The Bane That Is Social Media

[LFC]

Gizmodo has the Facebook Papers up and available. I didn't go through them but the employees clearly knew what going on and how Facebook was key to helping the right-wing sedition pipeline that eventually lead to the Jan 6 Republican Insurrection.

In the hours following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, employees at Facebook tasked with preventing “potential offline harm” found themselves under siege by a mob of a different sort. Reports of abusive content from users were flooding in. As one employee put it in an internal forum, many of the flagged posts “called for violence, suggested the overthrow of the government would be desirable, or otherwise voiced support for the protests.” The same day, Instagram employees reported that there were “no existing” protections against an onslaught of inciting content in places like the app’s list of most widely used hashtags.

Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer called on his staff to “Hang in there.” In response, employees began to openly accuse the company of fomenting the insurrection. One wrote, “We’ve been fueling this fire for a long time and we shouldn’t be surprised it’s now out of control.”

“Schrep, employees are tired of ‘thoughts and prayers’ from leadership,” another response read. “We want action.”

Screenshots of Meta employees’ reactions to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot were part of the Facebook Papers, a trove of documents that offer an unprecedented look inside the most powerful social media company in the world. The records were first provided to Congress last year by Frances Haugen, a Facebook product manager-turned-whistleblower, and later obtained by hundreds of journalists, including those at Gizmodo. Haugen testified before Congress about Facebook’s harms in October 2021.

[pnwguy]

Apr 18, 2022 16:25:47 GMT LFC said:

Gizmodo has the Facebook Papers up and available. I didn't go through them but the employees clearly knew what going on and how Facebook was key to helping the right-wing sedition pipeline that eventually lead to the Jan 6 Republican Insurrection.

In the hours following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, employees at Facebook tasked with preventing “potential offline harm” found themselves under siege by a mob of a different sort. Reports of abusive content from users were flooding in. As one employee put it in an internal forum, many of the flagged posts “called for violence, suggested the overthrow of the government would be desirable, or otherwise voiced support for the protests.” The same day, Instagram employees reported that there were “no existing” protections against an onslaught of inciting content in places like the app’s list of most widely used hashtags.

Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer called on his staff to “Hang in there.” In response, employees began to openly accuse the company of fomenting the insurrection. One wrote, “We’ve been fueling this fire for a long time and we shouldn’t be surprised it’s now out of control.”

“Schrep, employees are tired of ‘thoughts and prayers’ from leadership,” another response read. “We want action.”

Screenshots of Meta employees’ reactions to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot were part of the Facebook Papers, a trove of documents that offer an unprecedented look inside the most powerful social media company in the world. The records were first provided to Congress last year by Frances Haugen, a Facebook product manager-turned-whistleblower, and later obtained by hundreds of journalists, including those at Gizmodo. Haugen testified before Congress about Facebook’s harms in October 2021.

Thanks Zuck! Money and power seems to make anyone into a fascist over time. But if you have that orientation from an early age, the rise is that much faster.

[LFC]

If Musk gets his crazy hands on Twitter how long do you think bans like this will last?

witter is banning misleading advertisements that go against the scientific consensus of climate change, the company announced on Friday, which was Earth Day.

"We believe that climate denialism shouldn't be monetized on Twitter, and that misrepresentative ads shouldn't detract from important conversations about the climate crisis," Twitter said in a blog post.

Those denying the effects of climate change have targeted sites such as Twitter and Facebook, enabling them to reach hundreds and thousands of those platforms' users with false claims.

The announced change did not indicate whether Twitter would ban or delete the accounts of users who post climate change misinformation.

Twitter's blog post cited the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose recent report called for "immediate and deep emissions reductions" to combat the impacts of global warming.

The tech giant said it is working toward adding more "reliable, authoritative context" to conversations about the climate on its platform.

[goldenvalley]

Apr 25, 2022 14:48:11 GMT LFC said:

If Musk gets his crazy hands on Twitter how long do you think bans like this will last?

witter is banning misleading advertisements that go against the scientific consensus of climate change, the company announced on Friday, which was Earth Day.

"We believe that climate denialism shouldn't be monetized on Twitter, and that misrepresentative ads shouldn't detract from important conversations about the climate crisis," Twitter said in a blog post.

Those denying the effects of climate change have targeted sites such as Twitter and Facebook, enabling them to reach hundreds and thousands of those platforms' users with false claims.

The announced change did not indicate whether Twitter would ban or delete the accounts of users who post climate change misinformation.

Twitter's blog post cited the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose recent report called for "immediate and deep emissions reductions" to combat the impacts of global warming.

The tech giant said it is working toward adding more "reliable, authoritative context" to conversations about the climate on its platform. 

They won't.  The misinformation will increase, the bots will spread it far and wide.  Will it drive people out of Twitter?  

And what single person has enough money to buy a multi-billion dollar company?  We're back to the Gilded Age here folks.

[LFC]

More details on the possible sale and where Musk got his funding.

Any moment now, a deal between between Twitter’s 11-member board and Elon Musk could be announced. The news of how real this deal could be comes from an unspecified number of anonymous sources in a report by Reuters and two unnamed sources in a report out from The New York Times. Or maybe this all could still be a troll, trolling. After all, if you’re the richest man in the history of the world, why not spend more than $43 billion on a bad joke.

Although the deal is unconfirmed, both the Times and Reuters reported that sources tell them a deal could be finalized and made public later today. First, the board has to recommend the sale to Twitter’s shareholders. But the deal could certainly still fall through. As of writing this, neither Twitter nor Musk have responded to Gizmodo’s request for comment.

If Musk makes the purchase, Twitter would no longer be a publicly traded company, but instead, private. Musk’s vying to purchase the social media company as an individual, and not through Tesla or SpaceX, reported Reuters.

Musk first announced his offer to buy the social media company at around $54.20 per share on April 14. Since then, he’s demonstrated that he does, in fact, have the capital to back the offer, with about $46.5 billion in liquid funds supported by his own direct assets as well as financing from Morgan Stanley Senior Funding, Bank of America, Barclays, Citibank, and others.

[LFC]

SOLD!!!

The company will be taken private.

[LFC]

From the Department of "Yeah. Sure."

As news of Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s buyout of Twitter broke on Monday, former President Trump declared that he remains loyal to his “TRUTH Social” app even if his defunct Twitter account is reinstated by the world’s richest person.

On Monday afternoon, Twitter announced that its board accepted an offer from Musk to buy the platform for $44 billion.

Speaking to Fox News on Monday shortly before Twitter’s announcement, Trump — who has only made one post on his own TRUTH Social app thus far — claimed that he will officially join his own app in the form of actually posting on it over the course of the next week.

“I am not going on Twitter, I am going to stay on TRUTH,” Trump told Fox News.

Trump quipped that he had hoped Musk would buy Twitter because the billionaire would “make improvements” and is a “good man,” while reiterating that he will begin “TRUTHing” sometime next week.

Much like former congressman and TRUTH Social CEO Devin Nunes’ recent remarks, Trump claimed that TRUTH is faring better than Twitter, despite … evidence to the contrary.

“Twitter has bots and fake accounts, and we are doing everything we can,” Trump said.

“The bottom line is, no, I am not going back to Twitter,” the former president continued.

[AnBr]

[LFC]

Devin Nunes, in a desperate bid to keep his CEO job, begged Faux folks to join TRUTH. It was about a pathetic display of groveling and boot licking as you'd expect.

A mere day after insisting that he and former President Trump aren’t sweating billionaire Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, former GOP congressman and TRUTH Social CEO Devin Nunes on Tuesday made a desperate plea for Fox News hosts to start posting to Trump’s off-brand Twitter.

Appearing on “Fox and Friends,” Nunes said he was “excited” that that the network has joined Truth Social and claimed the Fox News account is gaining followers “very quickly.”

Nunes then used his air time to beg the hosts to “send some TRUTHs out” to get more followers now that the glitch-plagued app — which has struggled to gain traction — apparently became fully functional as of last Saturday.

“We cannot be canceled by any tech tyrants. But also, Brian, you’re on TRUTH. We need you to TRUTH,” Nunes said to “Fox and Friends” host Brian Kilmeade, referring to the word the Trump app has decided use for “posting” on the social media site.

Nunes continued pleading with the hosts to join the app by singling out host Steve Doocy.

“But Doocy — I got to talk to him. He’s got to turn his phone on and click on the app, he’s been let in,” Nunes said, before joking that perhaps Doocy hasn’t been on the app due to bots.

“We are trying to keep the bots off so it could be concerned about Doocy’s legitimacy,” Nunes said.

"Doocy's legitimacy?" Now THERE's an oxymoron. Actually a moron AND an oxymoron.

[pnwguy]

Devin doesn't want to become Nunes Cow-pie when Truth stops being the manure-spreader of choice.

[goldenvalley]

Apr 26, 2022 18:42:37 GMT pnwguy said:

Devin doesn't want to become Nunes Cow-pie when Truth stops being the mature-spreader of choice.

He might be sorry he resigned from Congress.  On the other hand, the district he once served has different boundaries now.  I don't know that the new one will be as safe for him as the old one was.  Remember CA lost a congressional seat so boundaries had to change and the number of people within each district must be equal (or very close).

[pnwguy]

If your name isn't Trump (or Kuschner), to get in on The Big Grift you have to hustle on your own in the GOP. But it's already crowded in the MTG/Gaetz/Boebert/Gosar executive board of Lunatic, Inc. Given Nunes' redistricting woes, Truth Social looked like a way to keep the con going. But he should have seen the Trump business empire track record and high tailed it to a lobbying gig. Putin could have sent some clients his way.

[LFC]

Josh Marshall discusses what Musk might do to Twitter but a major point here is that a private space like Twitter or Facebook is NOT the public square. It's private, under private control, and people need to understand that.

But here’s my perhaps-a-bit-bleak optimistic take on all this. People are worried because they believe Musk has purchased what amounts to the digital town square and plans to make it safe again (Make It Great Again?) for those who want to menace trans people, run ivermectin scams, propagate Trump’s Big Lie or “just ask questions” about the racial heritability of intelligence. I suspect it will be more mixed than people fear. But at least the exchange I noted above would suggest it will be that bad and worse. But here’s the thing. In the long running conversation about the platforms and free speech and the town square there’s been a viewpoint that Facebook or Twitter really is the public square and our goal must be to manage them so there is a corporatized version of “free speech” but also restrictions about what a public corporation has a responsibility not to propagate. The platforms themselves, Facebook especially, have really embraced this idea. And not surprisingly. It’s great to literally own the town square, have unassailable control over its Board of Directors and have government and all societal stakeholders buy into that belief.

But it’s not true.

This whole move to faux-civic-ize the platforms is wrongheaded. They’re not the public square. The actual digital public square is the open Internet. Facebook is a private company that makes untold billions of dollars by selling ads against digitally manipulated “engagement.” Twitter is the same. They just manage not to make money. That’s why it’s never really about “free speech” because the whole thing is really about algorithms that make certain kinds of speech more visible than others and do it for profit. So Facebook makes money by doing that. That’s what it is. Twitter somehow manages not to make money by doing that. But same difference.

Anything that bloodies up the idea that these company spaces are the public square is thus a good thing. If Musk really is the Lex Luthor comic book villain people make him out to be (and which he really may be) I’m ready to see him treat Twitter like his own maniacal toy because he bought it and therefore he can. That’s good because it will be more clear that Twitter is not the public square. It’s a company impersonating the public square that a nasty person can buy. If people flee to other sites or find ways to operate around his malevolence I’m ready for that. That’s why my reaction to this is just as much “let it burn” as “oh no.” Probably a bit more so.

[LFC]

Elon Musk: "By "free speech," I simply mean that which matches the law. I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law."

In other words if he gets his way Twitter will become more of a cesspool. Here comes mainstream 4chan / 8chan!

In the meantime he's trying to get the SEC to let him out of the settlement he agreed to.

A federal judge has rejected Tesla CEO Elon Musk's attempt to get out of a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission that requires Tesla to impose limits on Musk's social media statements.

The judge also rejected Musk's request to quash portions of an SEC subpoena that seeks documents related to whether he got pre-approval before posting a recent tweet about Tesla stock sales. The ruling against Musk was issued Wednesday by Judge Lewis Liman in US District Court for the Southern District of New York.

"Musk was not forced to enter into the consent decree" with the SEC, and he "cannot now seek to retract the agreement he knowingly and willingly entered by simply bemoaning that he felt like he had to agree to it at the time but now—once the specter of the litigation is a distant memory and his company has become, in his estimation, all but invincible—wishes that he had not," Liman wrote. The judge also called Musk's claim that the SEC is harassing him "meritless."

Musk and Tesla settled with the SEC in 2018 after Musk claimed on Twitter that he had secured funding to take Tesla private. The SEC said Musk hadn't actually secured funding and that his misleading tweets caused significant market disruption. In addition to the social media controls, Musk and Tesla each agreed to pay $20 million in penalties to settle the lawsuit.

Last month, Musk asked the court to terminate the settlement, claiming that the SEC is using the consent decree to "micro-manage" his Twitter activity, that he was "forced" into signing the deal, and that his "First Amendment freedoms are imperiled." Musk and Tesla also claimed the SEC "has been weaponizing the consent decree by using it to try to muzzle and harass Mr. Musk and Tesla."

[pnwguy]

Apr 28, 2022 20:20:45 GMT LFC said:

Elon Musk: "By "free speech," I simply mean that which matches the law. I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law."

In other words if he gets his way Twitter will become more of a cesspool. Here comes mainstream 4chan / 8chan!

In the meantime he's trying to get the SEC to let him out of the settlement he agreed to.

A federal judge has rejected Tesla CEO Elon Musk's attempt to get out of a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission that requires Tesla to impose limits on Musk's social media statements.

The judge also rejected Musk's request to quash portions of an SEC subpoena that seeks documents related to whether he got pre-approval before posting a recent tweet about Tesla stock sales. The ruling against Musk was issued Wednesday by Judge Lewis Liman in US District Court for the Southern District of New York.

"Musk was not forced to enter into the consent decree" with the SEC, and he "cannot now seek to retract the agreement he knowingly and willingly entered by simply bemoaning that he felt like he had to agree to it at the time but now—once the specter of the litigation is a distant memory and his company has become, in his estimation, all but invincible—wishes that he had not," Liman wrote. The judge also called Musk's claim that the SEC is harassing him "meritless."

Musk and Tesla settled with the SEC in 2018 after Musk claimed on Twitter that he had secured funding to take Tesla private. The SEC said Musk hadn't actually secured funding and that his misleading tweets caused significant market disruption. In addition to the social media controls, Musk and Tesla each agreed to pay $20 million in penalties to settle the lawsuit.

Last month, Musk asked the court to terminate the settlement, claiming that the SEC is using the consent decree to "micro-manage" his Twitter activity, that he was "forced" into signing the deal, and that his "First Amendment freedoms are imperiled." Musk and Tesla also claimed the SEC "has been weaponizing the consent decree by using it to try to muzzle and harass Mr. Musk and Tesla."

Elon just needs to BUY the SEC.  The next GOP president will surely let him.

[Bact PhD]

I didn’t know whether to put this analysis here or somewhere in “Economics.” In the estimation of this author, the math doesn’t add up to make the bid successful.

www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/05/02/elon-musk-twitter-financing-flawed/

It’s hard to imagine a megadeal that better captures the absurdity of the era in American finance than Elon Musk’s ploy for Twitter.

The only plot twist making for a better tale of speculative excess would be if Musk, a crypto evangelist, had arranged to pay in bitcoin.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict that we will come to see this deal as a market top, when sky-high valuations and over-indebtedness reach a convulsive crescendo in a megadeal driven by hype, overconfidence and ego. In many respects, it is reminiscent of AOL’s disastrous takeover of Time Warner two months before the massive tech and telecom bubble burst in the spring of 2000.

At some point in the not-too-distant future — once the hype has finally drained from the tech-crazy stock market and defaults start to roil the overleveraged credit markets, once housing prices fall back to earth and the crypto fantasy is dispelled, once we’ve settled into an extended period of stagflation — people will look back at this moment and say, “What were they smoking.”

Elon Musk is worth $270 billion. He’d buy Twitter with an IOU.
Let’s put aside for a moment the overwrought debate about freedom of speech and content moderation and unpack the bubbly financial details of this transaction. For while Musk may be the world’s “richest” person, at least on paper, $44 billion may be a stretch even for him.

[LFC]

As part of its SEC filings Twitter noted that it may experience a loss of key personnel due to Musk's acquisition.

Twitter warned that it may lose key employees and have difficulty hiring during the period before it closes its $44 billion sale to Elon Musk. Twitter also warned that it could have trouble keeping advertisers on board.

"During the period prior to the closing of the merger, our business is exposed to certain inherent risks and certain restrictions on our business under the terms of the Merger Agreement that could harm our business relationships, financial condition, operating results, cash flows, and business," Twitter said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Monday.

Twitter's stated list of risks includes "whether advertisers continue their spending on our platform" and "our inability to attract and retain key personnel and recruit prospective employees, and the possibility that our current employees could be distracted, and their productivity decline as a result, due to uncertainty regarding the merger."

"[W]e may experience a departure of employees, prior to the closing of the merger," Twitter's filing also said. While this type of filing lists many risks of varying likelihood, Twitter's concerns about keeping and hiring employees come amid reports of employee discontent about Musk buying the company. Twitter CEO "Parag Agrawal sought to quell employee anger on Friday during a company-wide meeting where employees demanded answers to how managers planned to handle an anticipated mass exodus prompted by Elon Musk," Reuters reported.

Twitter's SEC filing also warned that possible litigation could "prevent consummation of the merger" and that "f the merger is not consummated for any reason, litigation could be filed in connection with the failure to consummate the merger."

[Bact PhD]

And yet another plot twist in The Misadventures of Elon and Twitter:

www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/musk-says-twitter-deal-temporarily-hold-report-fake-accounts-rcna28675

There's another twist in the Twitter deal.

Elon Musk said early Friday that his plan to buy the social media company was "temporarily on hold" over a report of fake accounts on the platform, later adding that he was "still committed" to the deal.

Possibly it’s an excuse to re-negotiate or even back out of the deal?

One prominent investment group said recently it believed Musk could try to submit a lower bid for Twitter.

Dan Ives and John Katsingris, analysts at Wedbush Securities, a Los Angeles-based investment firm, wrote in a note on Friday that the move by Musk adds support ot the idea that he will try to renegotiate with Twitter or back out of the deal entirely.

"If Musk does decide to still go down the deal path a clear renegotiation is likely on the table which calls into question a number of topics (financing path, leverage of Tesla stock, prior financing partners, employee reaction)," they wrote. "Many will view this as Musk using this Twitter filing/spam accounts as a way to get out of this deal in a vastly changing market."

[LFC]

There are fake accounts on Twitter?

[LFC]

Texass just decided that social media platforms of a certain size can't block any posts. Bold mine.

Texas residents can now sue Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for allegedly censoring their content after a federal appeals court sided Wednesday with the state's law restricting how social media sites can moderate their platforms.

The 15-word ruling allowing the law, which had been blocked last year, to take effect has significant potential consequences. Most immediately, it creates new legal risks for the tech giants, and opens them up to a possible wave of litigation that legal experts say would be costly and difficult to defend.

Texas's law makes it illegal for any social media platform with 50 million or more US monthly users to "block, ban, remove, deplatform, demonetize, de-boost, restrict, deny equal access or visibility to, or otherwise discriminate against expression."

The law creates enormous uncertainty about how social media will actually function in Texas, according to legal experts, and raises questions about what users' online spaces may look like and what content they may find there, if the companies are even able to run their services at all.

The ruling also sets the stage for what could be a Supreme Court showdown over First Amendment rights and, possibly, a dramatic reinterpretation of those rights that affects not just the tech industry but all Americans — and decades of established precedent.

In short, the decision has allowed Texas to declare open season on tech platforms, with huge ramifications for everyone in the country. It could reshape the rights and obligations of all websites; our relationship to technology and the internet; and even our basic, fundamental understanding of the First Amendment.

Radical upending of one precedent after another is the goal of partisan hack SCOTUS.

On top of this the 3 judges literally have no idea how websites work and, from the sound of it, were in no hurry to learn. Bold mine again.

The origins of Texas's law, HB 20, lie in the longstanding Republican criticism that tech platforms discriminate politically against conservative users, a charge the companies have denied and which platform moderation researchers say there is little systemic evidence to support.

The law, which seeks to address the perceived imbalance, was blocked in December by a district court judge who ruled it was unconstitutional under the First Amendment. That decision came months after a similar law, in Florida, was also blocked for the same reason.

But that all changed this week, when in oral arguments at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, a three-judge panel confused social media platforms with internet service providers; disputed that Facebook and Twitter are websites; and expressed surprise that a service such as Twitter could "just decide" what content appears on its platform as a matter of course.

Is there any way they can ask for this ruling to be dismissed with prejudice since the judges clearly have their own, fake definitions of known things? Maybe an expert 12-year old witness can be called to rebut these clowns. Hell, probably millions of them.

My guess is that if they push this through Facebook, Twitter, and others will simply make it clear that it is illegal to access their websites (excuse me, apparently not websites) from Texas. Put it in the user agreement, make everybody agree, and Texas can move on to Truth Social and Parler. They'll be able to censor all they wish since neither will ever make it to 50M users, unless of course they don't block Russian bot accounts in which case they'll hit 50M in a matter of days if their servers can stay up.

[indy]

Considering the highly unlikely scenario where twitter and facebook are driven out of business by Republicans and even ignoring all the irony it still makes me smile.

[LFC]

More details on the Texass decision that yanks control over social media platforms from the companies that own them. It's amazing that people this stupid are allowed on the bench. They don't understand the most basic things about the technology (but want to argue their position of ignorance), don't understand why the internet isn't regulated the same as phone lines, and don't even seem to grasp what the First Amendment actually says.

"Your clients are Internet providers," Judge Edith Jones reportedly told the lawyer for NetChoice and CCIA. "They are not websites." The two groups' members are in fact almost entirely websites and online services rather than Internet service providers—see NetChoice's members here and CCIA's here. Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Yahoo are all members of both groups.

At another point in the hearing, "Judge Andrew Oldham suggested that if the tech platforms succeeded, it would allow phone companies to kick off users," Protocol reported. "Under your theory, could Verizon decide that they're going to overhear every phone call... and when they hear speech they don't like, they terminate the phone call?" Oldham asked.

Telephone companies are classified as common carriers and regulated by the Federal Communications Commission. No such designation has been applied to websites, though Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has argued that digital platforms could be regulated as common carriers.

CNN tech reporter Brian Fung also detailed the Fifth Circuit judges' confusion in a Twitter thread. Oldham called it "extraordinary" that Twitter has a First Amendment right to ban certain kinds of speech, even though the First Amendment's free speech guarantee is imposed on Congress, not private companies. The tech groups' lawyer, Scott Keller, pointed out that "when it comes to private entities, government doesn't get to dictate what they must disseminate, what they can't disseminate," according to Fung's account.

Who could put such incompetents into such important positions? Oh, yeah. Republican presidents. I bet they all had Federalist Society approval. The FS loves themselves some useful idiots.

Jones is a Reagan appointee, while Oldham was appointed by Trump. The third judge in the panel, Leslie Southwick, was appointed by George W. Bush.

[andydp]

May 13, 2022 13:48:32 GMT LFC said:

There are fake accounts on Twitter?

I'm shocked ! Shocked to find fake accounts on this site. 

Your new account name sir...

Thank you !!

[goldenvalley]

In the olden days kids had to steal prescription drugs like Percocet from their parents or find some sort of dealer for them.  These days you can use social media platforms to order the drugs.  If that's not enough a problem, those prescription drugs obtained may be cut with fentanyl.  Result...higher death rates.

Overdoses are now the leading cause of preventable death among people ages 18 to 45, ahead of suicide, traffic accidents and gun violence, according to federal data.

Although experimental drug use by teenagers in the United States has been dropping since 2010, their deaths from fentanyl have skyrocketed, to 884 in 2021, from 253 in 2019, according to a recent study in the journal JAMA.

Rates of illicit prescription pill use are now highest among people ages 18 to 25, according to federal data.

Much as drug dealers in the 1980s and ’90s seized on pagers and burner phones to conduct business covertly, today’s suppliers have embraced modern iterations — social media and messaging apps with privacy features such as encrypted or disappearing messages. Dealers and young buyers usually spot each other on social media and then often proceed by directly messaging each other.
The platforms have made for a swift, easy conduit during the coronavirus pandemic, when demand for illicit prescription drugs has jumped, both from anxious, bored customers and from those already struggling with addiction who were cut off from in-person group support.

[LFC]

Musk's ill-timed attempt to buy Twitter followed by his subsequent backpedaling has shareholders pretty pissed off. He made an offer and they're trying to force him to stick to it.

A collective of Twitter shareholders are banding together to try and keep the world’s richest man from weaseling his way out of buying Twitter.

In a proposed class-action lawsuit filed earlier this week, Twitter shareholders accused Musk of engaging in market manipulation during his acquisition bid, alleging he violated California’s corporate laws along the way. Twitter itself was also named as a defendant.

The complaint, filed in a San Francisco federal district court, accuses Musk of intentionally lowering Twitter’s stock value. The suit alleges Musk did this because the $12.5 billion he pledged as collateral for the acquisition was secured using his Tesla stock which has since declined by 37%. That decline, the suit alleges, put Musk in the uncomfortable position of potentially having to fork over more of his own money to make up the difference. Purposely lowering Twitter’s value, in this scenario, could theoretically serve as a corporate get out of jail free card.

The suit claims Musk “proceeded to make statements, send tweets, and engage in conduct designed to create doubt about the deal and drive Twitter’s stock down substantially in order to create leverage.” That leverage could potentially allow Musk to back out of the deal entirely or renegotiate for a substantially lower price. The shareholders also call bullshit on Musk’s supposed concern with bots on the platform and claim he “knew all about the fake accounts.”

“Musk’s conduct was, and continues to be illegal, in violation of the California Corporation’s Code, and contrary to the contractual terms he agreed to in the deal,” the lawsuit reads.