Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has had his account on X - formerly Twitter - reinstated by Elon Musk.
Musk asked users to vote in a poll whether or not to lift a Jones ban pre-dating his ownership of the platform, signalling he would honour the result.
Around 70% of roughly two million respondents voted to lift the ban.
Jones is most notorious for falsely claiming the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting, in which 20 children and six adults died, was “staged”.
He was ordered to pay $1.5bn (£1.32bn) in damages to family members of the victims, after courts found he had caused them to be subjected to harassment and death threats with his false claims.
This asshole always uses a poll as a cover when he does something shitty. “I want nazi’s back on the site but it will be unpopular… better poll my alt-right nazi fans! Heh, heh. I’m so clever.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/twitter-users-vote-elon-musk-quit-ceo-poll-rcna62332
A year ago next Monday, Musk asked “Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll”. The votes came in, 57.5% to resign, 42.5% to stay. If you’re wondering how much he care about polls where he hasn’t pre-ordained the outcome.
He did step down… he hired a CEO to run day to day.
He was going to do it either way though
Also, don’t think that CEO doesn’t do whatever the fuck he wants, it’s a puppet
Probably true, but it wasn’t the best choice of example to use above against him.
Edit: misread comment about CEOs gender, you were referring to Elon so I removed the correction.
Now is a good time to debate following the letter of the law vs the intent of the law.
He didn’t hire a CEO though.
He hired a scapegoat with the title of CEO.
“Let’s see, how can I make it even shittier…?” -Elon
Coincidence that he just also appeared as a guest on Tucker’s show for the first time ever? I think Alex is getting some kind of push somehow/somewhere to spew his bile back into the limelight.
I’m sure it’s for the 2024 election… the right is drumming up the crazies to get out and vote for the orange traitor.
Hmmm I wonder if we’ll see Trump guest on Infowars like he did for the 2016 election.
I mean if it happens he is going to have to pay the Sandy Hook families the money he owes. Dude is still on the hook for a cool billion with 2 trials to go.
He’s been getting a lot of love from Russia, and the GOP and Russia are best friends
There we go. Now it’s officially Truth Social as run by Elon Musk. He could have just bought the actual Truth Social for way less.
Freedom of hate speech
Good, now advertisers have even less reason to spend money on that platform
He seems to be going all in on “fuck those who left, I don’t need them” philosophy
On the one hand, it is sad to see what Twitter has become. On the other hand, it is a bit funny, as Truth Social is more likely to fail the more X takes on their userbase. Which is hurting Trump right in the wallet.
Twitter has always sucked and destroying it at his own expense is the one good thing Musk has done. He should buy Facebook next.
I see we’re still reporting on X as if it retained any kind of importance or significance. Quaint.
I appreciate the heads up that we’re going to be hearing from Alex Jones again soon, regardless of who, exactly, has chosen to platform him again. This is awful. He’s a hateful, horrible person, and I don’t look forward to the conspiracy theories he’s going to create again.
Thank you. Tired of hearing about this clown, as if doing alt-right shit is novel. It’s only newsworthy when he does something progressive by accident.
Xcho chamber
Smells like desperation 😤
Just keep adding more water to the ship, please!
I love anything that further sinks the site.
Sometimes I scroll YouTube shorts when I’m bored, and there will always be at LEAST one Alex Jones short that pops up, despite my only engagement being to quickly downvote it and skip it. It drives me crazy
Clicking on the short is engagement.
Downvoting is engagement.
Commenting how much you hate, disagree, or feel stupider for watching, is engagement.
Scrolling past the clip and entirely ignoring it, is not engagement.
So… Don’t engage, and remember:
Being happy reduces engagement.
Being angry increases engagement.
The algorithm doesn’t care how you feel, just how long it can keep your attention.
The lack of engagement? Believe it or not, still engagement!
Only for the engagement metrics used to set advertising prices and bill the ad buyers.
From socialvideoplaza.com
You’ve probably heard the myth that dislikes are a form of engagement. And since engagement is the social currency in which YouTube videos are paid, it makes your video perform better in the YouTube rankings. If that information was true in the first place, it is outdated now.
[the dislike button] is used in the algorithm for a couple of things: It is a sign to the algorithm that it should suggest less videos of that creator to the viewer.
As trustworthy a source as socialvideoplaza.com clearly is…
Google has a different take:
YouTube engagement metrics (views, likes, dislikes, and subscriptions) reflect how many times your YouTube video or channel has been interacted with. These metrics can be an important measure of your video or channel’s overall popularity.
Mozilla also disagrees, here’s a link to their study and some below articles diving into it
https://www.androidauthority.com/study-youtube-dislike-button-bad-recommendations-3210676/
A Mozilla study found that YouTube’s “dislike” button was ineffective against bad recommendations.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardnieva/2022/09/20/youtube-dislike-recommendations-mozilla/
…those buttons do little to purge unwanted videos from the personalized recommendations that YouTube feeds to users, according to a study published Tuesday by Mozilla, the foundation behind the Firefox web browser.
For example, using the “Not Interested” button only prevented 11% of recommendations for similar videos, Mozilla said. The “Dislike” button only stopped 12%. The most effective control is the “Don’t recommend this channel” button, which works less than half of the time at 43%.
So…it looks like affirmatively engaging with a video, even with a dislike, is engagement and is unlikely to change what types of content YT feeds you.
Now, from my anecdotal experience, the only way to remove, or reduce, unwanted content categories from your YT feed is a combination of flagging them as not interested AND searching/watching a new category of content to replace it with. Not perfect, but manageable. Oh, and using Piped/proxied services e.g. Newpipe.
I don’t click on it, I have never watched more than 10% of one before scrolling past, I have never commented.
quickly downvote it and skip it
He’s saying that’s the engagement.
I have never watched more than 10%
You gave 10% engagement and voted with your downvote! Double engagement!
From socialvideoplaza.com
You’ve probably heard the myth that dislikes are a form of engagement. And since engagement is the social currency in which YouTube videos are paid, it makes your video perform better in the YouTube rankings. If that information was true in the first place, it is outdated now.
[the dislike button] is used in the algorithm for a couple of things: It is a sign to the algorithm that it should suggest less videos of that creator to the viewer.
Also from socialvideoplaza.com
This site is not a part of the YouTube website or Alphabet. Additionally, this site is not endorsed by YouTube in any way.
Your random quote from a random website doesn’t mean much against the experience of myself and others and how massively disliked videos still get tons of traffic. If you don’t want to see certain content don’t dislike, just keep moving and don’t engage at all. My feed only improved after doing this, when I was disliking videos I kept getting the content I disliked. I didn’t engage and now I don’t see content I don’t want to anymore.
If you’re going to keep posting this same factually incorrect comment, I’ll keep posting my response:
As trustworthy a source as socialvideoplaza.com clearly is…
Google has a different take:
YouTube engagement metrics (views, likes, dislikes, and subscriptions) reflect how many times your YouTube video or channel has been interacted with. These metrics can be an important measure of your video or channel’s overall popularity.
Mozilla also disagrees, here’s a link to their study and some below articles diving into it
https://www.androidauthority.com/study-youtube-dislike-button-bad-recommendations-3210676/
A Mozilla study found that YouTube’s “dislike” button was ineffective against bad recommendations.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardnieva/2022/09/20/youtube-dislike-recommendations-mozilla/
…those buttons do little to purge unwanted videos from the personalized recommendations that YouTube feeds to users, according to a study published Tuesday by Mozilla, the foundation behind the Firefox web browser.
For example, using the “Not Interested” button only prevented 11% of recommendations for similar videos, Mozilla said. The “Dislike” button only stopped 12%. The most effective control is the “Don’t recommend this channel” button, which works less than half of the time at 43%.
So…it looks like affirmatively engaging with a video, even with a dislike, is engagement and is unlikely to change what types of content YT feeds you.
Now, from my anecdotal experience, the only way to remove, or reduce, unwanted content categories from your YT feed is a combination of flagging them as not interested AND searching/watching a new category of content to replace it with. Not perfect, but manageable. Oh, and using Piped/proxied services e.g. Newpipe.
I get random right and far right posts too.
