• 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

  • gullible@kbin.social
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    10 months ago

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

    • Nobody@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      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.

    • meco03211@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

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

            • nomous@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              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.

  • zarkanian@sh.itjust.works
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    10 months ago

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

    Wait what now

    • flicker@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      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…

        • wikibot@lemmy.worldB
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          10 months ago

          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

    • chuck@lemmy.ca
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      10 months ago

      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

  • Max_Power@feddit.de
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    10 months ago

    Well he told advertisers to fuck off so they did.

    To me as an average Joe it seems pretty dumb to tell your advertisers to fuck off when they provide a big chunk of your income but hey, I’m not a stable genius billionaire so I just don’t get Elon’s 5D chess moves. Right?

  • zeppo@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

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

    • dinckel@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      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@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        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.

    • garretble@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      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.

    • nomous@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      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.

      • dustyData@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        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@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          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@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            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@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              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).

          • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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            10 months ago

            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?

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Since when do “high quality ads” exist? I mean, the mentioning of “low quality ads” implies that those others might actually exist.

  • EdibleFriend@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    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.

      • EdibleFriend@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        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@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

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

          • Stumblinbear@pawb.social
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            10 months ago

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

                • nomous@lemmy.world
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                  10 months ago

                  $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.

                • SatansMaggotyCumFart@lemmy.world
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                  10 months ago

                  $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.

                • Rolando@lemmy.world
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                  10 months ago

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

  • BringMeTheDiscoKing@lemmy.ca
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    10 months ago

    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.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          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.

        • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          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.

  • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
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    10 months ago

    AI undressing apps you say? AI’s about to make that video of Elon telling advertisers to fuck off a lot more surprising.

  • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    I’m calling it now. Even if his aim was to not destroy Twitter from the inside, he will absolutely say that was his goal when it eventually happens.

    People like this never, pathologically, ever, ever admit making a mistake.

    • CobblerScholar@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      He has too much money to give a shit, he lost more money than anyone has literally ever on this deal and he still has more money than almost anyone who’s ever lived. Only way he stops being like this is if he drops dead from the inevitable overdose he’s queuing up for himself

    • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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      10 months ago

      Even if his aim was to not destroy Twitter from the inside, he will absolutely say that was his goal when it eventually happens.

      Could that open him up to lawsuits from investors?