Internet & Websites News - Page 5

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 or because they're no longer active on Twitter)."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.

Now that Elon Musk has purchased Twitter, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO has begun revealing some of his stances on changes that may come to the platform.

Musk hasn't been shy about saying that Twitter needs changes, as it was one of his main reasons for purchasing the world's second-largest social media to take it private as he believes that under his guidance and changes, he will "unlock it". Since the purchasing has gone through, Musk has dropped hints on his beliefs for Twitter to "deserve public trust,"; what Twitter's direct-messaging services needs, and now account authentication.

In reply to a post by Mike Huckabee that directly asks Musk to change Twitter's account requirements to have people's real names attached to them so people cannot hide behind anonymity. Huckabee calls upon people to "be man enough or woman enough to stand by what you say!". In response to this Tweet, Musk says that "Authentication is important, but so is anonymity for many. A balance must be struck."

Despite having restrictions on his tweets, Elon Musk has taken center stage once again to reveal his stance on direct messaging (DMs) on Twitter.

The SpaceX and Tesla CEO took to his personal Twitter account to reveal that he supports end-to-end encryption-style DMs and then referenced the messaging platform Signal. Musk went on to write that he believes Twitter should have this messaging service "so no one can spy on or hack your messages".

At the moment, administrators at Twitter with the appropriate level of system access can view a message sent between two individuals, and by proposing end-to-end encryption, Musk is saying that Twitter shouldn't be allowed to read the messages users are sending. Essentially, when a message is sent from the user's phone, it arrives on the Twitter server encrypted and is then transferred to the receiver's phone, where its deciphered.

Meta's latest financials reveal how many people use Facebook every day, and the answer is surprising.

Facebook is absolutely huge and is easily the largest social media platform on the market. A quarter of the world's population, or 25% of people on planet Earth, log into and use Facebook every day.

The numbers show that more people are using Facebook than ever before. A record-breaking 1.96 billion people used Facebook on a daily basis through January and March 2022. That's a substantial yearly increase of 4.4% in users, or 82 million people

Facebook is under pressure from several regulators worldwide to change how it handles users' data.

A leaked internal document written in 2021 obtained from Facebook by Motherboard shows that Facebook was "surprised" by a "tsunami of inbound regulations," and privacy engineers on its Ad and Business Product team are sounding alarm bells within the company to institute change to prevent trouble with regulators. The document uses the acronyms 3PD, 1PD, and SCD to refer to third-party data, first-party data, and sensitive categories data, respectively.

"We've built systems with open borders. The result of these open systems and open culture is well described with an analogy: Imagine you hold a bottle of ink in your hand. This bottle of ink is a mixture of all kinds of user data (3PD, 1PD, SCD, Europe, etc.) You pour that ink into a lake of water (our open data systems; our open culture) ... and it flows ... everywhere. How do you put that ink back in the bottle? How do you organize it again, such that it only flows to the allowed places in the lake?" the document reads.

Since Elon Musk's official purchase of Twitter, many individuals have been asking the SpaceX CEO questions about what he will do to the platform when the deal has closed and what he should investigate internally once he has taken the reins.

Dave Rubin, a conservative political commentator who hosts "The Rubin Report," took to Twitter to ask Musk to investigate The New York Times, Forbes, and other media outlets for buying "their Twitter followers to fake influence." Rubin then pointed out that The New York Times Twitter account has 53 million followers but only gets about 50 retweets per post, indicating a severe lack of user engagement despite the extremely high follower count.

The very same principle applies to Forbes' Twitter account, which has 17.8 million followers but only receives about fifteen retweets per post and about ten comments. Notably, Rubin didn't provide evidence of these media outlets directly purchasing followers but has pointed out an interesting metric nonetheless. Furthermore, Musk has responded to the call for an investigation to be launched by replying, "Yeah, I noticed that too. Pretty weird."