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Comment by I_Am_Nous | Hacker News Reader

"I demand that you continue funding my social media site!"

Elon seems to have felt untouchable for a long time. There is a limit to how much people will overlook in the pursuit of money but let's be real here - Disney is trying to portray itself as a family company. Basically anything that happens on Twitter at this point is pretty much not family friendly. Elon being Elon might have given Disney an easy excuse to back out of ad buys on a platform they don't see a large enough target market using.

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> Basically anything that happens on Twitter at this point is pretty much not family friendly

Dunno which bit of twitter you're on, but my corner has been family friendly pretty much forever.

So, I've been off Twitter since last November, but before I went, until I blocked him, virtually every Musk tweet was showing up in the algorithmic feed for me, and it was constantly suggesting I follow him. And, like, a lot of the material he's been tweeting lately is very far from family friendly, unless you're a rather odd and frightening family.

(Of course, possibly it doesn't do the Musk hyperpromotion thing anymore.)

I recently re-downloaded Twitter to give it another chance and I can confirm it does still promote Elon's posts everywhere. Even when I have select "Show less like this" etc.

The main buzz of Twitter is adult content (not perverse, just for adults). So there aren't really any kids to advertise to on the platform and basically anything can show up in the algorithmic feeds.

Adult are usually the ones buying the movie tickets, toys, and other merchandise.

And also, there's this: https://www.thestreet.com/investing/disney-has-a-plan-to-tar...

You could check the Elon headlines on Hacker News, like "Elon drives 9,500% increase in Pizzagate content."

I think it's reasonable to ask where the line is. Disney has no problems advertising on platforms currently being sued for distributing child abuse material...

https://www.reuters.com/legal/new-mexico-sues-meta-ceo-zucke...

The line is probably "Elon was an asshole about everything in general" while Zuck is way more low profile. Clearly it isn't just an idealogical dispute or they would suspend from Meta too.

You mean virtue signalling one thing, whilst actively and simultaneously doing the opposite by supporting known malicious platforms?

Not exactly - perhaps if you only look at the public statements made by the CEOs.

If you look at how Meta spends money, they spend billions per year in moderation and brand-safety technology and people and processes.

Meanwhile, in the Twitter -> X transformation, these roles were all but eliminated.

And yes, one CEO says "it is important we get this right" and the other one says "fuck it all", then it's more "signaling priorities" than "virtue signaling".

Billions per year in moderation, and they're still being sued for distributing child abuse material?

Also, you forgot the bit about how much Meta spends on lawyers suing federal agencies so they can use data they scraped from their underage users:

https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2023-11-30...

The problem is fundamental to any jpeg uploading website. For the computer it is just a bunch of numbers. You need a human brain or something imitating the brain for the computer to understand the meaning of the arrangement of numbers.

This is what Meta's human brains are doing with child abuse material: https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/31/23005576/facebook-content...

And this is what they're doing with data they illegally harvested from children: https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2023-11-30...

(and there are many more examples)

Yes, their moderation is not 100% and companies can be sued for any reason. AFAICT there has not been a finding in these lawsuits, it’s probably not a smart idea to use the existence of a lawsuit as evidence that something nefarious has happened.

And also yes, I am using evidence of how they spend their money as an indication of their intent. It’s the embodiment of putting their money where their mouth is.

Yep, capitalism as usual, working as intended.

It is possible to be capitalist, and not two faced and hypocritical.

That's true, but it's dependent on people maintaining personal ethics. Unfortunately the incentives are aligned with not maintaining ethics so you can make more money. I've had this discussion with a coworker plenty of times. His argument is regulation makes capitalism safer and the best option we have, while I argue that "after the fact" regulation only prevents someone from repeating someone else's unethical strategy and most likely the initial, unethical party will not really be punished for doing what wasn't illegal at the time. Maybe they get fined, but nowhere near the revenue they generated with the unethical strategy.

At least meta has tons of moderators trying to find this content and block it. Twitter has literally one moderator for all of the Dutch market.

And then there's this kind of thing: https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2023-11-30...

They don't sound terribly competent...

https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/31/23005576/facebook-content...

The line is wherever they want it to be. They're the customer. They can buy ad space or not.

If they think association with Musk makes them look bad then they won't buy ads on his platform.

Of course! And I support anyone who talks with their wallet, but that's not what's going on here...

If Bob has a personal problem with Musk, then let it be know. I could totally understand that, especially after Musk's recent interviews.

But hiding behind a virtue signalling flex when Disney are actively supporting platforms that are as bad or worse is straight up hypocrisy.

Even if we ignore the child abuse and focus on antisemitism, it doesn't take long to find out how bad Facebook is:

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58058428 Anti-Semitic social posts 'not taken down' in 80% of cases - 2 August 2021 "Facebook was the worst performer, CCDH said, failing to act on 89% of posts."

Similar articles can be found on The Guardian, NPR, and many others.

> I support anyone who talks with their wallet, but that's not what's going on here

That's exactly what's going on here.

Yeah, he's voting with with his wallet... It's the justifications that I'm opposed to.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/disney-s-iger-take...

"By him taking the position that he took in quite a public manner, we just felt that the association with that position, and with Elon Musk, and X was not necessarily a positive one for us and we decided we would pull our advertising."

This is in reference Musk's 'anti-Semitic' tweet. So instead of just voting with his wallet, Bob has turned it into a virtue flex, which would also be fine if they weren't actively supporting other platforms that are known to be far worse. (And that's ignoring Meta's issues with child abuse)

> So instead of just voting with his wallet, Bob has turned it into a virtue flex

No. There's no need to flex anything. All he's done is distance Disney from the bad smell around Musk and Twitter.

If that's all Bob Iger needs to do to make Disney look better (or at least avoid looking worse) then maybe Musk should have a think about getting himself under control.

"Lying isn't marketing. It's just lying." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38541436#38541565

Pretending to do the right thing whilst actively doing the exact opposite might make Disney look better to anyone not paying attention but it's not marketing, it's just lying.

Your whataboutism argument isn't going very well.

Through his antics, his moronic public statements, and the changes he made to the platform, Musk created the conditions that resulted in Disney pulling its advertising from Twitter.

The End.

All that remains for Musk to do now is to grow up and take responsibility for this outcome.

But, given that he has told his customers to "go fuck themselves", it seems unlikely that he will take responsibility any time soon.

> Your whataboutism argument isn't going very well.

Gotcha. One rule for me and another for thee.

It says a lot about people when they'd prefer to believe a comfortable lie, than be told an uncomfortable truth.

I never once defended Musk's idiocy, but you've made it clear that you have no problems with child abuse, anti-Semitism, or hypocrisy.

Best of luck to ya.

> The End.

What on earth are you talking about?

You're bounding off into the irrelevant tundra, desperately hoping that it is somehow relevant to Disney not advertising on Twitter.

It isn't.

lol, gotcha.

Commenting on Disney paying money to an antisemetic company that distributes child abuse material is irrelevant in a thread about Disney not paying money to an allegedly antisemetic company.

Sorry, I suppose it's another "whataboutism"...

No, I don't think you've managed to get any of it.

You are profoundly confused.

> but you've made it clear that you have no problems with child abuse, anti-Semitism, or hypocrisy.

What an absurdly childish response to GP’s comments. GP has made none of those things “clear” and it’s disgusting that you would stoop to such a gross, inflammatory accusation because you’re upset about an internet argument.

Grow up or log off. This crap is a really, really ugly look for you.

lol, gotcha.

It's an ugly look for me to suggest that someone has strange priorities if they're defending Disney for paying money to an antisemetic company that distributes child abuse material? I guess we're only allowed to judge antisemetic companies if they're owned by Elon Musk...

It's an ugly look for you to look the other way. Silence is violence remember.

No one you’ve responded to is defending Disney. No one is looking the other way. They’re telling you that you’re conflating unrelated things.

You spinning that into “actually that means you approved of CSAM” is teenage Twitter bullshit, frankly. Again, grow up.

Musk's antisemitic Tweet (no quotes, it was antisemitic) was also racist. He endorsed a discredited canard against Jews, namely: replacement theory. That's a completely baseless white supremacist claim that Jews are engineering demographic change against white people in America. Musk said it was the truth. How would one reinterpret that to doubt the antisemitism and racism in that? Punishing that kind of bigotry is no "flex." It is basic decency.

I mean, I think _intent_, and scale, probably comes into it. Clearly, Facebook does not want this sort of material; its existence is merely a failure of moderation, and something that advertisers can lean on Facebook to fix. It also, realistically, isn't at all prominent; Facebook is not going to abruptly shove it in the face of 165 million people. On the other hand, Musk himself in the past few weeks has posted "Great Replacement" and Pizzagate far-right conspiracy bullshit, broadcasting it to his 165 million followers. Based on this alone, I think most reasonable people would doubt that Twitter has any intention of cleaning up its Nazi problem.

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