It’s interesting what has been discovered when things were shaken up on Twitter by Elon Musk’s leadership. He fired thousands of people who were not necessary at the company and some things came out amid the chaos.
One of the noticeable shifts first surfaced in Japan, trending lists no longer included a lot of political posts. According to some influencers, trending lists were full of Gundam and anime trends.
Niche Gamer wrote this tweet: “Gundam and other entertainment have replaced politics on Japanese Twitter Trends after new owner Elon Musk laid off thousands of employees at the company.”
The layoffs included a team responsible for “Curation,” and one Japanese journalist attributed this change from politics to entertainment to the team’s dissolution.
This was also spotlighted by Business Insider Japan writer Ikeko Takeshita.
“I’m pretty sure Twitter’s news feed isn’t updated,” tweeted Takeshita. “We media created a moment for our own article → , contacted the Twitter curation team → , and it may or may not have been selected after screening, but this work has made sense for a while. I wonder if there isn’t?”
It seems that Twitter had been colluding with “specific media” to create “trends” that push specific narratives. People in Japan are comparing the trending lists from previous days and almost all trending topics had been political in nature.
This is also happening in the United States. Just today, the general trending list doesn’t have anything political until number 13 with a post about Paul Ryan. Everything else is either entertainment or sports related.
There has been no actual proof that any manipulation was occurring before people were fired, but some are putting together pieces of information that seem to indicate that topics would accompany news stories that gave boosts to left-leaning storylines. Right-leaning trending topics would disappear very quickly.
Take a look:
#Twitter #TwitterJapan #TwitterTakeover pic.twitter.com/0uoq460VAJ
— Kukuruyo 🏳️⚧️ 🏳️🌈 🇪🇦 (@kukuruyo) November 10, 2022
