Social Media & Big Tech news and discussions

Mitro
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Post by Mitro »

Elon musk's 'Epic thread' was a mocking of the predictions, not an endorsement, as seen by his other comments in that thread. Surprised no one mentioned that.
weatheriscool
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Twitter Cuts More Staff Overseeing Global Content Moderation
Source: Bloomberg

Twitter Inc., under new owner Elon Musk, has made deeper cuts into its already radically diminished trust and safety team handling global content moderation, as well as to the unit related to hate speech and harassment, according to people familiar with the matter.

At least a dozen more cuts on Friday night affected workers in the company's Dublin and Singapore offices, according to the people, who asked not to be identified discussing non-public changes. They included Nur Azhar Bin Ayob, the head of site integrity for Twitter's Asia-Pacific region, a relatively recent hire; and Analuisa Dominguez, Twitter's senior director of revenue policy.

Workers on teams handling the social network's misinformation policy, global appeals and state media on the platform were also eliminated.

Ella Irwin, Twitter's head of trust and safety, confirmed several members of the teams were cut but denied that they targeted some of the areas mentioned by Bloomberg.
Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... 0wall&s=09
weatheriscool
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Microsoft to cut 10,000 jobs as tech layoffs intensify
Source: Reuters
Jan 18 (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) said on Wednesday it would cut 10,000 jobs by the end of the third quarter of fiscal 2023, the latest sign that layoffs were accelerating in the U.S. technology sector as companies brace for an economic downturn.

The layoffs and costs related to hardware-portfolio and other changes will result in a charge of $1.2 billion in the second quarter of fiscal 2023, representing a negative impact of 12 cents on per share profit, Microsoft said.

In a note to staff, shared with Reuters, Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella said customers wanted to "optimize their digital spend to do more with less" and "exercise caution as some parts of the world are in a recession and other parts are anticipating one."

The news of layoffs, reported by media publications on Tuesday, follows some reductions last year. Microsoft said in July last year that a small number of roles had been eliminated, while news site Axios in October reported that the company had laid off under 1,000 employees across several divisions.
Read more: https://www.reuters.com/technology/micr ... 023-01-18/
weatheriscool
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Google parent to lay off 12,000 workers as AI focus intensifies

Source: Reuters
Jan 20 (Reuters) - Google's parent Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) is cutting about 12,000 jobs, or 6% of its workforce, it said in a staff memo Friday, as the technology sector reels from layoffs and companies stake their futures on artificial intelligence (AI).

Alphabet's shares were up nearly 3% in pre-market trading. The cuts come at a delicate moment for the U.S. company, which has long been the leader in key areas of AI research.

Alphabet now faces a challenge from Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) in a branch of tech that can, for instance, create virtually any content a user can think up and type in a text box.

Microsoft this week said recession worries were forcing it to shed 10,000 jobs, less than 5% of its workforce, and it would focus on imbuing its products with more AI going forward -- a point Alphabet's CEO Sundar Pichai echoed in the memo.
Read more: https://www.reuters.com/business/google ... 023-01-20/
weatheriscool
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TikTok's Secret 'Heating' Button Can Make Anyone Go Viral
Source: Forbes

-snip-
But that’s not the full story, according to six current and former employees of TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, and internal documents and communications reviewed by Forbes. These sources reveal that in addition to letting the algorithm decide what goes viral, staff at TikTok and ByteDance also secretly hand-pick specific videos and supercharge their distribution, using a practice known internally as “heating.”

-snip-

TikTok has never publicly disclosed that it engages in heating — and while all tech giants engage, to some degree, in efforts to amplify specific posts to their users, they usually clearly label when they do so. Google, Meta, and TikTok itself, for example, have partnered with public health and elections groups to distribute accurate information about COVID-19 and help users find their polling place, making clear disclosures about how and why they chose to promote these messages. (Disclaimer: In a former life, I held policy positions at Facebook and Spotify.)

But sources told Forbes that TikTok has often used heating to court influencers and brands, enticing them into partnerships by inflating their videos’ view count. This suggests that heating has potentially benefitted some influencers and brands — those with whom TikTok has sought business relationships — at the expense of others with whom it has not.

-snip-

For TikTok, fears of political manipulation are tied to concern that the Chinese government could coerce the platform’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, into amplifying or suppressing certain narratives on TikTok. TikTok has acknowledged that it previously censored content critical of China, and last year, former ByteDance employees told BuzzFeed News that another ByteDance app, a now-defunct news aggregator called TopBuzz, had pinned “pro-China messages” to the top of its news feed for U.S. consumers. ByteDance denied the report.

-snip-
Read more: https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker ... -go-viral/
weatheriscool
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Microsoft reports outage for Teams, Outlook, other services
Source: AP

2 hours ago
LONDON (AP) — Microsoft said it’s investigating problems with its online services including its Teams messaging platform and Outlook email system after users around the world reported outages Wednesday.

In a status update, the tech company reported “service degradation” for a number of its Microsoft 365 services.

Thousands of users reported problems with Teams, Outlook, the Azure cloud computing service and XBox Live online gaming service early Wednesday on the Downdetector website, which tracks outage reports. By later in the morning, it showed the number of reports had dropped considerably.

Many users took to social media to complain that the services were down.


Read more: https://apnews.com/article/technology-s ... osition_11
weatheriscool
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Facebook and Instagram to end Trump's suspension from platforms

Source: NBC News

Former President Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts are being reinstated, the social media giant Meta announced Wednesday — a little more than two years after he was suspended from the platforms over incendiary posts on the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.

Trump’s accounts will be reinstated “in the coming weeks” and come with “new guardrails in place to deter repeat offenses,” Nick Clegg, president, global affairs at Meta, said in a statement. Meta owns Facebook and Instagram.

Those guardrails will include "heightened penalties for repeat offenses — penalties which will apply to other public figures whose accounts are reinstated from suspensions related to civil unrest under our updated protocol. In the event that Mr. Trump posts further violating content, the content will be removed and he will be suspended for between one month and two years, depending on the severity of the violation," Clegg said on the company's website.

Trump celebrated the announcement on his social media platform Truth Social. "FACEBOOK, which has lost Billions of Dollars in value since 'deplatforming' your favorite President, me, has just announced that they are reinstating my account. Such a thing should never again happen to a sitting President, or anybody else who is not deserving of retribution!" he wrote.
Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald ... -rcna67524
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caltrek
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Cheaters Beware: ChatGPT Maker Releases AI Detection Tool
January 31, 2023

Introduction:
SAN FRANCISCO (AP via Courthouse News) — The maker of ChatGPT is trying to curb its reputation as a freewheeling cheating machine with a new tool that can help teachers detect if a student or artificial intelligence wrote that homework.

The new AI Text Classifier launched Tuesday by OpenAI follows a weeks-long discussion at schools and colleges over fears that ChatGPT’s ability to write just about anything on command could fuel academic dishonesty and hinder learning.

OpenAI cautions that its new tool – like others already available – is not foolproof. The method for detecting AI-written text “is imperfect and it will be wrong sometimes,” said Jan Leike, head of OpenAI's alignment team tasked to make its systems safer.

“Because of that, it shouldn’t be solely relied upon when making decisions,” Leike said.

Teenagers and college students were among the millions of people who began experimenting with ChatGPT after it launched Nov. 30 as a free application on OpenAI's website. And while many found ways to use it creatively and harmlessly, the ease with which it could answer take-home test questions and assist with other assignments sparked a panic among some educators.
Read more here: https://www.courthousenews.com/cheater ... ion-tool/
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Time_Traveller
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Twitter will charge developers to access its API starting February 9th
February 2, 2023 5:49 AM

Developers will soon have to pay Twitter to be able to use its API. The website has announced through its Twitter Dev account that it will no longer support free access to its API, both versions 1.1 and 2, starting on February 9th. It will launch a "paid basic tier" instead, but the company has yet to reveal how much it would cost. Twitter has been experimenting with new ways to make more money ever since Elon Musk took the helm. The biggest change so far has been Twitter Blue, which evolved into a $8-to-$11-a-month subscription service that allows users to purchase the website's previously elusive blue checkmark.

A New York Times report from last year said Musk and his advisers also discussed the possibility of adding paid direct messages and videos behind a paywall. They even reportedly considered reviving Vine, its short-form video app that it shut down back in 2016. Musk has been exploring all possible sources of income to be able to pay the loans he took when he purchased Twitter for $44 billion. As The Information notes, he borrowed $13 billion from a group of banks to close the deal, and they weren't able to sell the debt to investors as planned. The company now has to pay $1.5 billion every year in interests alone.

Twitter showed signs that it had plans to change the way developers accessed its APIs when third-party clients like Tweetbot suddenly stopped working in January. Later, the company confirmed that it deliberately cut off their access due to "long-standing API rules," even though it previously removed the section in its developer policies that discouraged app-makers from creating something similar to its core service. A few days after third-party Twitter clients went down, the website updated its developer agreement to ban access to its "Licensed Materials to create or attempt to create a substitute or similar service or product to the Twitter Applications."
https://www.engadget.com/twitter-chargi ... 17093.html
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Time_Traveller
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Delete TikTok app to protect your personal data, says Tory MP
3 hours ago

People should delete TikTok from their phones to protect their personal data from “hostile” threats, according to a senior Conservative MP.

Alicia Kearns, who chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee, said users should “without question” get rid of the app as she suggested the video-sharing platform is linked to China’s efforts to build a “tech totalitarian state”.

There have long been concerns around TikTok over its links to China because its parent company, ByteDance, was founded in the country, and critics have raised fears data could be passed to the Chinese state.

In December, TikTok executive Liz Kanter insisted the platform has not been asked for UK user data by the Chinese government and would not provide it if it was.

Speaking after the United States shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon, Ms Kearns told Sky’s Sophy Ridge On Sunday programme: “We are being naive.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/p ... 76058.html
"We all have our time machines, don't we. Those that take us back are memories...And those that carry us forward, are dreams."

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