Social Media & Big Tech news and discussions

[wjfox]

Twitter to make job cuts after Elon Musk takeover

2 hours ago

Twitter says it will inform its staff on Friday about whether they will be laid off following the firm's takeover by Elon Musk.

In an internal email, the social media company said the cuts are "an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path".

The firm added that its offices would be temporarily closed and badge access would be suspended.

The multi-billionaire will be Twitter's chief executive after buying the firm last week in a $44bn (£39.3bn) deal.

"We will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday," Twitter said in the email.

There is speculation that as many as half of Twitter's 8,000 jobs are on the chopping block.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-63495125

[weatheriscool]

Twitter temporarily closes offices as layoffs begin
Source: Reuters

Twitter Inc temporarily closed its offices and cut workers access to internal systems on Friday after telling employees they would be informed by email later in the day about whether they were being laid off.

[snip]

The social media company said in an email to staff it would tell them by 9 a.m. Pacific time on Friday (12 p.m. EDT/1600 GMT) about staff cuts.

"In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday," said the email sent on Thursday, seen by Reuters.

Musk, the world's richest person, is looking to cut around 3,700 Twitter staff, or about half the workforce, as he seeks to slash costs and impose a demanding new work ethic, according to internal plans reviewed by Reuters this week.

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/technology/twit ... ter%20List

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[Time_Traveller]

It will just turn into a right-wing leaning platform within a few months. Get out while you can i say and go to an alternate social platform ASAP.

[Time_Traveller]

Wikipedia co-founder reaching for the glory of Facebook

Jimmy Wales, co-founder of the online encyclopaedia called Wikipedia, launched a social media site intended to compete with Facebook and Twitter.

The 53-year-old internet entrepreneur told journalists: he was inspired to launch a new forum by the superficiality of Facebook and Twitter, and he hopes that the new site will “conquer” Facebook, which he considers to be full of click-bait and misleading news, and which is overflowing with advertisements today. In his words: “People are feeling fed up with all the junk” and fake news.

The new service will enable users to share links pointing to articles, analyses, information, and to start discourses and debates. They can talk about and comment on anything from politics to technological innovations to beekeeping.

Its newsfeed is similar to the one on Facebook, but only in its layout. While, for example, Facebook lists posts with the most shares or comments first, WikiTribune Social places the latest news at the top of the feed. According to plans, the offered services are soon to be expanded: users will be able to suggest valuable, quality content with the click of a button.

Wales established a new firm to run the new social media site, which is not connected to Wikipedia in any way. WikiTribune Social builds on the donations of the users in order to avoid having to publish advertisements, as Jimmy Wales is convinced that ads are responsible for the degradation of content and the questionable or downright bad directions social media is taking. The anti-Facebook will stay free forever, without advertisements.

https://kesgrave.news/wtsocial-the-new-social-network/

[wjfox]

[caltrek]

[caltrek]

Mass Migration from Twitter Is Likely to Be an Uphill Battle – Just Ask Ex-Tumblr Users
by Casey Fiesler
November 4, 2022

Introduction:

(IFL Science) Elon Musk announced that “the bird is freed” when his US$44 billion acquisition of Twitter officially closed on Oct. 27, 2022. Some users on the microblogging platform saw this as a reason to fly away.

Over the course of the next 48 hours, I saw countless announcements on my Twitter feed from people either leaving the platform or making preparations to leave. The hashtags #GoodbyeTwitter, #TwitterMigration and #Mastodon were trending. The decentralized, open source social network Mastodon gained over 100,000 users in just a few days, according to a user counting bot.

As an information scientist who studies online communities, this felt like the beginning of something I’ve seen before. Social media platforms tend not to last forever. Depending on your age and online habits, there’s probably some platform that you miss, even if it still exists in some form. Think of MySpace, LiveJournal, Google+ and Vine.

When social media platforms fall, sometimes the online communities that made their homes there fade away, and sometimes they pack their bags and relocate to a new home. The turmoil at Twitter is causing many of the company’s users to consider leaving the platform. Research on previous social media platform migrations shows what might lie ahead for Twitter users who fly the coop.

Several years ago, I led a research project with Brianna Dym, now at University of Maine, where we mapped the platform migrations of nearly 2,000 people over a period of almost two decades. The community we examined was transformative fandom, fans of literary and popular culture series and franchises who create art using those characters and settings.

Read more here: https://www.iflscience.com/mass-migrat ... ers-66075

[caltrek]

Elon Musk Just Axed Twitter Teams Like Human Rights, Accessibility, AI, Ethics and Curation
by Taylor Hatmaker
November 4, 2022

Introduction:

(TechCrunch) Elon Musk is wasting no time making extremely deep cuts at Twitter, calving off many teams doing essential work at the company in the process. News of layoffs swept the platform on Friday, showing that Twitter’s billionaire owner is painting in broad strokes when it comes to trimming down the team by half.

The same day that Musk complained about supposed activists impacting Twitter’s ad revenue, he cut some departments outright — actions that are sure to make advertisers all the more skittish about Musk’s ability to steer a ship with a skeleton crew. As he’s only owned the company for a single week, it’s impossible to imagine that such sweeping layoffs won’t lead to dysfunction at Twitter, from the content moderation policies sure to prove crucial for Tuesday’s U.S. midterm elections to product teams keeping the platform humming.

Former Twitter employees affected by the layoffs describe a chaotic situation with little official communication beyond abruptly receiving a termination letter or seeing their access to internal tools like Slack or databases suddenly revoked. In the information vacuum created by Musk’s disorganized and sudden approach to the layoffs, some employees aren’t sure if their colleagues are still employed or if their teams continue to exist at all.

The cuts appear to be as broad as they were deep, affecting everything from Twitter’s trust and safety teams that handle content moderation to its marketing department. Here are some of the teams either eliminated outright or hit hard by the layoffs, and what the new incarnation of Twitter will be losing in the process.

Human Rights…

Accessibility Experience…

Communications…

Machine learning ethics, transparency and accountability…

Public policy… (See link provided below for some discussion of each team mentioned above)

Read more here: https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/04/elon ... -layoffs/

[caltrek]

Open Letter to Chief Advertisers on Twitter


Introduction:

Open letter to the CEOs of Amazon, Anheuser-Busch, Apple Inc., Capital One Financial Corporation, CBS, CenturyLink, Coca-Cola Company, Comcast Corporation, Best Buy Co. Inc., Disney, Google, Home Box Office, Inc. (HBO), IBM, Merck & Co., Meta Platforms, Inc., Mondelez International, PepsiCo, Inc., Procter & Gamble, Unilever and Verizon

Dear CEOs: Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter came with his promise to advertisers like you that the social network would not transform into a “free-for-all hellscape” and would remain “warm and welcoming to all.”

But beware: Musk’s promises in no way accurately portray his plans for Twitter, nor are they a reflection of the evolving reality of the platform as it transforms by the minute under Musk. If Elon Musk follows through with just a fraction of what he has already committed to doing, then Twitter will not and can not be a safe platform for brands. Urgent action is needed by advertisers.

Among Musk’s first acts as owner was to spread a dangerous conspiracy theory about a violent attack on the husband of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. He also fired several top executives, including Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s head of legal policy, trust, and safety.

Within 24 hours of Musk taking ownership, the platform was inundated with hate and disinformation. Not only are extremists celebrating Musk's takeover of Twitter, they are seeing it as a new opportunity to post the most abusive, harassing, and racist language and imagery. This includes clear threats of violence against people with whom they disagree. Without deliberate efforts by Twitter to address this type of abuse and hate, your brands will be actively supporting accelerating extremism.

Additionally, he has threatened to drastically reduce employee headcount, putting those responsible for maintaining community standards and protecting user safety first on the chopping block. Musk has also publicly supported the idea of restoring the accounts of prominent individuals Twitter had suspended for inciting and glorifying political violence, spreading election- and COVID-related disinformation and abusing people based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, or disability.

Your companies are Twitter's 20 largest US advertisers, spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Your posture and response to Musk’s plans during this moment matter for your brands. We, the undersigned organizations, call on you to notify Musk and publicly commit that you will cease all advertising on Twitter globally if he follows through on his plans to undermine brand safety and community standards including gutting content moderation. This means that Musk must not roll back the basic moderation practices Twitter already has on the books now and must commit to actually enforcing those rules.

Read more here: https://www.freepress.net/sites/defaul ... final.pdf

Sponsors of the letter include, but are not limited to, Common Cause, Friends of the Earth, NAACP, Public Citizen, and the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Edit: See also my post of Sun Nov 06, 2022 7:57 am on the Labor Rights News Thread regarding a class action lawsuit being filed on behalf of the many workers affected by Musk's layoffs

[caltrek]

The Internet Is Full of Predators. Omegle Lets You Meet Them.
by David Alm
November 4, 2022

Extract:

(Mother Jones) Omegle is a website that pairs users at random for one-on-one video chats. “The internet is full of cool people,” the company boasts; “Omegle lets you meet them.” It was created by Leif K-Brooks in 2009 when he was 18 years old. (Chatroulette, a similar site based in Moscow, launched eight months later.)

But over the years, according to a lawsuit filed against Omegle, the “most regular and popular use” for the “cool people” on Omegle “is for live sexual activity, such as online masturbation.” For some men, semi-public masturbation is as far as it goes. Others use Omegle to persuade children to perform sex acts, expose them to porn, or even meet in real life, according to court documents. The men who use Omegle to sexually exploit children have been the subject of numerous federal investigations, and the company has been the target of a multimillion-dollar lawsuit, and a UN Special Rapporteur investigation.

Even so, many people over 30 have never heard of it; a lot of teens have, thanks in part to the pandemic. In January 2020, the site had 26 million monthly visits. Six months later, the New York Times ran a piece on Omegle’s popularity among teenagers stuck at home, and social media stars who started using the platform to keep a connection with their fans. The article also revealed the site’s dark side. “There’s the shock factor of it all,” an 18-year-old YouTuber named Nailea Devora told the Times. “There’s a lot of sexual porn stuff. We just film our reactions, like, ‘OMG I didn’t want to see that!’” By January 2021, according to the internet data firm Semrush, the site had 54 million monthly visits, due largely to Omegle users sharing videos of their more innocuous encounters to other apps. On TikTok alone, for example, videos tagged “Omegle” have racked up nearly 11 billion views.

Read more here: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2 ... eet-them/

caltrek’s comment: These are the sorts of things that can happen if we pursue the course of demanding an absolute right to free speech. Modern social media technical capabilities have forced upon us situations and choices that in some ways are radically different than anything we have experienced before. That we can do some things that can arguably be a matter of “free speech” does not mean that we should.

Of course, one of the problems comes with giving power to moderators, who may then abuse their power in opposition to people who simply have reasonably different political opinions. Is there a middle way that avoids these extremes?

[weatheriscool]

Facebook Parent Meta Is Preparing to Notify Employees of Large-Scale Layoffs This Week
Source: Wall Street Journal

Meta Platforms Inc. is planning to begin large-scale layoffs this week, according to people familiar with the matter, in what could be the largest round in a recent spate of tech job cuts after the industry’s rapid growth during the pandemic.

The layoffs are expected to affect many thousands of employees and an announcement is planned to come as soon as Wednesday, according to the people. Meta reported more than 87,000 employees at the end of September. Company officials already told employees to cancel nonessential travel beginning this week, the people said.

The planned layoffs would be the first broad head-count reductions to occur in the company’s 18-year history. While smaller on a percentage basis than the cuts at Twitter Inc. this past week, which hit about half of that company’s staff, the number of Meta employees expected to lose their jobs could be the largest to date at a major technology corporation in a year that has seen a tech industry retrenchment.

“Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here,” Mr. Zuckerberg told employees at a companywide meeting at the end of June.

Read more: https://www.wsj.com/articles/meta-is-pr ... 1667767794

[Time_Traveller]

Oops! Elon Musk's Twitter Reportedly Wants Some People Back After Firing Them

7 hours ago (Nov 07, 2022 04:10)

Twitter is reportedly asking some of the thousands of workers it fired to come back to work after the company fired thousands en-masse on Friday.

What Happened: The Elon Musk-led company is asking some staff members to return as they were laid off by mistake, reported Bloomberg, citing two people familiar with the matter.

Others were let go before the social media company's management took into consideration that they may be needed to build features envisioned by Musk, according to Bloomberg sources.

Platformer writer Casey Newton tweeted apparent excerpts from Twitter's Slack, which pointed to the company needing help for Android and iOS mobile operating systems.

"I'll do some research but if any of you who have been in contact with folks who might come back and who we think will help us, please nominate tomorrow before 4
— Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) November 6, 2022

Twitter did not immediately respond to Benzinga's request for comment on the development.

https://uk.investing.com/news/stock-mar ... em-2813682

[weatheriscool]

Twitter users can soon get blue check for $7.99 monthly fee
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-11-twi ... y-fee.html
by Barbara Ortutay

Twitter has announced a subscription service for $7.99 a month that includes a blue check now given only to verified accounts as new owner Elon Musk works to overhaul the platform's verification system just ahead of U.S. midterm elections.

In an update to Apple iOS devices available in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.K., Twitter said users who "sign up now" for the new "Twitter Blue with verification" can receive the blue check next to their names "just like the celebrities, companies and politicians you already follow."

But Twitter employee Esther Crawford tweeted Saturday that the "new Blue isn't live yet—the sprint to our launch continues but some folks may see us making updates because we are testing and pushing changes in real-time." Verified accounts did not appear to be losing their checks so far.

It was not immediately clear when the subscription would go live. Crawford told The Associated Press in a Twitter message that it is coming "soon but it hasn't launched yet." Twitter did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

Anyone being able to get the blue check could lead to confusion and the rise of disinformation ahead of Tuesday's elections, but Musk tweeted Saturday in response to a question about the risk of impostors impersonating verified profiles—such as politicians and election officials—that "Twitter will suspend the account attempting impersonation and keep the money!"

[caltrek]

Elon Musk Encourages Independents to Vote for a Republican Congress Ahead of Midterms
by Lauren Feiner and Ashley Capoot
November 7, 2022

Introduction:

(CNBC) New Twitter owner Elon Musk weighed in on the upcoming midterm elections and tweeted on Monday that “independent-minded” people should vote for a Republican Congress.

“Shared power curbs the worst excesses of both parties, therefore I recommend voting for a Republican Congress, given that the Presidency is Democratic,” Musk wrote in a tweet Monday.

In a follow-up tweet, the billionaire added, “Hardcore Democrats or Republicans never vote for the other side, so independent voters are the ones who actually decide who’s in charge!”

Musk tweeted in April that the platform must be politically neutral in order to maintain the public’s trust. But in recent days Musk has hit back at many of his critics on Twitter, including progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and replied favorably to numerous prominent conservative media figures.

A Republican-controlled Congress with a Democratic president would make it less likely for major changes impacting tech platforms to become law.

Read more here: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/07/musk-e ... ions.html

[Time_Traveller]

Elon Musk can't tweet his way out of this

November 8, 2022

If you're one of the Twitter users who fled to Mastodon after Elon Musk bought the service, we regret to inform that you missed one of the hellsite's finest hours.

The weekend left Musk looking incompetent (his $8 blue check service arrived, didn't work, vanished again), indecisive (managers are trying to bring back some of the employees he fired) and intemperate (he banned comedian Kathy Griffin's account for "impersonating" him – which resulted in so many parodies, Musk was briefly nowhere near the top search result for his own name). One widely-shared tweet captured the full flailing feel of it:

Monday saw Musk pivot back to his usual outrage-generating, Trump-like posts. He endorsed the GOP (again), shared a meme that used a picture of a Wehrmacht soldier in World War II, and posted and deleted a joke that was apparently about jerking off to Mastodon. But users were catching wise, and one of the things they caught was that Tesla stock kept sliding after he tweeted. Musk was literally impoverishing himself.

By the time you read this, Musk may well have posted a half-dozen new bids to seize control of the narrative. But the narrative called math stubbornly refuses to be changed. And the math says that even Elon Musk cannot afford what all this is costing him – especially not when the worth of his wealth is largely in Tesla investors' hands.

"Twitter news keeps getting worse," Gary Black, one of Tesla's top investors and a Musk ally, wrote Monday. "Elon's top engineers shouldn't be running Twitter … Elon's threats aren't helping."

https://mashable.com/article/elon-musk-twitter-future