Internet & Websites News - Page 3
Lofi Girl YouTube livestream taken down after 2+ years running
The iconic music livestream stopped on July 10th, 2022.
The stream had amassed over 688 million views after starting on February 23rd, 2020. The Lofi Girl channel received a DMCA takedown request by FMC Music, a Malaysian company, leading YouTube to take the video down and issue one copyright strike to the channel. A second stream by the channel was also taken down on the same day, which had amassed 129 million views, and began streaming only three days after the other, back in 2020.
Lofi Girl claims they are "false copyright strikes," marking another episode in the ongoing saga of abuse of YouTube's copyright system. YouTube confirmed on July 11th that the takedown requests were malicious and subsequently terminated FMC Music's account. Though the strike has been removed from Lofi Girl's channel, and the videos will be reinstated, a new stream will need to begin, marking the end of an era for one of the platform's biggest ongoing livestreams. The new live stream will be going live here, if you're interested.
Continue reading: Lofi Girl YouTube livestream taken down after 2+ years running (full post)
Joe Rogan responds to being canceled and the height of his controversy
Joe Rogan, the host of the largest podcast in the world, "The Joe Rogan Experience," appeared on the Lex Fridman podcast, where he discussed various topics, including what he experienced at the height of his controversy.
The UFO commentator and host of the Joe Rogan experience sat down with his good friend Lex Fridman for a lengthy discussion that ranges across various topics such as the role discipline plays in Rogan's life, what he did to manage with his attempted cancellation following interviews with polarizing medical professionals, UFOs, Putin, the CIA and more.
At the beginning of the nearly two-hour discussion, Fridman asks Rogan how he survived being publicly attacked over publishing podcasts with medical professionals that gave a controversial opinion on the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the n-word highlight video.
Continue reading: Joe Rogan responds to being canceled and the height of his controversy (full post)
You can stream every episode of Seinfeld 24/7 on this dedicated site
If you've been itching to watch every single episode of Seinfeld, well then we have just the website for you: Watch Seinfeld Online is a dedicated website to streaming every episode of Seinfeld.
As each episode of Seinfeld is streaming, you won't have any options of rewinding or skipping through episodes, but you also don't have to put up with ads flashing up or any commercials. That's not bad considering the same can't be said for TV or anywhere online: although, Netflix did secure themselves a 5-year streaming deal for one of the most successful TV shows in history.
Personally, I've finished the latest season of HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm, written and stars Larry David... the co-creator of Seinfeld along with comedian Jerry Seinfeld. Curb Your Enthusiasm is fantastic, but I have to admit: I haven't watched Seinfeld. I couldn't do it... but I really want to, and need to start from the very beginning.
Continue reading: You can stream every episode of Seinfeld 24/7 on this dedicated site (full post)
Elon Musk makes his return back to Twitter with a big bang of posts
Tesla and SpaceX CEO took a several-day hiatus from Twitter but how now returned in a series of tweets following his birthday celebrations.
Musk recently celebrated his 51st birthday on June 28, and coincidently the world's richest individual managed to pass a milestone number of Twitter followers on the same day - a nice little birthday present. Musk's official Twitter account reached 100 million followers on June 28, and has since climbed to 100.2 million followers, a gain of approximately 200,000 new followers in just four days.
Musk stopped posting on Twitter on June 22 and seemingly took several days to himself to enjoy his birthday and work on his myriad of other projects. He has now returned on June 2 by firstly posting a meme followed by a simple, "Feeling... perhaps... a little bored?"
Continue reading: Elon Musk makes his return back to Twitter with a big bang of posts (full post)
Mark Zuckerberg will axe employees that don't meet Meta's new goals
Mark Zuckerberg has informed Meta employees that company performance goals will be increasing in order to discover underperforming staff.
Reuters has learned that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has spoken to Meta staff during a recent Q&A meeting where he said that Meta will be focusing on plugging any financial holes following slower than anticipated revenue growth. Zuckerberg explained that he will be introducing new performance targets for employees that will be harsh as the company will axe employees that cannot meet them. The Meta CEO said that, realistically speaking, "there are probably a bunch of people at the company that shouldn't be here".
Audio from the Q&A was heard by Reuters, and Zuckerberg described the increasing performance goals will be "turning up the heat a little bit" where employees may realize that Meta isn't the right place for them, "and that self-selection is OK with me," said Zuckerberg. To illustrate how Zuckerberg is reeling back Meta's aggressive growth amid unexpectedly reduced revenue, the company brought its hiring target of 10,000 workers all the way down to 6,000/7,000.
Continue reading: Mark Zuckerberg will axe employees that don't meet Meta's new goals (full post)
How Facebook clickbait works, according to science
A study on Facebook clickbait titled "Click me...! The influence of clickbait on user engagement in social media and the role of digital nudging" has been published in the journal PLoS ONE.
Researchers from the University of Duisburg-Essen studied four thousand Facebook posts from various news organizations to gauge what constituted clickbait and how effective various techniques were than others. Though clickbait increases attention to certain articles, some previous studies have suggested that it erodes readers' trust in a given source.
The team collected the posts over seven consecutive days in 2017 from ten news outlets' Facebook pages based in the United States and the United Kingdom, which included "reputable" and "tabloid" sources. They found headlines including typical clickbait phrases were associated with about a quarter of reactions, shares, and comments compared to those without, e.g. "this will blow your mind."
Continue reading: How Facebook clickbait works, according to science (full post)
TikTok of man AirDropping his nudes to plane passengers goes viral
A video posted to the TikTok account @daddystrange333 shows a man aboard a plane being accused by flight attendants of sending lewd images of himself to passengers.
@daddystrange333 explains that she was aboard a flight when she noticed that she had an AirDrop request on his phone. The man that was seated next to @daddystrange333 that she was speaking to told her not to open the request, but she was curious as she could see that the AirDrop request was coming from a man she calls "Larry". @daddystrange333 realized that Larry was sending the images with his iPad, and once she accepted the request, she immediately notified staff aboard the flight.
Flight attendants approached Larry and asked him if he sent explicit images of himself to passengers, to which he agreed to doing by nodding. The flight attendants then followed up by asking him why he would do that, and he said he was "just having a little fun". @daddystrange333 can then be heard saying directly to Larry, "It's sexual harassment, disgusting, it is assault". Before the video ends, Larry can be heard apologizing for his actions.
Continue reading: TikTok of man AirDropping his nudes to plane passengers goes viral (full post)
Meta to launch avatar clothing store on Facebook next week
Mark Zuckerberg has announced that Meta is releasing a new online clothing store for avatars where users will be able to purchase outfits.
Zuckerberg, along with Instagram's vice president of fashion partnerships, Eva Chen, took to Instagram Live to announce "Meta Avatar Store" is coming to Facebook next week and will allow users to explore a virtual store across Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. Users will be able to purchase digital clothes for their avatars, and it will feature notable brands of clothing such as Prada, Balenciaga, and Thom Browne. According to TechCrunch, the price for these outfits has yet to be revealed.
Continue reading: Meta to launch avatar clothing store on Facebook next week (full post)
Instagram moves to adopt new TikTok-style feed with new testing
Meta has been very public about its push to create a product that directly competes with Byte Dance's hit app TikTok.
A leaked internal meme from Meta revealed that Mark Zuckerberg and other Meta executives want to roll out several changes to Facebook to make the application more like TikTok. The redesign overhaul would concentrate on Facebook's main feed section and change it, so the feed shows content from pages, users, and people that the account isn't following. The memo described this algorithm change as "Discovery Engine".
Now, Instagram is testing a new TikTok-style redesign of its main feed, which Mark Zuckerberg shared on his personal Instagram account story, where he wrote, "We want to make it easier to discover content and connect with friends." Adding that Instagram is currently working on full-screen photos appearing in the feed and that some individuals will start seeing "this test soon". It seems that Meta as a whole is pivoting towards a more TikTok-style user interface.
Continue reading: Instagram moves to adopt new TikTok-style feed with new testing (full post)
Facebook is being sent patient information from hospital websites
Facebook has been busted for receiving sensitive medical information from hospital websites, raising the question if the social media giant has broken federal law.
Ars Technica, partnered with The Markup, a non-profit that focuses on data-driven journalism and the impacts of technology throughout society, investigated the websites of the top 100 hospitals across the United States and found that 33 of them featured a tracker called the Meta Pixel. This tracker is designed to send Facebook a packet of data whenever an individual clicks the "Schedule Online Now" button.
An example of what this packet of data can contain is the University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center website, where the Meta Pixel will send Facebook a data packet that contains the doctor's name, and the search term the team used to identify the patient, which was "pregnancy termination".
Continue reading: Facebook is being sent patient information from hospital websites (full post)