A senior German official said on Thursday Twitter should join other tech firms in being directly monitored by the European Commission, saying the company’s erratic behaviour under new owner Elon Musk posed a threat to free speech.
Sven Giegold, the state secretary in charge of competition policy at Germany’s economy ministry, pointed to Twitter’s abrupt suspension of journalists’ accounts and restrictions on the access to some links.
In a letter to two European Commissioners, Giegold called on the EU to launch an investigation and said the Commission should act to prevent what he called Twitter’s “anti-competitive behaviour”.
Twitter did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The European Commission confirmed receiving the letter and said it would reply in due course, adding that it was following the developments at Twitter closely.
“General terms and conditions that change almost every hour, erratic justifications for extensive restrictions on links and the blocking of journalists threaten freedom of competition and pose a risk to freedom of expression, information and the press,” Giegold wrote on Twitter, while sharing his letter. READ MORE...
Elon Musk's poll, asking whether he should stand down as the boss of Twitter, appeared hours after he was photographed at the World Cup final in Qatar.
That photo tells us two things: firstly, Musk was standing beside Jared Kushner - the son-in-law of Donald Trump, the former US President whom Musk has tried, and failed, to entice back to the social network he now owns.
Musk knows that a bombastic Trump tweet would likely provide a controversial, but 'jackpot' moment for Twitter - and bring huge audiences to the platform.
Trump knows this too, of course, and has his own agenda - specifically his own social network, Truth Social, to which he has so far remained loyal.
Pardon the pun but Musk's trump card remains unplayed.
The second point about the photo? It proves Musk was geographically in the vicinity of Saudi Arabia - home to Twitter's biggest investors. Did he drop in, and did they - along with millions of people who use Twitter every day - pose some serious questions about his leadership during the past couple of months?
And then there's the matter of the poll itself. How we view the results - 57% of the 17.5m votes cast were in favour of Musk standing down as Twitter CEO - depends on what we think he wanted to achieve by it. READ MORE...
Elon Musk took to Twitter Friday morning to voice his opinion about the prisoner swap President Biden negotiated with Russia for the release of U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner.
On Thursday, Biden announced the U.S. would release Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who was sentenced 25 years for providing weapons used to kill Americans, in exchange for Griner. The deal notably excluded American Paul Whelan, an Iraqi war veteran who remains imprisoned in Russia since 2018. The Griner deal also excluded Marc Fogel, a Pennsylvania teacher in Russian custody.
Musk said Friday the U.S. should "never" leave behind one of its own servicemen.
"Never leave a marine behind. Never," Musk tweeted, responding to a user who inquired about his opinion.
The initial user asked: "Does it surprise anyone the Biden regime would leave a Marine behind after they abandoned Americans in Afghanistan?"
Musk’s criticism joined the chorus of Republican lawmakers and others who voiced concern Biden failed to free Whelan.
Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, took to Twitter demanding an answer from the Biden administration on why he excluded the Iraq war veteran from the deal.
"This was likely not a simple ‘choose him or her’ situation. But if it was, you choose the guy that served our country, Paul Whelan. We should get an explanation from this administration immediately," Crenshaw wrote.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Illinois, echoed: "What about retired marine who has been unjustly detained for years, Paul Whelan? Surely an arms dealer is worth two innocent people?" READ MORE...
Part of what has made New York Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez such a political star is her total lack of fear of speaking truth to power—and that includes one of the richest, and arguably most powerful, men in the world, Elon Musk.
AOC has been mercilessly dragging the new billionaire owner of Twitter, who acquired the platform last month for $44 billion in a purported bid to strengthen "free speech" and make the virtual "town square" a place where discourse is exchanged more freely.
In practice, this has mostly resulted in free-flowing racial, ethnic and anti-LGBTQ+ slurs and disinformation by the far-right figures to whom he has become a hero, and a desperate plan to charge verified users for their blue check marks.
If charging public figures for their only means of ensuring rogue account holders don't imitate and speak for them online seems antithetical to Musk's stated goals, you're not alone. READ MORE...
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, said he expects China to produce "some very strong companies" because of the country's workforce.
"There's just a lot of super-talented, hardworking people in China who strongly believe in manufacturing," Musk said in an interview with the Financial Times on Tuesday.
"They won't just be burning the midnight oil. They will be burning the 3 a.m. oil," he continued. "They won't even leave the factory type of thing, whereas in America people are trying to avoid going to work at all."
Musk himself famously slept on the floor of Tesla's Fremont factory during the "production hell" for the Model 3.
"I wanted my circumstances to be worse than anyone else at the company," he told Bloomberg in 2018. "Whenever they felt pain, I wanted mine to be worse."
Last month, workers at Tesla's Shanghai Gigafactory were required to sleep at the facility as production resumed following a three-week shutdown, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. A memo, which Bloomberg reported, indicated that each worker would be provided with a sleeping bag and an air mattress and expected to work 12-hour shifts with one day off per week.
But workplace tides may be shifting in China after tech workers there protested the "996" schedule that had many working 72 hours per week, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. for six days. READ MORE...
