Guess we actually do reside in a simulation.
On Tuesday, as an airplane sponsored by a coalition of civil rights group circled above the Fontainebleau in Miami Seashore trailing the message “Musk is dangerous for enterprise #StopToxicTwitter,” Elon Musk appeared on the inaugural Doable convention to (kind of) woo an viewers of advertisers, advert tech firms and publishers.
In dialog with Linda Yaccarino, NBCU’s chair of world promoting and partnerships, Musk nonchalantly defended his stance on “free speech,” the rise of citizen journalism (concurrent with the demise of conventional publishers) and Twitter’s supposed dedication to belief and transparency.
Yaccarino kicked off the dialog by asking Musk the way it’s been going for the reason that acquisition final 12 months, to which Musk replied, “It’s going properly. … It’s entertaining. … It’s a trainwreck typically.”
That’s really a quite truthful evaluation. The remaining was an odd mélange of jokes, offhanded commentary and a choice of very specific, facetious and in some instances arguably spurious POVs.
Musk on Twitter’s new “freedom of speech, not attain” content material enforcement coverage:
“If any person has one thing hateful to say, that doesn’t imply you need to give them a megaphone. They need to nonetheless have the ability to say it, however it shouldn’t be pushed on individuals. … We’re not going to advertise that to individuals or advocate it. We’ll put it behind a warning label.
“That is one thing we have now to be very cautious with as we roll it out … but when individuals are saying issues that make you unhappy or they’re encouraging negativity, then we’re not going to amplify that, which Twitter had accomplished up to now.”
On whether or not he’s been in a position to derisk Twitter for advertisers:
“Now we have adjacency controls in place which are actually fairly efficient. Adverts won’t seem subsequent to something remotely unfavorable. … However you will need to put controls in place as a result of there’s an extra of stock that’s unfavorable.”
On his disdain for conventional media:
“I not too long ago had an interview with somewhat group referred to as the BBC. That was entertaining. The reporter was claiming he’d seen all of this hate speech on Twitter, so I requested, ‘Are you able to give me a single instance?’ And he couldn’t – not even one.
“It’s vital to keep in mind that conventional media is a competitor to Twitter. They compete in opposition to Twitter on your advert {dollars}. … You shouldn’t take your competitor’s phrase for it.”
[Author’s note: You can, quite literally, search for racial and ethnic slurs and hateful phrases on Twitter, such as “Hitler was right,” if you are so inclined, and the results are there.]
On whether or not he’s open to suggestions from advertisers:
“Authentic issues advertisers have – that I wish to hear. Issues must be mentioned in an open discussion board.”
On promoting usually:
“When promoting is related to customers and, particularly, the message is entertaining and fascinating, it’s content material. But when an advert isn’t related to customers, that’s spam. Promoting can go all the best way from spam to high quality content material, and we wish to concentrate on content material.”
Nonetheless, although …
— Marktech (@Marktech) February 19, 2023
