571

X briefly discouraged users from viewing a link to an NPR story about Donald Trump's recent visit to Arlington National Cemetery, raising questions about whether the Elon Musk-owned platform is putting its thumb on the scale for the former president.

On Thursday, NPR reporter Stephen Fowler posted a link to a story in which he quoted an Army official who said that an employee at Arlington National Cemetery was “abruptly pushed aside” during an event attended by Trump and members of his campaign earlier this week. The outlet had previously reported that there was a “physical altercation” at the event with campaign staff over federal laws barring campaign activities at the cemetery.

Some users on X who attempted to click a link to the story were greeted with a warning message saying that X deemed that “this link may be unsafe.” It stated that it could be malicious, violent, spammy or otherwise violate the platform’s rules, but didn't explain why the link was flagged. Fowler posted a thread on X, each tweet of which contained a link to his story — the warning appeared to affect the first two instances of the link but not others, for reasons unknown. It’s highly unusual for such a warning to appear before a link to a mainstream website. Other links to NPR, as well as other coverage of Trump’s visit to Arlington, don’t appear to have such a label.

In a statement to an NPR reporter, an X spokesperson claimed the warning appeared due to a "false positive" and that it had been corrected. The company didn't explain further.

Notably, Musk has been a vocal supporter of Trump this election, and recently held a lengthy live streamed conversation with him on X. Musk has also publicly feuded with NPR in the past, adding a “state affiliated media” label to its account for several months last year. NPR hasn’t posted from its main account on X since the label was added last April.

top 28 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] cygnus@lemmy.ca 177 points 2 weeks ago

And yet if you click that journalist's profile, the ONLY social media link is to that festering shithole. Journalists are complicit and enabling Twitter to do this by treating it as a legitimate platform and the default place for news.

[-] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 81 points 2 weeks ago

Journalists are complicit and enabling Twitter to do this by treating it as a legitimate platform and the default place for news

100%.

[-] helenslunch@feddit.nl 24 points 2 weeks ago

True but journalists wouldn't post there if people weren't reading. Everyone on that site is complicit.

[-] cygnus@lemmy.ca 19 points 2 weeks ago

If large outlets said they were quitting Twitter and going elsewhere (Threads, Mastodon, whatever), the audience would follow. Media deserves most of the blame IMO.

[-] jaybone@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago

I think you’d also need a bunch of celebrities to make the same move.

It’s funny how only old people are left on Facebook, but Twitter still has the masses after all these years.

[-] helenslunch@feddit.nl 4 points 2 weeks ago

Once again, that's a 2-way street.

[-] ripcord@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

There's no "but" there. Should be an "and".

Absolutely blame the journalists.

[-] helenslunch@feddit.nl 2 points 2 weeks ago

I said "but" because there was no "and".

[-] diabolik@lemmy.sdf.org 21 points 2 weeks ago

It’s infuriating and disgraceful, but none of the orgs and their employees seem to feel any shame about it.

[-] cygnus@lemmy.ca 9 points 2 weeks ago

It's mind-boggling. How many articles can they write about the latest Twitter clusterfuck, followed up immediately by "follow me on Twitter", before they wonder if they're the baddies?

[-] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

The problem is, for the past 2 decades twitter WAS the default place for news. I can remember watching somebody live streaming FROM THE BOSTON BOMBING in real time. News outlets would KILL for that kind of up to the minute reporting. Plus, it was able to happen not from just one person, but a multitude of people from different perspectives, live on the scene, all without the news outlet needing to pay for a single dime of labor. It's all just handed to them, from people not assosiated with the station, and therefore not paid, nor given any benefits.

And this went on for almost 2 decades. Now the platform in the past 2 years has shrunk, but it's still millions of users, compared to Mastodon which has something like less than 100k people last time I checked.

So yes. For now it IS the default for news in real time. Even if the slant has dramatically shifted in a very short time. It takes time for people to change habbits. Mastodon needs to grow, and the fediverse needs to grow. Doing so will change the landscape of the internet, since the fediverse is built to be resistant to corporate takeover. Once it becomes the default, things will look very different. The problem is, if you walk out of your house, and walk to the mall, and ask 100 random people what the fediverse is, I'd be shocked if 1 of them knew. That's where we are right now.

[-] stoly@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

But that was BE (before Elon).

[-] HonkTonkWoman@lemm.ee -4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

You haven’t been paying much attention to the current state of journalism, have you?

Twitter is a decent portion of their revenue stream, and given that none of us want to pay them for their efforts, what do you suggest they do?

Those clicks are their livelihood & we’re all sitting here reading the article pasted directly to this thread.

WE, INCLUDING YOU, ARE COMPLICIT IN THIS TOO.

E: “I don’t wanna pay for the news, I want journalists to forgo their living & only post their work on sites I’m actually willing to steal their content from”

Keep on downvoting children. Y’all suck as humans.

[-] grue@lemmy.world 46 points 2 weeks ago

A "false positive," eh? Okay, sure.

How many "false positives" have there been in the other direction, labeling anti-Kamala stories as "unsafe?"

[-] ech@lemm.ee 34 points 2 weeks ago

Weird how many "false positives" they get. Uncanny.

[-] BleatingZombie@lemmy.world 6 points 2 weeks ago

Now the question is was this on purpose? Or was it caused by the huge layoffs they did?

[-] KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 2 weeks ago

Those are not mutually exclusive.

[-] IAmTheZeke@lemmy.world 25 points 2 weeks ago

I'm starting to think something is wrong with Twitter

[-] BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 19 points 2 weeks ago

raising questions about whether the Elon Musk-owned platform is putting its thumb on the scale for the former president

Fucking media. Two years after he gets into power I'd expect headlines like this to be the norm:

Raid on fifth Democratic Congressman calls into question the legitimacy of Trump's new Task Force

[-] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 18 points 2 weeks ago

weird how it became a false positive only when they got called out

[-] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 17 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

but didn’t explain why the link was flagged

Couldn't possibly be because Twitter is basically four chan and those "free speech extremists" always mass report shit they don't like ...

I have zero idea why everybody is still using that shit

[-] Draconic_NEO@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

It's not even really 4chan though. 4chan has limited moderation and allows alt-right crazies to run wild. Twitter had strict moderation which is designed to cater specifically to alt-right crazies and suppresses beliefs that go against it.

[-] jabjoe@feddit.uk 1 points 2 weeks ago
[-] Draconic_NEO@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

That's true it has relaxed a lot more, though Musk still does comply when it comes to some of the really extreme stuff that other platforms would allow (they still do remove blatant antisemitism, and threats).

[-] helenslunch@feddit.nl 1 points 2 weeks ago

Social graph

[-] TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 16 points 2 weeks ago

The original Engadget article which was syndicated here:

(Yahoo! News isn't as bad with link rot as MSN is, but it's still not great)

[-] zante@lemmy.wtf -2 points 2 weeks ago

Not news though, is it ?

News is Twitter doing something honest.

But everyone continues to spread rage bait

this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2024
571 points (98.3% liked)

Technology

58063 readers
5009 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS