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X is left with advertisers pushing dubious cryptocurrency and AI 'undressing' apps, users say after Musk's outburst

  • X users are complaining about an influx of low-quality ads promoting crypto scams and AI "undressing" apps.
  • The decline in reputable advertisers on X has made the platform more reliant on less reputable ad buyers.
  • The exodus of advertisers, partially due to Elon Musk's controversial behavior, has left X with a growing revenue gap.

Archive link: https://archive.ph/sbOxS

autotldr Bot ,

This is the best summary I could come up with:

They are also spreading rapidly across the internet, according to data from the social-media analysis firm Graphika, which warned such tools could be used for sextortion and targeted harassment campaigns.

Hamza Mudassir, a strategy consultant and lecturer at Cambridge University, noted that suspicious ads appear across all social-media platforms.

"However, I think the problem with X is that, because all of the large advertisers have effectively walked out, this is what you see in higher frequency, which basically produces a terrible time for genuine users on the platform," he told BI.

Since taking over the site, Musk has slashed X's content-moderation team and reinstated figures such as Alex Jones who was previously removed from the platform for abusive behavior, something that made advertisers distinctly uneasy even before the billionaire's recent controversies.

"The fact that X has made it abundantly clear that it has no desire to create a brand-safe environment has only solidified our recommendations to move to growing platforms with better opportunities for organic discovery," he added.

The Financial Times reported last month that X was attempting to offset the loss of companies like IBM and Walmart by appealing to smaller businesses and aiming to bring in $100 million in political ads during the 2024 election year.

The original article contains 756 words, the summary contains 208 words. Saved 72%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

zeppo ,
@zeppo@lemmy.world avatar

Weird, this week they’re also claiming that TwitX has 24 times the engaged users of YouTube.

dinckelman ,

Prime example of "source? trust me bro". Elon can make up whatever metrics he needs to, but it doesn't make the platform any better

zeppo ,
@zeppo@lemmy.world avatar

Advertisers surely know he's full of crap, too. He can make up fake views, he could even have bots click on ads, but unless he's also going to fake being a customer it will all come out in metrics. Savvy advertisers track all of that. Clicks per display, sales per click.

db2 ,

My source is I made it the fuck up!

Introversion ,

Maybe misspelled “enraged”?

ObviouslyNotBanana ,
@ObviouslyNotBanana@lemmy.world avatar

Tbf I think the YouTube comment section has that one too

LarryTheMatador ,
@LarryTheMatador@sh.itjust.works avatar

[Thread, post or comment was deleted by the author]

    •
    db2 ,

    Someone who willingly went by the name "Grimes" liked it. 🤢🤢

    garretble ,
    @garretble@lemmy.world avatar

    I’m curious about what their definition of “engaged” is. I imagine most people don’t make comments on YouTube videos, but twitter’s main focus has always been posting and commenting on others’ posts.

    zeppo ,
    @zeppo@lemmy.world avatar

    Scrolling by a video without even looking at it counts, apparently.

    EdibleFriend ,
    @EdibleFriend@lemmy.world avatar

    I mean....youtube is the same tho. I constantly get ads for apps that are basically flat out saying you can use it to make porn of anyone you want. Not to meniton the constant scams. There is that big one that pops up all the time claiming you can get a online only, no experience necessary, data entry job for Disney starting at something crazy like $25 an hour.

    Musk is shit, X is shit but....all of them allow these kinds of ads.

    swayevenly ,

    Wait. That job posting is a scam?

    EdibleFriend ,
    @EdibleFriend@lemmy.world avatar

    Yep, money is too good to be true for a job like that for one thing but I saw someone talk about it and a few others like it. You go through all the steps, give them your personal information, and then you get dumped on a generic job seeking website and then get spammed to death for months.

    Enk1 ,

    $25 an hour is sadly not too good for any job in the US these days. $50k doesn't go that far anymore.

    Stumblinbear ,
    @Stumblinbear@pawb.social avatar

    Define "the US" because 25 an hour is living a life of luxury in much of the US that's not a major city

    SatansMaggotyCumFart ,

    $25/hr isn’t living a life of luxury anywhere. Not even in a town of 2,000 people.

    Corkyskog ,

    What is that like 40, maybe 35k after taxes?

    nomous ,

    $52k before taxes, about $41k after. It's an ok wage a lot of places but I defniitely wouldn't call it a "life of luxury" anywhere in the U.S. and I'm from one of the LCOL places in the U.S., the midwest.

    You definitely won't starve but you're also not going to retire early.

    CascadianGiraffe ,

    Most of us consider not living check to check as living a life of luxury.

    nomous , (edited )

    $50k is still very much working class. Yeah you own a car but it's a 7yr old Nissan sedan, nothing luxurious about it. At $50k you're not missing that many paychecks before it becomes a very real issue I promise.

    Stumblinbear ,
    @Stumblinbear@pawb.social avatar

    I was slightly exaggerating sure, but 25 an hour outside of a city is a lot of money.

    Rolando ,

    Until you need a doctor and suddenly discover a lot of rural areas don't have any.

    SatansMaggotyCumFart ,

    $25/hr is barely a living wage.

    Are you factoring in vehicle payments, maintenance, insurance and fuel?

    A lot of people have a cheap transit option in the city.

    Stumblinbear ,
    @Stumblinbear@pawb.social avatar

    Yes. When I lived out there I would've killed for 25 an hour. I was making 7.50 an hour and with a roommate I lived pretty okay. At 25 I could've lived alone and still saved

    SatansMaggotyCumFart ,

    When was that?

    Enk1 ,

    When MTV still played music videos.

    Stumblinbear ,
    @Stumblinbear@pawb.social avatar

    I'm much younger than you think I am

    Stumblinbear ,
    @Stumblinbear@pawb.social avatar

    Three or four years at this point, so technically not including some of the ridiculous inflation, but the cost of living in that area has barely increased. Rent is $900 on average there right now, so if you're pulling in 25 an hour you're making plenty to live alone relatively comfortably

    Klear ,

    You should just block the ads. It's not that hard and certainly worth it.

    EdibleFriend ,
    @EdibleFriend@lemmy.world avatar

    Eh, i rarely use it on my phone so not really worth the time and effort.

    FoxBJK ,
    @FoxBJK@midwest.social avatar

    It’s a couple clicks. I’d seriously recommend it because I’ve found that Google actually will improve their recommendations if you tell them stuff you’re not interested in.

    gullible ,

    You advertise to your audience. Ads targeting the perverse and the stupid seem perfectly suited to twitter.

    Nobody ,

    You may not like it, but this is what peak advertising looks like. Add in some T-shirts with swastikas on them, and they've nailed their target demographic.

    Fedizen ,

    whoa you're forgetting dick pills

    meco03211 ,

    I've clicked a few "sources" from a dude I know on Facebook that constantly posts his crazy bullshit. Dick pill ads for days.

    jopepa ,

    Meanwhile my Hulu ads are for Hers or Hims, I guess my VPN works

    BeardedSingleMalt ,

    HIMS, HERS, and dating apps for days.

    jopepa ,

    When in doubt bank on people not feeling they’re enough and lonely.

    nomous , (edited )

    I recently got a fresh Hulu acct and it's funny watching them try to figure out what I "am" while they just cycle through the dating app ads.

    One commercial will be a christian dating app, the next will be a black dating app, the next will be a latino dating app, the next a farmers dating app. It's hilarious and I'm not exaggerating at all. I'm sure if I started interacting with anything they'd start narrowing my demographics down but for now the algorithm seems to be trying a shotgun approach and it's a little bit amusing.

    BlackSkinnedJew , (edited )

    I wouldn't be surprised if the far right wing christofascists start seeing CP AI generators adverts suddenly, it would fit their preferences so well.

    TWeaK ,
    • The exodus of advertisers, partially due to Elon Musk's controversial behavior, has left X with a growing revenue gap.

    The main reason Twitter has a revenue gap is that Musk saddled it with $13bn of debt with his leveraged buyout. The business isn't failing because of Musk's management since then, it's failing because that was the purpose derived from the purchase.

    BlackSkinnedJew ,

    Yeah he bought it to crush it and make it the far right christofascist heaven on earth.

    atrielienz ,

    The thing is, Twitter is liable for that debt, and they continue to fall further into the red every time they fail to pay their bills and every time they lose advertisers because ad aggregation is their business. So the business is definitely being detrimentally affected by his leadership because he is directly responsible for the underwritten debt of $13bn and the $14 million+interest in unpaid bills, plus probably more than $500 million in unpaid severance pay. He's barely owned the company a year. And there are so many lawsuits that honestly he'll end up owing more just from that.

    TWeaK ,

    They're only liable for the debt so long as the business is operational, though. If the business folds, all the debt goes with it.

    The point I'm making is that, while the decisions Musk has made since buying it have only made the business worse, ultimately the reason it's going to fail is the huge amount of debt, which is primarily from the leveraged buyout. If anything, Musk's antics are nothing but those of a clown trying to distract from and give plausible deniability against the real evil that's happening.

    atrielienz ,

    They're only liable for the debt from the buyout. The other stuff? We'll see what the courts rule. But on the other hand, that assumes the banks were in on it.

    kool_newt ,

    One perspective on this might be that Elon and friends have successfully identified a set of dubious advertisers and hate-tolerant userbase.

    c0mbatbag3l ,
    @c0mbatbag3l@lemmy.world avatar

    Who wouldn't want to corner a user base like that? Used to have to become a priest to have people hooked so thoroughly.

    Voroxpete ,

    Another perspective would consider that Dime Store Alex Jones probably has a much smaller marketing budget than, say, Disney.

    Elon has cultivated a hate-tolerant user base, and has found himself with the kind of advertisers that user base gets you.

    kool_newt ,

    Well ya, that's the standard explanation, and probably the most likely to be right.

    I like to wonder if there might be other explanations, or even multiple explanations. You've heard I'm sure of the quote like "never attribute to malice which can be adequately explained by stupidity"? I have my own version of that that goes something like this:

    Never attribute an act to stupidity when a clear pattern of malice is apparent.

    Voroxpete ,

    The malice, in this case, is the deliberate cultivation of a hate-tolerant audience. Let's not forget that Elon got into this mess because of a stupid game of chicken he decided to play with Twitter's board in order to convince them to let him say transphobic slurs on the platform (imagine hating your daughter that much?)

    kool_newt ,

    Such a pathetic sad hateful stupid person he is.

    magnetosphere ,
    @magnetosphere@kbin.social avatar

    Too bad, so sad

    BeardedSingleMalt ,

    Oh no. Anyways...

    homesweethomeMrL ,

    People are still on Xitter? Gross.

    Potatos_are_not_friends ,

    Xitter is great for keeping the riff Raff contained, else they share their shit takes with the rest of the internet.

    Scotty_Trees ,
    @Scotty_Trees@lemmy.world avatar

    I don't use Twitter and my life is better off.

    nomous , (edited )

    It's crazy, any time I open it up I see blatantly obvious rightwing trolls or even gore. My feed pre-Elon didn't look like that, I mostly followed infosec people but they've all gone elsewhere and now it seems I'm being served content that baits me into arguing or converts me.

    zarkanian ,
    @zarkanian@sh.itjust.works avatar

    404 Media report[ed] last month that ads promoting "semen stealing" were showing up on the site.

    Wait what now

    Socsa ,

    I mean, where do you get your semen?

    Klear ,

    I make my own.

    vynlwombat ,

    It's 9pm. Do you know where your semen is?

    WhiteOakBayou ,

    Once I figured out how to get it back into my penis I became unstoppable.

    SpaceCowboy ,
    @SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca avatar

    Well that UTI was unstoppable anyway.

    jaybone ,

    Just pour some cranberry juice in afterwards.

    downhomechunk ,
    @downhomechunk@midwest.social avatar

    If I were someone with no tact and low-brow humor, I'd say it's in your mom's mouth. Fortunately I'm much better than that. So I'll just say it's slowly gathering in preparation for a pre-sleep release into a few tissues.

    ETA: which I will douse in hot sauce before flushing down the toilet.

    elshandra ,

    I got the rest from this guy named Ralph in an alley--stupid asshole didn't even charge me, he just told me to close my eyes and suck it out of a hose!

    Jimmyeatsausage ,

    I make my own

    flicker ,

    I wanted to see what kind of ads that might actually be since I have zero concept. I do not recommend typing "semen stealing" into Google innocently and hoping for an answer.

    I'm going to have some weird ads now...

    wahming ,

    And yet you didn't share the info with us? Shame on you

    flicker ,

    You're welcome to weird up your ads, also.

    Emerald ,

    If you don't want to search it up, here are the first 3 DuckDuckGo results for "semen stealing"

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_fatherhood

    https://news.yahoo.com/spurgling-stealing-sperm-pregnant-121820779.html

    https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/2022/01/10831906/baby-trapping-illegal

    wikibot Bot ,

    Here's the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:

    Forced fatherhood or imposed paternity, occurs when a man's semen is used, against his will or without his knowledge or consent, to inseminate a woman, it includes deception by a partner about their ability to get pregnant or use of contraceptives, birth control sabotage, and sexual assaults of males that result in pregnancy. "Sperm theft" (also known as "unauthorized use of sperm", "spermjacking" or "spurgling" (a portmanteau of sperm and burgling), refers to a specific form of forced fatherhood where a males semen is collected without his consent. Although the term uses the word "theft", it more closely falls under a state of fraud or breach of contract. Stealing of sperm in itself without using it for successful insemination is not illegal and is difficult to prove. It usually has no bearing on issues like child support.

    ^to^ ^opt^ ^out^^,^ ^pm^ ^me^ ^'optout'.^
    ^article^ ^|^ ^about^

    reagansrottencorpse ,

    Say what now? Stealing sperm isn't illegal unless you use it?

    flicker ,

    I saw... that. But what could someone advertise about it! And that's a curiosity those links don't answer...

    wahming ,

    I like how you're just adbaiting us at this point

    flicker ,

    Entirely by accident I assure you.

    chuck ,

    Yea this guy is the hero of the thread, I would have just not bothered with the article if it wasn't for you pointing that line out

    Exosus ,

    Couldn't find that username or email is my favourite person!

    root_beer ,

    Yep, I’ve seen that, along with ads for “jack-off pants”:

    https://midwest.social/pictrs/image/c33f5248-7ae0-4630-9e2a-48f813b15011.png

    Bleach7297 ,
    @Bleach7297@lemmy.ca avatar

    I care just enough to say I don't care.

    I was repeatedly called a GPT3 bot on Xitter. This was before it was even public.

    blazeknave ,

    I downvote every article giving him attention

    KingThrillgore ,
    @KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml avatar

    You admit you care, and that's the first step to curing your addiction.

    Bleach7297 ,
    @Bleach7297@lemmy.ca avatar

    Curing my addiction? Hell no, I just substituted it with Mastodon and Lemmy!

    FlyingSquid ,
    @FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

    There was a crazy guy on Reddit who was absolutely convinced I was a rogue AI. It was so bizarre.

    Bleach7297 ,
    @Bleach7297@lemmy.ca avatar

    Can you prove you AREN'T a rogue AI? :p

    FlyingSquid ,
    @FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

    The best part was, just to see what he would do, I wrote his username and the date and time on a napkin and took a picture of it- blacking out part of my face to limit the doxing- and he claimed it was photoshopped. You can't win against crazy, but I was pretty amused.

    Bleach7297 ,
    @Bleach7297@lemmy.ca avatar

    He fully embraced a post-truth world! Assume EVERYTHING is a lie

    Except the stuff he knows is true of course

    Buddahriffic ,

    Hmm last time I tried to do that, all I was able to do was show the selection process that required it was flawed and got admin access anyways.

    Or maybe whoever was in the terminals was just fucking with me the whole time.

    Either way, I'm still not sure I'm a person. Maybe I'm just a meat automation.

    corsicanguppy ,

    literally allowed

    Back button.

    starman2112 ,
    @starman2112@sh.itjust.works avatar

    That was a quote from a tweet, not the author's own words

    KingThrillgore ,
    @KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml avatar

    What's that you say? Advertisers took his advice at that event seriously?

    ohlaph ,

    Ten is a terrible site anyway.

    harry_balzac ,

    Please don't associate Xitter with the ancient Romans. They never hurt you.

    dustyData ,

    They never hurt you.

    This heavily depends from which geographical region you're from. They were the champions of imperialist colonialism for a loooooong time.

    Buddahriffic ,

    Hell, I'd broaden it to the whole world because the Romans popularized Christianity, which pretty much immediately kicked off millennia of religious conflict. Christians vs "pagans" (which wasn't one single group), Christians vs Christians, Christians vs Jews, Christians vs Muslims, Christians vs all "pagans" in the world (and their history), Catholics vs Protestants, church vs science...

    Maybe Christianity would have risen without the Romans, but it wouldn't have had such a powerful papacy without the Roman legacy. And as much as I hate religion, I have to admit it wasn't all bad; if it weren't for the clergy, even more Roman knowledge would have been lost and education in general through Europe would have been worse. Maybe. Islam did have Christianity beat for education and progression for a while, and the church did have a habit of condemning science that contradicted the idea that we were special in every single way.

    harry_balzac ,

    People who seek power and authority will use whatever tools at their disposal. Christianity is a good tool because it is inherently monotheistic (leaving all the Trinitarian nonsense aside), thus making it authoritarian. One God. One mouthpiece. Christianity would have become dominant somewhere else and infected the world.

    Buddahriffic ,

    I don't disagree, I just don't think there would have been as strong of a central church authority because it wasn't grandfathered in as a former Roman institution with all the power and influence that came along with that.

    Once the Roman emperors decided Rome was Christian, a lot of Europe was suddenly Christian. Iberia, everything west of the Rhine, the Balkans, Anatolia, and the western part of the Middle East. If Rome hadn't forced that, Christianity wouldn't have spread as quickly and might even today still be one of many different sects.

    Islam might have spread through Europe instead of being stopped in Iberia and the Balkans. It's impossible to know what Europe would have done with Islam, but early Islam was a lot more tolerant of other religions and valued education, knowledge, and progress. We might not have settled in to some centuries of most people thinking humans had discovered everything there was to discover or physics being held back by people offended at the idea that the Earth isn't the centre of existence. Colonialism might have even been different because Islam didn't stamp out existing cultures like Christianity did (though again, who knows what it would have evolved into by the time people were figuring out how to navigate the oceans, because Rome also used to be like that).

    essteeyou ,

    Great, it has now been 0 days since I thought about The Roman Empire.

    Semi-Hemi-Demigod ,
    @Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social avatar

    We're all victims of Roman jurisprudence

    FlyingSquid ,
    @FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

    What have the Romans ever done for us?

    SketchySeaBeast ,
    @SketchySeaBeast@lemmy.ca avatar

    The aqueduct.

    FlyingSquid ,
    @FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

    Oh. Yeah, yeah. They did give us that. Uh, that's true. Yeah.

    Honytawk ,

    Yes, they did give us that, that's true

    And sanitation Yes, that too

    The aqueduct I'll grant is one

    thing the Romans may have done

    And the roads, now they're all new

    And the great wines too

    Well, apart from the wines and fermentation,

    And the canals for navigation

    Public health for all the nation

    Apart from those, which are a plus,

    what have the Romans ever done for us?

    stratosfear ,

    SUCH GUD BIZNESS MAN

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