According to research by Westminster lobbyists Headland, one in four MPs (26%) have set up a profile on Threads, while 90% of UK MPs have their own Twitter/X handle. Despite the hype Meta’s Instagram linked Threads has gained 169 MPs.
Headland crunched the numbers and found that while there is only a marginal difference between which party had the most MPs on the new channel – with 39% (67) of the early adopters on the Conservative benches and 44% (77) Labour – Labour MPs have been the busiest. Only 12 Conservative MPs have been “active” (i.e., posted content more than once in the past week), versus 29 Labour MPs.
Headland’s Gregor Poynton tells Guido:
“It’s difficult to imagine how Westminster worked before tweeting, and while it seems as though X’s influence over the political news cycle is unlikely to change anytime soon, it is waning. The question for MPs will be whether it’s worth the time and energy to engage with both Threads and X.”
Despite Elon Musk’s exasperating at times tinkering with Twitter / X it will be hard for a rival social media platform to beat it because of the strong network effect – with 90% of politicians and 100% of political media on Twitter a rival will have to have a compelling advantage to cause a mass migration. Threads so far looks bare.
Elon tells CNBC…
“The lap-top class is living in la-la land.”
Fresh from being fired by FOX at the end of last month, Tucker Carlson has now announced that his show will be resuscitated, in some shape or form, on Twitter. The announcement video, now with over 73 million views, was posted as his website proclaimed ‘TUCKER IS BACK’. Complete with a photo of Tucker holding a gun.
Tucker added:
“At the most basic level the news you consume is a lie. A lie of the stealthiest and most insidious kind. Facts have been withheld on purpose, along with proportion and perspective. You are being manipulated… We’re just grateful to be here. Free speech is the main right you have. Without it, you have no others.”
Musk responded to Carlson’s declaration of love with the terms and conditions, pointing out fire exits and loos:
“On this platform, unlike the one-way street of broadcast, people are able to interact, critique and refute whatever is said. And, of course, anything misleading will get @CommunityNotes. I also want to be clear that we have not signed a deal of any kind whatsoever. Tucker is subject to the same rules & rewards of all content creators. Rewards means subscriptions and advertising revenue share (coming soon), which is a function of how many people subscribe and the advertising….”
It’s not surprising Musk wants to keep his distance from conspiracy-loving Carlson…
Elon Musk sat down with BBC reporters last night in a Twitter Spaces interview to clear the air over his recent decision to label the Corporation as “government-funded” and discuss the prevalence of “hate speech” – however loosely defined – on the platform. It went about as smoothly as you’d expect.
BBC tech reporter James Clayton claimed he’d seen more hate speech on the app since Musk took over, to which Musk inevitably asked for specific examples. For some reason, Clayton couldn’t quite recall any – instead claiming he’d seen “hateful content” on the new “For You” recommendation page, though he no longer uses that feature so isn’t exposed to it anymore. Right. Musk wasn’t having it:
“I say sir that you don’t know what you are talking about… because you cannot give me a single example of hateful content, not even one tweet. You claimed that hateful content is high. That is false, you just lied… that is absurd.”
Musk then went on the attack over the BBC’s coverage of the UK government’s Covid policies, to which Clayton was equally lost for words…
The latest batch of the Twitter files reveal some real bombshells: the FBI gave the company nearly $3.5 million in taxpayers’ cash to reimburse the company for handling mass “processing requests” – the taking down of accounts. This, in other words, amounted to banning certain conservative accounts and blocking “possible violative content” in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election and beyond. One leaked email shows a Twitter employee even gleefully wrote “I am happy to report we have collected $3,415,323 since October 2019!”
According to US journalist Matt Taibbi, who was briefed by Musk himself, “Between January 2020 and November 2022, there were over 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth”, with the express purpose of blocking accounts sharing alleged “disinformation“. Sometimes this even included accounts sharing obvious jokes…
The most damning consequence of all this is, of course, the censorship of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden story. Twitter blocked the exposé on the grounds that it was “Russian disinformation“, just a day after their top lawyer Jim Baker had a secret meeting with the FBI. By chance, Baker himself happens to be an FBI alumnus. He personally told Yoel Roth to censor the story – a story which, it now goes without saying, wasn’t churned out by the Kremlin at all…
Looks like he’s heeding the Twitter poll, CNBC is reporting that Musk is actively searching for a new Twitter CEO. Which will be a relief to Tesla shareholders…
