Social Media & Big Tech news and discussions

weatheriscool
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Musk sends fresh letter to scrap Twitter deal after whistleblower claims
Source: Reuters


Elon Musk has sent an additional letter of deal termination to Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) to include a recent whistleblower complaint from former security head of the social media firm as another reason to scrap the $44 billion deal.

Last week, Peiter Zatko, a famed hacker known as "Mudge", said in his complaint that Twitter prioritized user growth over reducing spam and falsely claimed it had a solid security plan. read more

If the allegation are true, then Twitter has breached some of the provisions of the merger agreement, Musk and his legal team said in a letter dated Aug. 29.

Twitter, however, said in its regulatory filing the fresh termination notice was invalid and wrongful under the deal terms.
Read more: https://www.reuters.com/technology/musk ... 022-08-30/
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caltrek
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'January 6th All Over Again': Facebook Accused of Fueling Bolsonaro's Coup-Mongering
by Jake Johnson
September 6, 2022

Introduction:
(Common Dreams) Trailing badly in the polls with the presidential election less than a month away, far-right Brazilian leader Jair Bolsonaro is attempting to galvanize his supporters with incendiary rhetoric and lies about the integrity of the vote—and Facebook is supplying him with a megaphone to do so.

That's according to a new report released Monday by SumOfUs, a global group that's been tracking Facebook's failure to combat blatant disinformation on its platform ahead of Brazil's closely watched October 2 presidential election.

The report finds that Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp—each owned by Meta—"are being used by Bolsonaro and his allies to push election lies and grow Brazil's own 'Stop the Steal' movement," a reference to former U.S. President Donald Trump's effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential contest.

That campaign culminated in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and observers fear that similar or far worse violence could occur in Brazil, where Bolsonaro has indicated he may not concede defeat and hinted at a coup attempt if his leftist opponent, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, prevails.

"This is January 6th all over again—Meta is actively helping mobilize an online army in Brazil that's peddling conspiracy theories about the integrity of the election and threatening a violent coup," said Flora Rebello Arduini, campaign director for SumOfUs. "Regulators the world over need to take urgent action, or we'll only see these kinds of attacks on democracy intensify."
Read more here: https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022 ... mongering
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caltrek
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We Now Interrupt Nothing to Bring You News of the Queen’s Death
by Jacob Rosenberg
September 9, 2022

Introduction:
(Mother Jones) The news of Queen Elizabeth’s death sent off a wave of tributes, shitposts, and denunciations for the departed monarch from people around the world. We all waved goodbye; Ireland even did it with just its middle finger.

As I watched the outpouring of grief and antipathy, one thing was notable: our inability to shut up.

Historically, when major news happens, the broadcast is stopped for a special announcement. A reverent halt begins. Now, the opposite appears to have swallowed that tradition. Major news sparks a worldwide bang in the content machine. The queen’s death did not stop us. It got us started—and now we’re in frenetic overdrive.
Read more here: https://www.motherjones.com/mojo-wire/ ... a-deluge/
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Twitter shareholders approve Musk’s $44bn buyout as trial looms
14 Sep 2022 06:40

Twitter shareholders approved billionaire Elon Musk’s proposed $44 billion buyout, paving the way for a trial next month to determine the deal’s fate.

A majority of Twitter shareholders voted in favour of accepting Musk’s $54.20-a-share offer to acquire the social-networking company, according to a preliminary vote count read on Tuesday. Musk made the bid in April and has since sought to rescind it. Twitter’s board — along with two prominent advisory firms — had encouraged investors to ratify the deal. The company’s shares were little changed after the vote and closed at $41.74, well below Musk’s proposed price.

The special shareholder meeting convened for the tally lasted 7 minutes, with polls open for about 3 minutes. Investors could also submit votes for several weeks ahead of the meeting, and Twitter sent numerous messages encouraging them to vote ahead of time.

While investor approval was required to finalise the deal, its consummation is far from a sure thing. Musk in July said he was canceling the agreement, claiming that Twitter misled him about the size of the company’s user base and the number of bots and spam accounts. Twitter denies those accusations, and sued Musk in a Delaware court to force him to complete the acquisition. Musk then counter-sued the company.

The company said 98.6% of the votes cast were in favour of the deal. Musk, Twitter’s largest shareholder, didn’t vote at all, according to two people familiar with his decision. Musk owned nearly 10% of Twitter — more than 73 million shares — when he agreed to acquire the company.
https://www.moneyweb.co.za/news/tech/tw ... ial-looms/

Unfortunately, this is another step of me officially leaving Twitter. Some people have already left for alternate Twitter social media platforms.
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Post by wjfox »

This SUCKS.

And it will encourage more people to use adblockers, which has a knock-on effect to content creators like me (who use minimal advertising).

-----

YouTube Free is Silently Testing 5 Ads, instead of 2, Before Your Video Starts

Sep 13, 2022

YouTube, the video-sharing social media platform wholly owned by Google, has recently silently implemented a new ad format starting this September 2022. YouTube users who are not subscribed to YouTube Premium, will now receive up to 5 advertisements to be watched, before your video starts.

The news broke out when several YouTube Free users started complaining on Twitter and Reddit that they have been receiving 5 ads instead of 2, before they could watch their YouTube video.

For several YouTube Free users, they reported that they have received 5 unskippable advertisements as opposed to skippable advertisements before a video-watching session, and this caused dissent and upset among the users.

https://www.gizmochina.com/2022/09/13/y ... eo-starts/


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wjfox wrote: Thu Sep 15, 2022 11:55 am This SUCKS.

And it will encourage more people to use adblockers, which has a knock-on effect to content creators like me (who use minimal advertising).

-----

YouTube Free is Silently Testing 5 Ads, instead of 2, Before Your Video Starts

Sep 13, 2022

YouTube, the video-sharing social media platform wholly owned by Google, has recently silently implemented a new ad format starting this September 2022. YouTube users who are not subscribed to YouTube Premium, will now receive up to 5 advertisements to be watched, before your video starts.

The news broke out when several YouTube Free users started complaining on Twitter and Reddit that they have been receiving 5 ads instead of 2, before they could watch their YouTube video.

For several YouTube Free users, they reported that they have received 5 unskippable advertisements as opposed to skippable advertisements before a video-watching session, and this caused dissent and upset among the users.

https://www.gizmochina.com/2022/09/13/y ... eo-starts/


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Or like me walk away from your PC/Laptop until it's gone.
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-H.G Wells.
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caltrek
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Zoom Down In Major Outage
by Amanda Silberling
September 15, 2022

Introduction:
(TechCrunch) If you had a meeting you really didn’t want to attend this morning, it’s your lucky day. Zoom’s status website shows there is a major outage, affecting users’ ability to join meetings. According to the crowd-sourced DownDetector, tens of thousands of Zoom users are reporting outages this morning, beginning around 10:30 AM ET.

“We are aware of issues currently impacting Zoom. Our engineering team is investigating this matter,” a Zoom spokesperson told TechCrunch. Users eager to hop back on their meetings can keep track of the latest updates at status.zoom.com.

On DownDetector, most reports show trouble joining a conference. Geographically, outage reports are streaming in from across the U.S. and Europe, though they may extend to other regions as well.
Read more here: https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/15/zoom ... r-outage/
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caltrek
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Federal Appeals Court Upholds Controversial Texas Social Media Law Restricting Content Moderation
by Brian Fung
September 16, 2022

Introduction:
(CNN Business) — A federal appeals court on Friday upheld a controversial Texas law that restricts the ability of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to moderate content on their platforms, setting up a potential Supreme Court showdown while also renewing uncertainties about how tech platforms may operate in the state in the future.

The Texas law, known as HB 20, does not violate the First Amendment rights of tech platforms by requiring them to host speech they find objectionable, according to the decision by a three-judge panel at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

“Today we reject the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say,” the judges wrote.
The decision is a defeat for the tech industry, which had sued to block the law, alleging it was unconstitutional. Earlier this year, another appellate court blocked a similar law in Florida from going into effect, citing the same arguments.

Texas officials passed HB 20 last year amid allegations that tech platforms unfairly censor conservative speech. Social media companies have widely denied the claims, but the Texas law imposes sweeping obligations on platforms, prohibiting them from moving to “block, ban, remove, deplatform, demonetize, de-boost, restrict, deny equal access or visibility to, or otherwise discriminate against expression.”
Read more here: https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/16/tech/te ... dex.html

Extract:
(Tech Dirt) (Federal Appeals Court) Judge Oldham insists that concerns about forcing websites to post speech from Nazis, terrorist propaganda, and Holocaust denial are purely hypothetical. Really.

The Platforms do not directly engage with any of these concerns. Instead, their primary contention—beginning on page 1 of their brief and repeated throughout and at oral argument—is that we should declare HB 20 facially invalid because it prohibits the Platforms from censoring “pro-Nazi speech, terrorist propaganda, [and] Holocaust denial[s].” Red Br. at 1.

Far from justifying pre-enforcement facial invalidation, the Platforms’ obsession with terrorists and Nazis proves the opposite. The Supreme Court has instructed that “(i)n determining whether a law is facially invalid,” we should avoid “speculat[ing] about ‘hypothetical’ or ‘imaginary’ cases.” Wash. State Grange, 552 U.S. at 449–50. Overbreadth doctrine has a “tendency . . . to summon forth an endless stream of fanciful hypotheticals,” and this case is no exception. United States v. Williams, 553 U.S. 285, 301 (2008). But it’s improper to exercise the Article III judicial power based on “hypothetical cases thus imagined.” Raines, 362 U.S. at 22; cf. SinenengSmith, 140 S. Ct. at 1585–86 (Thomas, J., concurring) (explaining the tension between overbreadth adjudication and the constitutional limits on judicial power).
[/i]

These are not hypotheticals. This is literally what these websites have to deal with on a daily basis. And which, under Texas’ law, they no longer could do.

Oldham continually focuses (incorrectly and incoherently) on the idea that editorial discretion is censorship. There’s a reason that we’ve spent the last few years explaining how the two are wholly different — and part of it was to avoid people like Oldham getting confused. Apparently it didn’t work.
For the lengthy and technical article in TechDirt discussing this decision: https://www.techdirt.com/2022/09/16/5t ... moderate/
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caltrek
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Florida Asks Supreme Court to Review Social Media Censorship Law
by Kelsey Reichmann
September 21, 2022

Introduction:
WASHINGTON (Courthouse News) — Florida’s attorney general on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court to settle a controversial legal battle playing out across the country as states attempt to regulate how social media companies moderate content on their sites.

The petition challenges a ruling on a Florida law aimed at punishing social media platforms for removing “conservative ideas” from their sites. According to Florida, social media companies have developed a “censorial streak” that allows them to manipulate “a critical forum in our marketplace of ideas.”

“In S.B. 7072, Florida took point in preventing social-media platforms from abusing their power over the public square,” Florida Solicitor General Henry Whitaker wrote in the state’s petition. “The Act, as relevant here, requires disclosure about how and when the platforms censor speech and requires the platforms to host some speech that they would otherwise prefer not to host.”

Florida’s law — known as SB 7072 — requires social media companies to disclose how and when the platforms censors speech, and to host speech they disagree with. It allows the state to fine large companies $250,000 a day if they remove an account of a statewide political candidate, and $25,000 a day if they remove an account of someone running for a local office.

Disclosure requirements included in the law require social media companies to divulge standards for how they censor, deplatform, and shadow-ban users. Companies would be required to notify users if they are being censored in any way and allow users to see how other users view their posts so they can decide for themselves if they are being censored or shadowbanned.
Read more here: https://www.courthousenews.com/florida ... ship-law/
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caltrek
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Telegram Cuts Its Subscription Fee by More Than Half in India
by Manish Singh
October 1, 2022

Introduction:
(TechCrunch) Telegram has cut the monthly subscription fee for its premium tier by more than half in India, just months after introducing the offering as it attempts to aggressively cash in on a large user base in one of its biggest markets.

In a message to users in India on Saturday, Telegram said it was making the subscription available in the country at a discount. The monthly subscription now costs customers 179 Indian rupees ($2.2), down from 469 Indian rupees ($5.74) earlier. The app’s monthly subscription, called Telegram Premium, costs between $4.99 to $6 in every other market.

Users who have not received the message are also seeing the new price in the settings section of the app, they said and TechCrunch independently verified.

India is one of the largest markets for Telegram. The instant messaging app has amassed over 120 million monthly active users in the country, according to analytics firm data.ai. (An industry executive shared the figures with TechCrunch.) That figure makes the app the second most popular in its category in the country, only second to WhatsApp, which has courted over half a billion users in the South Asian market.

Telegram, which claims to have amassed over 700 million monthly active users globally, introduced the optional subscription offering in June this year in a move it hopes will improve its finances and continuing to support a free tier.
Read more here: https://techcrunch.com/2022/10/01/tele ... e-change/

caltrek’s comment: One thing that I learned in reading the rest of the article is that Telegram is headquartered in Dubai.
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