Elon Musk's X pushes Trump tags on all US users
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/18147280
X, the social media platform owned by Trump megadonor Elon Musk, is promoting Trump campaign-curated content to all U.S. users, regardless of whether they have opted out of Trump-related content.
On the platform formerly known as Twitter, banner ads for the Trump campaign donning the #Trump2024 tag appear for all U.S. users, even those who’ve blocked words, topics, and hashtags related to the candidate or his campaign or muted the advertiser.
Additionally, the #MAGA tag displays an edited image of the former president from his attempted assassination and the #Trump2024 hashtag displays an American flag.
It is unclear whether the Trump campaign paid for the images on the #Trump2024 and #MAGA tags, though an advertisement for the tag on the site’s trending page reads “Promoted by Team Trump.” As Mashable noted, it is the first time the platform has enabled the image feature to promote a specific political candidate.
Clicking the Trump2024 tag also prompts American flag graphics to flood the screen.
Remember, if you use xshitter in any way, even to follow your favorite progressive celebrities and complain about the platform and write mean tweets about Elon, you are validating the platform. You are putting money in his pocket so that he can continue to donate $45 million per month to conservative superPACs.
The biggest fear I have for the country is seeing peoples inability to just stop using things that are being enshittified that are completely optional. I get people have to bank and shop for food and such but no one needs to be using social media or streaming or any crappy internet stuff.
This is the argument I always see: "But all my friends and favorite content creators are there!"
Okay, get new online friends, and write to your favorite creators that they should switch to Mastodon. Hell, switch to Bluesky. But every interaction is a bit of data, a bit of engagement, that Elon can show to advertisers to entice them to buy multi-million dollar ad packages.
I stopped using whatsapp because fuck facebook. All my friends are like: yeah, i wish, but everyone i know uses whatsapp. That is a very good argument that i haven't thought off. Same with twitter people. Oh i totally see how much it must suck if you don't know what kind shit the rock is trying to sell you.
Buying or owning Tesla, or using his bullshit is supporting Trump.
Yup. I call Tesla's "Muskmobiles" and have a lot of contempt for the people driving them. I assume these people are Trumpers.
If people don't want this association, then replace the logo or sell the thing.
would like to see a decal that surrounds the tesla logo to make it read "FUCK TRUMP"
So you’re saying someone needs to sell a bunch of “FUCK RUMP” decals? I mean I was already thinking of starting that business.
you could even repurpose stickers that said that for completely non-political purposes! it's free real estate
A wide range of rump fucking target audiences!
Your comment made me realized that Fuck Trump is a homonym for Fucked Rump
That's a pretty bad assumption.
Man, I really do feel sorry for the people who are progressive and bought a Tesla and are stuck with ut for whichever reason from back when Musk was still that "quirky but relatable genius billionaire" (quotations because most people now know he never really was that, but a lot still thought it at the time)
I do not have a Tesla but I am considering buying an EV. Teslas are the best EV, especially now that the self driving stuff works. Elon is the only thing steering me elsewhere.
Also, imagine buying one a few years ago and wanting to make the decision based on the technology or the environment. These people make a huge investment, possibly even with good intentions, and buying a new car is not cheap. Cut them a break.
The self driving works? I'm not sure I believe it.
People post YouTube content for every new build. It has gotten very good over the last year or so, even in cities. It still needs a bit of work but appears to drive almost human.
Just a few days ago, it was shown that Tesla's FSD is being specially trained on influencer's routes to make it appear better in their videos and experience, without them even knowing.
Got a source on that? Not challenging the claim, just really interested to learn more about it.
Edit: NVM, after some googling I was able to find it.
For anyone else who is interested; https://electrek.co/2024/07/09/tesla-insiders-say-elon-optimized-full-self-driving-routes-for-himself-influencers/
Interesting, I had not heard that, I just found the videos impressive.
Do you regularly bet your life on YouTube videos?
I have gotten similar responses about the quality of FSD from multiple people, even got the one from you that you have since deleted. Are you really this unoriginal and self important?
I've been hearing they have shitty build quality and just recently read that the autopilot took someone down train tracks.
You’re being downvoted but you are indeed correct on both points.
No need to worry about my score on this one, lol. Tesla is not popular on Lemmy, no doubt it'll swing positive eventually.
IMO for legitimate reasons other than Elon being a sack of garbage. Like you pay, what is it, $10k for a self-driving license that is not transferable and also doesn't do what they promised? Doors are full electronic for some reason, but in a power loss emergency you can hopefully remember where the manual handle is and still get out (albeit shattering the window in the process). Somehow all repairs are wildly expensive because of reasons.
(Am I misremembering that it gets automatic remote updates and some have prevented people from using their cars for a while?)
Teslas are not the best EV. They have some of the absolute worst quality control of any vehicle in the market right now. They only have service locations in major cities. If you live rurally and a technician can’t get out to you remotely then you end up going on a roadtrip for service.
There are quite a few EVs in the same price range as Tesla that are abjectly better cars in every car metric than Tesla. Teslas are great if you really like gadgets and shiny stuff. If you want a reliable EV, go with most anything else.
Yeah, the QC on Teslas is absolute dog shit now. It's not just the Cybertruck; across the board they're cheaply made vehicles. Badly fitting trim, cheap and poorly finished parts, windows that crack themselves, electrics that short out in rain.
At this point the rest of the EV market has more than caught up. There are a lot of great options out there.
Rivian is releasing the R2 in 2026 if you can wait. I want to buy an EV as my next vehicle, but it won’t be a Tesla.
Wouldn't this be a great opportunity to flood that hashtag with content that talks about project 2025? Or the Epstein list?
I wouldn't be surprised if melon husk added a filter for those terms.
You know he has, or at least will eventually, if he's dumb enough to be a failure at PsyOps 101... which wouldn't surprise me in the slightest.
He's already deboosting pro-Ukrainian sources, so I wouldn't be surprised...
The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.
People still use twitter? It's just a right wing bot cesspool now.
A lot of people on the left think they're able to throw sand in the gears by tweeting how mean Elon is.
I mean, that's what got his dumbass to buy it in the first place lol.
lol i thought it was used for p0rn mostly since its X?!
All this simping for him and Trump just announced he's going to destroy the EV credits cause EVs are too expensive. Remind me, isn't oil still to this day subsidized by taxpayers?
That's not a problem because the oil barons are paying Repub leadership directly.
As Musk has proven, it doesn't matter if you're an oil baron or a renewable energies baron; all baron's are dickheads. It's not the field or the damage it does to the world, it's the role at the top itself that creates these megalomaniac dickheads.
Elon: The EV market has soured on me, I'm willing to trade the tax credits for something...
Don: I got just the thing: you can sell SpaceX satellites to the Russians
Elon: Perfect!
sucking sounds resume
I love it when terrible people do terrible things to their own wealth. What I don't love is how after a certain number of billions, you have an infinite wealth cheat code to fuck around with.
Billionaires get so obvious with crap they want, it reminds me of a toddler that really wants his very own formula one racer or artillery piece or nuclear reactor.
And yeah, if it weren't so critically deleterious to the rest of us to let him have it, we'd let him pull a Stockton Rush and blow himself up with mad science.
But the rest of us really don't want to have to clean up after his one party autocracy or suffer through the critical scarcity, the civil war and the holocaust that propagandists will deny for centuries.
When you look upon a billionaire, see them as a bird, trying desperately to feed a cuckoo chick at the cost of their own offspring, only this chick never grows up and flies away, but stays, ever eating, ever growing like a cancer, demanding nourishment forever.
Yeah in the US we pride ourselves on having equal*** voting power, but our vastly unequal purchasing power can be used to override that.
Twitter was never perfect but at one point you could have reasonable back and forths about articles under the posts of the authors who wrote it, who also would chime in occasionally.
I very much believe muskrat buying it made the whole site less intelligent which is honestly a feat in and of itself. It's not lost on me a place where you could directly and reliably contact journalists as an individual is now an arm of right wing propaganda.
And nothing you say gets seen unless you buy a fucking checkmark off of Musk
So glad I use Lemmy and not Twitter
Musk is such a whiny little kunt.
He's not a cunt, he lacks the warmth and depth. He's lower than a cunt. He's a cankle.
Kunt with a K has nothing to do with vaginas, that would be with a C.
This is an all-new concept for me. I thought that was just cutesy censorship. What's the difference?
A Cunt with a C has generally been a sexist term. And although the word is the same but spelled different, it means, a jerk, an asshole, a dick, a lying fuck, whatever slam you want. It's not meant to be sexist. Language evolves as does spelling.
All twitter users are Musk's army, even if they don't think so.
I'm continuously glad that I got out of Twitter the day Elon took over.
Hopefully this will enrage the users enough to go and actually vote against Trump.
This is election interference.
How so? It's a private Nazi website.
If any private entity spends enough money on a candidate, it's an election contribution.
Election contributions have legal requirements. Musk / Twitter aren't complying with those requirements.
Twitter sells enhanced hashtags and placement on the top of the trending list to advertisers. Now they are donating ad slots to Trump.
Of course, the real question is whether or not anything will be done about it. Churches endorse political stuff all the time, and legally they are supposed to lose their tax exemption over it, but as we all know a Church can straight up call for mass murder of LGBT people, and they don't see any consequences at all...
Nah, you're forgetting how fucked the US is.
Citizen's United mean it's absolutely fine for billionaires to spend as much money as they like supporting geriatric fascists, providing they don't ask the fascists how they'd like the money spent.
Providing Elon keeps going off half-cocked and making decisions on his own and isn't following instructions from the trump campaign this is all perfectly legal.
And even if he is acting on orders, how could you ever prove it?
Elon Musk is a rich industrialist wanting to install a guy that would serve his interests.
If you keep using the shitter site, don't be surprised if you get shit sprayed all over you.
Twitter is for chumps. I blocked it on my home network along with all the other trash. PFBlocker is great.
I have never heard anything good about Twitter. Just the format of following people instead of topics seems like a narcissistic’s dream.
People used it when they shouldn’t have before Elon and people will continue now.
Some just like shitty systems I guess.
I've never had a twitter account. Finally got around to making a Mastodon account and I have no f'ing clue what to do with it.
Same. Made it last week and went. Huh. And bailed back to lemmy. I prefer this type of UI
Not a good decision from Elon.
Hahaha! They could have left Xshitter when it was time.
They can still leave Usa while there is time.
It's a bit easier to not use a website than it is to leave a country.
Time to leave USA for what? Going to another garbage state that's also doomed?
They won't let you out of the land of the free? ;-)