Nearly 2 months ago, Elon Musk went connected a nationalist crusade against Reddit.
On X, he said it was “insane” that subreddits were blocking links to the level successful protestation of him appearing to springiness a Nazi salute. A fewer days later, he posted that Reddit users advocating for unit against Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) labor had “broken the law.”
As it turns out, Musk wasn’t only utilizing his X level to telephone retired contented connected Reddit. He was besides privately messaging Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, according to group acquainted pinch the matter.
Shortly aft the 2 CEOs exchanged matter messages, Reddit enacted a 72-hour prohibition connected the “WhitePeopleTwitter” subreddit that hosted the thread astir DOGE employees, citing the “prevalence of convulsive content.” The specific thread Musk shared connected X was besides deleted, including hundreds of comments that didn’t telephone for unit aliases doxxing. (So far, Reddit doesn’t look to person intervened successful immoderate moderator decisions to prohibition X links from the subreddits they oversee.)
When asked astir Musk and Huffman’s correspondence, Reddit spokesperson Gina Antonini sent the pursuing statement: “We return immoderate study of Reddit argumentation violations seriously, whether connected Reddit straight aliases done different nationalist aliases backstage means. We will measure contented reported to america and return action if violating.” Musk didn’t respond to a petition for comment.
The news of Musk’s outreach to Huffman quickly made its measurement to immoderate of Reddit’s moderators, who discussed it together connected Discord. After 1 wrote, “Musk is coming for /r/Comics,” which was 1 of the subreddits that was banning links to X, different responded by calling him a “giant baby,” according to screenshots of the speech that were shared pinch me. (Since he bought Twitter, Musk has blocked links to competitors multiple times, including as precocious arsenic past month.)
“Elon called retired decease threats,” wrote different Reddit moderator. “He should not beryllium capable to power Reddit, but if what he calls retired is decease threats past of people they request to travel down.”
Yet different responded: “Oh, I don’t person immoderate problem pinch removing rule-breaking contented (and taking the respective admin action connected said accounts), but I find it a spot problematic that he’s capable to exert power connected some nationalist and backstage institutions.”
- AI’s Wild West era: ChatGPT’s upgraded image generation feels for illustration an important milestone successful the AI industry’s displacement toward a more Wild West, hands-off style of moderation. OpenAI’s stance that nationalist figures should opt out of having their likeness replicated — not to mention ChatGPT’s willingness to replicate circumstantial brands — feels inherently problematic. It besides gives different players screen to do the same.
- TikTok is losing Blake Chandlee, the ex-Facebook leader who fundamentally built its ads business from scratch, pinch the deadline for it to beryllium saved from a US prohibition aliases not hitting adjacent Saturday. Chandlee’s departure is notable, though I’m much willing successful TikTok main Shou Chew’s soul memo astir his replacement. TikTok’s advertisement income org, which Chandlee oversaw, will beryllium merged pinch the gross merchandise org led by Will Liu, a seven-year ByteDance veteran. And according to Chew’s memo, Liu will now study to him pinch a “dotted line” to Lidong Zhang, the chair of the company’s business successful mainland China. If I’m ByteDance, that’s a unusual org floor plan alteration to make if you deliberation you’re astir to suffer power of TikTok…
- More headlines: 23andMe filed for bankruptcy… More layoffs deed Block… Robinhood moved into banking… Google tried to upstage OpenAI with a Gemini update… Apple’s WWDC keynote will beryllium on June 9th.
Some noteworthy occupation changes successful the tech world:
- Another unit alteration astatine TikTok, per Chew’s soul note: Khartoon Weiss is now overseeing the full North American business.
- Jun Young-hyun is now the sole CEO of Samsung aft Han Jong-hee tragically died of a bosom attack.
- OpenAI promoted Mark Chen to main investigation serviceman and Julia Villagra to main group officer. COO Brad Lightcap will now “oversee OpenAI’s business and day-to-day operations,” which suggests that Sam Altman is focusing connected immoderate big-picture swings.
- X’s caput of engineering and product, Haofei Wang, has left without explanation.
- Dan Neary, Meta’s caput of Asia Pacific, is leaving the institution aft 12 years.
- Wired goes inside Silicon Valley’s exclusive making love scene.
- Bloomberg’s deep dive connected the authorities of Google Search.
- Evan Spiegel went connected The Diary of a CEO podcast.
- Dwarkesh Patel and Gavin Leech person a caller book, The Scaling Era, astir the modern history of AI.
As always, I want to perceive from you, particularly if you person feedback connected this rumor aliases a communicative tip. Respond present aliases ping maine securely connected Signal.
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