Internet & Websites News - Page 6

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."

Since his purchase of Twitter, Elon Musk has been launching off several tweets about what he believes Twitter needs to be in the future, revealing some of the ethos he will be bringing to the company.

Earlier this week, SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk purchased Twitter for $46.5 billion, citing that free speech is the "bedrock of a functioning democracy" and that "Twitter is the digital town square". When the deal was struck, Musk said that he wanted to "unlock it" by implementing changes such as making the social media platform open source and making it "politically neutral".

The now Twitter owner seeks to make Twitter a publicly trusted platform, and recently revealed how he intends to do that. Musk to his personal account on April 28 to write that "For Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally". Jokingly, Musk said that his next big company purchase will be Coca-Cola as he desires to put the cocaine back in the drink. More on that story below.

Following Elon Musk's official purchase of Twitter and the long process of closing a multi-billion dollar deal, Musk has found himself in the middle of some controversy.

Musk only recently purchased Twitter, and as a part of the 95-page-long agreement, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO agreed to put restrictions on any future tweets until the deal was closed. The restrictions that Musk signed on for was that any future tweets wouldn't "disparage" Twitter or any of its representatives.

Twenty-four hours after the agreement was signed, Musk posted two tweets; one was a reply to podcast host Saagar Enjeti flagging, who posted an article that claimed Twitter's legal head, Vijaya Gadde, was "emotional" and cried during a meeting where the deal was being discussed. Enjeti described Gadde as Twitter's "top censorship advocate", which was a call back to the role Gadde played in Twitter's decision to stop the New York Post from publishing a story about President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden.

A YouTuber that goes by the Trevor Jacob filmed himself crashing his own plane over California's Los Padres national forest and has now lost his pilot license.

Jacob filmed himself flying over California's Los Padres national forest in a small plane that was equipped with several camera angles. In the video, Jacob can be heard saying, "I'm over the mountains and I ... have an engine out," and then he can be seen abandoning his plane, jumping out, and filming himself parachuting towards the ground. The video was uploaded on December 24, 2021, and sparked an investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on April 11, 2022.

The investigation has concluded that the crash of Jacob's 1940 Taylorcraft BL-65 was intentional and that Jacob "demonstrated a lack of care, judgment, and responsibility by choosing to jump out of an aircraft solely so you could record the footage of the crash."

President Trump won't be returning to Twitter any time soon, while SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk has just secured Twitter for $44 billion... and ex-CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, is singing Musk's praises.

In a series of new tweets, Jack said that doesn't believe "anyone should own or run Twitter. It wants to be a public good at a protocol level, not a company. Solving for the problem of it being a company however, Elon is the singular solution I trust. I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness".

Jack continued: "Elon's goal of creating a platform that is "maximally trusted and broadly inclusive" is the right one. This is also Parag's goal, and why I chose him. Thank you both for getting the company out of an impossible situation. This is the right path...I believe it with all my heart".

YouTube launched on December 15, 2005, and since then, it has become an internet sensation and a standard, to the point where younger generations can't even imagine an internet without it.

With YouTube getting thousands upon thousands of hours uploaded to its every day in 2022, in 2005, there was nothing on the platform, that was until YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim, an American software engineer, uploaded the very first YouTube video titled "Me at the zoo" on April 24, 2005. The 17-year anniversary of the video's upload and the beginning of YouTube's journey was just yesterday.

In April 2005, YouTube launched a public beta and around the same time, Karim, one of YouTube's co-founders, left the project to study for a master's degree in computing science at Stanford University. Karim left with a substantial number of shares in the company, which was later purchased by Google for $1.65 billion in 2006, sending YouTube's share value skywards.