It seems to me that if ads from certain advertisers were not supposed to appear next to posts by particular senders on a platform, there should be no way for users to "manipulate" the system to cause ads to appear in that manner. If they can, there are deficiencies in the system, not those users. Full stop.
@lauren it doesn't sound like that was the promise, though.
It sounds like those ads were unlikely to appear, and Media Matters manipulated the site to see them more often than they would appear for a normal user, without mentioning that manipulation.
@volkris Such manipulation should be impossible. As an external user, Media Matters was not obligated to do more than note that such ads would appear. They don't have access to the platform statistics. And accepting Twitter's word on anything these days regarding their operations seems problematic at best.
@lauren the complaint is that Media Matters intentionally put its finger on the scale creating for itself an intentionally unrepresentative experience that would make some good headlines.
It's not merely that Media Matters was wrong because it didn't have internal statistics. The complaint is that Media Matters engineered a sensational situation that it presented to readers as if it was the norm.
From the complaint, Media Matters set accounts to follow users with controversial opinions plus corporations and then worked hard to generate screenshots containing content from controversial opinions next to the corporations.
So the user got what they asked for, which is how the site is supposed to work.
@volkris No, users should not be able to manipulate ads to appear where they are not supposed to appear. The ability for that to happen has all manner of awful implications beyond the obvious. And irrespective of that, Musk's reaction declaring the advertisers are enemies of free speech and then going after MM is about as self-destructive in a corporate sense as can be imagined. If he wants to turn his platform into a right-wing hellscape supported almost entirely by his sycophants that is definitely his right, of course. As a business proposition and as a place for mainstream advertising however, that will likely not be very attractive outside of his cohorts.
@lauren again according to the complaint ads *were supposed* to appear there because Media Matters set up accounts specifically to show ads interspersed with controversial opinions.
The problem is that Media Matters didn't make it clear that they caused it to happen and instead presented this as if it was normal use of the site instead of an engineered situation looking to get that exact outcome.
I really don't care about Musk, he's a troll that's better ignored, but there's a lot of misreporting about what this lawsuit is over, and that does bother me.
