There is a stage out there, I cannot say whether I am seeing it right, or wrong. I could be massively wrong, but this is how I see it. It started yesterday with one article and the articles started to pile up and an image was created. Now do no take my interpretation as gospel. I could be wrong, this I say upfront. The story you are about to read had been shaping for some time, yet yesterday the BBC struck a chord within me. As such this all escalated with ‘Twitter Blue accounts fuel Ukraine War misinformation’ (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-66113460). It was not new, I have other sources making similar claims and they were supporting this with data evidence. I had seen at least one of the claims and I rejected it outright. Twitter is not a valid source, but they do carry valid sources (BBC, the Guardian, Washington Post, NY Times). I might not agree with them, but for the most they tend to properly inform their audience. As such when I saw ““French police are fired upon with American rifles that may have come from Ukraine,” reads the headline.” I knew this was a lie, propagated by someone really stupid (usually) or trolls (often enough) and here we get “BBC Verify has traced it back to pro-Kremlin channels on the Telegram messaging app” and now we have the beginning of a larger setting. Too many people are realising that when you take the blue mark (at $8 per month) you get to spout all kinds of lies gaining followers and reducing Twitter to a populist cloud of misinformation. So as we are told (n the end) “Twitter’s press office acknowledged receipt of our enquiry, but declined to comment” we need to realise that even as Jack Dorsey is not a reliable person, this was NEVER on his watch. He was able to stop many of these issues giving a larger station to laces like Threads to grow and grow they most likely will at present. To see this we need to take the second article. This time it is the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jul/10/twitter-faces-legal-challenge-after-failing-to-remove-reported-hate-tweets) who gives us ‘Twitter faces legal challenge after failing to remove reported hate tweets’ in this article we see “Twitter faces a landmark legal challenge after the social media giant failed to remove a series of hate-filled tweets reported by users in what could be a turning point in establishing new standards of scrutiny regarding online antisemitism” it is merely one side of a multitude of sides that are haunting Twitter and optionally pushing people to the less agreeable data capturing driven Threads. It is about to become a fight between two parties and the stag is lighting up by the notion, which of the two are the lesser of two evils. And the interesting quote here is “Twitter has received notice of the legal action and has since acted to block some of the offending tweets.” Where they only act when legally being pushed to. It is a dangerous station as it is the setting that populist sources rely on. You see Twitter has had an average of 350,000 tweet per minute and that makes sifting through the fake imagery and discriminating seas of dumbo’s a real challenge. I cannot say how it is as the limits make the old setting incorrect and I have no idea how Manny tweets we get now, yet 10,000 tweets a day for verified users implies that it pays for misinformation to get the blue checkmark at $8 a month. As such for $800 a month a troll farm can instil massive amounts of damage and there is no one to stop them and as it implies, until Twitter gets a legal summons they aren’t likely to do anything either.
Yet this is not the whole picture, to see a little bit more of this situation we need to add one more article which aired a few hours ago by both the BBC and the Guardian. Here we see ‘Top US senator calls for probe into KSI and Logan Paul energy drink’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/business-66150857) the texts we need to consider are “US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has called on regulators to investigate an energy drink promoted by high-profile YouTubers KSI and Logan Paul” as well as “In 2022, Logan Paul and KSI – who have around 48 million YouTube followers between them – launched the caffeine-free Prime Hydration drink” and the coup de grace comes from “The caffeinated Prime Energy drink was launched in January this year. It is promoted by the company as being sugar-free and vegan.” This now gets me to my speculated view. “A company relies on two stupid people to set the stage for a population (Logan Paul and KSI), these people get their coin and as we are given “a caffeine-free Prime Hydration drink” as such these two never did anything wrong, this is seemingly clear. What happens next is that the company released their caffeinated Prime Energy drink on the coat tails of the previous and as the company owns BOTH drinks they will not sue themselves for ‘Is one more alike than the other’ and they get to ride the wave on a high and now we see Chuck Schumer starting an investigation. The company is racking in the dollars, two YouTubers are used to maximum effect and no one did anything wrong? And this is not even the start, this is also about to get a lot worse. When the people behind this new Twitter are setting a much larger stage of ‘Not our problem’ we will have one. The media lost most credibility they had, social media is racking in before it collapses on the draconian overreach of most governments and I am watching on the sidelines when I can get my slice of a multi billion dollar pie, because as that gets worse my position merely improves. I need to consider who I prefer to sell to Google (least likely), Amazon, Apple, Kingdom Holdings (preferred) or Tencent Technologies.
In the end with the examples that we are seeing today and as we saw them over the last few months as these populations clusters scatter wherever they feel the safest. I lean back and realise that I had the right combination from the start and as the setting decreases in stability (Twitter) we see governments trying some knee jerk reaction towards a solution that was too late to be implemented in the first place. I reckon that after the second child death all will run for the hills and I will watch it happen. What did you think would happen when a child gets 4 times the caffeine meant for an adult? The company might try to hide behind “it is not recommended for children under the age of 18, people who are sensitive to caffeine, pregnant women or women who are breastfeeding”, yet the larger station will be that it was promoted as “as being sugar-free and vegan” and more alike then the ‘less healthy’ version. If it is the one word ‘Energy’ and ‘hydration’ that company has a problem and I reckon that Logan Paul and KSI better start moving, because when the children start dying their 48,000,000 followers will go somewhere else, and fast.
There is now a station where we have fake information, false information and deceptive information and the people at large can no longer tell the difference between them. As such what will happen next you think? In the meantime other companies will look at the setting that Prime had and they will try to reflect on how they could cash in, the bottom line for them is the dollar (or soon enough the Yuen). I reckon that ChatGPT with their deeper machine learning will add to the confusion. So when you consider that Spark is another word for energy and Sparkling for hydration, what happens when these two drinks are identified as ‘spark’ drink and ‘sparkling’ drink? What is the result when people like Chuck Schumer and whomever brought it to THEIR attention miss it too? How many people will have to dies for people to take notice? I don’t Carew, I have no children, but consider what was done in Yemen, there 11,000 children have died so far. What did you do? I did nothing either, I will admit that. But at least I tried to bring it to the front page of plenty of places, more than many other did.
Enjoy your first day after the weekend.
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 