 Elon Musk's Twitter debacle continues to get worse, but somehow funnier simultaneously, and this has been very entertaining and at first I've got to admit I was against Elon Musk purchasing Twitter all the way, didn't necessarily care that much, but to see the way that things have unfolded and how it's been a complete disaster, I've got to say I think that this was a good move for him, not financially or publicly, but just it was a good move just from my entertainment purposes. And so the only thing that he really seems to care about is recouping his losses after irresponsibly purchasing Twitter for much more than it's worth. And he wants to make back that money by essentially wooing back advertisers. The problem is that another thing that could hurt his revenue is failing to live up to the standards of regulators, and he's just now kind of openly sparring with senators who are going to be overseeing his platform. For example, Senator Ed Markey tweeted, a Washington Post reporter was able to create a verified account impersonating me, I'm asking for answers from Elon Musk, who is putting profits over people and his debt over stopping disinformation. Twitter must explain how this happened and how to prevent it from happening again. So lawmakers have questions, but Elon Musk responds to that saying, perhaps it is because your real account sounds like a parody? Well, he then added, and why does your profile pic have a mask? So let's just pause for a moment there. You have Ed Markey, a US Senator whose party is in control of the White House and the FTC, and they have very serious questions. And the response from the owner of Twitter now, Elon Musk, is responding by essentially shitposting and joking about it. I mean, look, I've got to say it's entertaining, but if I were Elon Musk, I wouldn't act like a child in response to a United States Senator who could ruin you. This is how Ed Markey responded, because he didn't let this go. He tweeted in response, one of your companies is under an FTC consent decree. Auto safety, watchdog, and HTSA is investigating another for killing people. And you're spending your time picking fights online, fix your companies or Congress will. Now that is a threat by a US Senator. And he's just like, LOL, you're wearing a mask in your profile pic. I just I love this so much. Honestly, I love it so much. I hope that he continues to act like a buffoon because I want him to see that there is a finding out phase that comes after you eff around. Now the problem and as Ed Markey alluded to, Twitter is under an FTC consent decree. Now, Elon Musk should in theory be doing everything in his power to keep the executives who are helping Twitter remain in compliance with said FTC decree. But the problem is that that's not happening. Now as HuffPost reports, Twitter's new owner Elon Musk is further gutting the teams that battle misinformation on the social media platform. As outsourced moderators learned over the weekend, they were out of a job. Twitter and other big social media firms have relied heavily on contractors to track hate and enforce rules against harmful content. But many of those content watchdogs have now headed out the door. First when Twitter fired much of its full-time work force by email on November 4th, and now as it moves to eliminate an untold number of contract jobs. Content moderation expert Sarah Roberts, an associate professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who worked as a staff researcher at Twitter earlier this year, said she believes at least 3,000 contract workers were fired Saturday night. So let me just take a moment to try to clarify how this demonstrates that Elon Musk has no clue what he's doing. So he's so desperate to make Twitter profitable and recoup some of his losses that he announced mass layoffs on November 4th. That's what the article demonstrated, right? But you can't just lay off everyone and expect that the money that you're saving on labor is going to be recouped because that's not necessarily the case. As you let go of the content moderation teams, advertisers might not want to come back to the platform because they don't want to put money into a platform that is accessible. But on top of that, if you let go of the people or you allow them to resign by not trying to aggressively poach them to stay, if you allow them to resign and these folks are the individuals who keep you in compliance with the FTC, well, then what's going to happen? I mean, I'm no expert, but this could lead to fines, untold costs that he didn't anticipate. So by firing so many people, he could have cost himself more money when he was hoping to save on labor. Now, one example is Yol Roth. This was the head of content moderation at Twitter. Now, on November 4th, Yol Roth tried to reassure everyone, probably advertisers, namely that even if the entire company saw 50% cuts about, well, the content moderation team only saw 15% of cuts. But the problem is Yol Roth, who was arguably Musk's greatest asset, he resigned along with other top executives, which could actually spell doom for the company. Now, as Rihanna Pafferkorn explains, in 2011, Twitter agreed to a 20-year FTC Consent Order over its data security practices. In May, FTC fined Twitter 150 million for violating the 2011 order and issued a modified order. If Twitter so much as sneezes, it has to do a privacy review beforehand. Per the order, a small team of senior executives is on the hook from making privacy and security decisions, which are legally binding on the company, and a senior officer has to certify compliance with the order annually to the FTC. Dollars to donuts, that small team mandated by the FTC order, equals all the people who just quit. So here we are, they're violating the FTC order already. Twitter has a compliance notice due to the FTC today, 14 days after change of control. And so if it seems to you like he doesn't care about the FTC decree, that's because he seemingly doesn't, at least according to what his lawyers say, as the Verde reports, Musk's personal attorney tells people that Elon Musk puts rockets into space so he's not afraid of the FTC. So on one hand, he is desperate to save money and he wants to do that any way he possibly can. So he's cutting labor. But on another hand, fines from the FTC, assuming you're not in compliance and you get these fines, that's also going to cost you. But when it comes to that, he's like, eh, so you know, billionaires, they usually care about profits only, but Elon Musk seemingly is more concerned about his tough guy persona, even more so than profits, which is interesting. But it kind of just demonstrates how big of a man baby he is. Now, Elon Musk isn't just pissing off regulators. He's continuing to skir off advertisers with his new verification program because that may have cost one pharmaceutical company billions. So a parody account for Eli Lilly tweeted that we are excited to announce insulin is free now. And that single tweet sparked panic across the company with executives scrambling to contact higher ups at Twitter as the Washington Post reports. And that single tweet may have led to a 4.5% drop in Eli Lilly's stock. And as Eric failed ding reports, Eli Lilly executives are raging and furious at losing $20 billion in market cap from this stunt with Twitter Blue. It's too bad they don't see their own damn insulin price gouging as the actual problem. Karma, Lilly Pad, karma. So not only was the rollout of Twitter Blue a hilarious mess, but it cost a greedy pharmaceutical giant, potentially billions of dollars if it is the case that that drop in their stock is correlated with that fake tweet. And it may have scared away Twitter's advertisers even more. I mean, the story just keeps getting better. So ironically, I like watching the train wreck that is now Twitter, but at the same time, I'm probably gonna be sad if it does go the way of the dodo just because inadvertently Elon Musk made Twitter better just by running it like a complete buffoon and giving us something to be entertained by. So I guess that we have to thank him for that at least. But certainly I'm going to watch this train wreck until it's over. But certainly it doesn't look good for Elon Musk and it keeps getting worse. And I will continue to report on this shit show because I think it's absolutely thoroughly entertaining. I'm going to come. Do not come, come, come, come, come, come. 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