Tag: tweets
Linda Yaccarino fires off first tweets as Twitter’s new CEO
Twitter limits access to some tweets in Turkey ahead of tightly contested election
On the eve of potentially one of the most consequential elections in the country’s history, Twitter began blocking posts in Turkey. “In response to legal process and to ensure Twitter remains available to the people of Turkey, we have taken action to restrict access to some content in Turkey today,” the company tweeted on Friday, in English and Turkish. “We have informed the account holders of this action in line with our policy. This content will remain available in the rest of the world.”
In response to legal process and to ensure Twitter remains available to the people of Turkey, we have taken action to restrict access to some content in Turkey today.
— Twitter Global Government Affairs (@GlobalAffairs) May 13, 2023
Twitter didn’t say which tweets it was blocking, and the company no longer operates a communications department Engadget could contact for more information. Predictably, the decision to comply with a censorship request from the Turkish government has put a spotlight on Elon Musk’s free speech beliefs. On Friday, Musk, who named Linda Yaccarino as the next CEO of Twitter that same day, lashed out at Bloomberg columnist Matthew Yglesias when he suggested the decision “should generate some interesting Twitter Files reporting.”
“Did your brain fall out of your head, Yglesias? The choice is have Twitter throttled in its entirety or limit access to some tweets. Which one do you want?” Musk tweeted at Yglesias.
Did your brain fall out of your head, Yglesias? The choice is have Twitter throttled in its entirety or limit access to some tweets. Which one do you want?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2023
As The Washington Post notes, Sunday’s election could have significant ramifications for Turkey. After two decades in power, Recep Tayyip Erdogan faces the most credible threat to his presidency in recent memory. Ahead of Sunday’s contest, most polls showed opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu had a slight lead on his opponent. If elected, Kilicdaroglu has promised to reshape the country’s domestic policy. Erdogan’s defeat could also have a profound impact on Turkey’s relationship with other powers in the region, including Russia and NATO. Per CNN, If one candidate can’t win more than 50 percent of the vote, the country will hold a run-off election on May 28th. As of the writing of this article, Erdogan holds an 11 percentage point lead on Kilicdaroglu, though that could change as more ballots are counted.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/twitter-limits-access-to-some-tweets-in-turkey-ahead-of-tightly-contested-election-171432725.html?src=rss
Twitter says a ‘security incident’ led to private Circle tweets becoming public
Back in April, users found a bug with Twitter’s Circle feature that saw the platform expose private tweets to strangers. Now, nearly a month later, the company has finally commented on the issue. In an email seen by The Guardian, Twitter told affected users the exposure was the result of “a security incident that occured earlier this year.”
The company claims the issue was “immediately fixed.” It also shared an apology. “Twitter is committed to protecting the privacy of the people who use our service, and we understand the risks that an incident like this can introduce and we deeply regret this happened,” the company said. When news of the exposure first started circulating online, some, including creator Theo Brown, speculated the issue was the result of Twitter failing to filter Circle tweets out of its recommendation algorithm. Twitter has not operated a communications department since Elon Musk’s first round of layoffs, and the company did not initially acknowledge the issue.
More broadly, Twitter has dealt with a growing number of technical issues since Musk’s takeover of the company in October. The billionaire has reduced the company’s workforce by at least 60 percent, gutting many of its technical teams of senior leadership. Over that time, Twitter has suffered multiple outages and otherwise created confusion over feature rollouts and removals.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/twitter-says-a-security-incident-led-to-private-circle-tweets-becoming-public-164954799.html?src=rss
Twitter confirms Circle tweets temporarily were not private
Twitter confirmed that a security error that made Circle tweets — posts that only go out to a small subset of trusted friends — surface publicly. TechCrunch reported the glitch in early April, but the platform confirmed the issue today in an email sent to Twitter Circle users. “In April 2023, a security incident may […]
Twitter confirms Circle tweets temporarily were not private by Amanda Silberling originally published on TechCrunch
Twitter starts putting labels on tweets with restricted reach
It should now be easier to deduce whether Twitter has restricted the visibility of a tweet over a possible violation of the company’s hateful conduct policy. Twitter has started applying a label to tweets that it believes breaks those rules, as it recently pledged to do.
When Twitter detects a tweet that may violate the policy, it will limit the reach of the post and apply a label that reads “Visibility limited: this tweet may violate Twitter’s rules against hateful conduct.” The company plans to expand the labels to include more types of policy violations in the coming months.
🚫Censorship
🚫Shadowbanning
✅Freedom of speech, not reach.Our new labels are now live. https://t.co/a0nTyPSZWY
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) April 24, 2023
Twitter says it may limit the visibility of rulebreaking tweets by excluding them from search results, as well as from the For You and Following timelines. Such tweets may be downranked in replies and it may not be possibly to reply to them, retweet them, bookmark them or pin them to profiles.
Twitter noted that it may incorrectly label a tweet as one that violates its rules, so the authors of such tweets can effectively appeal the decision by providing feedback. However, the company said it may not acknowledge the feedback or restore the tweet’s typical reach.
The company is taking a looser approach to moderation under current owner Elon Musk as it has adopted a “Freedom of Speech, not Freedom of Reach” philosophy. For instance, it quietly updated the hateful conduct policy this month to lift a ban on misgendering and deadnaming transgender people.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/twitter-starts-putting-labels-on-tweets-with-restricted-reach-201509292.html?src=rss
Nearly 25,000 Twitter users pay to subscribe to Elon Musk’s exclusive tweets
After this weekend’s Twitter Blue drama, debacle, guerilla marketing campaign – whatever you want to call it – Elon Musk shifted gears on Monday to promote Twitter’s other paid subscriptions feature called, well, Subscriptions.
“Content creators may wish to enable subscriptions on this platform,” tweeted Musk. “Just tap on Monetization in settings.”
Subscriptions allows users to subscribe directly to a specific Twitter creator that has opted into the program. In turn, the creator can provide subscribers with exclusive tweets, subscriber-only Twitter Spaces, and other paywalled content.
Included in Musk’s tweet, is a screenshot showing the sidebar navigation menu on Twitter’s mobile app. Ostensibly, Musk included this to show interested users where they could sign up. But, there’s another bit of information included in that screenshot: It shows just how many users are directly paying Elon Musk for his Subscriptions-only content.
Next to Musk’s followers and following counts is another number: Subscriptions, which is actually a private metric only shown to the specific creator so they can see how many users have Subscribed to their paywalled content.
Musk’s subscriber count shows at 24.7k, or somewhere between 24,700 and 24,799 paying subscribers. Twitter’s owner charges $4 for subscriptions to his account, which puts the amount of money he’s making from the Subscriptions feature at nearly $100,000 per month.
That’s just under $1.2 million a year, which would be quite a successful outcome for the average content creator. Musk enabled Subscriptions on his account on April 15, so these subscribers all joined within the past 10 days.
But, Musk is quite obviously an anomaly as Twitter’s owner and its most-followed user. It’s unlikely that any other creator comes close to making anywhere near Musk does from Twitter’s Subscriptions feature.
And, taking Musk’s other metric into question, it’s actually kind of low. Just around 0.018 percent of Musk’s more than 136.4 million followers pay to subscribe to Musk’s paywalled content.
The Subscriptions feature existed before Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, under the name Super Follows. However, Musk wasn’t such a fan of the branding and changed it to simply “Subscriptions” in the weeks after he took over last year. The feature has been available since then but it appears Twitter is now re-focusing its efforts on marketing Subscriptions.
As Super Follows under the old Twitter, the feature failed to take off. But, Musk seems intent to move Twitter away from an advertiser-supported platform, so he continues to center his efforts on subscription models.
We’ve yet to really see how Subscriptions under Musk could play out, but if it’s anything like how Twitter Blue has gone, it’s not looking good. But, maybe it’ll end up being just as entertaining to watch play out.
The 13 best tweets the week Elon Musk killed Twitter’s legacy checkmarks
Elon Musk actually did it. Twitter stripped stripped verified users of their blue checks on Thursday (April 20).
The only people left with blue checks, barring any mixups typical of Musk’s Twitter, are those who paid for a Twitter Blue subscription. In other words, a blue check now means that you are willing to pony up $8 per month to Musk.
Celebrities, journalists, and politicians are all left without verification. And not just some writer with 3,000 followers (cough, me) — we’re talking Halle Berry, Beyoncé, and the freaking Pope.
The response to the blue-check wipeout, however, was hilarious. Musk unintentionally created a great day on Twitter as folks responded to the petty decision. Here are 13 of the best responses tweeted in the aftermath.
1.Halle Berry had a great response to losing her blue check (before she actually lost it).
2. No blue check to hold us back anymore.
3. The move does make it super easy to see who paid for Twitter Blue, and they should be blocked immediately.
4. This really has been the best part of the whole thing. It’s now super simple to know who is that desperate.
5. This is a great bit about Musk’s other endeavor, SpaceX, which had a rocket explode on Thursday.
6. And again, about the people who paid.
7. I would absolutely pay $8 to make it look like my friend paid for Twitter. 100 percent.
8. Ahhh I remember those days.
9. Margaritaville nailed it.
10. A good meme to hold on to these days.
11. A nice little gotcha on LeBron James.
12. But also maybe not?
13. And finally, my own meme. Because I can.
Twitter will limit reach of ‘hateful’ tweets with a label, not removal
You can still find hate speech on Elon Musk‘s Twitter. But now, some of it will come with a warning label.
According to Twitter, the company will start rolling out new warning labels on tweets that break its “Hateful Conduct” rules. Tweets with this label will have “limited visibility” on the platform, meaning that Twitter’s algorithm will reduce its reach — that is, fewer people will see the content, as its ability to be found via search or discovered via recommendations will be stifled.
Twitter stressed that the limited visibility will only affect the specific offending tweets, and accounts that tweet hateful content will not be deboosted or penalized in any way. The company said users will be able to submit appeals if they believe Twitter wrongly affixed their tweet with the label. Twitter also said it will “continue to remove illegal content and suspend bad actors” from the platform.
Limiting the visibility on user accounts or posts is typically referred to as shadowbanning, a practice that Musk and his staunchest supporters have frequently railed against.
However, Twitter is framing letting users know that a tweet has had visibility limited for breaking the company’s “Hateful Conduct” policies as a new step towards more transparency on the platform. Of course, any extra information provided by a platform to its users is a welcomed addition. But, again, from a content moderation standpoint, it’s exactly the type of activity that Musk has previously criticized.
Twitter’s policies define hateful conduct as racist or sexist slurs, tropes, and intimidation, as well as hateful references, imagery, and incitement.
Musk previously shared his vision of a platform with “freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach” before. However, so far, researchers and many Twitter users have noticed quite the opposite, often finding that hate speech and other extremist content make its way into the recommendations of the default For You feed.
Earlier this year, Twitter slashed its global content moderation team as part of a series of layoffs under Musk.
Twitter to label tweets that get downranked for violating its hate speech policy
Twitter announced today a new policy that it claims will offer more transparency around which hateful tweets on its platform have been subject to enforcement action. Typically, when tweets violate Twitter’s policies, one of the actions the company can take is to limit the reach of those tweets — or something it calls “visibility filtering.” […]
Twitter to label tweets that get downranked for violating its hate speech policy by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch