More like a pyrrhic victory. Musk got rid of NPR which hurts Twitter (although probably only a little), in exchange for the victory…of something.
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From the “You Can’t Make This Up” Department." Elon Musk bought Twitter, in part, because Musk disagreed with Twitter’s moderation policies, saying he was a free speech absolutist. One of the gripes specifically was “shadow banning” certain posters..
In order to expose the depravity of the old regime, Musk gave journalist Matt Taibbi and others access to internal emails and documents, which they have been publishing as the Twitter Files. Per the agreement, the articles were first published on Twitter and then later published on Taibbi’s Substack, which requires a subscription and Taibbi’s primary source of income.
Welp, Substack rolled out a service called Notes, which Musk deemed a threat to Twitter, and so all links to Substack were blocked, as were likes and comments on Tweets with references to Substack.
Taibbi complained to Musk in private, and after some back and forth drama, Musk shadow banned him.
Censorship isn’t bad as long as you are the one doing the censoring, I suppose.
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This is why people who thought Musk was doing this for “free speech” are wrong.
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Funny item from the Voice of America. They are objecting to being labeled ‘government-funded media’ even though they are a US Federal entity and their funding is in the Federal budget set by Congress.
DB2
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Visits to the NPR website are down by over seven million per month (-6.5%) since before they left Twitter. We’ll see if they can bounce back.
https://www.similarweb.com/website/npr.org/#traffic
Mar 111.5 Apr 104.4 May 104.2
DB2
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Very cool link, thanks for sharing.
Looks like NPR gets the vast majority of its traffic from direct links and organic searches. It also appears that from social media redirects, twitter was third after FB and Reddit (the last being rather surprising).
Regardless, I don’t think NPR needs to “bounce back” from a 6% drop in traffic to their site since that is not really what drives their business model. NPR was and continues to be the 3rd most visited site for music in the United States (yet another surprise) and of course NPR is more about people listening than reading.
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That’s a surprise.
I would guess that the traffic from Twitter is mostly about news items, BWDIK. At any rate, there may be some effects from leaving in a huff.
DB2
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In other news, Twitter is being evicted from its Boulder offices for non-payment of rent.
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I wonder if now they’ll be allowed to work remotely. After all, the office is gone…
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For somebody else ??? If the plan all along was to close that office…
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Bob
I have used twitter and google analytics for years along with an art website that counts bots.
Twitter stirs up more bots per post by far than any other sm. The factor can get as high as 20 bots to 1 tweet.
Npr lost mostly bots.
I have seen one artist with 47 million visits to her website and almost no sales. Twitter inspired bot count.
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But wait – didn’t Twitter say it bot count was very low?
DB2
Relative to what? Note that omission…
I would think that if they had closed the office, the article might have mentioned it - but maybe not?
I believe they said their bot count was accurate, which Musk initially disputed.
If that was the plan then there would be no need to evict them.
Not if their lease was still in force (i.e. they were still required to pay rent per the lease until the lease end–OR they failed to pay rent). Eviction was necessary in order to terminate the existing lease and make the space available for a different tenant.
You don’t need an eviction for that. If Twitter’s intention was to close the office, they could simply move out and give control back to the landlord. They would still have to pay rent in accordance with the lease agreement, but the landlord would have the opportunity to find a new tenant which would reduce Twitter’s financial obligations. Musk is a deep pockets tenant. You can bet the landlord is going to go straight at Twitter for the back rent and the court costs.
I have a client in a similar situation. His tenant moved out with years remaining on their lease (major grocery store chain), but is still paying rent until he can find a new tenant. No evictions required, no courts involved.
I suspect the play here is that Musk is trying to force rent concessions by tying everything up in court. Or he could just be a jerk. Hard to tell sometimes.
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Bob twits bot count is low. Tweets stir up bots for other websites not twitter