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Climate scientists are claiming that changes at Twitter following Elon Musks takeover of the social media platform have unleashed a wave of unfair abuse directed at them.

The platform, they claim, is now flooded with climate denial.

Dr. Mark Maslin, professor of Earth System Science at University College London, told The Guardian hes been the target of abuse and rude comments on Twitter as a result of him challenging the position of climate deniers.

Maslin also said that, prior to Musk taking over, he used to have meetings with a top Twitter executive to coordinate efforts to ensure that trusted information would be pushed to the top of feed rankings. That way, perspectives Maslin disagrees with would be less likely to be seen.

Musk laid off that department head during a purge after he bought the platform.

No Definitions And Examples

The Guardian article doesnt explain exactly what climate denial is or provide any links to or screenshots of examples of what the scientists are calling abuse.

The article quotes Maslin and other scientists referring to climate denial. The article headline refers to climate crisis deniers, which seems to imply that climate denial is also disputing if climate change is producing catastrophic outcomes.

Cowboy State Daily reached out to Maslin to ask what he believes falls outside the realm of trusted information and if that includes perspectives he simply disagrees with as opposed to the promotion of perspectives that challenge established, indisputable science.

Maslin was also asked if thinks its appropriate for a social media platform to coordinate with activists on an issue to purge perspectives they dont agree with.

Maslin didnt reply.

Hateful Canard

Dr. Judith Curry, president and co-owner of Climate Forecast Application Network, told Cowboy State Daily the issue of climate denial is a hateful canard thats applied to a range of ideas that arent approved by a circle of climate scientists.

Before she moved into the private sector, Curry was a professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Institute of Technology, as well as chair of the program. She also was a professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Environmental Studies Program at the University of Colorado-Boulder.

Curry is a moderate voice in the debate. In her latest book, Climate Uncertainty and Risk, she argues that climate change is an exceedingly complex issue, both in terms of the science and its impacts, as well as the policies aimed at addressing it.

We have mischaracterized climate risk by conflating the slow incremental risks from warming (such as sea level rise) and the risks from extreme weather that have little, if anything, to do with the warming, Curry said.

She said in our zeal to eliminate carbon dioxide emissions, were jeopardizing our energy supply, which will only cause more harm than good.

Denial Label

In 2011, Curry criticized the hockey stick graph, which shows temperatures over the last 1,000 years.

The graph, which was produced by climatologist and Penn State Professor Michael E. Mann and some of his colleagues, purportedly shows an exponential rise in temperatures over the last few decades, which makes it look like a hockey stick.

For her criticism of the graph, Curry said she was labeled a denier.

I have seen scientists and politicians labeled as deniers who agree with the IPCC science assessment, but dont think that this is a problem that trumps all others and needs to be urgently addressed, Curry said.

Curry said the label has been applied to highly reputable scientists, such as James Hansen and Kerry Emanual, because they advocate for nuclear energy instead of solar and wind.

Because of his extremely active levels of denial entrepreneurship, my operating definition of climate denier is anyone who disagrees with Michael Mann about anything related to climate, Curry said.

Censorship Collusion

Curry said its concerning that Maslin admitted in the Guardian article to coordinating with employees of Twitter to suppress perspectives he doesnt like and admitted it apparently with some pride.

Following his takeover of Twitter, Musk released thousands of documents showing frequent collusion between staff members of Twitter and government officials, as well as deliberate efforts to suppress conservative viewpoints.

Prior to Musks takeover, Curry said the engagement she received on her Twitter feed was considerably lower.

For the [approximately] 18 months prior to Musks takeover of Twitter, I felt as if I was tweeting into a void hardly any new followers and virtually no likes or retweets of my tweets, Curry said.

Within a week after Musk took over, she said, her followers and engagement greatly increased. Since November, her followers have doubled.

I was obviously shadow banned in some way, Curry said, referring to the practice of lowering the ranking of content so its seen by fewer users of a platform.

Hateful Attacks

Curry said Twitter has vastly improved under Musk, but its a work in progress.

There are people on both sides of the debate on climate issues that are exceedingly ignorant about science and the impact of climate change, she said. But they speak loudly on the topic.

However, its those on the alarmist side of the debate whose rhetoric of extinction and crisis is the most out of touch with reality, she said.

Curry said that despite the bad information they spread, she thinks its more important to reign in what she calls libelous and hateful attacks by climate scientists who hold faculty positions at universities.

Lately, Mann has been on a rampage on Twitter, attacking figures who express viewpoints he doesnt like. Some might call the Tweets abusive.

In one tweet, Mann called Curry a go-to figure on the denial circuit.

Disparaging Tweets

In a tweet about Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder Roger Pielke Jr., Mann wrote, Roger Pielk Jr. is still around? I thought he was now writing a sports column or something.

Pielke has been a regular commenter on climate change issues, arguing that the science on extreme weather is far more nuanced and uncertain than is often presented in the media. Hes also been critical of the International Panel on Climate Change, a consortium of the worlds leading climate scientists, for what he says is an increasingly biased view of climate change.

Mann also disparaged research meteorologist Ryan Maue, who served as a chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration during the Trump administration.

Mann called him a fossil fuel propagandist.

Whos The Abuser?

Maslin, too, isnt above throwing the same type of harsh criticism at the people who disagree with him.

He accused Dr. Matthew Wielicki of posting fake science. When Wielicki asked for examples of what Maslin considered to be fake science, Maslin didnt provide any. Instead, Maslin replied, And you are not even consistent in your denial so we all assume you are doing this for attention.

Mann has apparently singled us out for attacks because each of us has greater than 50,000 followers on Twitter, Curry said.

She said rather than being reprimanded for such behavior, scientists like Mann are rewarded by prestigious university chairs and institutes, as well as given awards from professional societies.

Until this problem is cleaned up, I see no home for addressing this issue, Curry said, adding that its ironic for them to complain about hostile comments on Twitter when they tend to dish it out so much.

Everyone Gets Nasty Comments

Curry said that abusive comments happen on Twitter all the time, but its nothing exclusive to climate scientists on the alarmist side of the debate, such as Mann and Maslin.

I receive nasty comments all the time, Curry said.

She said when it gets to be too much, shell mute the individual, and Twitter provides tools to limit notifications to help screen out some of the unwanted remarks.

Since Curry tends toward the middle on climate issues, she said the hateful comments come to her from both sides.

However, I will say that the really vile and hateful comments come predominantly from the alarmed side of the spectrum, Curry said.

Contact Kevin Killough at Kevin@CowboyStateDaily.com

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Climate Alarmists Claim They Are Being Abused On Twitter Since ... - Cowboy State Daily

Elon Musk left a California court with two of his bodyguards. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Elon Musk wanted a bathroom built next to his office in Twitter's headquarters so he didn't have to wake up his bodyguards in the middle of the night to go pee, a new lawsuit claims.

Six former Twitter employees filed the suit against Musk and X. Corp, Twitter's holding company, in the District Court of Delaware on Tuesday.

It accuses the defendants of violating 14 counts, including fraud, breach of contract, and labor-rights laws. But it's also full of details about what's been going on inside the social-media company under the billionaire's leadership.

A Twitter engineer told the BBC in March that at least two bodyguards followed Musk around its San Francisco headquarters, including to the restroom.

The lawsuit says that Steve Davis, the Boring Company CEO, told Joseph Killian a plaintiff who worked at Twitter for 12 years and oversaw office design to start work on a new restroom closer to Musk's office.

Musk wanted the facilities next to his office so he "didn't have to wake his security team and cross half the floor to use the bathroom in the middle of the night," the suit says.

Last month, the billionaire told the BBC that he sometimes slept on a couch in the library at Twitter's headquarters. Musk also told CNBC on Tuesday that he slept for about six hours a night.

The suit says Killian told Davis that he would start getting the permits for Musk's restroom, but the suit paraphrases him responding: "We don't do that; we don't have to follow those rules."

According to the suit, he instead suggested Killian hire an unlicensed plumber to build the toilet since others wouldn't want to jeopardize their license by working on a project without a permit.

Insider reached out to Twitter for comment. It responded with its standard poop-emoji auto-reply.

Elon Musk did not directly reply to Insider, but tweeted about this story after its publication, calling the claim about his bathroom an "absurd scenario."

"Even were this absurd scenario true, my 'bodyguards' being asleep instead of thwarting assassins would be of far greater concern to me than shortening my trip to the [toilet]," he said.

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Elon Musk wanted own bathroom at Twitter to avoid waking bodyguards - Business Insider

Chief executives, trying to bring employees back to the office, argue that working from home leads to less engaged and less productive workers. But Tesla CEO Elon Musk is going one step further, calling the practice morally wrong in an interview with CNBC on Tuesday evening.

Musk argued that tech workerswhom he characterized as the laptop classwere unfair in demanding privileges that other people, like service workers or factory employees, could not enjoy. Youre going to work from home, and youre going to make everyone else who made your car come work in the factory? Youre going to make people who make your food that gets deliveredthey cant work from home? Musk asked. Does that seem morally right?

People should get off their goddamn moral high horse with the work-from-home bullshit, he said. Theyre asking everyone else to not work from home while they do.

During the U.S.s stay-at-home orders in the early days of the COVID pandemic, white-collar workers were able to hunker down while workers deemed essentialoften lower income or from minority populationshad to venture outside to go to work. In-person work sometimes led to COVID outbreaks in sectors like the meatpacking industry where working from home was not possible.

Musk has long been a critic of remote work. Last June, the Tesla CEO ordered staff back to the office full-time, even as other companies were gingerly tryingand often failingto get employees back in the office just a few days a week. Musk cited fairness in an internal email, noting that asking corporate employees to come in for 40 hours a week was less than [what] we ask of factory workers. (Musk also joked on Twitter at the time that Apple employees who refused to come into the office were being lazy.)

Musk also ended Twitters permanent remote work policy last November, in one of his first acts as the social media companys CEO, though he later softened his demands when more employees than expected were willing to quit over the issue.

Teslas CEO has also praised those who went beyond standard working hours, celebrating employees in the companys Shanghai factory for burning the 3:00 a.m. oil even as U.S. workers are trying to avoid going to work at all, in an interview last May. Teslas Shanghai factory at the time operated under a closed-loop system amidst Chinas tough COVID-prevention regime, with workers sleeping and eating on-site to prevent any disruption to production due to an outbreak.

Musk claimed on CNBC that he took only two or three days off a year, and otherwise did at least some work seven days a week with only six hours of sleep a night. (Musk was seen partying at a music festival in Mexico last weekend hours before a meeting with Emmanuel Macron, joking with the French president that he had to sleep in the car beforehand.)

Bosses and employees are still debating how long workers should be in the office. More companies are pushing for employees to come in at least part of the time. CEOs argue that working from home hurts company culture, and claim that fully remote workers lose opportunities for feedback and mentoring, hurting their growth.

Employee surveys consistently report that workers think they are more productive at home.

The battle may be reaching an equilibrium around hybrid work, where employees come into the office for part of the week. The number of U.S. firms demanding in-person work five days a week dropped over the past three months, from 49% to 42%, according to data from Scoop Technologies, an analytics firm tracking workplace strategies.

Still, companies are trying to get their employees to come in more often.

On Tuesday, AT&T CEO John Stankey told Bloomberg Radio that the telecoms company would require managers to work in-person three days a week, starting as early as July in some cases. The company will also be closing some of its offices, potentially requiring some employees to relocate.

Also on Tuesday, asset manager BlackRock asked employees in an internal memo to start coming in four days a week, up from three, arguing that remote workers missed both teaching moments and market-moving moments while at home.

See you in the office! BlackRock wrote, according to the Financial Times.

See more here:

Elon Musk says the laptop class needs to get off their moral high horse when it comes to remote work - Fortune

17 May 2023

Image source, Getty Images

Twitter owner Elon Musk has defended his controversial social-media presence, saying he will "say what I want" even if it loses him money.

Mr Musk was responding to accusations of antisemitism on Twitter, after his tweet George Soros "hates humanity" was criticised by the Israeli government.

The tweet was seen as playing into frequently debunked conspiracy theories about the Jewish philanthropist.

But Mr Musk told CNBC he held no antisemitic views.

He also used the interview to call working from home "morally wrong" and criticise technology rival OpenAI.

Trending figures

But company founder Mr Soros is a regular target of conspiracy theories by right-wing figures in the US.

And the Israel Foreign Ministry retweeted a post from the country's digital diplomacy director, David Saranga, sharing Twitter trending figures showing more than 27,000 tweets using the term "The Jews" following Mr Musk's post.

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Former Labour MP David Miliband, Foreign Secretary under Gordon Brown, called Mr Musk's remarks "totally disgusting" and said he should retract them.

But this was not the only part of the interview to draw criticism.

Mr Musk was also questioned about a tweet in which he asked whether a mass shooting had been part of "a very bad psy-op" - a baseless conspiracy theory.

A "psy-op" - or "psychological operation" - is a military term for actions used to target and influence behaviours.

False claims

Mr Musk's words carry considerable weight.

One of the world's richest and most influential people, he also owns one of its largest social-media platforms - where he has the single biggest account, with nearly 140 million followers.

But in recent months, Mr Musk has increasingly been engaging with false or misleading claims on Twitter.

His remark about the Texas shooting - and Bellingcat, an investigative organisation that reported on it - are the latest in a series of such Twitter engagements by Mr Musk.

Previously, he had repeated misleading claims about:

While Mr Musk often tries to be careful with the wording of his tweets, he has been more explicit in promoting the false claim the Texas shooter did not have a neo-Nazi ideology and his online profile might have been a "psy-op".

This is despite major news outlets reviewing and verifying the shooter's online profiles and Texas police confirming he had extremist and neo-Nazi beliefs.

Some of Mr Musk's recent tweets have been fact-checked by Community Notes, a Twitter feature that allows users to add context to false or misleading claims via a voting system.

Elsewhere in the interview, Mr Musk also took aim at working from home.

"It's not just a productivity thing," he said. "It's morally wrong." And it was unfair some people, such as baristas or shop assistants, had to attend work in person while others did not.

Artificial-intelligence development

Mr Musk also suggested the way OpenAI had developed technology such as ChatGPT was unsafe.

He said earlier on Tuesday that he was the reason OpenAI existed and in the interview added that he had come "up with the name".

In March, Mr Musk was one of many public figures to sign a letter asking for artificial-intelligence development to be put on hold so safeguards and regulation could catch up.

But the following month, he created rival AI company X.AI.

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman has not responded to Mr Musk directly but appeared before a Senate Committee on Tuesday calling for AI growth to be regulated.

See more here:

Elon Musk: I will say what I want even if it costs me - BBC

Twitter accused Microsoft of inappropriately harvesting the social media companys data to build apps, according to a Friday report in the New York Times. The news comes exactly one month after Microsoft dropped Twitter from its advertising platform, which prompted an angry Tweet from worlds saltiest billionaire Elon Musk.

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They trained illegally using Twitter data. Lawsuit time, Musk tweeted then.

The charge comes in a letter addressed to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, sent by Alex Spiro, one of Musks personal attorneys. As you are no doubt aware, for years, Microsoft has used Twitters standard developer APIs free of charge in order to benefit from Twitters data and services in key Microsoft products that generate tens of billions of dollars in revenue for Microsoft annually, Spiro wrote. The letter lays out a number of allegations, and demands an audit of all the ways Microsoft collected and used Twitters suddenly precious data.

Usually the context comes after the content in an article, but lets start with the fun part. Mr. Billionaire Business Maverick has a little pattern going here. At Twitter, Elon keeps making wild decisions that, at least according to social media pundits, seem impulsive and not well considered. When this affects big tech companies like Apple and Microsoft, they wont put up with it, in part because they understand business is ostensibly about business, not feelings. Then Elon gets upset and calls them out on Twitter, all the while acting like hes the one being reasonable. Here we go again!

If you want to understand this billionaire-on-millionaire drama (Microsofts Nadella is worth something like $861 million), you need three sentences-worth of technical knowledge. Its worth it. Basically, Elon started charging for a tool thats always been free. Microsoft didnt want to pay for it, so it didnt fork over any money, and Elon seems insulted.

Twitter is a platform, which means it hopes that other people will build apps and other cool stuff on top of it. To encourage that, Twitter provides an application programming interface, or API, a tool that lets computer programs talk to each other and exchange data. Other social media companies like Facebook and TikTok have APIs too, and theyre typically free because the arrangement is mutually beneficial. Ok, technology explainer over.

Twitters API was always free. Then Elon Musk showed up and said everyone had to pay for it. Thats abnormaland antagonistic to the companies and developers whove spent years working with Twitter.

Microsoft is (or was) a regular user of Twitters API. No one had a problem with it, at least not out in any public temper tantrum kind of way. According to Musks threatening letter, Microsoft integrated the API with apps including Xbox One Social, Bing Pages, Azure, and the Microsoft Ads platform.

The letter says Microsoft used the API in a number of ways that violated Twitters terms of service. For one, Twitter throttles the rate at which you can collect data, but Despite these limitations, the Microsoft Apps accessed Twitters APIs over 780 million times and retrieved over 26 billion tweets in 2022 alone, the letter says. The letter also says Microsoft didnt disclose all the ways it used Twitter data, which violates the terms of service as well. CNBC got a copy of the letter, you can read it here. Microsoft didnt immediately respond to a request for comment. Twitters press email now automatically responds with a poop emoji.

Earlier this year, Musk announced that its once-free API would become a paid service. That had a number of consequences which Elon either didnt think of or didnt take seriously. One of them is it broke a lot of fun Twitter robots that everyone loves (like this one, which tweets whenever the New York Times prints a word thats never been in the newspaper before). You can tell Musk didnt think this plan through because he kept changing his mind about how it was going to work when people made fun of him.

The right to tweet or download tweets is something that a lot of organizations dont seem willing to pay for. New York City, for example, said it would shutter its MTA bot which tweets about subway delays, until Twitter said, Wait, actually, sorry, you dont have to pay.

Microsoft, too, said it wasnt going to pay for the Twitter API. This is a much bigger deal, because Microsoft used the Twitter API to loop the social media company into its advertising system. Twitter wants most businesses to pay $42,000 a month to use the API. Microsofts response was essentially No, thanks, were not going to pay for the right to share advertising revenue with you.

This is what prompted Musks Lawsuit time tweet, and the threatening letter. If you unpack this for a moment, it doesnt make much sense. If Microsoft was violating Twitters terms, that would be true whether or not Microsoft pays for the API. It almost sounds like protection money: you can break our rules, but only if you pay us. Twitterdesperately needs ad money. The company makes almost every dollar of its revenue from ads, and Twitters list of big advertisers went off a cliff when Musk took over.

Advertising relies on whats called brand safety, you want to be sure your ads dont show up next to racism, for example, because that implies you support it. Too bad then, that hate speech skyrocketed on Twitter immediately after Musk bought the company. The concern isnt hypothetical: Elon unbanned several famous white nationalists and then Twitter ran ads on their profiles.

This problem certainly relates to Musks recent decision to step down as CEO and put former NBCUniversal advertising honcho Linda Yaccarino in his place. (Elon is staying on as chief technical officer and executive chairman. So hes Yaccarinos subordinate and her boss at the same time. Wonder how that will go!)

Musk has a poor track record when it comes to going head-to-head with other big companies. Apple pulled back its ad spending on Twitter ads amidst the chaos of Elons early days. You might think youd reassure companies who are worried your platform might make them look bad. But not Elon. Hes playing 4D chess. Musk lashed out at Apple, asking his millions of followers whether Apple made the move because it hates free speech. He also tweeted he was going to war with the iPhone maker, a message he later deleted.

Heres how that war played out. Apple CEO Tim Cook invited Elon to visit the Apple campus. If you know what they talked about, I am begging you to email me, because that same day, Musk completely changed his tune. Not only did he stop criticizing Apple, he started praising the company, thanking Cook for his hospitality and groveling about the companys beautiful HQ. Whatever Cook said to Elon, it turned him from a threat into a lap dog.

Perhaps Musks war on Microsoft will go better. At least in this case, there is a slightly better reason for the vitriol.

There is a broader debate thats going on in the tech industry. For about a decade, all of the big technology companies walled off their own little gardens. Meta did social media. Google had web tools like Search, Gmail, Chrome, and YouTube. Apple made phones. Microsoft made boring software for businesses. Twitter, a tiny compared to these giants, was just happy to be there. There was a lot of crossover, but most of these businesses really didnt compete with each other. They all had their own things going.

Suddenly, thats changing. Microsoft is gunning for Googles search business. Apple wants a cut of Metas targeted ad money. And almost everybody, out of nowhere, is in a fierce battle over AI. You need a lot of data to train AI algorithms, and companies like Twitter and Reddit had a lot of it lying around.

Musk really wants to be a part of this AI party. He put $50 million or so into OpenAI in its early stages (Musk keeps giving different numbers). Musk recently told Tucker Carlson that hes going to build an AI called TruthGPT, an anti-woke alternative to ChatGPT. Fortunately for anyone who likes hearing accurate things about racism and history, you can bet youll never see TruthGPT. If theres one thing you can count on, its that the self-sabotaging humiliation machine that is Elon Musk doesnt fulfill his promises.

For a conflict that supposedly all about business, there seem to be a lot of emotions involved. This could be related to the fact that Microsoft was one of many organizations that declined to give Musk a bail out when he tried to change his mind about buying Twitter. Text messages that came out in a lawsuit showed Musk and Nadella were in contact, and apparently Musk shared some neat ideas about Microsoft teams, the companys chat software. Nadella texted Musk will for sure follow-up on Teams feedback! We dont know, however, whether that follow up ever came.

See the rest here:

Twitter Sends Microsoft Mean Letter Because Elon Is Mad - Gizmodo