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Elon Musk: Officially a fraud and piece of shit. Official or unofficial war criminal?


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On 12/30/2022 at 2:27 PM, Mrs Whiggins said:

I don't know the answer to your question, but I've been pondering over this for some time now. At somewhere around $650 million, Dolly Parton is nowhere near as wealthy as Musk but she has invested money and time into literacy and other projects in her hometown and beyond and the region is the better for it. Philanthropy such as that--personal and relatable--makes one feel very very good so why Elon doesn't pursue that drug baffles me.

On the other hand, were I in possession of that much money, I'd be enrolled in classes part time for fun and interest and traveling the world with loved ones the rest of it. One life to live so get out and do it.

i genuinely can't believe he has this much money and is such a bad public speaker. if i had that much money i would be spending a ton of it on getting better at public speaking at every. single. opportunity.

hey he gave $5.7 billion to a charity. it just happened to be his charity and he got a huge tax write off on it. i assume the reason he doesn't give it away is because he can't be in control of it? imagine how much better he would be viewed by basically everyone if he was giving money away at the level of the Gates Foundation. he can literally pick *ANY* concept in the world he wants to improve and immediately impact it. but does he? nope.

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12 hours ago, pantone159 said:

I don't understand the refusal to pay bills. I guess if you are a billionaire you can just ignore whatever bills you want to. Generally I expect that businesses pay their bills, but not Elon it seems.

 

12 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

Maybe he thinks he can negotiate the bill, because he's always the smartest guy in the room.

Or he's thinking if the landlord locks it up an shuts off access, that's more savings!

it's a terrible look.

if you are ever at a company that cuts back on JANITORIAL SERVICES it is time to move on.

 

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46 minutes ago, NoName said:

i genuinely can't believe he has this much money and is such a bad public speaker. if i had that much money i would be spending a ton of it on getting better at public speaking at every. single. opportunity.

hey he gave $5.7 billion to a charity. it just happened to be his charity and he got a huge tax write off on it. i assume the reason he doesn't give it away is because he can't be in control of it? imagine how much better he would be viewed by basically everyone if he was giving money away at the level of the Gates Foundation. he can literally pick *ANY* concept in the world he wants to improve and immediately impact it. but does he? nope.

Yes, when I think of individuals who's charitable donations, works and services are universally lauded, I think of Bill Gates. That man isn't at all attacked by about 30% of the US population, and his charitable works dismissed as global conspiracies' aimed at globalism, population control, and mind control implants masquerading as vaccines. 

Then again, Elon's biggest fans are the crazies, so maybe he would receive universal praise.  

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1 minute ago, SydneyCarton said:

Yes, when I think of individuals who's charitable donations, works and services are universally lauded, I think of Bill Gates. That man isn't at all attacked by about 30% of the US population, and his charitable works dismissed as global conspiracies' aimed at globalism, population control, and mind control implants masquerading as vaccines. 

Then again, Elon's biggest fans are the crazies, so maybe he would receive universal praise.  

ABD2B448-15B1-41B3-A729-246D5540BB98.gif.aa580a7af57cc530af873ee8062e249b.gif

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13 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

Yes, when I think of individuals who's charitable donations, works and services are universally lauded, I think of Bill Gates. That man isn't at all attacked by about 30% of the US population, and his charitable works dismissed as global conspiracies' aimed at globalism, population control, and mind control implants masquerading as vaccines. 

Then again, Elon's biggest fans are the crazies, so maybe he would receive universal praise.  

the last line is what i was thinking about when I said it, the venn diagram of people who hate Bill Gates and love Elon Musk has to have a ton of overlap.

Then again, the Gates Foundation has an endowment of like $50b with Bill and Melinda donating about $36b of that money. Can't see him giving anywhere near that much to fight anything other than to own the libs (he spent about $20b of his own money on that by buying TWTR

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Tesla production numbers were bad which is hurting the stock it seems.

In other Elon wealth news-- how much of SpaceX does he own? Saw this chryon today-- probably will help his net worth with all the Tesla loss:

Quote

SpaceX has reportedly clinched $750 million in new funding at a $137 billion valuation, led by the venture firm Andreessen Horowitz. (CNBC)

 

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Tesla production numbers were bad which is hurting the stock it seems.
In other Elon wealth news-- how much of SpaceX does he own? Saw this chryon today-- probably will help his net worth with all the Tesla loss:
SpaceX has reportedly clinched $750 million in new funding at a $137 billion valuation, led by the venture firm Andreessen Horowitz. (CNBC)
 

I would expect that to dilute his position, so certainly not helpful unless the valuation is a new high mark
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12 minutes ago, Lurch said:

 

I would expect that to dilute his position, so certainly not helpful unless the valuation is a new high mark

speaking of high mark valuations - Elon is down 11.2m today (7.66%)  $11.5B (7.86%) and is only $8.8b  $8.5b ahead of third place.

https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#3900ca273d78

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2 hours ago, boknowstecmo said:

Tesla owners are just saying Now is the right time to buy!

 

2 minutes ago, texasdago said:

Have a friend who is a good guy in general but, man, he is a Tesla/Elon fanboi and I should know better to get in conversations with him.  They are a beating.

This is why I'm thinking of closing my current short at $136.5 and waiting for a bounce to get back in on the short side.

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50 minutes ago, Aqua Buddha said:

Elon will then forced to let everyone work from home again.

Nah. It's his long game to be "forced" to relocate, Governor Abbott will roll out the red carpet to incentivize a doomed company to come to Texas, Twitter sets up shop at a compound outside of Giddings where the only employees left are forced to also live but they won't have a choice because it'll be exclusively H1-b folks left at that point. Visionary. 

 

 

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21 minutes ago, BearMace said:

Nah. It's his long game to be "forced" to relocate, Governor Abbott will roll out the red carpet to incentivize a doomed company to come to Texas, Twitter sets up shop at a compound outside of Giddings where the only employees left are forced to also live but they won't have a choice because it'll be exclusively H1-b folks left at that point. Visionary. 

 

 

Looks like my Aunt and Uncle by Giddings about to cash in on not knocking over their old hog buildings. 

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7 hours ago, crash_davis said:

Is it me or has he been awful quiet lately? Hubris finally get the best of him?

Or he's catching up on a few months of sleep.

The #twitterfiles turned out to be extremely boring and extremely outdated and already in the public conscious (well, the public who actually gave a shit).

I don't know if he's able to plan something big these days.  It would require him to actually keep secrets about his future plans, and require him to actually make those plans.

The Cybertruck shows that he is incapable of planning something big or thinking all that far ahead.  All during the time it was being designed, the major automakers were all working on EV trucks and everybody knew it.  He gives us something that Citroen came up with back in 1980.

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31 minutes ago, Blotto said:

Are you kidding me? This one probably took him a few days, but goddamn.....he knocked it out of the park

Had that happen on a couple of twitter accounts that literally have not had new posts in a few years - basically have a pinned post with information pointing to websites - I didn't want somebody taking twitter handles that matched some websites I manage.  I login every few weeks or once a month to check for DMs or mentions, and they were locked. I clicked on a button/link and they were suddenly unlocked.  Weirdest fucking thing.

Made me think they were going to lock accounts that had little to no activity and if nobody logged in within a certain amount of time, they would free them up (something Musk promised a few months ago).

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45 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

Elon is in over his head, in more ways that one:

Didn't have that on my bingo card.

We know he doesn't know how to read the room, but normally that leads to social faux pas that are soon forgotten.

Fucking with the Saudis though, who have far more money than him, and don't care too much about fucking with people they get pissed off at, and who hold a grudge for years...

Jason Bateman Cotton GIF

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1 hour ago, atomheartbevo said:

Or he's catching up on a few months of sleep.

The #twitterfiles turned out to be extremely boring and extremely outdated and already in the public conscious (well, the public who actually gave a shit).

I don't know if he's able to plan something big these days.  It would require him to actually keep secrets about his future plans, and require him to actually make those plans.

The Cybertruck shows that he is incapable of planning something big or thinking all that far ahead.  All during the time it was being designed, the major automakers were all working on EV trucks and everybody knew it.  He gives us something that Citroen came up with back in 1980.

It’s like he’s literally never seen a pickup

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11 hours ago, Bama Chick said:

He’s feverishly brainstorming for some big dumb spectacle to grab the attention from the current Kevin McCarthy/Speaker of the House debacle. /No CR
 

he figured it out! it only took him like 48+ hours to come up with it but by jove i think has it now!

 

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shocking literally no one, Twitter Blue is still broken and not doing any kind of verification...

 
Quote

 

After Blue 2.0 (my term for it) launched on Dec. 12, I made another faux Markey and applied for verification. Some of Twitter’s new requirements slowed down the process — and might dissuade some impatient impersonators — but the company never asked to see a form of identification. Last week, up popped a blue check mark on my @SenatorEdMarkey account. Oops! I did it again.
Twitter didn’t reply to a request for comment.
and
 
Quote

 

The real Markey, who has long been a critic of Big Tech, told me Twitter had failed a basic test. “It’s an absolute joke that Elon Musk, who prides himself on being a tech entrepreneur, can’t implement a functioning verification regime — except users aren’t laughing,” Markey said.
“Twitter’s current leadership has failed to safeguard the platform from misinformation, failed to provide answers to my simple questions regarding their anti-fraud protocols, and failed to demonstrate an appreciation for the role that their platform plays in our democracy,” he said.

https://archive.ph/1sFkG

Twitter said it fixed ‘verification.’ So I impersonated a senator (again).

Text:

 
Spoiler
Elon Musk said he would fix Twitter’s problem with impostors. The blue check mark on my fake U.S. senator suggests he still has a long way to go.
On Tuesday, @SenatorEdMarkey briefly went viral on Twitter. Gisele Barreto Fetterman, the wife of Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), thanked @SenatorEdMarkey in a tweet that garnered 140,000 views.
 
 
The problem is, @SenatorEdMarkey is actually me, not the real Sen. Edward J. Markey. It’s a test of Twitter’s $7.99 per month Blue “verification” service I made with the permission of the real Democrat from Massachusetts. I wouldn’t blame anyone for being confused: My test account has the senator’s name and photo and a blue check mark that says it is “verified.”
 
But Twitter, it seems, isn’t verifying much of anything.
This is the second time I’ve been able to impersonate the senator. Back in November, when Twitter first began selling its iconic blue check marks to anyone for a fee, I showed how easy it was to buy official-looking status with an impostor account called @realEdMarkey. Musk, who bought Twitter in October, got into a Twitter fight with Markey about it. Then Musk shut down Blue and promised that in a new-and-improved version “all verified accounts will be manually authenticated” before they’re given the authority of a check mark.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
438ccd04be8c7bd047bea4467dad6ee837c2ee19
 

Sorry for the delay, we’re tentatively launching Verified on Friday next week. Gold check for companies, grey check for government, blue for individuals (celebrity or not) and all verified accounts will be manually authenticated before check activates. Painful, but necessary.
Copy link
 
After Blue 2.0 (my term for it) launched on Dec. 12, I made another faux Markey and applied for verification. Some of Twitter’s new requirements slowed down the process — and might dissuade some impatient impersonators — but the company never asked to see a form of identification. Last week, up popped a blue check mark on my @SenatorEdMarkey account. Oops! I did it again.
 
 
Twitter didn’t reply to a request for comment.
Two months into Musk’s takeover, millions of Twitter users face a real question: Is Twitter getting better or worse? Is it even worth putting our time into Twitter anymore, or should we abandon ship for something else, be it Mastodon, Instagram or TikTok?
Twitter has yet to devolve back into the impersonation circus we saw when Blue first launched. But my test shows Twitter does not understand the dangers of misinformation or the value of authenticated sources. Under Musk’s leadership, Twitter users face a greater risk of seeing something fake and thinking it is real. I don’t know if Twitter is going to die any time soon, but I’m spending less time on a service I can’t trust.

 

How I bypassed verification again
Creating my impostor senator the first time around was dead simple. All I needed was a new Twitter account running on an iPhone and a credit card to pay for Blue.
 
 
For Blue 2.0, Twitter added two additional hurdles that could help slow people and bots from making fakes. To test it, I needed a Twitter account that was at least 90 days old — new accounts are not eligible. A colleague had one he hadn’t used in years, so he dedicated it to the cause. After we changed the name of the account to @SenatorEdMarkey, Twitter made us wait 7 days before we could sign up for Blue.
Second, I also had to link the account to a phone number before I could sign up for Blue. To do that, I visited the T-Mobile store at the mall, and got a 1-month temporary number for $15 — no name or ID required.
Once I had all of those pieces in place, I signed up for Twitter Blue on the web, paying with a credit card. At that point, I expected Twitter would ask me to prove my identity, such as uploading a snapshot of a drivers’ license. I thought Twitter might be suspicious that the account was owned by a random Gmail address, not one ending in senate.gov. I assumed its verification system might challenge me after scanning for the word “senator” or maybe even the names of the notable people with legacy verification status.
But no. After 7 days, a blue check mark appeared on the faux Markey account, no questions asked.
591773fdb2e2cf6ce69b4c5ad12e0f90fa5e04cf
On the left, Ed Markey's real Twitter account. On the right, the Twitter account Geoff created impersonating Markey. (The Washington Post illustration; Twitter)
As far as I can tell, Twitter has never said what goes into “manually authenticating” an account. Since Musk bought Twitter, the company also now has a greatly reduced workforce — so it’s not clear who’d be around to do the checking.
 
 
Twitter says impersonating others is not allowed, and accounts that do so face suspension when they’re discovered. But in 2023, it’s not enough to just make a rule. Twitter has to do something to actively stop it from happening — and its Blue adaptations clearly aren’t enough. Across the internet, authentication is becoming increasingly common. Airbnb asks you snap a photo of your ID to rent a room; Facebook asks for an ID to gain access to hacked accounts.
Musk often tries to frame criticisms as culture wars — but evaluating how well a product’s core functions work isn’t a partisan act. It’s a tech review, and I do it with the same critical eye to new Apple iPhones, Amazon shopping results and Twitter check marks. I take the side of users, and last week published a column agreeing with Musk about the need to stop a form of online censorship called “shadowbanning.”

 

Why trust matters
Musk appears to have several goals in selling Blue subscriptions. First, he needs a new source of revenue after taking on billions in debt to buy Twitter. Second, he wants a mechanism to separate real users from bots, whose creators are less likely to pay for a subscription. Finally, he has said that offering verified status to more users will level the playing field, encouraging more people with wider views to be active on Twitter.
 
 
It’s possible that people who buy blue check marks will tweet more. But without actually doing the hard work to authenticate them, Twitter is eroding one thing that helped make it into a cultural juggernaut: You could trust it. Its legacy verification system — in which the company really did check who owned an account — was opaque, but it meant when an elected official, company or celebrity tweeted, you’d believe it was them.
The real Markey, who has long been a critic of Big Tech, told me Twitter had failed a basic test. “It’s an absolute joke that Elon Musk, who prides himself on being a tech entrepreneur, can’t implement a functioning verification regime — except users aren’t laughing,” Markey said.
“Twitter’s current leadership has failed to safeguard the platform from misinformation, failed to provide answers to my simple questions regarding their anti-fraud protocols, and failed to demonstrate an appreciation for the role that their platform plays in our democracy,” he said.
 
 
In a partial return to Twitter’s old system, Twitter has said it plans to offer different-colored verification marks for officials and corporations separate from its Blue services. That isn’t going to help independent creators, but Twitter did give The Washington Post’s account a gold check mark for businesses, and President Biden’s account a gray one.
And so far, Twitter has not given any special marks to the accounts belonging to U.S. senators such as Markey.
As of press time, Markey’s real account still has a blue check mark that says, “This is a legacy verified account. It may or may not be notable.” My fake one, meanwhile, says “This account is verified because it’s subscribed to Twitter Blue.”
There is a difference and it matters to Twitter’s users — and its future.
 

 

 

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Welp...more good news for Elron! Lost the most money ever from his personal accounts, as CEO his business' stock price tanked the most ever of any publicly traded company, and now perhaps the CEO whose business suffered the largest hack of all time. All records set within the past 30 days. 

 

image.thumb.png.75dd3cdd63c1be51f14a050d50326f3f.png

Already under elevated regulatory scrutiny since its purchase by Elon Musk, Twitter could be facing even more government oversight after the records of 235 million accounts and the emails connected to them have surfaced on an online forum.

The leak sets “the stage for anonymous handles to be linked to real-world identities,” my colleague Joseph Menn reports.

Quote

 

While the Federal Trade Commission declined to comment, it was already conducting an inquiry into whether Twitter had violated a deal promising to better protect user data. Recently, the FTC asked Twitter whether it still had the resources to comply with that consent decree after Musk’s dramatic personnel cuts.

Twitter has been facing more regulatory scrutiny on the international front, too, a situation set to intensify after the latest revelations.

What happened


The hacker who claimed credit for obtaining the data set advertised it for sale online on Dec. 23. The hacker said it contained 400 million records. Alon Gal, a co-founder of the Israeli security company Hudson Rock who spotted the posting, later put the number of affected users at 235 million.

“This database is going to be used by hackers, political hacktivists and of course governments to harm our privacy even further,” Gal said.

Wrote Joseph: “Those users at the least risk provided throwaway email addresses or ones not tied to them elsewhere. But even they could be subject to account takeover attempts, phishing or emailed threats.” Twitter didn’t respond to a request for comment about advice to its users.

The person who advertised the data claims that they were able to get the records in 2021 by using data-scraping methods via a since-patched vulnerability that Twitter disclosed in August 2022. Twitter said it learned of the vulnerability in January 2022.

It’s not the first time hackers appear to have exploited that vulnerability. In another incident, which appears to be a separate case, hackers in July 2022 were found selling 5.4 million Twitter account handles as well as their associated email addresses and phone numbers.

January 2022, by the way, was when Twitter fired its top two security officials, including Peiter “Mudge” Zatko. Zatko would later file a whistleblower complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission alleging that Twitter was violating its 2011 consent decree, citing disastrous security and privacy missteps.

The hacker who posted the hundreds of millions of records last month has made additional claims, some of which couldn’t be independently verified, about celebrity names caught up in the leak. The hacker is seeking $200,000 for sale of the complete data set.

Gal’s firm tweeted that some of the claims look to be at least related to the overall breach.

“Piers Morgan, who appeared in the data samples provided by the Twitter hacker, just had his account hacked,” Hudson Rock tweeted. “This is likely not a coincidence: The reveal of the email address may have been just what the hacker needed to find passwords for the account, or social engineer his way.”

Regardless of who’s in the actual data set, the suspected size of the breach would put it on any list of some of the biggest in U.S. history.

 

editing to add the rest of the article

Quote

 

In a coincidence of timing, the Irish Data Protection Commission had announced on Dec. 23 that it was investigating the breach that affected 5.4 million users — the same day the apparent second hacker posted the 235 million records.

In response to the emergence of the newest data set, the Irish Data Protection Commission said that it “will examine Twitter's compliance with data-protection law in relation to that security issue,” Chris Vallance of the BBC reported on Dec. 30.

U.S. regulators have also been watching developments at the company since Musk took over. “We are tracking recent developments at Twitter with deep concern,” the FTC said in response to privacy and security departures at the social media giant. “No CEO or company is above the law, and companies must follow our consent decrees.”

Musk has inspired lawmakers to issue warnings over his handling of the company, among them Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), who got into a spat on Twitter with the company’s billionaire owner.

With Markey’s permission, The Post in November was able to create a “verified” impostor account posing as Markey. My colleague Geoffrey A. Fowler writes that he was able to impersonate Markey even after the company rolled out a new way to authenticate its paid “verified” accounts.

“It’s an absolute joke that Elon Musk, who prides himself on being a tech entrepreneur, can’t implement a functioning verification regime — except users aren’t laughing,” Markey said. 

“Twitter’s current leadership has failed to safeguard the platform from misinformation, failed to provide answers to my simple questions regarding their anti-fraud protocols, and failed to demonstrate an appreciation for the role that their platform plays in our democracy,” he said.

 

 

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  • immamac changed the title to Elon Musk: [Fraud] Official or unofficial piece of shit?
  • blacklab changed the title to Elon Musk: Officially a fraud and piece of shit. Official or unofficial war criminal?

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