Business, Financial & Legal - Page 40

The director of product management at Twitter, Esther Crawford, wrote on Twitter that the company will be relaunching its Twitter Blue subscription service on Monday, December 12.

Twitter is planning to relaunch its premium subscription service, known as Twitter Blue, with revised payment options. The service, which was first introduced in May 2021, will now cost $8 per month for those that sign up on the web and $11 per month for users that subscribe through the App Store on iOS. Twitter Blue offers a range of additional features and benefits to subscribers, such as the ability to undo tweets, customize the app's appearance, access exclusive content, and the iconic blue checkmark.

The revised payment options for Twitter Blue come as the company looks to expand its revenue streams and diversify its business, with Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk previously stating the company needs to take its reliance off advertiser revenue. Twitter has been facing increased competition from other social media platforms, and the launch of Twitter Blue is seen as an effort to differentiate the service and attract more users to the platform via its exclusive features.

Almost one week ago, in the early hours of December 2nd, customers noticed issues with their services. A message was posted on their status site stating, "We are investigating an issue that is affecting our Hosted Exchange environments. More details will be posted as they become available."

Although the company had posted a notice on its status page, the average customer was unaware of this part of the website. Clients averaged over two hours before reaching someone in the company's call center. Even when they reached the call center, customer care agents were not fully briefed on the outage and potential impact or solutions.

The system outage disrupted email services for thousands of small and midsize organizations. Rackspace's advice was for their customers to move to a competitor's platform. This left Rackspace customers desperate, frustrated, and many outright furious for the lack of support or communications from the company.

Elon Musk, the CEO of Twitter, has announced that the company is working on a new software update that will make it easier for users to see their account status.

The update will show users whether they have been shadowbanned, which means that their tweets are no longer visible to other users, and provide them with the reason why this has happened. In addition, the update will also include information on how users can appeal their shadowban if they believe it was applied unfairly.

Shadowbanning is a controversial practice that has been used by social media companies to limit the reach of certain users who violate the platform's rules. The practice has been criticized by some users who argue that it can be applied unfairly and without their knowledge. This new update from Twitter aims to provide greater transparency and allow users to better understand why their account may have been shadowbanned.

In November, Elon Musk said that he would be sleeping at Twitter until everything was fixed and the company was in working order.

Now, leaked photographs from inside Twitter HQ in San Francisco, obtained by BBC reporter James Clayton, have revealed that some Twitter offices have been converted into living spaces with wardrobes, pillows on couches, and even washing machines being installed. Notably, the images showcase conference rooms being converted into makeshift hotel rooms with couches being covered in pillows and sheets, showing that "lots of staff have been sleeping at Twitter", per Clayton.

All of these changes and the makeshift sleeping quarters are a part of Musk's push to create Twitter 2.0, which will lead into the ultimate creation of the "Everything App". Additionally, these additions to the office and employees sleeping at work are certainly part of Musk's ultimatum that the Twitter owner dropped on staff last month. The ultimatum required employees to sign up for "long hours at high intensity" or receive 3 months of severance. The decision forced many employees to leave the company.

Amazon has announced a new program that will pay customers $2 per month to monitor their phone traffic.

The invite-only program is called Ad Verification and is designed to help the company gather data on when and where customers viewed advertisements on their phones. The program tracks users' ads, informing the company when a user saw an ad, where they saw it, what type of ad, and more. Notably, this tracking includes Amazon's own ads as well as third-party ads.

According to Amazon, the data collected through the program will be used to improve its products and services, as well as provide a more personalized advertising experience for all its customers. Amazon customers not invited to the program can join a waitlist and can potentially enter at a later date, according to an Amazon spokesperson that spoke to Insider.

Apple's AirTag, a small device that allows users to track and locate their personal items, has recently come under fire for privacy concerns.

AirTag utilizes Apple's Find My network to track the location of an item, allowing users to see its location on a map in the Find My app. However, some have raised concerns that this technology could be used to track individuals without their consent.

One of the primary concerns with AirTag is that it could be used by stalkers to track their victims. AirTag is small and easily concealable, making it difficult for someone to know if they are being tracked. In addition, AirTag does not require any explicit consent or notification when it is attached to an item, meaning that someone could attach an AirTag to another person's belongings without their knowledge.

A new exclusive report from Reuters has revealed that Elon Musk's Neuralink brain chip company is now under federal investigation over animal abuse concerns.

The report claims that twenty former and current employees at Neuralink have told Reuters that pressure from Neuralink CEO Elon Musk resulted in employees feeling rushed and failing experiments, costing the lives of animals unnecessarily. The publication claims to have reviewed several Neuralink documents and interviewed each of the twenty employees, which said that failed experiments had to be repeated, further increasing the number of animals the company tested and killed.

Reuters explains that it couldn't verify all of the details of the federal investigation and if issues such as animal abuse reported by former and current employees were at its center. Notably, Neuralink has passed all USDA inspections of its facilities, according to regulatory filings. Furthermore, the report claims that Neuralink has killed approximately 1,500 animals since 2018. Included in that total are various amounts of sheep, pigs, and monkeys.

SpaceX, Tesla, and Twitter CEO Elon Musk has been warned that he's now angered some "very, very bad people", and that he should be in an undisclosed safe location.

The warning comes from former Olympian Caitlyn Jenner, who took to Twitter on Friday night to tag the billionaire and say, "I hope you are surrounded by massive security and in an extremely safe undisclosed location", adding that "you just became public enemy number one to some very very bad people. I pray for your safety and thank you for your bravery! We need more @elonmusk in our society!!!"

Jenner went on to pray for Musk's safety and thank him for his bravery in giving the green light to release the Twitter Files, which showed evidence of Twitter's previous administration suppressing the 2020 New York Post report on the Hunter Biden laptop. Musk argued for the release of the Twitter Files in a move to build public trust through transparency.

Over the weekend, SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter Spaces while he was flying from one location to another via his private jet.

Musk spoke to the public on Saturday, and during the talk, the Twitter owner was asked several questions about what the future looks like for Twitter and his plans surrounding tackling some of the platform's main issues, such as bot/spam accounts. Musk was asked how he plans to remove bot/spam accounts from Twitter 2.0, to which Musk replied, "I will defeat the bots. It's a war, and we are gonna win that war. We will expose those who want to manipulate people."

Additionally, the Tesla CEO explained that many of the bots are acting "in concert", and that engineers at Twitter are planning on developing software that will enable the bot influence to be controlled by Twitter. "Those software tools haven't been written, but we will make them", said Musk.

The relationship between Apple and Elon Musk has seemingly been repaired after the Twitter owner announced that Apple has "fully resumed" it's advertising on the social media platform.

At the end of last month, Elon Musk announced that Apple threatened to without Twitter from its App Store, which sparked a fully-fledged offensive response from the Twitter owner where he targeted Apple's stance on freedom of speech, its 30% tax on all in-app purchases, and claimed it censored select developers on its App Store.

Additionally, Musk said that Apple had significantly reduced its advertising on Twitter, with The New York Times then reporting that Apple stopped advertising on Twitter completely following the Club Q shooting in Colorado Springs on November 19. However, the publication notes that a lot of advertisers roll back their ads on Twitter after tragic events and disasters such as shooting as they don't want their brand name and/or advertisements for their products to appear alongside posts about human tragedy.

The tornado of Kanye West appearances is continuing as the rapper has now openly showed his support for Adolf Hitler.

Kanye West, now officially known as Ye, has appeared on the Alex Jones show wearing a black hood that covers his face and head, where he discussed several topics such as his finances, his stance on Jewish people, and how he sees "good things about Hitler". Ye's comments even turned famed conspiracy theorist Alex Jones against him.

Ye appeared on the Alex Jones show on Thursday, where he said, "I see good things about Hitler, also. Every human being has value that they brought to the table, especially Hitler. I was thinking about Satan. Whether it's the Zionists or Hitler - it's not the person. It's Satan using the people, who are controlled by demonic forces." Ye added, "The Jewish media has made us feel like the Nazis and Hitler have never offered anything of value to the world. Meanwhile, there's all of these things that are happening."

Kanye West, now officially known as Ye, has revealed on a podcast that the Internal Revenue Service has frozen four of his bank accounts.

The rapper appeared on the Timcast IRL podcast on Monday hosted by Tim Pool to promote his 2024 presidential campaign. During the podcast, West revealed that his "finance people" informed him that he's going to "have to pay a lot of taxes", and the morning of the podcast, he found out that "they were trying to put me in prison this morning." Ye goes on to say that the IRS put a "$75 million hold on four of my accounts" and that it took him six hours to find out just how much "a lot was".

The rapper further revealed that "a lot" was around "$50 million", and admitted that he isn't the most "financially literate person on the planet" and that, given even his current position, he's going to have to "learn how to run a company". Notably, Ye has received quite a lot of negative press following his antisemitic comments, which resulted in the dissolving of extremely lucrative brand deals with top brands such as Adidas, Balenciaga, Gap, and more.

Twitter owner Elon Musk has taken to his personal Twitter account to announce that Apple has "threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store," but won't inform the company of its reason why.

Musk has launched a fully-fledged attack against Apple's App Store policies in response to the company's alleged threats against Twitter. Musk specifically targeted the 30% tax the platform takes from any in-app purchases, as well as claiming that Apple has "censored" developers. Additionally, Musk followed up with another tweet that revealed Apple has "mostly stopped advertising on Twitter". Musk then, if Apple "hate free speech in America?", then tagged Apple CEO Tim Cook, asking him, "What's going on here?"

The SpaceX and Tesla CEO didn't stop there as he continued to post more free-speech-themed tweets, with Musk writing that "This is a battle for the future of civilization. If free speech is lost even in America, tyranny is all that lies ahead." Notably, Musk didn't specify if Apple was considering removing the app entirely from iOS, or would prevent Twitter from rolling out new updates to the service.

An unprecedented wave of protests have erupted in China over the country's zero-tolerance policy toward COVID-19.

These massive protests that are erupting in several cities across the country have coincided with a large wave of X-rated content on Twitter, according to China-focused data analysts. Reports indicate that there has been a "significant" increase in the number of bot-posted content that appears when a user searches a major Chinese city on Twitter.

Thousands of people have hit the streets in major Chinese cities as well as universities to express their disdain for strict COVID-19 laws that have resulted in long lockdowns, temporary shutdowns of businesses, and general life intrusion.

A group of cryptocurrency entrepreneurs has failed miserably to attract the attention of the world's richest individual Elon Musk with a custom $600,000 statue of the Tesla CEO's head.

The cryptocurrency team behind the project is Elon GOAT Token, which created the sculpture of Musk's head over the course of six months in a stunt to grab the billionaire's attention. The team behind the project spent $600,000 to create a 30-foot-long, 12,000-pound metal sculpture of Musk's head fashioned into a goat's body that is straddling a rocket. The statue was delivered to Tesla headquarters under what the creators called "GOATSGIVING".

Notably, Insider reports that the crypto team consists of Ashley Sansalone, along with Alec Wolvert and Richie Latimer, who all decided to follow through with the sculpture idea to get the attention of Musk, who would then acknowledge the stunt likely via Twitter, which would then directly increase the value of their cryptocurrency coin Elon GOAT Token. Furthermore, the Elon GOAT Token community expressed sadness and disappointment that Musk didn't recognize the crowd-funded statue existed.

Over the weekend, Elon Musk shared slides on his Twitter account regarding his plan for Twitter 2.0 and some analytics on Twitter usage.

The Twitter owner wrote that the four slides are from his Twitter company talk that he recently delivered. The slides showcased graphs comparing Twitter signups that show the average number of signups per day was 2 million as of November 16, which is an increase of 66% compared to the same week a year ago. Additionally, graphs showed active minutes hitting a seven-day average of 8 billion per day, which is an increase of 30% compared to the previous year.

The graphs illustrate record highs, and according to internal company data, hate speech impressions, along with reported impersonation, has reduced after spiking around the beginning of November. Musk's charts show that hate speech impressions, in particular, have dropped from a high of 10 million near the end of October to just above 2.5 million as of November 13. Additionally, these slides contain ideas that'll be implemented into Twitter 2.0, "The Everything App", and those are; encrypted DMs, long-form tweets, a relaunch of Blue Verified, and "Payments".

A newly published report from Media Matters America claims that half of Twitter's top advertisers have left the company in the last month.

The nonprofit media research organization published the report on November 22 that claims 50 of Twitter's top advertisers have either announced or stopped advertising on the social media platform entirely, with these top 50 advertisers representing close to $2 billion in advertising spending on Twitter since 2020. Notably, these advertisers, which have now purportedly backed away from Twitter, accounted for about $750 million in advertising in 2022.

Furthermore, as of November 21, there were approximately seven advertisers that are reducing spending on Twitter to what Media Matters claims is "close to nothing," and these advertisers have spent more than $255 million on Twitter since 2020 and about $118 million in 2022. The organization labeled most of the big brands in its list as "quiet quitters", the companies that reduced advertising spending on Twitter without making a public announcement or statement.

Artemis 1 launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center on November 16, and according to officials, the Orion spacecraft has entered the Moon's orbit on Friday, November 25.

On Flight Day 10, NASA officials announced that Flight Controllers at the Johnson Space Center have successfully performed a burn that placed the Orion spacecraft into the Moon's orbit, entering into a distant retrograde orbit. Orion will remain in this orbit around the Moon for six days, where it will then exit the Moon's orbit and put itself back on course with a trip to Earth for a planned splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on December 11.

NASA has taken to its blog and social channels to document the progress being made by Orion. According to NASA's Artemis 1 Flight Day 11, the Orion capsule broke the distance record for a spacecraft designed to carry humans to deep space and back to Earth. The previous record was set in 1970 by the Apollo 13 mission, where a spacecraft traveled 248,655 miles from Earth, and according to NASA, on November 28, the Orion spacecraft will reach a distance of 270,000 miles from Earth.

In the event that Twitter is banned from Android and iOS operating systems, Elon Musk says he will create an "alternative phone".

The SpaceX and Tesla CEO replied to a tweet from Liz Wheeler, host of The Liz Wheeler Show, where she suggested that Musk should create his own smartphone in the event that Apple and Google "boot" Twitter from their app stores. Wheeler goes on to write that "Half the country would happily ditch the biased, snooping iPhone & Android" and that since Musk "builds rockets to Mars," he should have the capabilities of easily producing a "silly little smartphone".

This tweet from Wheeler sparked a response from the SpaceX CEO, who wrote that he hopes "it does not come to that, but, yes, if there is no other choice, I will make an alternative phone". This isn't the first time Musk has discussed the possibility of an "alternative phone", with rumors long circulating about a possible mobile device called a "Tesla Pi Phone". However, these are simply just rumors that, at the moment, have no official confirmation or source to back them up.

A Twitter employee has acquired legal documentation that prevents Elon Musk from firing her from her position at the company.

A new report from The Irish Times states that Sinead McSweeney, Twitter's Ireland-based global vice president of public policy, has secured a temporary injunction that stops Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk from firing her following McSweeney being locked out of work accounts as well as Twitter's Dublin office. McSweeney didn't respond to Musk's company-wide email that posed an ultimatum to Twitter employees requiring them to accept longer/harder working hours with higher standards or receive three months' severance.

The lack of response from McSweeney meant she was locked out of work accounts and Twitter's office. The report states that McSweeney didn't respond to the email or click "yes" on the link provided in Musk's email, as she believed Musk's severance package violated her current "contractual entitlements". The email was sent out on November 16, with Musk giving employees about 36 hours to respond. McSweeney received an email on November 18 informing her of her "voluntary resignation" despite her intention to stay at the company.