Elon Musk's X removes New York Times' verification badge | Hacker News Reader

Elon Musk's X removes New York Times' verification badge

washingtonpost.com

58 pointsCharlesW33 comments

These news sites should really just stop using Twitter. Every time Twitter does something stupid and they all just happily keep using it they're just encouraging more stupid decisions down the line.

Part of the unspoken reality of Twitter is that it became an integral part of modern journalism.

News agencies have been spending the last two decades cutting way back on their field reporting and foreign bureaus. And most journalists graduate college without any actual investigative experience, and get a job where they sit at a desk and read the internet all day. No one is out knocking on doors anymore.

Twitter basically became the outsourcing platform for beat reporting. There is no plan B.

That's the theory, but I wonder if it's actually true? I suspect it isn't, especially at this point. I think a lot of that activity came down to reporters talking to each other, followed by hordes of bots and people who don't actually read past the headline.

NPR bailed on Twitter and they claim they've seen zero change in their metrics as a result; I believe them.

How much of the news you have seen from Hamas/Israel has actually come from a reporter or news crew on the scene?

Almost exclusively the content that is not coming from government sources themselves is coming from from videos and posts being uploaded by Palestinians/Israelis directly.

Even if NPR and others have bailed from having an official presence on Twitter, I can almost guarantee you that individual journalists at said organizations are still probably on it all day scanning for content.

iirc journalists are not allowed into Gaza and have been stuck at the border.

> is coming from from videos and posts being uploaded by Palestinians/Israelis directly.

... which also means it could be coming from Israeli or Hamas (or Iranian or Russian or American or ...) propagandists posing as on the ground citizen reporters and there's nobody on the ground to fact check anything.

This is particularly true in the era of deepfakes. You don't even have to stage or mis-caption or mis-attribute photos. You can outright fake things. You don’t even need to be there. That on the ground reporter in Gaza could be in a basement in Idaho using Midjourney and Dall-E.

Even if the deepfake is detectable most of the hordes on Xitter will believe it. See, believe, retweet.

I just watched the Anthony Bourdain special where he talked to people in Israel about previous wars, and they talked about Twitter saving their lives, calling in NATO strikes by Tweeting about enemy activities.

May not be from the big name sources you expect, but journalists are there. And 19 known to have died are covered here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/19/journalists-...

Israel doesn’t allow journalists in since this started.

https://apnews.com/article/israel-gaza-journalists-safety-25...

The theory gains more credibility to me every time I see journalists screeching about how they can't use search on Threads to find out what "people" are saying.

Yes, it's true. The costs to do apparent 'journalism' fell because underpaid news writers could make a valid-sounding article from stuff they found on Twitter. That started a race to the bottom, where now very few places are doing non-Twitter journalism.

You're arguing a different point. There is no actual argument to be had about the decline of the reporter. Print media died and took journalists with it. Outlets like the NYT or NPR get by with their old guard, but once they retire who knows what'll happen.

> Part of the unspoken reality of Twitter is that it became an integral part of modern journalism.

I think this is true, and it's absolutely horrifying. Nuke it from orbit.

Twitter didn't just become toxic with the Elon takeover. It's always been toxic. It's structurally toxic. The net effect of Twitter being the brain of humanity is to prioritize and elevate the dumbest, most divisive, and most emotionally triggering ideas from every part of the ideological landscape and de-prioritize anything deep and intelligent. Trash and rage bait drive engagement.

It's like letting trashy daytime TV drive your civilization.

I don't think that Twitter should be shouldering the blame for the fact that Twitter is an integral part of modern journalism and that journalism these days involves regurgitating stories found on Twitter.

> most journalists graduate college without any actual investigative experience

[citation needed]

> These news sites should really just stop using Twitter.

It's already happening:

https://niemanreports.org/articles/npr-twitter-musk/

TL;DR: NPR and many of its member stations stopped posting to Twitter in April 2023. Traffic to their web site dropped by ~1%.

To further distance themselves, they need to stop quoting things that happened on Twitter as if its news. "Such-and-such Senator said on X, Formerly Twitter ..." can be replaced with the actual quote, press release, or news conference.

Important note: Traffic from Twitter was already 2% and is now at 1% Not exactly the same dramatic story if you think about it.

I mean the verification badge means less than nothing these days anyway.

Nah, it means someone, somewhere, paid $8.

No, because the New York Times didn't but had one. Many people are sort of grandfathered in. It's a hot mess.

They were getting a badge because of their advertising budget They stopped paying for it, so… https://twitter.com/xDaily/status/1715231084307509429

https://archive.ph/Ce30B

As reported by Jeff Bezo's Washington Post. Wonder what Rupert Murdock's Fox News thinks about this? Maybe we can ask Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook to weight in on alternatives.

We need a modern update to Diderot's solution for kings and priests that considers politicians and billionaires.

For context, NYT recently called out Musk for spreading anti-Semitic propaganda.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/10/19/x-twitt...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/10/08/israel-...

Elon Musk owns a social media company that is pretty open about it's speech policies, whether you agree with them or not. I hold random twitter user spouting bullshit to a much different standard than say...an organization that styles itself as a "newspaper of record" _uncritically_ parroting Hamas propaganda for the past two weeks.

Those in glass houses and all...

What Hamas propaganda?

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/14/opinion/israel-gaza-war.h...

> Israel stands on the verge of invading Gaza in response to the terrorist attacks by Hamas that many, including Israel’s leaders, have compared to Sept. 11 not just because of the scale and savagery but also because the terrorists sought to destroy the tranquillity of daily life. They killed the very young and the very old, the strong and the weak, civilians and soldiers; they took some 150 hostages, including children, and survivors said the attackers raped women — all to send a message that no Israeli was safe.

- The Editorial Board

Elon Musk said

> For following the war in real-time, @WarMonitors & @sentdefender are good

Turns out those accounts aren't good.

Musk had the freedom to endorse those accounts, and the times has the freedom to criticize him for doing so.

> Elon Musk owns a social media company that is pretty open about it's speech policies, whether you agree with them or not.

How would you characterize that policy?

Musk has claimed to be a “free speech absolutist” and perhaps he is. But, as demonstrated by the India and Turkey decisions, Twitter / X is not.

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/05/twitter-accuse...

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/05/twitter-musk-censors...

How are things at the town square ?

I guess they have to pay $8 like everybody else ...

That's if they want the blue checkmark. Organisations have to pay for a gold checkmark, which is ~$1000 p/m

Reply on news.ycombinator.com