Mastodawn

In the age of disinformation, this is the most important episode of Last Week Tonight yet.

John Oliver uncovers how Elon Musk took over Twitter and began funding accounts who spread disinformation, creating movements that cause serious trouble in the real world based on Twitter falsehoods — even causing the Trump regime to launch security operations based on conspiracy theories invented by random Twitter users.

https://youtu.be/p7ZG_xWYLzI?si=h_sQbBJzmI7rTqXF

Twitter: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

YouTube

Clinton Anderson SwordForHire Feb 23

Twitter was shit long before Elon came along....

Hiker Geek 🌲💻🌲Feb 23

I happened to be watching it as your post came up in my feed.

I'd be interested in a poll as to whether people think the service is called X or Twitter. Twitter as far as I'm concerned.

It's run by a twit after all.

Ron Bowes Feb 23

@HikerGeek @randahl I'm okay calling it "x", because I have some good memories of people and events on Twitter, and those are all gone and destroyed. Now it's something new and worse

@randahl having worked there 2011-2012, its very very bizarre seeing what that place turned into

Diabolic Preacher ♒Feb 23

@randahl that part about going to fort knox to check if things are still there... 🙄

Per Jakobsen (no anonymity)Feb 23

Awesome, hilarios and also scary.

Everybody - should leave Twitter / X and all of Elon Musks enterprises.

🐈‍⬛David Sommerseth Feb 23

«Let that ....»

Bruno Nicoletti Feb 23

@randahl People can now lie shamelessly total impunity while algorithmic media prioritises outrage to maintain engagement to sell ads. Then add in the Elons prioritising lies for their own financial ends, as well as spreading not a few of their own. Burn down the internet, at least the heavily commercial parts of it.

Adam Bullock Feb 23

@bjn @randahl yes! This exactly. I haven't watched it yet, but it's crazy that people are monetized for coming up clickbait, or totally wrong things, or dangerous things. Wild.

Stefan 🧝Feb 23

@randahl Swedish politicians support this by being there.

Frank Quednau Feb 23

@inwis @randahl and German ones. Despicable.

FossThought Feb 23

@randahl This is how Elon's stumbling answer about "collective consciousness" struck me.
Just as 30-40 trillion cells all come together to create one human being, several billion people also can come together to create one "Earth-entity". Of course there are different kinds of cells: skin cells, blood cells, brain cells, etc.
He loves the idea of considering himself a brain cell because the brain controls the body. He thinks he should do the "thinking" for us.
He strives to answer non-arrogantly

Robin Barton Feb 23

@randahl Colour me not surprised

Frank Heijkamp Feb 23

@randahl A link to the video without tracking. https://youtu.be/p7ZG_xWYLzI

Twitter: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

YouTube

TheNovemberFella ✊🏳️‍🌈 🇺🇦☸️🛰️🚀Feb 23

@alterelefant @[email protected] 👍👍

xenophyte Feb 23

@randahl Today, in Nature, link at the end. The article is open access. Therein: Switching from a chronological to an algorithmic feed increased engagement and shifted political opinion towards more conservative positions, particularly regarding policy priorities, perceptions of criminal investigations into Donald Trump and views on the war in Ukraine. In contrast, switching from the algorithmic to the chronological feed had no comparable effects.

There is no excuse for being active on X with the single exception of attempting to actively fight disinformation.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10098-2

The political effects of X’s feed algorithm - Nature

Among users initially on a chronological feed, 7 weeks of exposure to X’s algorithmic feed in 2023 shifted political attitudes and account-following behaviour in a more conservative direction compared with those remaining on a chronological feed, whereas switching the feed setting in the opposite direction, from algorithmic to chronological, had no effect.

Nature

leftofcentre Feb 23

@randahl a great 2nd amendment challenge! throw in pedonald dumb as well, thiel et al them bloodsucking ticks.

Crystal_Fish_Caves Feb 23

@randahl A national treasure is John Oliver even though not from our nation originally. #PBS is near to my ❤️ as I have been taking donation calls for many years, but I learned tons from his recent schelacking of our gov for withdrawing 💸💲Rural areas only source of emergency 🦺 alerts and local news.

and Big Bird.

Orb 2069 Feb 23

Twitter USED to have a reasonable API, which made it a fucking goldmine of raw data about disinformation campaigns and bot swarms. Last private social media platform to do it, afaik.

Now I guess we've got to just guess.

The entire world can watch that video except for:
Australia
Canada
United Kingdom & Ireland
New Zealand

North Korea can watch it. Russia can watch it. Easter Island can watch it.... but those countries cannot. Guess it's time to find a redirect.

AlexanderMars Feb 24

@randahl just visiting twitter makes you complicit with Musk's agenda through engagement and ad views that makes revenue.

I did recently stumble on this browser extension
https://github.com/DoingFedTime/PrivacyPlease
It redirects any twitter link to Nitter. Also, with Nitter you can generate RSS feeds of any account you still might want to follow. I generally don't like browser extensions, but this is actually pretty useful. Only downside, not on mobile, yet.

GitHub - DoingFedTime/PrivacyPlease: Swaps non-privacy respecting sites with open source privacy frontends.

Swaps non-privacy respecting sites with open source privacy frontends. - GitHub - DoingFedTime/PrivacyPlease: Swaps non-privacy respecting sites with open source privacy frontends.

GitHub

𝕯𝖔𝖔𝖒𝖘𝖈𝖗𝖔𝖑𝖑™Feb 24

@randahl @percepticon A platform takeover is never just about speech. It’s about who gets to subsidize which narratives, and at what scale. Once amplification is cheap, disinformation stops being “lies” and becomes a logistics problem: routing belief through attention infrastructure. The scarier part is institutional responsiveness, when agencies treat trending as actionable intelligence, the feedback loop closes.

I love that you insist on calling it Twitter.

Justbeep Feb 25

@randahl
#LetThatSinkin

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