Jimmy Fallon begs Elon Musk to stop Twitter users joking about his death – but Tesla mogul retorts: ‘Fix what?’ in heated exchange
- Musk, 51, who completed his $44billion takeover last month, was reached out to by the TV host, 48, on Tuesday after erroneous tweets about his death surfaced
- Fallon tweeted: ‘Elon, can you fix this? #RIPJimmyFallon’ with Musk sending the nonchalant response: ‘Fix what?’ the following day
- Fans have continued to jokingly use the #RIPJimmyFallon hashtag with pictures of other celebrities including James Corden, David Hasselhoff and Matt Damon
- Twitter has seen an surge in misinformation after Musk fired much of the platform’s full-time workforce by email earlier this month
- Eli Lilly was forced to clarify it was not offering insulin for free after a fake Twitter account – verified through Twitter Blue – tweeted: ‘We are excited to announce insulin is free now’
Jimmy Fallon has begged Elon Musk to stop Twitter users joking about his death – hours after the hashtag #RIPJimmyFallon inexplicably started trending.
Tesla mogul Musk, 51, who completed his highly-controversial $44billion takeover of the microblogging site last month, was personally reached out to by the TV host , 48, on Tuesday after erroneous tweets about his death surfaced.
Fallon tweeted: ‘Elon, can you fix this? #RIPJimmyFallon’ with Musk sending the nonchalant response: ‘Fix what?’ the following day.
Fans have continued to jokingly use the #RIPJimmyFallon hashtag with pictures of other celebrities including James Corden, David Hasselhoff and Matt Damon – causing mass confusion for people who are not aware it is a hoax.
Wow: Jimmy Fallon (left) has begged Elon Musk (right) to stop Twitter users joking about his death – hours after the hashtag #RIPJimmyFallon inexplicably started trending
Twitter has seen an surge in misinformation after Musk fired much of the platform’s full-time workforce by email earlier this month.
Last week pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly was forced to clarify it was not offering insulin for free after a fake Twitter account – verified through $8 a month subscription service Twitter Blue – tweeted: ‘We are excited to announce insulin is free now.’
The post from parody account @EliLillyandCo – which used the same logo as the company in its profile photo and boasted a blue tick – was identical to the official account and sparked mass panic.
The account was later suspended and $330billion company Eli Lilly stopped all their Twitter ad campaigns.
Oh dear: Fallon tweeted: ‘Elon, can you fix this? #RIPJimmyFallon’ with Musk sending the nonchalant response: ‘Fix what?’ the following day
On Sunday it emerged Musk had further wiped out the teams that battle misinformation on the social media platform as outsourced moderators learned over the weekend they were out of a job.
The social media giant fired its contractors that track hate and other harmful content on Saturday. Some of the contractors said they didn’t realize they were sacked until they weren’t able to log onto work.
About 4,400 of 5,500 contractors have been fired, according Reporter Casey Newton from Platformer News.
Melissa Ingle, who worked at Twitter as a contractor for more than a year, was one of a number of contractors who said they were terminated without notification on Saturday. She said she’s concerned that there’s going to be an increase in abuse on Twitter with the number of workers leaving.
Tweets: Fans have continued to jokingly use the #RIPJimmyFallon hashtag with pictures of other celebrities including James Corden, David Hasselhoff and Matt Damon – causing mass confusion for people who are not aware it is a hoax
‘I love the platform and I really enjoyed working at the company and trying to make it better. And I’m just really fearful of what’s going to slip through the cracks,’ she said.
Newton said that those employees impacted are involved in Twitter’s marketing, content moderation and real estate sectors.
‘Contractors aren’t being notified at all, they’re just losing access to Slack and email,’ Newton wrote on Twitter. ‘Managers figured it out when their workers just disappeared from the system. They heard nothing from their leaders.’
Content-moderation expert Sarah Roberts, an associate professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, tweeted Sunday that around ‘3,000+ contractor employees of Twitter were canned last night.’
Twitter hasn’t said how many contract workers it cut. The company gutted its communications department and hasn’t responded to media requests for information since Musk took over.
Fake news: The TV host is alive and well – but the hashtag has sparked panic
Contractors also do other jobs to help keep Twitter running,
‘All contractors are not content moderation agents,’ Roberts said. ‘Contractors fulfill many key roles inside the company. But almost all moderation agents are contractors.’
In the early days after Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in late October and dismissed its board of directors and top executives, the billionaire Tesla CEO sought to assure civil rights groups and advertisers that the platform could continue tamping down hate.
That message was reiterated by Twitter’s then-head of content moderation, Yoel Roth, who tweeted that the November 4 layoffs only affected ‘15% of our Trust & Safety organization (as opposed to approximately 50% cuts company-wide), with our front-line moderation staff experiencing the least impact.’
Roth has since resigned from the company, joining an exodus of high-level leaders who were tasked with privacy protection, cybersecurity and complying with regulations.
Experts have expressed concern that making the checkmark available to anyone for a fee could lead to impersonations and the spreading of misinformation and scams.
NOT true: Last week pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly was forced to clarify it was not offering insulin for free after a fake verified Twitter account tweeted: ‘We are excited to announce insulin is free now’ (pictured fake tweet)
The move by Musk comes after he fired a portion of Twitter employees by email on November 4
Musk recently tweeted: ‘Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months. We will keep what works and change what doesn’t’
Musk sought to reassure big companies that advertise on Twitter on Wednesday that his chaotic takeover of the social media platform won’t harm their brands, acknowledging that some ‘dumb things’ might happen on his way to creating what he says will be a better, safer user experience.
The latest erratic move on the minds of major advertisers who the company depends on for revenue was Musk’s decision to abolish a new ‘official’ label on high-profile Twitter accounts just hours after introducing it.
Twitter began adding the gray labels to some prominent accounts Wednesday, including brands like Coca-Cola, Nike and Apple, to indicate that they are authentic. A few hours later, the labels started disappearing.
‘Apart from being an aesthetic nightmare when looking at the Twitter feed, it was another way of creating a two-class system,’ the billionaire Tesla CEO told advertisers in an hour-long conversation broadcast live on Twitter. ‘It wasn’t addressing the core problem.’
Media sites like The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal received an official designation, as did most major corporate brands. And then they were gone.
TIMELINE OF ELON MUSK’S CHAOTIC ATTEMPT TO TAKEOVER TWITTER
April 2: Musk announces that he owns 9.2 percent of the company, making him its largest single shareholder
April 14: Musk offers to take Twitter private at $54.20 a share, valuing the company at $44billion
April 25: Twitter accepts Musk’s offer
April 29: Musk sells $8billion in Tesla shares to finance deal
May 13: Musk says Twitter deal is on hold pending a review of bot accounts
May 26: Musk is sued by Twitter for stock manipulation during takeover
July 8: Musk says he’s backing out of the deal. Twitter sues, trying to force him into seeing it through.
October 4: Musk proposes again to go ahead with the deal at the original price
October 17: Proposed trial date in Delaware
October 26: Musk visits Twitter HQ with a sink, updates his bio on the site to ‘Chief Twit’ and sets his location to Twitter HQ
October 27: Musk’s $44 billion takeover of Twitter is finally completed
October 28: Musk fires top Twitter employees, including CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal and top counsel Vijaya Gadde, the woman responsible for banning President Trump after the January 6 riots last year.
October 30: Twitter employees are told by Musk to make verified accounts a feature that’s exclusive to Twitter Blue, the platform’s paid subscription service
October 31: Musk confirms he’s the new CEO of Twitter and dissolves the board of directors
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