According to his Twitter buddy Pranay Pathole from Pune, there may be three different options of algorithms to the users…reports Asian Lite News
Amid the “doxxing” row with journalists, Elon Musk on Sunday said that Twitter users will soon see multiple algorithms that will guide them about which kind of tweets they would like to see them on their homepage timelines.
“There will be multiple algorithms, including no algorithm (i.e. just tweets from those you follow in chronological order),” Musk told a follower, who asked about implementing a social credit system on Twitter.
According to his Twitter buddy Pranay Pathole from Pune, there may be three different options of algorithms to the users.
“Home” — something that the default Twitter algorithm suggests, where tweets would be recommended based on users’ activity; Chronological or latest tweets; and Tweets From people you follow”, he posted.
Currently, your Home timeline displays a stream of Tweets from accounts you have chosen to follow on Twitter. You may see suggested content powered by a variety of signals. You can reply, Retweet, or like a Tweet from within Home.
Twitter this year tested a feature that shows users custom timelines built by developers that will merge Tweets and other media around specific themes or interests based on content pulled from accounts, hashtags and more.
In March, Twitter rolled back the update that removed the option to access the timeline in chronological order by default, after facing criticism from the users.
“We heard you — some of you always want to see the latest Tweets first. We’ve switched the timeline back and removed the tabbed experience for now while we explore other options,” said the company.
Twitter 'inching closer' to finalise $46.5 bn deal with Elon Musk
The user’s post also included journalists Ryan Mac from The New York Times and Aaron Rupar from Independent…reports Asian Lite News
Twitter CEO Elon Musk has suspended accounts of several prominent journalists on the micro-blogging platform, including Donie O’Sullivan from CNN and Drew Harwell from The Washington Post as they covered the “exact real-time location” of Musk.
When a Twitter user posted screenshots of suspended accounts of some journalists, Musk said on Friday: “Same doxxing rules apply to journalists as to everyone else.
“They posted my exact real-time location, basically assassination coordinates, in (obvious) direct violation of Twitter terms of service.”
The user’s post also included journalists Ryan Mac from The New York Times and Aaron Rupar from Independent.
Several users expressed their thoughts on Musk’s tweet.
While one user commented, “Most regular users come here for the journalists. Once they’re gone, so is your audience”, another said: “When are you going suspend @weatherchannel & @JMichaelsNews for doxxing the real live locations of all these tornado survivors in Gretna, Louisiana? You promised a dedication to free speech & now you are the suppressor.”
Meanwhile, the micro-blogging platform also suspended the official account of Mastodon, a platform for people seeking a Twitter-like alternative.
Musk reactsto press criticism
The CEO of Twitter hasn’t held back on responding to accusations of him hampering the microblogging site’s ‘freedom of speech’. Taking to Twitter, the multi-billionaire reacted with a sarcastic comment at the criticism being hurled at him.
“So inspiring to see the newfound love of freedom of speech by the press,” he wrote. According to a report by US-based Tech portal The Verge, a statement was released by CNN on the banning of one of its own journalists.
“The impulsive and unjustified suspension of a number of reporters, including CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, is concerning but not surprising. Twitter’s increasing instability and volatility should be of incredible concern for everyone who uses Twitter. We have asked Twitter for an explanation, and we will reevaluate our relationship based on that response,” the statement read.
Twitter recently suspended accounts of roughly half a dozen prominent journalists, who have been covering the social media site and Musk, citing they had violated rules against “doxxing.” The suspended accounts include those of Ryan Mac of The New York Times, Donie O’Sullivan of CNN, Drew Harwell of The Washington Post, Matt Binder of Mashable, Micah Lee of The Intercept, political journalist Keith Olbermann, Aaron Rupar and Tony Webster, both independent journalists, the New York Times reported.
The social media platform on Thursday (local time) displayed “account suspended” notices on the accounts of these journalists. The development follows a policy update made by Twitter on Thursday (local time) prohibiting the sharing of “live location information, including information shared on Twitter directly or links to 3rd-party URL(s) of travel routes.” (ANI)
Koo’s Twitter handle suspended
Microblogging site Twitter has suspended the account of Indian microblogging platform Koo. The Twitter handle @kooeminence was suspended on Friday, a development that came in the wake of billionaire Elon Musk-owned Twitter suspending the accounts of several prominent global journalists, including those from the New York Times, CNN and Washington Post. Taking to Twitter, Mayank Bidawatka, co-founder of the homegrown microblogging platform said, “I forgot. There’s more! – Banning Mastodon account. – Not allowing mastodon links saying it’s unsafe. – Banning Koo’s eminence handle. I mean seriously. How much more control does the guy need?” Mastodon is the social media rival of Twitter.
In a series of tweets, Bidawatka questioned the rationale behind suspending the @kooeminence account, which has been set up only a few days ago for queries posed by celebrities and VIPs wanting to use the Indian social media platform. “1. Posting publicly available info isn’t doxxing. Why shoot the messenger? 2. Journalists that posted links did nothing wrong. Posting a link to publicly available info isn’t doxxing the way posting a link to an online article isn’t plagiarism,” Koo co-founder Bidawtka said.
“3. Leaving spaces without answering journalists is bad. 4. Creating policies out of thin air to suit yourself is worse. 5. Changing your stance every other day is inconsistent. 6. Posting a video of an unknown car on Twitter with the car plate showing – how’s that allowed?” he added. The Koo cofounder said that Twitter killed spaces overnight to control conversations.
“He further added that there are other things that Twitter had done in the past week which is not a democracy. One needs to speak up,” he said. While promoting Koo, Bidawatka said that the home-grown microblogging platform is the best alternative to Twitter. “This place is what it is because of you and millions of other users like us. Let’s not fuel this guy’s ego,” he added. Bidawatka also said, “And guess what! Suddenly. Almost suddenly #ElonIsDestroyingTwitter has been removed from the trending section. Twitter is a publisher. Not a platform anymore!”
This comes a day after Twitter suspended the accounts of roughly half a dozen prominent journalists, who have been covering the social media site and Musk, citing they had violated rules against “doxxing.” The suspended accounts include those of Ryan Mac of The New York Times, Donie O’Sullivan of CNN, Drew Harwell of The Washington Post, Matt Binder of Mashable, Micah Lee of The Intercept, political journalist Keith Olbermann, Aaron Rupar and Tony Webster, both independent journalists, the New York Times reported. The social media platform on Thursday (local time) displayed “account suspended” notices on the accounts of these journalists. Twitter also updated its policy update on Thursday (local time) prohibiting the sharing of “live location information, including information shared on Twitter directly or links to 3rd-party URL(s) of travel routes.” Meanwhile, the United Nations and the European Union has threatened to sanction Musk on the actions taken by Twitter. (ANI)
Then the platform will guide them through a series of steps to help regain access to their accounts…reports Asian Lite News
Photo and video sharing platform, Instagram announced that it will now help users to regain access to their hacked accounts.
The platform said in a blogpost on Thursday that it has created Instagram.com/hacked, a new destination for users where they can report and resolve account access issues.
Users will need to visit Instagram.com/hacked on their mobile phone or desktop browser, if they are unable to log in to their account.
They will be able to select if they think they have been hacked, forgot their password, lost access to two-factor authentication or if their account has been disabled.
Then the platform will guide them through a series of steps to help regain access to their accounts.
If someone has multiple accounts associated with their information, they will be able to choose which account needs support.
“We know losing access to your Instagram account can be stressful, so we want to ensure people have multiple options to get their accounts back if they lose access,” Instagram said.
The company also provides the option to choose two of your Instagram friends to verify your identity and get back into your account.
Additionally, Instagram is testing new ways to prevent hacking on the platform.
It will remove accounts that its automated systems find to be malicious, including ones that impersonate others and which go against its Community Guidelines.
Moreover, the blue verified badge for verified accounts will now appear in more places across the platform including Stories and DMs.
If you run a paid newsletter, on December 20 the company will set all paid subscriptions to cancel at the end of subscribers’ billing cycle…reports Asian Lite News
Twitter will shut down its newsletter tool Revue on January 18, 2023. Twitter’s senior product manager and Revue founder Martijn de Kuijper made the announcement in a post on Wednesday.
Users will not be able to access their Revue account from January 18, 2023 and all data will be deleted.
“This has been a hard decision because we know Revue has a passionate user base, made up of people like you,” Kuijper wrote.
If you run a paid newsletter, on December 20 the company will set all paid subscriptions to cancel at the end of subscribers’ billing cycle.
This will stop your subscribers from being paid for Revue content once it no longer supports sending newsletters.
In the meantime, the writers will be able to download their subscribers list, past newsletter issues and analytics by following the instructions present in the post. “We’re grateful to everyone who has used our service over the years, and hope we can continue to help you build a community with your readers on Twitter,” Kuijper wrote. Twitter acquired Revue in January last year.
The company will refund players for any in-game purchases made via Epic direct payment 180 days prior to December 14…reports Asian Lite News
Video game developer Epic Games has announced that it is shutting down online services and servers for many older games including ‘Rock Band 1-3’ and ‘Unreal Tournament 2003’.
Most games will allow players to play offline, while some will no longer be playable, Epic Games said in a blogpost on Wednesday.
The changes aim to support Epic Online Services with its unified friends system, voice chat features, parental controls and parental verification features. The company also apologised to the players affected by the changes.
“We have started removing games that were still available from all digital storefronts and are disabling any in-game downloadable content (DLC) purchasing as of today,” the game developer said.
The company will refund players for any in-game purchases made via Epic direct payment 180 days prior to December 14.
Meanwhile, last week, the video game developer had added new for-kids accounts in ‘Fortnite’, ‘Rocket League’ and ‘Fall Guys’ games. ‘Cabined Accounts’ provides a personalised experience that is safe and inclusive for younger players.
Telegram has over 700 million monthly active users globally and has more than 120 million users in India, according to reports…reports Asian Lite News
Telegram Founder and CEO Pavel Durov on Wednesday said that the paid Telegram Premium, which we introduced just five months ago, has surpassed 1 million subscribers.
Telegram in October reduced the subscription cost of its premium tier in India from Rs 469 to Rs 179.
Globally, the premium subscription is priced in the range of $4.99 to $6.
“While it still represents just a fraction of Telegram’s overall revenue, Telegram Premium is growing steadily every day, and one day may even rival our ads,” said Durov.
Telegram has over 700 million monthly active users globally and has more than 120 million users in India, according to reports.
Durov said that their ads have significantly outperformed the market and put Telegram on a steady path towards financial sustainability.
“The future looks exciting. The additional monetisation strategies I discussed in my previous posts are already bearing fruit, and the features we are working on now will set the foundation for further financial growth for Telegram in 2023,” he mentioned.
“While some other apps consider their users a tool to maximise revenue, we consider revenue a tool to maximise value for our users,” he noted.
Telegram’s next step is to build a set of decentralised tools, including non-custodial wallets and decentralised exchanges for millions of people to securely trade and store cryptocurrencies.
“We, developers, should steer the blockchain industry away from centralisation by building fast and easy-to-use decentralised applications for the masses. Such projects are finally feasible today,” the Telegram CEO said earlier this month.
Security expert Chad Loder first broke the news on Twitter and was suspended soon from the platform…reports Asian Lite News
As Elon Musk goes gaga over Twitter 2.0 which will be the ‘Everything App’, at least 5.4 million Twitter user records, stolen via an internal bug, have been leaked online on a hacker forum.
In addition to the 5.4 million records for sale online, there were an additional 1.4 million Twitter profiles collected using a different Twitter application programming interface (API) that have reportedly been shared privately among a few people.
The massive data consists of scraped public information as well as private phone numbers and email addresses that are not meant to be public, reports Bleeping Computer.
The data expose came at a time as Musk revealed his Twitter 2.0 — The Everything App, saying that the new user signups are at an all-time high and the company is now actively recruiting.
Security expert Chad Loder first broke the news on Twitter and was suspended soon from the platform.
“I have just received evidence of a massive Twitter data breach affecting millions of Twitter accounts in the EU and the US. I have contacted a sample of the affected accounts and they confirmed that the breached data is accurate. This breach occurred no earlier than 2021,” Loder had posted on Twitter.
The data containing non-public information was stolen using a Twitter API vulnerability fix in January this year.
This data was collected in December 2021 using a Twitter API vulnerability disclosed in the HackerOne bug bounty programme, the report said on Sunday.
Most of the data consisted of public information, such as Twitter IDs, names, login names, locations, and verified status.
It also included private information, such as phone numbers and email addresses. Musk or Twitter were yet to comment on the report.
Pompompurin, the owner of the Breached hacking forum, told BleepingComputer that “they were responsible for exploiting the bug and creating the massive dump of Twitter user records after another threat actor known as ‘Devil’ shared the vulnerability with them,” the report mentioned.
As hackers released 5.4 million records online, an even larger data dump has allegedly been created using the same vulnerability, according to the report.
“We were told that it consists of over 17 million records but could not independently confirm this,” said the report.
Upon investigation, the researchers found that all of them were active WhatsApp users…reports Asian Lite News
WhatsApp phone numbers of 487 million users have been stolen and put on sale on a “well-known” hacking community forum, the media reported.
According to Cybernews, the dataset allegedly contains WhatsApp user data from 84 countries and phone numbers of over 32 million users from the US, 11 million from the UK, and 10 million from Russia.
The hacker claims to have a significant number of phone numbers belonging to the citizens of Egypt (45 million), Italy (35 million), Saudi Arabia (29 million), France (20 million), and Turkey (20 million).
The hacker was selling the US dataset for $7,000, the UK for $2,500, and Germany for $2,000, according to the report.
Cybernews researchers were able to get in touch with the hacker and also able to collect a sample of the data in which they found out that the shared sample contained 1,097 UK and 817 US user numbers.
Upon investigation, the researchers found that all of them were active WhatsApp users.
However, the hacker did not specify how they obtained the data, suggesting they “used their strategy,” and that all the numbers belong to WhatsApp users, said the report.
This database can be used by hackers for spamming, phishing attempts, identity theft, and other cybercriminal activities.
WhatsApp provides numerous privacy settings, such as hiding status and profile pictures, that users can enable to protect themselves from prying eyes.
The new feature will also be released on WhatsApp beta for Android soon…reports Asian Lite News
WhatsApp has rolled out a new feature to some beta testers that allows users to see profile photos within group chats on a desktop.
This feature will help users to identify group members for which they don’t have the phone number or when they have the same name, reports WABetaInfo.
If a group member does not set up a profile photo or if it is hidden due to privacy restrictions, the default profile icon appears and it is highlighted using the same colour as the contact name.
The new feature will also be released on WhatsApp beta for Android soon.
The messaging platform started to work on this new feature for WhatsApp Desktop beta in October.
The company plans to introduce the feature on desktop and iOS beta to help group members recognise other people in their groups better, the report said.
Several employees also bid farewell to Twitter in the company’s internal messaging platform Slack…reports Asian Lite News
In yet another mayhem at Twitter, hundreds of employees have resigned ahead of the deadline given to them by Elon Musk to either agree to his “extremely hardcore” way of work or quit the company.
Several employees took to Twitter to announce their resignations ahead of the 5 p.m. Thursday deadline (US time) to meet Musk’s new work criteria.
Twitter had around 3,000 employees left after the massive layoffs when Musk sacked about half of its workforce after taking over the company.
“And just like that, after 12 years, I have left Twitter. I have nothing but love for all my fellow tweeps, past and present. A thousand faces and a thousand scenes are flashing through my mind right now – I love you Twitter and I’ll forever bleed blue,” posted Satanjeev Banerjee from San Francisco.
Several employees also bid farewell to Twitter in the company’s internal messaging platform Slack.
“After the deadline hit, hundreds of employees quickly started posting farewell messages and saluting emojis in Twitter’s Slack, announcing that they had said no to Musk’s ultimatum,” reports The Verge.
“I have worked here at Twitter for over 11 years. Back in July, I was the 27th most tenured employee at the company. Now I’m the 15th,” posted one employee in Twitter’s Slack.
“I’m not pressing the (yes) button. My watch ends with Twitter 1.0. I do not wish to be part of Twitter 2.0,” another posted.
Musk, in his memo to employees, had written that “going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore”.
“Guess I just said goodbye to the ghost of my dream job forever?. Tweeps, you are world-class,” posted another employee who resigned.
Zoe Schiffer, Managing Editor at Platformer, tweeted that “Twitter has alerted employees that effective immediately, all office buildings are temporarily closed and badge access is suspended. No details given as to why”.
“We’re hearing this is because Elon Musk and his team are terrified employees are going to sabotage the company. Also, they’re still trying to figure out which Twitter workers they need to cut access for,” she tweeted.
Schiffer said that Twitter offices will reopen on November 21.
