Internet & Websites News - Page 4

Elon Musk has sat down with Twitter staff and answered a series of questions regarding what he believes Twitter will become under his control.

Musk entered into a $44 billion acquisition of the world's second largest social media platform, and since then Twitter employees have been concerned about what his acquisition means for their positions (once its gone through) and how handing over the reins to the company will impact it.

Now Musk has sat down for an all-hands meeting where he explained that he personally uses Twitter to express himself, "Some people use their hair to express themselves. I use Twitter" and that there is a line between being able to express ones self and how many people that expression reaches. Notably, Musk praised China's platform WeChat and how that platform is the center point for social media as users "basically live on WeChat".

TikTok has announced that it will be rolling out a new feature that is designed to stop young users from infinitely scrolling the app.

The new feature, which is very similar to what is currently present on Netflix and Instagram, will prompt users aged between 13 and 17 years old if they spend more than 100 minutes on the app in a 24-hour period. Notably, TikTok also announced that it will be rolling out an insight tool that will allow users to be able to see your screen time summary each day, how many times the app was opened, and more.

This new feature is similar to Netflix's "are you still there?" screen prompt and is intended to add a level of protection to the platform that will help prevent phone addiction. Separately, Asurion, a private insurance company that provides insurance for smartphones, tablets, and consumer electronics, recently published a study that found that the average American checks their phone 353 times a day.

Podcast listeners weren't able to put on their favorite podcasts as all of the shows hosted on Spotify's Megaphone platform went offline.

A spokesperson for Spotify told The Verge that the music streaming platform, unfortunately, suffered from an issue "related to our SSL certificate". The spokesperson explained that throughout the duration of the outage, Spotify users weren't able to access any podcast hosted by Megaphone publishers. Podcasts such as The Joe Rogan Experience, The Ringer, and more were temporarily unavailable from 8PM ET on Monday until 6AM Tuesday.

Notably, Megaphone is a service that adds advertisements into podcasts, and Spotify purchased the company for $235 million in 2020. Furthermore, Engadget explains that an SSL certificate is used to verify an authentic connection between a server and browser or application, and as the publication points out, Spotify is a large technology company that relies on secure connections. Having its SSL certificate expire and not be renewed for several hours is the equivalent of an MLB player dropping stock-standard fly-ball.

Apple takes in a considerable amount of money per year for Google to be the default search engine on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac... but that could soon change, with Apple reportedly gearing up to unveil a new search engine competitor.

In a fresh series of tweets, industry veteran (amongst a laundry list of achievements, companies and websites founded, and connections in the tech industry) Robert Scoble teased "oh, and a new search engine is coming too. Will Siri finally get "smart?" Hmmm". The series of tweets were all about Apple's new AR headset tease at its WWDC 2022 event.

Scoble was asked if the "New search engine is your guess or you've actually heard through the grapevine from sources" to which he replied: "Heard it from many places. Had dinner six years ago with head of Siri at Apple and he laid out why Siri would need to be rebuilt. We haven't seen that rebuild yet. It will come with the headset".

TikTok's Live Creator page has published a new video that teases an upcoming feature that will allow creators to receive donations from viewers.

The upcoming feature is called "Live Subscription" and will introduce TikTok live streamers and viewers to a new program that allows fans to initiate a monthly subscription to a creator to receive a range of perks that will differentiate them from "normal" viewers. These perks are similar to perks seen on streaming platforms such as Twitch, such as subscriber-only chat, custom emotes, badges, and more.

Within TikTok's video, the company states that creators will be able to have a "predictable monthly income", which, if executed properly, will be a massive leg-up for the company as making money directly from TikTok has been extremely difficult since the platform's creation. TechCrunch reports that TikTok's subscription packages will also be similar to Twitch's in terms of pricing, with the basic package being priced at $4.99 a month and multiple tiers that range up to $24.99 a month.

In the wake of Elon Musk's announcement that he wants to find out how many fake accounts are on Twitter's platform, an audit has been done on a very influential Twitter account.

In a new report from Newsweek, an audit conducted by software company SparkToro found that nearly half of President Joe Biden's Twitter followers, which is currently at 22.2 million, are fake accounts. Notably, the software company found that 49.3% of accounts following Biden's "@POTUS" Twitter account were "fake followers". SparkToro defines a "fake follower" as "accounts that are unreachable and will not see the account's tweets (either because they're spam, bots, propaganda, etc. or because they're no longer active on Twitter)."

Twitter has estimated in its last 11 quarterly reports that approximately 5% of users are spam/fake accounts, which Musk has now thrown into question following several recent tweets where Musk has proposed new ways to estimate the number of bot accounts, and asked the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) to get involved. Furthermore, SparkToro found that 70.2% of Musk's 93.3 million Twitter followers are fake accounts.

Elon Musk is attempting to figure out how many Twitter users are bots and how many are authentic users.

The SpaceX and Tesla CEO recently stated that the deal to purchase Twitter was temporarily put on hold while an investigation was conducted into how many fake, spam, illegal, or duplicate accounts are on Twitter. According to Twitter's latest numbers, the social media platform estimates that below 5% of Twitter's total accounts are bots, and if that number is found to be inaccurate, it may impact the $44 billion price tag in a way that Musk gets a discount.

Musk recently took to his Twitter account to publicly say that Twitter claims >95% of daily active users are real, unique humans. The Tesla CEO then asked his followers if anyone has that experience. Musk followed up by replying to a journalist that stated the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) should investigate Twitter's numbers to see if the company lied on its official filing with the regulatory body. Musk jokingly prodded the SEC by writing the below tweet.

Aaaaand the fun continues... SpaceX and Tesla boss Elon Musk has said that the Twitter acquisition deal is on hold, as he calls BS over Twitter's number of spam/fake accounts.

In a new tweet, Musk said: "Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users". Acquiring a company for tens of billions of dollars requires extensive research, documentation, proof, and a million other things... to find out that 10-20-30% of accounts of the second-largest social network in the world are fake or bots? Oh boy.

Musk replied to himself, adding that he is "still committed to the acquisition", while Mega founder Kim Dotcom tweeted that "30% bots, fake and spam accounts. Minimum". 30% of them wouldn't surprise me, and I think that would be across ALL social networks, not just Twitter... something I think we're all going to see very soon.

Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey has come out and approved of Elon Musk's decision to bring back former President Donald Trump's Twitter account.

The Twitter co-founder praised Elon Musk for his choice of reinstating Trump's Twitter account, which was banned under inciting violence following the January 6 capital hill riots. Dorsey took to Twitter on Tuesday to say that generally, permanent bans are a "failure of ours and don't work", while going on to list exceptions where permanent bans don't solve an issue such as child sexual exploitation, spam, scams, network manipulation, and more.

Notably, the Twitter co-founder directed attention to his Twitter thread, where he explained why the company decided to ban Donald Trump's Twitter account. According to Dorsey, the decision to ban the president "was the right decision" motivated by "the best information we had based on threats to physical safety both on and off Twitter." Despite Musk stating that he would reverse the permanent ban on Trump's account, the former president only stated at the end of last month that he won't be returning to Twitter and will be staying on his own social platform Truth Social.

Famed "Star Trek" actor William Shatner recently asked Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk if he could be the new face of Twitter.

Following Musk's official purchase of Twitter and entering into a year-long closing deal, the billionaire entrepreneur has received multiple requests from various public figures asking him to make certain changes to the social media platform. Additionally, Musk has received countless questions regarding which changes he will implement and why.

On a lighter note, Shatner seems to have coyly asked Musk if he could hire him "as the face of Twitter", adding that he should remove the Twitter bird logo with the hashtag "#dumpthebird". Musk replied to Captain Kirk's tweet, saying that "You will always be my Captain". Recently, Musk revealed a change that is likely to be implemented into Twitter's direct-messaging system. To find out what check out this link here.