What happened when Twitter cracked down on extremists
2 years, 4 months ago

What happened when Twitter cracked down on extremists

Raw Story  

Since Donald Trump’s election in 2016, an entire ecosystem of right-wing social media platforms has come into existence — from Gab to Parler to the former president’s own Truth Social. Pyrra, which launched in early 2022 with $1.3 million in funding, monitors more than 20 alternative social media sites and online forums, scanning some 100 million messages per week. Chang, a data scientist, says increased content moderation at major social media platforms — including the ouster of figures ranging from Trump to Alex Jones — has driven a sizable contingent of users to the spaces Pyrra tracks, which tend toward an absolutist view of free speech. These are diametrically opposed ideas, yet folks are simultaneously believing both of them and saying, “This is what is happening in the world today.” I’ve been really immersed in this stuff since 2016, and I’m still routinely appalled, surprised and taken aback by some of the things I read on these platforms.

Social Media Media Information Platforms Truth Social Twitter Jan Telegram This Stuff Chang Content Moderation Pyrra  jan  extremists  things  cracked  media  really  content  twitter  information  happened  platforms  truth  social

History of this topic

Keir Starmer under pressure to order inquiry into social media to prevent it fuelling future riots
4 months, 2 weeks ago

Keir Starmer under pressure to order inquiry into social media to prevent it fuelling future riots

The Independent  

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. “We cannot let this moment go by without a proper …

How the porn bots took over Twitter
9 months, 2 weeks ago

How the porn bots took over Twitter

NPR  

How the porn bots took over Twitter Enlarge this image Illustration by Jackie Lay/NPR Illustration by Jackie Lay/NPR The routine of a loyal X user remains relatively simple. On the business side, Musk dissolved the Trust and Safety Council and cut staff overseeing content moderation — two things Enberg said were vital for keeping the platform safe for advertisers and …

Pakistan blocks X for the sixth day as activists criticize the social media platform’s shutdown
10 months ago

Pakistan blocks X for the sixth day as activists criticize the social media platform’s shutdown

Associated Press  

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan’s media regulators have blocked the social media platform X, formerly Twitter, with users across the country on Thursday enduring the sixth day of sweeping disruptions, partial and complete shutdowns. The outage was first observed over the weekend when the political party of Pakistan’s imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan announced protests against what it says were rigged …

The year of social media soul-searching: Twitter dies, X and Threads are born and AI gets personal
1 year ago

The year of social media soul-searching: Twitter dies, X and Threads are born and AI gets personal

Associated Press  

We lost Twitter and got X. Here’s a look back at some of the biggest stories in social media in 2023 — and what to watch for next year: GOODBYE TWITTER A little more than a year ago, Elon Musk walked into Twitter ’s San Francisco headquarters, fired its CEO and other top executives and began transforming the social media …

Commentary: Elon Musk bought Twitter just to break it. With a new war, we’re paying the price
1 year, 2 months ago

Commentary: Elon Musk bought Twitter just to break it. With a new war, we’re paying the price

LA Times  

It’s been nearly a year since Elon Musk acquired Twitter, and more than the average landlord, he’s made some changes to the storefront: replacing the social media platform’s cheerful winged mascot with an ominous “X,” stripping all but paying subscribers of verified status, and turning it from a frenetic crossroads of breaking news and opinion to a playground for falsehoods …

Column: Scientists used to love Twitter. Thanks to Elon Musk, they’re giving up on it
1 year, 4 months ago

Column: Scientists used to love Twitter. Thanks to Elon Musk, they’re giving up on it

LA Times  

In the first couple of years of the COVID-19 pandemic, Peter Hotez, an expert in vaccines and tropical medicine at Baylor University, found Twitter to be “a useful and at times almost essential tool for timely and important exchange of information.” The platform banned the most aggressive anti-vaccine and anti-science trolls, leaving a relatively safe space “for mainstream physicians, epidemiologists, …

Column: A few sick days made it clear — Twitter is dying, and so is social media as we know it
1 year, 4 months ago

Column: A few sick days made it clear — Twitter is dying, and so is social media as we know it

LA Times  

The state of the social media feed in 2023? The alternatives weren’t much better — Threads, Meta’s competing product, launched by Mark Zuckerberg to much fanfare just weeks ago, felt vaguely cheery but ultimately vacant. I’ve been logging onto Twitter at the start of every working day since, oh, 2011; it’s easy to let muscle memory take over and keep …

Is Twitter down? Thousands of users complain of issues with social media platform
1 year, 5 months ago

Is Twitter down? Thousands of users complain of issues with social media platform

The Independent  

Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Elon Musk said on Saturday afternoon that temporary reading limits would be applied for …

Twitter Really Is Worse Than Ever
1 year, 7 months ago

Twitter Really Is Worse Than Ever

Wired  

A year ago, Elon Musk announced that he wanted to buy Twitter to clear it of bots and turn “the de facto public town square” into a place for unfettered free speech. After he took over the platform, Musk insisted that “Twitter’s strong commitment to content moderation remains absolutely unchanged.” But around the same time, Twitter fired most of its …

When tanks meet Twitter: How Sudan's power struggle turned into a social media battlefield
1 year, 8 months ago

When tanks meet Twitter: How Sudan's power struggle turned into a social media battlefield

Firstpost  

Twitter and Facebook have quickly become critical sources of information for five million people trapped inside their homes in Sudan’s capital as street fighting rages on. Army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his deputy-turned-rival Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo have been “flooding the media with false information”, said Raghdan Orsud of Beam Reports, which investigates disinformation in Sudan. For five million people …

Antisemitism on Twitter has more than doubled since Elon Musk took over the platform: new research
1 year, 9 months ago

Antisemitism on Twitter has more than doubled since Elon Musk took over the platform: new research

Salon  

In the days after Elon Musk took over Twitter in October 2022, the social media platform saw a "surge in hateful conduct," which its then safety chief put down to a "focused, short-term trolling campaign." Rather, antisemitic tweets have more than doubled over the months since Musk took charge, according to research that I and colleagues at tech firm CASM …

We Were All Supposed To Leave The Twitter Dumpster Fire. Why Are We Still Here?
1 year, 9 months ago

We Were All Supposed To Leave The Twitter Dumpster Fire. Why Are We Still Here?

Huff Post  

I’m not sure when Twitter ― founded in 2006 as a fledgling microblogging network in competition with the MySpace juggernaut and the then-growing Facebook ― had its watershed moment and moved toward becoming the behemoth it is today. Twitter, along with a quarantine that bored people senseless, was the catalyst behind the unprecedented global response to George Floyd’s murder; arguably, …

Twitter down for hours, many users furious: Know what happened
1 year, 9 months ago

Twitter down for hours, many users furious: Know what happened

India TV News  

Twitter, the known microblogging social media platform was reported unresponsive by a number of users. More than a million users across the world reported their experience as another major global outage, leaving them unable to login to their accounts or post any tweets respectively. Find some people and topics to follow now.” Image Source : PIXABAYTwitter down for hours, many …

Twitter Deny Data Leak Hack Sold Online Researcher Alon Gal
1 year, 11 months ago

Twitter Deny Data Leak Hack Sold Online Researcher Alon Gal

ABP News  

Twitter has denied a data leak that apparently hit 200 million of its users and their information was being sold online. The data hack that resulted in 200 million names and email IDs of Twitter users was not a result of a security bug on the micro-blogging platform's systems, Twitter has said. ".Therefore, based on information and intel analyzed to …

What is wrong with Twitter? 200 mn users' data leaked and sold for $200K on Dark Web
1 year, 11 months ago

What is wrong with Twitter? 200 mn users' data leaked and sold for $200K on Dark Web

India TV News  

Cyber-security researchers have found a data dump comprising over 200 million Twitter users, that was earlier being sold for $200,000. "The vulnerability in Twitter's API, enabled threat actors to input phone number/email address to retrieve the Twitter user ID which in turn enables data scraping," said a CloudSEK researcher. On January 4, a new user on the hacker forum with …

From Twitter chaos to TikTok bans to the metaverse, social media had a rocky 2022
2 years ago

From Twitter chaos to TikTok bans to the metaverse, social media had a rocky 2022

NPR  

From Twitter chaos to TikTok bans to the metaverse, social media had a rocky 2022 Enlarge this image toggle caption Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images 2022 has been a rocky year for social media companies. Enlarge this image toggle caption Mario Tama/Getty Images Mario Tama/Getty Images TikTok's runaway success has companies including Facebook and Google …

We’re in Denial About the True Cost of a Twitter Implosion
2 years ago

We’re in Denial About the True Cost of a Twitter Implosion

Wired  

When I opened Twitter one day a couple of weeks ago, the first piece of “news” I read was that Sam Bankman-Fried killed Jeffrey Epstein. Among the users I follow, the mood on the app ever since has resembled the giddiness of 2 am in a dorm room just after the last joint has been smoked, when it’s not clear …

This Is The Reason Behind Twitter's Massive Revenue Drop, According To Elon Musk
2 years, 1 month ago

This Is The Reason Behind Twitter's Massive Revenue Drop, According To Elon Musk

ABP News  

New Twitter boss Elon Musk on Friday announced that the micro-blogging platform has suffered a massive drop in revenue due to lost advertisers who cut back on using the platform, amid sweeping layoffs at the company. "Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we …

Elon Musk vents that ‘messed up’ activists are causing ‘massive drop’ in Twitter revenue as advertisers flee
2 years, 1 month ago

Elon Musk vents that ‘messed up’ activists are causing ‘massive drop’ in Twitter revenue as advertisers flee

The Independent  

Sign up to our free weekly IndyTech newsletter delivered straight to your inbox Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy Elon Musk took to Twitter to publicly air his grievances against so-called “activists” …

RIP Twitter, 2006-2022: Dead at the hands of Elon Musk
2 years, 1 month ago

RIP Twitter, 2006-2022: Dead at the hands of Elon Musk

The Independent  

The best of Voices delivered to your inbox every week - from controversial columns to expert analysis Sign up for our free weekly Voices newsletter for expert opinion and columns Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. I didn’t know anything about Twitter, …

Column: With Elon Musk in charge, it’s the beginning of the end for #BlackTwitter
2 years, 8 months ago

Column: With Elon Musk in charge, it’s the beginning of the end for #BlackTwitter

LA Times  

It’s all rather disturbing and yet somehow fitting in these doublespeak-steeped times. “Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Musk said Monday, announcing that he had succeeded in taking over the San Francisco-based social media company for $44 billion. Business Elon Musk reaches $44-billion deal to buy Twitter The social media …

Twitter sees jump in govt demands to remove content of reporters, news outlets
3 years, 5 months ago

Twitter sees jump in govt demands to remove content of reporters, news outlets

The Hindu  

Twitter Inc saw a surge in government demands worldwide in 2020 to take down content posted by journalists and news outlets, according to data released by the social media platform. In its transparency report published on Wednesday, Twitter said verified accounts of 199 journalists and news outlets on its platform faced 361 legal demands from governments to remove content in …

QAnon has receded from social media -- but it’s just hiding
3 years, 5 months ago

QAnon has receded from social media -- but it’s just hiding

Associated Press  

On the face of it, you might think that the QAnon conspiracy has largely disappeared from big social media sites. Where Facebook groups once openly referenced QAnon, you’ll now see others like “Since you missed this in the so called MSM,” a page referencing “mainstream media” that boasts more than 4,000 followers. “There was a very, very explicit effort within …

Twitter plans to double revenue by 2023, teases new 'super follow' feature
3 years, 9 months ago

Twitter plans to double revenue by 2023, teases new 'super follow' feature

The Hindu  

Twitter Inc will launch new features and products at a faster pace to catch up with rivals,it said on Thursday, projecting a doubling in annual revenue andreaching a least 315 million users in 2023. This includes having an audio-only talk through its new Spaces feature and longer-form content using Revue, the newsletter product Twitter acquired last month. The efforts will …

A World Without @donaldtrump Is Here. But Will Tech Giants Finally Acknowledge What They Do to Us?
3 years, 11 months ago

A World Without @donaldtrump Is Here. But Will Tech Giants Finally Acknowledge What They Do to Us?

News 18  

As the world adjusts to a Twitter without @realdonaldtrump, the next big question is: Now what?” Major tech platforms, long accused of giving President Donald Trump special treatment not allotted to regular users, have shown him the door in the wake of his incitement of violence by supporters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Although they’ve long sought to …

Opinion | Twitter’s soaring user base masks critical problems
4 years, 5 months ago

Opinion | Twitter’s soaring user base masks critical problems

Live Mint  

Users continue to flock to Twitter Inc.’s social media platform, but that doesn’t necessarily make it any better of an investment for shareholders. The company itself cited the extraordinary historic nature of the June quarter in its investor letter: “The year-over-year increase in mDAU was primarily driven by external factors, such as continued shelter-in-place requirements for many people, and increased …

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