After NPR stopped populating its more than 50 Twitter accounts, Twitter boss Elon Musk has now threatened to shut down the main account “of another company”. This is reported by the publicly funded US broadcaster, citing emails from the US billionaire. The involuntary disclosure of well-established accounts to third parties may pose serious risks of unauthorized impersonation and threaten the reputation of companies, writes NPR. Their main account has almost nine million followers on Twitter. A professor speaks to NPR of an “extraordinary threat”. This is just one of several signs that the social network is still not calm.
Musk vs Media
The conflict between Musk and NPR began when the US billionaire had placed the NPR account with the award as a state-controlled media organization in a row with the Chinese news agency Xinhua or the Kremlin TV station Russia Today. After criticism, the award was changed, but NPR had stopped all Twitter activities. In an unsolicited email Musk asked an NPR reporterwhether NPR will post again or whether to give the account to another company. This would be done with inactive accounts. According to Twitter, inactive means not logging in once a month, and there is no question of posting tweets.
If the threatened move is a sign of what’s about to happen on Twitter, a much faster media flight could be in the offing, says Emily Bell, a social networking professor at Columbia Journalism School. According to NPR, PBS and the Canadian broadcaster CBC also announced that they would stop their activities on Twitter. In Germany, ARD wants to shut down engagement on Twitter. Musk has been attacking established media for a long time and has even targeted journalists. The threat against NPR is a deterrent to companies because it suggests they must bow to Musk’s whims in order to protect their brand on Twitter, an anonymous former Twitter executive told NPR.
The renewed spat with NPR is just another sign that Twitter isn’t resting. Current cinema films such as “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” and “Avatar: The Way of Water” were repeatedly released over the weekend and not deleted for hours. In one case, a film was viewed more than nine million times, writes The Verge. The background is probably that there are simply not enough people left on Twitter who delete such posts, while at the same time the maximum length for shared videos has been increased. The thin staffing level could also be responsible for the fact that there were more technical problems on the site on May 1st: Techcrunch Ocean many users were repeatedly simply logged out.
Free API access for weather warnings et cetera
Meanwhile, Twitter has relented in a conflict with US services that disseminate important information via the microblogging service. Because of the costs that have now been raised for API access, the New York transport company had announced that it would not be able to disseminate any current announcements. The US weather service made a similar statement. As a consequence, Twitter has now announced that “verified government agencies” or “publicly owned” services can continue to access the API free of charge in order to be able to post weather warnings and emergency notices there. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority from New York has announced that the options will now be examined.
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