Social Media & Big Tech news and discussions

[wjfox]

[Time_Traveller]

Is Telegram founder's arrest a sign of the tide turning against social media companies and their bosses?

Thursday 29 August 2024 14:28, UK

The bosses of the world's biggest social media companies have typically avoided personal repercussions, even when their platforms have faced scrutiny over their duties to their billions of users.

Social media companies including Facebook, X and TikTok have repeatedly come under fire from policymakers for failing to sufficiently tackle the spread of misinformation, but their founders have maintained their distance from content published by users on the platforms.

In a rare instance of personal accountability earlier this year, Mark Zuckerberg, who runs the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, apologised to families who said their children had been harmed by social media while testifying in a hearing at the United States Senate.

But the pursuit of Pavel Durov by French authorities, the co-founder of the Telegram messaging app, sets a new precedent.

Durov, 39, was born in Russia but became a French citizen in 2021.

https://news.sky.com/story/is-telegram- ... s-13205278

[weatheriscool]

[firestar464]

More on that by the BBC:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y3rnl5qv3o

I want to hear your thoughts. Is the fine for accessing X overkill?

[Powers]

More on that by the BBC:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y3rnl5qv3o

I want to hear your thoughts. Is the fine for accessing X overkill?

Absolutely. And I'm sure R8Z would have more to say if he was still here...

[firestar464]

Yeah...though the question is, how else are they supposed to enforce the sanctions on X?

[weatheriscool]

[Time_Traveller]

Racism, misogyny, lies: how did X become so full of hatred? And is it ethical to keep using it?

Thu 5 Sep 2024 05.00 BST

I considered leaving Twitter as soon as Elon Musk acquired it in 2022, just not wanting to be part of a community that could be bought, least of all by a man like him – the obnoxious “long hours at a high intensity” bullying of his staff began immediately. But I’ve had some of the most interesting conversations of my life on there, both randomly, ambling about, and solicited, for stories: “Anyone got catastrophically lonely during Covid?”; “Anyone hooked up with their secondary school boy/girlfriend?” We used to call it the place where you told the truth to strangers (Facebook was where you lied to your friends), and that wide-openness was reciprocal and gorgeous.

It got more unpleasant after the blue-tick fiasco: identity verification became something you could buy, which destroyed the trust quotient. So I joined the rival platform Mastodon, but fast realised that I would never get 70,000 followers on there like I had on Twitter. It wasn’t that I wanted the attention per se, just that my gang wasn’t varied or noisy enough. There’s something eerie and a bit depressing about a social media feed that doesn’t refresh often enough, like walking into a shopping mall where half the shops have closed down and the rest are all selling the same thing.

In 2023, the network now known as X began sharing ad revenues with its “premium” users, and I joined Threads (which is owned by Meta), but all I ever see on it is strangers confessing to boring misdemeanours. I remained on X, where everything got darker. People get paid, indirectly through advertising, for engagement. Even that is a bit murky, since it’s described as “revenue sharing”, but you don’t get to see which ads’ revenues were shared with you, so can’t measure revenue-per-impression. Is X sharing it 50/50? Or 10/90? Are they actually paying you to generate hatred?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... p-using-it

[weatheriscool]

Trump has lost $4 billion in Truth Social wipeout

Source: CNN Business

Published 5:30 AM EDT, Mon September 9, 2024

New York CNN — Former President Donald Trump’s social media company is in a deep slump that keeps getting worse, wiping out a huge chunk of his net worth.

Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT) dropped last week to their lowest level since the merger that brought the owner of Truth Social public this spring. Trump Media has lost about three-quarters (74%) of its value since peaking at $66.22 on March 27.

The selloff has erased significant amounts of wealth for investors — including Trump. Trump’s dominant stake of 114.75 million shares was valued at $6.2 billion on May 9. It’s now down to about $2 billion, a sharp drop that has knocked Trump off the Bloomberg Billionaires Index of the world’s 500 richest people.

The wipeout reinforces concerns raised by experts who have repeatedly warned that Trump Media’s multi-billion-dollar price tag defies logic. The company is losing money, generating very little revenue and Truth Social remains a relatively tiny player in social media. “If this wasn’t Trump, this thing would be trading at $1,” Matthew Tuttle, CEO of Tuttle Capital Management, told CNN in a phone interview.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/09/business ... index.html

[Tadasuke]

How people's mental health got way worse after 2010 in a few short years and what to do about it (part 1):



It focused on the USA and the UK, but talks about the so called "developed countries" and the effect of the Internet, World Wide Web and smartphones/tablets/ultrabooks, especially on those born after 1995.

I think we've failed the 21st century so far. Humans have been building infrastructure, communications and lots of stuff, but we've totally failed to keep ourselves physically and mentally healthy (except some of us). One billion obese people and at least one billion Internet-addicted people. Wasting time instead of improving ourselves or something worth caring about. Faster computers, bigger cars, but humans not getting any better (I mean since the year 2000). This is not a good way forward. This is a way for a semi-dystopia. Perhaps something like Wall-E or similar. Wtf are we collectively doing? Yes, I know some people are doing great, but I mean most people, not you specifically. Wasting time arguing, posting memes or some instant gratification or addicting thing of choice.

[wjfox]

Cristiano Ronaldo hits 1bn social media followers

13 September 2024, 13:00 BST

Cristiano Ronaldo has hit 1bn total followers across his various social media accounts - making him the first person to reach that mind-boggling figure.

The number is calculated by combining his total number of followers across Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Chinese social media sites Weibo and Kuaishou.

It does not equate to one billion individual followers, as many people will follow him across multiple platforms, and some will be fake accounts, known as bots.

Nonetheless social media expert Paolo Pescatore, from PP Foresight, described it as a "staggering number" that media and brands would pay close attention to.

"What an achievement, and it further underlines the fundamental shift taking place in media."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn5r5nk4ry6o

[Time_Traveller]

Children and young teenagers could be banned from using social media, minister says

8 hours ago

Children in the UK could potentially be banned from using social media because of the harm it’s causing to their health and mental health, a minister has suggested.

Technology secretary Peter Kyle has vowed to look closely at what happens in Australia, where the government plans to introduce a bill barring children from using platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.

Prime minister Anthony Albanese said a consultation would be carried out on an age limit of between 14 and 16, because social media was taking children away from real-life experiences with friends and family.

The government of the state of South Australia has proposed forcing social media companies to ban children aged 13 or younger – or face fines.

Mr Kyle told BBC Radio 4 he was open-minded about introducing similar restrictions in the UK.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/h ... 12630.html

[wjfox]

[Vakanai]

How people's mental health got way worse after 2010 in a few short years and what to do about it (part 1):



It focused on the USA and the UK, but talks about the so called "developed countries" and the effect of the Internet, World Wide Web and smartphones/tablets/ultrabooks, especially on those born after 1995.

I think we've failed the 21st century so far. Humans have been building infrastructure, communications and lots of stuff, but we've totally failed to keep ourselves physically and mentally healthy (except some of us). One billion obese people and at least one billion Internet-addicted people. Wasting time instead of improving ourselves or something worth caring about. Faster computers, bigger cars, but humans not getting any better (I mean since the year 2000). This is not a good way forward. This is a way for a semi-dystopia. Perhaps something like Wall-E or similar. Wtf are we collectively doing? Yes, I know some people are doing great, but I mean most people, not you specifically. Wasting time arguing, posting memes or some instant gratification or addicting thing of choice.

For obesity we're working on drugs to combat it.
For internet addiction, we're just fully embracing it.

[wjfox]

[Powers]

Nitter is the unique really keeping it alive.

[wjfox]

[Powers]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
The true death of the internet.

[wjfox]

[firestar464]

From what I understand they can see you now

https://www.firstpost.com/explainers/el ... 18901.html