Business, Financial & Legal News - Page 34

Since Elon Musk has taken over Twitter, top executives at the company have departed, with two more top executives recently leaving and describing their experience at the social media company as "Game of Thrones"- like.

A new report from NBC News has revealed that top Twitter executives such as Twitter's Chief Information Security Officer, Lea Kissner, along with Twitter's Chief Compliance Officer, Marianne Fogarty, officially resigned Wednesday night, following the rollout of Twitter Blue and the slew of account impersonations that have and still are taking place.

The publication reports that the top executives left the company only hours before SpaceX CEO Elon Musk sent out his very first email to Twitter employees, which was titled "difficult times ahead". The email implemented a mandatory return-to-work policy. Fogarty recently took to Twitter and wrote, "I don't watch Game of Thrones. I certainly don't want to play it at work." The roller coaster at Twitter has attracted the attention of the Federal Trade Commission, as a spokesperson for the government agency recently wrote that the agency is "tracking recent developments at Twitter with deep concern".

Impersonation has become a point of contention on Twitter following Elon Musk's newly revised and rolled out Twitter Blue subscription service that allows paying customers to gain the iconic verification checkmark badge.

The new Twitter Blue service became available on November 9, and since then, numerous accounts across various industries have decided to pay the $7.99 fee to receive their blue verified check mark and a range of other features. Leading up to the release of Twitter Blue, there was a wave of already-verified accounts impersonating Elon Musk, with celebrities and public figures such as H3 Podcast host Ethan Klein and comic Kathy Griffin changing their display names to "Elon Musk" and then posting several tweets in an attempt to impersonate his account.

Now that Twitter Blue is available, we are seeing this account impersonation spread beyond just targeting Elon Musk, with companies such as Nintendo, Twitch, Valve, and many more becoming victims of impersonation. Most notably, Twitter's own Twitter account was impersonated by a random user that created a new Twitter account, paid for Twitter Blue to receive the verification badge, and then proceeded to post a tweet that claimed Twitter Blue was now free for crypto/NFT holders who "authenticated" their digital wallet assets by clicking a link.

TSMC has been busy making 7nm wafers for a bunch of different companies over the years, and while you might not know it, you're probably using at least one product in your house that uses a chip based on the 7nm process node at TSMC.

AMD is building the semi-custom SoCs inside of the Sony PlayStation 5 and Microsoft Xbox Series X/S consoles, as well as its range of Zen CPUs (up until its latest Zen 4 CPU which switched over to TSMC's new 5nm process node) and its Radeon RX 5000 and Radeon RX 6000 series GPUs (while its new Radeon RX 7000 series are also based on TSMC's new 5nm process node).

Intel has been tapping TSMC's 7nm process node for a while now, Qualcomm as well, and also MediaTek... oh and we can't forget Apple. You can see TSMC has been busy with making 7nm chips for everyone, but with hundreds of millions of 7nm-based products shipped... the 7nm party is winding down and coming to an end.

Twitter made its revised Twitter Blue subscription service available on iOS in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zeal, and the UK on November 9, ushering in large swaths of companies having their accounts impersonated.

Twitter has rolled out the new Twitter Blue subscription service that allows users to pay $8 for a "verified" checkmark on their account, as Twitter owner Elon Musk believes pigging backing off payment systems such as Apple Pay authenticates the holder of that Twitter account, flushing out scammers, bot and spam accounts. Paying for Twitter Blue also gives the account prioritization in replies, messaging, search, and other customization features.

The rollout hasn't been without its hiccups, as companies are seeing their likely already-verified account being impersonated by random Twitter users that have purchased the verified check mark via Twitter Blue. An example of this is the above tweet from an account posing as Nintendo of America. Valve was also impersonated when a user falsely announced Ricochet: Neon Prime, which was described as the "next competitive platform". Twitch also fell victim to an account impersonating it and creating a viral post that falsely announced a new sub-split that would go into effect next month.

The bimonthly magazine owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has reported that Twitter has lost 1 million users since Elon Musk has taken over the company.

MIT Technology Review recently reported that Twitter has lost more than 1 million users since Elon Musk has taken the reins of the company, according to Bot Sentinel, which analyzed 3.1 million accounts on Twitter and that out of those accounts 877,000 accounts were deactivated with an additional 497,000 being suspended between the dates of October 27, a day after Elon Musk took over, to November 1. Notably, these numbers represent more than double the typical number.

Bot Sentinel's analysis on its dataset revealed that there was an increase of 208% lost account on Twitter during the aforementioned timeframe when compared to the week before Elon Musk took control of the platform. Christopher Bouzy, founder of Bot Sentinel said that analysts believe there was a sharp increase in suspended accounts from Twitter users testing Twitter's rules which Musk said he would be updating to allow for a wider variety of content on the platform.

Kanye West, now officially known as Ye, may have to prepare himself for Adidas selling his iconic Yeezy shoes in front of him but with new branding.

The rapper, who was partnered with Adidas since 2013, recently had his relationship dissolved by the company, which decided to separate itself from Ye after he began posting antisemitic comments on social media platforms. West's public comments against Jewish people broke terms of service on various social media platforms and resulted in massive public discussion on the severity of West's comments and their impact on Jewish people.

Throughout the mass public debate, West saw prominent brands such as Balenciaga, Adidas, Gap, and more sever ties with him. Perhaps the largest hit to West's bank accounts was the Adidas deal which was expected to be worth anywhere between $150 - $200 million, with Adidas backing that rough estimation up during its recent quarterly earnings call where it said the deal with Ye is expected to cost the company $247 million throughout 2022, causing its expected annual revenue to be reduced by about $502 million.

Only a few days before the rollout of Twitter Blue's updated subscription service and only a few weeks after Elon Musk tweeted, "comedy is now legal on Twitter", previously verified accounts are being banned across the platform for an impersonation prank.

A few days before Twitter Blue went live, several prominent Twitter accounts, such as Kathy Griffin and host of the H3 podcast, Ethan Klein, changed their display name and profile picture to "Elon Musk" and began posting several tweets in an attempt to impersonate his account. A move that was done by both the individuals, and many others, as a way to prove that verified accounts will still be able to impersonate other accounts.

Klein and Griffin both already had verified blue check marks. "Yes, I could have ended world hunger instead of buying Twitter. But people don't understand the importance of having a free and open forum. If somebody dies of starvation in Sudan, it won't affect the world. But being able to say the N-word on Twitter is a right we all deserve," wrote Klein.

Elon Musk has posted an image of a shirt that pokes fun directly at people who believe the $8 fee for Twitter Blue is unreasonable.

The SpaceX and Tesla CEO took to his personal Twitter account on November 8, a day before the rollout of Twitter Blue, to post an image of a t-shirt that featured the following text, "Your feedback is appreciated. Now pay $8". The t-shirt also featured the blue verification check mark that has become a matter of controversial opinion, with some people agreeing with Musk on the impact of the new Twitter Blue service being a net positive for the platform, and another group believing the opposite.

When asked if Musk would be paying for Twitter Blue himself, he replied with the "100" emoji, indicating that he would be paying for it. The $8 paywall for Twitter's verification also comes with a slew of new features such as access to uploading longer video and audio content, the ability of monetization on the platform, priority in search and replies, as well as half the amount of advertisements.

Its been around two weeks since Elon Musk went through with the acquisition to purchase Twitter, and now the SpaceX CEO is already announcing that the social media platform has reached a new milestone.

Musk took to his own Twitter account on November 8 to announce that "Twitter usage" has reached an all-time high. The Tesla CEO didn't specify what metric he was specifically referring to, but it can be assumed it would be real-time users on Twitter around the time he made the tweet.

This seeming increase in Twitter's users is part of Musk's plan to make Twitter the most attractive social media platform for users, with the billionaire even stating in his leaked pitch deck that he aims to create the "everything app" which will increase the users on the platform from 217 million to 600 million by 2025.

Mark Zuckerberg has announced mass layoffs at Meta aka Facebook, with 11,000 jobs sliced away -- a significant number, considering the largest social networking site in the world had 87,314 employees at its peak earlier this year.

Meta has been bleeding on the stock market for a while now, and while the headlines are dominated by Twitter and Elon Musk, it seems no one really cares about the bigger issue: the largest social networking site in the world (which owns Instagram, Oculus, WhatsApp, and more) has just laid off 11,000+ people right before Christmas. Oh, and within hours of the 2022 midterm elections.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained: "Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected. Not only has online commerce returned to prior trends but the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss have caused our revenue to be much lower than I'd expected. I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that".