Social Media & Big Tech news and discussions

[weatheriscool]

Twitter becomes first major social platform to allow weed ads
Source: Politico

Elon Musk is backing up all his 420 tweets.

The owner of Twitter, who sparked a media firestorm after he puffed on a spliff during an appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, is making good on speculation that his acquisition of the platform might make it more cannabis-friendly. The company changed its policy to allow U.S. cannabis companies to advertise on its platform Tuesday — although with numerous restrictions.

“It is a groundbreaking thing for many cannabis advertisers to be able to reach their markets and their audiences without doing any type of workarounds,” said Amy Deneson, co-founder of the Cannabis Media Council, a trade association focused on cannabis education.

To advertise on Twitter, cannabis companies must be pre-authorized by Twitter and meet many requirements. Perhaps the most significant restriction is that cannabis companies can’t promote or offer for sale cannabis products.

Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/1 ... k-00083026

[wjfox]

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki steps down after nine years

2 hours ago

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down after nine years in the role.

In a blog post, she said she had "decided to start a new chapter focused on my family, health and personal projects I'm passionate about."

YouTube's chief product officer, Neal Mohan, will take over as head of the Google-owned video platform.

"The time is right for me, and I feel able to do this because we have an incredible leadership team in place at YouTube," Ms Wojcicki said.

Ms Wojcicki added she would continue to work at YouTube in the "short term" to "support Neal and help with the transition."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-64675997

[wjfox]

[Time_Traveller]

Hmm, you wonder why i left ages ago, just before the takeover.

[ººº]

Hmm, you wonder why i left ages ago, just before the takeover.

It was already going down that route and Musk has done absolutely nothing to stop it, maybe even accelerating it.

[Time_Traveller]

Instagram to launch new $11.99/month ‘Meta Verified’ subscription with verification badge

19/02/2023

As rumored at the beginning of the month, Facebook-owned Instagram may soon take a leaf out of Twitter’s book by allowing users to buy a blue verification badge, with a line of code discovered referencing a “paid blue badge” and a new subscription.

According to social media consultant and industry analyst Matt Navarra, the new verified subscription service will be called ‘Meta Verified,’ offering subscribers customer support, prioritization in comments, exclusive stickers to be used in Stories, plus the platform’s verification badge.

Last year, as part of Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s rampant efforts to monetise the platform following his turbulent $44 billion buyout, Twitter allowed any user to purchase the once-sought after blue verification badge as part of the service’s pay-monthly Twitter Blue subscription, leading to a spate of significant impersonations and confusion on the platform as any user could purchase the once-meaningful blue badge and claim their account represented whoever they wished, with no clear way to differentiate genuine accounts from impersonators.

Despite the flaws with Twitter’s new pay-to-play verification system, Facebook-owned Instagram appears to be developing a similar feature that would allow users to add a blue verification badge to their profile by subscribing to a new pay-monthly subscription service.

According to Navarra, the new ‘Meta Verified’ subscription will only be available to individuals and not business accounts.

https://www.theapplepost.com/2023/02/19 ... uecmuXdrpE

What birdy does, Meta soon follows.

[wjfox]

China hits out at US over TikTok ban on federal devices

34 minutes ago

China has accused the US of overreacting after federal employees were ordered to remove the video app TikTok from government-issued phones.

On Monday, the White House gave government agencies 30 days to ensure that employees did not have the Chinese-owned app on federal devices.

The order follows similar moves by the EU and Canada in recent weeks.

A spokesperson for China's foreign ministry accused the US of abusing state power to suppress foreign firms.

"We firmly oppose those wrong actions," spokeswoman Mao Ning told reporters during a news briefing on Tuesday. "The US government should respect the principles of market economy and fair competition, stop suppressing the companies and provide an open, fair and non-discriminatory environment for foreign companies in the US."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-64795548

[wjfox]

This is what freedumb looks like.

-----

Twitter can’t protect you from trolls any more, insiders say

12 hours ago

Twitter insiders have told the BBC that the company is no longer able to protect users from trolling, state-co-ordinated disinformation and child sexual exploitation, following lay-offs and changes under owner Elon Musk.

Exclusive academic data plus testimony from Twitter users backs up their allegations, suggesting hate is thriving under Mr Musk's leadership, with trolls emboldened, harassment intensifying and a spike in accounts following misogynistic and abusive profiles.

Current and former employees of the company tell BBC Panorama that features intended to protect Twitter users from trolling and harassment are proving difficult to maintain, amid what they describe as a chaotic working environment in which Mr Musk is shadowed by bodyguards at all times. I've spoken to dozens, with several going on the record for the first time.

The former head of content design says everyone on her team - which created safety measures such as nudge buttons - has been sacked. She later resigned. Internal research by Twitter suggests those safety measures reduced trolling by 60%. An engineer working for Twitter told me "nobody's taking care" of this type of work now, likening the platform to a building that seems fine from the outside, but inside is "on fire".

Twitter has not replied to the BBC's request for comment.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-64804007

[weatheriscool]

Twitter hit with one of the biggest outages since Elon Musk took over

Source: CNN Business

New York CNN — Twitter’s website was inaccessible for many users on Monday while others reported issues seeing photos and clicking through links in the app, marking one of the most wide-ranging service disruptions to date under new owner Elon Musk. Some users who attempted to load Twitter.com or TweetDeck, a service that allows users to organize their Twitter feed into lists, were met with an error message: “your current API plan does not include access to this endpoint.”

Other users were able to access the site (although it appeared to load slowly), but they were met with the same error message when clicking on links. Outage tracker site DownDetector showed more than 8,000 Twitter outage reports around noon on Monday. For users who were able to access the platform, “Twitter API” was trending as people tweeted about the issues.

“Some parts of Twitter may not be working as expected right now,” the company said in a tweet. “We made an internal change that had some unintended consequences. We’re working on this now and will share an update when it’s fixed.” In a separate tweet on Monday, Musk said: “This platform is so brittle (sigh). Will be fixed shortly.” Within about an hour, the issues appeared to have largely resolved. “Things should now be working as normal,” the company tweeted around 1 pm ET.

Monday’s outage marked the second Twitter glitch in less than a week and the third in under a month. Last Wednesday, some Twitter users who opened up their “for you” timeline were greeted with a blank screen and a message saying, “welcome to your timeline,” encouraging them to follow other users to get tweets to show up even if they already followed various accounts. Other users were met with a “Welcome to Twitter!” message as if they had just joined the platform. Three weeks ago, Twitter users encountered various issues with the platform, including the inability to tweet, send direct messages or follow new accounts.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/06/tech/twi ... index.html

[wjfox]

TikTok to be banned on UK government phones

4 minutes ago

Chinese-owned social media app TikTok is set to be banned on phones and other devices used by government ministers and civil servants on security grounds.

Cabinet Office Minister Oliver Dowden will make a statement to MPs later.

There has been no official comment - but Security Minister Tom Tugendhat had asked the National Cyber Security Centre to review the issue.

TikTok has strongly denied allegations that it hands users' data to the Chinese government.

The government has come under pressure from senior MPs to follow the United States and the European Commission in banning the app.

The US banned TikTok from official devices in December, and the Commission followed suit last month.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-64975672

[caltrek]

House Rebuke of TikTok CEO is a Bipartisan Affair
by Benjamin S. Weiss
March 23, 2023

Introduction:

WASHINGTON (Courthouse News) — A video of a firing handgun punctuated a hearing Thursday morning with the CEO of TikTok as some lawmakers pushed for a national ban against the social media platform.

The short TikTok clip, played by Florida Representative Kat Cammack, depicted what appeared to be a 3D rendering of a Glock 17 handgun firing with the caption “me asf [as f**k] at the House Energy and Commerce Committee on 03/23/23.”

After Cammack showed the video posted Feb. 10 during the meeting of the lower chamber’s energy panel, TikTok moderators quickly removed it. The clip had a little over 450 likes — thin gruel for a platform where some creators command engagement in the hundreds of thousands — but lawmakers positioned it regardless as an example of the threat posed by TikTok.

Cammack called it a blatant display of how vulnerable everyday users are on the platform.

“This video has been up for 41 days,” the Florida Republican told TikTok CEO Shou Chew, who was invited to give testimony. “It is a direct threat to the chairwoman of this committee and the people in this room. … You expect us to believe that you are capable of maintaining the data privacy and security of 150 million Americans, when you can’t even protect the people in this room?”

Read more here: https://www.courthousenews.com/house-r ... n-affair/

caltrek’s comment: Defenders of free speech may object to the harsh scrutiny and criticism being levied against Tik Tok. Still, a lot rests on how truly independent from mainland China is Tik Tok?

Of course, one could also turn that argument around and apply it to social media platforms based in the U.S but operating in a foreign country. As an example, it would be a shame to see the Future Timeline forum banned or severely restricted across the globe simply because it is based in England. Still a big part of the equation rests on the size of the social media platform in question. The larger the size, the more appropriate it is to have oversight. So, yes, that even means that if certain foreign countries decide they don’t want a U.S based firm that is hogging up too much of their attending audience, then protective actions may be justified.

[wjfox]

[caltrek]

Congress Might Want a TikTok Ban, But Their Questions Suggest Going Further
by Ali Breland
March 24, 2023

Introduction:

(Mother Jones) What if the United States government banned every single social media app? Not just TikTok. All of them. Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter–sayonara. It may sound ludicrous, but if you apply the logic behind the kinds of questions posed at Thursday’s House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on the data security risks and alleged harm to children posed by TikTok, that’s what the members inadvertently proposed.
During the hearing, Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.) called out TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew for spreading dangerous viral trends—like the blackout challenge, which shows kids how to intentionally pass out. Rep. Gus Billarakis (R-Fla.) lamented TikTok serving users videos sympathetic to suicide. Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) criticized illicit drug sales on the platform. Rep. Kim Schrier (D-Wash.) challenged the company for being addictive.

Carter, Billarakis, Guthrie, and others all essentially asked the same thing: What if we lived in a world where there was no algorithmic amplification of harmful content? That’s basically the same as asking: What if we lived in a world where there was no such thing as social media?

To be clear, encouraging self-harm, facilitating illegal drug sales, and deploying addictive design are bad, but they’re also not unique to TikTok. Every other social media platform has been a vector, to varying degrees, for such harms. Snapchat has become a vital tool for some drug dealers. Tumblr was infamously home to pro-eating disorder content. More bad things have happened on Facebook and YouTube than anyone could reasonably count. While it stands to reason TikTok’s powerful algorithm, which is uniquely good at widely distributing content, is probably better at distributing problematic, that isn’t desirable at any scale.

Alas, social media companies in their current form probably can’t exist without producing this kind of deleterious runoff. They’ve tried to get rid of the worst of it for years; they know that the PR risk of drug dealing and social security numbers theft is not worth the profit boost that minuscule subset of users brings. The same goes for content that directly encourages eating disorders or other self-harm.

Read more here: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2 ... hearing/

caltrek’s comment: All of which reminds of the expression that “even paranoid people have enemies.”

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[caltrek]

TikTok Hires Former Biden Staffer as it Fights U.S. Ban
by Donald Shaw
March 24, 2023

Introduction:

(Sludge) On the same day its CEO appeared before Congress for the first time, social video company TikTok hired a new lobbyist in D.C. who formerly worked for President Joe Biden.

Ankit Desai, the new TikTok lobbyist, was a legislative correspondent for Biden for 10 months in 2005 while he was a U.S. senator, as Sludge previously reported. Since January 2021, Desai has been a managing member at lobbying firm ABI Associates.

TikTok hired Desai to lobby in D.C. on “Issues related to internet technology, regulation of content platforms,” according to a disclosure filed with the Senate.

The video platform company is under increasing scrutiny from lawmakers who say they are concerned about its data surveillance practices as well as national security concerns stemming from the fact that it is owned by a Chinese company. In December 2022, President Biden signed into law legislation from Sen. John Hawley (R-Mo.) that bans TikTok from being installed on federal devices. Earlier this month, the White House called on TikTok’s owner, ByteDance, to sell the app in order to avoid it being banned in the U.S. by Congress, a ramping up of its pressure which had previously focused on getting the company to sign a security deal with the U.S.

Desai is just one of the people in the Biden orbit who TikTok has recently hired. Public relations firm SKDK was also recently employed by the company according to reports. SKDK is very closely tied to the Biden administration, with many of its former employees having shifted to working in the administration in recent years. Most notable among these individuals is Anita Dunn, a founder and former partner at the firm, who is a senior advisor to Biden.

Read more here: https://readsludge.com/2023/03/24/tikto ... s-u-s-ban/

[weatheriscool]

Twitter pushes hate speech, extremist content into 'For You' pages
Source: Washington Post

SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter is amplifying hate speech in its “For You” timeline, an unintended side effect of an algorithm that is supposed to show users more of what they want.

According to a Washington Post analysis of Twitter’s recommendation algorithm, accounts that followed “extremists” — hate-promoting accounts identified in a list provided by the Southern Poverty Law Center — were subjected to a mix of other racist and incendiary speech. That included tweets from a self-proclaimed Nazi, for example, a user the account did not follow.

Many were from users previously suspended by Twitter and let back on by new owner Elon Musk, who pledged to de-boost hate speech following his takeover of the site.

The tweets appeared on Twitter’s new “For You” page, which the company unveiled in January as part of Musk’s redesigned site. Twitter says the timeline includes “suggested content powered by a variety of signals,” including “how popular it is and how people in your network are interacting with it.”

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technolo ... te-speech/

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[wjfox]