin Nunes or his cow

Created by the Trump Media & Technology Group, Truth Social claims to be a haven for free speech. "Truth Social is America's 'Big Tent' social media platform that encourages an open, free, and honest global conversation without discriminating against political ideology," the homepage says.

But if you don't want to be banned from Truth Social, you should steer clear of making jokes about CEO Nunes, a former US Representative. Web developer Matt Ortega created a Truth Social account called "@devinnunescow" and says he was banned before he even posted anything. "This is censorship," Ortega wrote on Twitter. The @devinnunescow account name is a reference to the satirical "@devincow" Twitter account, which gained a big following after Nunes sued it for defamation in 2019.

Mashable explained what happened with the attempt to create a Nunes parody account on Truth Social:

Web developer Matt Ortega signed up for the Truth Social service and soon discovered an email from Truth Social telling him that his account had been banned. Ortega confirmed the authenticity of the email and ban in a private message to Mashable.

Furthermore, Ortega had never posted a single thing to Truth Social as his account was one of the many still on the waitlist to join. Ortega was banned simply because of the username he used to sign up for the platform: @devinnunescow.

Ortega is not involved with the original @devincow Twitter account. He did try to create a @devincow handle on Truth Social but said he found that the username "is already unavailable or blocked."

[pnwguy]

Feb 24, 2022 19:19:01 GMT LFC said:

I can't get to the WaPo story on Truth Social's hideously bad debut but this article has details as well. Remember that the CEO is Devin Nunes and apparently any mentions of "Devin Nunes's Cow" in this beautiful free speech world earn instant banishment.

Don’t make fun of Devin Nunes or his cow

Created by the Trump Media & Technology Group, Truth Social claims to be a haven for free speech. "Truth Social is America's 'Big Tent' social media platform that encourages an open, free, and honest global conversation without discriminating against political ideology," the homepage says.

But if you don't want to be banned from Truth Social, you should steer clear of making jokes about CEO Nunes, a former US Representative. Web developer Matt Ortega created a Truth Social account called "@devinnunescow" and says he was banned before he even posted anything. "This is censorship," Ortega wrote on Twitter. The @devinnunescow account name is a reference to the satirical "@devincow" Twitter account, which gained a big following after Nunes sued it for defamation in 2019.

Mashable explained what happened with the attempt to create a Nunes parody account on Truth Social:


Ortega is not involved with the original @devincow Twitter account. He did try to create a @devincow handle on Truth Social but said he found that the username "is already unavailable or blocked."

How much do you want to bet that "putinsbitch" is also a blocked profile handle?

[goldenvalley]

More on Truth Social...this reporter signed up for it.

The site promises a safe space for “free expression,” encouraging of “all viewpoints,” according to the welcome email, “as we do not discriminate against political ideology.” But inside the app, digital tumbleweeds blew through my feed. The site is a bit slow, and a bit empty. Its stalled roll-out, led by Devin Nunes, the Trump supporter and former Republican congressman from California, has become a source of frustration and confusion in MAGA-world, according to my colleague Meridith McGraw. Republican lawmakers like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz and Kevin McCarthy already have accounts and appear to be posting similar or identical content to both Truth Social and Twitter, along with right-leaning platforms like Gettr and Parler. (Apparently, no one is quite ready to turn their backs on an actual audience yet.) But when they do finally get their welcome emails, the thousands of regular Trump fans still waiting in line, eager for their chance to search for truth, will find a Twitter knock-off with no immediately discernible improvement on the original — a vanity project that has yet to prove its utility.

Put simply, there isn’t much happening on the site.

After setting up my profile under my name, a list of suggested users appeared on the screen: Donald Trump held the number one spot, followed by pages for Truth Social, the NFL, USA Military News, the Daily Mail, Sean Hannity, Kyle Rittenhouse and an account for paranormal news and discussion.

Scrolling down, I saw ordinary users and trolls on the list: @creepyjeffbezos, @hypocritetrudeau, @fakehunterbiden (bio: “Celebrating Hunter Biden’s love for art, prostitutes, and laptops”).

Not much action on this site.

Dan Scavino, Trump’s former deputy chief of staff, appears to be one of the most active users on the site, with 74 Truths and counting. At the bottom of his feed, his first post on the site, published about two weeks ago, showed a picture of a blood-red wave crashing violently on the sea. Above a row of emojis — red heart, white heart, blue heart, American flag, flying eagle — Scavino wrote, “THERE ARE MORE OF US — THAN THERE ARE OF THEM!”

Around 10 a.m., I Truthed my first Truth.

“Anybody out there?” I wrote.

By the end of the day, no one had responded.

[goldenvalley]

WaPo reports that Facebook hired a consulting firm used by Republicans to push a campaign against TikTok.  

Facebook parent company Meta is paying one of the biggest Republican consulting firms in the country to orchestrate a nationwide campaign seeking to turn the public against TikTok.

The campaign includes placing op-eds and letters to the editor in major regional news outlets, promoting dubious stories about alleged TikTok trends that actually originated on Facebook, and pushing to draw political reporters and local politicians into helping take down its biggest competitor. These bare-knuckle tactics, long commonplace in the world of politics, have become increasingly noticeable within a tech industry where companies vie for cultural relevance and come at a time when Facebook is under pressure to win back young users.

Employees with the firm, Targeted Victory, worked to undermine TikTok through a nationwide media and lobbying campaign portraying the fast-growing app, owned by the Beijing-based company ByteDance, as a danger to American children and society, according to internal emails shared with The Washington Post.

Targeted Victory needs to “get the message out that while Meta is the current punching bag, TikTok is the real threat especially as a foreign owned app that is #1 in sharing data that young teens are using,” a director for the firm wrote in a February email.

I'm not sure why it's relevant that Targeted Victory works for mostly Republican concerns.  This is one of those editorial choices that I don't understand.  It really adds nothing to the story except injecting a partisan tweak to it.  As for the consulting company...I'm sure if you pay enough they'll want to work with you.  Capitalism and all that.

[LFC]

The rats are leaving the TS (Trump Ship) Truth Social.

Two top executives at former President Donald Trump’s social media site Truth Social have quit as the company faces a lackluster number of users and plummeting signups, Reuters reports. Josh Adams and Billy Boozer, who headed up the right-wing platform’s technology and product development, have both left after joining the struggling company last year. The platform’s rollout was bumpy from the start, with users running into glitches and errors when it dropped on Apple’s App Store in February. Since its launch, app downloads have gone from a high of 170,000 downloads a day to a mere 8,000. On Sunday, MAGA ally Roger Stone accused the app of censoring him after it applied a “sensitive content” warning to his post that said, “Trump also warns again a growing threat of terrorism by radical Islam mix in the predicted the 9/11 attack.” “Why would this be censored content on TruthSocial?” he wondered, later claiming to The Daily Beast that the content flag was nothing more than “a glitch.”

Here's another piece from TDB on Truth Social, the app that was going to take down Twitter ... or something like that.

[indy]

A Trump venture failed? I can't believe it.

[pnwguy]

Apr 4, 2022 20:17:55 GMT indy said:

A Trump venture failed? I can't believe it.

Trump HIMSELF never fails.  He has sometimes selected individuals that turn out to be WEAK or INCOMPETENT, but he NEVER knew that in advance.  THEY have failed HIM.  Trump's vision and leadership was always flawless.

[goldenvalley]

It seems that Trump's most successful product is Trump, the man. 

ETA More details on the latest Trump venture. There was a third person who resigned too, Lori Heyer-Benar.

Trump’s frustration comes as the site has struggled mightily upon launch, with low traffic and persistent tech glitches. It is also now suffering from personnel issues too — neither Adams nor Heyer-Bednar list their job titles with Truth Social on their personal profiles, despite previously having listed it.

Not terribly important, but kinda funny.

[LFC]

Elon Musk bought 9.2% of Twitter and was just named to their board.

[LFC]

Trump is unhappy that Truth Social is failing.

Behind closed doors, tensions are rising as Trump is reportedly not pleased with the app's progress. Insiders familiar with the situation recently spoke to The Post under the condition of anonymity saying, "Trump has privately fumed about the app’s slow rollout and has mused about joining other platforms such as Gettr."

Devin Nunes, the former California lawmaker who gave up the congressional seat that he'd held nearly two decades to run the social media company, has also struggled with its rollout. Although he initially said, the platform would be “'fully operational' by the end of March," The Post reports that it "has been hamstrung by technical issues, including a waiting list that has blocked hundreds of thousands of potential users during its crucial first weeks online."

CEO Devin Nunes goes full metal Baghdad Bob (or Kevin Bacon in "Animal House").

In a new interview on Fox Business, former Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), now the CEO of former President Donald Trump's new social media platform "Truth Social," proudly proclaimed that his website is overtaking Twitter, which he says is now a "ghost town."

Nunes resigned his seat in Congress to take the position heading up the company.

"There’s not very much activity over at Twitter right now, especially when you compare it to sites like ours, where we’re just in our beginning stages as we continue to test and bring people on day by day," Nunes told anchor Maria Bartiromo.

To be fair there has been very little activity from Trump on Twitter for a long time.

[indy]

Apr 7, 2022 20:52:03 GMT LFC said:

Trump is unhappy that Truth Social is failing.

Behind closed doors, tensions are rising as Trump is reportedly not pleased with the app's progress. Insiders familiar with the situation recently spoke to The Post under the condition of anonymity saying, "Trump has privately fumed about the app’s slow rollout and has mused about joining other platforms such as Gettr."

Devin Nunes, the former California lawmaker who gave up the congressional seat that he'd held nearly two decades to run the social media company, has also struggled with its rollout. Although he initially said, the platform would be “'fully operational' by the end of March," The Post reports that it "has been hamstrung by technical issues, including a waiting list that has blocked hundreds of thousands of potential users during its crucial first weeks online."

CEO Devin Nunes goes full metal Baghdad Bob (or Kevin Bacon in "Animal House").

In a new interview on Fox Business, former Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), now the CEO of former President Donald Trump's new social media platform "Truth Social," proudly proclaimed that his website is overtaking Twitter, which he says is now a "ghost town."

Nunes resigned his seat in Congress to take the position heading up the company.

"There’s not very much activity over at Twitter right now, especially when you compare it to sites like ours, where we’re just in our beginning stages as we continue to test and bring people on day by day," Nunes told anchor Maria Bartiromo.

To be fair there has been very little activity from Trump on Twitter for a long time.

I signed up as Devin Nunes' Cow's Calf and was banned in 20 minutes. Go figure.

[goldenvalley]

I almost put this in humor but it's too grim for that. This is the text from a tweet.

Twitter such a madhouse right now. You can have five followers and zero credibility but if you post a photo of a dolphin with the caption BREAKING: Uruguay to deliver a battalion of tactical sharks with lasers to Ukraine you'll get 25,000 retweets and a newspaper column.

Marcel Dirsus (@marceldirsus) April 11, 2022

[Bact PhD]

Apr 5, 2022 18:55:18 GMT LFC said:

Elon Musk bought 9.2% of Twitter and was just named to their board.

The plot thickens. Not only did the deal with Musk getting a seat on the board get called off, Musk has announced his intention to engage in a hostile takeover.


www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/04/14/elon-musk-twitter-takeover-bid/

Elon Musk has launched a hostile takeover bid of Twitter — promising to unlock its “extraordinary potential” as a private company — in the latest twist in a stunning multiweek saga.

In a securities filing dated Wednesday, the billionaire tech CEO proposed $54.20 a share for the social media giant, calling it his “best and final offer. If it is not accepted, he added, “I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder.”

In a letter addressed to Twitter Chairman Bret Taylor, Musk said he invested in the company because of its “potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe." Free speech is a “societal imperative for a functioning democracy,” he added.

[LFC]

In a securities filing dated Wednesday, the billionaire tech CEO proposed $54.20 a share for the social media giant, calling it his “best and final offer. If it is not accepted, he added, “I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder.”

So take my offer or I'm going dump over 9% of the companies stock onto the market at once and tank the price. Nice.

[LFC]

Truth Social sinks even lower in its desperation to matter. Devin continues to perform as expected.

Donald Trump's social media platform, Truth Social, could really use a win right now. Downloads of the app are way down, two major tech executives recently left the company. Even Trump himself is refusing to use his own social network until things get better.

And, earlier this week, it looked like that much-needed win for Truth Social and its parent company, Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), had arrived: Fox News officially joined the platform.

Or so everyone thought. It turns out even that has turned out to be a major bust for Truth Social. According to Fox News, the verified @foxnews account on Trump's social network does not belong to the company.

A Fox News spokesperson would not comment beyond confirming to Mashable that the network is not on Truth Social.

[goldenvalley]

Apr 14, 2022 19:32:05 GMT LFC said:

Truth Social sinks even lower in its desperation to matter. Devin continues to perform as expected.

Donald Trump's social media platform, Truth Social, could really use a win right now. Downloads of the app are way down, two major tech executives recently left the company. Even Trump himself is refusing to use his own social network until things get better.

And, earlier this week, it looked like that much-needed win for Truth Social and its parent company, Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), had arrived: Fox News officially joined the platform.

Or so everyone thought. It turns out even that has turned out to be a major bust for Truth Social. According to Fox News, the verified @foxnews account on Trump's social network does not belong to the company.

A Fox News spokesperson would not comment beyond confirming to Mashable that the network is not on Truth Social.

Ach! the schadenfreude is delicious....

[Bact PhD]

Apr 14, 2022 15:25:55 GMT LFC said:

In a securities filing dated Wednesday, the billionaire tech CEO proposed $54.20 a share for the social media giant, calling it his “best and final offer. If it is not accepted, he added, “I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder.”

So take my offer or I'm going dump over 9% of the companies stock onto the market at once and tank the price. Nice.

Twitter won’t go down without a fight, inserting a “poison pill.”

www.npr.org/2022/04/15/1093077611/twitter-board-poison-pill-elon-musk

This is an interesting analysis regarding whether this is “for real,” or a bunch of posturing:

"The poison pill puts a temporary roadblock in front of Musk going forward," said corporate governance expert Edward Rock, who teaches at New York University's School of Law.

[snip]

Rock, … said Musk will show he is serious about buying Twitter if one of two things happens: He shows how exactly he plans on financing the takeover, since Musk did not reveal that in his Securities and Exchange Commission filing, or he launches a proxy contest to try to replace members of Twitter's board in response to the poison pill plan.

"Absent that, he's not going to acquire the company," Rock said. "And people can just write it off like some of his other Twitter storms."