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Welcome to a new section of Nightcap I’ll tentatively call “Wait, what?” where I ask the tough questions.
Questions like “Are you kidding me?” and “Really?”
Today’s topic: Actual Nazis on Twitter in 2022.
If you’ve spent your weekends sensibly off the internet, you’ve probably missed the latest news on literal neo-Nazism This was welcomed on Twitter.
On Friday, Twitter reinstated the account of Andrew Anglin, a self-described white supremacist and founder of the neo-Nazi website daily stormer. As you might surmise from his whole “becoming a white supremacist” thing, Anglin is a troll who got kicked out of Twitter a decade ago.
If you’re thinking, like, Ok, but who cares I don’t even use Twitter… support.
You probably don’t care about Twitter or trolls spouting hate and sending death threats to journalists on it (true story!). But it’s an important business story because it tells the site’s CEO.
Elon Musk has owned Twitter for more than a month, during which time he has vowed to restore some banned accounts on the basis of “free speech” without allowing the site to become “free for all”. hell”.
It won’t be good.
The amount of hate speech on Twitter has increased dramatically under Musk’s leadership, according to research released Friday by two watchdog groups.
- The daily use of racial slurs against black people is three times the 2022 average, researchers say.
- Slurs against gay men rose 58 percent.
- Anti-trans speech rose 62 percent.
- Anti-Semitic content is also on the rise, according to the Anti-Defamation League. (No, it’s not all from Kanye West, though the rapper, now known as Ye, did suspend his account again last week.)
Musk responded to the New York Times article about the study by tweeting that it was “completely false.” He claims “hate speech impressions,” or the number of times a tweet containing hate speech is viewed, has declined since he took the helm.
big picture
What Musk never seems to realize is that neither advertisers nor users want to hang out with someone like Andrew Anglin. It’s bad for business, it’s bad for society, it’s everywhere.
So far, Musk has done minimal content moderation in an ad hoc, very subjective way.
Example: Musk said he would not reinstate Alex Jones, the far-right conspiracy theorist who claimed the Sandy Hook massacre was staged, because Musk was personally offended by him. (Specifically, Musk said he has “no mercy for anyone who takes advantage of a child’s death.”)
All of this is to say that the only person who decides what to offend on Twitter is Elon Musk, and if there is trauma outside of his own lived experience, well, that doesn’t seem to count.
Advertisers, who provide 90% of Twitter’s revenue, aren’t happy about it.
According to The New York Times, Twitter’s U.S. ad revenue was 80 percent below its internal forecast for the first week of the World Cup — usually a huge traffic event for the company.
Musk’s chaotic behavior has itself worried some brands. GM paused its advertising on Twitter this fall, seeking assurances that its data would not be shared with Tesla, The Times reported, citing two people familiar with the matter.
Bottom line: Twitter remains an influential platform for politicians, academics, journalists and celebrities. But Musk’s reach is much wider. He’s the CEO behind the vast majority of electric cars on American roads; he wants to drill holes in the ground to solve “soul-destroying transportation”; he’s already sent humans into space; and he believes his SpaceX will save it by colonizing Mars Humanity.
At this point, no one in the business world can ignore Musk.
This is a pilot’s market. According to Reuters, travel demand is booming and commercial airlines are short-staffed, which is why Delta Air Lines just offered its pilots a 34% raise over three years. If the deal is approved by Delta Air Lines pilots, it is expected to become a benchmark for similar contract negotiations for United and American Airlines.
The West is doing its best to cut off Russia’s oil revenues, which have so far blunted the impact of economic sanctions on the country.
Today’s two main lines:
1. Europe boycotts all seaborne imports of Russian crude oil.
2. The U.S., U.K., EU and allies have imposed price caps on Russian crude aimed at limiting Kremlin revenue while allowing countries like China and India to continue buying Russian oil.
What happens next may depend on Moscow’s reaction, writes my colleague Julia Horowitz.
What is the goal?
Despite unprecedented Western sanctions on various industries, Russia’s war chest has been filled with oil revenues.
After 10 months of fighting in Ukraine, Russia is still bringing in about $560 million a day in crude oil revenues even after Europe slashed imports.
Countries such as China and India are still buying excess barrels of Russian oil, which has been cheap since Western traders started shying away from it. This is where price caps come in.
The US, EU and their allies don’t want Russian oil to be taken off the market entirely – that would only drive up global prices at a time when high inflation is hurting their economies. By imposing a price cap, they hope they will keep the barrels flowing, but will reduce the profitability of Moscow’s operations.
…how?
The price cap is intended to be enforced by companies that provide shipping, insurance and other services to Rosneft. If buyers pay more than the cap of $60 a barrel, the companies, most of them based in Europe or the UK, will stop providing services, theoretically preventing oil shipments.
will it work?
This is far from certain. Countries such as Poland and Estonia want to lower the price ceiling, emphasizing that $60 is too close to the current market price for Russian oil. At the end of September, Russia’s Urals crude was trading at just under $64 a barrel.
Enforcement can also be difficult. A Kremlin spokesman said on Monday that Moscow would not recognize any price caps. This could push Russian producers and customers to rely on ships and insurance providers outside Europe, in what the industry calls a “shadow fleet”.
Bottom line: Market analysts said the impact on oil prices was hard to predict. With relatively loose price ceilings, Russia is likely to continue looking for buyers. But it could also cut output, reducing global supply and injecting some decidedly unwelcome uncertainty at a time when the global economy faces a potential recession.