Twitter is loosening its advertising policies to allow cannabis companies to promote their brands on the service. The changes makes Twitter the first major social media platform to welcome cannabis ads within the United States.

“Going forward, Twitter is allowing advertisers to promote brand preference and informational cannabis-related content for CBD, THC, and cannabis-related products and services,” the company announced in a blog post.

While the change will allow companies that sell cannabis products to advertise their businesses, there will still be some restrictions on what can appear in the advertisements. As Axios points out, the ads can’t directly “promote or offer the sale of cannabis” with the exception of certain CBD products. There are also age and location-related restrictions that limit who can be targeted with cannabis-related ads.

The change is the latest way that Twitter has shaken up its rules under Elon Musk’s leadership in order to allow content that was once barred. The policy update also comes at a time when many advertisers have either fled the platform or significantly reduced how much they’re spending. By opening up to cannabis companies, which until now have had extremely limited options to reach people on social media platforms, Twitter has the opportunity to bring in a fresh set of advertisers.

In its announcement, Twitter suggested that cannabis companies could reach a large audience on the platform, noting that cannabis-related conversation “is larger than the conversation around topics such as pets, cooking, and golf, as well as food and beverage categories including fast food, coffee, and liquor.”

Extrapolations, a drama series focusing on the near-future impacts of climate change, is coming to Apple TV+ next month. The streaming service has released the first trailer, which shows off a cast stuffed full of big names. Among the stars featured in the show are Meryl Streep, Sienna Miller, Kit Harington, Daveed Diggs, Edward Norton, Yara Shahidi, Matthew Rhys, Gemma Chan, David Schwimmer, Keri Russell, Marion Cotillard, Forest Whitaker, Tobey Maguire and Murray Bartlett (who was most recently seen in The Last of Us).

The eight-episode series showcases "interwoven stories about love, work, faith and family," Apple says. Extrapolations depicts how people from around the planet are adapting (or perhaps not) to the effects of climate change. It covers a several-decade span in the middle of the 21st century, by which time humans have landed on Mars.

Given the cast and the visual effects-packed trailer, it's clear Apple has spared little expense on this series. The clip shows a future version of Manhattan protected by sea walls and hints at technology that might allow humans to "thrive" in a world further wracked by climate change.

Contagion writer and An Inconvenient Truth producer Scott Z. Burns created the show. The first three episodes of Extrapolations will premiere on Apple TV+ on March 17th, with the remaining five arriving on a weekly basis.

2023 will be another big year for fans of Riot Games and League of Legends. This morning, the studio announced it will release not one but three games from its Riot Forge publishing label before 2024. The slate opens with The Mageseeker: A League of Legends Story, a new action RPG from Digital Sun Games, the studio behind 2018’s Moonlighter. TheMageseeker casts you as Sylas, everyone’s favorite rogue Damacian mage, as he attempts to lead a revolution against the kingdom that imprisoned him. Riot is billing the game as a “2D hi-bit” title, meaning it features a pixel art style that takes advantage of modern rendering techniques. Judging from the trailer Riot shared, TheMageseeker looks like it draws inspiration from games like Hyper Light Drifter and Titan Souls. It will arrive this spring on PC and consoles.

Sometime this summer, Riot will then release Convergence: A League of Legends Story. Double Stallion, a Montreal-based studio that’s best known for its work on Speed Brawl, has been working on the game since at least 2019. It stars Ekko, one of the League champions who makes an appearance in Netflix’s Arcane animated series, in a 2D action platformer. This being a game about Ekko, expect to use time manipulation to solve some of the challenges and puzzles Convergence throws at you.

Lastly, there’s Song of Nunu: A League of Legends Story. This spinoff comes courtesy of Rime creator Tequila Works and will arrive sometime in the fall. Of the three games that Riot shared release dates for today, Song of Nunu is probably the one I’m most excited to play since Nunu and Willump are such a loveable pair and Tequila Works has a consistent track record. Both Convergence and Song of Nunu will be available to play on PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC via Steam, GOG and the Epic Games Store when they arrive later this year.

Platformer has interviewed Twitter employees to figure out why people's For You feeds turned into The Elon Musk show, and they said the company's engineers truly did build a system that benefited their CEO alone. According to the publication, Elon's cousin and Twitter employee James Musk sent an urgent message on the company's Slack on Monday morning. "We are debugging an issue with engagement across the platform," he wrote, calling the situation "high urgency" and asking everyone who can write code to help. The situation? President Biden's tweet about rooting for the Philadelphia Eagles got more engagement than Musk's. 

Apparently, the president's tweet generated almost 29 million impressions, whereas Musk's generated 9.1 million only before he deleted it. Musk's issue with his tweets not getting as much engagement as he would like started before the Super Bowl, however. Platformer previously reported that he fired one of Twitter's two remaining principal engineers because he suggested that Musk's tweets aren't generating as many impressions anymore because people are no longer that interested in what he's saying. 

Around 80 Twitter employees were reportedly tasked to investigate the possible reasons for Musk's waning engagement numbers, and they did consider the possibility that a lot of people had blocked and muted him in recent months. They also looked into legitimate potential technical issues, though, because tweets from users whose posts typically perform well should've been automatically promoted by the website's system. 

The fix they came up with, Platformer says, is to deploy code that would artificially boost Musk's tweets by a factor of 1,000, ensuring that they rank higher than everyone else's in people's feeds. As a result, over 90 percent of Musk's 128.9 million followers saw his tweets, and even those who don't follow the Twitter owner kept seeing his posts on their timeline. 

While Musk didn't speak at length about the issue, he did acknowledge the change in his own way, specifically by posting the "forced to drink milk" meme. He also asked people to stay tuned while Twitter made adjustments to the "algorithm" (his quote, not ours) after users started complaining of seeing all Elon all the time. "Adjustments" reportedly didn't mean removing his advantage completely, though: according to Platformer, Elon's tweets are still artificially boosted, but by a factor less than 1,000. Bottom line, users will still see his tweets a lot, unless they choose to move over to the Following tab instead. 

TuneIn is adding a new way for users to discover the more than 100,000 radio stations available to stream on its service. This week, the company – in honor of World Radio Day, which fell on February 13th – began rolling out TuneIn Explorer (via Android Police).

The feature plots everything TuneIn offers on an interactive map allowing you to see where some of the world’s most famous radio stations are based out of. You can access the map by visiting TuneIn’s website on your computer or mobile device. The company has included handy filters along the top of the interface, allowing you to narrow down the stations you see based on genre and language. You can apply multiple filters if you want more specific results. The map also includes a search feature and even displays emergency broadcast stations.

There’s no word yet on when the feature will arrive in the TuneIn app. In the meantime, we can imagine a few fun use cases for the map. You could turn to it if you want to rediscover a radio station from your hometown or as a way to immerse yourself in a language you want to learn.

Starting today, Meta is rolling out a new version of its “Why am I seeing this ad?” tool. The company says the redesigned interface is meant to provide users with more information about how their activities on Facebook and beyond inform the machine learning models that power its ad-matching software. If you’re unfamiliar with the tool, you can access it by clicking or tapping the three dots icon next to an ad on Facebook or Instagram.

Once you have access to the updated tool, you’ll see a summary of the actions on Meta’s platforms and other websites that may have informed the company’s machine-learning models. For instance, the page may note that you’re seeing an ad for a dress or suit because you interacted with style content on Facebook. Users will also see new examples and illustrations that attempt to explain how Meta’s machine learning algorithms work to deliver targeted ads. At the same time, the company says it has made it easier to access its Ads Preferences. You’ll see a link to those settings from more pages accessible through the “Why am I seeing this ad?” tool.

Meta

“We are committed to using machine learning models responsibly. Being transparent about how we use machine learning is essential because it ensures that people are aware that this technology is a part of our ads system and that they know the types of information it is using,” Meta said in a blog post published Tuesday. “By stepping up our transparency around how our machine learning models work to deliver ads, we aim to help people feel more secure and increase our accountability.”

The company notes it worked with “external privacy experts and policy stakeholders” to collect input on how it could be more transparent about its ads system. Meta doesn’t say as much, but the changes likely represent an effort to ensure the company is compliant with the European Union’s Digital Services Act when it becomes law in 2024. The legislation has several provisions that apply directly to Meta, including one that mandates more transparency around how recommendation systems work. The law will also ban ads that target individuals based on their religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity or political affiliation.

More broadly, the changes come after Apple’s ad-tracking changes in iOS 14 significantly hurt Meta’s bottom line. One early report after iOS 14.5 went live estimated only four percent of iPhone users in the US opted into app tracking. Since then, Meta has seen revenue growth shrink significantly. More recently, in combination with its virtual and augmented reality spending, Meta saw its first-ever revenue decline in the second quarter of 2022.

Discord is expanding Stage Channels, its Clubhouse- and Twitter Spaces-style feature that puts a spotlight on a small group of speakers broadcasting a conversation to a larger audience. Stage Channels debuted almost two years ago as an audio-only feature, but that's all about to change as Discord is adding video feeds, screen sharing and text chat to the mix.

Up to five participants can share their video feed. Someone else can can share their screen at the same time. As ever, no audience members' audio or video will be broadcast unless they're invited to join the speakers.

Because video uses a lot more bandwidth than audio, Discord has imposed some limits. Any server with the free Community features switched on can enable video and screen sharing in Stages with up to 50 people, including the hosts. Still, Discord points out that's double the maximum viewer limit for video chat in regular voice channels. Boosted servers can have up to 150 people in a video Stage at Tier 2 and 300 at Tier 3.

Discord

Text chat, meanwhile, is the same as in voice channels. You can select "Show Chat" on the top right of the panel and ask questions or comment on what speakers are discussing. Additionally, moderators have the ability to only allow users with certain assigned roles to share video or their screen on a server.

Meanwhile, as you're waiting for a Stage to begin, Discord will now play waiting room music. If you'd rather not hear it, you can switch off the music by hitting the eighth note (♫) button.

Although Discord users won't be able to broadcast their video Stage chats to as many users as they can on the likes of Twitch, this will surely be a welcome update for users. Folks have used Stage Channels to run AMAs, fireside chats, live podcast recordings, beatboxing contests and other events. Now, creators can use the feature for premium gameplay streams if they want.

Adding video to the mix gives users more flexibility without moderators having to mute and unmute too many people. It's useful for audience members too, since it'll be harder to accidentally unmute yourself during a Discord video presentation. Make sure your mic muting hotkey isn't one you press often, folks!

Comcast subscribers are about to lose a big perk: free access to Peacock streaming. Since it launched in April 2020, the ad-supported version of Peacock Premium has been provided to Xfinity TV and broadband customers at no charge. Starting on April 3rd, it will no longer be offered to new subscribers, and as of June 26th, existing customers won't get it either, NBCUniversal has confirmed to Variety.

The news was first noted on Reddit via screenshots posting more details. "Customers will be presented with discounted offer details within the Peacock app," an internal message reads. "Stay tuned for offer details and more information." NBCU has also sent messages to customers that they'll be able to purchase Peacock Premium at a discounted price, which has yet to be determined.

Last month, Peacock stopped offering the free ad-supported standalone service to new users. At the time, the company said it believed Peacock's paid tiers were the best way to experience the service. More likely, it's because despite counting 20 million subscribers in 2022, up 9 million from the year before, Peacock has yet to turn a profit for NBCU/Comcast. 

The company's plan was always to phase out free Peacock access for Comcast users, a spokesperson told Variety. By next year, it aims to hit 100,000 hours of programing divided between original series, licensed TV, movies, live sports and more. Its buzziest original hit right now is Rian Johnson's Poker Face, and it also streams popular classic TV fare like The Office. 

The following article contains spoilers for earlier Star Trek properties but doesn’t reveal specific spoilers about Star Trek: Picard season three, not that you should be watching it anyway.

It’s 2034 and Warner Bros. decides it needs to wring more cash out of Friends, the decade defining cultural juggernaut and sitcom behemoth. Imagine what that show would be like; A warm and cozy three-decades-later check-in on characters you know intimately well. After all, you probably spent your formative years watching them mature from young single New Yorkers to a series of families. Maybe it’ll tickle those nostalgia glands, reminding you of when you watched the show with your own family as a kid.

Unfortunately, the hotshot creator of the age decided they want to go in a different direction this time. This needs to be a dark and gritty miserycore grief orgy that better reflects our more rough-and-tumble times. After all, TV these days can’t be gentle or comforting, offer escapism or posit a better world, not since Trump, Brexit, Bolonosaro, January 6th and Ukraine. The creative team have got that quote on a poster in their office, the one about thetriumph of evil, and they’re not going to sit idly by, they’re taking a stand.

In the sequel, Rachel’s famous for her wellness TikTok that often makes allusions to “reclaiming” the US as a white ethnostate. Joey lost an arm while filming a movie and is now in prison after a failed heist to pay off his life-ruining medical debt. Monica’s got a crippling adderall addiction and slips away most nights to murder the neighborhood cats and dogs. Everything’s shot in ultra gloomy vision, and there’s no laugh track, jokes or a studio audience, just unrelenting misery.

This revival is dense with references to the Friends backstory as well as the broader Friends universe. Remember that Lisa Kudrow played Phoebe’s twin sister Ursula on Mad About You, right? If not, you better get yourself to Wikipedia to study up. I mean, it won’t be relevant to the plot, but it’s something you remember, so clap, go on, clap.

You might be wondering why such a project would be allowed to happen, given that it wouldn’t be fun for fans of the original series. Times change, characters age, but you can’t turn a cozy sitcom into Breaking Bad overnight and expect that to be satisfying. You’d hardly think it’d be a big pull for newbie viewers either, who’d probably steer clear if they weren’t already familiar with 236 episodes of intricate backstory. Nostalgia revivals don’t need to be slavish to their source material, but it’s hard to see the appeal for something so grim and unpleasant.

Apropos of nothing, let’s talk about the third and final season of Star Trek: Picard.

Trae Patton / Paramount+

Season three was sold as something of a course correction for Picard after its first two deeply unpopular runs. It ditched all but Raffi from the roster of original characters created for it, and instead pulled in the stars from Star Trek: The Next Generation. As well as the returning Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis and Brent Spiner, we’ll see LeVar Burton, Gates McFadden and Michael Dorn back in action. And, in the six of ten episodes I’ve been permitted to watch under strict embargo, I’d say only one of them feels like the character we know and love.

Unfortunately, while we have the other TNG stars, the creative team of Executive Producer Alex Kurtzman and showrunner Terry Matalas didn’t bother to grab any of that show’s lightness of tone. Picard remains a grimdark slog, shot on perpetually underlit sets and featuring a succession of increasingly-bleak setpieces. The plot is stretched so thin that the first four episodes turn out to be little more than an extended prologue for the rest. A prologue that could, I should add, have been an efficient, and possibly more enjoyable, hour. The story is so obvious, too, that you’ll be ahead of the characters pretty much non-stop as they stumble from one idiot plot to the next.

It’s maddening that we can see how much of the plot is blocking itself to ensure things can’t move forward too quickly. There’s a whole episode of gosh-isn’t-this-tense tension that could have been eliminated if anyone in Starfleet pulled out a tricorder and used it as God intended. In this utopian future, where science and technology really are advanced enough to look like magic, why does nobody employ the tools hanging from their waistband? Mostly because Paramount ordered ten episodes, and ten episodes is what we’re going to give them. Another episode has a time-filling punch fight runaround because it’s now somehow impossible for a serving officer to use a Federation ship’s intercom system to call the bridge and warn them of impending danger.

Picard is one of those series where you often find yourself shouting at the screen as the next stupid moment unfolds in front of you. Even worse is that the show’s creative team seem to think that it’s us, the audience, who are deficient in the thinking department. There is scene after scene in which characters repeat the same lines back to each other because the crew assume we’re not paying attention. Because of the limits on spoilers, I’ve re-written a scene to match the sentiment, if not the words verbatim, so you can get a sense of what to expect:

CREW 1: The ship is being pulled closer to the black hole’s gravity well.

CREW 2: We do not have enough power to pull ourselves away, sir.

RIKER: Are you saying that we’re dead in the water?

CREW 1: We will be passing the black hole’s event horizon in 17 minutes.

RIKER: We’re dead in the water and we’re sinking.

PICARD: We’re going to be dead in 17 minutes, Will, unless we can find a way to solve this.

RIKER: We’re sinking into quicksand, and there’s no time to grab a helping hand.

The irony is that this run is so thicket-dense with references that the show basically assumes that you’ve already seen pretty much everything produced during Trek’s gold, silver and bronze ages. But, to make sure nobody’s left behind, everyone has to speak in exposition so hamfisted that, now that this is over, I think Michelle Hurd deserves personal injury compensation. Raffi gets saddled with so many cringe-inducing lines where she states, and restates and re-restates the obvious that I started grasping fistfuls of my own hair to relieve some of my discomfort.

And as for the storyline, what can I say? It’s clear that Alex Kurtzman is only comfortable writing in a single register. His go-to is usually a militaristic, testosterone-fuelled paranoid Reaganite fantasy in which the real villain was our own government all along. He did it in Into Darkness, Discovery season two and even the first season of Picard – to the point where Starfleet is now so lousy with double agents that all of their schemes fail because the saboteurs are all too busy sabotaging each other’s plans instead of that of the wider Federation.

If Picard is nothing else, it’s nearly pornographic in its use and misuse of franchise iconography. I always felt that Jeff Russo’s Picard theme sounded more like the library music for a corporate advert than the makes-your-heart-soar theme a Star Trek deserves. And here, it’s been ditched in favor of Jerry Goldsmith’s sumptuous, nectar-for-the-ears score for First Contact. The first title card is a direct pull from Wrath of Khan, and pretty much every element therein is an elbow to the ribs, reminding you of older, better Star Trek movies and TV series.

An early scene has a character “hijacking a starship” under false pretenses while it’s in spacedock. You know, the mushroom-shaped megastation orbiting Earth from The Search for Spock onwards. And because we’re already going beat-for-beat for a sequence xeroxed from 1984, said starship even jumps to warp as soon as it’s past the exit doors. Despite the fact that the sort of hardcore Trek fans who would spot the reference would also note that you’re not meant to jump to warp while inside a solar system when there’s no urgent need to do so.

I’ll admit, this is postgraduate degree-level Star Trek nerdery, but you can’t have it both ways: If you’re trying to placate hostile viewers with the excessive fan service, you can’t then complain when they point out that you’re doing it all wrong.

The show’s teaser trailer already revealed we’re getting an overstuffed roster of villains to round out the run. Amanda Plummer’s captain of an enemy ship that shares a design with the Narada from Star Trek ‘09. Then there’s Daniel Davis’ holographic Professor Moriarty, as well as Data’s evil twin brother Lore. Both of these sorta make sense in the context, but there’s a hell of a lot of narrative scaffolding to explain away the fact that Brent Spiner is now 74 years old. (The dude looks good for it, but it’s hard to play an ageless android when time marches on and the de-aging CGI budget is spent on smoothing out Patrick Stewart’s face for a single flashback and the pointless needle-drops that open every episode.)

Now, before you scurry off to Memory Alpha to confirm that Moriartywas locked away in a holobox at the end of “Ship in a Bottle,” and Lorewas disassembled at the end of “Descent Part 2,” yes, they were. Try to remember that showrunner Terry Matalas and executive producer Alex Kurtzman treat Star Trek’s continuity less as something which informs storytelling and more as a series of shiny objects to keep us all amused when the plot sags or anyone has any time to think about what’s going on.

I’ll also add that the trailers and promotional material have very intentionally kept a lot of material back. There are more classic-era heroes and villains crowbarring their way into the story in the way that, if it were fanfiction, would seem excessive. But, if I’m honest, the second or third time someone, or something, familiar popped up, I wasn’t whooping and cheering, I was sighing. The Star Trek universe is vast and broad and deep, but Picard makes it feel like a puddle where everyone knows each other, and everyone under the age of 30 has grown up watching The Next Generation. If you’re serving in the US Navy, for instance, how likely is it that you’d know the ins and outs of every exploit of even the most well-traveled combat vessel?

Now, I don’t have the language or experience to discuss this properly, and I’m aware of others who do feel differently. This is just my opinion, but I think the depiction of drug and alcohol use in Picard has always felt off. And since I can’t talk about the third season, I’ll talk about the first, where something very similar happened and is just as vexing here as it was back then. Raffi deals with her son’s rejection by relapsing, but then mere hours later, she’s back at her station and advancing the plot. I don’t recall a sense that her use clouded her judgment and I don’t think it was discussed subsequently – so despite the portentiousness in the build-up, it was depicted almost like someone just having a bad day and knocking back some drinks. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, because there are plenty of people who use drugs and it doesn’t impact their professional lives at all. (Read any Making-Of book about The Original Series and you'll notice how more than a few references to the production team's drug use.) But if you’re going to write a plot where scenes hang on the will-she-or-won’t-she tension of relapse, but it all turns out to be hunky dory straight after, what was the point of depicting any of this in the first place?

Then there’s the violence, and the casual way that it’s doled out, especially in the show’s numerous interrogation scenes. I’m not advocating for forced confessions, but given Starfleet’s advanced science, and the Federation has a planet of literal telepaths at its disposal, why are we always punching people in the nose with a butt of a phaser pistol? I mean, I know why: It’s a nerdy sci-fi show play acting as a muscular basic-cable drama, but that doesn’t mean it works. I’ve often theorized that many modern-day Star Trek creators would much rather be over the hall making their own Star War instead. Maybe I’m wrong, and the Picard crew is really nostalgic for the hamfisted Bush-era politics of 24.

Trae Patton / Paramount+

It was always going to be hard to pull Picard out of its creative slump that started back when the show was greenlit. If there was ever a character who we’d seen grow, change, mature and treat his own life with more kindness, it was Jean-Luc Picard. Some of TNG’s best episodes forced Picard to consider his own life, his history, his mortality, his motives, including the series’ grand finale. “All Good Things” isn’t just good Star Trek, it’s one of the best series finales ever made, encompassing the entire breadth and depth of The Next Generation in one glorious sweep. And between seven years of TV and four less essential but still important movies, he was done.

I wrote somewhere, I forget where, that a smarter idea would have been to center the action on a less-well served member of the Enterprise D crew. I’d have been second in line to watch a Geordi LaForge spin-off (behind uber fan Rihanna, of course), and there’s plenty to explore there. Or a Beverley Crusher spin-off, as she solves people’s problems as a simple country space doctor back on Earth or on some far-flung planet. Maybe a sci-fi version of In Treatment fronted by Marina Sirtis could have worked, and would have certainly cost less than this.

All of which would be preferable to what we got, which despite initially having a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist at the helm, was two years of go-nowhere, do-nothing bore-a-thons. Its brief moments of cleverness drowned out by the baffling character decisions, tin-eared dialog and ligneous acting. And both had plots which would have struggled to fill a movie stretched out across a painfully slow ten hour runtime.

And that’s before we get to the moralizing, which had characters pointing at a bad thing and saying “thing bad.” I don’t think the second season’s 26 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes is because the (inexplicably) conservative wing of Trek fandom was outraged that a show about happy space communists solving problems while remaining friends suddenly “got woke.” Good, old-fashioned Star Trek at least had the good grace to cloak its progressivism in allegory that could slide past the otherwise closed minds of some of its viewers. By comparison, Picard felt like the first draft of a high school theater production made the term after the teacher had explained agitprop.

Maybe that’s why I feel so annoyed by Picard, because all of the things that are wrong with the show, and its kin, are examples of amateurishness. Amateurish plotting, amateurish dialogue, a lack of thoughtfulness about the material, what it says, or what it’s doing. Just an endless parade of big, dumb, brash, po-faced melodrama used in place of some sort of maturity or integrity. I don’t expect Star Trek to be brilliant all the damn time, but I do expect a minimum standard of something to be upheld. And this falls so far below it, it’s hard to call it Star Trek. Some people will call that gatekeeping, but Star Trek can be anything it damn well wants to be, so long as it's competently made and halfway entertaining. 

The constant callbacks got me thinking about the period when Nicholas Meyer was, directly or indirectly, the major creative force behind Star Trek. It’s been 32 years since his 1991 swansong, The Undiscovered Country, and it remains a high-water mark of cinematic Trek. Drawing to a close the story of The Original Series crew, Meyer didn’t go for nostalgia, but savaged his characters, exposing their flaws, their bigotries, their failings. There was redemption, and heart, and it never needed Meyer to stage endless close-quarters phaser-fu fights in unlight rooms.

But that was a filmmaker with a clear vision, and the good graces to really drag his characters in the dirt before washing them clean. Imagine what would happen if Picard encountered any of the same level of subtext – they’d probably spend an hour running from it before beating it over the head with the butt of a phaser rifle and then spend the next hour feeling glum about it. If nothing else, I’d say don’t even watch Picard for ironic kicks, lest Paramount think it’s somehow a runaway hit and continue to produce crap like this.

Twitter is making millions of dollars from just a handful of some of its most infamous users, according to a new report. New research from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) estimates that Twitter “will generate up to $19 million a year in advertising revenue” from just 10 accounts that were once banned from the platform.

The report looked at the current engagement with 10 accounts that were previously banned for “ for “publishing hateful content and dangerous conspiracies.” The accounts were reinstated after Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter. The group includes a number of high-profile accounts associated with extremism and conspiracy theories, including those belonging to influencer Andrew Tate, Daily Stormer founder Andrew Anglin, prominent antivaxxer Robert Malone and the Gateway Pundit.

In order to estimate their reach and engagement, CCDH analyzed nearly 10,000 tweets from these accounts during a 47-day period in December and January. According to their analysis, “on an average day, tweets from the ten accounts received a combined total of 54 million impressions,” they write. “Projecting this average across 365 days, the accounts can be expected to reach nearly 20 billion impressions over the course of a year.”

In order to determine how much ad revenue those impressions might generate for Twitter, CCDH says it created three new Twitter accounts that followed only the 10 users named in the report. The authors found that ads appeared about once every 6.7 tweets. Then, using data from analytics firm Brandwatch, which estimates that “Twitter ads cost an average of $6.46 per 1,000 impressions,” CCDH came up with “a total figure of up to $19 million in estimated annual ad revenues across the accounts.”

While the estimates aren’t a precise accounting of how much Twitter might be making from these users, it demonstrates how valuable a small number of highly polarizing accounts can be for the platform. It also underscores how much more Twitter stands to gain by bringing back even more controversial users.

All of the accounts named in the report were once permanently banned from twitter, but were reinstated after Musk said he would offer “general amnesty” to users who hadn’t broken the law. Twitter also recently announced plans to allow even more previously banned users to appeal their suspensions.

At the same time, Twitter’s advertising business has taken a major hit since Musk’s takeover. A number of high profile advertisers have pulled back from the platform, and revenue is down as much as 40 percent, according to reporting fromPlatformer.

The report also points out several instances when ads from prominent advertisers appeared adjacent to offensive and inflammatory posts from these users. For example, a Prime Video ad directly underneath a tweet from Andrew Anglin that states “the only career a woman is actually capable of on merit is prostitution.” The report also highlights an ad from the NFL, which appeared directly underneath a tweet misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines.

“This work confirms that Twitter has been displaying ads next to every one of the toxic accounts we have investigated, despite the fact that the individuals behind them are known to promote hateful views and falsehoods,” CCDH writes.