Elon Musk's X revenues in the UK crashed in 2023, down 66% In the months following Tesla CEO and Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter, now rebranded to X, business collapsed in the UK, according to recently filed profit and loss accounts for the year ended December 31 2023. The document lodged with Companies House, the repository where commercial entities in the country are required to …
If you're referring to the 'summer of love' then you are correct. Those riots were intended to change the result of the 2020 election.
But I assume you are referring to the connotationally protected rights to request redress from the US government which was used by the vast majority of the legitimate Jan 6th protesters.
bomb threat, no (this is like th classic 'yelling FIRE in a crowded theater' argument). Calling a biological male "he", THAT is fine. ['he' after all is the universal inclusive pronoun]
If feelings are hurt (poor widdle babies), TOO BAD. And how many OTHER "FEELZ got hurt on social media" arrests have been made in UK ?
For some specifically GROSS examples of "online policing overreach", I did a GROK analysis.
Ahhhh, free speech. I presume you are equally concerned about:
- Trump wants to punish people who burn the flag with a year in prison deeply unconstitutional
- He is deeply against the First Amendment - deeply against free speech he sued CNN for $475 million because they called election denialism the big lie he sued Bill Maher for $5 million over a joke he didn't like
- he supports quote opening up the Lial laws to sue journalists.
- he called for jailing journalists who reported on the Supreme Court abortion ruling early
- he wants to deport Pro Palestine protesters
- he gag ordered the EPA from telling the truth on climate change
- he arrested and charged six journalists with quote felony rioting
- he wanted to invoke the Insurrection act to deploy US troops against George Floyd protesters
- and then of course he called to terminate the Constitution
Let's not get started on Musk, who bans / censors people he doesn't agree with.
"punish people who burn the flag"
Someone was given 5 months for burning a BLM flag.
"he sued CNN"
Good. They have already lost several big cases such as the Covington student Nick Sandmann.
"Lial laws"
As seen with stories like the Covington students, the media has absolutely no issue with making up completely fabricated stories and doing no actual journalism whatsoever.
"reported on the Supreme Court"
If you remember the memo was leaked and the source was never identified. Someone did break the law with the leak. Lets not forget the political left's response to the Hunter laptop, pretty sure you wanted the computer shop guy arrested.
"Pro Palestine protesters"
When they have posters with pictures of the armed paragliders and are chanting for the elimination of a nation state, it isn't really a protest.
"EPA from telling the truth on climate change"
What, that its made up?
"arrested and charged six journalists with quote felony rioting"
Journalists were arrested for being near the Capitol on Jan 6th.
"invoke the Insurrection act to deploy US troops"
Back to Jan 6th again.
"he called to terminate the Constitution"
Citation needed. What Trump ACTUALLY said is that in some circumstances it should be OK to terminate the protections granted under the constitution when someone has done something very bad. Sorta like how the DOJ violated the Jan 6th defendants constitutional rights, but you are likely fine with that.
A simple search would bring up many reports of him saying just that.
Here is one
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-63851751
But naturally, a left wing rag like the BBC can't be trusted so
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-resolution/1527/text
Even Ted 'Cancun' Cruz said that he was wrong but naturally like him saying many times, 'Build that wall and Mexico will pay for it' he will deny it and call it fake news.
Trump can never admit that he can be wrong about anything.
Original claim: "he called to terminate the Constitution"
Response "Citation needed. What Trump ACTUALLY said is that in some circumstances it should be OK to terminate the protections granted under the constitution when someone has done something very bad. Sorta like how the DOJ violated the Jan 6th defendants constitutional rights, but you are likely fine with that."
From the Beeb citation supplied:
Headline "former President Donald Trump after he called for the "termination" of the US constitution"
Deeper in the text where midwits don't read: "A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution"
So going back to the response to the original statement:
"What Trump ACTUALLY said is that in some circumstances it should be OK to terminate the protections granted under the constitution when someone has done something very bad. Sorta like how the DOJ violated the Jan 6th defendants constitutional rights, but you are likely fine with that."
So, if you read past the headlines the Beeb admits that he isn't trying to 'terminate the constitution' as a blanket generic thing for all 'mericans but to do it in very specific cases and as such the AC response was correct.
Not that similar has ever happened before! It would be unthinkable that laws could be changed, manipulated or bypassed purely in order to go after someone. Say for example suddenly passing a law removing the statute of limitations or applying a law that was only ever intended to be used against mega corps to hugely increase the sentences for individuals. Nope, never!
"- he wants to deport Pro Palestine protesters"
That one might have some legal backing.
Nearly every country has a prohibition against visitors engaging in political activities. It part of the visa you have agreed to whether it is a formal document or a published condition for entering the country. It's a very good idea to carefully read the conditions you fall under when visiting another country and even if you are only switching flights in one you won't be staying in (things can happen).
The Trump regime does not care about the Constitution especially the 1st, 4th, 5th and 6th amendments.
Being sent to a gulag somewhere in the world (El Salvador was not cruel enough) so they are now going to Rwanda without due process is illegal but Trump has criminal immunity thanks to SCOTUS so he can tell his minions to ignore the constitution and then pardon them on his way out the door.
I'm sure that it won't be long before ICE (or some new TLA) comes for the people on Meidastouch, Occupy Democrats, the Lincoln Project and other people on social media who love to slag off Trump, Musk and the other idiots in his cabinet.
Even the likes of Kimmel, Myers and Jon Stewart might suddenly [cough][cough] disappear. That is right out of the 3rd Reich playbook.
IMHO, Trump won't leave the White House unless it is in a coffin sometime around 2036. Declaring Martial Law will stop any more elections.
The USA is rapidly descending into a 4th world dictatorship.
Now I must go and wash my mouth out with soap for defending BB but like a broken clock, even he can be right every once in a while.
I would never imagine this kind of thing but they are showing phishing "ads" for some of major financial payment platforms and banks. For the good of people,I keep reporting them as "illegal products & services" and nothing happens. I even reported them to the company being targeted.
It is a jungle, even AI generated famous people are used.
I got one on FB with a fake Richard Branson telling people to invest in this guaranteed money-making scheme. I reported it and got back a message that they didn't take it down, much like the 10 or so I've also reported in the last month. These massive social media companies just don't care. And what can the ASA do? What can Trading Standards do? Probably fuck-all. The social media companies make so much money from it that only the threat of, er, I don't know, tariffs or something, may work.
Seriously, this is going to be a massive problem now that they're emboldened with a "make america great again and sod the consquences" attitude.
"These massive social media companies just don't care."
It's like the phone companies continuing to allow telemarketing/scam calls. They know who those people are since they are getting paid to handle the traffic. The same applies to SM companies that are collecting ad revenue. What it might take is a figure such as Richard Branson suing them with the claim they knew it was a scam and his likeness was being used without permission. It's like me having a stall at the weekly farmer's market and posting loads of advertising that claims the Kardashians (using their photos as well) buy their produce from nobody but me as it's so much better. The market should realize that it's complete manure and ask for some sort of verification. Oh, and look, here's a photo of me holding a bunch of carrots and Taylor Swift handing me cash for them. That might be fun to see if some AI will generate that photo for me. I could also get a photo of me and Robert Smith from the Cure's Disintegration tour. I did work on the steel crew for the stadium shows, but never met Robert. Now I can fix that and have photos to back me up. (There would be no legal issue with that unless I used the image to infer/imply some sort of commercial endorsement on Robert's part.)
> And what can the ASA do?
Same as they always do, a token slap on the wrist and warning not to run the ad again six months after the campaign has ended anyway.
Or, in other words, the absolute minimum required to make it look like Something Is Being Done while doing fuck all, from an intentionally toothless body that only exists to maintain the pretence that the industry can self regulate and avoid the need for government intervention.
> this is going to be a massive problem now that they're emboldened with a "make america great again and sod the consquences" attitude.
Facebook/Meta- made in the image of its sociopathic founder, Zuckerberg- has only ever cared about its own self-interest, making token acknowledgements of concern or the pretence of going along with external pressure (social or political), while in reality doing nothing that gets in the way of what it wants.
They're going along with the aggressively nationalistic MAGA trend now because it's in their interests to do so, because that's the way the wind is blowing and because Zuckerberg thinks he can leverage that to use Trump to bully Europe into watering down or discarding present or future regulations that stop his company doing what it wants.
Of course, Europe (including the UK) has already had it abruptly brought home in recent months how dangerous it is to be reliant upon an IT market dominated by the US- a country which is rapidly moving from being an ally to a rival, and one which, under Trump, is prepared to abuse any imbalance of power.
Given that Europe is already showing signs of having woken up, and of finally realising it needs to move away from that general situation anyway, they wouldn't need to be bluffing to present Facebook with the nuclear threat of being banned completely.
Moreso since All-American Facebook's nationalistic appeal to Daddy Trump to bully Europe into backing down may backfire and simply make it a more obvious threat and part of the problem that Europe needs to get rid of anyway.
Came off a while ago - anyone worth following is on Bluesky which also takes up about 5% of the time while providing 500% of the useful info.
I've found it's quite easy to tell who's on there though...
The other week the brighter (ie less right-wingy conspiracy types) were conversing endlessly about the purpose of the free energy matrix under the pyramid of 'geezer', a litter of white wolves with a handful (out of a billion plus) gene edits which were apparently now dire wolves and the imminent threat of Chinese reprogramming of their kids through TikTok - which far less toxic than Meta/X ecosystem - and kids (mine anyway - though I've done nowt) seem far more immune to the propaganda affecting colleagues and family at 40+ so badly.
We need something like Godwin's Law: how many comments will appear until someone references something stupid that Microsoft does?
Granted, it's almost impossible to do anything IT related without bumping into the idiocy that is Microsoft's excuse for usability and reliability but I think we need some sort of metric.
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There is a Musk graphic in the body of the article where he is looking unusually gormless even by his standards.
He might be looking at whence X's profits have descended but seems to me more like his admiring a pair of nickers going up an escalator.
The whole dismal crew make even seizing defeat from the jaws of victory an improvement on their incomprehensible efforts.
If President Elon Musk did not censor posts and people critical of him then it might make a profit. He has single handedly driven a lot of now former Twitter users to other platforms. That is 'shooting yourself in the foot' big time. He does not care, his ultra thin skin must be protected from all criticism.
I'm not on X or any other social media platform so he can't ban me. He could sue me but as I have nothing and live on my State Pension, doing that will be like trying to extract blood from a stone.
"The business continues to take corrective measures to build brand safety tools, invest in platform safety and content moderation"
Do these brand safety tools involve removing the core cause of the drop in ad-revenue? Namely, reputational damage to brands for being associated with much of the content on X
In the words of Mike Skinner from The Streets:
"It's easy to make a small fortune. Start with a large fortune and lose until it becomes a small fortune..."
Seems appropriate somehow for both Musky and Trump. And yet somehow people keep giving them money...
Musk sued some former advertisers because buying adverts on X is a legal requirement (now). Some 'returned' to the minimum extent required to avoid being near the top of Musk's hit list. It must have been tempting for those advertisers to promote products from Musk's competitors like BYD and HughesNet.
"Musk sued some former advertisers because buying adverts on X is a legal requirement (now). "
If there were some sort of contract in place, they might have had to, but sans that, they can present Elon with two fingers and walk away.
On one hand, Elon has used the excuse for some contracts that since they were made with "Twitter", they aren't his problem. OTOH, Elon threatens to sue on other contracts that benefit him that were also made before he took control.
It's funny how some people confuse "freedom of speech" with "privilege of speech"... Musk bought the privilege to speak, and the privilege to decide who can and can't speak on his platform.
Luckily for all of us, it's really exposed (a) how vacuous most of his speech is, and (b) how fickle and narcissistic he is when it comes to other people's speech.
Andy 73,
I don't think it's confusion. Musk claimed to be a "free speach absolutist". All censorship was bad and he'd end it all. It was pretty clear what he was claiming to mean.
To be honest, I suspect nobody truly believed that he was telling the truth. He's always been thin-skinned and litigious - and forever pathetically whining about what people say about him, while feeling free to say whatever dumb shit he feels like. Including calling people paedos (for no good reason other than childish pique that busy rescue workers ignored his ill-timed "help").
it seems Xitter is doing comparatively better than it was.
You admit in the article that these are figures for the year ending 2023. Impossible to draw conclusions from this about the business now. My understanding is that Twitter engagement has continued to decline worldwide since then, but I'll admit as to not having figures for that.
If we believe this...
In 2024, the average engagement rates on X (Twitter) have experienced a decline across different metrics. For example, the average number of likes per post decreased from 37.82 in 2023 to 31.46 in 2024. Similarly, mentions and reposts have also seen a year-over-year decrease, with the average post receiving 1.56 likes and 8.47 mentions.
The average engagement rate on Twitter varies depending on your brand’s market. As of 2024, the average engagement rate across all markets and industries on the platform was 0.029%. Sports teams received the highest average engagement rate of 0.072%, while media had the lowest at 0.009%.
Thanks, I have my own anecdotal evidence from the lazy world of broadcasting: statements from various bods are no longer exclusively sourced from Twitter but might be quoted from Telegram or Bluesky. This despite the fact that, at least according to some journalists, Telegram is full of conspiracy theorists — prove it isn't! — drug lords and pedos…
It is undoubtedly even worse in the EU.
But "good news" for those dumb enough to be Tesla investors. Now that Musk merged Twitter and xAI, his rumored next step is to merge those into Tesla as a way of cashing in on xAI's bubble valuation at the expense of other Tesla stockholders.
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