How to Garner Attention from X.com: The Guardian Method Seems Infallible

January 24, 2025

Prepared by a still-alive dinobaby.

The Guardian has revealed its secret to getting social media attention from Twitter (now the X). “‘Just the Start’: X’s New AI Software Driving Online Racist Abuse, Experts Warn” makes the process dead simple. Here are the steps:

Publish a diatribe about the power of social media in general with specific references to the Twitter machine
Use name calling to add some clickable bound phrases; for example, “online racism”, “fake images”, and “naked hate”
Use loaded words to describe images; for example, an athlete “who is black, picking cotton while another shows that same player eating a banana surrounded by monkeys in a forest.”

Bingo. Instantly clickable.

The write up explains:

Callum Hood, the head of research at the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), said X had become a platform that incentivised and rewarded spreading hate through revenue sharing, and AI imagery made that even easier. “The thing that X has done, to a degree that no other mainstream platform has done, is to offer cash incentives to accounts to do this, so accounts on X are very deliberately posting the most naked hate and disinformation possible.”

This is a recipe for attention and clicks. Will the Guardian be able to convert the magnetism of the method in cash money?

Stephen E Arnold, January 24, 2025

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Business strategy, Marketing, News, Publishing

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.