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Twitter to restrict DMs for unverified accounts to reduce spam

Musk had put “temporary” rate limits on reading tweets. He had said that “If our twitter bid succeeds, we will defeat the spam bots or die trying”…reports Asian Lite News

Twitter has announced to restrict direct messages (DMs) for unverified accounts in order to reduce spam on the platform.

The company said it will soon be implementing some changes “in our effort to reduce spam in Direct Messages”.  “Unverified accounts will have daily limits on the number of DMs they can send,” the company said.

To send unlimited DMs, a Twitter user will now need to pay for a Twitter Blue subscription. Twitter, however, didn’t specify what the daily DM limit might be. The changes would be implemented beginning Friday.

Last week, the micro-blogging platform added a new messages setting to help reduce the number of spam messages in DMs.

With the new setting enabled, messages from users who you follow will arrive in your primary inbox, and messages from verified users who you don’t follow will be sent to your message request inbox.

“Users who previously had their permissions set to allow message requests from everyone will be migrated to this new setting, but can switch back at any time,” said the company.

Earlier, Musk had put “temporary” rate limits on reading tweets. He had said that “If our twitter bid succeeds, we will defeat the spam bots or die trying”.

Twitter last week claimed that more than 99.99 per cent of Tweet impressions are from healthy content or content that does not violate the platform’s rules. “Our commitment to our community is simple and clear — maintain free expression and make Twitter a safe space for everyone,” Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino tweeted.

“We will continue to remove the most serious violations of our rules, such as illegal content, and suspend bad actors from our platform,” Twitter said.

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Social Media Tech Lite

Threads set to cross 100 mn users as Twitter traffic dips

The new app crossed 2 million sign-ups in just two hours after launch, 10 million users in seven hours and 30 million in just 12 hours…reports Asian Lite News

Meta’s Twitter rival, Threads, is set to cross 100 million user sign-ups as Twitter is experiencing a decline in traffic.

Meta launched Threads last week for iOS and Android users in 100 countries, and it is currently the top free app on the App Store.

There are currently over 97 million accounts on the Threads app, based on the number badges that appear on Instagram profiles and indicate when someone joined the new app, reports Search Engine Journal.

At the current rate of user adoption, Threads would soon reach 100 million users.

The new app crossed 2 million sign-ups in just two hours after launch, 10 million users in seven hours and 30 million in just 12 hours.

IT service management company Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince on Sunday tweeted a graph showing Twitter’s declining domain name system (DNS) ranking from January to now. 

Instagram head Adam Mosseri last week clarified that Meta does not want to replace Twitter but create a public square for communities on Instagram that never really embraced Twitter and for communities on Elon Musk-run platform “that are interested in a less angry place for conversations, but not all of Twitter”.

The new application is currently missing features such as direct messages, a “Following” feed, a full web version, a chronological feed and more.

Auto-delete posts option

Threads, will now feature an option to auto-delete posts after a few months of posting them. In response to a feature request related to automatically delete posts after 90 days, Instagram head Adam Mosseri on Monday said” “I was thinking 30 but make it a user choice, but maybe 90 if better…”

Meta launched Threads last week for iOS and Android users in 100 countries, and it is currently the top free app on the App Store.

Threads has crossed 90 million user sign-ups just within a few days after its launch. Meanwhile, Twitter-owner Elon Musk on Sunday mocked Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and said, “Zuck is a cuck”.

“I propose a literal d*** measuring contest,” he tweeted. Several users expressed their thoughts on Musk’s post.

While one user said, “Ok I had to check like 10 times this was actually Elon and not a parody account lol”, another commented, “‘Zuck’ is only 1 letter away from ‘Cuck’.” Last week, Musk said “competition is fine, cheating is not.”

“Zuck my *tongue emoji*,” he had tweeted last month. Back in 2017, Musk had hit back at Zuckerberg, saying that the Meta CEO’s understanding of artificial intelligence is “limited”.

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Social Media Tech Lite USA

Twitter rivals flex their muscles as Musk restricts access

Since January, Threads has been under development at Meta under the name “Project 92”. Meta has added a launch date teaser to the Instagram app…reports Asian Lite News

The abrupt changes at Twitter under Elon Musk, that has left millions of users annoyed, has resulted in a surge in several competitor apps to the so-called ‘public digital square’ and leading the pack in Meta’s Threads that is set to be launched this week.

As Twitter writes its own nemesis as it finally heads towards a fully paid service, Musk rivals have sensed the deep grudge among Twitter users.

Before Twitter owner Musk and Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg enter a full-on cage fight (both are apparently preparing for the Jiu Jitsu showdown), Instagram Threads is expected to launch on Thursday, according to an App Store listing for the application.

“Say more with Threads — Instagram’s text-based conversation app. Threads is where communities come together to discuss everything from the topics you care about today to what’ll be trending tomorrow,” according to Meta.

With the new Twitter-like app, users will be able to follow and connect directly with their favourite creators and others. Last week, Threads briefly appeared on the Google Play Store.

Since January, Threads has been under development at Meta under the name “Project 92”. Meta has added a launch date teaser to the Instagram app.

Typing “threads” into the search box (or a number of other keywords) causes a ticket icon to appear on the search bar. Another Twitter competitor Mastodon is witnessing a steep rise in new members.

According to its CEO Eugen Rochko, the number of active users across the decentralised social media platform went up by 2,94,000 over the weekend, as Twitter faced refresh rate limit and post viewing restrictions, especially for non-paid users. Mastodon recently crossed more than 10 million registered accounts.

Sensing a big opportunity, Twitter rival Bluesky, backed by none other than Jack Dorsey who still feels that running Twitter is “hard”, has reopened the sign-ups that the company disabled a few days back.

“We just enabled account sign-ups again, so any outstanding invite codes can now be used to create an account,” the company said in a screenshot shared by The Verge.

In an update, the platform said: “We are still working to accommodate the large influx of users and increase in traffic.”

Meanwhile, popular messaging platform Telegram posted on Twitter: “Don’t worry, you can read as many Telegram posts as you want”.

Facing a myriad of issues, Musk has announced that the recent Twitter changes for users are temporary to “address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation”. However, the micro-blogging platform has now launched a new and improved version of the social media dashboard application for management ‘TweetDeck’ globally, saying that after 30 days, only verified users will be able to access the new app.

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Tech Lite

Twitter to soon let users upload over 3-hr videos

Twitter. (File Photo: IANS)

In May, Musk had announced the ability to upload 2-hour videos (8GB) for Twitter Blue Verified subscribers…reports Asian Lite News

Micro-blogging platform Twitter will soon allow users to post over 3-hour long videos. When Twitter-owner Elon Musk responded to the American comedian and podcaster Theo Von’s tweet, “Comedy is legal on this platform!”

Lex Fridman, host of the famous Lex Fridman Podcast and who recently posted a video of him training jiu jitsu with Musk, commented, “Nice. It would be great to be able to upload 3+ hour podcast videos, with timestamps/chapters. PS: Theo is awesome.” “Coming,” Musk replied.

“Thanks Elon! Let me know when you’re ready to bring podcasts to twitter. happy to help,” Von added. Several users expressed their thoughts on Twitter-owner’s post.

While one user said, “Meme editor. Elon. Cmon. give us give us,” another commented, “Can you make the uploading time faster….I be trying to upload a 5 mins video and it still takes like 10 mins to post.”

In May, Musk had announced the ability to upload 2-hour videos (8GB) for Twitter Blue Verified subscribers.

The microblogging platform had also changed its Twitter Blue page and announced that the video file size limit for paid users has been raised from 2GB to 8GB. Despite these changes, the maximum upload quality remains 1080p.

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-Top News USA

Musk sets reading posts limits on Twitter

New York [USA], June 21 (ANI): Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk speaks the media after meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in New York, USA on Tuesday. (ANI Photo)

According to outage monitor website ‘Down Detector’, more than 7,000 users reported issues with Twitter. “Someone wake up Elon and tell him his $44 billion app isn’t working!” a Twitter user posted…reports Asian Lite News

As millions of users were left in the lurch due to “extreme” backend changes at Twitter, Elon Musk on Saturday said that he has applied temporary limits on who will read how many posts in a day, in order to prevent data scraping and system manipulation.

According to Musk’s new order, verified accounts have been limited to reading 6,000 posts per day. Musk said that unverified accounts will be able to read 600 posts per day and new unverified accounts just 300 posts a day.

“To address extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation, we’ve applied the following temporary limits,” said the Twitter owner. His clarification came as millions of users across the globe, including in India, slammed him as micro-blogging platform suffered a major outage globally, which prevented thousands of users from accessing the social media platform.

According to outage monitor website ‘Down Detector’, more than 7,000 users reported issues with Twitter. “Someone wake up Elon and tell him his $44 billion app isn’t working!” a Twitter user posted.

“Me coming to twitter to see why it says ‘rate limit exceeded’ #TwitterDown,” another user wrote.

The hashtags #TwitterDown and #RateLimitExceeded were trending on Twitter. Earlier on Saturday, Twitter stopped browsing access on its web platform for people without accounts, as Musk said this drastic action was necessary due to “extreme levels of data scraping”.

“We were getting data pillaged so much that it was degrading service for normal users,” Musk posted. “Almost every company doing AI, from startups to some of the biggest corporations on Earth, was scraping vast amounts of data,” he claimed.

ALSO READ-Twitter hits all-time high user engagement

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-Top News Tech Lite

Twitter hits all-time high user engagement

For the Twitter Android app, average daily active users were down 9.8 per cent in March and monthly active users were down 8 per cent (both year-over-year)…reports Asian Lite News

Despite tall claims by Twitter owner Elon Musk, the micro-blogging platform is witnessing a decline in user engagement as well as traffic. Musk on Saturday tweeted that the “platform hit another all-time high in user-seconds last week”.

The Twitter owner has made such claims in the past too. In April, as part of a BBC interview, Musk said the social media service was seeing record user engagement, and that major advertisers were returning.

However, according to web analysis site Similarweb, its monthly report on traffic to the social media ad portals saw an 18.7 per cent year-over-year drop for Twitter in March.

“Worldwide visits to twitter.com dropped 7.3% year-over-year in March, the third straight month of declines,” according to Similarweb estimates. Twitter’s unique visitor count on the web dropped 3.3 per cent year-over-year in March.

For the Twitter Android app, average daily active users were down 9.8 per cent in March and monthly active users were down 8 per cent (both year-over-year).

One of Musk’s specific claims — tweeted in March and repeated in the BBC interview — is that Twitter now commands more than 8 billion minutes of user time per day, which he said is a new record.

“We couldn’t find any evidence that Twitter’s previous management ever reported that particular metric and it’s not one we can either confirm or dispute,” according to Similarweb. Over the past couple of years, traffic to the website has been fluctuating from month to month, but with no consistent pattern of growth.

Over the same period that Twitter has been losing web traffic, app usage has also been trending down.

ALSO READ-Hacker who took over Biden, Musk Twitter accounts sent to prison

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-Top News Social Media

Hacker who took over Biden, Musk Twitter accounts sent to prison

He was extradited to the US from Spain in April this year, where he awaited trial for harassing, threatening, and extorting his victims…reports Asian Lite News

A 24-year-old hacker behind the massive July 2020 Twitter hack where he along with others attempted to take control of at least 130 famous Twitter accounts has been sentenced to federal prison in the US.

Joseph James O`Connor attacked several celebrity accounts including US President Joe Biden, American socialite and model Kim Kardashian and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

O’Connor was sentenced in a New York federal court to five years in prison, after pleading guilty in May to his role in cyber stalking and computer hacking that targeted several high-profile social media accounts.

In the court, he said his crimes were “stupid and pointless”, and apologised to his victims, reports TechCrunch.

O’Connor, known by his online handle PlugWalkJoe, was part of a group that broke into dozens of high-profile Twitter accounts, including Apple, Binance, Bill Gates, Joe Biden and Elon Musk, to spread cryptocurrency scams in July 2020.

He was extradited to the US from Spain in April this year, where he awaited trial for harassing, threatening, and extorting his victims.

O’Connor, in July 2020, wrote on Biden`s account: “All Bitcoin sent to the address below will be sent back double! If you send $1,000, I will send back $2,000. Only doing this for 30 minutes. Enjoy!”

Twitter then responded at that time by deactivating all verified accounts and disabling the tweet feature in an attempt to target the hackers. As part of his guilty plea, O’Connor has agreed to pay restitution to all of the victims and forfeit just over $7,94,000.

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Business Media Tech Lite

Linda Yaccarino takes over as new Twitter CEO

Elon Musk confirms Linda Yaccarino as new Twitter CEO

Yaccarino said last month that she is prepared to build Twitter 2.0 and transform the business together with Musk and millions of platform users…reports Asian Lite News

Linda Yaccarino is set to take over as the new Twitter CEO from Monday, as Elon Musk aims to focus more on Tesla and SpaceX, the media reported.

Yaccarino, former Chairman of Global Advertising and Partnerships at NBC Universal, has also hired Joe Benarroch, executive vice-president at NBC Universal, to work along with her at Twitter.

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) late on Sunday, Benarroch has been a trusted adviser to Yaccarino.

“Tomorrow, I start a different professional adventure at Twitter, taking on a role focusing on business operations,” Benarroch wrote in the memo seen by WSJ.

“I am looking forward to bringing my experience to Twitter, and to working with the entire team to build Twitter 2.0 together,” he added.

Yaccarino said last month that she is prepared to build Twitter 2.0 and transform the business together with Musk and millions of platform users.

“I’ve long been inspired by your vision to create a brighter future. I’m excited to help bring this vision to Twitter and transform this business together,” she posted on Twitter.

“I’m just as committed to the future of this platform. Your feedback is VITAL to that future. I’m here for all of it. Let’s keep the conversation going and build Twitter 2.0 together,” Yaccarino also commented.

Musk is looking forward to working with Yaccarino to transform the platform into X, the everything app, just like China’s WeChat.

Yaccarino oversaw about 2,000 workers at NBC Universal. Her team generated more than $100 billion in ad sales and entered partnerships with companies, including Apple, Snapchat, BuzzFeed, Twitter and YouTube.

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India News Social Media Tech Lite

Twitter bans record over 25L accounts in India

Under the new IT Rules 2021, big digital and social media platforms, with more than 5 million users, have to publish monthly compliance reports…reports Asian Lite News

Elon Musk-run Twitter banned a record 25,51,623 accounts in India between March 26 and April 25, for promoting child sexual exploitation and non-consensual nudity.

The micro-blogging platform, going through a churning under its new owner, also took down 2,249 accounts for promoting terrorism on its platform in the country.

In total, Twitter banned 25,53,881 accounts in the reporting period in India.

Twitter, in its monthly report in compliance with the new IT Rules, 2021, said that it received just 158 complaints from users in India in the same time-frame through its grievance redressal mechanisms.

In addition, Twitter processed four grievances which were appealing account suspensions.

“We overturned three of these account suspensions after reviewing the specifics of the situation. The remaining reported accounts remain suspended,” said the company.

“We did not receive any requests related to general questions about Twitter accounts during this reporting period,” it added.

Most complaints from India were about abuse/harassment (83), followed by sensitive adult content (41), hateful conduct (19), and defamation (12).

Under the new IT Rules 2021, big digital and social media platforms, with more than 5 million users, have to publish monthly compliance reports.

Meanwhile, under Musk, Twitter recently approved a staggering 83 per cent of government requests to either restrict or block content globally, including in India and Turkey, the media reported.

Since Musk’s takeover in October 2022, the micro-blogging platform received 971 requests from governments, according to a report in El Pais, a Spanish-language daily newspaper.

When Bloomberg columnist Matthew Yglesias shared the report on Twitter on Monday, with the caption “I’m a free speech absolutist”, an angry Musk reacted: “You’re such a numbskull. Please point out where we had an actual choice and we will reverse it.”

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