Angry Tweeters Are Being Force-Fed Extremism In Surprise New Feeds On Elon Musk's Twitter

[highplainsdem]

I've been seeing a lot of complaints about this, as well as seeing it myself if I just search Twitter for Musk's last name, which yields "Top" search results that are 99% RWers kissing Musk's ass and posting conspiracy theories about Democrats.

The piece below was at HuffPo as well as Yahoo:

https://sports.yahoo.com/angry-tweeters-being-force-fed-005607798.html

Twitter users are complaining that Elon Musk’s newly acquired company is manipulating their feeds to blast them with obnoxious tweets from extremists they loathe.

A significant number of users say that their profile feeds, or timelines, have become unrecognizable and are now riddled with tweets from extremists pushing perspectives they oppose. It’s a strange concept of “free speech,” which Musk claims to support.

Thousands of people responded to actor George Takei’s tweet Thursday complaining about the radical change in tweets he’s receiving, including one from “asshat” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), whom the civil rights activist pointedly noted he does not follow.

His feed also included a surprise tweet from Donald Trump Jr. Takei said he would “sooner follow a banana slug” on Twitter than the former president’s son.

-snip-

Much more at the link.


As for my own experience, with a Twitterverse I no longer recgnize as the one I'd been so familiar with for years... The tweets below were the top "Top" tweets when I searched for Musk's last name minutes ago. I'm copying just the text, not info about the accounts tweeting this garbage, which Musk's Twitter is now promoting to everyone searching for his name:

BREAKING: The US Government has launched an investigation into Elon Musk's Neuralink.

How long will we put up with this? Every time someone goes against their agenda they start a sham investigation! Pure corruption!😡


We shouldn’t be asking why Elon Musk is fighting for free speech…. We should be asking why the GOP isn’t !


Elon Musk is exposing the deep state!


Elon Musk exposed the FBI.


BOMBSHELL REPORT: Hillary Clinton Linked to DARK MONEY CAMPAIGN AGAINST MUSK'S Effort to Restore Free Speech on Twitter..


Elon Musk is getting death threats from the left because he is allowing free speech on Twitter. Wow.


Elon Musk exposed the Biden administration.


Musk deserves a medal for revealing how the Biden campaign, FBI and media censored the Hunter Biden scandal https://foxnews.com/opinion/musk-deserves-medal-revealing-how-biden-campaign-fbi-media-censored-hunter-biden-scandal #FoxNews

That insane drivel - pure irrational RWNJ propaganda - is what newcomers to Twitter will find searching for anything about Musk.


I'm still seeing more criticism of Trump if I search for Trump's last name. So apparently Musk is still allowing some liberal critiques of Trump, while turning search results for his own name into mindlessly worshipful blather promoted by Twitter.

[TheRealNorth]

1. Musk is turning Twitter into 4-chan

[gratuitous]

2. Free speech doesn't mean captive audience

Standard fuck-up by "free speech" people who want to say obnoxious things to everyone, but don't want to hear back.

[Comfortably_Numb]

3. Elon Fanboi asshats can fuck all the way off. Muskovites, choke on shit, please.

[onecaliberal]

4. If you're going to stay this is what it is.

[underpants]

5. I'm getting posts by people like Andy Biggs and LOTS of ads

I mean a lot of ads.

[cyclonefence]

6. I think Hillary Clinton could take the veil

and enter a convent and take a vow of silence, and everything would still be her fault.

[TlalocW]

7. I never understood

Conservatives' - especially conservative mens' - proclivity for glomming onto someone they consider an alpha. They're all, "Men are men, and women are women, and we the strong providers who don't need nothing from nothing, and... Oh, is that Trump on TV? He's so dreeeeeeamy." *SWOON* Lindsay Graham is a perfect example. For years, he was McCain's sidekick, and then he moved onto Donald with John died.

I mean not to gender stereotype, but they act like 12-year-old girls in the 1970s excited about the David Cassidy photo shoot in the latest issue of, "Tiger Beat."

Or even better...

[Emrys]

8. This is hard to gauge.

With Twitter, it's aways been the case that if you go searching for crap, you'll find it. Given the current situation, there's bound to be a lot of babble around the name Musk, and it's not much of a surprise to me that tweets like those in the OP from the RW fringe figure high among them. The RW have always been good at sending up squid clouds of crap (not just on Twitter but on other platforms like Facebook and various blogs, as witnessed by Memeorandum over the years). How persuasive they are to anyone who's not a loon is a different question. I just usually mute the fuckers on sight.

I don't use the feed facility and I'm selective in the searches I carry out and the hashtags I click on, so I can't comment on others' experiences. I don't see ads except for very rare promoted tweets, and they're usually commercial and innocuous, if boring. I've seen little or no change in my Twitter experience except for one account focused on Ukraine that seems to have retired from Twitter and retreated to Telegram. That's it so far.