The initiative, which was rumored to have been in development for over a year, appears to have started rolling out lately, as email invitations are being sent to prospective buyers.

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X, formerly Twitter, has begun to ramp up its efforts to sell user names that are no longer used. This is a move previously announced by Elon Musk, billionaire owner of the site.

Emails found by SMEThe @Handle Team has been working on an online marketplace to purchase account names that were left unregistered by their original owners. In some instances, X/Twitter sent emails to buyers asking for a $50k flat-fee to make a purchase.

You can send emails to anyone. SMEThe company’s @handle policy, fees, and process were updated recently.

An automated response from X’s press email account to SME as of publication time said only: “Busy now, please check back later.”

Musk’s company has been rumored to be planning to put such a program into effect for months. As early as November 2022, Musk posted on the social media site that a “vast number” of handles had been taken by “bots and trolls” and that he planned to start “freeing them up next month.” (In response, a user suggested a “Handle Marketplace” where people could sell accounts to each other, with the site pocketing a fee; SME couldn’t determine whether such a practice is now in place.)

According to a report from January, X staffers were discussing the sale of X/Twitter handle by the end of the month. The New York Times with Musk posting that he planned to free up as many as 1.5 billion usernames “soon.” In May, X began purging defunct accounts from its site.

As of Friday evening, X’s username registration policy posted on its website still stated “unfortunately, we cannot release inactive usernames at this time.” Its “inactive account policy,” meanwhile, warned usersLog in at least every 30 days in order to not be considered as inactive. However, X did not release inactive usernames.

Musk might want to consider using his own service to purchase at least one account soon: @handle itself, which hasn’t posted since 2019. It was fitting that its last post happened in 2019. postThe website associated with the rumor of a new launch was long gone.

Meta’s Threads app has struggled to gain market share from its larger rival, X, despite a promising launch that quickly garnered 100 million signups. But, how the platforms combat misinformation about the conflict between Israel and Hamas could become a tipping point in boosting Threads’s traction.

The User Experience on X

The search results I found for the Gaza Conflict were a comparison of several key words.

On X, the results in the “Top” tab were all posts from individuals with no apparent credentials and no more than a few thousand followers. All of these posts had a political bent, some supporting Hamas and others detailing Hamas atrocities. These posts are stuffed full of hashtags that may be misspelled to make them more discoverable and shareable.

Notably absent among these “top” results were posts from major news organizations, recognizable journalists, or actual political leaders.

Mark Cuban, billionaire entrepreneur and the most internet-savvy Shark Tank star, said on Threads, “Twitter is a cesspool of misinformation on Israel/Gaza.”

This statement was a good match for my experience. Most of the posts that I read were biased, promoting a particular point of view with no credible source to back up their claims. Others have deemed some videos to be altered.

News Discovery Limited

Further diminishing the impact of links to news stories is Musk’s removal of headlines from posts. A link to an article on another site now shows an article image with the domain watermark, but without a headline. Since it looks nearly identical to an image post that doesn’t link to external content, it’s not evident that clicking the photo will lead to a full story. Musk claims that this was done to make posts look better, but the end result is fewer people clicking on external links.

Contrast of the Threads

When searching for Gaza on Threads, you’ll find results from The Washington Post and various news outlets and journalists, including Reuters, Sky News and CNN. These results often linked to more detailed coverage of the topic.

The search results can be filtered to show posts made by specific members. The majority of these posts are thoughtful and considerate, no matter what opinion the poster has on the Gaza conflict. There was no obvious misinformation, or language that would be considered extreme.

Threads does not have hashtags. Therefore, there are no hashtags on any of the posts. While theoretically one could stuff a Threads posts with keywords, it’s not clear whether that would improve its discoverability. No keyword-stuffed threads appeared in my search.

If X became a street fight, Threads looks more like a quiet reception or networking occasion.

Are Threads a good way to gain market share?

If more users become disillusioned with Twitter’s combative environment and abundance of unreliable information, Threads could have an influx of new users.

The current trend in the industry is not very encouraging. According to Similarweb, in September Threads.net had just 45 million visits compared to nearly 6 billion for Twitter.com, X’s primary domain. There was one bright spot in the Web data for Threads: their visits rose by 5% from the preceding month while Twitter’s dropped 8%.

The differences in app usage are significant. Similarweb’s Top Apps list shows X as #4 in usage vs. Threads at #7, up one spot from the previous month. Threads has a higher download ranking than X, at #4 vs.#6.

Why Isn’t Threads Growing Faster?

It is because of the network effect that Threads remains far behind X. More people using the app means more engagement for other users. A user who posts repeatedly and receives no comments or likes may decide to stop using or checking the app. If a user receives a lot of feedback, they are likely to increase their usage. At the moment, Threads doesn’t have the number of very active users to produce engagement like X does.

Threads’s growth has also been held back by its lack of features. The app’s web version was not available for over a month. There are few sharing options. You can share this article on X with a click on the icon near the top, but to share on Threads you’ll have to copy the article URL and paste it into the app or website. I can embed a tweet (or, more precisely, an X post) in this article, but Threads doesn’t yet permit that. Other technical restrictions make it difficult to share Threads content with others or even photos.

What are the current topics?

Reportedly, Threads will soon introduce a trending topics feature like X’s. It will allow users to stay up-to-date with the latest news, and the most popular topics. This is likely to increase the time they spend on the website or app.

The downside of this feature is the risk to Threads’s congenial environment. Users hijack keywords or hashtags to create unrelated content.

Currently, neither X’s algorithm nor moderation seems to be able to control the spam or ban the users responsible for it. Apparently, Musk’s quest for better post aesthetics hasn’t found posts that contain multiple lines of blue-linked spammy hashtags as unattractive as a linked article headline.

The Success of Threads

X appears to be particularly vulnerable right now. Spam and negativity are on the rise. Changes, from renaming to “X” to dropping article headlines, are made at the Musk’s whim rather than because users wanted them.

To overcome X’s considerable network advantage, Threads must keep rolling out improvements to the user experience. Threads must make external sharing as easy as Facebook or X. It must be very easy to discover content and other users. Simple changes, such as the clipboard image uploading feature, will encourage users to add more content.

The most important thing for Threads is to keep its uniqueness: an environment free of spam, misinformation, and hostility. Threads needs to be a place that is truly different when users are tired of partisan yelling. Both the current Gaza Conflict and the U.S. Presidential Election offer an opportunity to differentiate the applications.

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American and Israeli schools encourage parents to remove their children’s accounts on social media. They do this because they believe that Hamas terrorists could use popular apps as a weapon to spread the news of the brutal killings.

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Schools across the United States and Israel are urging parents to ensure their children delete TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and Telegram “immediately” in anticipation of the terrorist group Hamas broadcasting videos executing hostages it has taken in its attack against Israel.

Hamas’ spokesperson warned the group would post pictures of its captured civilians if Israel attacked Gazans without prior warning. White House: In addition to 150 Israelis taken hostage, there may also be at least twenty missing Americans among those held by Hamas. Hamas has been designated as a terrorist group by the U.S. Government, and some of its members have also been declared terrorists.

“Dear Parents: We have been notified that soon there will be videos sent of the hostages begging for their lives,” one school wrote in a memo to families reviewed by SME. “Please delete TikTok from your children’s phones. We cannot allow our children to see them.”

“It’s hard for us, it’s impossible for us, to digest all of the content displayed on various social networks,” said the note, which SMETranslated from Hebrew A separate letter in Hebrew called on parents to delete Facebook and Telegram from their kids’ phones, in addition to TikTok.

In New Jersey, this letter was sent to almost 1,000 parents and students at a private high school.

“Local psychologists have reached out to us and informed us that the Israeli government is urging parents to tell their children to delete Instagram and TikTok immediately,” the principal wrote in an email seen by SME. “We strongly advise our students to do the same as soon as possible. … As one Israeli psychologist noted, ‘The videos and testimonies we are currently exposed to are bigger and crueler than our souls can contain.’”

SMEFor security purposes, the school names have been removed. Scores of parents in Arizona, New York and Canada as well as the U.K., claimed on social media that they too had been given this guidance by schools.

“The videos and testimonies we are currently exposed to are bigger and crueler than our souls can contain.”

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Since Hamas waged its surprise attack on Israel on Saturday, gruesome videos of the violence have quickly gone viral on the world’s most widely-used social media platforms, testing the companies’ policies and processes aimed at preventing or removing harmful content. Graphic reels of bloodied women who’d been raped, kidnapped or killed—and whose corpses were then paraded around Gaza as soldiers sat on them and onlookers spit on them—have been easy to find across the major platforms.

News of schools blasting out letters urging families to delete popular apps prompted Senator Rick Scott to call on the platforms to remove troubling posts and accounts that “instill fear and create chaos” and prevent Hamas from monetizing them in any way. “We’ve seen reports of babies savagely beheaded. The parents of children are shot. The elderly dragged through the streets,” Scott said. “Now Iran-backed Hamas wants to inflict more terror by sharing videos of hostages begging for their lives in Gaza. Companies that operate social media MUST act. TikTok, Instagram (Meta), X and every other social media platform have an obligation to stop these terrorists from distributing posts containing violence and murder and collecting financial support for their terror operations.”

TikTok and Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram) did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the schools’ concerns and how the companies are approaching the possibility that Hamas terrorists may try to weaponize mainstream platforms to spread these violent videos.

TikTok’s policies state that it does not allow “violent and hateful organizations or individuals” on the platform. The policy states that mass murderers, hate or criminal organizations, and violent extremists are all prohibited. Meta also prohibits organizations and individuals “organizing or advocating for violence against civilians… or engaging in systematic criminal operations.” That includes groups designated as terrorist organizations by the U.S. government, such as Hamas, or individuals designated as terrorists. “We remove praise, substantive support, and representation of [these] entities as well as their leaders, founders, or prominent members,” Meta’s rules state.

Politicians are not only concerned with viral videos that show violence. The sites have also spread misinformation regarding the war. This includes deceptive video clips about purported damage, victims and rescues. The misinformation spread because many people on the ground turned to social media for updates, especially X (formerly Twitter).

For example, European commissioner Thierry Breton demanded action from X on Tuesday to address “illegal content and disinformation” being spread in the EU—warning that the company’s moderation (or lack thereof) of this material could violate the bloc’s Digital Services Act. The Digital Services Act of the EU could be violated by the company’s moderation (or lack thereof) of this material. a letter to owner Elon Musk, Breton called on X to be clearer about what’s allowed on the site when it comes to terrorist or violent content and faster to take it down. The platform has been plagued by “fake and manipulated images and facts,” including “repurposed old images of unrelated armed conflicts or military footage that actually originated from video games,” Breton wrote, creating a “risk to public security and civic discourse.” Musk replied that “our policy is that everything is open source and transparent, an approach that I know the EU supports.”

At X, the conflict is arguably the company’s highest-stakes challenge yet since Musk took over Twitter one year ago. Its safety crew said this week that it has seen a surge of active users in the conflict area and that X leaders were deploying “the highest level of response” to protect discourse as the crisis intensifies. This includes the removal of new Hamas accounts, monitoring antisemitic speeches and working with industry anti-terrorism group, Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism to track problem trends. Its tolerance of graphic content appears to be high.

“We know that it’s sometimes incredibly difficult to see certain content, especially in moments like the one unfolding,” the safety team’s statement said. “In these situations, X believes that, while difficult, it’s in the public’s interest to understand what’s happening in real time.”

Rina Torchinsky contributed reporting.

Forbs: More From ForbesBillionaire Ackman and Others Promise Not to Hire Harvard Students who Signed a Letter Criticizing IsraelYou can also contact us by clicking here. Brian BushardForbs: More From ForbesBiden: Americans are among Hamas hostagesYou can also contact us by clicking here. Sara DornForbs: More From ForbesHamas Imprisons Israeli Soldiers And CiviliansYou can also contact us by clicking here. Antonio Pequeño IV

Subscribers will soon be able to choose to pay more for fewer ads on the platform that was formerly Twitter. Bloomberg initially reported that Elon Musk’s X is looking at a tiered model where the Basic tier shows the same number of advertisements, Standard tier half, and Plus level no ads.

At the moment, users of the premium tier see half the amount of ads that the free tier does.

A price plan for the three paid tiers isn’t known—nor is whether there would even be a free option for users. Musk said last month, however, that all users will be charged a monthly subscription. He claimed this would rid the service of bots.

It might seem Musk is more concerned about making the service—which he paid $44 billion to acquire last year—profitable.

Twitter finds it difficult to impose fee models that are used in other industries. It is also at risk of losing its users and brands’ trust. C4 Trends’ technology and social media expert Susan Schreiner said that it seems to be a revenue grab.

The situation at X/Twitter can be difficult to understand. Charles King, Pund-IT’s principal analyst, said that as a privately owned company, it is reasonable for the company to keep their financial/strategic information close at hand.

King pointed out that it could obscure, or dilute the message to the public about its achievements. Musk seems to have made a new pivot with the tiered system, but it is also the latest in X’s strategy.

X underwent a few changes including the elimination of its legacy “verification’ system. Just this month, the headlines of shared news articles were removed. The tiered subscription model may not win favor with users—especially with those who haven’t signed up for the premium option.

King said that it is difficult to know how the users’ response will be. The competing platforms which have emerged in the last few months, since Musk has purchased Twitter and rebranded it, have not really taken off. It is difficult to convince people who are used to freemium platforms to pay for paid services. “If X/Twitter decides to go with a paid subscription, this could encourage a significant number of users who use Twitter and other services to start using alternative platforms.”

Take a cue from the Streaming Model

It’s important to note that a tiered system is not exactly a novel concept. Many streaming services already use it, including Peacock. It’s not clear whether it will work well with social media.

This is similar to a streaming-model, but with less ads depending on the payment level. Cost will play a major role. “The higher prices are, the more casual customers they will lose,” said Greg Sterling, cofounder of Near Media. They might also see gains from professional users, who feel obliged to remain on the platform. The future remains uncertain. Twitter/X has changed. It is not the same public space it used to be.

A tiered approach will reduce the reach of advertisers.

King added, “Clearly Musk is looking to better monetize the platform and a subscription-based model could bring in much needed funds while Linda Yaccarino works to restore or rebuild relationships with advertisers.”

Twitter/X had some modest success in bringing back their top advertisers but the overall ad revenues remain way down. Sterling added that the plan was designed to make up for these losses. This plan is unlikely to bring Twitter/X back on track financially, especially given the state of Twitter/X.

How much would you pay to use social media if you didn’t have to look at ads?

That’s an important question to ask right now.

One report at Engadget theorized that the social media app formerly known as Twitter (now called X) might offer three different subscription “tiers” for those who hate ads. Bloomberg reported that a user of X had sifted some iOS code.

The code appears to reveal three different plans of payment, Basic, Standard, or Plus. No one knew how much the plans would cost. Basic was to show all ads. Standard showed about 50% less ads. And Plus did not display any ads.

Meta continues to ponder the idea of charging Facebook European users a fee per month (possibly as low as $14) in order to circumvent legal concerns related to gathering private data.

My take on all of this: We’re not exactly talking about Netflix here in terms of value. The social media companies are doing a terrible job at providing extras and perks that make a monthly subscription worth it.

Twitter and Facebook’s business models have been based on keeping things as similar as possible. This keeps us scrolling mindlessly.

Here’s what I mean by that:

Introducing new features makes sense for Apple or Samsung when they release new phones, because then we’re more likely to upgrade. New features on social media are counterintuitive. This is the ultimate goal. You can also check out our other blog posts.Introduce something new and novel. It not only makes us interested, but it also pleases advertisers. We may decide to make use of the new features, if there is any real benefit. We might break out of our trance and do something worthwhile and productive, which means we won’t look at the ads as much. It’s supposed to be a slogfest with no real value.

In recent years, I’ve noticed how more and more Facebook ads show up on my feed, likely due to more targeting. Facebook puts me in a category where I am more likely to be exposed to advertisements the minute that I engage with any content. Facebook has fewer friends posting these days. That means more ads. It’s content that counts, not value or purpose.

X, on the other hand, continues to experience a loss of advertisers. It is now looking at ways to improve revenue. It’s getting more and more dire, according to Reuters, because each month since Elon Musk took the helm, advertising have steadily declined.

The only way to make money is by charging for services.

What will it cost? I’m guessing the X Plus subscription plan might cost about $16 per month, or twice the current X Premium charge of $8 per month. It’s unclear what that really means other than not seeing ads, because there are few extra features even available. I’ve mentioned this many times now, but social media apps need to start offering more value and incentives. They might succeed if the apps can offer something that is worth paying for.

I’m guessing that until then most people are going to just accept the advertisements.

We’ve been doing that now for a decade…plus.

Who exactly is Elon M. Musk?

Recent book gives a very well written answer to this question.

Elon MuskWalter Isaacson has written a book that is both enlightening and revealing. It’s brilliant. It came out on September 12, and I’m already about halfway into the book, which clocks in at a hefty 688 pages.

I won’t spoil any revelations from the book if you plan to read it, especially the parts about his family dynamics or the early chapters about his life before becoming the richest person in the world. Any biography which dwells too heavily on the early years of a family’s life tends to bore me. You want to read about “the good stuff” that made someone famous. With this book, from the opening chapter onward, you get an inside peek into Musk’s formative years.

The book is incredibly detailed when it comes to his inner world — you start to understand what makes him tick. The book is sprinkled with quotes from friends, his family, and Musk, which add authenticity to the events described. But what keeps you reading the entire time is the fascinating psychology of this world-famous entrepreneur. He’s a genius. Isaacson said that he was a very random person.

In the book, there is a story about the beginnings of SpaceX. It tells how they began testing their rockets. It used launchpads in California initially, but then Musk suddenly decided he didn’t want to wait for the federal government to finish its own launches. Musk shipped rockets from California to Kwaj, but this was a bad idea due to its remoteness and other factors.

For a second, I had to pause and reflect on that. Isaacson describes how you start an enormous company, SpaceX. impatienceYou decide, instead of launching rockets half way across the world. Musk and his entourage questioned this decision at the time.

It was a short jump from the past to now. According to Wall Street JournalMusk took several unplanned decisions in relation to Twitter. Musk fired people, changed the company name and now might charge a subscription fee. Isaacson paints a picture of someone who is incredibly random, and how that’s frustrating to everyone around him. He’s abrupt and makes rash decisions on a dime, like moving those rockets.

But yet.

Isaacson describes the successful first SpaceX launch as well and suggests that there will be more to come. I haven’t read far enough to know this from the book, but obviously Musk also turned Tesla into a dynamo.

All of this has caused me to rethink Musk’s master plan for X. The company that was formerly known as Twitter. Musk, like the other tech geniuses who came before him in the field of technology, is always stirring up the pot. It seems he likes it this way. When there’s a smart decision to be made about retaining brand integrity with Twitter, he does the opposite and randomly decides to dump the brand. He suddenly decides to charge for an app that most people would not pay to download. He isn’t going to wait to build X into something worth a subscription.

I honestly don’t think any of this will work. X is ripping off users from left to right. It’s almost like Musk prefers to fail as much as possible and then see what happens.

Many of these early rockets were destroyed. Twitter’s own implosion is happening. Could it be that this was always the intention? At this scale of disruption, innovation always involves drama.

I’m rethinking everything about his strategy. He is purposefully blowing up Twitter, maybe as a way to see what’s left and who is still interested. As I discovered in the book, he’s someone who likes to create chaos and confusion and then see what’s still standing, and he always has.

Before, it worked. It worked before. Let’s wait and see.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, and it has resulted in a number of controversies—including how the leader’s comments about a grain embargo resulted in a rift with its staunch supporter Poland, and how Russian diplomats attempted to block the speech from taking place.

However, there is a controversy over whether or not the video broadcast of the speech in Ukraine was edited. Social media has posted images that appear to show that Ukrainian media edited footage in order to give the impression that there was a much larger audience than what it actually appeared to be.

Zelensky was reportedly seen sitting in the same audience as President Biden during his remarks earlier that day.

Multiple news agencies have widely distributed the official video of this speech.

The Ukrainian government has not made any official comments on the broadcast that was sent to the residents of the country, but Kyiv would be in error if they did edit the video.

“A knee-jerk reaction would be that video manipulation by anyone is inappropriate—but in this case, it poses a dilemma,” suggested Susan Schreiner, senior analyst at C4 Trends. “Why are we holding Ukraine to a higher standard than the misinformation disseminated by Russia, China or even Trump—with his penchant for bragging about the size of his crowds on Inauguration Day?”

Seeing Is Believing… Until It Isn’t

It would also be easy to believe the narrative that Ukraine manipulated the video—but it does seem so sloppily done that it could be a case of disinformation, presented by Kremlin propagandists, especially as the actual clips are so readily available. What should be the concern is that the posts of the clips on X—the platform formerly known as Twitter—quickly went viral on Thursday with few questioning whether the edited videos actually aired in Ukraine.

The question is, did the fake video actually exist, or was there a deliberate disinformation campaign behind it?

With the proliferation of social media, which is awash with sophisticated technology, it has become increasingly hard to separate fact and truth from falsehood and fiction. Schreiner continued, “I fear this situation will only worsen with the increase of book censorships and interferences in classroom curricula that reflect conformity and discourage thinking and exploration.”

Most people do not seek confirmation when misinformation is spread via social media. Too often they trust what they see—but increasingly seeing shouldn’t result in believing.

“While ‘older’ logic would suggest that new ethical and moral guardrails need to be established—in today’s climate that seems Quixotic,” she continued. It’s likely that the technology will lead to new types of watermarking or other forms of verification. Can technology also deliver the context—or do new tools need to be developed that enable technology to work alongside humans?

Spreading Misinformation Like Superspreaders

As more and people rely upon social media as their main source of information, misinformation has spread like wildfire. In a world with so little faith in mainstream media, social media has become a source of misinformation and disinformation.

“We should always be on guard against propaganda, but with this kind of coverage, we are at the intersection of war news, with its inherent opportunities for false information—which can be an effective weapon—served up on social media platforms that are hard-wired to reward outrage and chaos,” warned Susan Campbell, distinguished lecturer in the Department of Communication, Film and Media Studies at the University of New Haven.

In these perilous and worrying times, people live in echo chambers and silos that reflect their so-called views. Schreiner added that in this environment it is easy for misinformation spread to the point of a wildfire.

Many reports confirm that she was correct in pointing out the influence of Russia, its troll farm and other foreign actors on the results of the U.S. elections of 2016.

“In a more reasonable world—perhaps gravity will set in and people will slowly move towards being open to finding a middle-ground for respectful discussion within the context of agreeing to disagree,” said Schreiner. “Maybe that’s become a quixotic dream but for the sake of humanity—there needs to be an evolution in the changing relationship between people and modernity with technology.”

I’m following the destruction of Twitter like it’s a dumpster fire.

The dumpster is filled with cardboard. (Twitter Blue Verification becomes a service that costs money). Watch in horror as someone pours gas on the cardboard.

You can see a match lit, preparing to ignite an inferno.

Musk recently made an announcement in a conversation with Benjamin Netanyahu on livestream. Musk hinted that he could start charging people to use X, a former Twitter service which we still call by that name. That report by The Guardian quoted Musk as saying: “We’re moving to having a small monthly payment for use of the system.”

This reasoning seems a bit suspect. According to CNBC, Musk says there are too many bots, and by charging a small amount per month for access, the service can eradicate what he called “a vast army of bots” that have invaded the service over the last several years.

Let’s peel back the layers here a little. Musk appears to have given up the fight in his battle against bots who can make accounts, act like real humans, and trolling other users. The bot army is a common phenomenon that spies on websites, social media sites and other platforms to get your information and scam you. The bots have become a major problem, as they are programmed to mimic human behavior and can defeat the many defenses built by tech companies to keep them at bay.

The solution to the problem doesn’t really make sense, though.

Musk’s suggestion is this: The users themselvesPaying for the privilege to use a service which is free of bot accounts would be preferable to trying to figure out how to remove the bots. (Bot armies are rampant, but they don’t like to pay subscription fees.) More critically, he’s suggesting that X is worth paying for in the first place.

This business model worked well with some other services. Secure email is one example. Zivver is a good example of an app that can be used to charge for email. You may be sending financial data or legal documents to your clients. This service is $7.20 a month.

X allows users to send links for cat videos. It’s a meme generator. You can say everything you don’t like about a politician. We agree to see ads and sponsored content because we don’t actually pay attention to the ads in the first place. Charging for a service that’s barely useful reveals a complete misunderstanding of why we use the apps in the first place. Believe me, it’s not for sending legal documents to clients.

Here’s where things get interesting, though. Musk wants us to pay for X now, before it becomes the app he wants it to become — which might actually have some usefulness or involve our finances in some way. He hasn’t built that yet. He purchased Twitter at random, then realized that millions of users accounts could be transferred to another app without him asking.

What could work? Musk needs to build X before asking us to pay. The way it stands now, there’s really no reason to keep using X, whether you like the name or not.

Do you have trouble accessing X (formerly known as Twitter), the social media platform? You’re not alone. In the U.S., tens of thousands users have reported issues that began around 7:06 PM. ET.

According to Down Detector the majority of the issues with X are experienced by people accessing the site via the web rather than through the app on their smartphone. Users are being greeted with a message that reads, “Something went wrong. Try reloading.” Reloading doesn’t seem to help, according to my own tests.

X suffered a variety of technical problems over the past few months, including users not being able to load their site. Users were banned from the social media site after only 600 tweets. That was cap was soon raised and doesn’t appear to be a serious problem anymore.

Elon Musk purchased Twitter in October 2022. He made a lot of changes to the site, which included firing thousands. Some tech experts warned at the time that getting rid of so much staff risked causing the site to experience outages, though it’s not clear what’s causing the current downtime.

Musk also stirred up controversy by making provocative statements on the website, which reportedly scared off advertisers. The billionaire owner recently said ad revenue has declined by roughly 50% since he took over and it’s not clear what might be done to fix that in the near term.

Musk hired Linda Yaccarino in June as his CEO to soothe advertiser fears. It remains to be determined if this was a successful move, since Musk is still the focus of many power users.

X didn’t respond to emails sent on Monday night. I’ll update this post if I hear back.

Conspiracy theorists on Twitter spent the weekend insisting the racist shooter in Jacksonville, Florida who killed three people on Saturday was part of a “psyop” somehow organized by the U.S. government. As evidence for the theory, many far-right accounts said the shooter’s manifesto was immediately released, while other left-wing shooters have had their manifestos withheld. What’s the only problem? That’s simply not true.

“Anyone else notice how we got the Jacksonville shooter’s manifesto within hours of the ‘racially motivated’ incident, but we still don’t have the Nashville Trans Terrorist’s manifesto 5 months after they murdered Christian schoolchildren?” one account known as DC_Draino tweeted on Sunday.

“It’s a simple explanation: One boosts the regime’s racially divisive narrative. The other doesn’t,” the account continued, referring to President Joe Biden’s administration as a regime.

Jacksonville sheriff T.K. Waters gave a press conference Sunday to explain the case. He also revealed that Ryan Christopher Palmeter, 21, shot three Blacks at the Dollar General in a racist crime. Waters says the shooter wrote “several” manifestos that “detailed the shooter’s disgusting ideology of hate.” Palmeter eventually turned the gun on himself.

“Plainly put, this shooting was racially motivated, and he hated Black people,” Waters said at the Sunday news conference.

In spite of reports spread on Twitter, now known officially as X (the social media platform), where many people claim that the manifestos were released by the local authorities, these manifestos are not available.

Online, right-wing commentators have repeatedly demanded that the manifesto for the shooter responsible for killing six people inside a Nashville Christian high school in march 2023 be made public. Police haven’t released the manifesto, or any other writings of Aiden Hale (the 28-year old who committed the crime before being shot by the police). And while many conspiracy theorists try to suggest there’s some nefarious motive behind not releasing the manifesto, the Associated Press points out there’s no national standard for releasing such writings.

Many mass shootings, no matter what their politics are, do not share their manifestos online. But the advent of the internet in the past 20 years has enabled many violent attackers to post their hateful thoughts before they begin their attack. The Jacksonville Shooter and the Nashville Christian School Shooter both did not publish their manifestos.

One example of hateful writings spreading far and wide is the manifesto shared by the shooter in Christchurch in New Zealand who murdered 51 people in two mosques before committing the attack. He posted it on 8chan. In addition to the fact that the New Zealand police didn’t release this manifesto, they also made it an offence for anyone in New Zealand to have the document.

Whenever mass shooters commit their heinous crimes, it’s only natural for the public to have questions about why they did it. But shootings are so common and occur for such a wide variety of reasons that it’s hard to say there’s much public interest in releasing their screeds.

Gun Violence Archive reports that the U.S. had 476 mass killings in this past year. Everyone knows that this high number is unheard of among wealthy countries. Some U.S. lawmakers will claim that our epidemic of mass shootings is a result of mental health issues or declining prayer. The U.S. has the highest level of religiousness among wealthy nations. But, every country in the world suffers from mental illnesses. Our number of firearms is what sets us apart.

Americans have bought more than 60 million new firearms during this epidemic, which is an astounding number in a country with over 330 millions people. Our elected leaders have shown little desire to introduce new regulations on guns, so this number is only going to increase over the next few months and even years. It is up to the police whether or not they release mass shooter manifestos. But there’s absolutely no evidence that releasing manifestos will help get our violence problem under control.