elon musk x

musk’s-x-sold-checkmarks-to-hezbollah-and-other-terrorist-groups,-report-says

Musk’s X sold checkmarks to Hezbollah and other terrorist groups, report says

elon musk twitter, elon musk x, Policy / /
A photo of Elon Musk next to the logo for X, the social network formerly known as Twitter,.

Getty Images | NurPhoto

A watchdog group’s investigation found that terrorist group Hezbollah and other US-sanctioned entities have accounts with paid checkmarks on X, the Elon Musk-owned social network that still resides at the twitter.com domain.

The Tech Transparency Project (TTP), a nonprofit that is critical of Big Tech companies, said in a report today that “X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, is providing premium, paid services to accounts for two leaders of a US-designated terrorist group and several other organizations sanctioned by the US government.”

After buying Twitter for $44 billion, Musk started charging users for checkmarks that were previously intended to verify that an account was notable and authentic. “Along with the checkmarks, which are intended to confer legitimacy, X promises various perks for premium accounts, including the ability to post longer text and videos and greater visibility for some posts,” the Tech Transparency Project report noted.

The Tech Transparency Project suggests that X may be violating US sanctions. “The accounts identified by TTP include two that apparently belong to the top leaders of Lebanon-based Hezbollah and others belonging to Iranian and Russian state-run media,” the report said. “The fact that X requires users to pay a monthly or annual fee for premium service suggests that X is engaging in financial transactions with these accounts, a potential violation of US sanctions.”

Some of the accounts were verified before Musk bought Twitter, but verification was a free service at the time. Musk’s decision to charge for checkmarks means that X is “providing a premium, paid service to sanctioned entities,” which may raise “new legal issues,” the Tech Transparency Project said.

Report details 28 checkmarked accounts

Musk’s X charges $1,000 a month for a Verified Organizations subscription and last month added a basic tier for $200 a month. For individuals, the X Premium tiers that come with checkmarks cost $8 or $16 a month.

It’s possible for US companies to receive a license from the government to engage in certain transactions with sanctioned entities, but it doesn’t seem likely that X has such a license. X’s rules explicitly prohibit users from purchasing X Premium “if you are a person with whom X is not permitted to have dealings under US and any other applicable economic sanctions and trade compliance law.”

In all, the Tech Transparency Project said it found 28 “verified” accounts tied to sanctioned individuals or entities. These include individuals and groups listed by the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) as “Specially Designated Nationals.”

“Of the 28 X accounts identified by TTP, 18 show they got verified after April 1, 2023, when X began requiring accounts to subscribe to paid plans to get a checkmark. The other 10 were legacy verified accounts, which are required to pay for a subscription to retain their checkmarks,” the group wrote, adding that it “found advertising in the replies to posts in 19 of the 28 accounts.”

We contacted X today and will update this article if we get a comment. Our email to [email protected] triggered the standard auto-reply from [email protected] that says, “Busy now, please check back later.”

Update at 4: 28pm ET: After this article was published, X issued the following statement: “X has a robust and secure approach in place for our monetization features, adhering to legal obligations, along with independent screening by our payments providers. Several of the accounts listed in the Tech Transparency Report are not directly named on sanction lists, while some others may have visible account check marks without receiving any services that would be subject to sanctions. Our teams have reviewed the report and will take action if necessary. We’re always committed to ensuring that we maintain a safe, secure and compliant platform.”

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since-elon-musk’s-twitter-purchase,-firm-reportedly-lost-72%-of-its-value

Since Elon Musk’s Twitter purchase, firm reportedly lost 72% of its value

elon musk, elon musk twitter, elon musk x, Policy / /

Going down, down, down… —

Fidelity cuts value of X stake, implying 72% drop since Musk paid $44 billion.

–

A businessman places his hand on his head as he looks up and is perplexed by a chart indicating a drop in value.

Getty Images | DNY59

Fidelity’s latest valuation of its stake in X implies that Elon Musk’s social network is worth about 71.5 percent less than when Musk bought the company in October 2022.

Fidelity’s Blue Chip Growth Fund has a relatively small stake in X. A monthly update for the fund listed the value of its “X Holdings Corp.” stake at $5.6 million as of November 30, 2023. The fund’s share of X was originally worth $19.7 million but lost about two-thirds of its value by April 2023 and has dropped more modestly since then.

Fidelity cut its valuation of X by 10.7 percent in November, according to Axios. One question is whether Fidelity sold any of its stake during November, but the latest drop in value isn’t surprising given the recent Musk-related controversies that drove advertisers away from the platform.

“As of Oct. 30 the fund hadn’t sold any of its stake, but the monthly report with the updated valuation doesn’t disclose whether the size of the holding changed,” Bloomberg wrote. “Assuming the fund hasn’t reduced its holding in X, the latest report implies the value of the entire company has also fallen by 72 percent. Fidelity declined to comment.”

X’s ad woes hurt value

Based on the $44 billion that Musk paid for Twitter over a year ago, the drop in Fidelity’s valuation would make the company worth about $12.5 billion. X reportedly valued itself at about $19 billion in October, based on the value of stock grants to employees.

Since Musk took Twitter private, the company’s value and revenue are harder to determine from the outside. As Axios noted, “Fidelity doesn’t necessarily have much, if any, inside information on X’s financial performance, despite being a shareholder in the privately held business. Other shareholders may value their X stock differently.”

X’s finances were shaky enough at the end of October, the one-year anniversary of Musk’s purchase. Musk made things worse in mid-November when he posted a favorable response to an antisemitic tweet. He addressed the antisemitism controversy in a public interview on November 29, telling businesses that pulled advertising from X to “go fuck yourself.”

X has had trouble retaining advertisers throughout Musk’s tenure, due largely to his approach to content moderation. Musk eliminated most of the company’s staff shortly after becoming its owner.

X loses bid to block California law

X is dealing with new regulations on content moderation, both in Europe and the US. Musk’s company sued California in September in an attempt to block the state’s content-moderation law but last week lost a key ruling in the court case.

On Thursday, US District Judge William Shubb denied X’s motion for a preliminary injunction that would have blocked enforcement of the California content-moderation law. The state law requires companies to file two reports each year with terms of service and detailed descriptions of content-moderation practices.

Shubb rejected X’s claim that the law violates the First Amendment. “While the reporting requirement does appear to place a substantial compliance burden on social medial companies, it does not appear that the requirement is unjustified or unduly burdensome within the context of First Amendment law,” Shubb wrote.

The judge agreed with California that there is “a substantial government interest in requiring social media companies to be transparent about their content moderation policies and practices so that consumers can make informed decisions about where they consume and disseminate news and information.”

Since Elon Musk’s Twitter purchase, firm reportedly lost 72% of its value Read More »

elon-musk-will-see-you-in-court:-the-top-twitter-and-x-corp.-lawsuits-of-2023

Elon Musk will see you in court: The top Twitter and X Corp. lawsuits of 2023

elon musk, elon musk twitter, elon musk x, Policy / /
Elon Musk holding a microphone and speaking.

Enlarge / Elon Musk speaks at the Atreju political convention organized by Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) on December 15, 2023 in Rome, Italy.

Getty Images | Antonio Masiello

Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter, now called X, began with a lawsuit. When Musk tried to break a $44 billion merger agreement, Twitter filed a lawsuit that gave Musk no choice but to complete the deal.

In the year-plus since Musk bought the company, he’s been the defendant and plaintiff in many more lawsuits involving Twitter and X Corp. As 2023 comes to a close, this article rounds up a selection of notable lawsuits involving the Musk-led social network and provides updates on the status of the cases.

Musk sues Twitter law firm

Musk seemingly held a grudge against the law firm that helped Twitter force Musk to complete the merger. In July, X Corp. sued Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz in an attempt to claw back the $90 million that Twitter paid the firm before Musk completed the acquisition.

Most of that money was paid to Wachtell hours before the merger closed. X’s lawsuit in San Francisco County Superior Court claimed that “Wachtell arranged to effectively line its pockets with funds from the company cash register while the keys were being handed over to the Musk Parties.”

Wachtell sought to move the dispute into arbitration, pointing out that the contract between itself and Twitter contained a binding arbitration clause. In October, the court granted Wachtell’s motion to compel arbitration and stayed the lawsuit pending the outcome.

Unpaid-bill lawsuits

While Twitter paid the Wachtell legal bill before Musk could block the payment, dozens of lawsuits allege that X has refused to pay bills owed to other companies that started providing services to Twitter before the Musk takeover.

The suits were filed by software vendors, landlords, event planning firms, a private jet company, an office renovator, consultants, and other companies. The lawsuits helped some companies obtain payment via settlements, but X has continued to fight many of the allegations. We covered the unpaid-bill lawsuits in-depth in this lengthy article published in September.

Musk sues Media Matters

Musk has repeatedly blamed outside parties for X’s financial problems, which are largely due to advertisers not wanting to be associated with offensive and controversial content that used to be more heavily moderated before Musk slashed the company’s staff.

One of the biggest ad-spending drops came after a November 16 Media Matters report that said corporate ads were placed “next to content that touts Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party.” Musk’s X Corp responded by suing Media Matters a few days later, claiming the group “manipulated the algorithms governing the user experience on X to bypass safeguards and create images of X’s largest advertisers’ paid posts adjacent to racist, incendiary content.”

The suit was filed in US District Court for the Northern District of Texas. There aren’t any significant updates on the case to report yet.

X Corp. previously filed a similar lawsuit against the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), claiming the group “improperly gain[ed] access” to data, and “cherry-pick[ed] from the hundreds of millions of posts made each day on X” in order to “falsely claim it had statistical support showing the platform is overwhelmed with harmful content.”

The CCDC filed a motion to dismiss X’s lawsuit on November 16, saying that its actions constituted “newsgathering activity in furtherance of the CCDH defendants’ protected speech and reporting.” The motion and case are still pending in US District Court for the Northern District of California.

Musk suit against data scrapers tossed

In July, X Corp. sued unidentified data scrapers in Dallas County District Court, accusing them of “severely tax[ing]” company servers by “flooding Twitter’s sign-up page with automated requests.” The lawsuit was filed days after Twitter imposed rate limits capping the number of tweets users could view each day.

“Several entities tried to scrape every tweet ever made in a short period of time. That is why we had to put rate limits in place,” Musk wrote at the time.

The lawsuit initially listed four John Doe defendants and was amended to raise the number of defendants to 11. This was a tough lawsuit for X to pursue because it didn’t know who the scrapers were and identified them only by their IP addresses.

X issued subpoenas to Amazon Web Services, Akamai, and Google in attempts to gain information on the John Does behind the IP addresses, but the case fizzled out. On October 30, a Dallas County judge dismissed the lawsuit “for want of prosecution” and ordered X to pay the court costs.

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