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Daniel Friedman Profile picture
@DanFriedman81
Oct 7, 2023 • 8 tweets • 2 min read • Read on X
It's worth noting that the way the terrorist attacks on Israel are being covered and viewed today, and likely the international response to what is happening, would be significantly different if Elon Musk had not bought Twitter.
Prior to Musk's acquisition of the platform, fewer than 500,000 people had blue-check status. Blue checks get their tweets positioned first under a tweet when they reply to something, what they're tweeting about gets greater weight in determining trends, and their tweets are positioned first in trending topics.
The pre-Musk blue-checks were granted to accounts deemed notable by progressive Twitter staff, and they were overwhelmingly given to progressive figures in media, politics and activism.
There were significant disparities to who was able to get them based on political views. A freelancer who contributed to The Mary Sue or The Daily Beast could get one, but a freelancer who contributed to The National Review or Commentary could not. Staffers in AOC's office had them. Staffers in Ted Cruz's office did not.
The blue-checks are a lot more hostile to Israel and supportive of Palestinian terror groups than Americans at large. Because their fringe viewpoint was allowed to dominate this platform, they shifted the Overton window on Israel within media and academia over the past few years.
Additionally, Twitter before Musk had editors who removed or deprioritized tweets deemed inflammatory, edited and curated the trending topics and helped shape and control the narrative according to their values.
If Musk hadn't fired Twitters editors and moderators, you would not be seeing Palestinian terrorists taking selfies with the corpses of murdered women this morning, because Twitter's staff would be running crisis PR for Hamas and shaping the narrative on its behalf.
I don't agree with everything Musk has done. I think he doesn't keep people around who tell him when he's wrong, and I think his staff cuts have been too deep on the product and UX teams. But him wresting this platform from the progressive monoculture has been a huge win for truth.

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More from @DanFriedman81

Daniel Friedman Profile picture
May 24
The policies Elon Musk has changed since his purchase of Twitter have changed the discourse, and the way they’ve affected things has had a huge impact on the way we are discussing the war in Gaza. Here’s how it would be different if the old regime was still in charge.
First of all, Twitter had a number of staffers on the Trust and Safety team dedicated to “disinformation” and hate speech. Musk laid all these people off, unbanned a lot of odious actors and argues that more speech, through community notes, is the remedy to bad people speaking.
Old management banned accounts backed by Russian botnets and accounts connected to terror groups. On current X, Russian and Hamas backed disinformation accounts like Jackson Hinkle and Suppressed News have platforms where previous management and other networks ban them.
Read 11 tweets
Daniel Friedman Profile picture
May 20
Ubisoft has decided to make the protagonist of their next "Assassin's Creed" game, which takes place in 16th century Japan, a black man.

A lot of people online are insisting that this historical figure, a servant named Yasuke was a legendary samurai. This is nonsense.
Yasuke was an African who came to Japan as a servant of Italian missionaries. When the Japanese emperor, Oda Nobunaga, saw the black man he was astonished. He made Yasuke strip to the waist and scrub his skin, because he thought he was painted with ink.
Nobunaga asked the missionaries to keep the black man in his court. He was given the Japanese name Yasuke and was paid a stipend and given a house. Not much is written about him, but he was sometimes made to carry Nobunaga's tools or sword. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasuke
Read 15 tweets
Daniel Friedman Profile picture
Apr 18
Although black people are, on average, more conservative than white liberals, a significant break among black voters from the Democratic Party should be unlikely, because the Democratic Party treats black people collectively as an interest group it services, and the GOP does not.
Giving stuff to and doing stuff for black people is one of the main things the Democratic Party is about. Central to its messaging is that they do things for black people. That is why Joe Biden promised to nominate a black Supreme Court justice, and Gavin Newsom promised to fill a Senate vacancy with a black appointee.
The Republican Party’s messaging to white people isn’t as explicit, but the subtext is clear. They’re saying that the Democrats want to take stuff from “you,” their prospective voter who is probably white, and give it to “somebody else” who is probably black or an immigrant.
Read 13 tweets
Daniel Friedman Profile picture
Apr 17
I’ve been following the drama around NPR CEO Katherine Maher, and, while lots of conservatives are dunking on her tweets and statements, I don’t see a lot of liberals circling the wagons around her. But a lot of them were just like her between 2017 and 2020.
If Maher is forced to step down over her “in this house” tweet history, a lot of other people who advanced their careers a few years ago by being performatively woke could also be in trouble. I guess their plan is to just delete their old tweets and try to keep their heads down.
These people went completely fucking insane. They destroyed the lives and businesses of a lot of people who didn’t deserve it. And now they’re going to try to pretend that none of it ever happened.
Read 4 tweets
Daniel Friedman Profile picture
Apr 11
The reason they use graduation photos is forgotten internet lore. When Mike Brown was shot in 2014, media went to his Facebook to get pictures of him. In every photo, he was smoking blunts, fanning money or throwing gang signs. So they used photos of him looking like a thug.
Black Twitter reacted angrily. They said that the media was using images of Brown that stereotyped him. There was a trending hashtag #iftheygunnedmedown of college students or professionals posting pictures of themselves looking like thugs in solidarity with Brown.
Media outlets, thoroughly shamed, went to Brown’s family to get a picture that did not make him look like a stereotypical thug. They provided a photo of him in graduation regalia. From then on, media started using graduation photos of men who died while being arrested.
Read 4 tweets
Daniel Friedman Profile picture
Apr 6
This is an incredible article, because it shows what happens if you are a woke white man. Deck Nine makes progressive games and its CCO, Zak Garriss believed in assembling a diverse narrative team. But the people he hired hated and resented him and tried to destroy him.
In 2018, Garriss gave a talk at GDC about how he assembled a TV-style writers room for the game “Life is Strange: Before the Storm,” and how he believed “diversity of representation and perspective” strengthened the work. gdcvault.com/play/1025374/P…
But when he was nice to his team, they accused him of “love bombing,” a manipulation tactic. They insinuate that he was coming on to female employees, although he is never alleged to have tried to date any of his subordinates or that he made any kind of sexual advance. Image
Read 13 tweets

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