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NPR quits Twitter after being labeled as 'state-affiliated media'

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Re: NPR quits Twitter after being labeled as 'state-affiliated media'

#782
post #240

Good. It's clear now that Twitter is just an information control mechanism for Musk, and journalists should quit their addiction to it. I think every major news outlet should have their own ActivityPub compatible service, essentially as a modern replacement for RSS.

> Twitter is just an information control mechanism for Musk, and journalists should quit agreed. That was the case long before Musk. Would you have felt comfortable articulating that opinion, two years ago? When anything but Twitter was "an extremist echo chamber"? When the only censorship they were indulging in was the censorship we still can't talk about?

Twitter was also an extremist echo chamber. It's how the January 6th insurrection happened, a violent attack on the US Capitol that was organized, launched, and coordinated in real-time on Twitter. You can't do that if voices of sanity are seeping in. It's just that Twitter as many echo chambers, some bigger and more dangerous than others.

Re: NPR quits Twitter after being labeled as 'state-affiliated media'

#783

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The website I linked bins per-donor, not per-donation. Of donations from donors who gave over $100,000 total, more went to Democrats than to Republicans.

> Of donors giving more than $100,000 to a candidate or party, 19.09% favored Democrats and 15.02% gave to Republicans. The really interesting thing in that website is that big spenders favor PACs over either party. And Democrats win out with donations over Republicans in all monetary categories, not just the $100k+.

PACs favor Democrats too: https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/donor-demogra...

Re: NPR quits Twitter after being labeled as 'state-affiliated media'

#784
post #716

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NPR is not nor has it ever been state-affiliated media in any reasonable sense of the word. Is it a full stop, bald-face lie.

[flagged]

You’ve supported my point: there’s no consistent forced state narrative. Bias for or against a political party is orthogonal to whether the state itself is executing editorial control.

Re: NPR quits Twitter after being labeled as 'state-affiliated media'

#785
post #709
post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or more to the point, with how much of twitter is owned by the Saudi government? https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/10/28/saudis-kingdom-hol...

Twitter doesn't exist anymore (as of yesterday[1]), so the Saudis' ownership shares likely transferred to X Corp. How much of X is now owned by Saudi Arabia is the real question. 1. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/04/twitter-no-longe...

Large shareholders were moved to equity upon purchase.

In other words..the Saudi you are referencing was a large shareholder of the “Old Twitter”.

That’s along the lines of “how much did Russia fund Facebook”

VTB (sanctioned bank) funded Facebook in the tune of $1bn. It also funded Twitter in 2011 for $191m.

Re: NPR quits Twitter after being labeled as 'state-affiliated media'

#786
post #734

This seems perfectly fair to me and I don't understand the controversy. Maybe in the US people see "State Affiliated" as some kind of an insult? Public broadcasters like the BBC and Al Jazeera have done extraordinary work at times. That being said it would only be fair to also include a badge for private media corporations that says who their parent corporation is.

[deleted]

Re: NPR quits Twitter after being labeled as 'state-affiliated media'

#787
post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worst case, Twitter can set up something like "system accounts" that automatically fetch headlines from news websites or RSS feeds and post them with links on Twitter.

Twitter has recently been playing cat and mouse with its API access -- why wouldn't these news sites just block twitter's RSS agents?

How do you even block one organization from accessing your RSS feeds or your homepage HTML while allowing others to access it? How do you tell apart my requests and Twitter's requests if they both come from a residential IP or a common VPN?

Re: NPR quits Twitter after being labeled as 'state-affiliated media'

#788
post #777

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then lets run the same statistics for administrations from the other side. After all, state-controlled media would have to follow switching government lines on this, so it'll show Republicans loving NPR and Democrats hating it during the previous administration, correct?

So you're agreeing on their political affiliation? Let's just get that out of the way first.

The point is it is irrelevant for this discussion.

Re: NPR quits Twitter after being labeled as 'state-affiliated media'

#789
post #779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This seems perfectly fair to me and I don't understand the controversy. Maybe in the US people see "State Affiliated" as some kind of an insult? From Twitter's definition > State-affiliated media is defined as outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution. Yes. That is an insult.

From their definition from a week ago: https://web.archive.org/web/20230404115255/https://help.twit... > State-affiliated media is defined as outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution. Accounts belonging to state-affiliated media entities, their editors-in-chief, and/or their pro…

I was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt and using only the most current one. Policies get updated over time and that's okay. It's a good thing for organizations to change their mind, update and improve policies.

The thing is here it's dumb no matter what version of the policy you look at lmao

Re: NPR quits Twitter after being labeled as 'state-affiliated media'

#790
post #317

Should Twitter itself get a state sponsored label for getting concessions from San Francisco on their headquarters? https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-controller-hails-... Should Elon's account (or SpaceX or Telsa) have the same label because of their significant government funding? It's hard to see this as anything but silly politics games.

That seems like moving goalposts.

An org that primarily sells media (PBS or Twitter) should live by what its primary revenue source is for that media, because it colors the media that goes out the door.

Further, are the bulk of twitter's profits derived from concessions on a lease ? I don't think so, but I'm open minded.

An org that does not sell media, but physical goods (i.e. Tesla) is arguably selling cars, not media.

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