Twitter’s “Community Notes” system was designed “to create a better-informed world, by empowering people on X to collaboratively add helpful notes to posts that might be misleading“. The additions can be humourous and useful. Guido has crunched the numbers, though, and along with a marked uptick in the number of notes, it looks like they have a distinct target: Tories. Institutionalised bias, anyone?

The content of the notes themselves disproves any claim that the only answer is Tories talking more twaddle on Twitter. Editors “add context” by advertising Labour, defending Labour policies and clarifying Starmer’s comments when attacked by Tories. Labour attacks and vague policy promises go unchecked and uncontextualised. The only community note handed down to Labour’s account, meanwhile, explains that Sunak was instructed to use the side of the hammer in November…

Many of the notes attack Tory celebrations of Autumn Budget tax cuts by arguing threshold freezes are increasing overall tax – one goes so far as to say “It is misleading to suggest that “taxes are being cut“‘. Another says “tax has not been cut”. It’s fair to attack stealth tax rises and Guido does often, though it is factually incorrect to claim there has not been a tax cut. It also happens to be an explicit Labour attack line…

Noting power is given to a small number of Twitter users – Guido being one – and even fewer are proactive Community Note editors. While Elon Musk complains Wikipedia is “losing its objectivity” to the “biases of higher ranking editors” the same syndrome is affecting his platform. Twitter is not objective and shouldn’t pretend to be – it risks falling into the same trap…

The 51-minute long love-in between tech mogul Elon Musk and Rishi Sunak aired last night. Advertised as a “fireside chat“, the PM played a Jimmy Fallon-esq eager chatshow host, with the two giggling and agreeing on almost all of Sunak’s soft ball questions. Guido watched it so you don’t have to…

They agreed that rogue robots should have an “0ff-switch” (they’ve both seen The Terminator), and Musk praised Sunak’s decision to invite China to the summit and hailed London as a global power in AI. Even Elon’s bleak prediction that robots will make better friends than humans got no push-back from the PM. There was a brief hint of protest from Sunak when Elon claimed that AI means “there will come a point where no job is needed”, to which Sunak weakly responded “but work gives you meaning“, without really making much of a defence of this core Tory value. Still twenty points behind…

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…