In the wake of the Ron DeSantis nomination announcement on Twitter yesterday (here’s my article from just before it), it’s hilarious to watch the legacy “news” media “report” about it today. All they can talk about is (1) how it started with a technical glitch and (2) how so few people tuned in.
Both of these things are varying degrees of mistruth and/or misdirection. Let’s review:
I tuned in. I watched the number of people who tuned in grow and grow (note that you can do this on Twitter Spaces, in contradistinction to CTV News viewership numbers —which are not discussed, ever, and impossible to determine for the average human). It kept growing until it finally crashed the internet. Then after more server space was dedicated and systems were reconfigured and the hosting was taken over by Musk pal David Sacks to handle the load rather than being hosted as planned by the multimillion-follower Musk account, it restarted, and it went along just fine.
Growth in numbers causing what they call “scaling issues” in tech land —is not a “problem,” per se, or rather it’s a “problem” every tech guy or politician would love to have. It is actually a sign of extreme success. When so many people tune in that you have to scale up your servers to accommodate the vast numbers of interested people, that’s literally what every tech company dreams of. (Back in the day, I even had to do that a number of times for the PTBC website!). To try to turn this into a negative or a sign of failure is really a rather embarrassing display of jealousy or envy — and/or a total lack of understanding about how tech works; and perhaps a performative denial about how successful Twitter is becoming, which reflects extremely poorly on your objectivity as a “news” reporter, and betrays your bias. And that’s not a “feature” of today’s news media, but “a bug.”
All “news” media outlets exaggerated the glitch as if it were the story. But that way, they could slam free speech advocate Elon Musk in the process of taking down a conservative at the same time. A two-fer!
At least a few media outlets outright lied about the number of people tuning in. Some may simply be ignoramuses, some in denial, and some are just lying. For example, here’s CTVNews’s take, and my reply quoting their nonsense take on the numbers:
As I said, a fun aspect of the numbers game is that while you can’t find the numbers of people watching CTV News unless you’re some kind of TV data insider, the numbers are literally publicly displayed on Twitter and on Twitter Spaces. Even a CTV “News” reporter could have done what Spaces guru Mario Nawfal did there in his tweet, thereby giving himself the opportunity to report, as a reporter, the actual truth rather than BS. But you do you, “news” media!
And I would venture that having a minor tech glitch is rather unimportant in relation to the whole announcement story anyway, or the fact — the news — that politics and news is evolving into new platforms and methods of communication. Or indeed as compared to other such “tech” stories. For example, look at how the Globe & Mail instantly forgives Air Canada for a tech glitch today which resulted in the complete grounding of Air Canada aircraft — quite a massive and pretty scary problem if you ask me …especially for anybody flying on Air Canada today! Don’t be scared! I’m sure everything’s going to be OK! It’s only a brief technical glitch with your airline while you’re flying at 400 miles per hour at 30,000 feet in a metal tube!
Twitter’s much less important glitch was even more brief, but you’d never know it by the way the “news” media handled it.
But enough said about their handling of it, which was atrocious. It was a two-fer for them yesterday before the event, and today after it. It wouldn’t matter what happened. The point for them is: take down Ron DeSantis, the conservative, and take down the free-speech and new media guy Elon Musk who dares give them a platform —and take down all of the likes of him. Free speech isn’t fair to progressives because it allows truth, critical thinking, heterodox ideas, and so much more “evil” to escape!
The “news” media made fools of themselves again today, and all in service of their efforts to take conservatives down, once again. And the latter part of that sentence is the really important “news” to take home from this. It explains everything. All of their “reporting.” Which is why you can’t trust them. You can’t trust a news media with an agenda. And it’s why and how they will take not conservatives down, but themselves.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
Contact Mr. Johannesen about this article using this form. Please refer to article's title.
FOLLOW @JoelJohannesen ON X!
- Say something. - Friday October 25, 2024 at 6:03 pm
- Keep going, or veer right - Monday August 26, 2024 at 4:30 pm
- Hey Joel, what is “progressive?” - Friday August 2, 2024 at 11:32 am
