Current Events > Verified pro-Nazi accounts flourish on Elon Musk's Twitter

(+) Yeah! (+)

Elon Musks X is a thriving hub for Nazi support and propaganda, with paid subscribers sharing speeches by Adolf Hitler or content praising his genocidal regime.

NBC News found that at least 150 paid Premium subscriber X accounts and thousands of unpaid accounts have posted or amplified pro-Nazi content on X in recent months, often in apparent violation of Xs rules. The paid accounts posting the content all consistently posted antisemitic or pro-Nazi material. Examples included praise of Nazi soldiers, sharing of Nazi symbols and denials of the Holocaust.

The pro-Nazi content is not confined to the fringes of the platform. During one seven-day period in March, seven of the most widely shared pro-Nazi posts on X accrued 4.5 million views in total. One post with 1.9 million views promoted a false and long-debunked conspiracy theory that 6 million Jews did not die in the Holocaust. More than 5,300 verified and unverified accounts reshared that post, and other popular posts were reshared hundreds of times apiece.

Xs policies ban glorifying violence a broad prohibition that X has sometimes used to take down pro-Nazi content and accounts. The rules also ban praising violent entities and say the platform will apply labels to hate imagery like swastikas. But NBC News found that X does not appear to be enforcing those policies consistently.

The findings are the latest evidence of a flourishing Nazi network on X under Musks ownership. Previous investigations by news organizations and anti-hate watchdogs have documented many examples of antisemitism, white supremacy and support for Nazism on X.

NBC News found the Nazi propaganda posts by browsing the platform: scrolling through replies, clicking on user profiles and looking through the engagements on viral posts. NBC News conducted its review during one week in late March. The number of verified subscribers posting pro-Nazi material may be significantly more than 150. When NBC News conducted its review, Premium subscribers had the option to hide their verification check marks from the public.

The verified users sharing the pro-Nazi content have entered into a mutually beneficial relationship with Musks X, paying $8 a month or more for premium services that are available to all premium subscribers. In exchange, they get prioritization when they reply to posts and the opportunity to monetize their content through ads, according to the subscription terms.

The result is that X is bringing Nazi sympathizers in from the dark corners of the internet to a massive platform where they can pay to amplify their content. X had 174 million daily active users worldwide on its mobile app in February, according to the research firm Sensor Tower. X claims to have many more than that.

NBC News conducted its research in March, before X implemented a change to provide free premium subscriptions to accounts with more than 2,500 verified followers. That move has made it more difficult to determine who is a paid subscriber.

A welcoming social media environment can make Nazi sympathizers feel validated in their views and recruit others to their cause, said Patrick Riccards, executive director of Life After Hate, a Milwaukee-based organization that helps people disengage from violent extremist groups.

That's why he bought it

That's why he bought it

That's why he bought it

I still ascribe to the idea that he bought it because he was angry that the one account that tracked his plane wasn't banned. He banned the guy something like four times before the guy finally left (or got IP banned).

What are the odds that the US government ever tries to ban Twitter, based on this information?

I'm concerned with the role Twitter will play this election season. The closer we get to the election the more Musk will actively hinder Dem support and boost every bullshit Repub narrative and conspiracy that he can.

That's my theory as to why he bought it, to control the narrative on the most used social media platform.

I'm pretty sure Twitter has never been the most used social media platform, even before the Muskrat bought it and turned it into a steaming pile of Xitter. Pretty sure Facebook still has that dubious honor.

Apartheid Clyde making a platform hospitable for white supremacists is just one of those things you have to accept as inevitable.

I'm pretty sure Twitter has never been the most used social media platform, even before the Muskrat bought it and turned it into a steaming pile of Xitter. Pretty sure Facebook still has that dubious honor.

That's why he bought it

A guy I know tweeted the word cisgender and it got auto-flagged for hate speech. Fuck that entire platform and its trust fund baby owner.

A guy I know tweeted the word cisgender and it got auto-flagged for hate speech. Fuck that entire platform and its trust fund baby owner.

FB's political discussion, in contrast, is known for being right-wing boomers shitting it up and Zuckerberg saying he no longer cares about curtailing it or promoting the truth.

For years, Facebooks mysterious algorithms served up links to news and commentary articles, sending droves of traffic to their publishers. But those days are gone. Amid criticism from elected officials and academics who said the social-media giant was spreading hate speech and harmful misinformation, including Russian propaganda, before the 2016 election, Facebook apparently came to question the value of featuring news on its platform. In early 2018, it began deemphasizing news content, giving greater priority to content posted by friends and family members. In 2021, it tightened the tap a little further. This past February, it announced that it would do the same on Instagram and Threads. All of this monkeying with the internets plumbing drastically reduced the referral traffic flowing to news and commentary sites. The changes have affected everyone involved in digital media, including some liberal-leaning sitessuch as Slate (which saw a 42 percent traffic drop), the Daily Beast (41 percent), and Vox (62 percent, after losing its two most prominent writers)but the impact appears to have been the worst, on average, for conservative media. (Referral traffic from Google has also declined over the past few years, but far less sharply.)

That's why he bought it

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/04/conservative-digital-media-traffic/678055/
For years, Facebooks mysterious algorithms served up links to news and commentary articles, sending droves of traffic to their publishers. But those days are gone. Amid criticism from elected officials and academics who said the social-media giant was spreading hate speech and harmful misinformation, including Russian propaganda, before the 2016 election, Facebook apparently came to question the value of featuring news on its platform. In early 2018, it began deemphasizing news content, giving greater priority to content posted by friends and family members. In 2021, it tightened the tap a little further. This past February, it announced that it would do the same on Instagram and Threads. All of this monkeying with the internets plumbing drastically reduced the referral traffic flowing to news and commentary sites. The changes have affected everyone involved in digital media, including some liberal-leaning sitessuch as Slate (which saw a 42 percent traffic drop), the Daily Beast (41 percent), and Vox (62 percent, after losing its two most prominent writers)but the impact appears to have been the worst, on average, for conservative media. (Referral traffic from Google has also declined over the past few years, but far less sharply.)

That's odd because I recall Zuck recently saying they wouldn't be monitoring misinformation as they did in 2020.

That may well be true, but de-amplifying politics content could still have the effect of keeping the spread of that stuff contained.

That's not going to happen, unless Musk has a stroke and the resulting brain damage causes him to go full Trump mode.

There is nothing in the world that is easier than being a massive criminal piece of shit in the US, if one is filthy rich. There are only two rules:

1) Don't steal from other filthy rich people.

2) Don't spend entire years of your life at the center of your personal media circus having your own political and financial corruption as a central topic (i.e., how Trump is now a criminal defendant)

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/6/62074acf.png

When the Twitter bots try to post nazi shit, but ChatGPT won't let them:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/e/ee41a0ce.jpg

I guess this is why Musk opposes AI censorship.