Social Media & Big Tech news and discussions

[weatheriscool]

Twitter silently removes login requirement for viewing tweets
Ivan Mehta@indianidle / 7:30 AM PDT•July 5, 2023
https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/05/twitt ... ng-tweets/

Days after requiring users to log in to view tweets, Twitter has silently removed these restrictions. This means you can open Twitter links in a browser without an account.

We at TechCrunch noticed that tweet previews are unfurling in Slack and WhatsApp. Folks at Engadget noted that Twitter previews were visible on iMessage as well.

When Twitter started enforcing the login requirement, Musk said that he took these “temporary” measures to prevent data scraping.

“Temporary emergency measure. We were getting data pillaged so much that it was degrading service for normal users!” he said in a tweet.

[Powers]

Twitter silently removes login requirement for viewing tweets
Ivan Mehta@indianidle / 7:30 AM PDT•July 5, 2023
https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/05/twitt ... ng-tweets/

Days after requiring users to log in to view tweets, Twitter has silently removed these restrictions. This means you can open Twitter links in a browser without an account.

We at TechCrunch noticed that tweet previews are unfurling in Slack and WhatsApp. Folks at Engadget noted that Twitter previews were visible on iMessage as well.

When Twitter started enforcing the login requirement, Musk said that he took these “temporary” measures to prevent data scraping.

“Temporary emergency measure. We were getting data pillaged so much that it was degrading service for normal users!” he said in a tweet.

The same happened with deleting old accounts.

[Time_Traveller]

Zuckerberg takes swipe at Musk as ten million join Meta’s new app Threads

2023-07-06 08:56

A new app billed as a rival to Twitter has seen more than 10 million people sign up in its first few hours, according to Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg.

Threads, created by Facebook and Instagram owners Meta, went live in the UK at midnight on Thursday.

Linked to Instagram, it allows users to post up to 500 characters of text and up to five minutes of video and links, as well as pictures.

Chef Gordon Ramsay, pop star Shakira and Mark Hoyle, better known as the YouTuber LadBaby, have already joined and made their presence on the app known.

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/ ... ds-352165/

[weatheriscool]

It needs to work on desktops and laptops or it isn't really going to be able to compete against twitter. It would be nice.

[weatheriscool]

Twitter Threatens to Sue Threads


https://politicalwire.com/2023/07/06/tw ... e-threads/

"SNIP.......

Twitter is threatening legal action against Meta over its new text-based “Twitter killer” platform, accusing the social media giant of poaching former employees to create a “copycat” application, Semafor reports.

[weatheriscool]

Threads will eventually be separate from Instagram so you will be able to delete it without
Losing your Instagram account too. This post is from Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram.

I've been getting some questions about deleting your account. To clarify, you can deactivate your Threads account, which hides your Threads profile and content, you can set your profile to private, and you can delete individual threads posts – all without deleting your Instagram account. Threads is powered by Instagram, so right now it's just one account, but we're looking into a way to delete your Threads account separately.

https://www.threads.net/t/CuXRXDdNOtH/? ... IwNjQ2YQ==

[weatheriscool]

Threads Becomes Most Rapidly Downloaded App, Raising Twitter's Ire
Source: New York Times

Two hours after pressing the launch button on Wednesday on Threads, Instagram’s new app for real-time, public conversations, Mark Zuckerberg posted that more than two million people had downloaded his latest creation.

That was just the beginning.

Another two hours later, five million people had downloaded Threads. By the time Mr. Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, went to bed on Wednesday night, the number of downloads had soared to 10 million. When he woke on Thursday morning, the app had been downloaded more than 30 million times, he said.

In less than a day, Threads — which is aimed as a rival to Twitter — appears to have taken the crown as the most rapidly downloaded app ever. It easily outstripped ChatGPT, the chatbot, which was downloaded one million times within its first five days, according to OpenAI, ChatGPT’s maker. And it is on pace to exceed ChatGPT’s 100 million users within two months, which was the fastest to reach that number ever, according to the analytics firm Similarweb.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/06/tech ... itter.html

[Powers]

Of several scenarios I didn't expect this.
He really ****ed around this time.

[wjfox]

[weatheriscool]

Threads: Twitter threatens legal action over Meta's new app

Twitter is considering legal action against Meta over its fast-growing rival app Threads.

Threads, which was launched to millions on Wednesday, is similar to Twitter and has been pitched by Meta bosses as a "friendly" alternative.

Twitter's Elon Musk said "competition is fine, cheating is not" - but Meta denied claims in a legal letter that ex-Twitter staff helped create Threads.

More than 70 million people have signed up for the new app, according to Meta.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66129215

[weatheriscool]

[weatheriscool]

Twitter not suited for emergency communications, Dutch say after storm
Source: Reuters

Twitter is not the right place to seek information during an emergency, Dutch politicians and a prominent online group said on Wednesday, following an incident in which citizens were directed to the platform for updates during a large storm.

"We find it problematic that the government depends on Twitter for sharing crucial information," lawmaker Nico Drost's office said in emailed remarks to Reuters, citing accessibility, accountability and reliability issues.

[snip]

"It's ridiculous to use Twitter," said Bits of Freedom spokesperson Ber Engels, citing problems with dis-information and Twitter being hard to reach quickly for people without accounts. He also noted the company had recently imposed limits on the number of tweets that can be viewed by anyone who hasn't paid for a subscription.

"You might see one tweet with great information from emergency services, but maybe there are 10 tweets that Twitter prioritizes which contain completely false information," he said.

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/tw ... erm=070523

[caltrek]

[wjfox]

Instagram Threads hits 100 million users, becoming easily the fastest growing app ever

47 minutes ago

Instagram’s Threads app has reached 100 million users, making it easily the fastest growing app ever.

The site reached the number early on Monday morning, according to a tracker that looks at the numbers that are made public on each Threads account.

The previous fastest growing app was OpenAI’s ChatGPT. But it took that site two months to reach 100 million users.

Threads, which was released late on Wednesday, has taken only a few days to reach the same number. Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has released a number of updates throughout those days, saying that the growth was “way beyond our expectations”: it hit two million in two hours, and ten million in seven hours, he had said.

Twitter had 229 million monthly active users in May 2022, according to a statement made before Elon Musk bought it late last year.

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/inst ... 72336.html

[weatheriscool]

Elon fucked up royally. He should have stuck to space but chose to destroying twitter and side with idiocy. Sad.

[Powers]

Elon fucked up royally. He should have stuck to space but chose to destroying twitter and side with idiocy. Sad.

Maybe that's the idea.

[wjfox]

Twitter is “tanking” amid Threads’ surging popularity, analysts say

Ashley Belanger - 7/11/2023, 8:22 PM

Data shows that a sudden spike in interest in Meta's Threads—which surpassed 100 million sign-ups in five days, Mark Zuckerberg boasted yesterday—has likely already put a tiny dent in Twitter's traffic, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The news comes after a tweet from Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince went viral. In it, Prince shared a Cloudflare chart showing that since January, Twitter traffic—compared to other popular websites—has been "tanking."

During Threads' first two days online, Twitter traffic dropped by 5 percent compared to the same two days in the prior week, web analytics firm SimilarWeb reported. When measuring year over year, Twitter's traffic dropped by 11 percent.

“We’ve been reporting for a while that Twitter is down compared with last year," David Carr, a SimilarWeb senior insights manager, told CNN. "But Threads seems to be taking a bigger bite out of it.”

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/202 ... lysts-say/

[Time_Traveller]

WhatsApp could disappear from UK over privacy concerns, ministers told

Mon 8 May 2023 07.00 BST

The UK government risks sleepwalking into a confrontation with WhatsApp that could lead to the messaging app disappearing from Britain, ministers have been warned, with options for an amicable resolution fast running out.

At the centre of the row is the online safety bill, a vast piece of legislation that will touch on almost every aspect of online life in Britain. More than four years in the making, with eight secretaries of state and five prime ministers involved in its drafting, the bill, which is progressing through the House of Lords, is more than 250 pages long. The table of contents alone spans 10 pages.

The bill gives Ofcom the power to impose requirements for social networks to use technology to tackle terrorism or child sexual abuse content, with fines of up to 10% of global turnover for those services that do not comply. Companies must use “best endeavours” to develop or source technology to obey the notice.

But for messaging apps that secure their user data with “end-to-end encryption” (E2EE), it is technologically impossible to read user messages without fundamentally breaking their promises to users. That, they say, is a step they will not take.

“The bill provides no explicit protection for encryption,” said a coalition of providers, including the market leaders WhatsApp and Signal, in an open letter last month, “and if implemented as written, could empower Ofcom to try to force the proactive scanning of private messages on end-to-end encrypted communication services, nullifying the purpose of end-to-end encryption as a result and compromising the privacy of all users.”

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... sters-told

Update from YorkshireBylines: -

The online safety bill: taking a sledgehammer to the internet in the UK?

11-07-2023 06:43

Very bad laws are still laws. The Tories are about to pass one that will make the damage caused by Brexit seem like a fart in a hurricane: the online safety bill. It will ruin your experience of the internet. Guaranteed.

We need to ease into the subject, because it’s quite complicated. But that complexity hides enormous danger. The online safety bill has the potential to wreck the UK economy far worse than Brexit. It would cut the UK off from the normal internet the rest of the world experiences.

Concerns over the online safety bill

To give you an idea, here are some of the companies that have said they may no longer service the UK market or cut back on what they offer UK users if the online safety bill comes in:

WhatsApp: ‘UK ministers told WhatsApp will leave country if Online Safety Bill isn’t modified’
Wikipedia: ‘Wikipedia could shut down in UK after online safety law passes, Government told’
Signal: ‘Signal says it’ll shut down in UK if Online Safety Bill approved’
Apple: ‘Apple joins opposition to encrypted message app scanning’

Before we go any further, it’s vital to understand one thing: the rest of the world will keep going, even after the online safety bill comes in. Huge global firms (the ones we all rely on for communications, social media and discussion platforms) won’t change the way they operate around the world just to fall in line with draconian rules in one tiny market.

Imagine that the UK passed a law that all new cars sold here must come with five wheels and a solid gold steering wheel. How many manufacturers would produce models that aligned with this requirement? Between zero and none.

https://yorkshirebylines.co.uk/politics ... AgXb6J48CM

[Powers]

Before we go any further, it’s vital to understand one thing: the rest of the world will keep going, even after the online safety bill comes in. Huge global firms (the ones we all rely on for communications, social media and discussion platforms) won’t change the way they operate around the world just to fall in line with draconian rules in one tiny market.

https://yorkshirebylines.co.uk/politics ... AgXb6J48CM

[weatheriscool]

Court blocks curbs on US government contact with social media companies for now
Source: Reuters

July 14 (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Friday temporarily blocked a lower court order that had sharply limited certain Biden administration officials' and agencies' contacts with social media companies while it considers the administration's appeal.

The ruling from the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals means that the administration is not bound, for now, by a July 6 order by U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty in Monroe, Louisiana, who found that officials' efforts to limit the spread of posts they considered to be misinformation on social media violated the right to free speech under the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment.

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/legal/court-blo ... 023-07-14/